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There were a lot of urban fantasy and conspiracy RPGs in the 90s. Nightlife, World of Darkness, Immortal: Invisible War, Nephilim, etc.

Nephilim was adapted from a French roleplaying and was cancelled after a few years. I find this a shame, because I found its premise fairly interesting compared to its contemporaries. (I'm also just plain sick of World of Darkness' stagnant monopoly over the urban fantasy tabletop scene.)

Many of the 90s games had elaborate metaplots and secret histories... none of which the PCs could be part of and personally invested in. In Nephilim, the past lives mechanic meant that you could have been personally involved in historical events during a past life. Maybe you were a conquistador, a founding father, a French revolutionary, an apostle, etc. This lets the PCs have more hands-on experience with the invisible history compared to a game like World of Darkness.

And unlike, again, World of Darkness, the politics didn't reek of high school cliques. The PCs could join "major arcana" (based on the Tarot), which were schools of thought rather than off-brand ethnicities or high school cliques.

The premise wasn't about being all goth and emo, but about going on quests for enlightenment. There were clear rules in the rulebook for achieving enlightenment once you reached sufficient statistics.

The main antagonists, the secret societies, were composed of ordinary humans and not paranormal immortal monsters. Human beings could have a lot of temporal power in this setting rather than being food for the monsters.

It also has plenty of wacky 90s ideas like the Knight Templar as villains, the dinosaurs having an intelligent civilization that raised a second Moon, elemental spirits building Atlantis and directing human evolution, science being a lie and the world actually operating on a series of magical fields reflected off the planets, etc. I particularly liked the way the setting actually bothered to invent an in-universe theory behind magic with its magical fields, since typical urban fantasy games just crudely tack magic onto modern Earth without really thinking through the ramifications on basic science.

I especially liked how the setting explained that history was heavily influenced by the conflicts between the secret societies, because typical urban fantasy settings ignore the effects of magic on world history. Realistically, magic would have resulted in history going down a completely different path. Nephilim cleverly cheats by claiming that history went down the path it did because of magical interference, rather than despite it. (Sure, World of Darkness does the same thing, but this time human beings have agency rather than being pawns of monsters.) Nephilim also didn't shy away from integrating World War II like White Wolf did, claiming that the Nazi's secret societies sacrificed people (and nephilim) to use their blood for magic.


There were only a few flaws, albeit major ones:

• The PCs were body stealing parasites, which for some reason drove players away even if they otherwise had no difficulty playing vampire supremacists in another game. Chaosium apparently had a problem with this and several writers wanted to rewrite the nephilim as humans awakened to their past lives and magical nature, but didn't do that. I personally think that, yeah, the nephilim should be rewritten as reincarnating human souls and not body thieves.
• The rules and backstory were extremely intimidating for new players, raising the barrier to entry. The past lives in particular added a lot of complication to character creation, and there wasn't any rules for recalling past lives during play.
• Chaosium released dramatic revisions of several core mechanics in supplements, such as the magic system. In the rulebook the magic system was generic D&D-esque, but the Liber Ka revision changed it to be subtle and influenced by real world occult beliefs.
  
• Chaosium seemingly didn't do enough to explain "what do the PCs actually do?" but that's probably less important compared to the preceding issues.
• Like some other RPGs based on originally non-English properties (e.g. In Nomine), Chaosium adapted and altered the material rather than translating it faithfully. I don't have a problem with this, as the original French version is apparently really strange according to my research. The rulebooks' geography sections were France-centric, so publishing for an Anglo-American audience would require switching to an American-centric geography anyway. The in-game jargon that it used was even more obtuse and unbelievable than a White Wolf game, if you can believe that. I'm so glad Chaosium went with jargon like "past life" and "elemental creature" rather than the French version's "effet-Jesus" and "effet-dragon."
  

I've been following nephilim a little bit for the past decade, archived some homebrews, and researched the original French version. Just last year the French version received a fifth edition through kickstarter, so it apparently still has a fandom in the Francosphere. That inspired me to start doing some homebrew of my own to revise the rules and setting further for general BRP. The Liber Ka magic system was revised and reprinted as Enlightened Magic in 2014 for general BRP.

Anybody else remember Nephilim or have thoughts about it?

Never played it but it looked interesting.  I did run an Immortal game that ran a few months and a one shot.  They both went really well.

A friend of mine was convinced it was an incredibly complicated sort of April Fool's game. But apparently not!

I used to own it, and the biggest issues I had with it was:
1) There weren't any English-language adventures/modules for it. And it was so radically different in theme from most other games that it was pretty difficult to convert scenarios from another game to Nephilim.

2) The characters were attempting to reach Agartha - a sort of heaven-like state where they could live as they once did. But there were no rules about how to get there. There was a book with different secret societies who all had different ideas on how to get there, but there wasn't any help for the GM.

