I’ve been seeking information about Nobilis – a purely diceless game written in part by Jenna Moran (nee R. Sean Borgstrom), who wrote healthy chunks of Exalted, Aberrant, In Nomine, and other games of high power.
I’ve long since learned that Nobilis has suffered a colorful history involving bankruptcy and flames, but is finally to come to republication under the auspices of EOS Press. Still a ways off, and I’m impatient. With a fairly extensive google, I was able to find a PDF scan of the second edition of the game.
The game is absolutely beautiful, laced with short and very short fiction to lend color and inspiration, and written in a prose style that is clear, coherent, and pleasant. The system itself is, as mentioned, diceless, with the character getting a basic range of abilities and per-story points allowing them to stretch. There are four numbered statistics and their associated temporary point pools, and that’s just about it, and it nevertheless smoothly handles being a God.
The world is not neglected, and enjoys a great deal of built-in inspiration. For instance, the ruler of the realm of Earth is the Imperator of Entropy – everything he touches is corrupted. He rules indirectly wherever possible, and strikes with absolute decisiveness whenever he acts, for he does wish to protect his realm, so that he may corrupt it at _his_ leisure.
It’s a beautiful set of concepts all tied together with gorgeous imagery and a system I can only imagine to be quite playable. I look forward to seeing the new publication; I can only hope and dream that they’ll make it as lush and lovely as the second seems to have been.
Yup, I’m a bit smit.