The sixth installment of the designer's "Wind in the Flowers" series is now available on RPGnet. Link via Philippe Tromeur's cleverly titled Nobilis web page, "Philippe Tromeur's web page about Nobilis." Philippe was clever enough to discover and kind enough to link to this page even though I couldn't find an e-mail address for him to beg a link.

Note that Philippe is also the designer of the extremely clever Wuthering Heights Roleplaying Game.

I'm going to tell you the saddest story I know. Why? The main reason is to make you sad. I get sad every time I think of this story, and since my country is at war, I think of it a lot. And if I'm going to be sad, you are too. But the other reason is to sort of explain Nobilis, or at least why it immediately made sense to me. That's certainly why I told it to the players in our campaign (it made them sad too), and I know that some people who do not play in our campaign read this site. (In fact, the actual players can skip this item.)

In the spring of 1994, the Hutu government of Rwanda commenced a genocidal campaign against the country's Tutsi population. In a hundred days, Rwanda's Hutus slaughtered around five-hundred thousand of their taller, thinner countrymen. They killed with guns if they had them, machetes, clubs or bare hands if they didn't. There were 5,000 Belgian peacekeepers in the country at the beginning of April. When the massacres began, Belgium pulled them out to keep them safe.

That is not the saddest story I know. For one thing, it's not a story. It's just a baleful fact. By Stalin's famous reckoning, it's only half a statistic. If there was one thing the Twenthieth Century was good for, after all, it was slaughter.

This is the story. I read it in the Washington Post, in the days before permalinks. At one of many religious aid stations in Rwanda, one of the station's Tutsi employees of sought refuge. He must have seen the aid workers as his friends, and they must have seen him as theirs. A Hutu mob followed him there, and the aid workers barricaded themselves and the Tutsi inside. The mob demanded that the missionaries give the man up to be slaughtered. If they didn't, the mob warned, they would kill the aid workers too.

They gave him up. They had to forcibly eject him from their sanctuary. The mob killed the Tutsi man, and let the aid workers live, as promised. I suppose most of them are alive still.

Yes, yes. What could or would you or I have done differently? The man was doomed. In utilitarian terms, if his death was inevitable, what would be the point of everyone else dying too? And what right did he have to demand that his - friends? benefactors? (perhaps we are better sticking with employers) join him in death out of, what, solidarity? There was nothing the aid workers could do for the man.

But then, that's the sad part. They surely saw themselves as men and women of peace. They'd have been better off if they had guns. They surely believed they were there to help others. But as they should have known, there was a limit to just how helpful they were willing to be. Same with the Belgian government. You can't really blame it for valuing the lives of its own soldiers more than the lives of foreigners in another hemisphere. But how many Tutsis died because the presence of "peacekeepers" caused them to imagine things were otherwise?

More than the genocide itself, the story of the aid station made me an isolationist, since I finally understood that isolationism was a kindness, a refusal to lie to others for the sake of the illusion of your own generosity. You may not see it that way.

But think of Nobilis and the Valde Bellum, a war of symbol and synecdoche. The world is the genocide and the grain of sand is the incident at the aid station, and an Excrucian would inspire the Rwandan slaughter so that the betrayal of the Tutsi employee could happen. (So might some Nobles, of course, but I'll save that for the comment section.)

The preceding begs some important questions, not least whether it's evil to think this way. That is, whether one has any business using "the saddest story I know" to explain a leisure-time activity. In Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum, a group of waggish publishers amuse themselves constructing an all-encompassing conspiracy history of the world, in which even the Holocaust is explained as Hitler attempting to learn a secret of the Knights Templar. When Diotallevi, the Jewish publisher, develops terminal cancer, he becomes remorseful, explaining to the narrator that the group of them were guilty of "bad Torah," reading the world frivolously.

I remember being offended by a discussion on the Amber mailing list a couple of years ago, in which someone suggested that the Cambodian genocide was an effect of Zelazny's Black Road on shadow earth. Isn't this the same sort of thing? The short answer is: maybe. The slightly longer answer is, I don't think so (quite).

Here is what I think the difference is, though I may be fooling myself. The purpose of the Black Road is to get the forces of the Courts from Chaos to Amber. The corruption and waste that it leaves in its path - for instance, the tragedies of Lorraine the kingdom and Lorraine the woman - are simply byproducts. So to link the liquidation of the Cambodian middle class with the Black Road is to reclassify a great human evil as the epiphenomenon of of some tangential mystical process. While there is a sense in which it is in keeping with aspects of Amber cosmology, it is in keeping with the worst aspects of Amber fandom.

