The Inside Scoop on Gaming

Introduction

Unless you have been hiding under a rock, or are new to roleplaying, then you would have most likely heard of Hogshead Publishing’s Nobilis: The Game of Sovereign Powers. Essentially players take on the roles of replacement gods – looking after the elements of reality while the real gods battle enemies from beyond Creation who seek to destroy reality one concept at a time. Of course this description hardly does justice to what is a rich and detailed setting full of potential, but this review is about the Live Action supplement to Nobilis - The Game of Powers. If you are one of the few people who haven’t heard of the game, I recommend performing a search on the RPGnet review database for the core game before you read on.

LARPing – Live Action Role Playing – has been an activity that I’ve been personally involved in on and off over the last eight years. Predominantly focused on MET (Mind’s Eye Theatre) I have enjoyed a somewhat love-hate relationship with the hobby. The problem lies in that LARP design requires a great deal more skill than standard roleplaying. Your average LARP GM must be part writer, director, producer and player. She (or he) needs to have a decent grasp of how to pace events while avoiding the pitfalls of railroading players. Having written and successfully run a couple of LARPs myself – with the aid of several talented friends – I was intrigued by the idea of a Nobilis LARP – especially to find out if it was, in fact, playable.

Graphics and Layout

Firstly, The Game of Powers is in the standard size of most roleplaying books rather than the coffee-table book format of Nobilis. It has a soft cover – although the quality of the cover is similar to that found on trade paperbacks you find in the literary section – ‘mmmm soft…’ – The general quality of the book and it’s pages is very high.

Graphically, the cover mirrors Nobilis although this time we have the image of a sculpture ‘Ophelia’ by Maurice Bouval – from the Macklowe Gallery. I love this choice of cover for the series – it somehow manages to capture the essence of the setting effectively. Inside the book the art is once again a sparse series of full-page pictures – nine in total out of eighty pages. The quality is somewhat mixed. Most of them are fantastic images however a couple looked a little like fan art to me. There are also pictures of flowers spaced throughout the margins – which help to break the text a little.

The general layout follows that of Nobilis - two columns of text with small comments and quotes in the margins. I loved this style from the previous book – it was clean and attractive. However I did feel that the margin text this time lacked the spark of the previous book. There are some great little quotes, but some are almost banal to read.

Content

The Game of Powers is a collaborative effort and is essentially written as a series of essays that link together to provide the live action rules. I’ll look at each segment individually before covering general thoughts and impressions of the book as a whole.

Ninety-Nine Days and One – R. Sean Borgstrom:The book opens much like the first with a fiction piece describing someone becoming enNobled. I have a couple of issues with both fiction pieces. One of the problems with reviewing fiction is that such reviews are usually subjective – some people might hate what others might like. Pure language wise neither pieces are flawed. But I have issues with the use of first person present in fiction. In the case of this I personally find it overwritten and jarring. While this story is not as bad as the first one – which I really didn’t like – I still didn’t like the use of tense.

Book of the World: Water – R. Sean Borgstrom: A small fiction along the lines of the Book of Questions/Vyasa segments from Nobilis. I kind of have two minds about this because the Book of the World “explanations” are, unfortunately, hidden throughout the main text as opposed to using the margins. Still it does allow the reader to get a “feel” for the setting of the game.

Playing Dynamic Nobilis – R. Sean Borgstrom:This chapter is a brief outline of the Dynamic Nobilis rules, essentially an introduction to the concepts of LARPing. Personally, I find the term “Dynamic Nobilis” dances dangerously close to becoming pretentious. Why use it when “Live Nobilis” would be fine. (Especially considering that the system itself is far from “dynamic.” More on this later.) I just felt that it was as bad as “Mind’s Eye Theatre” – an unnecessary indulgence. Particularly later on in the book I found the constant use of the term annoyed me and usually felt somewhat forced.

