Nobilis.. anyone have any experience?

InkSplat

So, I've recently been able to skim through a copy of Nobilis (and by skim, I mean read through a single time), which has left me with a desire to play it--however, it has also left me with complete an utter confusion as to how this game could even actually be run.

For those who don't know, Nobilis is a game where you play a Noble, or a "Power" of Creation--you are essentially the embodiment of one thing in the world. So, you could be the Power of Guns or Emotion or Fear (even though that is included in Emotion) or Art or Clouds or Sporks. And you have complete an utter control (should you be willing to expend the energy) over your domain.

The world as designed is beautiful and it really makes you want to play it, but I just have no idea how to come up with a potential threat to the Domain of Floor Tiles, or whatever, should that be what one of my players picks.

Does anyone have any experience running or playing the game? How is it actually accomplished?

Darian

InkSplat wrote: »

The world as designed is beautiful and it really makes you want to play it, but I just have no idea how to come up with a potential threat to the Domain of Floor Tiles, or whatever, should that be what one of my players picks.

A great flood is coming, which could destroy all the floor tiles in a 7 state region... how will you save them?

Sadly topical.

PolloDiablo

I used to play this all the time. There are a couple easy ways to make life difficult for players. Most importantly, if you're having trouble finding trouble for them directly, make trouble for someone or something they care about. An anchor, some aspect of their domain they especially care for, maybe other familia members. Those don't really have to be related to floor tiles, in this example. For example, an anchor wakes up in a bed full of dead hookers and he's got swastikas tattooed all over himself. He calls for help and your power needs to deal with the problem. Or maybe the Power of Carpeting is making a power play, and working to buy out tile corporations and replace them with carpet weavers. Or someone murders a familia member, and he needs to go on a vengeance rampage. Or if you really want to cause trouble, have the Excrucians doing a flower rite to remove grouting from existence, which would really cause problems for a power of tiles.

Just find something the character cares about, and shit on it.

InkSplat

Yeah. I understand that that's what you have to do.. I'm just not sure how to make a lot of that interesting. Like.. you've got God-like powers.. but here, some Excrucians are working with Cammorans to do hostile takeovers of this string of companies that make grout...

But like.. why in the hell would they ever do that? I mean, yes, they hate all of creation. But come on, they've got to have enough respect for themselves to target something bigger than the tile industry. :P

I suppose I could just stick to the Mythic Earth and more of an adventure-y sort of story until I could come up with something better. But that seems like it side-steps what Nobilis is trying to be about in the first place.

Just feels like there's not a lot of game to be found in Gods taking part in mundane activities, no matter how interesting the surrounding Mythos is.

Though I suppose I could re-read Sandman for some inspiration.

Svenska

I think that something small is where the badguys would go after first. It'd be like something to get the ball rolling...you know the drill

First the take-over of all the grout companies in the tri-state area....THEN THE WORLD!!!!1!!!

PolloDiablo

As for why they might target tiles, I think the first answer would be that all creation is equal. Tiles are just as much a part of creation as mathematics. In the fluff, they've apparently already wiped out some specific kind of teddy bear, so why not tiles? That, and maybe they don't necessarily give a shit about tiles, but maybe the specific Imperator is a badass and they want to take him out of commission. If they have to do that by fucking up tiles, so be it.

It can be tough, but there are plenty of people that might hold grudges against tiles or the guy personally. It doesn't always have to focus directly on the domain, either.

I guess I'm not sure what exactly you're asking. Like how to extend a quest? Like, anchor wakes up with dead hookers, they investigate, find out that yesterday he broke an antique bathtub that some nazi wizard had accidentally transferred his spirit into. The anchor was cursed because the wizard's familiar was getting revenge on the anchor for killing its master. The PC's have to find it and stop it, or go back in time to prevent the wizard from ending up in the tub in the first place, where they meet a past version of a friend who fucked up the wizard's spell. I don't know. Just make shit up.

InkSplat

I guess I'm just having a hard time wrapping my head around how to make a conflict that is actually a challenge for the Powers, while still fitting within the world of subtlety and such. But the examples you're giving are definitely helping me get a better idea of what the game expects.

The example in the book is an attack on Treachery. The Excrucians are attempting to turn Treachery into Justice by changing reality to make people believe a murdered woman deserved it.

And I think that sort of hits on what I'm having a problem with--the real meat of the flower rite is to change reality to erase something. I suppose I just need to really sit and think of how you Strength could possibly be tricked away in the same way, or dogs, or space heaters.

Its just a matter of adjusting my thinking, I guess. Flower rites don't need to be global to have an effect, right? So just something involving 5 or so people could change all of reality if the flower rite succeeds?

So, like, if an Excrucian somehow convinced a single apartment building that dogs all died of a plague, so long as a flower rite was connected to it, it would effect the Domain? Or does it need to be a bit bigger than that?

Alistair Hutton

PolloDiablo wrote: »

As for why they might target tiles, I think the first answer would be that all creation is equal.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. All of creation is not equal - things that are represented by Powers are more equal than others. And that's why an attack on Tiles is important, the very fact that it is embodied by a Power makes it important, makes it crucial to creation and important to be defended.

To quote a friend of mine (not that I necessarily agree with him) "Nobilis isn't hard. The players are heroes, the Excrucians are orcs and all of creation is the dungeon. Kill things and take their stuff."

InkSplat

Alistair Hutton wrote: »

PolloDiablo wrote: »

As for why they might target tiles, I think the first answer would be that all creation is equal.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. All of creation is not equal - things that are represented by Powers are more equal than others. And that's why an attack on Tiles is important, the very fact that it is embodied by a Power makes it important, makes it crucial to creation and important to be defended.

