This is the conclusion of the critical analysis of Nibiru. You can find the first part here.
5. Disassemble Engine
Games have a flow, which, when you hit, the game pretty much runs itself. It is extremely satisfying. After examining the interactions of game elements, we single out the most important - the one that sets the pace of sessions, or even campaigns. We focus on how that engine works, how it makes the game move along, and what to do to make it do what you want to do - and how to keep it running clean.
Ludo
The game engine churns around Vagabond’s knowing themselves, through the accumulation of recalled Memories; Memories lead to situations through pushing success and failure, which may lead to additional rolls, which lead to the accumulation of more memories, and so on and so on.
Any time you roll, if you get three 4s or 1s, you will get a memory. A memory will give +1 or -1 to that action. Alternatively, you can trigger a flashback memory. By spending or gaining Memory Points, you can succeed/fail at a roll and get a permanent bonus/malus.
Each eight memories, you get a Revelation — a game changing ability. To chase after them, you are going to decide which failures you can accept in exchange for negative memories, or pursue your Beacon — a unique goal for the type of Vagabond you are.
As you keep pushing yourself, putting yourself at risk and/or accepting key failures, you keep adding memories and knowing who you are and how you relate to the Skyless World.
Brad
Lu perfectly captures the engine here, so in a classic show of agreement, I won’t repeat here.
6. Essentials For Session One
So, you got this game, you going to play it, but you don’t have the time to read everything. Or even worse, your have read it and now it is all jumbled together. Here we break down the things that you absolutely want to try to get right and/or hit during your first session, so you get the felling of what makes this game stand out from similar art.
Lucrécia
This is a pretty easy one, despite the complexity of the Skyless World. The rules of the game are pretty simple. You will get all you need beforehand by reading chapter five, which covers storytelling engines. In particular:
Dice rolls (pg. 104)
Violence (pg. 107)
Memories (pg. 112)
If you make some memories, you will have a pretty good feeling for the game — and making memories is quite easy, you just cannot avoid doing so.
Players will benefit from looking through character creation, simple as it is (pg. 125). At least someone at the table should read on what Vagabonds are and their place in the Skyless World (pg. 122).
Vagabonds are pretty simple at creation, with the most relevant option being their habitat of “origin”. Each habitat shapes narrative, special rules and gives a Beacon — an unique way to gain Memory points. While you are unlikely to use them in the first session, they are wonderful material for starting hooks.
Finally, there are three pretty well-developed settings in Nibiru. Learn about one of those that may appeal to the table and spend your first session as Vagabonds arriving there.
Ashur (pg.30) is a bustling post-scarcity urban center, a declining imperial power that is being transformed by religious fervor and an ambitious merchant class.
Suruptu (pg. 65) is a colony inside a depleted oil reservoir, the nexus of the fleets sailing across the space station, struggling with their decaying environment and the sins of their success.
Nataku (pg. 88) is the last proper city in the darkness, filled with hardy people that struggled against scarcity, floods and the terrors of the unknown.
Brad
Read chapter 5 twice, make notes, you may need them, and make sure your players understand how their Beacon will be a driving force of the character. Making memories is going to feel special so definitely focus on that. I loved Ashur as a starting location to capture that dreamlike familiar and alien feelings.
7. Playing The Game Wrong
Games are played wrong. Rules will be misunderstood, interactions will be confused, the importance of certain tech disregarded; etc. This is good, and it is good to acknowledge for: you cannot have the designer at your time, and even if they were, they would be just another player - and entitled to play it wrong. After identifying stress points of the game, things that don’t connect that well, we think of the things that are more likely to be (our have been) “played wrong”. What happens when you forget a line in page 273 clearly saying this is impossible?
Ludo
Unfortunately for the engine of the game, the memory economy can often slide to the side and not operate in a way that it serves the narrative you may wish to use the memories for. While the range of modifiers between -2 to +3 dice from memories suggests a swing between negative and positive memories modifying your character’s actions. There is a mechanical push that rewards “dump” actions that have negative memories and/or to gain more memories by having bigger dice pools (triggering more natural emergence of memories).
