Nephilim, expanded universe.

[RogerDee]

44 minutes ago, Mugen said:

4th edition was not very succesful, to say the least, as the only products were the GM screen and an introductory box.

Nephilim Legendes opted for a crowdfunding system that worked pretty well, and still works as a CF for a "2d Season" has begun.

Well, that's because you only see the best French products, I think...

4th Edition had a Selenim, Ar-kaim and normal Neph books as I acquired pdf French copies.

None of which were not OCR - thus making translation rather painstaking. Why can't they do OCR? as it means I could at least use Google translate too aid. sorry had to have a slight rant there 😀

Do you have a link for Neph Legends?

You did not say how they combined both Highlander and Neph btw?

 

 

Edited July 6, 2020 by RogerDee

[Mugen]

1 hour ago, RogerDee said:

4th Edition had a Selenim, Ar-kaim and normal Neph books as I acquired pdf French copies.

Really ?

I based my comment on the list on the GRoG, which usually has a list of all published works.

I also found no mention of Ar-Kaim or Selenim books for 4th edition afterwards. The only Ar-Kaim book I found was for 3rd edition:

1 hour ago, RogerDee said:

Do you have a link for Neph Legends?

There's the Crowdfundind site:

https://fr.ulule.com/nephilim-legende/

Then, the GRoG link :

http://www.legrog.org/jeux/nephilim

There's also a Starter Kit:

http://heritiersbabel.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Nephilim-Quintessence-Kit-de-démarrage-HD-V2.pdf

 

1 hour ago, RogerDee said:

You did not say how they combined both Highlander and Neph btw?

Sorry...

Honestly, I've read it a long time ago, and don't remember it very well. The "Nephilim" part comes from the fact a character can reincarnate, and the "Highlander" part comes from the fact their powers come in part from a sword.

[SunlessNick]

5 hours ago, RogerDee said:

Yeah I think I vaguely remember that, wasn't it rpg.net?

A Yahoo group, but I can't remember the address.

[SunlessNick]

5 hours ago, RogerDee said:

Yeah I think I vaguely remember that, wasn't it rpg.net?

A Yahoo group, but I can't remember the address.

[SunlessNick]

Double post - sorry.

Edited July 6, 2020 by SunlessNick

[Ian Absentia]

22 hours ago, SunlessNick said:

On another forum a player of the French version said that incarnation was described in that one in terms of alchemical wedding - essentially the incarnated Nephilim is the "child" of the elemental essence in the stasis and the human simulacrum, not the same being as either of them. 

Might that've been me?  I'm not aware of Rosenkreutz's "Chymical Wedding" being part of the French canon, but I've been beating that drum for years.  Not that it would replace or invalidate the parasite or symbiote models, but would instead represent another competing world view in the Nephilim Diaspora following the "Babel Event".  But look at that -- it's just another divergent theory from the original French material, which itself has undergone radical change over the years.  It's fair to say that wherever they started together, the French and English language games have become different animals.

8 hours ago, RogerDee said:

I have said it before, and will say it again, we desperately need a full translation of the 4th edition which could bespoke into system of choice.

It's my understanding that, as of several years ago, all involved parties have expressed a disinterest in doing so.  As suggested above, there are conflicting views on what the Nephilim RPG should look like.  That said, seeing the recent publication of translations of Würm and Aquelarre under Chaosium's banner...who knows?  Things change over time.

!i!

[RogerDee]

12 minutes ago, Ian Absentia said:

It's my understanding that, as of several years ago, all involved parties have expressed a disinterest in doing so.  As suggested above, there are conflicting views on what the Nephilim RPG should look like.  That said, seeing the recent publication of translations of Würm and Aquelarre under Chaosium's banner...who knows?  Things change over time.

The Chaosium version was okay but once you start reading the French stuff you see how much better it really is. So i really hope they do.

 

[Ian Absentia]

8 hours ago, RogerDee said:

4th Edition had a Selenim, Ar-kaim and normal Neph books as I acquired pdf French copies.

