Tag Archives: Nephilim

Fate of the Nephilim: Magic in General

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A quick note about the information presented below: I’m not going to be explaining all the ins and outs of the Nephilim game. If you’re really confused by stuff, I urge you to grab the pdf of the game to follow along. You can get it at the Chaosium site, and the entire line is available at RPGnow. It’s well worth the purchase. And Fate Core is available from Evil Hat Productions. Also very much worth it.

Now, we’re really getting into the heart of Nephilim. The game is all about non-human, magical creatures – beings made of magic, who perceive the world through magical senses, who interact with the world using magic, and generally use magical thinking because it works for them ((Years ago, I did an article about magical thinking in Nephilim and casual divination using the structure of magical thinking in the game for a friend’s zine. I have no idea what became of that article, which is a shame, because I’d like to reread it and see if I had anything useful to say, or if it was all a bunch of pretentious crap.)). And so the game has no less than three different magic systems.

Elements

All of the systems revolve around manipulation of the elemental fields. The elements, referred to as Ka,  represent both physical and spiritual components of the world – the Nephilim tend to not differentiate between those two states as much as humans do. The divisions into the elements are basically just fluff ((In that they provide an in-game division and variety to the magic systems, but don’t really have a mechanical impact, beyond being descriptors to hang some bonuses and penalties from.)), so there’s not any call to make changes. That means we’ve got the five elements staying the same as in the Nephilim book:

  • Air Ka
  • Earth Ka
  • Fire Ka
  • Water Ka
  • Moon Ka ((Weird thing I just noticed. I automatically alphabetized the four classical elements, then just appended Moon, out of alphabetical order. Some part of me rebels against putting Moon in before Water to maintain alphabetical order, because that would mean inserting it into the classical list of four. It seems I might be a geek.))

In addition to these elements, there are three special elements that exist and affect the Nephilim, but that the Nephilim ((Generally.)) don’t interact directly with:

  • Black Moon Ka, created by the mad Tyrannosaur prophet-king Mu and still used by the exiled Selenim
  • Orichalka, the deadly, Ka-destroying power of Saturn
  • Solar Ka, which infuses humans

These three types of elemental energy are each going to require some special rules to handle in-game.

Astrological Modifiers

One of the main features of the Nephilim game is the effect of the celestial bodies on the elemental fields. There are elaborate rules for it, and even (if you bought the GM’s screen) a special wheel dial that you could use to calculate the appropriate modifiers and enthronements for the current game day, based on date and such. It was pretty cool.

It was also a pretty irritating amount of work.

So, I want to include the influence of the planets on the Ka fields, but I don’t want to have to do the math every game day to figure out which elements are enthroned, which are diminished, etc.

Fortunately, Fate Core has a structure in place for determining these things – aspects. Easy enough to let characters use the Create an Advantage action to declare or uncover the current astrological modifiers. And while that may prompt them to always try and place their most favourable element in ascendancy, you can offer compels to get them to pick a different aspect.

The modifiers in Nephilim vary in amount, but aspects all work the same way. This means that there should be a fairly limited variations in the range of aspects that can be placed. I’m thinking just stick to Enthronement, with the name of the enthroned element. So, Fire Enthronement, Moon Enthronement, Sun Enthronement, Orichalka Enthronement, etc.

Each elemental enthronement gives a bonus to can be invoked for a bonus to that element, and as a penalty to two other elements ((Mostly. Orichalka and Sun Ka are both different.)). Here’s the list from the Nephilim rules:

  • Air opposes Earth and Moon
  • Earth opposes Air and Water
  • Fire opposes Water and Moon
  • Water opposes Earth and Fire
  • Moon opposes Fire and Air
  • Orichalka opposes all other elements

There are no Black Moon enthronements, by default, though I can see that being a cool story-based thing to throw in when dealing with the Selenim ((Or maybe a resurrected dinosaur sorcerer. Like you get.)). Sun enthronements in Nephilim are more complicated – they cause the Ka fields to fluctuate, meaning the bonus elements change randomly. So, it becomes a much more flexible aspect, though I’d also use it to give bonuses to any humans, and use it to cause the characters’ simulacra to assert themselves, causing problems.

Of course, you can just use the planetary days and planetary months tables in the Nephilim rulebook to actually calculate the proper enthronement. Without having to give it a numerical value, this is easy enough to do. It does, however, require you to track the days of the week and the zodiacal months of the year to be able to do this ((This isn’t difficult, but it’s one more item of bookkeeping, and I like to minimize those.)).

There are also Grand Enthronements, when the elemental fields are supercharged. These happen when the planetary day and the planetary month match, both lending power to the dominant element. So, Tuesdays in Aries are Grand Enthronements of Fire, for example, and Saturdays in Capricorn are Grand Enthronments of Orichalka. I can see doing one of two things to model Grand Enthronements: either increase the bonus/penalty for invoking the aspect to +3/-3 ((With the fact that the standard +2/-2 from an aspect is a pretty big bonus or penalty in Fate Core, I’m hesitant to make the Grand Enthronement bonus/penalty any more than that.)), or give the aspect a couple of free invokes.

I think the +3/-3 is the better choice, because the characters can get free invokes by rolling well on the Create Advantage action, and can replenish those free invokes by taking an action to Create Advantage again. So, the +3/-3 strikes me as more meaningful.

Ch’awe

Ch’awe in Nephilim is magic points, spent to power spells. As such, my initial thoughts have been to make a stress track for Ch’awe, and take hits there when casting spells – basically, the way that Mental stress is used in DFRPG. Lately, though, as I think about it, I’ve been wondering why I’m creating a new stress track, when the Mental stress track could serve just as well. See, I made the decision pretty much without thinking, initially, and all I can see in retrospect is that I maybe wanted to emphasize the magical nature of the Nephilim by giving them this battery.

