Soliciting input on Nobilis in play

[GreatWolf]

Okay.  My copy of Nobilis should arrive any day now.  (Pause to grumble about US Postal Service).  I do know that there are some folks here who played the first edition, and I would be curious if there are any words of advice that you would offer to a newbie Nobilis GM.

[Mytholder]

Okay.  My copy of Nobilis should arrive any day now.  (Pause to grumble about US Postal Service).  I do know that there are some folks here who played the first edition, and I would be curious if there are any words of advice that you would offer to a newbie Nobilis GM.

Give the players a few days after they've picked theirestate to think about it and possibly change their minds. The choice of estate defines a great deal of the game, so it's best that everyone (each player and the GM) is happy and comfortable with his or her Estate. Nobilis is rather tricky in that the most important NPC of the game - the PC's Imperator - is defined after PC character creation. Don't come in with any pre-existing ideas about the Imperator; instead, try to find a common ground between the estates and qualities chosen by the players.

Running a prequel, exploring how the character got enNobled, is a good idea for characters who are still think like mortals. If the character's been a Noble for centuries, and has left his or her humanity behind, don't bother with a prequel.

A Noble has 20 points worth of Bonds - basically, numerical ratigns for things they care about, and you're supposed to assign all 20 during chargen. Encourage the players to assign at least 15 points worth at the start of the game, but leave a few points free for a session or two, to be assigned as the character grows and develop.

Characters who have both Aspect and Domain less than 3 may get overshadowed unless they've got some flashy gifts or are imaginative. Aspect and Domain tend to be much more active attributes than Realm or Spirit.

Don't worry if the PCs break the world. Someone else will always put it back together.

Give the PCs the occasional simple challenge which they can easily overcome. It's how they overcome the problem that matters.

Hmm..I'm rambling. You asked a big question. I'll shamelessly plug the flyer on the Hogshead site (So You've Been enNobled), and wait for further questions. :-)

[Jason L Blair]

Okay.  My copy of Nobilis should arrive any day now.  (Pause to grumble about US Postal Service).  I do know that there are some folks here who played the first edition, and I would be curious if there are any words of advice that you would offer to a newbie Nobilis GM.

My advice is to invite the person upon whose coattails you plan to rest a career on to game with you. You should go over to their house to game since the person in question is recently, though voluntarily, unemployed.

But that's just me talking. ;)

[GreatWolf]

I'll shamelessly plug the flyer on the Hogshead site (So You've Been enNobled), and wait for further questions. :-)

Heh.  I've already read that...many times.  In fact, I've read all the sample material more times than I care to remember.  I can't wait to get this game!  Argh!

I'll probably return to this thread and ask some more specific questions once the book arrives.

But, perhaps I'll ask one more now, Mytholder.

Can you give a couple examples of some past adventures/stories/whatever from Nobilis that you have run?  Nothing too in-depth.  Just trying to get a feel for the options

Thanks a lot.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

A while ago, I started a thread asking for Help with Nobilis prep, which I hope has some useful stuff in it.

One of these days, I swear, I'll play ...

Best,
Ron

[Mytholder]

Can you give a couple examples of some past adventures/stories/whatever from Nobilis that you have run?  Nothing too in-depth.  Just trying to get a feel for the options
.

Hmm. Stories from my playtest campaign included:
*: the player characters relocating the mystery cult that worshipped their Imperator millenia ago, and their attempts to take control of it once more.
*: attempting to locate the soul of the sister of one of the PCs, who had committed suicide.
*: becoming exceedingly rich by manipulating the stock market with miracles.
*: soothing disputes with a whole host of other nobles, following the stock market crash they caused.
*: attempting to destroy the Channel Tunnel, discovering the Tunnel is really a giant snake, and eventually convincing the snake to lift its body out of the water, thus creating the Channel Bridge.
*: throwing parties.
*: Researching the history of their Imperator, and discovering that they are destined to destroy a world. This research included visits to Atlantis and Mars.
*: Foiling two Excrucian attempts to save the world by destroying them.
*: Travelling back in time to stop all six Jack the Rippers.
*: Deciding if the world was worth saving.

It's wide open, to be honest. Nobles are powerful enough, and have such a field of interest, that globe-spanning supernatural crises are common. However, with anchors (mortal servants of Nobles, which can be stepped into and used as temporary pcs) and the Nobles' connection to humanity, you can also run really small-scale dramas. I found the game to be really flexible, in that you can shift from melodrama to farce to horror to philophical debate without the game feeling silly or disjointed.

[Paul Czege]

Hey Gareth,

A Noble has 20 points worth of Bonds - basically, numerical ratigns for things they care about, and you're supposed to assign all 20 during chargen. Encourage the players to assign at least 15 points worth at the start of the game, but leave a few points free for a session or two, to be assigned as the character grows and develop.

This is a fantastic suggestion. It's Narrativist drift, but you gotta do what you gotta do. I just have to say that your Nobilis suggestions, way back to when you were answering first edition questions on Gaming Outpost, are consistently top-notch.

Paul

[Mytholder]

This is a fantastic suggestion. It's Narrativist drift, but you gotta do what you gotta do. I just have to say that your Nobilis suggestions, way back to when you were answering first edition questions on Gaming Outpost, are consistently top-notch.

Paul

I'm not sure if it's narrativist drift (in terms of GNS, Nobilis can be spun towards N or S without any real effort), but thanks for the praise. :-)

[GreatWolf]

A variety of replies:

Mytholder, thanks for the examples.  You've confirmed an impression that I formed about the game, and I do think that I'll end up spinning towards Sim for this game.

Paul, I agree with Mytholder re: the point suggestion.  In a Sim game, you might not know your character well enough at the beginning to be able to nail him down.

Ron, thanks for dredging up that thread!  I knew that Nobilis had been hashed around here before.

Now all I need is the ()$*%()#$% book.  Grumble.

[Paul Czege]

Hey Seth,

Paul, I agree with Mytholder re: the point suggestion.

I guess my biases are showing. I totally misread Gareth's suggestion. It didn't actually register for me that the motive for saving the five points was to better represent character growth, even though Gareth wrote exactly that in his post. In my defense, I've been sick as a dog the past two days, and just not that coherent. I read his use of "assign" to mean the player would have a pool of them that they'd spend at their discretion during actual play, parallel to his use of "assign" in the first sentence referring to chargen, not that the GM would disberse the points over the course of play to simulate character development.

I will say though that a pool of five points, available for a player to use at his discretion during play to invent Anchors is more directorial power than I'm aware of a player having through any of the official game rules in my first edition of the game. Being able to get three sessions into a game of manipulating the stock market and then dramatically overturn the whole current power structure by revealing that Alan Greenspan (or Alan Greenspan's wife) is one of your Anchors is a freakin' busload of directorial power.

Paul

[Michael S. Miller]

Just a small suggestion.

Keep the group small.

I playtested Nobilis with 5 players which then got upped to 7 and it was a mess. Admittedly, a number of the players had widely varying styles, which didn't help, but when I also think the wide spread of Domains we had in the group served to dilute the focus.

Just my experience