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    Default Numenera - What's it for, how does it play, and general questions

    I've been taking some new interest in Numenera. While I am not a fan of the background of the setting or the way it is presented in the artwork, under the hood it really seems to be almost exactly the same thing I've been aiming for with my homebrew setting for the last couple of years. If I understand it correctly, the default assumption is a huge but very lightly populated world with small settlements and plenty of ancient ruins of unknown origin, and the players are playing artifact hunters who explore those ruins to find strange and unexplainable devices that certain sages can salvage to make tools, weapons, and potions, which can help these treasure hunters in their work, or the small villages to prosper and protect themselves.
    Except for those artifacts having blinking lights and beeping, this seems to be exactly the same thing I am doing. From what I understand, the PCs are even going to be warriors, rogues, and mages, with the mages accessing some global wireless internet that was leftover from a past civilization or something. I think some people even called it a regular fantasy setting with blinking lights and beeping.

    So I am thinking that if the rules are build around this premise, this might be a good game for me.
    What is the game good at, what is it bad at, and how does it play? Anyone having experience with it?
    Last edited by Yora; 2015-04-13 at 04:27 PM.
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    Default Re: Numenera - What's it for, how does it play, and general questions

    Yeah, it seems like a default old-school D&D setting in a lot of ways (understandable, I mean the Dying Earth influence is palpable), except *explicitly* in the future rather than more vaguely hinted at.

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    Default Re: Numenera - What's it for, how does it play, and general questions

    Ok i have run a few sessions of Numenera... and i like it but in saying that its far from perfect. So i will give you my 2 cents on your assessment and then i will try and knock up a list of pros and cons.

    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
    If I understand it correctly, the default assumption is a huge but very lightly populated world with small settlements and plenty of ancient ruins of unknown origin, and the players are playing artifact hunters who explore those ruins to find strange and unexplainable devices that certain sages can salvage to make tools, weapons, and potions, which can help these treasure hunters in their work, or the small villages to prosper and protect themselves.
    Yeah this is more or less correct. There is very much an attitude that settlements are some what safe but between them is still pretty dangerous. The world has been made that you can tweak exactly what kinda setting you want based on where your PC's start in the world.

    If you start them in the Steadfast there is more of a established political element between the 9 kingdoms (i think its 9). So it gives you a basic background to run a more fictionalized game with mega plots and key NPCs of influence and blah blah.

    Then there is the Beyond which is sort of more wild. Settlements relationships don't stretch as far. Outside city walls is a little more dangerous then the Steadfast.

    Then there is the far Beyond which is prety much the area where the GM can do what the GM wants to do.

    In saying that the game/setting is very much designed to allow you to do what you want where you want.

    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
    From what I understand, the PCs are even going to be warriors, rogues, and mages, with the mages accessing some global wireless internet that was leftover from a past civilization or something.
    Sort of. There is an element of truth to this. I am not sure how much you have read of the system but each character is build around the statement; I am a DESCRIPTOR TYPE who FOCUS's.

    Descriptor is a key part of the characters personality/persona
    Type is the fighter, rogue, mage thing.
    and Focus is the cool thing on the end.

    In Monte's explanation of the character creation system, Type is defiantly flagged as the most important aspect on a character. However from my personal experience i have found the most important aspect of a character depends on the character being made. I went into it in THIS THREAD some time ago. if your interested go have a look there.


    As to mages pulling there power from the internet that's not entirely true. a Nano's (mage) source of power could be the internet or it could be a bunch of cobbled tech they keep about themselves. Or it could that they are the offspring of some bio-engineered weapon and their powers spawn from strange glands and organs added to their body. Or they could be from a different dimension where such abilities are the norm or it could be that their body naturally produces nano swarms that they can control. And its the same for all other types, there is no set power source based on a character type. For example a Glaive (fighter) is as likely to be a big hulking dude with a lightsaber as they are to be a cyberneticly altered person that gets a constant feed of tactical info fed to their brain by a distant satellite watching them from space.

