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TheTome /
NobilisIntroductionYou are on the archive wiki. The new wiki is here. Nobilis is a system and a single genre and milieu; unlike D&D which contains a system, a genre and a set of milieux; or TORG which contains a system, several genres and a single milieu. Nobilis is a diceless system, but more complicated than Amber Diceless RPG. You track your character's Miracle Points which you use to power miracles (almost anything above the ordinary action is defined as such) and when these MPs? are depleted, your PC become unable to use those miracles. Until the MPs? are exhausted, you can assume success in your PC's miracles. It sounds simple, but miracles are user-defined, and this means you have to work out a kinda power-scale system before the game begins. Players design a miracle menu for their PC, which defines the parameters of the PC's abilities, and how many MPs? he or she requires to obtain that ability. The Nobilis world (world? worldS - very plural indeed) is something like the Mage setting writ extra large. Prosaic Earth is the one we know so well. There are no particular surprises in it. Its technologies are familiar, its creatures are the normal beasts and its magics are unremarkable. But the prosaic Earth is only one way of looking at the world. The other way means accepting that the world is an interlocking system of symbols with deliberate meaning. The world is projected from pure archetypes and ideals, which often appear as people - or demigods, at least. Everything happens only because miracles make it happen. This universe behaves in much the same way as our prosaic Earth, but for entirely different reasons. Anyone who understands the mythic Earth interacts with it in entirely different ways. A prosaic observer would watch as a Power turns the key in a house's door. In reality the Power has asked the lock's spirit to unlock and, for whatever reason - usually habit in the case of mechanical spirits - the lock agreed so to do. Our Earth exists just as we the players know it, but in Nobilis the engines of creation are very much different, much bigger and still integrally involved in the way the universe works. At the largest scale the mythic universe is constructed in the branches of a large tree, called Yggdrasil. Surrounding it from its roots to near the top of its branches is the Wall of Worlds, which separates Creation from Nothing. Above Yggdrasil's highest leaves glitter uncounted stars. The many worlds of Creation are fruits hanging on the tree. The highest fruit of all is Heaven, and the beauty of Creation rains down from it. Beneath Yggdrasil's roots is Hell, and the stench of corruption seeps up from there. Earth is but one of an untold number of other fruits. The Creator of this universe is known generally to its inhabitants as Cneph, but it has many other names also. Cneph, for whatever reason which may or may not be significant, does not choose to involve itself in its Creation these days. The fundamental parts of its Creation are the infinitude of infinities of spirits that make up its each and every part. Some spirits are mighty things, such as the spirit that animates the entire Earth. Others are tiny and ephemeral, such as the spirit of each fleeting thought that passes through a mortal's head. But greater than the greatest of these spirits are the Imperators, the Aethereal Principals of the Sovereign Powers. Imperators incarnate one or more Platonic concepts, and animate the existence and behaviour of the spirits of that concept. Each concept is called an Estate. Power over an Estate gives very wide (but certainly not arbitrary) control over the spirits that work in that Estate. Sometimes a single Imperator's Estates tangentially relate to one another, and sometimes they are not related. An Imperator representing closely related Estates might be Gharial, an Aaron's Serpent (more on these later) with the mandate for Snakes, Crocodiles, and Extinction. An Imperator representing seemingly unrelated Estates might be Liwet, the Angel of Insight, Battlements, and the Things at Your Right Hand. All Imperators are not the same. They have different origins, which profoundly affects how they think. Some Imperators, such as angels, fallen angels, Aaron's serpents and Wild Lords, are universal, because they are known to appear in every part of the World Tree. Other Imperators, specifically those of the Light and the Dark, appear only in those worlds where humans live. True Gods are particular to Earth only. It follows that Estates belonging to Light Lords, Dark Lords appear only where humans appear, and those Estates belonging to True Gods appear only on Earth.