In the Nobilis version of the aid station story, things are much different. There is still a mystical process at work, but the human evil is not some side effect. It is the very point. Borgstrom's game cosmology is absolutely clear on this. Remove the moral dimension of genocide and betrayal, and you remove the mystical relevance too. This is true whether the instigators be Hell, the Dark or the Excrucians. The Hutu government must want murder, the mob must want murder, the man must want to live, and the aid workers must want to live more than they want to be true to their faith, temperament and ideals, or there is no power.

In other words, the story must remain the story, but with aspects of it externalized in the way fantasy is good at. There is always the danger that fantasy will produce a lie rather than a myth; that is, there is always the danger that fantasy will be irresponsible. But I don't think -and again, I might be kidding myself - that I have been irresponsible here.

The other big question has to be: Where's the fun in that? That's another good one. Maybe there neither is nor should be any. I told the story because, if it helps someone else understand Nobilis, it may help them have fun adventures dealing with almost anything else.

I also told it to make you sad.

Call me an Amber player, but when I read a sentence like "The new edition of Nobilis needed a stronger combat system" (in R. Sean Borgstrom's fourth installment of her RPGnet series, my immediate reaction is - why?

R. Sean Borgstrom has been publishing a series of essays on the (allegedly) forthcoming 2nd edition of Nobilis on RPG.net. The pieces are

The Changing of the Guard, about the decision to republish the game with Hogshead
The Emperor to Come, about an expansion of the game world designed to mitigate the balefulness of Lord Entropy's rule
Treachery, about the sample campaign included in the (alleged) second edition
Systems Change, about second-edition combat, and
Dynamic Nobilis, about the (also allegedly) forthcoming live-action rules.

Links via Philippe Tromeur's Nobilis site.

Posted by supplanter at 09:24 PM | Comments (0)

Ted Kennedy was in his Power, Tom Bender's body, escaping from a Japanese bar fight into the night.

Timothy Hague, the Power of Accidents, was about to get beaten up, or worse, by Utah State Police, just outside the elevator in the atrium hotel where everyone was staying. The police followed him from the scene of the accident...

...he caused at the behest of his rival, Barbara Niederlander, the Power of Conspiracy, who said she would help him rig the men's figureskating jury if he would cause Ted Kennedy to get hit by a car. (Which ended up being the ambulance that came when Ted Kennedy collapsed when his soul transmigrated into the body of Tom Benders.)

Analiese Grejbko, skier and sister to Paul Grejbko, the Power of Cold, and Evelyn, Power of Evolution, had just successfully trained skeleton driver Christian Wilcox, of the Caribbean island-nation of Saint Santos, to skate well, using the famous "Bill and Ted maneuver." This maneuver was made possible by Tony Timespawn. Meanwhile, Tony's anchor Valerie, a prostitute, has been having the worst Olympics of anyone, spending disquieting amounts of time in the employ of IOC chairman Abdel Mujahid of the Republic of Bacatya, and Gregor Grigoriev, Bacatya's Pride and the favorite in the men's figureskating competition.

As for Paul Grejbko, he is a little put out by the prospect of the Opening Ceremonies program, and has to wonder if it represents someone's attempt to nettle him.

Everything is in place for Christian Wilcox to take the gold medal in men's figureskating except

• he does not skate better than the other entrants
  
• the competition favorite is...very close to the head of the IOC, the IOC being a wholly-owned subsidiary of te Cammora, the shadowy organization close to Lord Entropy, ruler of Earth
  
• the Olympics are crawling with Mormons, who have a special hatred for the Familia of the Imperatrix Claudine, and lastly
  
• Christian Wilcox is not actually entered in the skating competition.
  

Claudine, Regina of Time, Cold, Accidents, Benders and Evolution, per New Dave's records:

Incomprehensibility: Soul-Twisted -- Imperator is difficult to comprehend. His Nobles are invisible to the Sight, and cannot be forced to speak the truth. (1)

Mystery Cult: Corrupted -- The cult has been corrupted; it no longer serves the Imperator, and its members can twist miracles and evade detection by the Imperator's Nobles, basically making them an enormous thorn in the Powers' sides. (-1)

Respect: Considerate -- The Imperator values his Nobles, and usually assigns them only to important tasks. He will also sometimes send aid when they need it. (1)

Empathy: Cruel -- Imperator is sadistic and cruel, and tends to demand more of his Nobles than they can deliver. (-1)

Guiding Hand: Advising -- The Imperator is usually willing to talk to and give advice to his Nobles. His Nobles also have a great deal of "common sense" (i.e., the GM will usually warn you if you're about to do something stupid) (1)

Mastery: Untalented -- There is some common and useful skill that the Imperator cannot comprehend, and thus his Nobles are completely incompetent at it (Driving: -1)

Per New Dave/Tony Timespawn...