    The golden rule about about the lost tech left behind is it isn't just highly advanced bits of gear. The previous civilizations delved heavily into all kinds of stuff ( for example dimensional travel.) The world was also the home to many alien races and the stuff they brought with them. So don't get wraped in the idea that the sending spell is just an advanced form of email. It could also be a psychic ability or a brief dimensional portal that opens between the sender and receiver allowing for a quick chat.

    Ok lets do some pros and cons.

    Pros;

    System is lite, quick and easy to run - I can go into this in more detail if you want but that is what it boils down to. I struggle to name any systems that i have run that are easier then Numenera.

    It allows for a lot of freedom for both the player and the GM - Its built around being able to add in what you want. In my last game one of my players wanted to be a nest for a swarm of tiny robot ants that could crawl across any image or text and then later be comanded to make an exact copy of it. The rules made this amazingly easy to add in and balance accordingly. So the player got what he wanted but he was still on par with the other pc's.

    Cyphers can really spice things up - Cyphers are interesting little one off magic items that really can change the dynamic of an encounter. They might make a wall of flame, or shrink a character, or allow you to teleport or tone of other things. They are cool and they work well in Numenera (im not as keen on them in the Strange). The best part is a cypher may completely dominate one encounter but it doesn't become a repeating trick. So as a GM you will have situations where your sitting there thinking "well that was a lot easier then i expected it to be!" but you don't have to worry about the PC;s doing it over and over because the key component is gone.

    Intrusion - This mechanic is really cool and so far all of my players have liked it. Basically what it does is allow you to bribe your players into letting you screw with them. Which sounds kinda bad but actually works really well. Its a really good way to spice up a situation when things are getting a little dull, or you want to switch things up. If you want more info on this let me know, but it going into it at length would likely turn what is already a long post into a horribly long post.

    The game is grate for imaginative players and GM's - The rule system is designed to work well with out of the box thinking. (this can also be a con, see later)

    Cons:

    The skills system works but it is to vague and open for my mind - to start off i have to say mechanically the skill system is more or less fine. My issue is with the available skills. There is no skill list so to speak, there is a list of example skills but the game suggests that you allow your players come up with any skills they like which seem appropriate for the character. Which would be fine but i means you have this weird thing where your left wondering about the value of skills... er i'm not sure if that makes sense...let me try an description.
    You get to use a skill to aid in a task if the GM views that it is reasonable. For example a player is trying to sneak past a guard, the player has the skill stealth, which the gm decides is useful so it benefits the player in this roll. The problem comes when one player decides he wants the skill stealth and another player decides they want the skill hide. Theoretically stealth gives and advantage when ever the PC is trying to be stealthy where as hide is only really of advantage when a character is trying to hide. Stealth overlaps hide to the point where you could use it for all the "hide" appropriate situations, but it doesn't work the other way around. Like in the previous example hide wouldn't really aid in the situation as much because the pc is trying to move past the guard without drawing attention rather then hiding from him.
    Now my issue is that while stealth is a very broad skill and hide is rather specialized, mechanically they both have the same cost to the character. It cost the player just as much to purchase one skill for their character as it does the other. A similar example would be skills such as jumping and athletics. One is broad the other specialized but both of the same value. And because of the way skill system works you cant give additional bonuses for hide because its "specialized" because that ends up breaking the core skill mechanics.

    Its mostly an example of where the rule system becomes to vague, (which happens a bit in Numenera). So far it hasn't caused me any real issue in game for two reasons. One because most starting characters get all their starting skills from their character statement. And secondly when characters are choosing skills for themselves it just comes down to negotiating with the players so everybody is happy. So this issue isn't game breaking, but its far from perfect.

