The Redemption of Eli

A Play-by-Post In Nomine Campaign

This is a PbP In Nomine Campaign that briefly ran on the Steve Jackson Games Forums, but that petered out in 2010.

• Game Overview
• Player Characters
• About the Setting
• House Rules
• PbP Rules and Conventions

Overview

Novalis, with the help of Zadkiel and Jordi, has gathered together a group of five angels— all favored and trusted servitors, 11-Force angels with a fair bit of experience— to try and track down what Eli is up to. Eli has been even harder to find in the last ten years, and by all reports is getting more flaky and distant when he does communicate to one of his not-reassigned servitors. What's more, Dominic has announced to the Seraphim council that he's going to step up his efforts to scrutinize angels of Creation, and to bring Eli in for trial. Novalis and other friends of Eli are worried, and so have put together this group of angels to try a kinder, gentler approach.

This is an In Nomine Play-by-Post game being run in the SJ Games Forums.

• Forum thread for the game
  
  
• Forum thread for related OOC chit-chat

Characters

Rhoda, Ofanite of Flowers

Rhoda— Rudy Bluemkranz, in her Role— is one of the more friendly and persoanble perahps-homeless folks that can be found in San Francisco. She doesn't seem to have regular work, but frequently picks up odd jobs, or just tries to spread joy in small but meaningful ways. She can frequently be seen speeding around San Francisco on a bicycle.

Somasti, Mercurian of Flowers

Somasti is just under 280 years old. She has found herself more attracted to the raw Nature aspect of Novalis' Word, as opposed to many of Novalis' servitors who embrace the metaphorical aspects of the Word. Somasti has spent a lot of time wandering very far from civilization, in the Role of a conservationist.

Nechama, Mercurian of Protection

A relatively young angel, Nechama is less than 200 years old. She's spent most of her time in the UK, including with her current Role: Naomi Ann Jones, a psychiatric nurse. She has recently been transferred to work at the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic in San Francisco, a Tether to Protection.

Heb Rhoneniel, Seraph of Animals

Heb Rhoneniel is a very old Angel, one who existed before the Fall, and who was scarred for quite some time by the Fall. These days, he has spent a lot of time focusing on whales, and whale song in particular. He has a role as a seasonal tourguide who shows humans whales, respectfully, in the wild.

Jedidah-Bezek, Mercurian of Lightning in service to Networks

Baz, to his friends, spent several centuries working on communications technology in the Halls of Progress, before returning to Earth in the late 19th Century. He made his mark working with many of the humans who did amazing things in MIT's AI Lab in the 1970s— which was also the birthplace of the modern Free Software movement. He been in service to Orc since shortly after Orc received his word. Baz currently has the role of Bazil Jesek, a computer engineering student.

The setting

For more information about my take on the In Nomine Universe, see Omar's In Nomine Universe. Because of its topic, this game is likely to have higher politicking than indicated on that page. Please be familiar with my take on the In Nomine Universe, and make sure it's one you're comfortable playing with.

Some other particular notes on the setting:

• It takes place present day (staring Summer 2009)

• The events in the Revelations Cycle have not happened. Anything that results from those events should be discounted for purposes of this campaign. However, Austin and Los Angeles are as described in those books, and some of the PCs may well have contacts with some of the NPCs described therein.

• This campaign may or may not be taking place in the same Universe as my face-to-face campaign. At the moment, I'm trying to keep them as one single continuity. I'll drop that if that turns into a problem.

• The game will start in San Francisco. Where it goes from there will depend on the PCs, and it may well go all over the world, and even into the Celestial realms or the Marches.

• If you have read the e23 PDF about Eli, you can consider the various possibilites described therein for what Eli is doing as the theories that are discussed, probably mostly in hushed tones, by members of the Host. Which, if any, is the truth, is of course part of what the PCs are trying to find out....