3) Character creation was back-asswards. It was meant to start everyone off at the same level of power, so character with many past lives had lower magical stats. But the point of each life of a Nephilim was to get closer to Agartha and thus MORE powerful in magic. So character creation went directly against how the background said things worked!  

But it was an amazing concept and could have been a great game - if only anyone had understood how to write scenarios in English for it!

I was obsessed with this game when I heard about it in high school. It took me 20 years before I was finally able to get a copy, and then I struggled with trying to understand wtf I was supposed to do with it. I thought I knew a lot about the occult and Biblical stuff, but this was way above my pay grade...honestly, this is the game Changeling 1st edition should have been, and I really like Changeling (only WoD game I'd play today). It's also the third French RPG I had a hard-on for, the other two being Scales and In Nomine.

Quote from: spon;1121951I used to own it, and the biggest issues I had with it was:
1) There weren't any English-language adventures/modules for it. And it was so radically different in theme from most other games that it was pretty difficult to convert scenarios from another game to Nephilim.

Blame Chaosium. They only wrote one or two scenarios for it that I know of. One in the back of the Gamemaster's Companion and a scenario supplement titled Serpent Moon. I think there were a couple others in various old magazines. Before Yahoo! closed down their groups archives, somebody uploaded a bunch of files (https://basicroleplaying.org/files/category/54-other/) including a few adventures from the mailing list. The English Major Arcana supplement included 60 plot hooks, too.

Quote from: spon;11219512) The characters were attempting to reach Agartha - a sort of heaven-like state where they could live as they once did. But there were no rules about how to get there. There was a book with different secret societies who all had different ideas on how to get there, but there wasn't any help for the GM.

I don't understand this complaint. It says right here on page 121 of the English rulebook how to reach Agartha:

QuoteTo finally reach Agartha after many years of discoveries and slow initiation, the Nephilim must meet the following requirements:

• 90 points of Ka
• 90% in one of the following skills: Astrological Lore, Hermetic Lore, Kabbalistic Lore, Tarot Lore.
• 90% in one Third Circle skill of any magic Technique (i.e. Grand Secret, Keys or Philosopher's Stone).
• At least 16 points in each aspect of its Metamorphosis transformations, and a minimum total of 90 points

Obviously this is extremely boring, so later editions of the French version introduced the idea of explicitly collecting "Agartha points" by going on quests and stuff. If you max out your Agartha points, then you reach Agartha.

Also, the description of Agartha in the rulebook I have doesn't describe it as a Heaven-like state. It's extremely vague, but it seems to be saying that Agarthans are able to travel through time and alternate universes. Like Suzerain, I guess.

Quote from: spon;11219513) Character creation was back-asswards. It was meant to start everyone off at the same level of power, so character with many past lives had lower magical stats. But the point of each life of a Nephilim was to get closer to Agartha and thus MORE powerful in magic. So character creation went directly against how the background said things worked!  

I saw a proposal for an alternate system on the mailing list. Instead of using Ka to pay for past lives, characters had a budget of points to spend on point buy. You started with two past lives for free, but any others cost points from the character budget.

Quote from: Brad;1121973I was obsessed with this game when I heard about it in high school. It took me 20 years before I was finally able to get a copy, and then I struggled with trying to understand wtf I was supposed to do with it. I thought I knew a lot about the occult and Biblical stuff, but this was way above my pay grade...honestly, this is the game Changeling 1st edition should have been, and I really like Changeling (only WoD game I'd play today). It's also the third French RPG I had a hard-on for, the other two being Scales and In Nomine.

I didn't really find it difficult to understand once I read the underpinnings of the setting. The English version, not the French original since I don't speak French. The English version went off in its own direction rather than being a faithful translation. Even so, I could never get a group together in order to get a feel for the actual gameplay.

I used to run this game wayback in the 90s when it came out.
A fun game to run, but you need the right players for a game like this.

A few months ago, I scored a 2nd hand copy for about $20 which came with the core rules and the GM screen.
I was very happy about that.

Great game, great idea.
Feel like there's a pretty limited playerbase that would like this though.

I liked Nephilim, and wrote a review of it for The Unspeakable Oath or Pyramid BITD.  IIRC the French version or the pre-Choasium English version (I forget which?) had different mechanics and backgrounds/content too.  I traded away my comb-bound copy ages ago.

Quote from: Brad;1121973It's also the third French RPG I had a hard-on for, the other two being Scales and In Nomine.

I'd love to have an English translation of Thoan, the RPG game based on Philip Jose Farmer's World of Tiers novels.

Allan.

As typical of English versions of foreign games, the extremely loose and creative translation was really bad.

