Customer Reviews

Nobilis: The Game of Sovereign Powers

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I have been playing rpgs since 1975. In that time I've played OD&D (the Three Little Books that started it all), Traveller, RuneQuest, Paranoia, Metamorphosis Alpha, Chivalry & Sorcery, GURPS, Harmaster, Ars Magica, Champions, Golden Heroes, TORG, Castle Falkenstein, Werewolf, Mage, Star Trek, Over the Edge and a host of other games. I got into gaming because of a twin love of storytelling and mythology/folklore. While I have loved and questioned many games, this one has caught my imagination the most. While it would be difficult to put together a game (see below), I have a deep and abiding love for the product and would wish to see it do well.

The game is based on the notion that the PCs are themselves demigods, powerful entities with near absolute control over some aspect of reality. What aspect? Well, it could be traffic. Or it could be guns. Or it could be the colour yellow. Or it could be treachery. Or you could incarnate (as showed up on the maillist) as the Power of Magnificence in the form of a weasel.

Yes, this is an odd game.

Within your sphere of influence, as I say, you have nearly complete power. The problem, of course, is that no one is going to have utter dominance over all matters and, due to various reasons (hey! this is a roleplaying game!) there are many groups and individuals opposed to you and your boss, the greater being who acts as the nearly silent patron of the combined group of PCs.

One of the biggest twists to this game, of course, is that no dice or cards are used as randomizing agents. Instead you have a certain number of points each session you can use to "bid" in an effort to make certain events take place. The GM also has these points, but in the end the feeling is not adversarial, but rather an attempt to create a larger myth, because sometimes the GM would use those points to bid up your efforts (or similar ones). While I am not fully explaining the mechanics here (both for copyright reasons and space limitations), take my word for it that this is the only diceless/cardless system I have ever seen that both works and makes sense.

Now I said this would be a difficult game to put together. Why so? Well, you have to find just the right group of players and just the right GM similtaneously. You have to have players who are less interested in gold, guns, and other objects and more interested in building a larger mythological framework to the game. Equally you have to have a GM who is able to coherently come up with plots where, to use one negative reviewer's comment, an assault on the colour yellow makes sense. I have run a couple short sessions of this game and the group has enjoyed it, been blown away by the possibilities. We have not tried a full campaign yet, but it has been intense fun to date!

I must also give kudus to the "micro-fiction" in this game. Scattered about on the pages are 1-2 paragraph snippets that overflow with ideas, much like the mini-stories from Italo Calvino's "Invisible Cities". One has the devil worried he might not get it right when he has been given the burden of evil in the world, another has two men fighting over flowers, and another recounts the circular nature of all journeys. I found these not only inspirational for this game, but actually serving as "whack to the side of the head" moments for life, other games, and how I did/wanted to view reality.

This game is about as imaginative and provocative as it gets. No, it is not for everyone, but for the right person, this game is perfection itself.

What is Nobilis?

In short, it's a diceless game playing the middle management of the gods.

In long? Well, that's quite a story. Nobilis is... different. Complicated, you might say. You probably got that impression from the 11" by 11" dimensions. It's probably my only real complaint as of right now. The books was specifically built to be very, very pretty. A coffee table book, if you will. It won't fit on your bookshelf, I promise.

As for the game contained within, the easiest way to turn people off of it is to tell them the first and most prevalent fact about the system: it's diceless. No random whatsoever included. There is a good reason there aren't any dice, though. The Nobilis or Nobles are the PCs in the game. They are humans who were (forcibly and involuntarilly) given a soul-shard of an Imperator (Imperators are like demigods, their soul-shards are litterally charged with divinity. Mankind thinks of Imperators as Angels and Demons). This makes them chief protecter, purveyer, and controller of a particular aspect of reality.

What aspects of reality? Well, pretty much anything. There is a Noble of Computers, Storms, Yellow, Trees, Flight, etc. These are the domains of Nobles. There are even nobles of Humans, Kung-Fu, Pants, Oceans, Betrayal, Waves, Eternity, etc. Pretty much everything. And within their domain, Nobles hold all the cards. And yes, I did mean to site both Oceans and Waves.

