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Quadratic_Wizard posted:Numenera is almost like a parody of what people think about Monte Cook. This post is like a parody of what people think about you. It is like you didn't even read the game, you weirdo. I haven't played it, but I kinda dig it? I dunno, THE STRANGE seems to fall into the same category as Numenera did for me; it is not interesting sounding enough to blow $60+ sight unseen, but I like the game well enough to get it for $35 from Amazon after. I dig the setting, and I dig the simplified rules. The rules are not anything to write home about but they seem to be good enough to do the job they need to in the game which is really all I ask of a rules set. I also dig on how light it is on the GM end of the lifting things, in terms of notes I need for whatever. I should horn in on one of the games in PBP or maybe just break down and try running it for my existing IRL crew since the mellow nature of chargen really appeals.
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Nov 9, 2013 20:46
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One thing about Numenera that I think is funny is that it has D&D's prestidigitation spell, practically verbatim.
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Nov 9, 2013 21:05
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Capntastic posted:One thing about Numenera that I think is funny is that it has D&D's prestidigitation spell, practically verbatim. No complaints there, really. It does what it needs to do and is widely available (2/3 types and one descriptor), which is better than "the wizard does everything". 3/5 of my players have it and the other two have little to no interest in being the magic guy, and that's cool.
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Nov 9, 2013 21:20
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Capntastic posted:One thing about Numenera that I think is funny is that it has D&D's prestidigitation spell, practically verbatim. Yeah I sorta like "here is misc wizardy bullshit, whatever" as a generic catch all spell or nano or whatever.
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Nov 10, 2013 07:06
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Winson_Paine posted:Yeah I sorta like "here is misc wizardy bullshit, whatever" as a generic catch all spell or nano or whatever. Oh yeah, I don't mean to knock it at all. While I did fret over a lot of D&Disms when I first read my copy, prestidigitation is always good.
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Nov 10, 2013 07:15
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If anyone wants to try out Numenera in PbP, I've put up a thread here. I'll be running a modified version of Vortex since Sarx already posted a thread for Beale of Boregal.
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Nov 10, 2013 22:36
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I just downloaded the Lovecraftian Numenera mini-supplement that Monte put out (with George Ziets editing!). It's pretty good, I'd say definitely worth the £2 I paid for it. There's some general guidance on how to make your campaign more Lovecraftian, sanity mechanics (direct intellect damage when you encounter Things Man Was Not Meant To Know, eventually leading to madness and then total insanity), a couple of new descriptors, and Numeneric versions of some monsters from Lovecraft's stories. Personally, I think it would work better as an addition to the core rules than a reimagining of the entire game. The idea that there's some stuff out there that's totally mental and will gently caress with your sanity, but most of it is relatively harmless seems like it would fit with the Numerena setting better than the idea that everything from the past is uncaringly unfathomable and will shatter your puny human mind. If you did it that way, it would also mean that the characters sanity would degrade over the very long term, and then only if they were specifically searching out particularly Weird poo poo, which is, in my mind, an appealing trade-off. But yeah, it seems like good stuff whether you're wanting to use it for Lovecraft-lite or full on cosmic horror. CottonWolf fucked around with this message at 00:16 on Nov 11, 2013 |
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Nov 10, 2013 23:56
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What are the new descriptors?
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Nov 11, 2013 08:37
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Mad, which ties into the sanity mechanics, you can pick it at the start, but you're foced to take it when you reach a certain sanity level, and doomed, which gets you some bonuses but means you can never refuse a GM intrusion.