Quote from: danskmacabre;1122012Great game, great idea.
Feel like there's a pretty limited playerbase that would like this though.

I don't really understand that. White Wolf games do a lot of the same stuff and achieved a near monopoly over the urban fantasy RPG scene. (Although it's still a pale shadow of its peak in the mid 90s, regardless of what the shills will tell you.)

Quote from: grodog;1122041I liked Nephilim, and wrote a review of it for The Unspeakable Oath or Pyramid BITD.  IIRC the French version or the pre-Choasium English version (I forget which?) had different mechanics and backgrounds/content too.  I traded away my comb-bound copy ages ago.

There wasn't any pre-Chaosium English version.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1122268As typical of English versions of foreign games, the extremely loose and creative translation was really bad.

I didn't think so. It didn't diverge all that much except as the supplements started introducing replacement rules for the core mechanics. I thought the replacements were interesting in their own right and even superior to the original. The original wasn't perfection either.

I played Nephilim in high school a few times but did not get to enjoy the depth of the game/setting. I bought the main book at a used bookstore and have been collecting material for it since. I even ran a short campaign of it with the players not knowing they were Nephilim and them regain past-life memories along the way until the big reveal. It was very successful although I deviated from the cosmology of the game a little to pull this magic trick.

I would absolutely love to run Nephilim for the right group!

Quote from: Nihilistic Mind;1122637I played Nephilim in high school a few times but did not get to enjoy the depth of the game/setting. I bought the main book at a used bookstore and have been collecting material for it since. I even ran a short campaign of it with the players not knowing they were Nephilim and them regain past-life memories along the way until the big reveal. It was very successful although I deviated from the cosmology of the game a little to pull this magic trick.

Yeah, I definitely think that was a weakness of the setting and rules. The rules lack provisions to recall past lives during play, even though flashbacks would make for good adventures. The whole "body-stealing parasite" premise apparently alienated a lot of potential players back in the day, with some even saying they'd prefer to play humans fighting against the nephilim.

That's why I decided to revise the setting and rules for my homebrew so that the nephilim were awakened humans, could recall past lives piecemeal during play, and learn about the occult mysteries through play rather than front-loading it.

This would require revising all the mentions in the books of nephilim possessing people, but I managed to discover some cheats in that regard. Firstly, I made a distinction between the kaim/ka'im/whatever and the nephilim in order to keep the secret history mostly unchanged: the former were elemental spirits who built Atlantis and manipulated human evolution, and the latter were awakened humans resulting from said experiments who could access memories from past lives using memorial objects. Secondly, I tweaked the way that these memorial objects worked so that a mortal who wanted to could skip the normal reincarnation cycle and incarnate the stored magic in themselves, Buffy the Vampire Slayer-style.

Right! I think the parasitic relationship turned people off too so in the mini-campaign I ran, the Nephilim were basically trapped in reality as humans and trying to ascend into what they were: awakened magical beings.
The game I ran was set in a modern day metropolis (never named, kinda like in the movie Seven) and they each had a run in with victims of a serial killer. The serial killer was a Selenim who tried to shock Nephilim into realizing what/who they were. Little by little the PCs discovered their past lives by being triggered by a scene the serial killer had set up and they thought they were losing their minds. I also had them discover other Nephilim who had changed physical traits and they themselves began to notice things based on their preferred magical form/element affinity. In the end, the serial killer revealed himself to them and they LET HIM GO because they understood why he was killing people. It was wild, I was really happy with the tone and story that unfolded for everyone at the table.

Thanks for reminding me of this game and campaign, I really should run it again.

I think the game setting could benefit from a more friendly outlook on the whole magical parasite thing too so I would definitely make Nephilim hunted by secret societies who don't understand or accept that the Nephilim exist, and the struggle to find a path to awakening, not only the past of the characters through past life memories (which could be gained during play btw!) and towards an awakened future.

Quote from: Nihilistic Mind;1122697Right! I think the parasitic relationship turned people off too so in the mini-campaign I ran, the Nephilim were basically trapped in reality as humans and trying to ascend into what they were: awakened magical beings.
The game I ran was set in a modern day metropolis (never named, kinda like in the movie Seven) and they each had a run in with victims of a serial killer. The serial killer was a Selenim who tried to shock Nephilim into realizing what/who they were. Little by little the PCs discovered their past lives by being triggered by a scene the serial killer had set up and they thought they were losing their minds. I also had them discover other Nephilim who had changed physical traits and they themselves began to notice things based on their preferred magical form/element affinity. In the end, the serial killer revealed himself to them and they LET HIM GO because they understood why he was killing people. It was wild, I was really happy with the tone and story that unfolded for everyone at the table.

So it was a Gnostic game like Kult?