On the other hand there is a great rule presented in this chapter – although why it wasn’t placed in the actual rules section strikes me as odd – and that is the concept of “Social Miracle Points.” Essentially players can either purchase or be rewarded with Social Miracle Points that can be spent during downtime to sort out “off-stage” character interactions and plots. I really enjoyed this idea – it provides the HG with a nice little mechanic to handle events between games and can be used in e-mail correspondences between players and HGs.

Unlike some LARPs which tend to occur in one location, The Game of Powers tends to involve multiple locations, named Regions. In each Region there is a table and noticeboard. On the table will be cards detailing various Objects and Mortals that may be present in the region. PCs can use these cards to also detail changes to the region due to miraculous actions and the noticeboard is used for detailing world-scale changes. These concepts are introduced in this chapter – but are detailed further on in the book.

Blossoming: Portraying Nobles and Imperators – E. Deirdre Brooks: While this chapter repeats some of the material in Nobilis, There is a horde of pointers and tips for both players and Hollyhock Gods about how to play Nobles and Imperators. While this chapter is short it manages to pack a good deal of information regarding miracles, handling the difference between player intelligence and Noble intelligence and how to portray the actions and behaviour of an Imperator.

Running Dynamic Nobilis – R. Sean Borgstrom: This chapter could have been included in the “Playing Dynamic Nobilis” chapter as it offers pretty much the same information. While it does expand on a few concepts it felt a little extraneous to me. This chapter is quite oddly placed within the book as well – it may have been better placed after “The Dynamic Game” rather than here, where the material seems to float on its own.

Tilling the Garden – Gareth Hanrahan: One of the best chapters in the book. This is PACKED with tips and suggestions for planning, writing and running a Nobilis game – live or tabletop. Written in a clear and easy to understand manner this chapter manages to answer the common question I hear many Nobilis HGs say – “Where do I begin?” While its focus is on Live Nobilis, most of the advice is useful for any Nobilis game. From character creation to plots and subplots – this chapter can save many HGs a lot of headaches and problems. It also has a great guide to preparing for a LARP and how to deal with the public as well.

Hedges and Thorns: An Alternative Approach – Mikko Rautalahti: Another short chapter. It has a good deal of useful tips for dealing with problems that may arise in a LARP – not just Nobilis. Could have benefited from a better layout, more white space would have made it easier to read, but still a useful section simply from providing an alternative perspective on LARPing.

The Dynamic Game – R. Sean Borgstrom: The crux of the book, the “Dynamic Rules.” After all the selling of the previous chapters I personally found the system to be not as good as the default Nobilis system. Essentially the “Dynamic” game is built around a success scale. Success/Failure is scaled from Misery to Triumph. When an action is facing a difficulty, the degree of success of failure decides how close to Misery or Triumph the player gets. Essentially these terms are fancy ways of saying “Critical Failure” or “Critical Success.” I don’t really have a problem with this use of terminology – after all it is in keeping with the feel of the setting – but it relies on using several charts. Although these are pretty simple charts, I do find it unlikely that many players would bother to learn them off by heart. On the plus side, it provides a more measured mechanic than say, a certain child’s game using hand gestures.

However, on the negative side it is more convoluted. Players spend MPs to raise their chances of success – but they must also refer to charts regarding any equipment or actions that may cause “shifts.” And this is where the game starts to get bogged down. Shifts move a character’s “vital force” (The total of attribute plus points spent) up or down the Misery-Triumph scale. While this is simple, it again forces the players to refer to the scale rather than just resolve the contest instantly. This is then further complicated by an obscure combat example that could have been written more clearly.

While “Dynamic” is more favourable for a LARP setting – it is far from Dynamic. I can envisage many players taking an unnecessary amount of time working out shifts and difficulties. The rules are somewhat scattered throughout the chapter, and I had to re-read the combat section several times to understand how the example worked. Tip: Keep unique Terminology to a minimum. Also, the Dodge table is a bit… odd. Sorry – a Live Action Game needs to be able to resolve conflicts quickly and with as little paperwork as possible. “Dynamic” seems to produce a large amount of paper that needs to be referred to regularly. I’d suggest that players abolish the charts and simply stick with keeping a number of pendants/cards representing Miracle points, which slowly get expended. Simply highest rank wins. While the Misery-Triumph mechanic does allow for more detail, it can risk slowing the game down. I also noticed that there are no playtesters mentioned at the beginning of the book. Did the game get playtested before publication?