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Nov 11, 2013 09:13
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For the last two saturdays, I've been running a game in this system. So far, its not bad. I was initially worried that the variance of a d20 might be too big for the type of core resolution system that Numenera is going for, but, so far, it seems to be working out fairly well. Don't know how much of that can be attributed to roll20 dice bias. The game is pretty light in play especially if you're like me and focus your game more on exploring strange new worlds and less on combat. Combat itself, since we did have it, seems to go fairly quickly and is pretty easy on me since making a monster is pretty quick. It is just picking a level and maybe making it one level higher or lower at one or two tasks. The game goes for the stay out of way method of handling roleplaying. In other words, there is next to no rules for social rules so players role play it out. That part is kind of meh especially since it sometimes comes down to a simple intellect check at times. I know why some people think that method works, but it does take away from social encounters when it's that loose. I'm mixed on the whole compel system (I'm not calling it GM Intrusion). I never did like the idea of messing up a player when they're doing good even if they do get XP and can resist it. Speaking of XP, I'm surprised how my players are hoarding it for rerolls rather than buying upgrades. If it were me, I'd level up quickly as possible. I guess I should mention that we don't have a nano in our party. Only reason I bring it up is that, from reading the core book, they seem rather unbalanced. Since we don't have one in the party, our party is relatively balanced. I wouldn't say I'm super wowed by it, but I have enjoyed it so far as have my players.
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Nov 19, 2013 04:56
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Winson_Paine posted:Yeah I sorta like "here is misc wizardy bullshit, whatever" as a generic catch all spell or nano or whatever. Quite frankly many games involving discrete spells would be improved for having this text, word-for-word in it. White Wolf, take notes 
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Nov 19, 2013 06:54
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Next month I'm going to be heading to a friends house to try this system out. I've only every played the D&D system, so this will be a change for me. Also, another person is coming (a guy I work with) who's never played a pen and paper game before. I'm pretty excited to try this game out, and interested to see how my work buddy is going to fair. Just reading over the thread I've gleaned a few things about this game. In terms of combat, how does that run? I know, you basically apply effort to give yourself a better chance. However, I don't know much about combat flow. The DM has said that the better you describe your attacks the more chances you will have to score hits. I'm excited, but don't know what the gently caress.
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Nov 19, 2013 18:50
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Commandante posted:Next month I'm going to be heading to a friends house to try this system out. I've only every played the D&D system, so this will be a change for me. Also, another person is coming (a guy I work with) who's never played a pen and paper game before. The core mechanic for the system is that the DM will assign a "target number" for an action. That number is then multiplied by 3 (and is generally between 1 and 10 to start with), and that's what you need to roll on a d20 to succeed. If you're trained in a skill, that reduces the number by 1, or is effectively +3 on the roll. Being specialized does the same thing, as does applying a level of effort (which requires expending points from a stat pool). Weapons and esoteries do fixed damage - light weapons do 2 damage and have +1(3) to hit, medium do 4, heavy do 6 but require two hands. Armor is a flat subtraction from damage though, which can make lighter weapons less useful. You can also expend effort to increase damage rather than making it easier to hit, and when you get the ability to apply more than one level of effort at once, you can really start pumping up damage/accuracy. Nanos tend to use an ability called Onslaught which does either 2 armor negating damage or 4 normal damage, but requires 1 int to activate. On the flipside, dodging an attack is the same thing - the DM assigns a target number based on what's trying to smack you, and you make a defense roll at a target number. You can get trained in defenses, and things like shields can count as an "asset" that gives you a bonus on the roll. Movement is very abstract - your distances are something like immediate, short, medium, long, and you can use movement actions to close or open distance. It's not tactical combat, but the combat isn't really the focus - exploration is. You don't get experience for beating up bandits, instead you get experience for having the DM spring traps on you, for finding artifacts (more or less end of adventure things), and arbitrarily for completing plotlines and such.
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Nov 19, 2013 20:20
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I put up a Numenera PbP that got no bites, so I thought I might advertise here. The setting is awesome, and I'd really like to explore it with some players.
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Nov 20, 2013 01:19
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Okay, am I just being obtuse about things, or are the PCs not actually supposed to know the difficulty of a task? Like, ever? The rules don't seem to mention it and the GM advice actively discourages it.
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Nov 20, 2013 21:10
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I think the idea is that they know the difficulty of actions unless it's an opposed action against an NPC, and even then they could attempt to scrutinize that NPC to figure out it's tier, and therefore the target number they'd usually be rolling against.