Quote from: Nihilistic Mind;1122697I think the game setting could benefit from a more friendly outlook on the whole magical parasite thing too so I would definitely make Nephilim hunted by secret societies who don't understand or accept that the Nephilim exist, and the struggle to find a path to awakening, not only the past of the characters through past life memories (which could be gained during play btw!) and towards an awakened future.

When I changed the nephilim into humans who awaken to their magical nature and past lives (which, let's face it, is pretty much the same premise as plenty of other 90s urban fantasy RPGs), this meant that I had to change the goals of the secret societies to compensate. Surprisingly, most of them didn't need to change because the majority of secret societies were evil regardless of whether the nephilim were involved. So the secret societies ended up falling into one of a few generalities: those who believe the nephilim are evil and don't know they're actually hurting human beings, those who don't care the nephilim are human and just want to bleed their souls for magic, and those who are indifferent or favorably disposed toward the nephilim.

What I like about the past lives mechanic is that it allows the PCs to play a more active role in the secret history compared to other 90s urban fantasy games. In White Wolf you had a ridiculously convoluted backstory that the PCs didn't actually have a real investment in, but which players (or at least people who really liked reading the metaplot for some reason) could obsess over. In Nephilim, the PC could have been personally involved in any historical events the player cares to name.

Unlike a White Wolf game, which was deliberately dark about whatever paths of higher existence it deigned to mention, in Nephilim the PCs can achieve Agartha by just accumulating enough points. Nephilim isn't the kind of setting where the PCs are expected to sit around in the same city and play high school clique politics for century after century. You're expected to go questing so that you can increase your occult knowledge, metamorphosis, etc until you've learned enough to reach Agartha. The difficult part isn't finding a path to awakening, since that's the express purpose of the Major Arcana, but the GM making the questing part interesting.

I don't really understand how that's proved so difficult for gamers since it's essentially the same basic goal as D&D: reach max level. In Nephilim, the only difference that you gain levels by doing stuff that isn't directly related to combat. But if you want to go on a quest for the Holy Grail in the modern day, that's literally a plot hook listed in the rulebook. Want to play the X-Files? That's probably a perfect example of questing for knowledge!

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1122699So it was a Gnostic game like Kult?

Kult was a big influence, so yes, good catch! haha

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1122699When I changed the nephilim into humans who awaken to their magical nature and past lives (which, let's face it, is pretty much the same premise as plenty of other 90s urban fantasy RPGs), this meant that I had to change the goals of the secret societies to compensate. Surprisingly, most of them didn't need to change because the majority of secret societies were evil regardless of whether the nephilim were involved. So the secret societies ended up falling into one of a few generalities: those who believe the nephilim are evil and don't know they're actually hurting human beings, those who don't care the nephilim are human and just want to bleed their souls for magic, and those who are indifferent or favorably disposed toward the nephilim.

What I like about the past lives mechanic is that it allows the PCs to play a more active role in the secret history compared to other 90s urban fantasy games. In White Wolf you had a ridiculously convoluted backstory that the PCs didn't actually have a real investment in, but which players (or at least people who really liked reading the metaplot for some reason) could obsess over. In Nephilim, the PC could have been personally involved in any historical events the player cares to name.

Unlike a White Wolf game, which was deliberately dark about whatever paths of higher existence it deigned to mention, in Nephilim the PCs can achieve Agartha by just accumulating enough points. Nephilim isn't the kind of setting where the PCs are expected to sit around in the same city and play high school clique politics for century after century. You're expected to go questing so that you can increase your occult knowledge, metamorphosis, etc until you've learned enough to reach Agartha. The difficult part isn't finding a path to awakening, since that's the express purpose of the Major Arcana, but the GM making the questing part interesting.

I don't really understand how that's proved so difficult for gamers since it's essentially the same basic goal as D&D: reach max level. In Nephilim, the only difference that you gain levels by doing stuff that isn't directly related to combat. But if you want to go on a quest for the Holy Grail in the modern day, that's literally a plot hook listed in the rulebook. Want to play the X-Files? That's probably a perfect example of questing for knowledge!

Yes, exactly! Another quest for knowledge would be something akin to The Ninth Gate film, where you quest for a rare book that holds occult secrets, etc. The game had a lot of potential for sure. What system would you use for the game, btw? I always found the magic portion to be lacking... I heard the second edition (French) was more subtle magic and that made me curious, but I have not had a chance to check it out.

Quote from: Nihilistic Mind;1122700Kult was a big influence, so yes, good catch! haha




Yes, exactly! Another quest for knowledge would be something akin to The Ninth Gate film, where you quest for a rare book that holds occult secrets, etc. The game had a lot of potential for sure. What system would you use for the game, btw? I always found the magic portion to be lacking... I heard the second edition (French) was more subtle magic and that made me curious, but I have not had a chance to check it out.

