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      Wind in the Flowers: Re-inventing a Game


    How to be a Hollyhock God

*R. Sean Borgstrom*
March 13, 2002
	

As mentioned in passing a few columns ago, *Nobilis* has its own unique
term for the person running the game, to wit, the Hollyhock God.
Historically, there have been endless variations on the language of
flowers; in the game's dictionary of floral symbolism, the Hollyhock
stands for ambition, glory, imagination, and perhaps a little touch of
vanity. A Hollyhock God, then, has decided that to build a new Creation
from their own imagination and share it with their players. I approve.

Since James wanted a significant amount of advice on how to run the
game, I set out to provide it. As in the Pharos Press edition, it's
narrated in character. Some of this is just me: I don't feel comfortable
telling people, as me, how to run their games. However, there's a more
important reason.

This is the section of the book most directly aimed at the reader. It is
not just presenting information; it's talking to the prospective
Hollyhock God, presenting directed advice on how they---the
reader---should proceed. In my head, this leads to a large section of
the book that breaks suspension of disbelief. Not that I expect people
to /believe/ *Nobilis*, but I do expect them to see the world as they read.

The character creation rules are written carefully to promote this, to
show the players how the subject matter plays out in the setting. The
setting material, of course, presents something to visualize directly.
Spending too much time talking about how to run the game, however,
breaks the vision and makes the reader think about /gaming/, not
*Nobilis'* Creation. Narrating it in character helps avoid this. It's a
character from the game world talking, and that reminder of how the game
world works is always there.

The advice in this book is much more detailed than in the previous
edition. Accordingly, I chose a narrator, Ianthe, with a relatively
unintrusive voice. Readers can concentrate on absorbing the material,
with Ianthe's presence as a grace note---but an important grace note.

Ianthe's advice comes in nine parts. Six cover a basic introduction,
genre, play contracts, rules interpretation, characters, and stories.
All of these are heavily optimized for games of *Nobilis*. Some of these
are interesting from the design perspective.

I've never actually been in a game that had a formal play contract,
covering how the game handles sensitive topics, describing the level of
control players have over their characters, and laying out rules for
player conduct. However, like any sane person would, I want *Nobilis* to
reach a large market that includes huge numbers of gamers and a
substantial number of previous non-gamers. I also know that its subject
matter can be fairly extreme. There is no sexual violence in the book,
because of /my/ personal hot buttons, and perhaps two uses of foul
language.

But there's some torture, some murder and maiming, a lot of moral
corruption, some horrible curses and massively ugly images, plus a huge
amount of blasphemy. This is a game of wonder and horror, and the horror
includes just about every kind that /isn't/ one of my personal hot
buttons. Resolving the conflict between "a game for everyone" and "a
game of intense wonder and horror" isn't easy; the best solution I can
find is to recommend that the players and HG (Hollyhock God) sit down
before the game and figure out what's in bounds and what's out of bounds.

Besides, think how many RPG horror stories this kind of thing avoids.

Playtesters rightly pointed out that most of the rules interpretations
in the section on rules interpretation could have gone into the rules
themselves. I'm still not sure whether I was right to leave things as
they were. My concern was fairly straightforward: first, I integrate
these into the rules, and then I write a new section of rules
interpretations; and then I integrate /those/ into the rules, and so
forth, until I find myself with a set of rules optimized for /my/
running the game instead of the average HG. Opinions on this are
welcome, although I'm not able to change it now.

The section on characters represents a detailed guide to the entities of
the *Nobilis* world, a discussion of typical social relationships
therewith, and advice to the HG on building and exploiting those
relationships. This was not so much design choice as organic evolution;
as I wrote about each of those three things, I found myself wanting to
define the other two more.

To finish up this column, I'll discuss the three remaining sections of
Ianthe's advice, all wholly *Nobilis*-specific. They cover, in order,
what Nobilis do all day, how they solve their problems, and what makes
their lives difficult. In my head, these are probably the most important
sections of the book, since they spell out so precisely how Noble lives
work.

The Pharos edition represents early work of mine, when my tendencies
towards vagary, imprecision, and hinting rather than defining were
operating at full force. I've learned better since then, and a great
deal of the new material represents me nailing down things that might
otherwise have rattled in the wind.

The first of these sections, on typical Noble activities, had one
primary purpose: free the players to act, rather than restricting them.
Working from this principle, I included a large subsection on the
personal projects of the Nobilis---their extracurricular activities, as
it were---and made an effort to make these as extreme and varied as
possible. Examples of this sort of project include freeing the souls in
Hell or sleeping with every man, woman, or adult human in general before
they die.

I stretched this idea a little bit with subsections on more dutiful
projects that nevertheless had a unique and personal character. One of
these subsections, for example, included a depiction of the Power of
Chaos' typical activities in service to the Chaos in his soul, which
include sowing disaster and trouble throughout the world, gambling, and
studying mathematics and quantum theory. There were discussions of
relatively standard activities as well.

The second of these sections discussed how Nobles solve their problems.
This represents, in essence, a guide to playing either a PC or an NPC in
the *Nobilis* world. This sought to preserve two game conventions:
first, the notion that characters don't arbitrarily fail, and second,
the idea that violence is fairly rare.

To protect the first, I highlighted the ease with which the characters
can use casually excessive force---not just violence, but also extreme
mental, social, and miraculous solutions---against problems in the
mortal world.

To preserve the second idea, I then spent time building mechanisms by
which the Nobilis could manipulate or oppose one another without
engaging in all-out miraculous combat. (It honestly is supposed to be
rare, despite the Example of Play---it's just something that I had to
cover there.)