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Nov 21, 2013 08:32
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KillerQueen posted:I think the idea is that they know the difficulty of actions unless it's an opposed action against an NPC, and even then they could attempt to scrutinize that NPC to figure out it's tier, and therefore the target number they'd usually be rolling against. pg. 321 posted:Unless for some reason you’re telling the players directly, they’ll never know if you change an NPC’s stats or a task’s difficulty on the fly. If you’re doing it to make a better story, that’s your purview. That (and a lot of the other advice) implies that you're not supposed to tell them anything. It's certainly the sort of thing that should be explicit in the rules, though. Incidentally, would there be any interest in a Fate hack for this game? The more read the drat thing, the more I'm convinced it would work well there. There are already a bunch of Fate-isms in the game, so it should be a relatively simple conversion.
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Nov 21, 2013 08:57
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Tulul posted:Incidentally, would there be any interest in a Fate hack for this game? The more read the drat thing, the more I'm convinced it would work well there. There are already a bunch of Fate-isms in the game, so it should be a relatively simple conversion. I'd be extremely interested in one. It'd mesh perfectly with the playstyle I think Monte was originally going for, since the Cypher System is still shackled down by the ghosts of D&D. I would've already made a hack myself if I had a better grasp on Fate's inner workings.
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Nov 21, 2013 09:03
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Yeah, I could cobble something together from the toolkit pretty easily. Glaive, Nano, and Jack are profession templates, focuses are "race" templates with megaskills like Evoke Fire, Work Miracles, or Talk To Machines.
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Nov 21, 2013 09:45
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In combat it's dead easy to determine the level of what you're fighting by its place in the initiative order. Hope my GM doesn't read this... e: I am of course, poking fun at my GM. I think the system works much better when the GM pretty much always tell you the difficulty. Worked for my group and the rules don't say anything explicitly one way or the other.
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Nov 21, 2013 11:42
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TheDemon posted:e: I am of course, poking fun at my GM. Hey, man, I have feelings too. Lazy feelings, that don't care to write down initiative privately. But yeah, just telling the difficulty in most situations works great imo.
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Nov 21, 2013 12:24
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So if I wanted to start posting a FATE hack for Numenera, would it belong more in this thread or in the FATE thread?
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Nov 21, 2013 17:26
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Glazius posted:So if I wanted to start posting a FATE hack for Numenera, would it belong more in this thread or in the FATE thread? FATE thread, probably.
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Nov 21, 2013 17:57
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I was disappointed with the world of Numenara, which seems like the most generic fantasy ever - only stylized to partially resemble something futuristic. Here is a patchwork of the most generic civilized kingdoms ever, here is some wilderness, here are some ruins to explore and find some weird A good setting should have some kind of unified vision "What this game is about". Ravenloft is all about Evil - the entire world is a great prison which traps villains, but also empowers them and gives them a fresh supply of victims to play. Planescape's thing is faith. Reign is a game where the players dabble in politics. Numenara... well, Monte claims it was about discovery and learning something new, but it seems to be a codeword for "exploring strange places, learning about them and finding useful things". This is something that fantasy characters are doing in every RPG since the first D&D. Hell, even the story at the beginning of the book is about a character who barely survives a random encounter, descends into a dungeon, fights monsters and discovers magic gizmos. The only difference is scenography - instead of musty non-descript ruins there is a high-tech monolith and a cyborg ape takes the place of a giant spider or a hobgoblin. This is supposed to be a story which showcases the most interesting elements of the system and it bored me so much I could barely finish it.