And now I’m not sure it was the best idea.

In addition to this, I’ve been reading Dresden Files Accelerated ((Which is pretty awesome, and I’ll be doing a review of it soon. In the meantime you can buy it here. And you should buy it.)), and they add a neat little piece of Fate technology to the game: conditions. Conditions are sort-of predetermined, flavoured consequences ((Also, some are benefits. They are a nicely flexible piece of game design kit.)) that act as batteries for various powers. Thus, a magical practitioner gets the Exhausted and Burned Out conditions that they can mark to boost the power of Evocation.

Something like that might work well with Ch’awe, and it might make it easier to bring in concepts like Khaiba ((The transformation into a raw, bestial form as the Nephilim loses control of it’s Ka fields.)) and Shouit ((The loss of control of the simulacrum as it’s soul overrides the Nephilim’s.)). I’m going to have to think about this some more, and do some deeper reading of DFA.

Types of Magic

In Nephilim, there are three broad types of magic available to the characters:

  • Sorcery is the oldest and most primitive, letting the Nephilim directly manipulate Ka fields to obtain results.
  • Summoning is contact and interaction with beings from higher realms of reality, composed of various Ka fields.
  • Alchemy is the manipulation of physical matter through magical ritual and the use of an athanor.

The differences between the magic types are mainly differences of tone and theme, rather than mechanics. There are little things – you need to create various alchemical powders in your athanor for Alchemy, you need to draw a summoning circle for summoning – that are in-game differences, but the actual mechanical process for the different types of magic is the same – know the spell, roll your skill, pay the cost.

I think that, in the Fate Core implementation, I’ll have to delineate some clear guidelines for what kinds of things each type of magic can do, and also convert a number of the spells in the Nephilim book to show how they work in the new systems. I’ll also have to check and see if there are more qualitative differences that I need to address.

I was thinking that cribbing from the DFRPG system for thaumaturgy would probably be the way to go ((And I’m pretty familiar with those mechanics.)) – it’s a very flexible system that pretty much covers any magic working you care to imagine. The downside is that DFRPG thaumaturgy is somewhat complicated and math-heavy, and when I ran my DFRPG campaigns, play would inevitably slow when a ritual came up.

Now that I’m reading DFA, I’m liking their take on ritual magic. It’s still got a little math ((Adding so simple it’s really more accurate to call it counting.)), but the actual mechanics for building spells is much streamlined. It does a couple of interesting things with costs that, while they are great for the Dresdenverse, may not be quite what I want in Fate of the Nephilim, but that shouldn’t be too tough to fix.

Circles

In Nephilim, each type of magic is divided into three different levels, called Circles. Each type of magic has a different funky name for their circles – Sorcery has Lower Magic, Higher Magic, and Grand Secret; Summoning has Seals, Pentacles, and Keys; Alchemy has Black Stone, White Stone, and Philosopher’s Stone ((Note that there are no spells listed for Philosopher’s Stone, because so few Nephilim have achieved this level, Alchemy being the newest type of magic.)). Each Circle is a different skill in the game, and you need to have 90% in a lower Circle before you can take the next one.

I want to avoid a glut of different skills in this conversion. Skill ranks in Fate Core are limited and pretty powerful, so diluting them among too many different skills is, in some ways, penalizing to the players. My solution is to have one magic skill for each of the three types of magic, and to place the Circles as thresholds within each skill. So, first Circle is at Average (+1), second Circle is at Good (+3), and third Circle is at Superb (+5).

I’m going back and forth on what that means, spell-wise. The Circles are only meaningful if there are some spells that are reserved for the higher Circles, so I’ll have to figure out exactly how I want to work that. Summoning has different groups of creatures summonable at different Circles, which is easy enough, and Alchemy is clear about the fact that Black Stone is about destruction and White Stone is about creation. But Sorcery is far muddier; I’m going to have to do some more reading of the Sorcery section in Nephilim and Liber Ka to sort out how to handle that.

Spells

This is another area that’s a little muddy. And it’s mainly muddy because of Liber Ka.

In the core rules for Nephilim, you need access to a physical focus for the spell to be able to cast it. This doesn’t vary for any of the three types of magic. Now, the copy of the spell can be written in a book, or inscribed on the Ka of an enchanted item, or whatever – you just need to have the copy available to you to be able to cast it. This means that the characters are often trying to recover their old toys, and occult libraries, and so on, so that they have the spells they need.

They can also have the spell tattooed on their own Ka, so that they always have access to that spell and don’t need the focus. This is a limited resource; you can’t have too many spells tattooed, because reasons.

I see no problem with this as it stands. There’s already a list of occult books and such in the Nephilim rules, and the tattooed spells ((I keep calling them “tattooed spells,” even though the actual game term is “inscribed spells.” But I used the word “inscribed” to describe something else in the last paragraph, so there it is.)) work nicely as stunts, so I’m good.

The catch is, as I said, Liber Ka, which contains an alternate Sorcery system that allows for free-form spell creation on the fly. It provides a set of rules for coming up with custom rituals to achieve custom goals, not the very prescribed spells present in the core rules. It’s a good rule set, too; I had a lot of fun with it, back in the day, and it reminds me of the thaumaturgy rules in DFRPG and DFA.

But that kinda flies in the face of the “you need a physical focus” thing.

I seem to recall that there was a discussion of that issue in Liber Ka, so I’m going to have to reread it and see how they handle it.

