System
The default mechanic of the system is the "d666." This consists of a roll of three six-sided dice; the first two are added together and compared to a target number to determine success or failure, the third determines the degree of success or failure. The third digit is often referred to as the "check digit," or "CD." Rolling all 1s or all 6s results in an "intervention" - divine or infernal, respectively - essentially filling the role of a spectacular success or failure. Note that, for example, rolling 1, 1, 1, always benefits Heaven, making it a critical success for an angelic player, but a critical failure for a demonic player. Because the roll of 6, 6, 6 always benefits a demonic player, it is sometimes referred to as a freight train from Hell.
Though there are numerous powers players can purchase with experience or earn through missions, the rules themselves are at a level of simplicity that stands in stark contrast to the complex politics and baroque cosmology. Most agree that this results in In Nomine achieving flexibility and simplicity, but not game balance.
Read more about this topic: In Nomine (role-playing Game)
Famous quotes containing the word system:
“Society cannot share a common communication system so long as it is split into warring factions.”
—Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956)
“UG [universal grammar] may be regarded as a characterization of the genetically determined language faculty. One may think of this faculty as a ‘language acquisition device,’ an innate component of the human mind that yields a particular language through interaction with present experience, a device that converts experience into a system of knowledge attained: knowledge of one or another language.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)