Play to Find Out, S3E4.5: Familias Reunion
Added 2025-11-21 12:00:07 +0000 UTCAnd thusly, after delivering something like 8 hours of content(!), our Nobilis season of Play to Find Out draws to a close. Please enjoy this extra-long talkback that is something like our review of Nobilis, I suppose! A game that is fascinating, awe-inspiring, most definitely a bit broken, and will remain in my heart for some time.
I've gotta say, it's such a relief to record an Actual Play show where Emily, Rob and I don't have to hold back on how we really feel! It makes me love this project so much more, because it can be honest about - among other things - how roleplaying is hard, but making a great game is even harder. But both are also magical acts that are nonetheless well worth doing.
Thank you all so much for listening, everybody. We'll be back with another old game in a little while.
Comments
The rules on certain points coming back after a “story “ is finished, permanent points, and temporary points —reminds me of the world of darkness 20th anniversary edition. I wonder if Nobilis was taking from those rules and assuming the player understood that system? As those games (werewolf, vampire, and hunter) were extremely popular at the time of nobiliss…I mean in general this system on philosophy reminds me of mage in WoD honestly.
InkedRaven
2026-01-05 18:04:52 +0000 UTCI am a bit of an evangelist for Cortex Prime so take this with a grain of salt, but I feel you'd get a more even game if it was couched in some form of those mechanics. Buuut, with trade-offs. Player sheets could be a little simpler, and able to incorporate a dice pool of Relationships and Attributes relating to the main aspects of a deity as described here. Checks would be used to determine both if something is possible, but also if something happens without consequence. Certainly, you could have something just happen; but 'failure' here would be messing up all consequences and having something unexpected happen. Or, rightly, Plot Points become extremely powerful. And the means of acquiring them could be interesting for a bit of push and pull within a narrative, while still allowing for some form of a godly power to exist within the game. If nothing else, abstracted forms of damage being manageable within Cortex would be helpful. However, you lose the immediacy of strength that Nobilis displays. You would lose the diceless system in favour of one that's closer to a gamble on whether you succeed or not. Being diceless does lend the game an ease which suits the premise really well. The prospect that a deity can fail at something would have to be addressed, possibly to make it that dice sizes in particular things are able to auto succeed but in place of spending power points, a Nobilis can instead roll a check to attempt to succeed, at the cost of possible failure and Plot Points. It's not apples to apples but I feel finding ways and means to play these games and keep these pieces of work alive in new forms that a group might benefit from is great. I do appreciate that shoving it into another system is not the best idea, but Cortex Prime does seem flexible to handle a lot of things. And I enjoy the adaptation process. Edit: Cortex Prime practically is a PvP system, it would work quite well for opposing groups of Nobilis meeting.
Tyro The Fox
2025-12-24 18:10:25 +0000 UTCSomething I found really interesting, which got a bit alluded to here and there but I don't think really came to the forefront, was the implicit horror in this story and setting. I know becoming a Nobilis is presented as deeply fulfilling and joyful but there's a sense in which the original person is somewhat erased, replaced by this new being that has far more depth in some aspects, but in other ways seems almost flattened to their domain. If you could somehow describe to Josie and Derek what was about to happen to them would they be excited or terrified? And that's not to mention what this world is like from the human perspective - constantly reshaped in bizarre and horrifying ways to the petty whims of creatures that you can't even bear to look at, and half the time you don't even know that they're doing it. I almost think that you *could* run an asynchronous PvP game using Nobilis, but only one group would be Nobles and using the Nobilis system. The other group would be humans and they'd be playing something like Delta Green.
Alastair
2025-12-06 00:50:29 +0000 UTCThis was fantastic, Quinns! The ending was a little abrupt, but I like leaving the question "What does a world of home offices look like?" open for the audience to explore and ponder. I am not generally a narrativist GM and prefer more trad or simulationist play, but this let's play of Nobilis has left me very inspired. I agree with your sentiment that a high powered god focused system needs to be more open ended and less specific/simulationist. I have cracked open my dusty Apocalypse World, Blades in the Dark, and Ironsworn books as reference, have been throwing ideas at the wall, and working on a prototype BitD/PbtA god system. The WIP idea is your god never needs to roll for mundane and mortal tasks or even lower powered miracles. You only roll against mortals when it reaches a certain scale threshold like you razing a city alone or you vs. an entire army. I've been using tweaked BitD Deep Cuts action resolution, so even at that scale you succeed all the time but generate narrative consequences or threat clocks. With a system like this, it would generate stories about players making sweeping changes to the world but watching as all sorts of unintended consequences pop up in response to their changes. Still working out how to handle direct god vs. god interactions.
Kolton Kulis
2025-12-01 14:26:49 +0000 UTC