Coming Up

Okay. When I started writing this post, I was going to provide a rough idea of each of the magic skills. But as I wrote about the underlying questions, decisions, and thoughts I had about magic in general, this thing somehow got long. And I still need to do some reading and thinking before I can write up each of the magical skills, including at least a few sample spells for each.

So, next up in Fate of the Nephilim ((There’s going to be a post or two about other stuff before that gets posted, though.)), I’m going to tackle Sorcery. After that, I’ll have another post for Summoning, and one for Alchemy.

Keep an eye out.

Fate of the Nephilim: Skills

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A quick note about the information presented below: I’m not going to be explaining all the ins and outs of the Nephilim game. If you’re really confused by stuff, I urge you to grab the pdf of the game to follow along. You can get it at the Chaosium site, and the entire line is available at RPGnow. It’s well worth the purchase. And Fate Core is available from Evil Hat Productions. Also very much worth it.

 

The next big piece of heavy lifting for the Nephilim conversion is solidifying the skill list. It also involves deciding which skills are available for which eras and for which types of past lives. And that requires looking at which types of past lives are available for which era. So, in this post, I’m going to take a look at all of that, and hopefully get the skills sorted for this conversion.

Past Lives

I’ve already decided ((In fact, it was the seminal idea for this hack.)) to use a variant of the mode method of character creation that I had first seen done in the Atomic Robo RPG, and later saw discussed in more detail in the Fate System Toolkit.  The basic idea is that you choose a couple pre-defined sets of skills and add together the ranks in overlapping skills. I thought that would work very well to reflect things learned over a series of incarnations in different time periods.

The standard number of skills in a mode in ARRPG is three ((Though the Science mode is different.)), and that seems a good number of skills for one mode or lifetime. But to keep from having to create a whole bunch of different modes in order to give some variety to the characters and choices ((Well, I still have to create a number of different modes, but not such an overwhelming number, I think.)), I decided that I should give each lifetime four or five skills ((When I sat down to actually do this, I wound up giving each mode six skills. I may need to change that.)), and allow the player to choose three of them for the character.

One of the other things I’ve decided about skill numbers is that, in addition to the three skills from the main list for each lifetime, the characters will get to make one pick from the magic skills list available in that era. This is partially because it kind of mirrors the way magic skills are handled in Nephilim – each lifetime grants a certain number of points that you can spend on occult development – and partially because it emphasizes ((Like the Nephilim system does.)) the idea that Nephilim are creatures of magic, and even the most mundane among them is still quite magically powerful. At least, compared to a mortal.

Now, some types of lifetime – scholars, for instance – may also have a magic skill as one of the skills on their main skill list, allowing the character to essentially double-dip. Again, this is by design, and I think the fact that the character is giving up a different ((More mundane, more mortal, more human.)) skill to embrace magic is just a fine trade-off. That said, it’s one of the things I’ll have to keep thinking about and will watch carefully if I ever get to try the game out.

The Skill List

If you’ve taken a look at the work-in-progress manual I posted last time, you’ve already seen the overall skill list I came up with. If you haven’t, here it is:

  • Alchemy
  • Athletics
  • Burglary
  • Contacts
  • Crafts
  • Deceive
  • Drive
  • Empathy
  • Fight
  • Investigate
  • Ka Vision
  • Lore
  • Notice
  • Physique
  • Provoke
  • Rapport
  • Resources
  • Shoot
  • Sorcery
  • Solar Ka
  • Stealth
  • Summoning
  • Will

You’ll probably notice that there are a few new skills on that list. Here’s the basics on those:

  • Athletics, Sorcery, Summoning: These are the three magical styles of Nephilim. I’ve only got a rudimentary idea of exactly how I’m going to implement them, so right now, they’re pretty much placeholders. When I get to the post where I sort out the magic, I’ll talk more about them ((Hopefully, I’ll have figured out something cool with them by that time.)).
  • Ka Vision: This is how the Nephilim view the magical flow of elements and the other occult aspects of the world. I figure it works just like the Investigate skill, except for magical things instead of mundane things.
  • Solar Ka: In Nephilim, Solar Ka is a measure of the power of humans. It mainly works as an obstacle that Nephilim have to deal with when trying to possess someone, or use magic on them, or something similar. So, I figure that there has to be some representation of it in the game, though I’m not entirely sure how it’s going to work, yet.

Eras

As mentioned back here, I’m dividing the past lives into four broad eras: Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance, Modern.

  • Ancient is era 1 (Predynastic Egypt c. 5000 BCE) to era 10 (Rome, Italy c. 350 CE).
  • Medieval is era 11 (Aachen, Germania c. 750 CE) to era 16 (Avignon, France c. 1378 CE).
  • Renaissance is era 17 (Florence, Italy c. 1480 CE) to era 22 (The Scottish Rebellion c. 1745 CE).
  • Modern is era 23 (Paris, France c. 1789 CE) to era 27 (Berlin, Germany c. 1933 CE).

I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: these are simple benchmarks. A good argument from a player is all that’s required to switch a given incarnation period from Ancient to Medieval or vice versa. And, of course, the edge cases – periods that are right on the border of switching to a different era – could go either way.

The main point is that it allows me to not have to create new modes for each incarnation period. I can just create Ancient modes, and Medieval modes, etc. It also means that the modes are more generally useful if a player decides to create their own time period for incarnation: I can just look at which of the four eras it falls into.

And, of course, location is a big determining factor. Some areas may be in one era and some in another during the same time. For example, England in 1600 CE is Renaissance, but northern Canada ((Well, it wouldn’t be Canada, yet, but you get the idea.)) probably counts as Ancient during the same year. So, yeah, benchmarks.