To quote a friend of mine (not that I necessarily agree with him) "Nobilis isn't hard. The players are heroes, the Excrucians are orcs and all of creation is the dungeon. Kill things and take their stuff."

I just need to figure out how you'd go about attacking Tiles in a way that could really alter their place in Creation.

Like I said, the example in the book makes it seem like you can weaken a Domain just by making one apartment building worth of people and their family believe something.

But how would you attack Tiles? or Strength? Or Clouds? Or Wind? Or Fire?

I guess you could relegate those sort of things to the Mystic Earth rather than the Prosaic, since everything has a spirit--just create a Tile-infecting virus or something.

I think my problem is just trying to figure out how to attack the Powers in the Prosaic Earth. Mythic Earth seems easy, as everything is alive. Want to get rid of Clouds? Lots of ways to do that when you think of it as a genocide of living creatures, but translating that into a problem in the Prosaic Earth is a bit tougher.

Though I suppose in the example of the Tile-infecting virus, the Powers could be drawn to the places where the virus is showing signs in the Prosaic Earth, and it could just be a back and forth thing as they try to track down human "carriers" in the Prosaic Earth even though its actually a problem rooted in the Mythic.

Hm. Maybe I'm starting to get a grasp for this finally.

Marikir

Part of the thing that you have to try and wrap your head around is the concept that there used to be things that we don't have any longer. Such as the child protecting teady bears.

Adjacent to that fact is that once something is erased, it's erased for all time, backwards and forwards. It becomes a foreign concept. It never was and never will be. I think, if I ever run a game, there's another concept that I'll mention that also suffered defeat and erasure, just to try and give the players a handle on that concept.


Though, in all honesty, reading the posts above, I really have to ask. Is someone playing the Power of Tiles?

PolloDiablo

I think I get what you're saying. The virus thing is a good idea, I bet you could work that out. For flower rites, the key is to just imagine what the opposite or absence of the domain would be like. It's not that messing up the domain in one place destroys the domain. The Excrucians only use the specific instance like a door to attack the domain directly, if that makes sense. Like in the example of play, they're turning that one woman's treachery into justice, or whatever exactly they were doing, but that instance doesn't really matter in the long run. That's just how they were connecting to attack Treachery directly. So you're exactly right, it doesn't have to be global to hurt the power.

I don't think it's enough to simply destroy a part of the domain, though. Like thinking all dogs had died wouldn't be enough to attack the domain, by my thinking, because destruction is the other half of what powers do. I think it would have to do with the specific way a player defined that domain. In the example, it was the player's notion that you couldn't have treachery if someone wasn't worth betraying, or something along those lines. So if your player focused on tiles being beautiful things that brightens people's days, an excrucian might try to pervert that by showing them to be ugly and hurtful. Something like that, I guess.

InkSplat

@Marikir: Ha, no. But, like, there are a lot of serious things that suffer from the same issue. Though, a Power of Sporks would be amusing to no end. The book does have examples of odd Powers though, like "Death by the Sea". And there's also the Power of Guns who is an example villain in the book. Like.. how do you attack the concept of guns?

@Pollo: Hm. That makes sense. I'm still unsure of how you'd twist a concept like Clouds or Wind or something though. Like.. even if the Power identified more with white fluffy clouds shaped like Bunnies, dark brooding storm clouds still exist, so the opposite wouldn't really be an attack.

Unless you go with the idea that every storm is an Excrucian attack on the Cloud domain. Which would be kind of cool, actually.

But like with my above example of the Power of Guns. There are people who both believe that Guns are terrible, nasty things, and people that believe they are absolutely faaabulous. How does that situation work, when two totally polar viewpoints already exist in abundance, and if the Power happens to share one of them?

(Sorry for harping on this point. Its just that I've never played the game, so I have nothing I can dissect on my own or anything.)

Marikir

Well, to attack the concept of guns, I'd think that any Excrucian would first attack the concept of using guns or guns being necessary. Maybe all guns suddenly begin to malfunction or something. Maybe a movement sweeps the world of people advocating swords or hand-to-hand. Or crossbows become more powerful, etc. Shape the world such that the idea of using or having a gun is foreign. Then make that concept reality by shunting the idea of guns out of the world.

I think that the idea of how a Noble Family comes about, with the rite that creates their domain might also be another way of thinking about this. The idea of that hometown is ripped from the world such that the world itself forgets it and all lost in it...and the ground grows together, leaving no trace behind. It might be a physical way to view a metaphysical result, the loss of a concept.

All of this is supposition on my part. I'm sure others who have actually ran Nobilis could offer better ideas. I know that if you want to find PbPs of Nobilis, they sometimes appear on RPG.net. That might offer some ideas. Also, the Nobilis mailing list is amusing from time to time...if it itself hasn't been Excruciated out of existence.

Alistair Hutton

A concept embodied by a Power is more than just the thing itself. Because the thing is important to creation you have to weave it into reality. Rebecca Borgstrom has a number of truly inspirational posts on rpg.net where she replies asking "How on earth do you make the Power of Smiles relevant? The power of Just Making It Onto The Bus Before It Pulls Away?"

The power of Sporks is easy. The spork is the ultimate representation of utility, the thing that has two functions, the two great tastes that go great together, the jack of all trades the master of none. The spork is 'the obvious idea' the concept so straightforward that only a genius can come up with it and leaves lesser people exclaiming 'It's so simple, why didn't I think of that?' it is the inspiration for others to pitch their million dollar idea.

A world without sporks is one that has less creativity, less willingness to just have a go at a silly idea, more straight jacketed thinking, less mutli-function devices.

Svenska

I really like that.
Amazing thinking!