Barbelith Underground > Creation > Nobilis RPG Character Development

Ok, rather than try and do it all at once, we’ll start off with basic character ideas and work out what people want to do with the game, how familiar they are with the concept, then move on gradually to things like details of setting. If you’re not sure of anything then post here, no matter how entry level: I’d be quite happy to see questions like “I want to play the Power of Political Activism – how will that work?” alongside “What’s your take on how Nobles not being part of any Estate, Auctoritas and the Rite of Holy Fire interact?”. Hopefully there will be enough material in the links above for those without the book to make sure everyone has a decent basic idea of the setting, and we can go straight to the potential for that setting. I’m going to steal one thing from the main book to start us off:

Here is what Nobilis is about.

You’re a perfectly normal person, when suddenly someone scissors open your soul and puts… something as large as the world inside. This isn’t about power. It’s not about… anything you ever dreamed of. The Imperial shard in your soul makes you as large as the world. That’s what being a Noble is. It’s exceeding every boundary you ever dreamed of. A lot of humans think our powers make us like gods. They don’t. They make us like God. I’m not omnipotent, or omniscient, and I’m certainly not omni-benevolent, but I’m part of something that is. I’m a slice of Creation large enough for all Creation to see. I am one of the building blocks of the world. I am, by extension, all of the building blocks of the world. I hold them close to my heart. My estate’s arms wrap around everything in the universe.

…

Nobilis doesn’t have any particular themes to explore. A few were central to its creation – but there is no limit on the themes you can use. There is no single genre. It is not a mystery game, or a game of daytime soaps, or a game of science fiction. It’s not not any of these things either. You can play one of them, if you like.

Nobilis does not have a genre, in the classic literary sense. What it has is an approach to the genre of your choice – an approach in which the characters and events are absolutes. Where they operate on the highest levels of reality. And where the whole world turns on a word in the right ear. Within those bounds, you may play in whatever genre you like.

So: characters and themes. What concepts are people interested in playing, what are the personalities behind those concepts like, what do you want a character embodying those concepts to be able to do?

Thinking about Estates briefly… It’s important to pick a concept that’s metaphorically big, but still has a manageable range of influence, without, at the same time, being of too small a focus. The Power of Change, for example, would be quite a large conceptual Estate, superficially with the ability to affect everything capable of change in limitless ways. Someone who wanted to play this as “I make a Lesser Creation of Change turning his head into a melon” would need to have a more clearly defined idea of what type of change they could create or modify, affecting the idea of change itself, like gradual change, or personal capacity for change, rather than it just being a catch-all. None of which should mean that a character who wants to embody Change as a meta-concept of mutability, of someone who turns “the euer-whirling wheele / Of Change, the which all mortall things doth sway,”, would be disqualified from doing so, just that they’d probably have to accept a broader sense of what their powers are capable of doing.

The Power of Loose Change, by comparison, would probably be quite a narrow focus, as loose change, in and of itself, isn’t very metaphorically significant. If someone wanted to play this, I’d probably ask them to think about what they wanted to do with such a concept, and maybe to consider a Secondary Domain focusing on small amounts of currency; having enough quarters for that cup of coffee that gets you out of the cold, lucky pennies, working for tips, begging for change, the drain on the economy of money that goes out of circulation, and so on.

It’s important to remember that an Estate doesn’t have a “correct” attitude to adopt. It’s a matter of the personality of their Power, the human component with imagination and free will, interacting with the immutable nature of their spiritual existence, and it’s also a question of that Power’s affiliation. We’ll probably need to talk more about affiliation, whether to Heaven or Hell, the Dark or the Light, or something else, in more depth, but preliminarily, you should think about how a Power of Love who serves the Light will differ from one who follows the codes of Hell – one might see Love as a force which binds humanity together while another could concentrate on how love corrupts the strength and principles of those who are oppressed by it. Both views are appropriate for a Noble of Love, and the perspective offered by their personal affiliation will be central to how most characters will view their Estate, and the pairing of incongruous affiliations / concepts could potentially make fascinating characters.

