Nobilis

I think I mentioned earlier that I was at least thinking about playing in a Nobilis game.

Well, I am.

Playing in one, that is.

I suppose I’m also thinking about playing in it… or writing about… or writing about thinking about… or…

Yeah.

We’ve met four times. The first two were devoted to group character, Imperator, and Chancel creation. In Nobilis, the PCs are all part of a team that works for (and is, in a sense, part of) an Imperator – an incredibly powerful being who might be an angel or something on that level. Chancels are, essentially, your base of operations.

The PCs ended up as:

• The Power of Masks (me)
• The Power of the Subconscious
• The Power of Rock and Roll
• The Power of Loyalty
• The Power of Discovery
• The Power of Waves

Yeah. It is a big group.

The Imperator has to embody all of those things. We decided that he had once been an Angel who (on a mission) left Heaven and the World to travel into the wild spaces beyond it. He returned, changed. He never returned to Heaven, but considers himself still on his original mission (many Angels are skeptical of this claim). He also brought Rock and Roll back from the wild beyond the world.

Our Chancel is Atlantis. It sits sunken beneath the sea of the human subconscious. The Atlanteans are ruled by an inbred royal family who practice magic and have changed to resemble fish people – though they are masked by their magics to look normal. The streets of Atlantis are walked both by living Atlanteans and the ghosts of those who died when Atlantis sunk beneath the waves. Modern technology does not work in Atlantis, but an alternate wave-based science which is roughly equally advanced thrives there.

I think we were all pretty happy with how these sessions went. I was, honestly, skeptical about the game given Borgstrom’s deliberately-obscure writing style… but I’ve enjoyed both the set up and the actual game sessions we’ve had so far.