The Chaosium version revised the sorcery rules in the Liber Ka supplement. Alchemy would have been revised in the unreleased supplement Slaying the Dragon. Both sets of rules were reprinted for generic BRP in the 2014/2015 supplement Enlightened Magic, which you can buy in PDF on the Chaosium website. It's very flavorful, subtler than stereotypical D&D magic, and inspired by real world occultism.

The enlightened alchemy rules are particularly flavorful. The rules are based on the occult principle of "as above, so below." Alchemy is divided into three circles, each of which produces effects using an "athanor", or alchemical oven. First Circle uses an alchemical laboratory as the athanor, which can be anything from a perfume distillery to a particle accelerator depending on the alchemist's personal style, to modify physical properties of targets. Second Circle uses a work of art as the athanor, affecting the minds of the audience. Third Circle uses the alchemist themselves as the athanor, affecting the souls of targets.

The French version wasn't as flavorful in my opinion. The magic rules have remained essentially the same in concept throughout all five editions, aside from mild refinements. The only major change IIRC to the Sorcery rules was adding some syntactic elements to let PCs invent spells on the fly.

If anybody wants to read or discuss my ideas for a second edition based on the Chaosium rules/setting, then just let me know and I'll start posting them here. I find it easier to elaborate my thoughts when I organize them first and more productive when I have other people to bounce ideas against.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1122747If anybody wants to read or discuss my ideas for a second edition based on the Chaosium rules/setting, then just let me know and I'll start posting them here. I find it easier to elaborate my thoughts when I organize them first and more productive when I have other people to bounce ideas against.

Please go right ahead and share your material! Hopefully I can put it to use. I don't have time to add it to the roster of games I'm running BUT I'm probably a couple months out before I wrap up a two-year long DCC campaign. I'll see if there is interest for Nephilim after that.

Quote from: Nihilistic Mind;1123102Please go right ahead and share your material! Hopefully I can put it to use. I don't have time to add it to the roster of games I'm running BUT I'm probably a couple months out before I wrap up a two-year long DCC campaign. I'll see if there is interest for Nephilim after that.

Thank you for the invite.

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This article provides an overview of the published books and the general reception toward the game: https://refereeingandreflection.wordpress.com/2017/11/05/there-were-gamers-in-the-earth-those-days/

Basic rules
I'm using the generic 2008 BRP rulebook and 2015 Enlightened Magic supplement as the basis, with the 90s Nephilim rulebook and supplements serving as secondary resources.

The nephilim mailing list already discussed a ton of ways to revise mechanics in the 90s and 00s. There's an unfinished draft for a second edition called "Ex Oculis" (ExO) which included a bunch of ideas for revision that I can adapt.

The Nephilim rules introduce the "potentials" mechanic to BRP, which basically states you can apply characteristic values to anything in order measure it (which is technically used in BRP already, but never formalized that way). If the PC commits a crime, it has a Crime Severity POT. An occult library has a POT. A mental disorder has a POT. A poison or disease has a POT. A spell has a POT. Etc. If I ever mention introducing a new trait, then assume it can be measured using a POT.

Summoning was never revised for Enlightened Magic, so that work is cut out for us.

Awakened humans
The first thing that needs to be done is change the nephilim from body-stealing parasites to awakened human beings. I don't know why, considering the sorts of character options available in other games at the time (like vampire supremacists), but this intimidated a lot of potential players who ended up being unwilling to play body-thieves or preferring to play humans fighting them. Go figure.

Anyway, changing the nephilim to awakened humans who have magical powers and reincarnate in the traditional fashion is conceptually simple but requires revisions to the rules and setting background.

I'll start with the ramifications for the setting: this will require changing every mention of the nephilim being body-thieves in the books and redefining the stasis object. It will also require revising the history of the ka'im.

Ka'im and nephilim
I found a pretty simple cheat to keep the history from the Gamemaster's Companion largely unchanged: the nephilim are actually another species of immortal who arose as a result of the ka'im's experiments on humans.

The ka'im built Atlantis, manipulated human evolution, etc. The nephilim inherited their elemental powers while retaining a human identity.

Memorial objects
The stasis object would be changed to a memorial object, used to store the memories between incarnations. This is the key to the nephilim's immortality, as without it their memories would be lost between incarnations as per real world belief in past lives. The memorial object, or memoriarium if you like New Latin, allows them to perform past life regression on themselves.

In theory, I suppose even the awakened humans would be able to use magic to possess the bodies of other people, or be channeled by willing mediums too I guess. We're going to assume that malevolent possession isn't the norm, but I want to acknowledge it as a possibility so as to give GMs options. In fact, you can assume that anything is possible with the right magical knowledge or whatever and that the limitations given in the lore and rules can theoretically be overcome regardless of whether doing so is remotely feasible for the PCs.