With regard to groups, Imperators embody several concepts, and while there can be and often is a close relationship between those concepts, there doesn’t have to be, or at least it doesn’t have to be overt. It’s perfectly possible to have a family of Powers of Streetlights, Fine Art, Murder and Charity, so long as people think about how those concepts would interact. Imperators move in mysterious ways. The other thing is that as a group the players will have a reason to work together, so seemingly irreconcilably disparate or opposed Estates will have at times Powers with greater loyalties to their Imperator’s Estates as a whole, or the properties of existence in general, than inter-Estate rivalry. Which isn’t to say a family of Nobles should always get on! One more thing on naming concepts (for both Imperators and Powers): Estates can usually be described in one or two words, but again, that might not necessarily be accurate or possible. There’s no reason for people not to choose Estates that are quite abstract or can’t be summed up as one concrete thing, as long as they have a good understanding of it.

I’d be interested to see if people wanted to consciously develop a game with Powers dealing with typical Barbelith concerns, if such things exist. We could think about the commonalities of interest in the occult, or science-fiction or equal rights, the Invisibles style encounter with a higher reality, something focusing on the dialectic between structure and anarchy, whatever you want. I suspect there’s no need to do this consciously, as everyone will bring something from themselves to the table, and personally I’m quite happy just to see what that is without planning it out too much.

Right, I’m going to stop writing now. I have some thoughts on some very basic foundations for the setting, but generally they are such that they will fit into whatever you, the players, decide you want to do with the game, so I’ll let you get on with it. If there’s a feeling of more of a need for a general overview then I’ll try and do that when I next pop in as well.

Blake Head

02:41 / 11.12.06

Nobles and What They Do

I was particularly thinking of something like this when talking about intoxication:

“Now I am light, now I fly, now I see myself beneath myself, now a god dances through me."

Didn’t I see something about Martial Arts earlier? I think it was…gridley? There’d be no problem with an Estate of Martial Arts, there almost certainly is one. But if possible I’ll use a couple of your ideas to talk about what Nobles can actually do, which means talking about Miracles.

Aspect covers what humans are able to do, physically, and at higher levels what animals, machines and mythological figures are able to do. Humans can balance, therefore high-Aspect Nobles can balance on thin branches. Very high aspect Nobles might be able to balance on spiderwebs. Humans can jump, therefore high-Aspect Nobles can jump very high. A Power of Martial Arts would probably be handy in a fight, but all Nobles with Aspect are going to better at combat than those without it; humans can fight, Nobles with high-Aspect can fight Batman. Which means that Aspect might be thought of as a less subtle or creative trait than the others, but there’s no need for it to be. Aspect covers thinking, it covers making things with your hands, it covers people skills, it covers teaching. The Power of Martial Arts might be able to throw you over their shoulder, but they’re just as likely to be able to demonstrate a new form of martial arts, or train someone to achieve their peak capabilities in an existing one. Actually effecting Martial Arts as an Estate, however, would use Domain. This covers what humans absolutely aren’t able to do, which is affect the building blocks of reality directly, without using their hands.

Domain (and Realm) miracles basically operate through magics of Divination, Preservation, Creation, Destruction and Change. Like Aspect, the higher one’s Domain, the more power to influence the world a character will have. What people should perhaps think about is not just what they want their character to represent, but also what they want them to be able to do.

Here’s a quick run through of each grade of the Domain/Magic system:

Level 0 Miracle – Estate Driven Divination
The character’s Estate will alert them if is being attacked in some way. If the Power of Drugs is using its influence to introduce Peyote to a mass-market, the Estate of Divine Intoxication will signal to Lazlo that an element of their Estate whose essential nature as a highly individual, reality altering experience is being corrupted.