But all is not well in a Noble's life. There is a great war raging on in the cosmos, between all the denizens of reality (mainly Imperators) and creatures from Outside reality (called Excrucians) who want to destroy reality. They see it as inperfection. It's like we planted our weed in their garden. And they really want to pluck that weed. But that weed is our existence.

The aspects of reality can't survive without divine beings in contact with that reality, you see, and the Imperators need someone to hold shop while they fight in the cosmos. So they are basically forced to give up their great powers while the Nobilis are forced to hold on to them.

Now the fun part comes in: Nobilis are humans granted great power. Yes, they get a tad corrupt by it (naturally) or see themselves as superheroes needing great responsibility (naturally). It's up to the players to decide. Moral decisions = nifty.

The bad news: The Imperators can't stop all the Excrucians. Some break through the front lines, or at least parts of them break through, and create Decievers. Decievers are like anti-Nobilis. Excrucians are like anti-Imperators. Every once in a while, an entire Excrucian breaks through. Bad news all around.

Now, outright warfare is NOT preferred. It's much easier to hurt a Nobilis by damaging what he is the Noble of than actually physically confronting him. Most Nobilis can take a bullet and not even be phased. Some can take a tac-nuke. Some are outright immortal. So how do you kill the Nobilis of Computers? Set off a massive computer virus. Start a propaganda campaign against computers. Do something that changes the aspect of Computers (for the worse) and you injure a Noble.

If a Nobilis fails, his aspect of reality is lost. In fact, it never was.

If all the Nobilis fail, reality dies, no matter how strong the Imperators are.

"Why would Nobilis work together?" you might ask. Well, Imperators have more than one domain to dish out. So what happens when one player is the Noble of Guns, one is the Noble of Purple, and one is the Noble of Rock? Lsjunil, the Imperator of Guns, Purple, and Rock is born. They are all family, in fact, if you get down to it, they are all partially the same individual. They are all partially Lsjunil. They pretty much have to work together, even if they all have different motivations.

And to be a lone Noble is to invite a Deciever to strike at that weakness.

Anyway, that's the bare-bones of it. There's a whole lot more, but most are turned off by one or more of the above. It's written really well, by the way.

Oh, I never answered the question as to why it was diceless. When we talk about things like divinity and miracles, leaving things to chance seems to be demeaning the divine.

Is this entire review 100% true? Not entirely. Nobilis has a lot to do with what you make of it, rather than what it allows you to make of it. Some interpretations were made by this reviewer (like on the Execrucian's motivations) that are really up in the air as far as the text is concerned.

But this should be enough of a picture so that you can see whether or not you will like Nobilis.

NOBILIS is the most radical RPG you're gonna get. Easy to learn rules, fast-paced diceless system (this one really works; if you are a rules-freak you're going to hate it), and you get to play demi-gods!

Of course, the setting is deep and relatively complex, with a mix of Judeo-Christian (Angels & Demons, Heaven & Hell) and Norse mythology (the World Ash, Yggdrasil, giants and a lot more), and many new concepts (two points of view on Earth, a realistic one, "Prosaic", and a faerie-tale one, "Mythic").

Mix it with Sandman, with a little Romeo & Juliet (there's a lot of the "forbidden love" theme; the Nobilis, your characters, aren't allowed to love, but they still retain human emotions...), and a touch of the Neverending Story (actually, many of the rules are explained in-character).

If you think this is mega-monster bashing, forget it... Here you have to socialize to get things done. Your car is not working? Don't use tools, talk to it! Maybe it wants some vacations.
The Nobilis, these demigod-like characters you play, are extremely hard to kill, and it's useless to do it, because they can (and will) be replaced by their bosses, the Imperators (gods). The same goes for your competing Powers.