Types of Life

Each time period that’s written up in Nephilim or Chronicle of the Awakenings includes a list of who your simulacrum could be. Again, in order to make my life simpler, I’ve created five broad categories of mode for each era. So, if you decide that you were incarnated as a Paladin of Charlemagne, you’d take the Medieval Warrior mode for that incarnation. If you were a galley slave in a Greek trireme during the Trojan war, you’d take Ancient Farmer/Labourer.

I also think that deciding which category your character falls into based on your incarnation is a judgment call. Some ((Like the Paladin of Charlemagne.)) will be pretty obvious, while others ((Like the galley slave – maybe that’s an Ancient Warrior?)) will require discussion to determine. That is, in my mind, a feature, not a bug; it lets the player and GM sort things out and flesh out some of the back story for the character, as the player answers questions or makes claims to justify their choice. All good stuff.

So, here are the categories:

  • Ancient: Farmer/Labourer, Craftsman, Warrior, Priest, Ruler
  • Medieval: Farmer/Labourer, Merchant/Craftsman, Warrior, Priest, Ruler
  • Renaissance: Farmer/Labourer, Merchant/Artist, Soldier, Priest/Scholar, Ruler
  • Modern: Farmer/Labourer, Businessman/Artist, Soldier, Priest/Scientist, Politician

Modes

And now we come to the meat. Here’s my preliminary list of skills for each of the modes. These are obviously subject to change as I keep working on the project. But it’s a start.

  • Ancient Farmer/Labourer: Crafts, Drive, Empathy, Notice, Stealth Will. Magic: Sorcery, Ka Vision.
  • Ancient Craftsman: Contacts, Crafts, Empathy, Lore, Notice, Rapport. Magic: Sorcery, Ka Vision.
  • Ancient Warrior: Fight, Ka Vision ((Why? Because stories of ancient warriors with preternatural senses are not uncommon. And I liked the idea.)), Notice, Provoke, Shoot, Stealth. Magic: Sorcery, Ka Vision.
  • Ancient Priest: Deceive, Empathy, Lore, Rapport, Sorcery, Will. Magic: Sorcery, Ka Vision.
  • Ancient Ruler: Contacts, Empathy, Fight, Notice, Provoke, Rapport. Magic: Sorcery, Ka Vision.
  • Medieval Farmer/Labourer: Crafts, Drive, Empathy, Notice, Stealth, Will. Magic: Sorcery, Ka Vision ((This list makes some magic skills unavailable, based on the mode. So, Medieval Farmer/Labourers don’t get access to Summoning. Not sure if this is a good idea, yet.)).
  • Medieval Merchant/Craftsman: Burglary, Contacts, Crafts, Empathy, Notice, Rapport. Magic: Sorcery, Summoning ((So, there are canon dates when the more advanced magical skills (Summoning and Alchemy) are discovered. I’m roughing them in by period. When I get to the magic conversion, I may change that.)), Ka Vision.
  • Medieval Warrior: Fight, Notice, Provoke, Shoot, Stealth, Will. Magic: Sorcery, Summoning, Ka Vision.
  • Medieval Priest: Empathy, Investigate, Lore, Rapport, Summoning ((Why? Because of the prevalence of saints and their almost-cults during the middle ages. Sure, that’s pretty Christian-centric, but there ya go.)), Will. Magic: Sorcery, Summoning, Ka Vision.
  • Medieval Ruler: Contacts, Empathy, Fight, Ka Vision ((Why? Because it fits with medieval ideas of kingship for the ruler to be touched by the mystical world.)), Provoke, Rapport. Magic: Sorcery, Summoning, Ka Vision.
  • Renaissance Farmer/Labourer: Contacts, Drive, Empathy, Notice, Stealth, Will. Magic: Sorcery, Ka Vision.
  • Renaissance Merchant/Artist: Burglary, Contacts, Crafts, Deceive, Notice, Rapport. Magic: Sorcery, Summoning, Alchemy, Ka Vision.
  • Renaissance Soldier: Fight, Notice, Provoke, Shoot, Stealth, Will. Magic: Sorcery, Ka Vision.
  • Renaissance Priest/Scholar: Alchemy, Investigate, Lore, Notice, Rapport, Will. Magic: Sorcery, Summoning, Alchemy, Ka Vision.
  • Renaissance Ruler: Contacts, Deceive, Empathy, Fight, Provoke, Rapport. Magic: Sorcery, Summoning, Alchemy, Ka Vision.
  • Modern Farmer/Labourer: Burglary, Contacts, Drive, Empathy, Notice, Stealth. Magic: Sorcery, Ka Vision.
  • Modern Businessman/Artist: Contacts, Crafts, Deceive, Empathy, Notice, Rapport. Magic: Sorcery, Alchemy, Ka Vision.
  • Modern Soldier: Drive, Fight, Notice, Provoke, Shoot, Stealth. Magic: Sorcery, Ka Vision.
  • Modern Priest/Scientist: Investigate, Empathy, Lore, Notice, Rapport, Will. Magic: Sorcery, Summoning, Alchemy, Ka Vision.
  • Modern Politician: Contacts, Deceive, Empathy, Provoke, Rapport, Will. Magic: Sorcery, Summoning, Alchemy, Ka Vision.

I’m thinking that I may need to allow characters to swap out one skill for another, based on the concept of their incarnation. For example, someone who incarnates as a police officer in 1900 CE may take the Modern Soldier mode, but want to swap out Stealth for Investigate. I think that would be okay, though I’m a little worried I’m making the modes a little too loose. I’m going to have to think about it, and reread the modes stuff in the Fate System Toolkit.

