[In Nomine Kitbash] Starting things off... really long post

[MPOSullivan]

Just in the interrest of putting this out there, i'm going to do a little write-up about the first session of a new campaign i'm running.

It all started about a month ago.  A friend of mine asked me about running a new game to replace our previous defunct tuesday night campaign.  We were in the gaming/comic store that he's the manager of and I asked him what kind of game he wanted to play.  He pointed at a copy of In Nomine sitting on the shelf and said "i want to play an angel."

Now, i have run In Nomine previously and i really do love the setting.  well, that's not exactly right as the setting isn't very well explored in the game text, but i love the smart-ass attitude of the game.  I also ran a very succesful five-session game of it about two years ago that i always look back on fondly.  having this experience with the game also gave me a great view into its many problems.

firstly, as stated above, for a game with plenty of "splat" style angelic and demonic types and bosses to plug into your character, there isn't much of anything in the way of background for the setting.  this isn't too much of a big deal and, as a matter of fact can become an advantage if approached properly.  

also, the game uses a very "cute" system.  Rather than just a simple dice mechanic, the game uses the "d666", rolling two d6 as a roll-under, the third determing success/failure level called the check digit.  sounds funny on the page, but in gameplay it works for crap.  great rolls can be hampered with a poor check digit roll, and trully crappy rolls can become incredible with the luck of a high check digit roll, and none of it takes into consideration the skill of the character.  

i had just finished running a short Buffy: the Vampire Slayer campaign and really took to the Unisystem.  It's nothing great, no bells or whistles, but it is small and easy and out of the way, so i took it to replace the In Nomine system.    

Finally, the game is fairly straight-up Sim, a fault i think when you're dealing with Angels and Demons and the great War (yeah, all capitalized).  To remedy this, i took an in-game stat called dissonance, which normally tracks how much the character breaks the rules that are set down by his angelic "race", and turned it into a trait more like Sorcerer's Humanity, making it about Good vs. Evil and the sanctity of the soul, or, more in line, about Damnation.  If angelic characters worked against the will of god or acted in a selfish way, then dissonance was to be flung their way.

This was also interresting because Dissonance never goes away.  One you have commited a Damning act, you are marked by it forever.  And this can also become quite literal.  Get some Dissonance and characters can turn it into Discord, a manifestation of their impending Fall.  they start to grow vestigial horns and the like.  

To offset this, i turned the in-game stat of Essence into a reward system for commiting acts that supported God's plan.  I also changed what it could do a little, turning it into a Plot Point-system.  

now, with these changes to the game, i was ready to run a game.  I wanted to really make the game a communal experience and not just be the all-powerful Game Master, so i decided on only a very few things that i wanted to do in the game.  I wanted the PCs to all be angels and i wanted to run the game in Savannah, GA, as the city has a reputation for the weird and for being rather "old world".  

Earlier this evening i ran the character creation and first session of the game.  It was myself as well as three other players: Brett, Ryan and Andrew.  (for those that like this sort of thing, it was an all-male gaming group and i was the only straight player.  Ryan and Andrew are a couple and Brett is also gay, but his partner isn't a gamer.  this is a familiar game group make up for me, as my previous group back in Philly was three gay males and myself or, as we called ourselves, the GAYmers.)  None of the other players had played In Nomine before and only one of them had ever really taken a flip through the book.  All in all, a great way to set up a new game, with an absolute clean slate.

so we hit the ground running and quickly went through character creation.  the three decided that the characters were all going to work for the same Archangel, so that they had a stronger in-game reason to bond.  They chose Eli, Archangel of Creation and went on from there.  We talked about the location that we wanted to play in and decided that Savannah was going to be like the Casablanca of this world, a place where angels and demons could be in the same room and not kill each other straight out.  We decided that there was an unspoken truce between all of the celestial inhabitants of the town that no one would touch anyone unless they rocked the boat.  From there we thought it would be fun if the humans in the town were kind of in on things.  they knew that there was something odd about their town, most might even know that there were angels and demons there as their neighbors and co-workers.  there's really nothing more fun than humans that are actually aware of their surroundings.  

only one of the players had come up with an angelic name that they liked, so i'm going to list them with their vessels' names.  we wound up with:

Gordon Frost (played by Andrew): a Seraphim servitor of Eli who, in his human Vessel is the owner of a jazz club in downtown Savannah.  Gordon has been using the club to encourage artists to develope their potential.

Vincent DiSalvo (played by Ryan): a Cherub servitor of Eli that poses as a police detective in his human Vessel.  He also has the vessel of a hawk.  Vincent has been helping to keep the city of Savannah cool with the in flux of damonic involvement in the town.  

Ethan North (played by Brett): an Ofanite of Eli, working for David, Archangel of Stone.  Ethan has been running a gay gym and has been trying to help people improve their feelings about their looks.

after character creation i asked the players to design Kickers for their characters.  I told them that they could either come up with a group kicker or individual ones and they decided to go with the second option. we wound up with:

Ethan had just started a new relationship with a visitor to his gym.  the only problem?  this new boyfriend has an ex that's a demon, a demon that has just placed a rather threatening phone call.  