    The Focuses can be all over the place - Some focuses have some really cool abilities some are more bland, i think all of them are usable. What i have found though that while some focuses get really cool they start really boring (carries a piece of the sun for example.) They are meant to be a really cool thing about your character that is unique to you but some players end up a little disappointed when they get in game and realize this big cool thing about their character doesn't really happen until like 20 sessions into a game. Its not game breaking, i think it comes down to slightly poor design and as everything else in Numenera it can be resolved by player gm negotiation.

    This game is designed for out of the box/imaginative play, so you better hope your players are too - While the game is awesome for out of the box style thinking and imaginative players, if you have player/s which aren't like that (which most groups seem too) they can find the game kinda dull and restrictive. Its a similar issue that i found in Dungeon World and other such games. I could go into more detail about this but it would be a long post on its own. So i will try to tl:dr it with a metaphor; Numenera is like a really awesome bowl of chilli, problem is if your players don't like chilly it wont magically make them like it.

    ehh there is probably other stuff. but i will leave it at that for now.
    Last edited by Kaun; 2015-04-13 at 07:33 PM.
    Aside from "have fun", i think the key to GMing is putting your players into situations where they need to make a choice that has no perfect outcome available. They will hate you for it, but they will be back at the table session after session.

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    Default Re: Numenera - What's it for, how does it play, and general questions

    The issue with skills and focuses seems like something that could easily be dealt with by the GM limiting the options the players can chose from, though that might go against the spirit of the game.
    I believe the whole point of a billion years into the future is that you can find absolutely everything you can imagine lying around somewhere If you run it in a different setting where there are rules what kinds of things exist and which don't, you probably have to do that anyway.

    How well does the game do in regard to the rules supporting and reinforcing the premise of treasure hunting in the wild? For character creation and action resolution, I can simply run Barbarians of Lemuria and I'm fine. But I've seen a couple of games in recent years that have the mechanics and rules set up in ways that nudges the players towards behaving as typical for the genre, by making such actions both very effective and also rewarding. You can roleplay in D&D 4th edition and you can make an epic battle against the forces of Hell campaign in B/X. But Atlantis: The Second Age and Spirit of the Century really nudge players towards doing outragous stunts with more carrots than sticks.
    Since the premise of treasure hunting in a mostly rural frontier setting is what I find the most interesting about Numenera, how does the game do in that regard? Is it a treasure hunting game, or an anything you want game that explains the abundance of weird technology and creatures by them being scattered everywhere?
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    Default Re: Numenera - What's it for, how does it play, and general questions

    I think at its basis its a treasure hunter game.

    Does it do anything to really promote or encourage this....ehhhh...maybe..

    If you run experience by the book, outside of intrusions the main thing characters get xp for is discoveries. You don't get xp for combat or overcoming an encounter so to speak its all about finding new things and learning about the world.
    What counts as a discovery? thats pretty much up to the gm. Does this facilitate treasure hunting... yeah i guess but not really in a good way.

    Cyphers and artifacts would be the main treasure hunting motivation i guess. Cyphers are cool one off power items. They are worth a nice amount. And the main place you are meant to find them is unexplored areas and ruins. Artifacts are the same but more long lasting magical items like things. The issue with cyphers is there is a sort of quasi limit to how many a character can carry, which the book never really gives you a definitive answer on what the punishment for carrying too many should be. It gives the GM wiggle room but it would be nice for some more guidance.

    I guess finally the main bonus for a treasure hunting style game that Numenera offers is a contextual base to have big weird "dungeon" complexes for the treasure to be hidden in all over the place. And while many other high fantasy games offer something similar Numenera lets you go all out without having to justify a places existence to much. Some of the favorite Numenera dungeons i have heard of include things like a pocket dimension hidden within a city that contains a trapped star that is used as a source of near infinite power. The body of a mammoth dead humanoid alien creature semi submerged off the coast that the locals are mining for resources. A giant bio tank/ weapons platform with an ancient insane alien AI that slowly winds its way through the beyond with some unknown objective.... and there are others i cant think of right now.