But the most critical stress point of the memory economy may be negative flashback memories. There are few benefits for you to get getting a negative memory; yes, you can get a few memory points, but no more than you would get from a session of play in exchange from a permanent malus. Even so, you may need an eight memory for a Revelation, right? Well, there is the further complication that taking a negative flashback is an automatic failure. This means that you are unlikely to get a negative flashback to things you are good at — which narratively you should have done a not, so why not have more negative memories, — and instead pile on something that you already have a natural negative memory and hey, you have a 3 on 4 of fail anyway, so that automatic failure is not a hefty price to pay.
Flashbacks may be used for regular and contested rolls, but that can be troublesome and leave to players to resent their choices, leading to some Feel Bad design moments. A Flashback leads to an automatic success or failure, but how does that work? It is not clear, as the outcome of contested successes is based on the difference between rolls rather than success. This makes flashbacks awkward to use during contested rolls. It becomes even more cumbersome during violence: not only does the losing side gets hurt, how many times over the dice is won, determines the consequences. So, what does that mean in an auto-success or auto-failure? Even assuming an auto-success means “all dices are 4s”, and auto-failure is “all dice are 1s”, this becomes quite dangerous fast, as positive flashback memories add even more grievous consequences while negative flashback memories inflict you devastating harm! So, this is either overkill if it is a positive flashback, or, the most baffling, if you get a negative flashback during combat, your character dies instantly! This is not conveyed clearly by the rules, so should be something considered. When playing Niburu, you may need to discuss how you will handle flashbacks during contested rolls in general, and negative flashbacks in specific.
Nibiru is an extremely lethal game; even if it warns you so, better take it in mind. Furthermore, violence is a clock for the destruction of your character — if not from physical harm, but from an accumulation of the consequences of stress, be mental harm or deadening detachment. Keep in mind how eroding violence is for your character’s life.
Gravity is crucial for the experience of moving between sections of the Skyless World; always remember how it changes as you move towards or away from the core of the space station. More important, it is easy to forget adaptation to different gravity; remember to check constantly for any changes to your character’s “ideal” gravity.
Influence points economy is a parallel economy to memory points economy. Influence points are very powerful, more arbitrary as to obtain, and don’t feed always neatly into the core engine of memories. It pays to be vigilant to issues that may emerge from conflict between the driving forces of Memory and Influence.
Brad
Nibiru’s lethality cannot be understated, murder is not the death of your foe but the death of the self and should therefore be avoided when possible. You will find yourself in an ugly shade of loneliness and loss if you aren’t careful.
Keeping track of the various points economies is complex but never complicated or frustrating, and doing it well will make your life significantly easier.
8. What to Steal
Experiencing good art is the most important step in making good art. We look back at the things that worked and did not work about this game, see what we learned for design work, interesting tech and just a general overview of things that we will take from this game and bring into others. Or more honestly: since many of us may not play this game and we have it in our library, this way we can get some use out of it.
Lucrécia
Just reading the game text gives us a lot. It is an excellent example of a different way to introduce you to a world, and convey efficiently what it is about and how to do what you may want to do with/in this world with ease. There is a lot of merit for study just from that angle, before even bringing Nibiru to the table. The Skyless World is alive, and the three detailed settings in the base book are efficiently introduced, laying immediately its themes, how to do things and why to care about its peoples and places.
Minor quirks of complex economies aside, Nibiru is amazing at the use of memories in a game and how to make a rich-character that you are still surprised by, knowing better and better every session.
The ecology and use of science (fiction) in the art-form of roleplaying games is outstanding and humbling. You are missing out an unique transformative experience by sleeping on how Nibiru approaches and represents these aspects.
Brad
You should steal how Nibiru onboard its players, besides stealing anything else you should learn how Nibiru makes sure that you as the player and you as the GM are on the same page as each other and understand a world that is so wonderfully alien to our sensibilities. I cannot praise this enough, that for a setting that is a giant Skyless World, by the end of session one we all felt familiar with it.
Nibiru’s commitment to its theme cannot be overstated and it is always so deeply pleasant to enjoy a game that is committed enough to its theme that it entrenches them in its game design to make a truly coherent experience. Do that, dare to make your game about what it claims to be about.