So is this game any fun?

So is this game any fun?

It's pretty good at what it does. But I would say it's far more important to have onboard and engaged in order to have a good time. If you have some fuck who browses his phone during games and only looks up when its his turn it won't go over well.

On the plus side, it's a good way to separate roleplayers from rollplayers.

Depends. Does your gaming group enjoy a game where it's mostly poetic and flowery and proper foreplay takes precedence over number and ability-crunching? Cause if not, you probably won't find it all that enjoyable.

It also depends on whether or not you have a good HG who can run with any crazy and imaginative ideas your group might sling around.

Isn't this that game where extra-dimensional beings are incessantly hunting you down and trying to kill you for inexplicable reasons - and they often succeed?

Yup. Except they aren't trying to "kill" you exactly. They want to unmakes you and everything about you utterly, until all of Creation ceases to be as the concepts that define it disappear forever. They have quite a few reasons for doing this (and most of said reasons change on a dime/whenever they feel like it), but it all inevitably harkens back to "Creation is a Lie and is thus a crime against the Void, and by destroying it, we are doing you all the greatest of favours".

Power of Distance would be broken as fuck

A lot of Powers would be broken as fuck depending on how you interpret them. For instance, the Power Of Music could literally drown the world in musical notation if they so chose, whilst the Power Of Movement can just end up moving absolutely anything, no matter what it is or even whether or not it's even capable of being moved at all.

Do you like arguing with your friends? No? Then it's not the game for you. You know how in D&D, when rules aren't clear, or sometimes when they are clear, people get into a big argument? 100% of the rules in Nobilis are like that. There are no dice because in place of dice you argue. All the time. About everything. You know how a game group can break up over a bad argument? When I tried to play Nobilis, that happened, before we even got to our first session, because character creation is a group effort. What's that, you don't like the dumbest guy in the group messing with your character concept? Then this is not the game for you.

Play it yourself and come tell us you lazy fag

It's actually not bad, but unfortunately you have to get through the rulebook and decipher it first

it's a wonderful look into the brain of a completely fucking insane person. i adore everything by jenna moran but jesus christ she'll never write anything that isn't in-itself a performance piece meant to make people stare in awe that her whimsies are actually supposed to be game rules

you have to find the right group.

example, I know a young woman who was sexually assaulted, her GM / boyfriend decided the best way for her to get over it was to have her be the power of sexual assault.

THAT is not the right group. (unless you decide to larp the gm being the power of being on fire, with a can of gasoline)

>So is this game any fun?

The book is amazingly inspiring for GMs of surrealistic games and fantasy games.

The game itself - no idea, haven't played it.

>it's a wonderful look into the brain of a completely fucking insane person. i adore everything by jenna moran but jesus christ she'll never write anything that isn't in-itself a performance piece meant to make people stare in awe that her whimsies are actually supposed to be game rules

1E sidereal charms were great from a game mechanics perspective, too.

Does anyone have a pdf handy? This sounds intriguing.

I have a 3e one.

You may not want that, as 3e is noted as having a much more...questionable art style compared to 2e.

Jesus Christ, why are the books so expensive. Over 100 dollars for one book on Amazon, even used ones are at least 200 bucks.

I played 2E (the version in your pic) once.

It was fun.

I had no idea what I was doing or what any of the rules meant, though.

The actual game rules are pretty straightforward. Each stat is on a 1 to 10 scale, and if two effects conflict, the person with the higher relevant stat wins, unless the loser spends enough miracle points (in which case they win).

Rather than dice-rolling randomness, it's meant to be kind of a bluffing/betting thing, where you're trying to win without either spending too many miracle points or giving away that you're already low.

If anyone’s interested, I’ve been thinking of making a scan of this. I own 1e and 2e.

Which would people be more interested in?

Out of production forever. Like, the publisher of 2e went out of business 15 years ago.

Technically, the original publisher went out of business 15 years ago, then it got a SECOND publisher, that went out of business 12 years ago.

1e was a print-on-demand product, so supplies are going to be even MORE limited.

And 3e's publisher got in a fight with the author after supposedly stiffing her on a kickstarter.

So I wouldn't doubt if NO ONE's been making Nobilis for a couple years now.

I would like a 2e. I know I used to have it, but the hard drive it was on failed unexpectedly, and it's not cited in any of the PDF share archives.

Personally, I would really appreciate a high-quality scan of 2e, but the kind I'm thinking of would probably require destroying the book in the process, which I doubt you'd want to do.

