Trivia / Nobilis

• Doing It for the Art: Jenna Moran's dedication towards her fans and her work is well-known. The entire design for the Great White Book in particular draws attention for this: There was no real need to include Encyclopedia Exposita quotes, or to clarify so many setting details, but the end result is that the game's fluff and mechanics are inextricably tied together in a way rarely seen in RPGs. It is for this same reason, however, that the GWB is sometimes considered more a work of art than a game.
• Troubled Production: Where do we even start?
  • Nobilis 2nd edition was put out by a small press that subsequently went down. It was then picked up by Guardians of Order, which, in Jenna Moran's words, "decided to stop sending out books and stuff and just lay coiled like a serpent around the dark heart of the world".
  • The never-produced A Society of Flowers supplement for 2e was acquired, but never published, by a second small press.
  • Nobilis 3rd edition also ran into problems. It was, at least, published—but not before one of the artists was busted as a plagiarist. All of this person's illustrations were actually traced from other people's fanart, which forced a last-minute scramble for replacements (out of Jenna Moran's own pocket, no less). Then planned supplements got jammed in the pipeline because the press responsible for it mismanaged its money terribly and promised things they couldn't deliver.
  • To the point where Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine was eventually just put out as a POD because the printing company simply could not get its act together.
  • Thankfully, Jenna Moran managed to regain or retain ownership of all the text for editions 2 and 3, and was able to put out self-published digital versions.
• Word of God: Comes up fairly often, as Dr. Moran and some of the other people involved in the game's development are quite active in the gaming and Nobilis fan communities and will clarify aspects of the setting or rules. For instance, the Word Of God on why Ha-Qadosch Berakha isn't described in any detail at all in 3e is that it's partially so he can remain a cipher for the HG to fill in the details of as suits their game, and partially because she wanted to maintain the pattern that only one new member of the Council is described per edition.