It looks like you can use the freeware Plant Studio to design "flowers that never were." Perfect for that Noble Device you've been putting off.

Link via the Nobilist.

Everyone running and playing Nobilis could do a lot worse than spend an afternoon in the kid section of their local library.

Jeremiah Ghenest, on the Nobilis Mailing List.

Freshened the link list last night. Some of the gaming blogs moved or died, and a couple of new Nobilis sites have started up. Nearly Empty Rooms becomes Mytholder's Journal, Bruce Baugh's comatose Nobilis blog gives way to his very active LiveJournal, Jennifer's inactive Nobilis weblog gives up its place to her master site, White Crow's Nest. Mike "Epoch" Sullivan's Random Ruminations, which hasn't been updated since January and to the best of my knowledge has not been replaced with another site, is banished.

New entirely to the list are trad sites Nightshade & Honeysuckle and Storm & Fury.

Note if you have a Nobilis site or are a member of the Nobilis community with a gaming blog and would like to be linked, e-mail or comment.

James of Nuadha's Tale agrees with me that Nobilis would be a perfect system for roleplaying Jack Kirby's New Gods.

is a new, very attractive Nobilis site which aims to provide items of general interest and material specific to a planned IRC campaign.

The experience rules say to award the group a Dynasty Point after each session where everyone has fun, and a character point each (or a single Chancel Point) at the end of every story. This seemed fine, until Campaign Mark II found itself in a story that has run for five sessions so far and could, conceivably, take seven to wrap up. So here are two options for increasing the flow of Dynasty Points during multisession stories. Players can use DPs as temporary Miracle Points and we've found that after three or four sessions without "new story" replenishment, PCs can use some MPs. Both variants are based on the Fibonacci Sequence.

Slower increase.

Story Session 1: 1 point.
Session 2: 2 points running total.
Session 3: 3 points running total.
Session 4: 5 points running total.
Session 5: 8 points running total.
Session 6: 13 points running total.
etc.

From the runing total subtract the total DPs used in previous sessions.

Example: The PCs go three sessions without drawing on any DPs. Their total DP award for this story after session 3 is 3 points. During session 4, the PCs use 1 point to power miracles. After session 4, their total DP award for this story is 5 points minus the one used: 4 points. In session 5, they use 3 more DPs - making a total of 4 used during the story so far. After session 5, their total DP award for this story is 8 minus 4: 4 points.

Story Session 1: 1 point.
Session 2: 1 more point. 2 points total.
Session 3: 2 more points. 4 points total.
Session 4: 3 more points. 7 points total.
Session 5: 5 more points. 12 total.
Session 6: 8 more points. 20 total.
etc.

We've opted for the faster option in our campaign. Don't forget that, in either version, the conclusion of one story and the start of the next "resets the clock." Campaigns where restriction-based replenishment refills PC MP pools at a rate they like might not want to make either change. Note that a (unlikely in my view) combination of many long stories and unspent DPs could lead to more rapid Imperator improvement than the GWB contemplates. I consider rapid Imperator improvement to be a Bad Thing, but suspect players will be happy to spend DPs by the time a story hits five or six sessions.

I liked this post to the Nobilis list by Mark Grundy about how to GM a party with dozens to hundreds of Nobles attending. One additional approach that might help. Make sure the PCs have an agenda going in, ideally a player-generated agenda. That helps the GM know where to focus his or her preparation and should provide insurance against the slowdowns Mark's advice covers.

Significant new material from R. Sean Borgstrom, posted out of the goodness of her heart to the Nobilis list. Excerpt:

Impossible-0:Significant. Impossible-1:Difficult (major character goal). Impossible-2:Very difficult (campaign goal, character lifework, major plot). Impossible-3:Insanely difficult (but why bother?)

Note that while Ambrolam's purpose falls under Impossible-2, *many* entities in the setting have Impossible-2 goals. Some of them will achieve them. Leave them alive long enough, and maybe *all* of them will.