Simulacrum Skills

There are certain other skills that the Nephilim don’t get, because they’re based on the abilities of the simulacrum. These include Athletics and Physique, because they’re purely physical; Resources, because that’s purely social; and Solar Ka, because that’s purely human.

What that means is that I need to add a character creation step: creating the current simulacrum. In addition to those skills, I figure it would be good to give the simulacrum an aspect to identify it ((Could wind up with a total of eight aspects, in that case, which is a lot.)). This could, in some cases, act almost like a second Trouble aspect, reflecting how the history, role, or submerged personality of the simulacrum makes things difficult.

Updated Manual

And here‘s the work-in-progress manual, updated with the material from above.

Fate of the Nephilim: Documentation

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A quick note about the information presented below: I’m not going to be explaining all the ins and outs of the Nephilim game. If you’re really confused by stuff, I urge you to grab the pdf of the game to follow along. You can get it at the Chaosium site, and the entire line is available at RPGnow. It’s well worth the purchase. And Fate Core is available from Evil Hat Productions. Also very much worth it.

Well, I’ve spent the last couple of days trying to get my head around where I left off on this project of converting Nephilim to a Fate Core game. It became readily apparent to me that I had lost a lot of momentum due to my long blogging hiatus, and had a fair bit of trouble remembering what I had planned to do next.

And so I fell back on my old stand-bys.

I’m a technical writer by day, and that means I’ve got a fair bit of practice with organizing and planning documentation. So, I decided to start actually writing the Fate of the Nephilim manual. That would document some of my ideas, show me what I had already done, cement some of the decisions, and give me a plan for what needs to come next.

The current version of the document doesn’t really advance things over the blog posts, but it does codify my thinking and planning. There are one or two new bits, decisions made either as I was putting the document together or sometime since the last post as the ideas have been brewing in my brain. But really, it just covers the basics of the character creation phases.

There’s still a lot to do.

It’s not a super-pretty document, either. I’ve given it a very simple cover page, a table of contents, and am using a pretty standard Word them to help with the organization. There are lots of pages that are blank except for the headings I’ve dropped in to use as an outline. And then, because I decided that I would share it with folks online, I spent an hour or so this evening tracking down the proper copyright and licensing notices for Fate Core and Nephilim ((Pro tip: always take the time to do this. If you like something enough to want to use it like I am, you should like it enough to give the proper credit to the folks who worked to make it in the first place. And not doing it just makes you look… unprofessional.)).

Yeah, I’m going to share the incomplete document with you folks.

If you find it interesting, let me know. If you spot any typos ((I haven’t given it a real editing pass. And one of the rules I live by is that everything always needs another editing pass.)), let me know. If you have any suggestions, comments, or complaints ((Though, to be honest, I will probably ignore complaints. Constructive criticism – now, that’s the way to get me to pay attention.)), let me know.

Next step will be coming up with the skill lists for the various eras. You’ll see what I mean when you look at the document.

Okay, so here’s the link.

 

Fate of the Nephilim: Phases and Aspects

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Fate of the NephilimA quick note about the information presented below: I’m not going to be explaining all the ins and outs of the Nephilim game. If you’re really confused by stuff, I urge you to grab the pdf of the game to follow along. You can get it at the Chaosium site, and the entire line is available at RPGnow. It’s well worth the purchase. And Fate Core is available from Evil Hat Productions. Also very much worth it.

After my last post, I got a couple of comments that made me think I had better put some thought into the actual process of character creation, rather than just mapping them mechanical elements. Fair enough; my plan had been to do all the mechanical mapping of all the systems I wanted, then to use that to tell me what the process should be, but the comments made me reconsider that ((So, thanks for that, Rob Rendell and Michael Duxbury!)).

So, let’s start talking about the phases of character creation, and the number and type of aspects the characters will have.

High Concept and Trouble Aspects

Obviously, the core of any Fate character is the aspect duo of High Concept and Trouble. Thus, the Nephilim will start with a High Concept and a Trouble.

For High Concept, I think it might be good to make the metamorphosis name required as part of the aspect, but also to require some modifiers. So, instead of a High Concept aspect of Djinn, or even Fiery Djinn ((Why not Fiery Djinn? Because all Djinn are fiery by definition. If you want to emphasize that you’re really fiery, maybe something like Djinn Inferno would work.)), I’d ask for something like Ageless Warrior Djinn, or Angel Esoteric Dancer, or Snake Astrologer to Alexander the Great or something. Use the metamorphosis name, but add some detail and colour.

For the Trouble aspect, I can’t think of any constraints I’d put on things. So, just the normal rules for choosing a Trouble aspect. Of course, the backstory and world of the Nephilim give some rich material for cool trouble aspects: Orichalka Scars, Hunted by the Holy Vehm, Touched by the Black Moon, etc.

One of the catches, though, is that I don’t think I would make picking High Concept and Trouble the first steps. I think I would save that until after the past lives are done. That’ll give a stronger foundation, and more shape to the character.

