Angels in the Outfield.

I'm going to talk about Nobilis some more.

It's a game where you play (usually) a human who's been put in charge of a concept of reality. You have a godlike boss of some sort that gave you this power and responsibility. There are alot of beliefs and agendas around. The big questions are left unanswered by the basic setting--God (Cneph, as he's called) is missing, noone's really sure if any of the assorted prophets and messiahs were the real thing. There are things from outside reality that want to break it all down, starting with the weakest links, which might be you.

There are factions, of course. Heaven is a big deal in Nobilis--the Angels champion the causes of beauty and justice and the idea that they are right. The base setting is pretty neutral about this, but in my experience, GMs tend to give them a bad rap. Most Angels you might meet are snobbish at best and fascist egomaniacs at worst. The concept of justice that they supposedly champion becomes completely self-serving. They draw their flaming swords at the drop of a hat.

I'd blame this on a general glorification of the less-organized eastern religions and general contempt of western religions. Angels are more associated with Christianity, and in my experience, gamers are less impressed with Christianity and its trappings. Biases happen. We all bring things to our games constantly that we're not even necessarily aware of.

I've tried to take another tact in my Nobilis game. Probably because of my experiences in other games, my game is quite a bit more angelo-centric that most. Even the Dark (who mostly seek ways to get humanity to destroy themselves) have some legitimacy built into my version of Creation. That leaves me with less grand factions of Evil, yes, but I'm going to try to use more individual villains than Leagues of Bastages.

Maybe more on this in the future. I doubt I'm done writing about one of my all-time favorite games, anyway.

~j