Nobilis 2nd Edition is like the ur-want RPG. It was published briefly by Hogshead Publishing in the last months of its first life as an originator of exciting new concept games and home of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. The game, written by Rebecca Sean Borgstrom (now Jenna K Moran), is about ex-mortals invested with a fragment of power which enables them to control an aspect of creation and by doing so to defend creation against hideous outsider gribblies.
It is everything that you could covet in a game: Hard to find, slightly obscure and very, very beautiful; and to cap it all, it came out at a time when I almost had a chance to get it at the selling price, but opted instead to wait for an unlimited edition that never materialised.
The thing of it is, I don't even know if the game is any good. It's run now to a third edition, so I guess it's got something to it, but what I don't know. It's a setting with possibilities, but has a potential to be too alienating to make for a satisfying roleplaying experience, and I have no idea how the system works having never read, let alone played, any version of the game (the third edition is currently available, I believe).
I think that Nobilis really exemplifies the nature of my material covetousness, in that I tend to want things that I don't know much about but that look shiny. I also have a tendency to get hung up on things I had a chance to get but missed. It is for this reason that I own a copy of Allansia, the Advanced Fighting Fantasy wilderness adventures book, which is a large paperback like any other AFF volume, but cost me £30 on Amazon marketplace.
Nobilis 2nd runs for about £250, which is too rich for me to spring for anything that isn't in some sense a sonic screwdriver*.
Next up, the funniest game I've played.
* A more up to date check shows it to be selling at closer to £75, but the same applies.
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