Past Lives

I’ve made a list of the past life periods from the Nephilim rulebook and Chronicle of the Awakenings. Here’s what I’ve got:

  1. Predynastic Egypt, c. 5000 BCE – The Great Compromise: What God Were You?
  2. Memphis, Egypt,  c. 3000 BCE – The Pact: Menes Creates Empire
  3. Uruk, Sumeria, c. 2700 BCE – The Epic of Gilgamesh
  4. Thebes, Egypt, c. 1350 BCE – Akhenaton: The Arcana Rebellion
  5. Mycenae, Greece, c. 1200 BCE – The Age of Discord
  6. Babylon, Persia, c. 600 BCE – Zoroaster and Ethical Religion
  7. Alexandria, Egypt, c. 350 BCE – Alexander and the Great Philosophers ((Sounds like a university band, doesn’t it?))
  8. The Kingdom of Carthage, c. 200 BCE – The Destruction of Carthage
  9. Jerusalem, Judea, c. 30 CE – The Jesus Incident: Birth of the Piscean Age
  10. Rome, Italy, c. 350 CE – Constantine and the New Church
  11. Aachen, Germania, c. 750 CE – Charlemagne Destroys Paganism
  12. Rome, Italy, c. 1000 CE – The Millennium
  13. Jerusalem, c. 1120 CE – The Crusader States
  14. Las Navas de Tolosa, Spain, c. 1212 CE – The Reconquista
  15. Montsegur, Toulouse, c. 1243 CE – The Cathars
  16. Avignon, France, c. 1378 CE – The Great Papal Schism
  17. Florence, Italy, c. 1480 CE – The Rennaissance
  18. London, England, c. 1590 CE – The New Camelot?
  19. Paris, France, c. 1630 CE – The Birth of the Age of Reason
  20. The Americas, New England, c. 1650 CE – For Fear of the Devil
  21. London, England, c. 1730 CE – The Mechanization of the Universe
  22. The Scottish Rebellion, c. 1745 CE – Bonnie Prince Charlie Wars for His Throne
  23. Paris, France, c. 1789 CE – The Best of Times; The Worst of Times
  24. The Siege of Paris, c. 1873 CE – The Insurgent Uprising
  25. London, England, c. 1900 CE – Return of the Magicians
  26. The Great War, c. 1916 CE – Anathema to Live, and Bane of Lovers
  27. Berlin, Germany, c. 1933 CE – The Spear and the Swastika

That gives a very broad range of periods for the players to choose from ((Though I note that they are heavily weighted to Western European ideas of what’s important history.)). That said, I don’t think that it needs to be a restrictive list – it’s handy to have a list for folks to choose from, but the periods here also provide templates for building other periods.

This list also gives me a nice chronological arrangement, and shows that I can probably get away with just four batches of skills, if I do it right:

  • Ancient – eras 1-10
  • Medieval – eras 11-16
  • Rennaissance – eras 17-22
  • Modern – eras 23-27

Yeah, the divisions are a little fuzzier than that, but close enough for our purposes, considering the broad skills in Fate Core. I’ve got some ideas about how to do the skills, but they’re not really solidified, yet, so I’m going to save them for their own post.

Past Life Phases

Character creation phases seem to fit nicely with past lives in Nephilim. I’m thinking give each character three “free” past lives, and let them buy more using fate (Ka) points. With the default starting refresh of 3, that means that characters can have from three to five past lives.

Rather than walk through each characters first, second, and third ((…and possibly fourth and fifth.)) past lives in order, it will work better to get the characters to discuss which eras they’re interested in, and create a list for each character. This is mainly so that, if two or more characters are manifest in the same era, we can take the opportunity to talk about how those characters interacted, kind of like the Crossing Paths phases of Fate Core.

So, here’s a rough outline of how I see the Past Life Phases working:

  1. Players discuss and pick the desired eras for their characters.
  2. Starting with the earliest era:
    1. Pick simulacrum.
    2. Pick skills.
    3. For first incarnation, choose Arcanum and Stasis item.
    4. If other characters are incarnated here, discuss and note interaction between the characters.
    5. Determine death circumstances.
    6. Choose an aspect for this era.
  3. Repeat step 2 for each era wherein a character has chosen to incarnate.
  4. Total up skill ranks for all incarnations.

There may be something added to step 2, depending on how I finally sort out the magic system and where stunts fit in.

Past Life Aspects

So, the idea is that each character gets an aspect for each past life. That’s my default plan. With the High Concept and Trouble aspects, and the variable number of past lives, that gives each character 5-7 aspects. Now, I’m not completely convinced that allowing characters to have different numbers of aspects is a good idea – I don’t think it’s a game-breaker, but it does give that character a couple more options for using the fate point economy. On the other hand, those with more aspects will have fewer starting fate points, so that might balance out. I’ll have to think more about this. It’s eminently doable to just have the players come up with aspects for any three of the character’s past lives, but I think that undermines some of the cool flavour of the long-lived Nephilim, so I’m reluctant to go that way.

Anyway, there was some discussion on a previous post about the kind of aspects characters should have for past lives. The most obvious one is an aspect that denotes their role in that period – a sort of period-specific High Concept. I can see that as a simple, usable kind of aspect, but I worry that a) it will undermine/conflict with the actual High Concept, and b) it’ll make for a list of aspects like the character classes on a multiclass D&D character sheet.

Thus I have come up with a short list of ideas for Past Life aspects:

  • An aspect related to your Arcanum, especially if this is when you joined your Arcanum: Eminence Grise of the Emperor, Right Hand of Strength, Justice Investigator
  • An aspect related to an important event in that era: Taught the First Farmers to Brew Beer, Fought Against the Reconquista, Cathar Perfect
  • An aspect related to an important person in that era: The Fourteenth Apostle, Paladin of Charlemagne, Confidant of Robespierre
  • An aspect related to interaction with a secret society in that era: Master Mason, I HATE the Holy Vehm!, Hunted by Templars
  • An aspect related to a personal event in that era that left a mark: Hung as a Witch, Twelve Years a Homonculus, I Have Known True Love
  • Any other aspect, unrelated to the era, that shows off your character, goals, habits, or values: No Such Thing as Overprepared, I Will Unlock the Secrets of Solar Ka, The Selenim Are Abomination

 

Those are my thoughts on the phases and aspects for Fate of the Nephilim. Let me know what you think. Next time, I think I’ll talk about the skill packages for the various eras, and how they will fit together and work ((I hope they’ll do both, anyway.))

