Creating a Character – Setting checklist
As a HG, you’ll probably want to set up some ground rules for the world. Here are some questions you might want to address either yourself or through play.
Are there powers above powers? Nope, Just spiritual forces of nature, Powers are exalted by Imperators, God, A mystery
Are there families of powers?
How do common humans handle the sight of miracles? Not well, By rationalising, Must be kept in the dark,
How do mythic reality manifest? Trees whisper if you listen carefully, Just another way to look at reality, As a mirror world
What are the excrucians? Dark powers, Creatures from beyond creation, Ancient horrors, Manifested despair or forgetting, Nobody really knows, Few even know of them
What if a power obliterates a capital city? Shit happens, History rewrites itself, Would require mad skills, It’s against the law, Someone would always oppose them,
What is alchemy and flower magic like? Can humans do powerful stuff?
(as per Apocalypse World)
Always say…
But also say
To create your arena:
Everyone and everything involved except the PCs should have an impulse. This is what they resort to when they act – in some cases they are methods of action, in others the motivation. When HGing a game like this, especially Nobilis, anything can have an impulse and agency. You’re free to explain it with spirits if you like, the spirits of the mountains working to keep people away for instance, but most often you don’t even need to.
Here are some sample impulses to give your threats:
When play is about one of your prepped scenes and you have NPCs involved under the following types, feel free to use these moves in addition to your ordinary HG moves.
On the First Session worksheet, there are spaces to jot down ideas for what could become arenas. Write who features in each arena, and focus on the ones that you can get the most PCs into.
In AW, regardless of the world there’s always a notion of weirdo maelstrom psychic powers existing. They’re always a possibility for the HG and the players, but without a brainer the characters might go their whole lives without seeing them, and if anyone ever understands them, they’re the first.
In this game, that’s true for loads of things. Anchors without the Spirit in play, Imperators without the Servant, Chancels without the Warden, alchemy and magic without the Alchemist, and so on. Remember during the first session that just because there is a Great White Book full of descriptions of the world, you don’t have to use it. Play this game like you would play AW. In AW, you need to know this: “The world went to hell about 50 years ago, and here are the playbooks.” In this game, try playing with no assumptions beyond this: “There are people in charge of a part of the world, like cats, time, apologies or stone. And here are the playbooks.”
Build the world with the players. For every part of the GWB canon that none of the playbooks use, consider first ignoring it completely, then saying no-one knows anything about it except that it exists, and then saying it’s a well-kept secret that only a few know about. After considering those options, you may consider including it wholesale from the GWB. This isn’t the GWB with AW-style rules; it’s rules for playing in any world where there are ordinary people who get an estate stuck in them.
Improvement, crap, first session, moves
Despite the high level of epics that can be told within the world of Nobilis, most nobles are supposed to be only a little more than human. Well, compared to actual humans they can work direct estates miracles which, depending on the estate in question, can make all mortal opposition pointless. Compared to each other, though, or compared to a mortal when there's no estate miracle that seems to help, they are pretty much human. Like AW, the harm system is a bit cinematic, "take one bullet for free" sort of, but shoot a noble twice and he'll be dead.
This very brutal method of problem-solving should always be present as an option, or at least a possibility. It should never feel completely out of bounds to kill another power - unless of course the consequences of that kill would be disastrous, which they should be. Nobles aren’t gods, even though many of them might think so. Different playbooks note complications, or even exceptions, to this:
The Warden, the Poseur and the Visionary might hide behind their people or followers. Find them when they're alone and they're as mortal as any noble. The Treasurer and the Alchemist have their toys and magic, but take them away and they're vulnerable. The Spirit might not care if one of his anchors dies, but kill them all and he'll go away for good.
The Warrior and the Youngblood are the only character who really defy their mortality; a warrior can easily take several bullets and then display only surface wounds. The Mortal is an exception too, but the other way around: he doesn't even have an auctoritas and can thus be changed by an estate miracle same as anyone.
Apart from those, anyone can be killed if it comes down to that. It's your job as the HG to make sure that killing off your NPCs doesn't solve their problems, but worsens them.