For the Chancel:
Defender's Blessing (Auctoritas 2)
Miscellaneous Blessings (Important 4)
Spirit Gateway (to tree, hard 0)
Accessibility (semi-convenient 2)

The aging GM offers this guide to the visual appearance of Our Beloved Imperatrix. Simply make this woman more inhumanly beautiful and you have it. Apparently, my players are younger than I thought, as references to a glamorous French female who spends all her time cleaning guns at the base of a ski slope jogged no recollections.

I found an entire thread on preparing to play Nobilis on the Indie-oriented Forge site.

Effective immediately, our beloved Imperatrix is named Claudine.

UPDATE: Just used the Search and Replace feature to replace Longet with Claudine everywhere on the website. Admittedly that was only in Bill's post, but hey - it's still cool.

Everything is sort of hazy, and having a drunk Senator in your head certainly doesn't help, but I think I can remember most of the pertinent details:

It all began while I was minding my own business in the Apres Monde Lodge drinking Irish coffees out of my Cheech & Chong thermos. I got a call from Claudine that she wanted to see me. Apparently, Claudine had a yen for some island Skeleton sensation and wanted us to make sure that he won a gold medal in men's figure skating. At first, I thought the Olympics would be fun, but then I realized that they were being held in Utah.

The very thought of being in Salt Lake City with all of those Cammorae to keep me from drinking the Great Salt Lake and all of those Mormons to keep me from drinking everything else terrified me.

My familia and I began planning to convert the poor Skeleton boy, but I decided to get some clarification from Claudine. The next thing I remember is waking up in a Utah drunk tank on the bottom bunk.

Tony informed me that he and I had walked back in time to save a drunk lass, a Kennedy, and to place a large bet on the Patriots to win the Super Bowl. After our release, I got the ticket from Tony.

Jonathan Pryce bought the house a round in celebration of his winning money on the Patriots. Caught up in the excitement, I foolishly let out that I, too had won a lot of money on the Patriots. What followed was too horrific to remember. I also won a bet with Senator Jean Carnahan (D-MO). She had to urge the Senate to "make ethanol a priority." Or maybe that was Senator Kennedy that won that bet. As I said, it's confusing.

Anyway, upon my return to Salt Lake, I handed over my winnings to Paul (who planned to use them to bribe some skating judges) and then got drunk. In my drunken stupor, my "friend" Tim convinced me to let him hit Senator Kennedy with a car.

I woke up in a strange bed with my arm caught beneath a Behemoth of a woman. I tried to extricate myself gracefully, but she was a Mormon and managed to trap me. Thinking quickly, I grabbed the bottle of Jim Beam and drank it. Unfortunately, Jim's advice didn't pan out.

Fujiyama Hakuseki bought a round of sake for the house in honor of Honda Eijiro, the champion sumo wrestler. I was in Tokyo, but Jabba the Latter-Day Saint was with me somehow. I tried to get away from her by stepping into Senator Kennedy, but something went very wrong and now the Senator is stuck in my head. We realized that only copious amounts of sake could possibly help us.

Jabba, Senator Kennedy, and I headed up on stage to perform a Captain and Tenille number. I was able to influence the drunken Honda-san to attack me annd Senator Ted, and in the ensuing melee, we were able to run like little girls and get away from Jabba.

So, anyway, that's what I'm doing sitting outside of a Tokyo Seven-Eleven drinking Ripple, what's your excuse?

In a case of perfect timing, Thursday afternoon Washingtonpost.com held an online chat with the alternate from the U.S. men's skeleton team. Particularly relevant were the following two posts:

---

Herndon, Va.: I have to ask -- other than one sport has the slider laying on his back feet first, and the other has him laying on his stomach head first, what's the difference between luge and skeleton?

Also, since you're an alternate, are you able to "party with the Jamaican team?" (If you know what I mean.) (And I think you do.)

Thanks!

Brian McDonald: The difference between our sports are as different as night and day. Our sleds are totally diffent. We have no steering mechanism on it where as Luge does. Plus skeleton athletes are cooler. As for the Jamaicans. I wont be partying with them too much but I do know some of the athletes on the two man team and Im sure they will be doing plenty of it. Being in the same room may get me in trouble(if you know what I mean)!!!!

---

Atlanta, Ga.: If not skeleton, what other Winter Olympic sport would like to be involved with? I hope not figure skating!

Brian McDonald: No not figure skating!!! I was always into track and field so If I could be in any other sport I woyld have loved to be a long jumper

---

This website is intended primarily as a central repository for a face-to-face Nobilis campaign that I GM in metropolitan Washington DC. Truth is, it is a "GM's night off" campaign that fits into the scheduling holes of our regular Amber campaign run by Nate Bruinooge.

If we do come up with anything of general interest for Nobilis players, we'll put it here too. And it's at least possible that having an example of what one group of people are doing with the game will be useful to others.