Monday, February 4, 2019

Review of In Nomine the Core Rule Book

The book is 212 pages and available on W23 for $16+
The first 24 pages are a cool story told from different perspectives that really helps you understand the mood and characters of the setting. The descriptions also explain a bit of some of the concepts.
After that it gets to explaining the setting and mechanics.
The book has a narrative style and is best read and understood from beginning to end. Attributes or characteristics are divided into three sets of Forces, Corporal, Ethereal, and Celestial and the player assigns a certain number of forces between them.
Corporal represents the physical world and covers Strength and Agility.
Ethereal represents the mind and covers Intelligence and Precision.
Celestial represents the soul of the character and covers Will and Perception.
As you increase a certain Force you get points to increase that Forces characteristics. Characteristics have a range from 1 to 12.
After that if your a Celestial you choose a Choir or Band (Kind of like race) and a Superior you follow.  You may get certain resources and special abilities based on how you spent your Forces, your Choir/Band, and even your Superior.

An interesting gimmick is most rolls are done by rolling what is called d666 whic is two matching die and one different. Sum the matching die and compare against the assigned target number (you want to roll low) and the third die is sort of a degree of success/failure die. This separates so called critical successes or failures from how difficult a task is and makes them more a matter of random luck.
Basic Target numbers are easy to determine as they are based on a characteristic and possibly a skill or ability. So for example a high strength score increases your chances of succeeding at strength checks. The GM may assign a modifier for certain tasks which is added or subtracted to the die roll.
This makes most task resolutions easy and obvious without looking things up during play.
Of special note is the rare "Intervention" which is a roll of 1,1,1 or 6,6,6 which I'll leave to your imagination!

I'll discuss special powers and more in later posts.

Summary

Overall the book and rules system feels less precise or simulationist, and more story driven where things have wiggle room for interpretation. That particular style doesnt suit my tastes but I'm an analyst by trade and personality so I like precision, heavy cross references, and things to fit in neat little boxes. If your like Vampire the Masquerade or games like that you'll probably like the book more than I did.
Like the above mentioned game,I really like the setting more than the rules.  A GURPS conversion was made, though that was a Third Edition project and I would like to see a Fourth Edition version.

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