While I do have some issues with the system, after a few re-reads I eventually understood how the system worked – it is a nice alternative for tabletop playing as it provides a more structured system for players who prefer to have their rules better defined. There are also some nice write-ups of how to convert the miracles, gifts and handicaps into Live Nobilis rules.

Heaven’s Gate – John Shockley: The “Dynamic” game provided is quite well written and definitely a great springboard for a Nobilis campaign – Live or Tabletop. It has nice set-up advice for a beginner HG to aid in organising the game. Setting up a LARP involves developing some decent habits, most of which are covered in this adventure.

Unfortunately does fall into the “PC party” trap at the end. Considering that there are 20-30 PCs it is unlikely that the segment that ties up the game will really work well unless the HG is very organised. I just have a vision of something reminiscent of the movie “Clue” with 15-20 Nobles running from room to room in the search for clues while looking like a celestial marathon.

Despite this gripe, the game is definitely playable and good for an introduction into Live Nobilis. There are possibly too many NPCs for 3 HGs to run – I would suggest that all NPCs are redone as PCs – which will free HGs up to actually guide the game. Takes some more work – and the NPC/PCs will need to be integrated into a larger campaign… but will make the work that much easier on the HG.

General Thoughts

So, what is the final verdict? I’m kind of torn. On one hand, The Game of Powers has some of the best LARP advice I have read in a long time. The ideas and suggestions are first rate, and I loved the concepts of Social Miracle Points, Lazy Notification, Object Cards and Noticeboards. While a Live game of Nobilis requires a great deal of organisation and preparation on the HG’s part – it has the potential to be one of the most rewarding LARP experiences players could have. With this in mind, The Game of Powers definitely helps to guide an HG through the process of organising the game.

On the other hand though there are some niggly little elements that really bugged me. The use of unnecessary terminology was annoying – “Dynamic Nobilis” just gets on my nerves for some odd reason. The actual rules system seems better suited to tabletop playing rather than Live Action – while it is simple, it’s too mechanical for LARPing in my honest opinion. Most LARPs are chaotic affairs, and the fewer times players need to chase down a Narrator/Co-ordinator/HG the better. “Dynamic Nobilis” also would involve having to educate players in the various rules of Nobilis AND Dynamic Nobilis to be able to be used effectively – and this is a lot of work for an HG to perform before they even get to write an adventure up for the game.

I am uncertain whether Hogshead actually play-tested this game before publication, but I’m assuming they would have. It would have been nice to play test this before reviewing, but LARPs take a lot of time to prepare. As of writing I have begun to organise a game for late December – early January. I’ll post my post-gaming impressions on the RPGnet Open Forum afterwards – so keep an eye out.

In Closing

Even though there were some things that did not sit well with me about this book, it is still a very well written product. There are some cases where clarity was needed – particularly with the rules – but in general it is very good, and as such still deserves the high score I’ve given it. Even though the game is not perfect it still remains useful for the advice in several of the chapters. Also, it can still be used to clarify the more obscure elements within the main book – such as how to portray Nobles and Imperators as well as how to design campaigns and adventures. I find myself looking forward to the next supplement – which obviously means that The Game of Powers managed to still impress me despite its faults.