So in that vein let's assume that, based on the occult concept of "alchemical marriage" or "monad" or Theosophical "One in Many and in Many One" (google it if you care to know what it is), that it's possible for an ordinary person to deliberately download the contents of a memento into themselves and skip the standard transmigration process. This requires the downloader to have a compatible personality and have a willing desire to unite with whoever the owner of the memento is, otherwise the download will either fail or (if they force it despite any incompatibility) drive them insane. GM's discretion and all that. This conceit is important because it allows me to retain the shticks of some arcana and secret societies who experimented with that and I'm way too lazy to redefine them completely.

So the end result is that these revised nephilim are awakened humans and hybrids of both mundane and magical natures. They're uniquely able to perform magic and that makes them a target of the opposing secret societies, who either believe them to be devils in the flesh or batteries to be drained of magic.

Past lives
In terms of rules, this will require changing the way that past life skills accumulated. Fortunately for me, the nephilim mailing list already discussed a ton of ways to do that in the 90s and 00s. There's an unfinished draft for a second edition called "Ex Oculis" (ExO) which included a bunch of ideas for revision that I can adapt.

Long story short, a past life is a collection of skills and a perk/flaw mechanic. Each past life has a Recall (REC) trait that limits how much you remember and how high the past life skills are. So they're essentially background skills writ large.

The REC trait can affect the character's personality. The more the PC recalls a past life, the more they identify with it. Initially they might think "I was X in a past life" at lower recall, and later at higher recall they think "I am X reborn!"

The perk/flaw concept was introduced on the mailing list. Basically, each past life would have accumulated perks, flaws, traits, etc as a result of events during that life and which have consequences for the future incarnations. ExO classified these into Assets, Burdens, and Goals. An Asset is something purely beneficial like a cult, a stash of treasure or occult lore, an important secret, etc. A Burden is something purely harmful, like a psychological scar, a recurring enemy, a perpetual obligation, etc. A Goal is something that a past life wanted to do but never accomplished, but which the current life might be able to complete and thus gain some kind of psychological/occult benefit/experience. Assets and burdens are supposed to be balanced against one another, but if you need to adjudicate further then assign POTs.

PCs start with two past lives for free and may remember new past lives during play. The only limit is that the PC cannot remember a past life from before his memorial object was created. So if your memorial object was created in AD 1000, then you can't remember a past life as an apostle. If your memorial object is destroyed, then you'll forget all your past lives upon reincarnating and your magical nature is in danger of disintegrating. Creating a new memorial object will only store past lives from the point of its creation, and learning about lost past lives is potential adventure fodder.

Anyway, from a setting perspective past lives allow your characters to have a personal stake in the secret history, rather than merely being latecomers slaved to it like a White Wolf character. Simultaneously, your character can also be a latecomer because of the complicated nature of immortal identity.

The Avatar
I decided to use "avatar" to refer to the physical body and personality of a nephilim's past lives and current lives. It literally means "earthly manifestation of a deity" in Hindi.

Whenever a nephilim reincarnates as a new avatar, the avatar's personality (that of a previously mundane person with mundane concerns and relationships) dominates. However, personality shifts are subject to how much of the past lives are recalled and the character's general sanity (to be explained later). Simply gaining magical powers can alter a normal person's POV, to say nothing of it painting a target on their back.

If you're familiar with other 90s urban fantasy RPGs that let you play wizards (and if past lives do appear, then they're largely background details), then the Avatar is the PC.

If you care about the Avatar's mundane life, then you can represent relationships with POTs. Considering that the point of this whole exercise was addressing potential players being alienated by the PCs being body-thieves, then I would expect that mundane relationships play a big role.

Immortal traits
When a nephilim reincarnates, its traits generally change with its new avatar. However, the ExO draft suggested a series of "awakened" traits that remain consistent. These replace the nephilim PC's traits from the first edition.

These immortal traits include the metamorphosis (personality traits that give you superpowers resembling a mythical creature like a genie or a satyr), the awakened attributes/enlightened characteristics/whatever you want to call them, and inscribed skills/spells.

The awakened attributes are "awakened" versions of the standard characteristics (i.e. STR, DEX, CON, INT, POW, APP/CHA). Awakened attributes normally don't do anything, but the PC may use an awakened attribute in place of their avatar's equivalent characteristic. However, this makes their metamorphosis easier to detect.

The Awakened POW characteristic works differently. In the Enlightened Magic rules characters may have elemental affinities (i.e. permanent modifiers) that make it easier or harder to cast spells of that element. In the Nephilim rules, these become distinct characteristics. Nephilim essentially gain five additional POW characteristics, each with a different elemental affinity attached. They use that elemental POW, or "Ka-Element", to determine the spell's POW when casting spells of that element. Each Ka-Element also adds a bonus to one of the other awakened attributes: e.g. Fire-Ka adds a bonus to Awakened STR, Water-Ka adds a bonus to Awakened DEX, etc.