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Nov 21, 2013 20:12
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TheDemon posted:I think the system works much better when the GM pretty much always tell you the difficulty. Worked for my group and the rules don't say anything explicitly one way or the other. I would agree with this, that's the way my GM runs it as well, and it's more or less essential when it comes to figuring out whether or not you need to spend effort. Gantolandon posted:I was disappointed with the world of Numenara, which seems like the most generic fantasy ever - only stylized to partially resemble something futuristic. Here is a patchwork of the most generic civilized kingdoms ever, here is some wilderness, here are some ruins to explore and find some weird I actually like the setting quite a bit - the big difference in flavor is that you're looking at super advanced ancient technology through the lens of someone who doesn't understand what its intended purpose is. I mean, sure, that power cell you just picked up could power several modern houses for a year, but all your character knows how to do with it is either use it as a crude bomb or as a light source (or some other effect; they might not even know it's supposed to be a power cell!). Similarly, you might descend into a trench that's been lined with some super-slick material while searching for some artifact, and not realize that it used to be a futuristic subway tunnel that was only recently exposed to the surface. There's a lot more story and wonder in trying to figure out what all the crap you find used to be in the setting than there is in a more generic fantasy locale where the castle is a castle and the dungeon is a dungeon. Sure those places might have history, but it's not quite as interesting as the sort of things you find in Numenera.
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Nov 21, 2013 23:15
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Dirk the Average posted:I actually like the setting quite a bit - the big difference in flavor is that you're looking at super advanced ancient technology through the lens of someone who doesn't understand what its intended purpose is. I mean, sure, that power cell you just picked up could power several modern houses for a year, but all your character knows how to do with it is either use it as a crude bomb or as a light source (or some other effect; they might not even know it's supposed to be a power cell!). Similarly, you might descend into a trench that's been lined with some super-slick material while searching for some artifact, and not realize that it used to be a futuristic subway tunnel that was only recently exposed to the surface. There's a lot more story and wonder in trying to figure out what all the crap you find used to be in the setting than there is in a more generic fantasy locale where the castle is a castle and the dungeon is a dungeon. Sure those places might have history, but it's not quite as interesting as the sort of things you find in Numenera. It's even mentioned in the core book briefly, but then it gets back to robo-gorillas, nano-wizards throwing nano-lighntings and extradimensional succubi that need your sperm to summon a hostile being. I have no idea what this things (and many more) were supposed to originally do. The authors don't even bother to explain it, so it looks like they are making weird things up as they go. It could have been great if they actually thought up those eight previous civilizations, described them and their interactions with their predecessors, then begun to describe the Ninth World based on this. Right now it doesn't seem like there were any underlying vision at all.
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Nov 22, 2013 00:20
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Yeah, it would have been great if they designed 9 entire campaign worlds so that one of them could be used.
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Nov 22, 2013 02:29
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Gantolandon posted:It's even mentioned in the core book briefly, but then it gets back to robo-gorillas, nano-wizards throwing nano-lighntings and extradimensional succubi that need your sperm to summon a hostile being. I have no idea what this things (and many more) were supposed to originally do. The authors don't even bother to explain it, so it looks like they are making weird things up as they go. It could have been great if they actually thought up those eight previous civilizations, described them and their interactions with their predecessors, then begun to describe the Ninth World based on this. Right now it doesn't seem like there were any underlying vision at all. Part of the reason that they haven't detailed all of the civilizations, and why the have so many prior civilizations, is that it gives tons of freedom to the GM. The GM is absolutely encouraged to simply make stuff up on the fly, and quite frankly not every construction the players come across needs to make sense. Hell, if the GM describes some weird thing and a player comments that it looks like it could have been something that the GM never thought of, this gives the GM freedom to run with that explanation for the structure. Alternately, it may never have had a function; it could have simply been an art installation that wore down over time (or was defaced/scrapped in a previous civilization) until very little of its artistic attributes survived. The idea is that things should be very freeform, very fantastical, and it should be up to the players and the GM as to why exactly a previous civilization would build something.
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Nov 22, 2013 03:20
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Zurai posted:Yeah, it would have been great if they designed 9 entire campaign worlds so that one of them could be used. I agree completely, though instead of eight campaign worlds it'd just be the history of the campaign world you're actually using, where an immense part of the game is "this world is built on the discarded junk of the previous civilizations".
