Making a Manual

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IN 2022, In Nomine, L5R, Liber Neglecta

A little over ten years ago I was offered an incredible opportunity to write the Unicorn chapter for L5R’s 4th edition Great Clans book. I crashed and burned and went into one of the worst depressions of my life (and to be clear, the chapter that went to print was not my work; AEG had to find a replacement on no notice because I couldn’t even bring myself to respond to emails from the story & development team).

Thoughts on Specialties

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In Nomine, Skills

When I was discussing re-aligning skills I brought up specialties as a topic to be examined later. A specialty isn’t so much a different skill, but a rather a particular way of using the base skill it is attached to.

Right now there are three main ways I could see Specialties working.

Revamping Physical Discords Pt. 1

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Discord, In Nomine

In evaluating the current Physical Discords (including my homebrew) I found that they overwhelmingly fell into one of three categories.

• Cosmetic Discords primarily resulted negative penalties to Reaction rolls or universal penalties to all social rolls.*
• Disability Based Discords generally penalized Strength, Agility, Precision, or Perception rolls in some way.
• Vulnerability Discords created damaging conditions that did not previously exist.

* On top of the universal Reaction penalty incurred by all physical discords except “Damaged Senses.”

Many of these mechanics were highly duplicative of each other to the point where the Pain discord literally references the Twitchy discord for it’s rules.

Re-aligning Skills

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In Nomine, Skills

I’ve finally gotten back on track with my plan to re-vamp Discords & Disadvantages, but in order to do that well, it’s important to know what skills are available.

I remain of the opinion that In Nomine‘s skills are an idiosyncratic mess, and I don’t think I can fix it all in one pass, but this framework should be adequate enough for me to plan out Discords so that they are more balanced. I’ll worry about the distinction between specializations and sub-skills later (and also how specializations work in a system where skills are already so cheap).

Abbreviated Player’s Guides

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In Nomine, Liber Neglecta

So, when this year started I had this grant plan to make a number of miniature player’s guides to highlight character types not centered by the main In Nomine text. I thought I’d gotten off to a good start with the Abbreviated Valkyrie Players Guide Part 1 and Part 2.

Life then got in the way. In order, to produce regular content while still making an unanticipated move – I had to set aside some of my more work intensive projects, including the miniature players guides.

Now I’m looking to get back on track – but to do that, I’d like your feedback.

The posts weren’t as popular as I’d been hoping, so I’d appreciate it if you could let me know what you felt the Valkyrie Players Guide was missing. I’m more than willing to create a Part 3 if there’s something to address, and I could definitely use the pointers as I get ready for putting together a second mini-players guide.

City of Mako: Summoning Materia

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Final Fantasy VII, Materia, RPG

According to Final Fantasy Lore there are at most 11 locations inside of Midgard capable of creating Summoning Materia. Even if each such location turned out 3-4 pieces of Red Materia, they would still be vanishingly rare.

While several members of SOLDIER 1st Class have been shown to have a small collection of Summons – Nobody at the Shinra C-Level seems to have any, or if they do – it’s not something they carry around with them (Scarlet has access to at least three pieces of Summoning Materia which she has been trying to fuse into… something)

More Genders to Choose From

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A Dream Askew, Gender, In Nomine, LGBT, Powered by the Apocalypse

Most celestials are genderless beings of metaphysical energy, who may have bodies of all available sexes.

– GURPs: In Nomine

If you have not questioned your own gender and do not move through genderqueer circles, it can be difficult to imagine genders beyond male and female. The In Nomine GURPS module suggests playing celestials as if they have no innate sense of gender at all, and that is certainly one way of handling it.

However, as an alternative, I’ll be sharing a list of genders that show up in the game A Dream Askew, a game Powered by the Apocalypse.

IN:LN Fan Ed – Forces & Characteristics

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Fan Edition, In Nomine

The System of Forces is one of the things I particularly like about the original In Nomine system, and one of the reasons why I’ve never really taken to the GURPs adaptation (which merges three of the original attributes into one). That said, I would engage in a little light division and renaming to remove some of the ambiguities.

IN:LN Fan Ed – Trinity Dice

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Fan Edition, In Nomine

As I have said previously, I think that the core role mechanics would be essential to any rebuild of the IN system. I am proposing a mechanic that keeps the check digit from the d666 system, but which stretches out the scale slightly to allow for more stages of growth.

In Nomine Reboot

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In Nomine, Revision

Every so often the topic of a new edition of In Nomine gets floated on the Steve Jackson Games forum. It goes on for a little bit and then we are reminded that there is a core disagreement within the SJG team as to what direction it would take.