Nephilim
is a contemporary role-playing game of the occult, first
written in French by Frédéric Weil and Fabrice Lamidey, and
published by
MultiSim in 1992.
(The French edition of the game is currently in its 2nd edition.)
The game was translated to English (and adapted in the process) by
Sam Shirley and Greg Stafford, and published in 1994 by
Chaosium Games.
Since then, several supplements have been published.
Loosely translating from the French description on MultiSim's web page
(which seems to have disappeared),
"Nephilim is a comtemporary occult role-playing game. Players adopt the
role of mystic beings composed of magical elemental fields (Air, Water,
Fire, Earth, and Moon).
Mysteriously, the Nephilim are now awakening en masse after a long slumber,
incarnating in humans, and continuing to acquire occult knowledge.
Their ultimate goal is to attain a superior consciousness called Agartha.
They face numerous dangers, the principle threat being secret societies,
the most determined being the Templars."
There is no one true answer, at least with regard to the specifics.
Like any roleplaying game, it's what you make of it.
Ultimately, Nephilim is a game is about secrets, mysteries both
of the self and of the world, of the esoteric and the everyday.
In short, it's about discovery and revelation.
There is much to improve on this site..
The following may be of interest to you:
Black Moon Rising, a Call of Cthulhu crossover
with Nephilim. (I wrote this.)
Partial Character Generation. This is a
PHP web application (a work in progress, last updated Jan 20, 2001)
that simplifies part of the
character generation process. Feel free to try it out and comment on it.
It's missing the all-consuming skill selection process. My immediate goal
is to add in support for stasis events.
Shannon Appel (former maintainer of the Chaosium Digest and a writer for
Chaosium) posted some information on new elemental
creatures that didn't make it into print due to space constraints; it had
been intended for the Nephilim Gamemaster Companion.
I'm working on a bibliography, and I've been
trying to figure out which fonts were used
by Chaosium to produce the Nephilim rulebook. I've had a bit more
luck recently.
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Where can I get this game?
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Stores which carry roleplaying games should be able to order the rulebook
and various supplements from Chaosium Games. For a nominal shipping and
handling charge, you can
order from
Chaosium directly. Here's a brief rundown of
their current product line.
Here's something intriguing:
some sample screens of a
Nephilim computer game being developed. It's in French, of course.
(Erk. It seems to have vanished. I knew I should have made a copy.)
Liam Routt (a writer for Chaosium) maintains a
Nephilim page.
Who is behind
the Nephile Vimana?
Frank offers up a
page that will house an alternate character generation system and other
goodies from his campaign. He's also archived some cool stuff from the
mailing list.
While scanning the web, I found
a page of house rules
for Nephilim, put up on the web for our collective perusal.
This
British site
authored by Jeff James
has a fair amount of local information to assist visitors to the region.
(Mind the popup on the way in.)
I have been informed of
a
site in France, allegedly owned by a Nicolas Muzet, which contains some
information, some nice graphics, and a link to a webring of French Nephilim
sites.
This is a
pretty French
Nephilim site just chock full of things to check out. Remarkable
graphic design.
.
The Nephilim Mailing
List Archive is maintained by Mike V. Caprio Jr. He also has some cool
stuff linked from there as well.
An extensive online library is at the
Alchemy Web site.
You can obtain the alleged text
of The Emerald Tablet. Some commentary elsewhere on its
historical origins seems to have evaporated.
The Ancient
World Web appears to have reincarnated at a new location.
Also of interest may be the
Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica,
which has several online exhibitions.
The Chaosium
Digest Archive of the mailing list periodically carries
articles for Nephilim.
The Library of Congress has
several online exhibitions; subjects include the Vatican Library and the Dead
Sea Scrolls.
Need to brush up on Babylonian and Assyrian? Check out this page on the
Akkadian
language and cuneiform.
How about a refresher on Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic script? Try out this
page which offers
lessons
in reading hieroglyphs.
You may also try these online
course notes at Stanford.
Here is another
study of the Ancient Egyptian language.
You might find the ongoing
Theban Mapping Project to be
of some inspiration.
A good collection of links can be found at Sepdet's Ancient Egypt Archives.
There is also Reeder's Egypt Page.
The Perseus Project provides
a digital library of a variety of resources on the ancient world.
A curious item is the
Phaistos Disk.
If you have a site that's relevant to Nephilim, e-mail me and I'll see about
linking it in. By no means do I consider this to be a penultimate resource;
the Internet is just too big for that.
Author: Jim W. Lai
Last updated:
April 30, 2006
Page hits since July 9, 1997:
27481
Feel free to comment by e-mail
(jwtlai@io.com)
or visit my home page.