Throwback Review: In Nomine, 1997
In Nomine, published by Steve Jackson Games in 1997, took the French RPG In Nomine Satanis/Magna Veritas by Croc and brought it to the states with game design by Derek Pearcy. The book gave players a roleplaying game about angels, demons, faith, rebellion, and celestial politics hiding inside the modern world.
In Nomine is a game about Heaven and Hell, but it was never content to leave those as simple labels for good guys and bad guys. The setting framed the universe as a vast Symphony, with angels and demons acting within it according to their natures, loyalties, and Words. Heaven and Hell were locked in a kind of cold war, and the game leaned hard into the idea that this conflict was philosophical, political, and personal all at once.
A lot of games would have treated this setup as an excuse for shock value. In Nomine played it more thoughtfully than that. One of its most impressive qualities was how respectfully it handled material that could easily have turned cheap or exploitative in less careful hands.
Mechanically, the game had one of those systems people remember immediately if they ever played it: the d666 roll. You rolled three six-sided dice, using two to determine success and the third as a check digit for how well or badly things went. This mechanic reminds me, on a very base level, of the Cortex system. On top of that, triple ones triggered Divine Intervention and triple sixes triggered Infernal Intervention. This mechanic sells the game’s whole identity. Even before you get into Choirs, Bands, Resonances, and attunements, the dice are already telling you this is a game about cosmic forces leaning in at exactly the right or wrong moment.
The best part of In Nomine might be how much flavor it packed into character identity. Angels and demons were not just stat blocks with wings. The different Choirs and Bands came with distinct ways of perceiving the world, different dissonance conditions, and different spiritual pressures. A Seraph and a Djinn were not just using different powers, they are fundamentally different beings. That gave the game a strong roleplaying spine, because the mechanics pushed you to think about what your nature demanded of you. In a hobby full of games where “play your character” can stay pretty abstract, In Nomine gave that idea teeth.
The setting is rich, but sometimes the book made you work to get your arms around it. The rules are simpler than the dense cosmology around them, which could be a strength at the table, but also makes some of the game feel a little uneven. It’s one of those RPGs where the ideas often hit harder than the clean execution.
In Nomine was moody, philosophical, strange, and just a little dangerous in the way 90s RPGs sometimes were when they decided to tackle big themes. It also looked good doing it. The game won the Origins Award for Best Graphic Presentation of a roleplaying game product for 1997, which feels fitting for a line that always had a strong visual and thematic identity.
Looking back now, In Nomine feels like a game that trusted players to want something more complicated than straightforward heroics. It wanted celestial intrigue, moral tension, religious imagery, and modern supernatural conflict all tangled together. Sometimes it was messy. Sometimes it was a little too pleased with its own darkness, but it was never boring.