Fate of the Nephilim: Character Creation

By | | Fate, Fate of the Nephilim, What's he playing?
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Fate of the Nephilim

A quick note about the information presented below: I’m not going to be explaining all the ins and outs of the Nephilim game. If you’re really confused by stuff, I urge you to grab the pdf of the game to follow along. You can get it at the Chaosium site, and the entire line is available at RPGnow. It’s well worth the purchase. And Fate Core is available from Evil Hat Productions. Also very much worth it.

I sat down with my Nephilim pdf the other night, and looked through it, making a list of things that I would have to address in converting the game to Fate Core ((No idea what I’m talking about? You should read the first post in this series.)). Below is my list, along with my initial thoughts on how I might convert that element. This is early days, yet; I expect that I will find the list changing, as I find things to add or decide that items on the list really don’t need special attention, and definitely I expect my approach to individual elements to change.

Past Lives

As mentioned, I think that the past lives can be addressed as modes, as seen in Atomic Robo RPG. Between Nephilim and Chronicle of the Awakenings, there are 27 different eras for the characters to pick for their previous lives, each of which has five or six different classes of person. Creating an individual mode for each of these potential incarnations is not only a lot of work, but many of the modes would be very similar.

I think that a simpler approach would be to create a basic mode for each general type of person in each broad category of eras: Ancient Warrior, Medieval Aristocrat, Modern Serf ((Yeah, that’s not the right name, but you get the idea.)), etc. Maybe give each mode a set of five skills, of which the player must pick three – that’ll allow some customization of each mode.

There are some great random tables with each life that I think are useful/interesting enough to keep: class of the simulacrum, stasis item for the first incarnation, and stasis event. Now, I think it’s important that the players have the option to choose those things themselves during character creation, but I also think that having the random options available is useful for those who don’t have a really good idea or just want to let part of the character creation rest in the hands of chance. Using those tables straight from the Nephilim books works fine, as there are no mechanical trappings to them.

An important consideration is how many past lives each character has access to, which brings us to Ka.

Ka

Ka is the central mechanical definer of the Nephilim character. During character creation, you spend Ka to buy past lives, meaning you are making a determination between the skills available to your character and your character’s raw power. In that respect, Ka maps nicely to Refresh. I’ll have to so some thinking and juggling to come up with the right number of starting Refresh – how many incarnations do I expect the characters to start with? What does each incarnation cost? How about stunts? I may go with the standard 3 Refresh, a few free incarnations, and a few free stunts ((Three, three, and three? The UA fan in me likes that set-up, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.)). Or, maybe giving everyone a big stack of Refresh but making them pay for everything is the way to go. Have to think about that.

The catch is that Ka is more than just the power currency of the game. It also has different flavours – the elemental affinities of the characters that do a lot to define identity, outlook, and abilities.

Elemental Affinities

Each character has their base Ka, as noted above, plus five types of elemental Ka: Air, Earth, Fire, Water, and Moon ((There’s also Solar Ka, Black Moon Ka, and Black Solar Ka, but those are all NPC concerns, so I can pretty much ignore them. At least, for now.)). These different Ka ratings govern magical ability with those elements, as well as the Metamorphosis of the character. Your dominant Ka, the element that you most identify with, then you have the neutral-favourable element, the neutral-unfavourable element, the minor opposite element, and the major opposite element.

I think it may be my best bet to divorce this from the overall Ka rating above, maybe turning it into a simple set of bonuses and penalties ranging from +2 to -2 ((+2 dominant, +1 neutral-favourable, +0 neutral-unfavourable, -1 minor opposite, -2 major opposite.)). This allows the ability to apply the Ka element modifiers to anything having to do with that element, including the symbolic associations with physical and mental abilities, where Fire Ka adds to feats of strength, and Water Ka adds to agility stunts, etc.

That’s sounds pretty powerful, though. Especially if I allow any stunts to boost the bonuses or ameliorate the penalties. If I do go that way, I think it would have to be a static thing.

Which means that basic method of Metamorphosis won’t work.

Metamorphosis

Metamorphosis is the way in which the spiritual and magical growth of the character changes the physicality of the host body. In the main rulebook, this change is tied to the elemental Ka increase. Chronicle of the Awakenings offers a different system, based on emotions. Thus, instead of the Djinn getting hotter as its Fire Ka grows, it becomes hotter the more energetic it is.

So, I’m thinking the emotional system works best. Especially if each of the emotions is an aspect, with maybe a track of three boxes. Each time the emotional aspect is invoked or compelled, the player gets to mark a box. When all three for a given emotion are marked, that part of the metamorphosis is fulfilled, granting whatever benefit that gives ((I’ll have to work out some examples, of course. And maybe three is the wrong number of boxes.)).

There’s also the possibility of pairing the emotional aspect with its opposite, and unmarking a box whenever that opposite aspect is compelled or invoked. Or maybe just unmarking a box when the character acts according to the opposite emotional aspect. That starts to look a little fiddly to me; maybe best if I increase the number of boxes in the track to five. I guess it depends on whether I want the up-and-down of the Metamorphoses, and how awesome the benefits are.

Skill List

I may need to make some era-specific skills: Fighting (Ancient), Fighting (Modern), etc. Not sure, though; have to think about the benefit of such things versus the dilution of the skill point pool. Also, I don’t necessarily want a miles-long skill list on each character sheet.