(I understand having multiple POW traits may be confusing. I haven't tried adapting the affinities modifiers to serve the same role, as that would require a lot of reworking to account for eight elements that are only available to certain character types.)

The Nephilim cosmology has eight elements total, attached to the POW characteristic. Humans and mortal animals have Solar-Ka as their element. Nephilim gain the five elements of Air-Ka, Earth-Ka, Fire-Ka, Lunar/Moon-Ka, and Water-Ka. Two other elements exist: Orichalka/Saturnian-Ka and Black Lunar/Moon-Ka.

Then there are inscribed skills and spells. Inscribed skills aren't forgotten with past lives, but are remembered at their full value upon every awakening. Naturally, the Arcanum Lore skills and Occult Science/Enlightened Magic skills are automatically learned as inscribed skills, but the player is free to inscribed mundane skills if desired.

Inscribed spells work like enchantments as described in Enlightened Magic, except that the enchantment is applied to the PC's soul as per Third Circle alchemy. Inscribed enchantments are useful because they're normally easier to cast or faster to prepare than normal, and the spell's POW is fixed at the moment of enchantment so they don't get penalized by unfavorable astrology.

Immortal traits are important because you need to achieve the equivalent of max level in your POW, magical skill, and metamorphosis in order to reach Agartha. Which you advance by using them because this is BRP. You use them by going on quests where their usage is relevant. It's that simple.

Agartha
Agartha is ascension to a higher state of existence. The nephilim, even as awakened humans, seek out it because their only other options are to either wander aimlessly for eternity like a White Wolf character or have their soul shredded by a secret society.

Achieving Agartha is a simple matter of raising your statistics high enough. You increase your POW by casting spells and so forth. You increase your metamorphosis/personality traits by roleplaying the associated emotion. You increase your magical skill by training and applying it to research the occult, design spells, cast spells, identify spells, etc. The onus is on the group to make the journey interesting.

Each of the Arcana provides a path to Agartha. Unlike splats in White Wolf games, the Major Arcana are not high school cliques but actual schools of thought with a defined end goal. The Emperor pursues temporal power, Strength hunts down elemental beasts, Temperance heals the sick, etc. While they might have drama sometimes, that's not their primary concern. Don't think of them like White Wolf splats, think of them like Mulder and Scully's superiors and co-workers.

It's also a lot easier to explain why the party works together. They're much more likely to survive and achieve their shared goal of Agartha by working together because they can't trust anyone else.

Sanity
Although based on BRP, Nephilim didn't use the same Sanity mechanic. It did, however, use some mystical sanity mechanics like other 90s urban fantasy games. These were called narcosis (PC turns into a ghostly haunting), khaiba (PC turns into an elemental beast), and shouit (the muggle takes over and forgets the occult). Chaosium only ever adapted the crude rules of the 1st edition French version, but later editions of the French refined and expanded these mechanics. At various points they introduced new problems like dragonization, cursed, basaltic sensitivities, etc and all of these use different mechanics. The 5th edition introduced a universal 10 point meter that has different symptoms at each degree of severity (although it wasn't used as well as it could have been IMO).

ExO wasn't influenced by the French version and went in its own direction. It copied the madness meters from Unknown Armies, which I've seen a lot of praise for elsewhere. Essentially, each character has five pairs of sanity meters: Self, Violence, Unnatural, Helplessness, and Isolation. When you encounter a source of stress, you roll to determine the PC's reaction. Success means that nothing happens, but the PCs gains "Hardened" in the associated meter. Failure means that the PCs suffers a momentary panic attack and gains "Failed" in the associated meter. Both have detrimental effects. Hardened eventually inflicts social penalties due to the PC's apathy. Failed eventually inflicts more recognizable mental disorder.

In ExO, each meter was associated with a particular element: Unnatural with Lunar-Ka, Violence with Fire-Ka, etc. The only effect this had was that Nephilim had a slightly easier time resisting stress events, but the concept seems like it could be interesting. Mortals only had the standard five meters, but Nephilim gained a sixth magical meter for "Khaiba". Nephilim also gained two extra panic attacks: "Fugue" (they interpret the world through the lens of a past life, such as a WW2 Nurse thinking that the bombings are currently ongoing) and the confusingly named "Khaiba" tied to the meter of the same name (the PC's metamorphosis takes over and they pursue a personality trait to the exclusion of all else). Oddly enough, ExO didn't have Failed meters so adjudicating mental disorders was more freeform (I have no idea why).