>And 3e's publisher got in a fight with the author after supposedly stiffing her on a kickstarter.

Oh, boy, it's worse than that.

Somebody on RPG.net who knows the author in real life related this whole fucked-up story about how Eos Press treated the author.

> When one of my closest friends tells me she currently is STARVING because Eos has not given her any money for food, and she has no other money of her own? And she is in a country where she doesn't speak the language, so is effectively completely isolated? I feel like I know a thing or two.
>
> You know how Syn kept fucking up the plane tickets and Jenna would get to SeaTac and no plane tickets would be there, and how this happened over and over again? Like, over months? Like, she had assurances the same day from him that tickets were waiting at the airline counter, and then she'd show up and there's no tickets? You realize someone drove her to the airport each time that happened, right? That someone was me. The person she was living with when Syn fucked that up over and over and over? Was me. So I think maybe I know just a little bit about what was going on.
>
> Don't even start with asking if what happens in China is my business. I've been friends with Jenna for more than 10 years. My wife's been friends with her longer. When you assholes were starving her in China? Yeah, that was my business. She was NOT OK. You know this, because you've met her, and you know damn well she can't just assert herself and go get some food or something. You gave her insufficient money to buy food and there were days (more than one, over more than a short span of time) when she COULD NOT EAT.

That's messed up.

Eos Press and everyone related to it deserve to burn in excruciating hellfire. Seriously, that's some messed up shit.

...

...

>You will NEVER kill everybody in Eos Press and wrangle a re-edited physical copy of Legends of the Wulin from their bloody-stained clutches

Truly, we live in the absolute worst timeline.

I heard a good idea was to have the scenarios being common metaphors taken literally, like:

>On the verge of death
The players nearly die, and as such, are forced to climb their way out of a massive pit which is the afterlife.

All whilst the denizens of said afterlife are begging desperately for you to stay and eventually end up like them over long term exposure. And Genseric Dace is manipulating shit from behind the scenes.

...

What are the stats in the game? I've never played it but it's something that intrigues me.

Nobilis is like world of darkness in that it needs a competent game master with a flair for narrative to make it anything other than wank.

It is also like playing Noumenon, in that you will spend the entire time wondering what the fuck is wrong with you, why are you doing this, hey, this is kind of okay, what the fuck, you know what, let's go watch TV and pick up again later. And then six hours later you're playing a new exalted campaign.

I don't know the names for to stats, but one is all your physical traits rolled into one stat, since you're a divine being so you are all around great, one is your domain of power, what you as a noble control and influence, like gravity, infrastructure, geometry, birds, whatever you are a power of, the third one is about your chantel, which is your personal pocket world, which can be small or as big as a country, and filled with subjects and such, and the final one is I think spirit, which is basically your godly presence and defenses, I think. I believe that's all that stats.

Wont the GM have a major advantage here in that he knows your characters stats and how many points you've used so far?

>it's a wonderful look into the brain of a completely fucking insane person
I've made it a life goal to run Wisher Theurge Fatalist at least once in my life. The problem lies in understanding the goddamn thing. There's a sneaking suspicion at the back of my head that Jenna Moran is taking the piss, but with her I will never be sure.

I have no idea, never played, but from what I've read the big point of the game is, since you and your foes are practically impossible to kill, it becomes a Jojo battle, where you have to find other ways of winning that aren't just beating your foe to death. That's all I know.

Think cops and robbers games. "I shot you!" "I was wearing a bullet proof vest!" "I had armour piercing bullets!" "I used a cannon!" "I went back in time and outlawed cannons!" "I founded a criminal cartel exclusively devoted to sexually fuelled collection of cannons, funded by drugs - heroin!" "I reworked the concept of the universe so heroin actually makes people really pacifistic and filled with hate toward dealers, retroactively!"

Kinda.

And one of those people could actually be the concept of shooting.

I must admit, the idea of someone who's dumped domain of power and chantel into the dirt to raise the other two and is just wandering through Being Superman is a rather funny concept.

It's possible. You won't be doing much incredible feats, but I guess if you have the right GM, you could still be worth something. Being mortal in the setting means you have zero stat points, so I imagine a Noble with nothing points in their first stat would be someone who is universally strong and incredibly smart and godly charming.

Yeah, hence my 'superman' comparison. But then, Superman did rather show off there is a lot you can do with just 'Being physically superior to everything else'

Yep, so you would be playing Superman at his peak abilities and likely dealing with Anti Monitor level threats regularly.