The Game of Powers
The Game of Powers Capsule Review by Conan McKegg on 21/09/02 Style: 4 (Classy and well done) Substance: 4 (Meaty) A useful source of inspiration and LARP advice. Slightly faulty, but still worth the purchase. Product: The Game of Powers Author: R. Sean Borgstrom, E. Deirdre Brooks, Gareth Hanrahan, Mikko Rautalahti and John Shockley Category: RPG Company/Publisher: Hogshead Publishing Line: Nobilis Cost: $16.95 Page count: 80 Year published: 2002 ISBN: 1-899749-36-5 SKU: HOG 602 Comp copy?: no Capsule Review by Conan McKegg on 21/09/02 Genre tags: Fantasy Science Fiction Modern day Historical Horror Gothic Diceless Live-action Other	Introduction Unless you have been hiding under a rock, or are new to roleplaying, then you would have most likely heard of Hogshead Publishing’s *Nobilis: The Game of Sovereign Powers. Essentially players take on the roles of replacement gods – looking after the elements of reality while the real gods battle enemies from beyond Creation who seek to destroy reality one concept at a time. Of course this description hardly does justice to what is a rich and detailed setting full of potential, but this review is about the Live Action supplement to Nobilis* - The Game of Powers. If you are one of the few people who haven’t heard of the game, I recommend performing a search on the RPGnet review database for the core game before you read on. LARPing – Live Action Role Playing – has been an activity that I’ve been personally involved in on and off over the last eight years. Predominantly focused on MET (Mind’s Eye Theatre) I have enjoyed a somewhat love-hate relationship with the hobby. The problem lies in that LARP design requires a great deal more skill than standard roleplaying. Your average LARP GM must be part writer, director, producer and player. She (or he) needs to have a decent grasp of how to pace events while avoiding the pitfalls of railroading players. Having written and successfully run a couple of LARPs myself – with the aid of several talented friends – I was intrigued by the idea of a *Nobilis* LARP – especially to find out if it was, in fact, playable. Graphics and Layout Firstly, The Game of Powers is in the standard size of most roleplaying books rather than the coffee-table book format of Nobilis. It has a soft cover – although the quality of the cover is similar to that found on trade paperbacks you find in the literary section – ‘mmmm soft…’ – The general quality of the book and it’s pages is very high. Graphically, the cover mirrors Nobilis although this time we have the image of a sculpture ‘Ophelia’ by Maurice Bouval – from the Macklowe Gallery. I love this choice of cover for the series – it somehow manages to capture the essence of the setting effectively. Inside the book the art is once again a sparse series of full-page pictures – nine in total out of eighty pages. The quality is somewhat mixed. Most of them are fantastic images however a couple looked a little like fan art to me. There are also pictures of flowers spaced throughout the margins – which help to break the text a little. The general layout follows that of Nobilis - two columns of text with small comments and quotes in the margins. I loved this style from the previous book – it was clean and attractive. However I did feel that the margin text this time lacked the spark of the previous book. There are some great little quotes, but some are almost banal to read. Content The Game of Powers is a collaborative effort and is essentially written as a series of essays that link together to provide the live action rules. I’ll look at each segment individually before covering general thoughts and impressions of the book as a whole. Ninety-Nine Days and One – R. Sean Borgstrom:The book opens much like the first with a fiction piece describing someone becoming enNobled. I have a couple of issues with both fiction pieces. One of the problems with reviewing fiction is that such reviews are usually subjective – some people might hate what others might like. Pure language wise neither pieces are flawed. But I have issues with the use of first person present in fiction. In the case of this I personally find it overwritten and jarring. While this story is not as bad as the first one – which I really didn’t like – I still didn’t like the use of tense. Book of the World: Water – R. Sean Borgstrom: A small fiction along the lines of the Book of Questions/Vyasa segments from Nobilis. I kind of have two minds about this because the Book of the World “explanations” are, unfortunately, hidden throughout the main text as opposed to using the margins. Still it does allow the reader to get a “feel” for the setting of the game. Playing Dynamic Nobilis – R. Sean Borgstrom:This chapter is a brief outline of the Dynamic Nobilis rules, essentially an introduction to the concepts of LARPing. Personally, I find the term “Dynamic Nobilis” dances