Anyone here ever played In Nomine Satanis/Magna Veritas? It’s an old French RPG published by Asmodée. Steve Jackson made a significantly less funny American version named In Nomine.
I’ve been thinking of drafting a AW hack for it.
Anyone here ever played In Nomine Satanis/Magna Veritas?
Anyone here ever played In Nomine Satanis/Magna Veritas?
Glorious. Do it. I have only read snippets and always wished the game had been translated instead of re-imaged.
It’s one of the best-written game I’ve had the pleasure to hold in my hands. The PDFs were released to the public a few years back (Asmodée gave the permission to a local guy in the Ottawa region to post them on his website). The book itself is nigh-impossible to find in North America nowadays. I’ll see what I can do.
I never read* the original French, but I heard it was a lot better at being satire as opposed to a lighter modern occult game with angels / demons.
*Well more accurately I can’t read it in French.
Ditto.
It has more in common with Brazil than it does with Constantine. It’s part absudist pitch-black humour, part satire of the modern world’s oppressive bureaucracy.
I remember a particular game in which we contracted a demon serving the Demon Prince of drugs to help keep the roommate of one of the characters alive while we pumped him as full of drugs as possible. The point of this was to make a cake out of the guy’s liver for a party.
There’s also this amazing advancement mechanic where one can trade in “favour”, the game’s experience point, for a random advancement. You hope you’ll get something useful, but more often than not, you’ll be granted a trio of mostly useless zombies. They have to live with you, in your bachelor pad. Shenanigans!
Alright, let’s make a prelim version of agendas. This class is long and boring.
Agendas
– Make the character’s lives absurd and insane.
– Play to find out what happens.
– Make the players feel like pawns. Abusively powerful pawns.
What sort of Moves would you be making?
It sounds like petitioning superiors would be a basic move.
I started hacking the American version to AW and what I discovered is that it really needs very minimal hacking, since it’s already 2d6 based. All it really needs is a set of basic moves.
http://corvidsun.com/2011/02/15/the-final-trumpet-in-nomine-aw/
Two moves, I think. There needs to be both a Favour/Bureaucracy stat, and a Faith/Blasphemy stat.
When you are trying to get information from your superiors, roll+Favour.
10+, Ask your question, you’ll receive a memo or telepathic communiqué soon enough.
7-9, choose 1 : the information is only vaguely relevant, the memo gets to you in a spectacular and inappropriate way, Take -1 forward to you next Favour roll (“It was my first day off in 363 years!”)
When you summon your Demon Prince or Archangel for help, roll+faith or blasphemy.
On 10+, your master comes by in some form to help you, as described by your archetype’s special move.
On 7-9, The boss gives you a hand as per your archetype’s special move, but choose 1 :
– Your Archangel or Demon prince is pissed! Lose one Blasphemy or Faith until you recover it.( the way will come)
– Bypassing the bureaucracy has consequences. of some sort. It’s not coming to me right now.
– Your boss sucks some life force out of you to help with the summoning, you take X harm
Cool.
So besides that sort of petitioning, what else would they do?
Basic moves… they can kick some ass, manipulate, corrupt or save a mortal, manipulate a supernatural being.
There has to be something for “flashing your aura”, an “Acting under fire” kind of move, I’m tempted to call it “Don’t give a fuck”.
There would also need to be a death move, perhaps inspired by the one in Dungeon World. When a demon’s or angel’s human host is destroyed, the entity has a chance of getting reincarnated in another host. The paperwork for it can be a pain, and that’s assuming that your supervisor’s not too pissed at you for ruining a perfectly good body.
They also have supernatural powers that depend on their archetypes (A Bruiser might be able to turn into a giant monster or summon a relic weapon out of thin air while a Manipulator (name pending) might be able to build himself a horde of brainwashed slaves).
Maybe getting a new host is a type of petition up the chain.
I like the spiritual influence of a mortal move as its own, singular sort of thing.
What’s flashing your aura exactly?
In INS/MV, demons and angels can, at any time, turn on their auras. It makes it so any supernatural creature around can see you for exactly what you are. If I’m not mistaken, triggering your aura also triggers the aura of every supernatural thing in your vacinity. The bigger a supernatural badass you are, the more impressive the aura. I see it as a “reveal your true form” kind of thing. The superpowered avenging angel suddenly appears as a 70 feet tall winged monster with four rotating faces while the lowly trickster demon might sprout a pointed tail, horns or a snake’s tongue.
It mostly serve two purposes :
-To identify someone as an ally or an enemy by triggering both your auras.
– It can be used as a tool for intimidation (Don’t fuck with me, I’m a four-faced swordsman the size of a skyscrapper).
It feels like it’s mostly colour, as such, an MC could just rule that going against anyone who obviously outranks you in power (in either hierarchies) requires you to roll “Not giving a fuck”.
/subbing ’cause I totally love this setting. (Language barriers prevent me from enjoying the french version, though.)