Not all Imperators have Estates that exist on Earth. Some Estates and spirits are simply alien, and live on other worlds than Earth. Other Estates on Earth are animated by their spirits without regulation or interference of the related Imperator. There are many spirits on Earth that simply have no Estate or Imperator at all. But what of Estates where the Imperator takes an active interest? Imperators, for a variety of obscure reasons, might want to interact with its Estates and spirits on Earth directly. To do this, they create a Chancel and take Powers. This amounts to dividing their eternal essence into several parts. One part takes over a chunk of Earth and makes it into a suitable home. This is its Chancel. Other parts of the Imperator are broken off and inserted into Earthly inhabitants (usually humans) which then become representative Powers on Earth, manifesting one of the Imperator's Estates in physical form. And of course some of the Imperator remains as an individual in its own right. The players of the game take the part of each of an Imperator's Sovereign Powers - also called Nobilis or Nobles - on Earth. This means each player must decide on an Estate that they embody. Gharial's Powers are the Power of Snakes, the Power of Reptiles and the Power of Extinction. Liwet's are the Power of Insight, the Power of Battlements and the Power of the Things at Your Right Hand. Together the players define their shared Imperator. They must also define their Chancel, which is home away from Earth. It's easy to see that each Imperator has a kind of ethic, that stems from the type of Principal that it is. If it is an angel, it holds beauty in high regard. If it is an Aaron's serpent, it likes trees and a state of nature, and hates fire and axes. If it is a Dark Lord, it pursues human death by self-immolation and suicide. By definition, an Imperator's Powers contain a part of the Imperator, and thus have a strong compulsion towards the same ethic: but very frequently the human part of the Power has other ideas. It's quite common for a Power to hold other ideas and belief systems. You must decide: will your Noble character retain a human ethic, or adopt the Imperator's ethic? Making a Noble character is a big job, and obviously not one you can do entirely isolated from the GM or from the other players. But there is a lot you can do. Some of it is based around the kind of game that I envisage. Our game will be set in present day Earth, with variations insignificant insofar as they affect character creation. In that context you need to create a human character, whose geography, history and background are entirely up to you. Characters once enNobled will not find it difficult to interact, because all Nobilis know all human languages, and some extra. Feel free to use a complicated human background - nothing human is nearly as bizarre as the simplest Nobilis. So you need a human with some background. This human must have quite a few good reasons to interact with the world, such as dependents (family or friends), a job, investments or property or some other material stake, and so on. Your human character should preferably have things and people they love or hate or have other complicated emotions about. Some of this you can devise after you have thought of your favorite Estate. (I've played in games where this background detail has either been ignored or callously exploited by the GM. I don't like that, and I hope I will avoid it in this game. Getting it down in writing will help. But please see TheAwayWeekendThemes for some discussion of how you can ensure your background will get used - obviously if you connect the background closely to the theme of the game, you will not be wasting your efforts.) Your character, once enNobled, will represent an Estate of your choice. You have to put some thought into this, because Imperators don't normally choose any old person but someone with a connection, however remote, to the Estate they wish them to represent. The budding Power of Insight ought to justify control of this Estate - perhaps an inventor or a psychiatrist. Be creative here: the Power-to-be of Snakes could simply be devious: a leading politician, maybe. But there are Imperators who choose Powers based on the incongruity of their human roles: perhaps the inventor ought to become the Power of Extinction instead. Choosing an Estate is quite fun for a player who knows what its Power is capable of. It's hard for a player who doesn't know. Don't get bogged down here - if you get excited by an idea for an Estate, we can probably use it in some way or other. The idea is that the Power of every Estate interacts with the world by using miracles connected to that Estate. Let's give a short table of the kinds of miracles the Powers of Snakes might use: Snake ghost miracles:
Snake divination miracles:
Snake preservation miracles:
Snake creation miracles:
Snake destruction miracles:
Snake change miracles:
Now for examples of the kind of miracles the Power of Insight would use: Insight ghost miracles:
Insight divination miracles:
Insight preservation miracles:
Insight creation miracles:
Insight destruction miracles:
Insight change miracles:
The above lists are called 'miracle menus'; they serve as guides for the use of the PC in play. These menus are not quite complete, because each level of the menu must be assigned a difficulty - a number of Miracle Points that must be spent to obtain that level of miracle complexity. Not all the miracles possible for a Power are necessarily the right ones. This has a lot to do with the role you think the Power ought to play in the world. Generally Powers seek to protect and to a degree govern their Estates. Powers define protection and governance in different ways, and this definition is really up to you as the player. If you get down and detailed, you'll find looking after every little snake in the world is a time-consuming job. Detail can be overpowering, but you might want that. On the other hand, being a kind of capricious muse of Insight, turning up without regard to the struggles of those who seek it, might suit your style of play. But this means that you may not so easily notice when things are going wrong in your Estate... You should decide what you think your chosen Estate means in the world. You can choose a direct physical interpretation. Maybe the Power of Snakes looks after the little beasties and has nothing to do with the myths about lies and temptation. On the other hand, you could choose a metaphorical interpretation. The Power of Battlements governs positions of safety generally, with a speciality in the safety of commanders and those who snipe from far away. Maybe your chosen Estate does this automatically - the Power of Insight would find it hard to justify a strictly literal control of his or her Estate. This decision will determine many things about how your character works, so take the time to think it through. You will also need to keep an eye on the nature of your relationship with the other PCs?, with your Imperator and with your Chancel. Each of these is a living thing. Even before you know the other players' characters, you can set out to make a friendly or a hostile character. It's well to remember that the other players have rights here, so don't make a character who is totally impossible to get on with! Your Imperator you will design co-operatively, so this isn't completely in your hands. Most Imperators are inhuman and concerned with their Powers only as representatives of the ideals they represent, so you can have a fairly weird and strained relationship without really trying hard. You can't have an Excrucian Imperator (these are the Big Bad, a la White Wolf, and I'm really debating whether to have them at all). Your Chancel you will also design with the other players, and it must function both as a refuge and as a place of adventure. Chancels can be tiny: a single room equipped with communications equipment is sufficient, but not necessarily the most exciting alternative. They can be - well, infinite. You could make the Star Trek universe your Chancel if you choose, bearing in mind that your GM knows only limited amounts about Star Trek! All Chancels figure some or all of their Powers as their leading personalities. All Chancels function as the home of an Imperator. Other than this, your imagination is the limit. At the point the game opens, each character is still human and involved in their normal activities. The first adventure is getting to be a Power and having your first conversation with the Imperator. I have an immediately ensuing adventure planned already. |