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Nov 22, 2013 03:27
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Capntastic posted:I agree completely, though instead of eight campaign worlds it'd just be the history of the campaign world you're actually using, where an immense part of the game is "this world is built on the discarded junk of the previous civilizations". You do realize that creating "the history of the campaign world" requires creating the entire campaign world first, right? You have to know who the various nations and personalities were, where they were, what their goals were, etc etc etc in order to write what actually happened. Apply that for each of the 8 rise and fall of civilization cycles. Furthermore, the point of the campaign setting is "yes, that's in Numenara". If they started defining everything that happened, it would limit the setting rather than leaving it open-ended.
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Nov 22, 2013 04:02
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Zurai posted:You do realize that creating "the history of the campaign world" requires creating the entire campaign world first, right? You have to know who the various nations and personalities were, where they were, what their goals were, etc etc etc in order to write what actually happened. Apply that for each of the 8 rise and fall of civilization cycles. There's probably a happy medium between "no information at all" and "complete history of the culture" that would help give form and function and coherence to the world, as well as providing some guidelines and hooks for people running the game to use. The examples above about the slippery ravine that was part of a high-tech subway system provides more to play with than "it's just some weird slippery stuff for some reason". That doesn't mean you need to know the destinations and timetables for the subway itself
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Nov 22, 2013 04:06
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Capntastic posted:The examples above about the slippery ravine that was part of a high-tech subway system provides more to play with than "it's just some weird slippery stuff for some reason". That doesn't mean you need to know the destinations and timetables for the subway itself Thing is, it could have been a subway system, it could have been part of a spaceborne railgun that was shot down in the war that brought about the end of the fifth civilization, it could have been part of a waterslide, an art installation, something akin to the Panama Canal, an industrial accident where nanomachines were released into a canyon and subsequently converted the surface into a different material while smoothing it, etc. I haven't read through the campaign setting; I've only had it filtered to me through my GM, but when we play the game, we talk about things like that. He'll put something in the game, and we'll speculate as to what it could have been. What it actually was is more or less irrelevant.
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Nov 22, 2013 07:39
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The campaign setting is to D&D what Thundarr the Barbarian was to Conan the Barbarian. A little bit of weird stuff here or there but in the end, wizards still throw lightning bolts and fly and fighters still do full round attacks and nothing else. If the actual underpinning 'ancient technology from dozens of dead cultures!" were part of the game's setting in a coherent way, even if there were just little plot hooks like "this culture had interlocking robots in the form of different geometric shapes that did everything", you could build off of that, and reflect them more in the mechanics. There's nothing stopping a GM from doing this on their own, but having some example cultures to generate some ground to build off of would be nice. There's so much art in the book that's just "an ogre fighting a guy with a hatchet" and "a woman in platemail is impaling a generic native with a sword" that are completely different in tone and style than the ethereal almost alien sort of weird cyberpunk people that show up in other parts of the book. For all of the game's attempt at creating a vast alien world to explore with dangerous and exotic trinkets and treasures, a lot of it seems to boil down to "oh you found a trove of cyphers... [the nanowizard identifies them] they're pills that make you grow blades from your elbows for d6 rounds". Edit: There is a wealth of "current day" stuff that's basically "here's this weird NPC here that has this machine" and all of that, which is functionally the same in a lot of ways. I guess my problem is that so much of the game is sifting through ancient tech stuff, and I'd like it more if we had some vague notions about where that tech stuff came from. Capntastic fucked around with this message at 08:04 on Nov 22, 2013 |
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Nov 22, 2013 07:59
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Just to add a bit to the current conversation, Monte Cook Games has a Ninth World Guidebook coming out that will actually flesh out the setting and go into detail on the strange poo poo in the Ninth World. While it would've been nice to have it in the Corebook, putting it in a separate piece was probably for the best. It keeps the corebook shorter for easier reference, and I'm sure it eased production prices in shipping physical copies. From what I've read, the latter tends to really gently caress up a lot of indies when it comes to tabletops, especially Kickstarted games.
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Nov 22, 2013 08:07
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The Numenera corebook is already 417 pages, too.
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Nov 22, 2013 08:21
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And the Ninth World guide isn't exactly small either. It's going to be a 256 page hardback book. Lots of room for stuff in there.