dangerously close to becoming pretentious. Why use it when “Live Nobilis” would be fine. (Especially considering that the system itself is far from “dynamic.” More on this later.) I just felt that it was as bad as “Mind’s Eye Theatre” – an unnecessary indulgence. Particularly later on in the book I found the constant use of the term annoyed me and usually felt somewhat forced. On the other hand there is a great rule presented in this chapter – although why it wasn’t placed in the actual rules section strikes me as odd – and that is the concept of “Social Miracle Points.” Essentially players can either purchase or be rewarded with Social Miracle Points that can be spent during downtime to sort out “off-stage” character interactions and plots. I really enjoyed this idea – it provides the HG with a nice little mechanic to handle events between games and can be used in e-mail correspondences between players and HGs. Unlike some LARPs which tend to occur in one location, The Game of Powers tends to involve multiple locations, named Regions. In each Region there is a table and noticeboard. On the table will be cards detailing various Objects and Mortals that may be present in the region. PCs can use these cards to also detail changes to the region due to miraculous actions and the noticeboard is used for detailing world-scale changes. These concepts are introduced in this chapter – but are detailed further on in the book. Blossoming: Portraying Nobles and Imperators – E. Deirdre Brooks: While this chapter repeats some of the material in Nobilis, There is a horde of pointers and tips for both players and Hollyhock Gods about how to play Nobles and Imperators. While this chapter is short it manages to pack a good deal of information regarding miracles, handling the difference between player intelligence and Noble intelligence and how to portray the actions and behaviour of an Imperator. Running Dynamic Nobilis – R. Sean Borgstrom: This chapter could have been included in the “Playing Dynamic Nobilis” chapter as it offers pretty much the same information. While it does expand on a few concepts it felt a little extraneous to me. This chapter is quite oddly placed within the book as well – it may have been better placed after “The Dynamic Game” rather than here, where the material seems to float on its own. Tilling the Garden – Gareth Hanrahan: One of the best chapters in the book. This is PACKED with tips and suggestions for planning, writing and running a Nobilis game – live or tabletop. Written in a clear and easy to understand manner this chapter manages to answer the common question I hear many Nobilis HGs say – “Where do I begin?” While its focus is on Live Nobilis, most of the advice is useful for any Nobilis game. From character creation to plots and subplots – this chapter can save many HGs a lot of headaches and problems. It also has a great guide to preparing for a LARP and how to deal with the public as well. Hedges and Thorns: An Alternative Approach – Mikko Rautalahti: Another short chapter. It has a good deal of useful tips for dealing with problems that may arise in a LARP – not just Nobilis. Could have benefited from a better layout, more white space would have made it easier to read, but still a useful section simply from providing an alternative perspective on LARPing. The Dynamic Game – R. Sean Borgstrom: The crux of the book, the “Dynamic Rules.” After all the selling of the previous chapters I personally found the system to be not as good as the default Nobilis system. Essentially the “Dynamic” game is built around a success scale. Success/Failure is scaled from Misery to Triumph. When an action is facing a difficulty, the degree of success of failure decides how close to Misery or Triumph the player gets. Essentially these terms are fancy ways of saying “Critical Failure” or “Critical Success.” I don’t really have a problem with this use of terminology – after all it is in keeping with the feel of the setting – but it relies on using several charts. Although these are pretty simple charts, I do find it unlikely that many players would bother to learn them off by heart. On the plus side, it provides a more measured mechanic than say, a certain child’s game using hand gestures. However, on the negative side it is more convoluted. Players spend MPs to raise their chances of success – but they must also refer to charts regarding any equipment or actions that may cause “shifts.” And this is where the game starts to get bogged down. Shifts move a character’s “vital force” (The total of attribute plus points spent) up or down the Misery-Triumph scale. While this is simple, it again forces the players to refer to the scale rather than just resolve the contest instantly. This is then further complicated by an obscure combat example that could have been written more clearly. While “Dynamic” is more favourable for a LARP setting – it