The Game of Powers is the LARP companion for Nobilis. This book builds on the main rules for Nobilis, adding optional systems, advice for making the transition from table top to LARP, and an adventure. Solid and workmanlike The Game of Powers is very useful to those wanting to LARP Nobilis, but lacks the spark and flare of the original book.

The Book

Unlike its predecessor The Game of Powers is a normal RPG sized book (8.5” x 11”), paperback, with normal weight paper. The cover shows half the face of a bronze statue, Ophelia by Maurice Bouval, and is very attractive and distinctive, quickly marking the book as being part of the Nobilis line. This kind of elegant, tasteful look carries over into the book where full page art and the clean, readable layout of the main rule book continues. All the art is nice, though some is a bit “faerie glamour” for my taste, and all images are given full page panels rather than being cramped in with the text.

As a perfect bound soft cover with good quality paper, The Game of Powers should hold up fairly well to use. While it lacks the storybook weight of the original, its reasonable price tag is adequate compensation.

The Scoop

The Game of Powers devotes just over half of its page count to advice and guidelines for running a LARP. The first five chapters are dedicated to introducing LARP play, setting out guidelines for PCs and HGs in playing in the Nobilis LARP environment, the mechanics of setting up and using space, and running plots that will work in an environment as rigorous as a Nobilis LARP. The sixth chapter contains the new rules set for Nobilis LARPing. The seventh and final chapter contains a scenario designed for LARP play, but easily modifiable for TT play.

The first two sections, “Ninety-Nine Days and One” and “Book of the World: Water” are fiction and tone pieces that set the stage for the rest of the book. “Ninety-Nine Days and One” is good, but “Book of the World: Water” (a series of koans/sutras) feels a bit forced and not up to the pace set by the similar sections in the original book. After the set up, “Playing Dynamic Nobilis” introduces the basic concepts of Nobilis LARPing. It also introduces the mechanic of Social Miracle Points, a system where characters can spend social influence in order to accomplish various off stage goals. I must say I liked the system a great deal, but found it very out of place in the introductory chapter.

“Blossoming” covers guidelines and ideas for getting into the Noble and Imperator mindset for both PCs and HGs. It gives guidelines for playing characters more intelligent than the player, working through Noble emotions, and dealing with the capacity for Miracles and other Sovereigns in daily life. “Running Dynamic Nobilis” then gives us a more HG oriented version of “Playing Dynamic Nobilis.” I can’t help but think those two chapters should have been merged, with the Social MP mechanic sent to Chapter 6.

Chapter 4, “Tilling the Garden” and 5 “Hedges and Thorns” are the most solid and useful sections of the whole book. “Hedges and Thorns” concentrates on alternate methods of setting up, staffing, and preparing for a game. It is very good, but owes a large part of its impact to the granite foundation laid in “Tilling the Garden.” That chapter handles a massive number of topics for running a Nobilis LARP, everything from how to spotlight characters, run plots, and deal with changes to the world to handling pre-game prep time and solving player problems. This chapter could be a textbook example of how to write advice for a LARP.

“The Dynamic Game”, chapter 6, covers the new rules for LARPing Nobilis. The new system focuses on “misery and triumph”, a sliding scale of degrees of effort, to determine exact levels of success and failure. In so doing it gives examples, complications, and specific details that many a Nobilis TT player has been wanting. It also gives suggestions for using various Gifts and Flaws in a LARP setting – because things that are simple in TT can get hard in a LARP. The section was generally well written, but I think the new rules are actually more useful for TT groups than LARPS. More on that in a bit.

The Game of Powers finishes with “Heaven’s Gate”, a pre-generated adventure for LARPing. The set up is broad and flexible, the situation interesting and well thought out. I will not give away spoiler details, but I will say that the scenario could be used for TT play with a bit of modification. It makes a fitting end to a solid book.

The Good

The best thing about The Game of Powers is its specificity. It is not a general LARP book, nor a book of general advice for Nobilis. With the possible, and odd, exception of the rules set everything in this book is balanced and developed to make a Nobilis LARP playable under its own terms. All too often RPG books repeat the same sorts of generic advice without custom tailoring their advice, structure, and support to the actual game being played. The Game of Powers does not make this mistake. When you get information about plot structuring, it is plot structuring specific to the peculiar demands of a Nobilis LARP. When you get information about casting players to specific roles, it is specific to the pros and cons of such set ups in a Nobilis LARP. At a slim 80 pages, this book didn’t have any time to mess about. Luckily it didn’t, and the results are wonderfully focused, thus making every bit of writing useful.

The Bad

The new system (“Dynamic Nobilis”) presented in The Game of Powers is anything but bad. However, in my case it was also less suited to LARP play than the general system in the main Nobilis book. At first I was very excited about it, as there is a good deal of grounding and specificity to the system that the rules in the main book lack. However, during playtest the new layer of rules and complications confused players and led to more, rather than less, need for HG intervention. Because of the way the Dynamic Nobilis rules are set up, using them requires knowledge of the basic Nobilis rules and the Dynamic rules. This lead to a double bind that asked for greater rules knowledge than my LARP group was ready for. Now, this may be a situation that would clear up with time and rules mastery from every member of the group. However, the added detail seemed unnecessary as well as being overly complex and chart-example driven for a LARP.

On the other hand, the Dynamic Nobilis complications and example charts work very well to add some definition to a TT game of Nobilis. If you’ve ever wondered how much Aspect it would take to beat 25 Navy Seals with M-16s all working under the direction of an Excrucian Warmain – Dynamic Nobilis can tell you. I am certainly going to use some of the complications for my TT game, and so I can’t call the system bad. In fact, I think it may be very useful for many TT groups who want a bit more focus and understanding of the rules. I do, however, find it not perfectly suited to LARP play.

The Ugly

The only ugly was in my playtest game when a drunken group of senior citizens decided to join us. If you’ve never seen a 72 year old dressed up like Cleopatra then be happy, for you have not suffered what my eyes have suffered. This, however, is no fault of Hogshead, and so can’t be blamed on the game.

Conclusions

The 15 person Nobilis LARP I ran to playtest The Game of Powers was an interesting experience. I’d never run a LARP before, though I’d played in several. However, I was not intimidated (well, not that intimidated) because I felt this book gave me a solid foundation to build from. In general everything at the playtest went well, except when rules questions came up. The fine-grained nature of the Dynamic Nobilis system (when compared to the normal TT system) ended up having players calling for my intervention on nearly ½ of the situations in which rules came up at all. At one point a whole Famila asked “Why can’t we just use the real rules?” In the end we did, though we kept some of the modifications out of The Game of Powers. Once we got everyone back on the same page, things went very well and the game was mostly a success.

In the end that says just about everything I feel about this book. It is a very solid, very good book about setting up, running, and playing in a Nobilis LARP. The advice and setup will make it a must buy for anyone wanting to run a Nobilis LARP. The Dynamic system is interesting, and contains many useful bits that can be used to make a TT or LARP game better. On its own, however, it did not work for LARPing as well as I had hoped.

If you are going to LARP Nobilis, get this book. You’ll be able to use elements of the new system to make the standard system LARPable, and everything else is golden. If you do not intend to LARP, but need a finer grained system with more complications, you may want to look at this book for the Dynamic Nobilis system. If you don’t want either of those, then the book will look pretty on your shelf.

The End

For being a pretty book, well laid out and with fitting art, The Game of Powers gets a 4 for Style. For being focused, on point, and dense but with a system of questionable value for a LARP it gets a 3.5 (rounds up) in Substance.