We had our first “full” Nobilis session yesterday over at the Testerfolks.
Interesting.
There still continues to be a lot of similarity to ADRPG. Diceless, narrative combat. A grand mythology that fits behind everything. Strange concepts that your mind takes a while to figure out (Domain powers vs Shifting Shadow). The sense that you know what to do, while at the same time being pretty certain that you’re not doing everything you could do.
The biggest two problems (which extend from the above) at the moment:
1. Figuring out what you can actually do, or, rather, how well you can do it. I tend to be a rather linear gamer, anyway, which is why I tend to avoid mage-types with long spell lists and a dozen different options in any given circumstance. Now I have a character who has Matrix-like physical abilities, and who can also do miracles having to do with the domain of Punishment. And what that means and how I do it and how I apply it remains sort of a mystery to me. It will come over time, but …
2. Figuring out the cosmology. Doyce is cleverly starting us off with amnesiac characters who’ve been cut off from our boss and headquarters, so a lot of the complexity doesn’t have to be dealt with yet. But reading through the book (yes, the Testerfolk got us a copy of the book, ostensibly because they didn’t do everything they felt they should housesitting for us, which is ironic because we simultaneously bought some books for them in thanks for their having housesat) is a long, hard, haul, because the mechanics are embedded (on, at first glance, a 1:7 ratio) with the mythology, the cosmology, the campaign setting. I don’t know if you could play Nobilis without that setting — but, like Amber, a lot of the setting is so open-ended that it almost doesn’t matter. Still, it’s going to be a while before I have an easy familiarity with Chancels and Excrucians and Lord Entropy and all that stuff.
The game mechanics (what I’ve been able to glean) seem pretty straightforward (in an open-ended miracle-working way), but we’ve had very limited exercise of them in game-time yet, so that remains to be seen.
The biggest problem, I suspect, will be finding time to shoe-horn the game into everyone’s schedule, since Doyce is starting off with seven players (expecting, I suspect, some attrition, which is only wise of him).
And with the avatars/owners of Lust, Electricity, Guilt, Reality, Death, Punishment, and Fungus swarming around, it should make for some interesting game logs. Or at least some amusing times when the mundanes are around.
You’re right about the attrition expectations. We’ll see, though, since by picking some of my favorite players I’ve also picked some of the more reliable.
On the one hand, a part of me wishes we’d stayed at our ‘Core Four’, but I think the pay-off that you get from a heavily ‘populated’ game should outweigh the scheduling issues.
I hope. 🙂
(I like the font in the comment-entry window, btw.)
Heh. I remember once starting a campaign with all the players I wanted, expecting there to be attrition. There was — of me. Rrg.
I think the nature of Nobilis is such that if there are more intermittent players (large cast, but not everyone on-stage at once), it can work pretty well. Sort of like ADRPG. We’re not stuck in a dungeon crawl.
Font in the comment windows is just a matter of creating a CSS style for it, then adding that to the form statements. Jeez, I sound like I know what I’m talking about.