is far from Dynamic. I can envisage many players taking an unnecessary amount of time working out shifts and difficulties. The rules are somewhat scattered throughout the chapter, and I had to re-read the combat section several times to understand how the example worked. Tip: Keep unique Terminology to a minimum. Also, the Dodge table is a bit… odd. Sorry – a Live Action Game needs to be able to resolve conflicts quickly and with as little paperwork as possible. “Dynamic” seems to produce a large amount of paper that needs to be referred to regularly. I’d suggest that players abolish the charts and simply stick with keeping a number of pendants/cards representing Miracle points, which slowly get expended. Simply highest rank wins. While the Misery-Triumph mechanic does allow for more detail, it can risk slowing the game down. I also noticed that there are no playtesters mentioned at the beginning of the book. Did the game get playtested before publication? While I do have some issues with the system, after a few re-reads I eventually understood how the system worked – it is a nice alternative for tabletop playing as it provides a more structured system for players who prefer to have their rules better defined. There are also some nice write-ups of how to convert the miracles, gifts and handicaps into Live Nobilis rules. Heaven’s Gate – John Shockley: The “Dynamic” game provided is quite well written and definitely a great springboard for a Nobilis campaign – Live or Tabletop. It has nice set-up advice for a beginner HG to aid in organising the game. Setting up a LARP involves developing some decent habits, most of which are covered in this adventure. Unfortunately does fall into the “PC party” trap at the end. Considering that there are 20-30 PCs it is unlikely that the segment that ties up the game will really work well unless the HG is very organised. I just have a vision of something reminiscent of the movie “Clue” with 15-20 Nobles running from room to room in the search for clues while looking like a celestial marathon. Despite this gripe, the game is definitely playable and good for an introduction into Live Nobilis. There are possibly too many NPCs for 3 HGs to run – I would suggest that all NPCs are redone as PCs – which will free HGs up to actually guide the game. Takes some more work – and the NPC/PCs will need to be integrated into a larger campaign… but will make the work that much easier on the HG. General Thoughts So, what is the final verdict? I’m kind of torn. On one hand, The Game of Powers has some of the best LARP advice I have read in a long time. The ideas and suggestions are first rate, and I loved the concepts of Social Miracle Points, Lazy Notification, Object Cards and Noticeboards. While a Live game of Nobilis requires a great deal of organisation and preparation on the HG’s part – it has the potential to be one of the most rewarding LARP experiences players could have. With this in mind, The Game of Powers definitely helps to guide an HG through the process of organising the game. On the other hand though there are some niggly little elements that really bugged me. The use of unnecessary terminology was annoying – “Dynamic Nobilis” just gets on my nerves for some odd reason. The actual rules system seems better suited to tabletop playing rather than Live Action – while it is simple, it’s too mechanical for LARPing in my honest opinion. Most LARPs are chaotic affairs, and the fewer times players need to chase down a Narrator/Co-ordinator/HG the better. “Dynamic Nobilis” also would involve having to educate players in the various rules of Nobilis AND Dynamic Nobilis to be able to be used effectively – and this is a lot of work for an HG to perform before they even get to write an adventure up for the game. I am uncertain whether Hogshead actually play-tested this game before publication, but I’m assuming they would have. It would have been nice to play test this before reviewing, but LARPs take a lot of time to prepare. As of writing I have begun to organise a game for late December – early January. I’ll post my post-gaming impressions on the RPGnet Open Forum afterwards – so keep an eye out. In Closing Even though there were some things that did not sit well with me about this book, it is still a very well written product. There are some cases where clarity was needed – particularly with the rules – but in general it is very good, and as such still deserves the high score I’ve given it. Even though the game is not perfect it still remains useful for the advice in several of the chapters. Also, it can still be used to clarify the more obscure elements within the main book – such as how to portray Nobles and Imperators as well as how to design campaigns and adventures. I find myself looking forward to the next supplement – which obviously means that The Game of Powers managed to still impress me despite its faults.