In Apocalypse World, there are populated places and not-so-populated places. In my experience you get the best play from everyone living in or near the same populated area, to get the following effects:
- Everyone knows everybody
- Everyone’s around if you need to find them
- Anyone might come looking for you
In an unpopulated area, like the burn flats or the catacombs or the jungle, the following is true instead:
- You don’t know the people (or creatures, or landscape) around here
- A given person is problably not here, why would they?
- Anyone might be there, and if they are, they might find you
So, you’re not isolated when you go outside the city, you just don’t meet as many people, you don’t know them, and you never know who to expect.
In Nobilis, this is sometimes the case with the mortal world. The mundane earth will take different shapes in different games and with different groups, and sometimes it will be the same thing – if you’re in a city, you treat it like a city, because the mortals there constitute important parts of your cast. However, sometimes the mortals will fade into the background, the characters will avoid them; the PCs might stay in a Chancel all the time, or they have a small district where all the powers live and outside of there isn’t interesting. In those cases, treat the rest of the mortal world as you would a barren area in AW.
This means:
- Don’t constantly harass them with other characters coming looking for them; if another power looks for them and gets told “oh, she’s downtown” they’ll just wait, much like you don’t race out the burn flats to find the chopper. You wait until he’s back in the hold.
- They won’t be very effective in looking for other powers. This almost goes without saying, because this style of play presupposes a world where the powers and nobilis have a kind of society of their own, above and beyond that of the mortals. So just like you wouldn’t go into the jungle for someone who lives in the hold, you don’t go ask mortals, or a mortal internet map service, or a mundane telephone book, when you’re looking for another noble.
- Still, any other power might be out there, too. In AW, you might run into a raiding party in the jungle, but the key point here is that by default noone expects it. Running into another noble in the noble district, or in the Chancel, is completely normal; finding them at the checkout of the local 7-11 is very rare. Unless one of you has a secret motive.
Choosing estates are tricky. They’re a bit like cars, if the game mandated that every character must have one. Some characters would make it a deep part of their identity what car they drove, while others would simply say “I just have one that gets me around” or even “I don’t even know man, it’s in my garage all the time”. Make sure everyone has something they’re comfortable with playing, but if one of them can’t find one that feels perfect, remind them that some characters see the estate as something they just got, and the whole package that came with it (the other powers, the moves, the world of the nobilis) is much more important. Just picking something and having the character treat it the same way, that is, “oh, yeah, I’m the noble of clocks, no idea how I ended up with that one”, works sometimes.
Here are some examples for some of the estate types listed, to get you thinking.
Forces of nature: storms, blizzards, droughts; winter, spring, summer; aging, growth, consumption; gravity, magnetism, phlogiston
Building blocks of the earth: mountains, plains, rivers; dirt, sand, fresh water, magma; forests, marshes, volcanoes; iron, bronze, diamonds
Building blocks of coherent thought / abstract concepts: conscience, intelligence, names; numbers, measures, perception; associations, resemblance, ideas; emptiness, infinity, existence, absence
Features of the psyche: dreams, memories, delusions, beliefs; forgetting, learning, knowledge
Feelings: love, hate, friendship; lust, envy, fear; happiness, sadness, ecstacy, depression
Small places: desk drawers, Brisbane, train stations, the Great Lakes, small ponds, bathrooms
Large regions: rainforests, Manhattan Island, Mexico, Russia, the seabed, outer space
Something ever-changing: rivers, the sky, the weather; fiction, monuments, science; regulations; taxes, education
Something strong and stable: mountains, monuments, South America; taxes, laws, stupidity; eternity, Jupiter, status quo, taboos
A tool: mathematics, architecture, generalisations; hammers, chisels, saws; guns, politics, lies
A trait of humanity: bravery, compassion, hope; mortality, frailty, ignorance; fear, collaboration, migration; bipeds, mammals, hair, arms; festivals, weekdays, coffee break
A profession: killers, healers, builders, destroyers, collectors, arbitrators; policemen, doctors, judges, politicians; store clerks, janitors, road construction workers; academics, coaches, athletes
Something that flies: flies, dragonflies, moths; bats, birds, dragons; planes, helicopters, airships; space shuttles, satellites, dreams; dreamers, spirits; everyone that flies; everything that flies
Living in this world
The PCs and their problems are best brought to life in a community of the right size. If there is a group of people who all know each other, so that you as the HG can say "right, there's Oliver, he lives down the street and you're good friends with his family" and this is natural for everyone, everything is so much easier. In AW, this is pretty easy, since there are so few people around and the PCs probably live in some holding or travel with the same people.
