Glitch is a Tabletop RPG by Jenna Moran, creator of Nobilis and Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine, offering an alternate perspective on the Nobilis setting.
In Glitch, you play a Strategist, one of the warleaders of the Excrucian Host, who used to be engaged in a Divine Conflict to destroy Creation... until you decided to opt out of this whole 'destroying Creation' thing and walked away.
Now... you're trying to cope with your current life, and getting involved in mysteries along the way. As a one-time leader of the armies of the void, however, you have various capabilities to help you deal with things:
- Eide: The divine attribute of the narrative weight of the Strategist's self-image. The higher it is, the more strongly themselves the Strategist is, even at the expense of the laws of the world.
- Flore: The divine attribute measuring the strength of the Strategist's emotional connections to Creation. The higher it is, the more the Strategist can empower the treasures of Creation they hold... and the more compromised by those treasures they've become. Equivalent to Nobilis 3e's Treasure attribute.
- Lore: The divine attribute measuring the depth of the Strategist's understanding of Ninuan, the void, which allows them, among various other things, to hunt and bind Arcana, alien treasures of the Beyond.
- Wyrd: The divine attribute representing a Strategist's attunement to the undercurrents of their self, allowing them to wield the power of unbeing, and more generally to resist, corrode, and unmake the mortal world.
- Ability: The mundane attribute representing the Strategist's basic ability to cope and function. The higher it is, the more functional they are.
A successful Kickstarter
ran in January 2020. The PDF was released on DriveThruRPG in November 2020.
Glitch provides examples of:
- The Bus Came Back: Features the return of Jenna's example players from Nobilis 2e, Heather Sullivan, Edward Jordan, Diane Firth and Madeline Rush. Their characters are basically dying of their Nobilis PCs Estates'.
- Encyclopedia Exposita: Like Nobilis, Glitch has quotes from in-universe books and records to help illustrate the feel of the setting.
- Geas: Geasa here are objective laws of a Strategist's nature, equivalent to Afflictions in Nobilis and Chuubo's.
- God Is Flawed: Turns out being an Eldritch Abomination doesn't necessarily make you any better at dealing with your life. In fact, it actively tries to make you a disappointment to anyone else.
- A God Is You: You play a Humanoid Abomination who walked away from their role as a warleader of the void, but still retains their nature and power.
- Hazy-Feel Turn: While members of the Chancery are no longer Omnicidal Maniacs, that's the only required change; they can be absolutely terribly people still.
- Humanoid Abomination: Comes with playing an Excrucian, even one that's gone rogue.
- Monsters Anonymous: The Chancery, a.k.a. the Riders' Abstinence Society, whose members are mostly Strategists, with a couple of affiliates from other Riders; it's not that other Riders are any less likely to drop out of the war, but that they have different stories from the Strategists, and their own deals.
- Mythopoeia: Shares the same setting as Nobilis, but generally either has a different perspective on the mythos, or covers areas the other game doesn't go into.
- Perspective Flip: Played straight and subverted: in the Strategists', and the wider Excrucian Host's, version of events, they have good reason to fight against Creation and the Imperators... but you're one of the Strategists who opted out of that part in the story.
- Power at a Price: Pushing yourself to do something that's more difficult than you're currently capable of incurs a Cost, which varies depending on which attribute you're using: if you're using Wyrd, you suffer Burn, your mind and soul unraveling; if you're using Lore, you suffer Fugue, delusion, confusion, and obsession; if you're using Flore, you suffer Immersion, false conceptions and emotional entanglements; if you're using Eide, you suffer Stilling, definition, loss of self, and calcification; and if you're using Ability, you suffer Wear, wear and tear to your body and mind. You can do almost anything you want, so long as you're willing to pay the Cost.
- The Power of the Void: How people become Strategists, by awakening the part of them that predates Creation, that has always been an enemy of Creation, and also what allows Strategists to use Lore and Wyrd.
- Resurrective Immortality: Downplayed. There's something in particular - their bane - that keeps killing a Strategist over and over, but they always come back. However, it's possible for them to die a final death from which they won't return.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: The PCs' response to the Excrucian War, the game picking up after they've done it.
- Shout-Out:
- From one of the bane examples in Chapter 6:[They] visited a chocolate factory when they were young. They ate a problematic chocolate. If you listen, you can hear the chorus singing about it even now. Now they are turning into chocolate, very slowly.
- From Chapter 12:Brandila Silva is dying of tornadoes. When she was young, one of them tossed her into a magical land. She escaped. Now tornadoes hunt her, as do all the appurtenances of that land. They want her back, but she won’t go. When she is dragged back, when she survives that journey, she uses her Technique (“vicious brutality from an unexpected angle”) to defeat that land’s great terrors.
- From one of the bane examples in Chapter 6:
- Super-Empowering: Strategists can empower those things of Creation they cherish, as represented by Flore.
- Things Man Was Not Meant to Know: Inverted; Flore is not a natural power for Strategists (in the sense that it is not part of their nature); it represents the degree to which they have been compromised by Creation. To study Flore is to come to actually lose the Strategist Omnicidal Maniac impulses, because it fundamentally accepts that while Creation is wrong, there are things of value in it.
- Was Once a Man: Well, a person in Creation, but the point still holds. You used to be someone in Creation, then you encountered the Glitch, the wrongness in Creation, and in order to avoid becoming broken you embraced the void and became a Strategist.
- Wound That Will Not Heal: Metaphysical version. A Strategist's bane will always be there to kill them, its progress measured by the Infection trait. Given their Resurrective Immortality, they're used to it.