None of which were not OCR - thus making translation rather painstaking. Why can't they do OCR? as it means I could at least use Google translate too aid.

By the way, you answered your own question there. [bold emphasis mine]  Information may want to be free, but writers and publishers generally want some reassurance that they'll get paid.

!i!

[RogerDee]

27 minutes ago, Ian Absentia said:

By the way, you answered your own question there. [bold emphasis mine]  Information may want to be free, but writers and publishers generally want some reassurance that they'll get paid.

!i!

You're missing the point, OCR is how it is scanned, not how they produced it. What you're aiming at, is that the French have not produced it in pdf - which nowadays seems to be a rare thing.

 

[Ian Absentia]

I may have misunderstood, and I didn't mean to tut-tut you.  Formatting of PDFs is a big thing with electronic distribution being so prevalent. Making a PDF non-transferable, non-copyable, or non-translatable are important goals in controlling online distribution.

Now, back to that Hellraiser hot-take...

!i!

[SunlessNick]

7 hours ago, Ian Absentia said:

Might that've been me?

I don't remember, I'm afraid.  At any rate, I liked the idea - it means each incarnation is sort of a different entity, but not entirely, and resulting Agarthan is an alloy of them all - it feels more magical than the other options somehow.

[Ian Absentia]

3 hours ago, SunlessNick said:

...it means each incarnation is sort of a different entity, but not entirely, and resulting Agarthan is an alloy of them all...

C.f. Kieron Gillen's The Wicked + The Divine and Alan Moore's Promethea.

!i!

Edited July 7, 2020 by Ian Absentia
More, much Moore!

[MoonRightRomantic]

 

On 7/6/2020 at 1:30 PM, RogerDee said:

The Chaosium version was okay but once you start reading the French stuff you see how much better it really is. So i really hope they do.

 

I disagree. I wouldn’t be interested in a faithful translation of the French version. I read a let’s read on rpgnet and the immortals come across as huge jerks. I prefer the English mailing list’s take on the immortals as human beings with past lives rather than body-stealing parasites.

[Mugen]

On 7/6/2020 at 7:15 PM, Ian Absentia said:

It's my understanding that, as of several years ago, all involved parties have expressed a disinterest in doing so.  As suggested above, there are conflicting views on what the Nephilim RPG should look like.  That said, seeing the recent publication of translations of Würm and Aquelarre under Chaosium's banner...who knows?  Things change over time.

!i!

Interestingly, Würm was published in French by the same company that translated Pendragon 5th edition, Icare.

Néphilim Légende is published by Mnémos, a traditional book publisher which was founded by the same people that created Nephilim 1st edition.

[RogerDee]

On 7/14/2020 at 2:15 AM, MoonRightRomantic said:

I disagree. I wouldn’t be interested in a faithful translation of the French version. I read a let’s read on rpgnet and the immortals come across as huge jerks. I prefer the English mailing list’s take on the immortals as human beings with past lives rather than body-stealing parasites.

Where does it say in the Chaosium version that they are humans with past lives?

i thought it stated that the Kaim were incorporeal beings forced to possess humans, and have an anchor in order to prevent discorporation or something?

Edited July 20, 2020 by RogerDee

[Mugen]

36 minutes ago, RogerDee said:

Where does it say in the Chaosium version that they are humans with past lives?

i thought it stated that the Kaim were incorporeal beings forced to possess humans, and have an anchor in order to prevent discorporation or something?

The way I understand the message in your quote, it's not about the Chaosium version of Nephilim, but rather a version that originated on a mailing list.

[RogerDee]

1 minute ago, Mugen said:

The way I understand the message in your quote, it's not about the Chaosium version of Nephilim, but rather a version that originated on a mailing list.

You are quite right, my mistake.