Khaiba Hardening didn't work like the other Hardened meters. Rather than apathy, the PC could "ride the wave" by immersing themselves in their dominant element and rejecting the two opposing elements. Naturally this would eventually make it difficult or impossible for the character to move around. This concept has no equivalent in the French that I know of, except perhaps as a psychological equivalent of the basaltic sensitivities (which simply made the character resistant or vulnerable to damage from a particular element).

The concept of sanity and disorders could definitely use a lot of playtesting, tbh. I don't really know what to do with this.

Other immortals
Chaosium planned to release a supplement for the 13th Arcanum, the Selenim, but this dissolved because the line was cancelled. There's plenty of material for the Selenim in the French version. Selenim are psychic vampires and mediums, pretty much nothing like White Wolf vampires.

The French third edition also introduced a third character type called Ar-Kaim, whose shtick was that they could (potentially) utilize all eight elements including Orichalka that was toxic to Nephilim. They were mentioned in the fifth edition but so far no rules were provided. Their unique powers were closer to superpowers like the Trinity Universe published around the same time, rather than the more stereotypical magic used by the Nephilim and Selenim. I can't read French and I'm not going to try faithfully translating and adapting the rules to BRP, since that would be a nightmare. (In an interesting coincidence, the English Secret Societies book introduced some brief rules for Saturnian/Orichalka magic used by the Saturnian Brotherhood. I don't know if anything like that was published in the French version, but it came out years before the French 3e.)

The French third edition (which discarded the BRP rules entirely, a trend continued by the subsequent editions, which each used a new ruleset because each had a different publisher with different ideas) included rules for both Nephilim, Selenim, and Ar-Kaim in the player's book. If I was working on a new edition, then I would do the same. Since Chaosium made some key changes to the Selenim backstory, and this hypothetical revision dramatically changes the concept of the nephilim, these new character options would also need to be adjusted. For example, one of the key differences between Nephilim and Ar-Kaim (plus "natural" Selenim, also introduced in 3e) was that the later were awakened humans in the French version and not body-thieves. In a revision of the Chaosium version where Nephilim are assumed to be awakened humans by default, this distinction no longer applies.

The French 3e also introduced a few weirder sub-types, like Nephilim/Selenim hybrids created by experiments and "Cruxim" with only four elements, but I think for the most part those concepts could be folded into the Ar-Kaim. Selenim origins included ex-Nephilim, so I don't think it's a stretch to let Ar-Kaim have multiple such origins too.

Conclusion
If you have any advice or questions, then feel free to say so! ;)

These ideas might actually make Nephilim playable.  I own all the books, but up to now have only mined them for supplemental material in Cthulhu games I ran.

Quote from: Inviktus;1128228These ideas might actually make Nephilim playable.  I own all the books, but up to now have only mined them for supplemental material in Cthulhu games I ran.

You're welcome.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1121803There were only a few flaws, albeit major ones:

• The PCs were body stealing parasites, which for some reason drove players away even if they otherwise had no difficulty playing vampire supremacists in another game. Chaosium apparently had a problem with this and several writers wanted to rewrite the nephilim as humans awakened to their past lives and magical nature, but didn't do that. I personally think that, yeah, the nephilim should be rewritten as reincarnating human souls and not body thieves.
• The rules and backstory were extremely intimidating for new players, raising the barrier to entry. The past lives in particular added a lot of complication to character creation, and there wasn't any rules for recalling past lives during play.
• Chaosium released dramatic revisions of several core mechanics in supplements, such as the magic system. In the rulebook the magic system was generic D&D-esque, but the Liber Ka revision changed it to be subtle and influenced by real world occult beliefs.
  
• Chaosium seemingly didn't do enough to explain "what do the PCs actually do?" but that's probably less important compared to the preceding issues.
• Like some other RPGs based on originally non-English properties (e.g. In Nomine), Chaosium adapted and altered the material rather than translating it faithfully. I don't have a problem with this, as the original French version is apparently really strange according to my research. The rulebooks' geography sections were France-centric, so publishing for an Anglo-American audience would require switching to an American-centric geography anyway. The in-game jargon that it used was even more obtuse and unbelievable than a White Wolf game, if you can believe that. I'm so glad Chaosium went with jargon like "past life" and "elemental creature" rather than the French version's "effet-Jesus" and "effet-dragon."
  

Anybody else remember Nephilim or have thoughts about it?

I gotta admit a lot of these factors contributed to me buying the core books simply cuz I thought it had some interesting ideas I could steal and use for inspiration, and then never played it. The fact that I wasn't so hawt about BRP didn't help any, and I also found some of the material a bit hard to follow. But haven't read it in decades so don't recall details. Though, the book is still mostly intact so and I managed to find it pretty quick while reading this so I might end up checking it out later at some point. Some of the ideas covered in the book might work for other settings I had planned.