In Nobilis, this is harder. The key is to play on the fact that there aren't that many powers, and those that exist often seek each other out. Even without the benefit of living in the same Chancel, they'll probably have their web of contacts and care much less for the mrotal world. Not nearly everyone has gifts that allow them to travel far and wide, so "the nobles of New York" is a good setting.
The Visionary
For surplus:
- Empowered means they gain powers derived from your estate. For a power of the mountains, they may be hard as rock (3-armor). For a power of the shadows, they may blend into shadows. A visionary often using this in a direct fashion might want to look at wondrous creatures from the Warden playbook.
- Leverage means they have some piece of information or an outstanding promise. If they want to detail it at the start of session, that’s fine, but if they wait you should be on the lookout for situations where it could apply - the first time that session they’re talking to anyone their well-connected followers could possible have made a deal with, toss something out.
The Alchemist
For on serving the Nobilis, first hear the players out and see if they want the alchemist to do something for them. Then look at your list of NPCs and give out some more pleas. It’s perfectly fine to invent new NPCs for this purpose. Make it so that the number of requests doesn’t exceed 4. Seeing as mystic is the Alchemist’s high stat, he’ll most often succeed with either all or all but one, so many tasks are good for him.
The True King or Queen
For my loyal subjects, if the estate in question is something that doesn’t really help, there are two ways to cope with it:
1) Don’t choose the move.
2) Wield it in a metaphorical sense. The noble of the planet Mars might already have decided that his domain includes warriors’ rage and the red haze of blood-crazedness; in that case he needs only invoke that on himself and then use the move as normal. If the estate is something even more internal, like courage or strength, make sure the character has to use an estate move in order to count as “weilding” it. Being courageous, and fighting with the very estate of courage on your side, isn’t exactly the same thing, so demanding service of it, changing it, or instilling yourself (or your weapon) with it might be required.
The Mortal
For pet, if the master dies the Mortal should be allowed to choose a new one. If the obilgation was official it was probably hereditary, in that case it may be effective immediately. Otherwise you’re allowed to stall until someone else picks up the mantle or between session, when you can talk over the situation with the Mortal’s power. If the move is rendered completely unusable, let the Mortal mark experience.
The Spirit
For anchors, make sure to establish well what it takes to make someone your anchor. Do they have to ingest a part of you, do they have to love or hate you, do they have to partake in a ritual with the whole pentagram, incense and chanting shebang? Having this part down will help make the world seem real, and will lead to more tension if they ever have to make an anchor out of someone but can’t seem to fulfil the requirements. If no-one’s playing the Spirit, this obviously applied to the first character who does get an anchor in any way.
The Poseur
For network, if they want stuff, make sure to make it so that it’s not completely free. If it’s cheap, compared here to the financial status of the business, sure, maybe the Poseur just gets it through there. However:
- If it’s very expensive, play up how the business is visibly affected by the purchase – both in that the business doesn’t go as well as it could, and that it’s going to be harder to hide the whole transaction.
- If it’s a thing of the noble world, that can’t be bought with money, the move only provides the opportunity; the Poseur will have to pay up, maybe to a very specific price (his son, or his love for one year or something).
- If it’s very hard to even come by, then maybe the opportunity isn’t more than the Poseur finding out exactly which hidden monastery in the Himalayas that he’ll have to journey to without help or any worldly possessions, and the name of the monk who has the ancient scroll. That’s legit, if the scroll is one-of-a-kind or even thought lost forever.
The last point also means that by default, almost anything is accessible through the move, but only if you ask for it as “an opportunity”. Draw inspiration from the workspace rules (in this game as the travelling rules of the Seeker or the laboratory rules of the Alchemist) when deciding what kind of opportunity you think is reasonable to provide through the Poseur’s network, even on a 10+ – a meeting with the monk who owns the scroll of the First Age may not be an opportunity his network can provide, but a guide who knows the way to the monastery might be the right talented contact.
What they seek:
What they act on:
Threats
How might a Noble threaten your being?
- rival
- infringing estate
- colliding ambitions
- old grudge / enemy
- ex-lover (impulse: to seek redress, att bevisa för sig själv att den andra parten är sämre)