[Ian Absentia]

Ever the apologist (I should change my screen name to that), I like to refer to the general sense of spiritual confusion among the Nephilim worldwide and assume that the arguments occurring between game editions and on discussion lists are manifestations of actual philosophical camps among the Nephilim themselves.  Heck, they're even codified within the Major Arcana:

Most Arcana = Parasite by default (mostly because they're unconcerned with the issue)
Hanged Man and/or Hermit = Reincarnated human
Temperance and/or World (Aeon) = Spiritual synthesis
Devil (and maybe Death) = Parasite in extremis
Star (and maybe Death) = Transhuman spiritualism, eternal consciousness within an artificial construct

It's been there all along.

On a not-too-distantly-related topic, who else is excited about David Mitchell's new novel, Utopia Avenue?

!i!

[Edit: Any and all of those summaries above are arguable.  I left out the Symbiote model, which The Lovers might favor, or The Hanged Man.  I left out that The Chariot might be onboard with The Star and Death for making either an android Simulacrum to explore outer space or a virtual Simulacrum to explore inner space.  I left out that The Moon has been distracting everyone with a handful of incarnations in cats and dogs when their real agenda lies with incarnating into aquatic mega fauna (and I'm not even sure what to call that model).  The important thing is, it's all in there already.]

Edited July 22, 2020 by Ian Absentia

[MoonRightRomantic]

On 7/20/2020 at 5:14 AM, RogerDee said:

Where does it say in the Chaosium version that they are humans with past lives?

i thought it stated that the Kaim were incorporeal beings forced to possess humans, and have an anchor in order to prevent discorporation or something?

 

On 7/20/2020 at 5:52 AM, Mugen said:

The way I understand the message in your quote, it's not about the Chaosium version of Nephilim, but rather a version that originated on a mailing list.

 

On 7/20/2020 at 5:54 AM, RogerDee said:

You are quite right, my mistake.

Right.

In the French version, the KaIm started to deteriorate due to the presence of the magic field of Orichalc brought by the meteor. They discovered that by discarding their physical forms and possessing human bodies they could avoid this deterioration, as human bodies were not poisoned by Orichalc. Thus they became the Nephilim, i.e. all Nephilim are former KaIm who lived since at least 10,000 years ago when the meteor fell. The secret societies created the stasis objects as traps for the Nephilim, but then it was discovered that the Nephilim's spirits would be expelled from the stasis during certain astrological conjunctions and given the chance to possess a human body. If the stasis was destroyed, then the Nephilim would cease to exist.

This backstory raises a number of questions, such as why the secret societies didn't simply kill the nephilim or how nephilim could survive long enough to be imprisoned in stasis objects made long after the fall of the meteor. In the Chaosium adaptation, the stasis objects were changed to creations of the nephilim to survive disembodiment and it was explained that nephilim were still born in spiritual form up to the present. I prefer this version because it plugs the plot holes I noticed.

A number of critics in the Anglosphere didn't like the nephilim because they were body thieves. Even some of the writers shared this opinion, and the old mailing list had lots of arguments and discussions about this. The current home of the mailing list hosts a partial rewrite of the game (titled Ex Oculis) where the nephilim aren't (necessarily) body thieves, if you're interested.

I would like to note that the French version introduced the Ar-KaIm in the third edition, who were depicted explicitly as awakened human beings rather than elemental spirits stealing human bodies. Selenim with the "natural Selenim" origin were depicted as human beings who awakened to the Black Moon, too. I found it quite odd that there weren't any Nephilim with the same origin. The first edition of the French version, upon which the Chaosium adaptation was based, stated Nephilim were still born up to the present; in the second edition this was retconned to "astrological nephilim", who became the Ar-KaIm in third edition. Unlike the natural Selenim, the Ar-KaIm don't follow the same rules as their Nephilim counterparts. Rather than occult sciences, they have "talents" that more closely resemble Aberrant-style superpowers. (To make things even more confusing, the Selenim sourcebook introduces Nephilim/Selenim hybrids who run on their own rules too. The third edition is the cleanest mechanically, but it still has oddities like that.)

If I was working with the Nephilim game today, then I'd really like to clean up all these messy rules. I'd use universal foundations for occult sciences, metamorphosis, origins, elements, etc and invent new sub-systems only when absolutely necessary.