House Rules

Core Books

OK, it's not a "house" rule, but you're gonna want to have handy a copy of the In Nomine Core Rulebook, both to know the mechanics for creating your character, and to understand the background. Because you're all experienced angels, you should understand the background.

Anything else available in published material is up to you. I've got nearly the entire line myself, and will be drawing bits and pieces from all of it. Nothing is "off limits"; whereas I've asked the players in my face-to-face game not to read certain bits of the books so I can freely use them, I'm making no such restriction for this game (as that would almost certainly be impractical).

Disturbance

Square the degree of disturbance to get the Base Range in yards (or meters). Whether or not you hear it is a straight Perception role, modified by range. Use the In Nomine Disturbance Calculator to calculate the penalty, if you wish.

Range	Per
0.1×Base Range	+3
0.2×Base Range	+2
0.5×Base Range	+1
Base Range	+0
2×Base Range	-2
5×Base Range	-4
10×Base Range	-6
20×Base Range	-8

Knowledge (Contacts), Precision based skill

This skill is to represent the contacts that will have been developed by an angel who has spent a lot of time travelling all around the globe recently. If the angel has primarily focused in one or two areas, just indicate that as part of the angel's background; there need be no game mechanics for it, and we'll deal with it reasonably if it comes up. However, if your angel may well have a contact in any random city you go into, take this skill. A succesful roll will indicate that the angel has a contact in the city to whom he can go for information about current events and other things going on in the city; the check digit indicates just how much information the contact has, and/or how extensive a set of contacts the angel has in this city.

Risk

You can take a penalty to your target number up to your level with a skill or song in exchange for a bonus to the check digit. (For resonances, we'll stick with the -1/+1 in the main rulebook.)

Character Development

• You cannot buy Forces with earned experience points. However, if you buy enough attributes (at 3cp/attribute), you will gain a Force "naturally". (Character development will probably not be very important in this game; I'm assuming that you're all established angels who know what they can do and who don't expect to evolve much. However, if the game manages to last long enough, I may hand out character points eventually. I do not want to see characters growing a lot in forces over the course of the campaign; you're already pretty tough as it is!)

• Superiors will not hand out character points, but they will occasionally hand out specific boons that they find appropriate.

Play-by-Post Rules and Conventions

• Stay active. If you can't think of what your character would be doing in the current situation, be creative, or take initiative to start a new investigation.

• To keep the style consistent, please write for your character in the third person.

• Don't write actions or dialog for other PCs— each PC is for his own player to control. Likewise, don't assume the results of non-trivial actions (anything where a die roll would be needed), or the actions of NPCs or anything going on "in the world" that your character wouldn't know about. This is an RPG, akin to a table-top RPG, rather than a group-writing exercise.

• I will do any die-rolling that is necessary, and will let you know the results of any actions you take. If you want to help keep things moving, you can indicate what you will do next based on whether or not you learn something, or something you try works, when you need to get that information from me.

• Please keep player knowledge and character knowledge separate. I anticipate that some "private" scenes will be done through e-mail or private messages on the forums. However, I may do some "private" scenes in the public message board. Please remember what your character does and does not know!

• Try to work well with the other players. In PBEM games in the past, the most disruptive players were often those who were so true to their own characters that they absolutely wouldn't compromise on some fine point of their characters' ideals. In other words, they were being "good roleplayers", but were disrupting the game. In real life, everybody is not so stubborn all the time. Bear in mind that we're all trying to play a game together here, and that we want to keep it fun. I'm not saying I want groupthink, nor am I saying that I want to avoid the intra-party tension that can make for meaty roleplaying. However, if you find that you've drawn a line in the sand and absolutely cannot agree to go along with what others in the party want to do, take a step back, take a deep breath, and ask yourself if perhaps you're being a little more stubborn in your characterization than is strictly necessary. It may well be reasonable, and of course I'm not demanding that everybody give into dissonance, but I do want everybody to bear in mind that we're trying to create a game together, we're not simply creating a platform for purely individualistic character portrayal.