Finally, the third of these sections discusses the opposition---the ways
the Hollyhock God can deal with the high power level and flexible
abilities of the player characters. This section was fairly
straightforward; my only purpose was to create obstacles that would
remain fun for the players rather than frustrate them.

R. Sean


      What do you think? <http://www.rpg.net/pf/list.php?f=88>

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 Topics 	Author  	Date 	Latest Reply
 James and the Small Caps
<http://www.rpg.net/pf/read.php?f=88&i=81&t=81> (2) new 	Kibo 
08-20-2002 16:29  	02-10-2003 01:23 new
 Art <http://www.rpg.net/pf/read.php?f=88&i=77&t=77> (1) new 	Lxndr 
04-26-2002 07:36  	04-26-2002 07:36 new
 The Original Nobilis Club
<http://www.rpg.net/pf/read.php?f=88&i=76&t=76> (3) new 	Bret Gillan 
04-17-2002 11:28  	03-17-2003 17:48 new
 Questions & Thoughts
<http://www.rpg.net/pf/read.php?f=88&i=64&t=64> (3) new 	Pyske 
03-20-2002 18:31  	05-01-2003 13:03 new
 Noble Buddhism?
<http://www.rpg.net/pf/read.php?f=88&i=61&t=61> (9) new 	Tlaloc 
03-20-2002 12:17  	12-10-2004 01:20 new
 Noble Suicide <http://www.rpg.net/pf/read.php?f=88&i=58&t=58> (9) new
Eric Christian Berg  	03-20-2002 07:43  	01-18-2005 16:27 new
 Art Notes <http://www.rpg.net/pf/read.php?f=88&i=54&t=54> (4) new 	R.
Sean Borgstrom  	03-14-2002 16:31  	03-21-2002 03:44 new
 Ack...you just lost my sale
<http://www.rpg.net/pf/read.php?f=88&i=45&t=45> (10) new 	SteveD 
03-14-2002 04:06  	03-15-2002 06:29 new
 Onomastikon working URL
<http://www.rpg.net/pf/read.php?f=88&i=36&t=36> (4) new 	Jorge
Hernández  	03-06-2002 12:51  	08-20-2002 16:10 new
 Why do angels change names ?
<http://www.rpg.net/pf/read.php?f=88&i=33&t=33> (10) new 	philippe
tromeur  	03-06-2002 10:13  	12-10-2004 01:34 new
 R. Sean, some examples?
<http://www.rpg.net/pf/read.php?f=88&i=32&t=32> (3) new 	Arref 
03-05-2002 08:17  	03-13-2002 20:28 new
 Sounds great, BUT...
<http://www.rpg.net/pf/read.php?f=88&i=28&t=28> (2) new 	Kane 
02-27-2002 16:43  	02-27-2002 17:30 new
 Sort of backwards?
<http://www.rpg.net/pf/read.php?f=88&i=21&t=21> (8) new 	Eric Finley 
02-20-2002 14:25  	02-28-2002 09:35 new
 Programmer nature slips out!
<http://www.rpg.net/pf/read.php?f=88&i=20&t=20> (2) new 	Sean
McCarthy  	02-20-2002 13:18  	02-21-2002 10:30 new
 Object Lesson Damage
<http://www.rpg.net/pf/read.php?f=88&i=15&t=15> (1) new 	Darren
Miguez  	02-13-2002 12:45  	02-13-2002 12:45 new
 How about this?
<http://www.rpg.net/pf/read.php?f=88&i=12&t=12> (2) new 	Kristian
Lund  	02-13-2002 11:30  	02-14-2002 01:17 new
 Now, this was strange!
<http://www.rpg.net/pf/read.php?f=88&i=9&t=9> (7) new 	access.denied 
02-13-2002 07:44  	02-16-2002 21:44 new
 Briefs on the other two?
<http://www.rpg.net/pf/read.php?f=88&i=5&t=5> (5) new 	Eric Finley 
01-31-2002 18:39  	02-13-2002 10:36 new
 Forum now works <http://www.rpg.net/pf/read.php?f=88&i=4&t=4> (1) new
Sandy Antunes  	01-31-2002 17:36  	01-31-2002 17:36 new
 limited series <http://www.rpg.net/pf/read.php?f=88&i=1&t=1> (2) new
Sandy Antunes  	01-21-2002 17:41  	01-31-2002 17:36 new

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------------------------------------------------------------------------

    * Editing, Development, and Production
      </news+reviews/columns/wind27mar02.html>
      March 27, 2002
    * Affiliations </news+reviews/columns/wind20mar02.html>
      March 20, 2002
    * How to be a Hollyhock God </news+reviews/columns/wind13mar02.html>
      March 13, 2002
    * Naming Conventions </news+reviews/columns/wind06mar02.html>
      March 6, 2002
    * Art Notes </news+reviews/columns/wind27feb02.html>
      February 27, 2002
    * Dynamic Nobilis </news+reviews/columns/wind20feb02.html>
      February 20, 2002
    * Systems Change </news+reviews/columns/wind13feb02.html>
      February 13, 2002
    * Treachery </news+reviews/columns/wind06feb02.html>
      February 6, 2002
    * The Emperor to Come </news+reviews/columns/wind31jan02.html>
      January 31, 2002
    * The Changing of the Guard </news+reviews/columns/wind21jan02.html>
      January 21, 2002 


      Other columns </news+reviews/columns.html> at RPGnet

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