There also need to be skills for the three magic types: Sorcery, Summoning, and Alchemy. Of course, I’ll have to figure out how those systems are working in Fate Core, as well.

There definitely needs to be a Ka Vision skill.

Now, one of the mainstays of the Nephilim skill list is Life Experience, where each incarnation grants a separate skill to know about stuff in the incarnation era. I think this may be better in Fate Core as just a list of incarnation eras on the character sheet, showing which eras the character can apply their skills to. That would also mean I don’t have to create era-specific skills, so I like that idea. Let the character use skill points to buy familiarity with the modern era after a few sessions, when it starts to get boring that they don’t understand cars and cell phones.

Stress

Physical stress is good as it is. Mental stress is fine, but for flavour, I think renaming it as Spiritual stress works better in this setting.

I’m toying with the idea of adding a Ch’awe track to model the magic point system from Nephilim. On the other hand, it might be better to adopt the stress costs of magic from DFRPG, applying the cost of casting to Spiritual and Physical stress tracks. I think I’ll have to take a look and see what other things in the game would impact Spiritual stress before deciding if I need a third stress track, or if that means that Spiritual stress is kind of redundant and useless.

Possession

I will need to figure out what kind of character stat block I use for the possessed body, including what kind of skill list it has. And then I’ll need to create several of them ((Or come up with a system where players can quickly and easily build their own.)). This is where I’ll have to do some thinking about Solar Ka, and how it affects the possession attempt. And what skill ((I’m thinking Will.)) the character will use to attempt possession, and what skill ((Again, probably Will, possibly with a Solar Ka bonus.)) the target will resist with.

Actually, if I decide that Solar Ka is the fate point pool that the target has, that makes it useful in resisting possession, but also more flexible than that. That may be the way to go.

Using the simulacrum’s skills should be slightly problematic, as it is in Nephilim. Don’t know how to model that: Spiritual stress hit, maybe? And incorporating those skills into the Nephilim from the simulacrum can probably be done with skill points received through milestones. One of those skills, maybe, is the general knowledge of the modern world, which would allow the Nephilim to add the modern era to the list of familiar eras. That could work.

Obviously, Shouit should occur when the Nephilim takes too much Spiritual stress. Should it be a consequence, or the result of being taken out? Have to think about that.

 

That covers most of the character creation issues. I’m gonna keep thinking about them. I’ll be back in a few days to take a look at the other stuff in the game that needs to be converted. It’s mostly to do with the wonderful, flavourful ((But very complex.)) magic system.

Fate of the Nephilim

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Fate of the Nephilim

Yesterday, in the middle of a busy work day, I saw a tweet that asked what RPG I loved but never got to play. My answer was pretty much instant: Nephilim: Occult Roleplaying from Chaosium Games ((Yes, I know that the original version of the game was from French company Multisim. I can’t find any trace of them with a cursory Google search, though I do find French Nephilim pages. I don’t read French, though. Anyone know if they’re still around?)). I love the themes, the setting, the basic idea behind it all, the flavour of the magic, the emphasis on playing truly alien beings trapped amidst humanity… all of it.

What I don’t love about it is the system.

See, it uses BRP, which is fine. But I never found it a good fit. It became fairly complex in handling the three different types of magic in the game, and was just a little too crunchy for my taste in a game that dealt with so much magical thinking and arcane/hermetic symbolism. It always felt like a real break in mood to go from talking about the ritual for summoning Those Who Creep and Nibble to doing mechanical calculations of the various astrological influences to work out what bonuses and penalties you had on your percentile roll ((Did I mention that the way it handled magic got complicated?)).

Anyway.

As I said, I was in the middle of a busy work day, so I didn’t really respond to the tweet. But the idea of Nephilim kept rattling around in my head, pulling up the question, “If I were to run Nephilim ((“…which I would never do…”)), what system would I use?”

There are a few core elements that whatever I used would have to handle, and the central one is the character generation. When you create you character in Nephilim, you do it by determining the string of different eras that they incarnated in, and what they learned in each one. What did you learn fighting in the Trojan War? How about in King Arthur’s Court? And leading a colonization attempt in the New World? That adds so much flavour to the game that I couldn’t ignore it.

But modes in Atomic Robo RPG do pretty much the same job: they allow you to pick a few categories with set skill lists, and the various skill choices accumulate. That idea got me excited enough that I tweeted about it, and got a little bit of interest online. Enough to let me know that it wasn’t a bonehead idea ((Hey, if four Internet people agree with me about anything, I take it as divine revelation of truth.)). That told me that Fate Core would probably work. Which is handy, because I love that system ((Pure coincidence and no confirmation bias at all, I assure you.)).

This evening, I’ve been gathering my Nephilim pdfs ((The books are all very worn and beat up. E-book are what I need for this part.)), and then I’m going to start creating Fate of the Nephilim. It’s going to be a long-ish project, but I’m strangely excited to do it. My first step is going to be going through the Nephilim books and and making a list of all the things that I think are central enough to the heart of the game that I need to come up with a way to model them in Fate. Then, tackle character creation. That’ll make or break my initial ideas – if I can get character creation to feel right, I’ll know I’m on the right track.

I’ve decided that I’m going to do this out in the open, here on my blog. This is for a few reasons:

  • It’ll be extra motivation to keep at this and get it done.
  • It’ll be a record of the project that will be safe as long as nothing happens to my domain.
  • It’ll get me blogging again. I haven’t had much to say on the blog for a while ((For quite a while.)), but this is interesting to me and, hopefully, to others.

I hope you follow along my little experiment. I hope it’s interesting. I hope it works out. I’ll be back in a few days with that list I was mentioning.