When I'm busy working on a campaign, I tend to buy supplements in vain hope for additional inspiration. I did not expect to actually find so much good material in a single book. The book could have been a quarter of the size and still been useful to me, but Jenna keeps layering more and more inspiration, more ideas, into this book until, by the time I was finished, I wanted to run Chibi-Ex: the game (and realized, in fact, that Chibi-Ex was about nothing but Deceivers).

I hesitated to buy this because I wasn't sure if I would want the soft-cover + PDF, or just the PDF. I chose for just the PDF. This was a mistake. If you like Nobilis, buy this book. Period.

Is a great expansion to Nobilis 3Ed. Will blow your mind!

Angelo

This book was very helpful for getting a solid handle on Excrucians in general and Deceivers in particular. As is typical for a Nobilis product, it's excellently written and full of entertaining bits of short fiction. There's also some great art. The quality of the softcover book is also excellent; the pages are thick, quality paper and the background images and the other art is well-printed.

This book is incredibly helpful in running Deceivers, but also excrucian NPCs. It has rules for playing them, so I suppose you could have that Nobilis/Excrucian team-up game you've always wanted.

It also has another of the 24 finales!

Not only did this book help me understand Deceivers, it helped me understand Excrucians in general -- how they break through into reality, how they can be formed from the core of a human being, why they do what they do, and so on. That alone was worth the price of the book. But of course the meat of this supplement is the Deceivers themselves, and we get a WEALTH of information about them, particularly rules for building them from the ground up (with a clear and complete example), starting with an avatar/lifepath and ending with the actual attributes, bonds, etc. In theory, you could use this to play a Deceiver PC (and there are rules for that!) but in practice, this will help me (as GM) flesh out my Deceivers (and, to some degree, other Excrucians) and make each one a fully-developed character.

A strong recommendation for GMs, entirely optional for players (who may appreciate the general insight into Persona and be inspired by some of the concepts, which could equally apply to Nobles).

Let me start out this review by saying that, prior to its release, I had been eagerly anticipating Nobilis Antithesis, Minibook 1i for for several months. Ever since I first heard about its potential existence. A book on the Excrucians was something that I very much wanted since 2nd edition, and craved with the arrival of the 3rd edition. This book seemed to deliver on that promise, at least in part, purely from the concept. I was excited! The fact of the matter, however, is that author Jenna Moran both met and exceeded my expectations and delivered a book that completely floored me.

First, this book talks a good bit about Deceivers... where they come from, the kind of power they have over Creation, how the Flower Rite or the Rite of Two Skins function in play. It introduces a Lifepath system to let you flesh out Deceiver antagonists for your game or to actually create them as characters. The same system accomplishes both flawlessly! There's even character creation guidelines for a Deceiver that 'probably' balances well with the Nobilis characters, and numerous nods within the text (and the Lifepath system) to allowing a Deceiver character to co-exist with a Familia of powers. If that is what you want to do.

The book doesn't stop there. It does more than just explain to us what Deceivers are and how you might create one for your game.

It does one better: It gets into the nuts and bolts behind the way that their powers work. It gives us a number of Excrucians in varying level of detail, supplies guidelines on how their Persona-based powers work in game, provides worked up "Persona Miracle Charts" for most of the Decievers mentioned in the book. One of the new Deceivers so mentioned, Morrowen Hollow, is fully developed from concept to full-game stats as an example of the Lifepath system in action. The book even discusses creating Properties for the Excrucians' Pseudo-Estate, while the Lifepath system can help you do something that I've found quite difficult to do on my own. Namely, come up with interesting example Pseudo-Estates for Deceivers.

All of this, and its written in author Jenna Moran's usual voice, which adds color and humor to every page. So, Minibook 1i isn't just a great RPG manual but also a joy to read. Still not done singing its praises though; I was holding off on this review until I got my PoD. Rather than simply commenting on its quality (excellent; great binding, layout, no issues with 'full page bleed' or anything), I find myself once again simply overwhelmed. What was already a beautiful PDF is a breathtaking Print-on-Demand Full Color Softbound book with a very distinct (and gorgeous) art style. The illustrations just leap off the page, artist Miranda Harrell helps the Deceivers breakthrough into our reality through her medium, and her talents are joined by too many other wonderful artists for me to mention (except for Alexander Benekos, because, wow...)

Do you like Nobilis? Buy this now, and buy the PoD. You can thank me later.

If you play Nobilis, or if you just read it, this is a worthy investment of your funds. It transforms the Deceivers from a cypher to a mandala of meaning, explaining what they do and why they do it in a way that doesn't spoil mysteries, but spawns them. It will enlarge the scope of your game and the ease with which you can include Deceivers in it.

This expansion to the Nobilis game covers the Deceivers, one of the four kinds of Excrucians, making these enemies of reality playable at last. The book includes lifepaths for Excrucian characters and guidelines to designing and using pStates, the bizarre self-referential powers that Deceivers use.

Deceivers range from the hilarious to the terrifying and are frequently both. (Iolithae Septimian, whose lies frequently supplant reality, reaches out to the reader and says sweetly, "No one can really know whether God exists or not.") This book is completely suitable for those who want to play them or who want to use them as antagonists for standard Nobilis games.