Level 1 Miracle – Ghost Miracles
Essentially, any use of the suite of magics available which is generally insignificant, and usually insubstantial. The Power of Mystic Visions could create semi-transparent auras, or use Divine Intoxication to give someone a mild buzz.

Level 2 Miracle – Lesser Divinations
Gives the character general information about their Estate.
The Power of Mystic Visions would be aware of the general structure of different mystical traditions, or through Divine Intoxication have an understanding of what experiences an intoxicant might provide, even without having personally tried them before.

Level 3 Miracle – Lesser Preservation
Intensifies or preserves pre-existing objects of the Estate. Power of Mystic Vision: make the impact of a mystical seminar or dream a life-changing effect. Power of Divine Intoxication: prolong someone’s high.

Level 4 Miracle – Lesser Creation
Creates a sample of the character’s Estate from nothing. Power of Mystic Vision: give someone a strong mystical vision, start a small movement around a previously unknown mystical teaching. Power of Divine Intoxication: produce a small quantity of a certain drug, induce the effects of an acid trip in the local mayor live on tv.

Level 5 Miracles – Lesser Destructions and Major Divinations
Lesser Destructions remove samples of the character’s Estate from existence. Power of Mystic Vision: remove a prophet’s mystical vision. Power of Divine Intoxication: end the crippling flashbacks your best friend’s been having for years, instantly cause someone to sober up.
Major Divinations allow the character to use their Estates to find out information their Estates might be able to perceive. Power of Mystic Vision: Surf the dreams of the world’s mystics to glean insight into the future. Power of Divine Intoxication: draw from the minds of the drunks, dreamers and sages the image of the apocalyptic figure which haunts their rituals.

Level 6 Miracles – Lesser Changes and Major Preservations
Lesser Changes alter objects of the character’s Estate without destroying or creating them first. Power of Mystic Vision: Someone’s dreaming perceptions have found a window into Hell, torturing them; change their vision into a more passive warning about the dangers of a life spent not thinking of others. Power of Divine Intoxication: change the manifestation of DMT elves into something else more or less lucid, talking unicorns, giant red satellites.
Major Preservations greatly increase the length and intensity of objects of a character’s Estate. Power of Mystic Vision: Make the recipient of a mystic vision so deeply touched by its message that they spend their life preaching it to others, inspiring them with their zeal. Power of Divine Intoxication: turn a casual drinker into a god-touched rambling irretrievable drunk.

Level 7 Miracle – Major Creations
Global, epic creations of the relevant Estate. Power of Mystic Vision: Introduce a new mystical meme into the global consciousness. Power of Divine Intoxication: Create a new drug, with an entirely different set of experiences.

Level 8 Miracle –Major Destructions
The ability to remove objects of the Estate on a massive scale – though not the Estate itself. Power of Mystic Vision: The mystic sight of everyone in the world goes dark. People stop caring about 2012. Power of Divine Intoxication: Sobriety rules. Hashish no longer has any intoxicating effect whatsoever.

Level 9 Miracle – Major changes.
Anything else that can be done with the Estate. Power of Mystic Vision: All mystic visions now share common features that point towards a single truth, world religions struggle to accommodate these overwhelmingly uniform perspectives. Power of Divine Intoxication: Change the basic nature of intoxication, no longer a perspective on or a route to mystical knowledge, intoxication becomes the physical means to possess that mystical knowledge; seekers all over the world wake up without hangovers but with unprecedented levels of gnosis.

Realm miracles are pretty much exactly the same as Domain miracles, except that they can effect any Estate (which is pretty much everything apart from Anchors, Nobles, Imperators) but they only work in your own Chancel.

Spirit has more passive abilities, but can be a bit difficult to follow, so we’ll come back to that one as and when people start asking questions.

At a basic level, what Nobles do is perform Miracles. Things which are qualitatively different, and have a different order of reality to, mundane actions. You should get an idea (if you haven’t already) of how you want your characters to use their main concepts under the structure above. I’m going to be busy for a couple of days, I’ll do a run-through of spending points and on what after that if it will help.