So, the style is "If you can't kill them, destroy all they love". That's a worse fate than dying, and there is the dark aspect of the game. The Nobilis have to love secretly, because it's forbidden by Law, and it's a weakness your enemies can exploit.

In other RPGs you worry about the size of the monsters, the spells of the wizards, and the magical weapons of the warriors... in NOBILIS, your character can survive a nuclear blast, but Love can really hurt him!

If you like Sandman, Amber (a kind of predecessor to NOBILIS), Romeo & Juliet and the Neverending Story, this is the one for you.

If you like myths (as opposed to modern-fantasy stories like The Lord of the Rings) where a hero or god (or both) can drink a lake, jump across the Atlantic, hide a mountain in his pocket, or make an ever-shifting labyrinth, this is the one for you.

If you like love stories where personality, virtues and strength of character matters, instead of simple physical beauty, but there are huge obstacles to that love, this is definitely the one for you.

NOBILIS is where RPGs really crossed the boundary between gaming and Art (plus, it's a great looking and HUGE book).

Nobilis is both an excellent diceless RPG, and wonderful, inspiring reading. There are many fine reviews of it at RPG review websites, but very briefly, it elegantly captures the feel of such authors as Neil Gaiman and Clive Barker, as well as Susan Cooper and other powerful fantasies, through the empowering of ordinary people as the godlike Nobilis, guardians and embodiments of the fundamental principles of the universe. The primary narrative themes of the game are love, duty, and sacrifice, while the playstyle theme emphasizes empowerment and choice for the players.

I have been playing Roleplaying games for about 8 years now, and for a number of reason my position in them have always been game master, so i have tried quite a few systems and settings in my time. from all of them, nobilis turned out to be the one standing up from the crowd, innovative, beautyfully manufactured, and incredibly easy to learn, this game has held my imagination captive, i recommend everyone who can to try this game, even owning the manual is a pleasure by itself, since it is an interesting read and a beautyfull book to have.

and if you, like I do, love to play roleplaying games, then consider this things about this game:

a)rules setting that stand for the game, not the other way around: the rules itself (and the fact that the system is diceless) are incredibly ease tu learn and implement, all the conflict can be solved by the hollyhock god (the gm) or by the players itself by the clever use of imagination or conversation, something that promotes role play itself.
b)an appealing setting: mythic and awe inspiring, the situation can go from a totally normal situation, to a mythic struggle of epic proportions, you are part of the universe, and that really shows up in the game.
c)the very fact that the game itself, leave all the doors open for you to invent everything that you want: you want to invent a power?, A code of ethic?, a WORLD?, be my guest. the book itself give guidelines to, and even promotes that you as a player or game master, grow the setting even bigger by adding your ideas to it, it isn`t in any way a closed system, with rigid rules that leave you no room for cration, on the contrary, is a system that invite to it.

if you are a more action oriented player, and like games that are already made to fit a more static powerplay, then dont buy this game, but if you like a more sophisticated gameplay, and a more innmersive roleplay, then your moral obligation to yourself is to buy this game, you wont regret it.


Amaro Cabello (Maria`s son)

I've been plaing RPGs for as long as I can remember, and looked forward to the time when my own copy of Nobilis would arrive. I was not disappointed when it did. It's *like* a lot of games, yet is different than all of them. The sheer scale of the setting is amazing; and the prose of the text (along with the great art) makes this more than just a game. I must, and do, highly recommend this to anyone who plays or is interested an RPGs. This is a once-in-a-lifetime masterpiece.

...Now if it can only keep with a single publisher for a while so people can find it...

I bought Nobilis yesterday, went home and started flipping the book through. First I just started from random pages somewhere in the middle to check out the layout and art. In my scale, this was an expensive book as rpg books go.

So, you can perhaps imagine my frustration when I noticed that the first pages all the way to the list of illustrations and again the pages from 19 to 24 appear to be twice in this book. The missing first chapter is available as .pdf-file in the official Nobilis' site. Adter they answered my mail enquiry I did as they suggested and took the book back to the store and got an errorfree volume.