Second edition rumors and my current thoughts

So there's some rumors and leaks going around regarding a second edition of Chaosium's Nephilim, the US version. I prefer to wait for an actual book release to peruse. From what I've heard, it's a mix of much needed rules revisions and some sweeping changes to the setting.

I'm not a fan of the setting changes. I typically dislike lore in tabletop games because it's invariably irrelevant self-aggrandizing microfiction, even if I otherwise like the premise of the game (e.g. I love the premise of Dark•Matter, but dear gosh that history chapter!). Nephilim holds an odd place in my heart because it's the only game to make its dense lore personally relevant to the PCs by making them reincarnating immortals and including past lives as modular options at character creation. So why change the lore if the lore isn't the problem? It just feels arbitrary to me, and it's especially unwelcome considering how the past decade has been full of old IPs being revived and dramatically altered from their original versions.

I know that the US version makes big changes compared to the French version, like changing the fall of Atlantis from 10,000 BC to 100,000 BC, introducing the Pharaonic Egregors, making the then-modern United States the default geographic setting, and so on. The difference here is that this never displaced the original French version in France. The prospective US second edition is supposed to replace the US first edition and returning fans are expected to adopt it completely.

I'm not interested because it doesn't sound anything like the game I fell in love with. Removing the Major Arcana, making Akhenaton into the villain, etc., are all extreme changes that I disagree with. I'll reserve full judgment until the new edition actually releases for me to read, but right now it doesn't sound like I'll like it. That really frustrates me because I was expecting a second edition to revive the dead fandom so that I'd finally have people to discuss my shared special interest with, but instead this feels like a middle finger. It really doesn't help that the leaks are presented in this very snarky and smug manner that makes it sound like the new creative team has a poor understanding of and hates the original game. Some of the changes sound plain arbitrary, like replacing the Sorcery occult science with a new Thaumaturgy occult science.

Probably the silliest change is how the leaks handle the whole body snatching problem. Allegedly, audiences back in the 90s were reticent to play because the titular Nephilim were bodiless thetans who possessed innocent people to get a body or "simulacrum" as the game jargon puts it. Over on the now defunct mailing list the members proposed alternatives like "symbiotic" and "awakened human" to assuage their disgust. How do the leaks propose that this is solved? Make the Nephilim a union between a mindless elemental spirit and the identity of a human being a la Andrew Montgomery's proposal? Leave it completely ambiguous a la the abandoned attempt at a second edition by the original writing team in the 2000s? Nah! The second edition Nephilim are still thetans who steal bodies to make simulacra, but now they steal the bodies of unborn babies. The child is born a Nephilim, with the elemental spirit taking full control of the body and trapping the original soul in a vestigial state. The leaks seriously suggest that this is totally not body snatching and is morally superior to the first edition. For extra silly points, this is presented as a new innovation pioneered by the Jesus Incident and prior to then the Nephilim still practiced the traditional body snatching among other methods to create simulacra. If your PC dies during play, then you still have to possess an adult victim to continue playing the same Nephilim just like in the first edition. Your character still suffers Shouit in the exact same way regardless of how they acquired their simulacrum.

On one hand I do think it makes sense that at least some Nephilim would adopt such a method even in first edition and it beggars belief that nobody else did after the Jesus Incident, and if possessing adults is too difficult then it does explain why Nephilim tend to have only one simulacrum per historical era. On the other hand, the whole mechanic sounds ridiculous and unnecessary. Does Chaosium want the Nephilim to be sympathetic or not? Stealing the bodies from babies is hardly an improvement over stealing bodies from adults. It's the same deal as the Weeping Angels, but without even the kindness of allowing the victim to live out their full life in another timeline. It's a completely unnecessary backstory too, since you still need to resort to body snatching if you don't want to reroll your character. Nothing meaningfully changes aside from the game telling you that your first simulacrum was stolen from a baby in a contrived attempt to assuage players who said they weren't comfortable playing body snatchers.

In past posts on this blog I suggested my own take that the Nephilim is a hybrid being whose Solar-Ka reincarnates non-linearly through time to explain the changing of simulacra during play. When a simulacrum is changed during play, it's not because the elemental is possessing a victim: they were that person all along, the elemental half is just reuniting with the solar half. While the elements don't allow time travel and that's why the occult sciences don't have time-manipulating spells, Solar-Ka includes time in its purview and thus souls can reincarnate outside the linear flow of time. If Chaosium wants to assuage player disgust regarding the body snatching problem, then I think my suggestion is superior to this proposed baby snatching.

Maybe the leaks are just really terrible at presentation, but I don't like what I'm hearing. It sounds like a completely different game that isn't for me anymore. That sucks. I spent years of my life investing in this dead game from the 90s. I painstakingly transcribed French books and magazines to get insight into that version of the game. I archived English fansites that no longer exist. Now I feel like I completely wasted my time.

I could probably hack the new edition to handle my take on how I think it should be, but why bother? Nobody else would be interested. I don't care about self-edification, I care about having friends and assuaging my perpetual loneliness in life. In real life I'm an introvert with no friends and a crippling social anxiety. Tabletop discussions were one of my few ways to have fun socializing and now I don't even have that.

I've seen every game I even vaguely liked get canceled, butchered, or driven into the ground. I'm exhausted with tabletop games. They don't give me any joy now, only frustration. I feel that way about pretty much all hobbies now. This game may finally be the nail in the coffin that cuts me off completely from the tabletop hobby. I really hope that's not the case, but I don't have much hope any more. I've been kicked around like a soccer ball by life. 

Sincerely yours.