"Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine"

I want to make this clear: I love the Nobilis 3e sourcebook. I own both the original and the 2022 "modern" edition. As a sit-down, read-it-through experience I think it's incredible and I still reread it for creative inspiration.

It is not well configured to get a new player playing the game quickly.

This Player's Handbook is my attempt to do that. It is written with a rules-and-mechanics-first approach, aiming for clarity rather than imaginative stimulation, although I have done my best to use creative examples to demonstrate the possibilities within the system.

Additionally provided is an automated character sheet/character creation tool that I have developed.

I humbly submit them to the internet for critique and to provide what use they may to those who have need of them. You may feel free to share them as widely as you feel inspired. For those kind souls who choose to examine them, I beg feedback in the form of corrections, criticisms, and questions, either left as comments in the documents themselves or sent to me here via Asks.

No one had expected a NASA TTRPG anything until they dead dropped it. From having read it, it cannot have possibly been a legit passion project. There was no passion to speak of. The only explanation a friend and I could come up with was a weird outreach thing by someone who thought that there's a significant population of gamers who somehow don't know about NASA, would find out about NASA from pure word of mouth about a random adventure module, and have the standards of a 12 y/o who has no money or experience when it comes to adventure modules.

(It's fine, tbc, I'm just not much for podcasts.)

It is absolutely a passion project, just by someone without a foundation of broad experience in RPGs and with a lot of additional contributors and oversight also lacking that foundation. The lead designer was aware that RPGs other than D&D existed (like "a d6 based system") but it's quite possible that nobody on the team had even heard of World of Darkness or Apocalypse World, much less ... like ... the Shab al-Hiri Roach or Sea Dracula or Good Society.

Print this game. Attach it to another RPG.

In this game you play scholarly ostriches, or schostriches. You have gathered to play an RPG, as is a schostriches' wont. A schostrich is a most dedicated bird and is nigh physically incapable of making OOC comments or actions during play. Therefore, the players cannot take IC actions as schostriches; they must be OOC as players or IC as their schostrich's character at all times. This applies even to a player playing a schostrich GM (SOGM) in a game that has such a thing; "there is a table by the river where you gather," for instance, can only refer to the schostriches' PCs and not the schostriches themselves. Depending on how you define IC and OOC, it may be possible to describe things OOC (setting the stage for later play and so on) but do have care.

CHALLENGE

The schostriches face five challenges during play: the waters, the malark, the frog, the odliend, and the stork. (In that order.)

The current challenge begins rated 5 and increases by (1d6-1) every fifteen minutes of play. When it reaches 12, it completes.

Each player rolls 7d6 when the game begins and another 1d6 after each full hour of play. Push dice forward; the sum of their faces represents your schostrich's ability to meet the current challenge. Once pushed forward, dice cannot be reclaimed. While the dice pushed forward equal or exceed the challenge rating, your schostrich is doing well. While they equal or exceed half the challenge rating, your schostrich is managing.

When a challenge hits 12+, it's complete. Remove it from play. Remove all pushed-forward dice. Either take on the next challenge or end the session. If you've played at least 40 minutes since your last bonus 1d6, roll another. Record your dice; their state persists between sessions.

Remember that you are allowed to talk about either game OOC; while not even a SOGM can describe the malark or what any of this is like for the schostriches it's perfectly possible to explain or discuss the matter as players. For the sake of symmetry the authority on the waters, the malark, the frog, the odliend, the stork, and the implications of failing to exceed a number or half the number goes to whoever is playing the closest thing to a relevant authority in-game (or, of course, to the group as a whole if authority is unclear or clearly absent.)

Let's simplify RPG play for the moment to in-character and out-of-character play.

In character, you use your speech and actions to directly convey your PC's speech, actions, and more generally identity.

Out of character, you talk about anything from your character to the mechanics of the game.

This is something of a canard in that it's impossible to draw clean lines between the two modes of play. If you hiccup when deeply in character, that's definitely your OOC body doing that, but you'll naturally present that as IC ... unless you're playing a robot or something, in which case you'll naturally shift OOC instead. And so forth. But conceptually, right, there's "here I am in the skin of my character, being my character in the medium of my words because they have no fleshly body of their own" vs. "here I am playing a game with y'all." as two distinct intentionalities towards play.

Because schostriches are devout, devout roleplayers---it's a cultural thing, I assume---they're strictly IC at all times in play. They say only what their character says. They act only in ways intended to convey their PC. It's obviously possible as real-world players to say "I flare my feathers to convey my rogue assuming an aggressive stance," but it felt to me like that was disrespectful, given that the schostrich was explicitly trying to convey not "look at me and my feathers" but "my rogue is assuming an aggressive stance." It felt like it was a way of demeaning scholarly ostriches to allow players to do that. Does that make sense?

But all that really does is say, you're not allowed to step into your character's skin without stepping into their character's skin. You're absolutely still allowed to talk OOC about your schostrich, and you're absolutely allowed to let it impact how you play. How could you do otherwise? If your rogue's an elf, that impacts how you play them even when they're not saying poser things like "as an elf, I flare my ears aggressively." If being an elven rogue didn't affect what they did then you might as well not be IC at all. If being a schostrich affects nothing then you're already playing your character as if a schostrich, which seems an overstatement too.

I do think that in a lot of gaming people go sort of halfway IC. They use inherently OOC techniques to express their character. For instance, giving a voiceover as a character when the implicit idea that they're telling the story to someone in the future is not viable. (There's also the flip side, seeking OOC objectives through IC means, but while that's usually good play it's also logically impossible.) Half-IC play gets tricky because---well, to take the example of a voiceover, it's clear that a schostrich looking back and telling stories of the campaign is probably not playing a session at the time and therefore able to mention things like feathers, but at the same time, that requires them scorning and reinterpreting their past self in the same cruel way the rules of the Schostrich Colocation ask you not to. Is it reasonable to imagine that in the grim future of the schostriches they become bitter and disaffected and no longer love roleplay and so dedicate themselves to ripping the mask from their past self and narrating roleplaying stories in their schostrich identity? Is it reasonable to step out of character and then begin to narrate a voiceover in that embittered schostrich voice? Well, technically, of course it is; you're out of character and as history shows people who are out of character can say literally anything. But perhaps it bends the spirit of the game.

Anyway, I guess all I'm saying is that if you believe playing a schostrich (struggling perhaps with a midrange malark) playing at being an elven rogue, mech pilot, youkai helping small-town humans, or you is the same as just playing an elven rogue, mech pilot, youkai helping small-town humans, or you yourself then the colocation in fact brings nothing to the table for you and perhaps your group. But inevitably one must accept that if this is so you are functionally playing a schostrich playing a dedicated elven rogue roleplaying yourself at all times and Marcie of Dark Dungeons fame was correct to fear Black Leaf's demise.