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Nov 22, 2013 09:21
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Dirk the Average posted:Part of the reason that they haven't detailed all of the civilizations, and why the have so many prior civilizations, is that it gives tons of freedom to the GM. The GM is absolutely encouraged to simply make stuff up on the fly, and quite frankly not every construction the players come across needs to make sense. Hell, if the GM describes some weird thing and a player comments that it looks like it could have been something that the GM never thought of, this gives the GM freedom to run with that explanation for the structure. Alternately, it may never have had a function; it could have simply been an art installation that wore down over time (or was defaced/scrapped in a previous civilization) until very little of its artistic attributes survived. The idea is that things should be very freeform, very fantastical, and it should be up to the players and the GM as to why exactly a previous civilization would build something. That's the approach I don't like in RPGs, though - the authors just throwing random curiosities and expecting the GM to make them work somehow in their campaign. Usually thinking up something weird is the easiest part of writing an adventure - it's integrating it with the rest of the campaign that makes it harder. I would prefer more "This building was an ancient engine factory, which worked this way, think how can you use it" and less "This building's walls create purple sparkles when touched with organic matter, think what could it do". Zurai posted:You do realize that creating "the history of the campaign world" requires creating the entire campaign world first, right? You have to know who the various nations and personalities were, where they were, what their goals were, etc etc etc in order to write what actually happened. Apply that for each of the 8 rise and fall of civilization cycles. I would even welcome a short description of each previous world - half of a page each - because that would at least give me something to work with. Without even this I could as well make up the game world from the scratch. I feel like the authors just threw some random cool stuff at me and expected me to do the hardest part for them. saberwulf posted:Just to add a bit to the current conversation, Monte Cook Games has a Ninth World Guidebook coming out that will actually flesh out the setting and go into detail on the strange poo poo in the Ninth World. While it would've been nice to have it in the Corebook, putting it in a separate piece was probably for the best. It keeps the corebook shorter for easier reference, and I'm sure it eased production prices in shipping physical copies. From what I've read, the latter tends to really gently caress up a lot of indies when it comes to tabletops, especially Kickstarted games. If this book actually bothers to explain stuff, it would change a lot and probably completely reverse my opinion about the system.
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Nov 22, 2013 17:53
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Gantolandon posted:I would even welcome a short description of each previous world - half of a page each - because that would at least give me something to work with. Without even this I could as well make up the game world from the scratch. I feel like the authors just threw some random cool stuff at me and expected me to do the hardest part for them. Monte's new kickstarter The Strange has a supplement that provides ideas to link Numenera/The Strange campaigns. One of the suggestions in that supplement will be that the world from The Strange is one of the eight prior worlds.
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Nov 22, 2013 18:04
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Dirk the Average posted:Part of the reason that they haven't detailed all of the civilizations, and why the have so many prior civilizations, is that it gives tons of freedom to the GM. The GM is absolutely encouraged to simply make stuff up on the fly, and quite frankly not every construction the players come across needs to make sense. Hell, if the GM describes some weird thing and a player comments that it looks like it could have been something that the GM never thought of, this gives the GM freedom to run with that explanation for the structure. Alternately, it may never have had a function; it could have simply been an art installation that wore down over time (or was defaced/scrapped in a previous civilization) until very little of its artistic attributes survived. The idea is that things should be very freeform, very fantastical, and it should be up to the players and the GM as to why exactly a previous civilization would build something. My gaming group has been using "freedom" as an inside joke for years thanks to Monte Cook and his throwing out an empty, bare-bones setting for Arcana Evolved, then claiming that it was to "free" the GMs to basically do all the work of creating the setting themselves. He eventually said that he'd put out detailed setting books for the Diamond Throne, and never did.
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Nov 22, 2013 20:02
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Implied settings are a real thing and there are several systems which use them. Burning Wheel, for example. In fact, Burning Wheel doesn't even function properly with a fully fleshed out, everything already in its place setting.
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Nov 22, 2013 22:50
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