Gordon has been set up by servitors of Nybbas, demon prince of the Media.  Nybbas wants Gordon out of his club so that he can turn the property into a new 24-hour-a-day reality tv station, and Gordon has just gotten through with a meeting with them.

Vincent has just stepped into a crappy hotel on the outskirts of town where he finds a dead body pinned to the wall by what looks like a ceremonial dagger.

After using these techniques to set up the game (Kickers, narrativist game traits, a looser approach to set-up) i really found GMing the game a pleasure.  these were all techniques that i had used before, but they really seemed to come together well here.  the players were very receptive to this new approach and i really tried to take that  and run with it.

I started the session off with the most violent, bloody bang: Vincent's dead body.  i described a hot summer night in the south, the smell of honeysuckle in the air, and a twnetysomething male hanging from a sheetrock wall in a dingy hotel on the outskirts of town.  I told Vincent's player, Ryan,  that he was standing in the room, examining the knife along with his partner.  Then i told Brett that he was to play out Vincent's partner.  Brett was a little taken back at first, but then he just grabbed the ball and ran.  Within half an hour all of the players had played at least two characters and had been invovled in each Kicker.  Hell, one of the players decided to start writing in stuff to the game without even asking me.  he took on the role of the angel cop's partner and described the aprtner finding a pile of silver filings on the floor.  i felt all warm and gooey inside.  

the end of the session came to soon, as we had an angel and demon fighting over the same guy, an angel getting into the investigation that could point to another angel being a murderer and an event that could lead to the closing of the club.  

i could go more in depth on just aobut everything here, but i think it would be better to see if you guys have any questions and see where that leads me.  then again, it is Gencon week, so i'm sure many of you won't be around to read this just yet.  but i just wanted to be sure to post this and get it out there.

laters...

[b_bankhead]

Hey maybe you should take a look at the game Paladin, it seems designed for just the kind of thing you want to do. I have run it a little and find it highly flexible and brings 'character' into the center of play. Take a look at the avilwerks forum and look at Paladin here:
http://www.anvilwerks.com/paladin/

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

That was a great post about your thoughts and adjustments to the game ... but I want the punchline! Socially and creatively, how well did it go?

Best,
Ron

[MPOSullivan]

the game went off marvelously, honestly.  I had attempted to bring some "forge-style" play approaches to these guys before, but it was always while other players were in the group as well, players that had a differnet play agenda than me.  After two months of failed attempts to get a game running with that group, i pretty much just made some executive decisions, cut the group back to four players (including myself) and ran with it.

the three other players really seemed to get into the game.  players got smiles on their faces when i pointed to them and said "you're playing the boyfriend" or "this girl's name is rebecca, and go...".  While i would have preffered some stronger kickers to get us out of the gate (like "my archangel just old me that he heard the end of the world was next tuesday and that i should get some high-water shoes"), the ones the players made up were really solid and kinda added to the lazier, more southern-fried feel that the game seems to be developing, not to mention the personal tone of the story.  

what really pleases me though is that the players really understood what i wanted to do with the game.  i stated at the beginning that i was just the GM, that i was there to dress the sets and act out the bit parts.  I told them that i really wanted to hand the players the ball from the beginning and see where they would want to take it and they've really gone with it.  It's sort of simialr to the approach suggested in Sorcerer and Sword, i think, in that the GM has to reconsider his role within the playgroup to maximize his effects within the game.  The PC is the coolest thing in the room and he is the thing that defines the world around him.  While the effect isn't as obvious as it would be in a sword and sorcery style game, the outcome is still the same: the game is defined by the way the players interact with it.  They really took to my suggestion of a southern city to play the game in and through that started to create a "voice" that was appropriate for it.  Things moved a little more slowly than in most RPGs, the characters ahd a more gentrified world to play in, everything they described always had some form of heat involved.  This lead me to slow up my scene framing, losing most of my regular "jump-cutting", and giving scenes a little room to ramble.  

is all of that stereotypically southern?  yeah, but that's the point.  it's an easy way to inform the players of what kind of setting we're playing in and an easier way for them to speak to me through the game's "shorthand".  if they're character suddenly starts acting very quickly or they start pushing for some rapid framing, then i know things are getting to a crescendo for them as a character within that session.  it's been really interresting so far and i'm incredibly excited to run the next session.

i'm also really jonsing to take these approaches to other play types.  i don't plan on running the In Nomine game for terribly long, myabe fifteen sessions tops, as i want to try and improve my ability on focusing my GMing to certain themes and story-points, rather than rambling on like a venerated old DnD game.  After that, i'm considering a Sorcerer and Sword game or dusting off an old idea of mine and seeing how well that works with this approach.  That is, of course, along with any future playtesting of Criminal Element.

[Ron Edwards]

That's all great news, Michael. I hope you establish firmly that you are committed to the series of sessions for this game, because (to go by my past experience) that's the single crucial social element that a group like this is looking for at this stage.

By "like this," I mean a sub-set of an existing group which is trying something new, and who had a great time in the first session.

Best,
Ron