Highly recommended, for those Thought-Records readers who don't subscribe to Nobilist. The rest of you probably already saw it.

Possible gifts of Spirit are little explored in the Nobilis rules. Our players have come up with a couple of good ones that others may find worth adopting:

Bond of the Hearthfire - Allows the Noble to increase the number of mortals she may anchor, as if her Spirit were higher for that purpose. Jen's character Tempe bought this one. Cost follows:

The base cost is the necessary level of Spirit. If you wish to have six anchors, the base cost is 5. These are not "extra" anchors. The anchors to which your actual Spirit score entitles you are included in the total. If you have Spirit 1 (2 anchors), and buy a Force 5 gift (6 anchors), you get six anchors, not 8.

Activation: Automatic (+1)
Area: Local (-1)
Utility: One trick (-3)
Frequency: Uncommon (+1)
--------------------------------
Total Modifiers: -2
Cost Range: 1-3

Honored - The Noble receives just the respect benefits of a higher Spirit score. Bill bought this gift for Ratatosk, to reflect the esteem in which he is held as "messenger of the gods":

Base cost is the level of respect desired.

Activation: Automatic (+1)
Area: Local (-1)
Utility: One trick (-3)
Frequency: Uncommon (+1)
--------------------------------
Total Modifiers: -2
Cost Range: 1-3

Guardians of Order has added a Nobilis section to its redesigned website, with a prominent graphic link from the front page. They've made the old Hogshead-era downloads available again (character sheets, sample chapters, brochure).

To each of her Nobles, Raya explains why an Excrucian who weakens an estate isn't simply strengthening another estate and leaving Creation in toto as strong as it was before.

"Tom," she says to the Power of Shelter, from her chair at the table in the corner where she likes to sit and look through the shutter slats at the weather. She appears as an old woman, one you might expect to meet at a tea room in Manhattan or a shtetl kitchen in the Katyn Forest. "Take half this pillar" - she pats the heavy timber with her hand - "and add its material to the one in the middle of the room there. The Inn is as sturdy as ever? Weaker pillar here, stronger pillar there, same difference?"

Tom, who can feel the strong and weak points of any building as surely as his own itches, knows better. Even without Raya actually shifting the pillar, which he knows she could do trivially, he can foretell the stresses, sags and eventual buckles that would ensue.

"Tempe?" Raya continues. "In Breughel's Icarus, for example - you like that one? I think it's sad. I guess that's what he wanted - you know the hawk perched on the branch in the bottom right hand corner? It's hard to see, in front of a dark part of the ocean like that, not far from the head of the . . . I think he's a fisherman. Crouched down in the white coat and the red scarf."

Raya pauses, attention taken by something beyond the slats of the shutters. You suspect far beyond.

"Right," she smiles. "The hawk. On the branch. Say Breughel made the hawk bigger, maybe in flight, so you couldn't see Icarus anymore. All you can see now is his legs? He could even change the name of the painting to 'The Hawk.' Would they write poems about it?"

"And you," she says, looking sternly at Ratatosk. (But as she glares, her forefinger flicks a shelled peanut across the table to him.) "You like stories, I like stories. What happens to a story if you make the beginning bigger at the expense of the middle? Or add all the stuff from the beginning to the very end?

"It's not so good. We're keepers of a part of Creation. But Creation -

" - is an arrangement. But listen to me rambling on like this."

And she turns her attention to the peanuts, picking each one up between thumb and forefinger and pausing before popping the shells open. Those at the closest tables can smell the peanuts roasting as she gazes.

Several repositories of Nobilis play materials:

The Foreshadow campaign has chancel and character writeups. No play logs so far, no house rules.

Nobilis:Glendalough has a very nice front page design but not, as of this writing, any working links. Try again later.

The Windy Road has character writeups, place descriptions, synopses and a bunch of Georgio di Chirico thumnails.

UPDATE: Can a Nobilis web ring be far behind?