[Mugen]

On 9/4/2020 at 5:31 PM, MoonRightRomantic said:

A number of critics in the Anglosphere didn't like the nephilim because they were body thieves. Even some of the writers shared this opinion, and the old mailing list had lots of arguments and discussions about this. The current home of the mailing list hosts a partial rewrite of the game (titled Ex Oculis) where the nephilim aren't (necessarily) body thieves, if you're interested.

I honestly wonder what is the incentive to play this version of the game over Mage:the Awakening, which is also a game focusing on occult mysteries, and not the metaphysical game that is Ascension.

Except, obviously, if you dislike the WoD/CoD rules, which is a perfectly fine reason to play another game.

On 9/4/2020 at 5:31 PM, MoonRightRomantic said:

I would like to note that the French version introduced the Ar-KaIm in the third edition, who were depicted explicitly as awakened human beings rather than elemental spirits stealing human bodies. Selenim with the "natural Selenim" origin were depicted as human beings who awakened to the Black Moon, too. I found it quite odd that there weren't any Nephilim with the same origin. The first edition of the French version, upon which the Chaosium adaptation was based, stated Nephilim were still born up to the present; in the second edition this was retconned to "astrological nephilim", who became the Ar-KaIm in third edition. Unlike the natural Selenim, the Ar-KaIm don't follow the same rules as their Nephilim counterparts. Rather than occult sciences, they have "talents" that more closely resemble Aberrant-style superpowers. (To make things even more confusing, the Selenim sourcebook introduces Nephilim/Selenim hybrids who run on their own rules too. The third edition is the cleanest mechanically, but it still has oddities like that.)

Ar-Kaïm were not well-received in France, where they were seen as an unnecessary excuse to play "manga/anime" (Saint Seiya/Knights of the Zodiac, essentially) characters in a setting that originally focused on occult inquiries over violence and fights.

I think they were introduced as a way to have simpler characters, and not a problem with the concept of spirits living in human bodies, which was never a big concern for french players.

Edited September 8, 2020 by Mugen

[RogerDee]

You know I had been meaning to re-write some of the stuff for this, for a while now actually.

One version was going to involve essentially space magic, and another version was going to use the four worlds from Gurps Cabal and Champions Mystic World. Maybe do the former this weekend.....time permitting.

 

[Ian Absentia]

11 hours ago, Mugen said:

I honestly wonder what is the incentive to play this version of the game over Mage:the Awakening, which is also a game focusing on occult mysteries, and not the metaphysical game that is Ascension.

Except, obviously, if you dislike the WoD/CoD rules, which is a perfectly fine reason to play another game.

I actually appreciate how the situation in gaming mirrors the real-world occult.  Myriad different systems and recursive derivations thereof to model something that defies explanation.  The fact that the creative team on Mage: the Awakening has links directly to Nephilim is a case in point.

Sooner or later, someone has to get occult roleplaying down just right.

!i!

[Loïc]

On 7/6/2020 at 11:48 AM, Mugen said:

Well, that's because you only see the best French products, I think...

I confirm! Like anywhere, we have our best (Nephilim, Bitume, Bloodlust...) and our worst (take a look at Cops!)... And we also have, of course, nice universes with less than perfect systems (Te deum pour un massacre, Aliénoïds, Zone...).

The only thing I really regret is when foreign translations do not respect the spirit of the original (In Nomine Satanis/Magna Veritas). But this is a two-way problem, anyway... 😁

[SunlessNick]

3 hours ago, Loïc said:

The only thing I really regret is when foreign translations do not respect the spirit of the original (In Nomine Satanis/Magna Veritas).

What was the original spirit?

[Loïc]

As many Syroz games (Zone, Aliénoïds, Bitume, Bloodlust), it was much more audacious/irreverent than its translation. Whether your were playing a demon or an angel, there were no limits/no filters. I do understand it can't fit everyone, and myself didn't like much INS/MV (for other reasons). But the translation wasn't faithful at all, probably to content the greatest number and make more profit...

As I said, I didn't like INS/MV, but not for these reasons. Then I still do respect the original work, not its bowdlerized translation...