    To be honest Yora, if the setting doesn't grab you i personally wouldn't re-purpose the rule system to something else. Its a nice system but it has its weird kinks that only really make sense in the setting (so much so that i dont think they translated well into The Strange, which is the follow up to Numenera).

    If your keen on the system i hear Gumshoe is similar without some of the oddities.
    Aside from "have fun", i think the key to GMing is putting your players into situations where they need to make a choice that has no perfect outcome available. They will hate you for it, but they will be back at the table session after session.

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    Default Re: Numenera - What's it for, how does it play, and general questions

    I think the primary way it encourages treasure hunting is by making treasures unique and used often. Numenera is not a game where you pick up a random belt that gives you a few bonuses which you promptly forget about as soon as you add the new numbers to your character sheet. Cyphers are great as treasures, they almost always do something impressive (at least when used smartly) and you always have a motivation to get more of them since they're all single use objects.

    Artifacts are also cool when you want a step above what cyphers have to offer, but use them sparingly. Too many of them and it starts to feel like another Christmas tree. (Though it should be noted that most artifacts are necessarily permanent either, you just get more out of them than cyphers)

    Oddities are weird but I like them. They are designed to be useless, acting more like art objects in D&D that happen to have little quirks to make them valuable instead of traditional treasure. However you better believe that my players tried to go out of their way to find a use for everyone they came across when I ran a game. Sure "a small neon colored plastic rod that glows in darkness" is designed to be useless (it doesn't even cast enough light to be a torch, at best it can help your friends find you in the dark) but the player still loved that she had essentially gotten a glowstick in a role-playing game and was dead set on keeping it around on the off-chance the party ever stumbled into the middle of a rave (they probably would have if that game had continued long enough).

    The one thing I'm a little disappointed that they didn't include more of are discoveries. Discoveries are essentially magic locations. Devices too large or otherwise difficult to move for easy use, and more like dressing for dungeons. I was really hoping they'd have a table for generating discoveries like they did with other numenera, but it sadly was skimmed over with a more general "Make up something weird". I understand that making up your own things is likely preferable for such big setting pieces, but it would be nice for something a little more defined when you just need something weird to be in a room (besides a monster)

    I suppose that is one of my biggest concerns about Numenera, as a treasure hunting game they excel at the treasure part, but the hunting is placed a little more on the GM's head. I'd really have appreciated if they made a book solely about locations (not just setting locations like the Guide to the Ninth world does. I mean something more like dungeoncrafting books that D&D makes) something to help the GM make just as weird and interesting of sites for adventures as the setting manages for their monsters and treasures. Actually one of the more counter-intuitive points in the core book I found was the encouragement to make your dungeons big and vague. Essentially doing away with strictly defined maps like in other games and instead give your players a sense of scale by saying it takes them over an hour for their characters to cross this bridge, and otherwise separating the interesting parts of the dungeon by vagaries rather than describing every room they go through. While that's all well and thematic, I feel that it runs counter to a lot of player sensibilities. If I told my player that they spend an hour going through empty corridors, they're probably going to want to roll a few dice just to make sure they didn't miss something. If I describe more, they're going to want to poke whatever it was with a stick. Even more, I fear that it encourages rail-roading by giving them the illusion of an expansive dungeon, when in reality you've only given them a few linear encounters seperated by a lot of empty "you spend a few hours searching through huge and impressive but ultimately uninteresting rooms before you arrive at the next pre-ordained encounter"

    Say what you want about D&D dungeons but at least you felt like you had a clear choice when you decided to go down the left corridor instead of the right.

    That said there's no reason you can't use outside sources for that sort of thing. Especially if you're using the system for a more traditionally fantasy setting. Find a better dungeoncraft book from another system, add in your own weirdness where appropriate and it's really easy to adapt things mechanically (just keep in mind that Numenera can throw expectations of environmental challenges out the window. An underwater part of a dungeon in D&D will require magical preperation or some really good swimming skills. In Numenera they can use a cypher to breathe underwater, or to evaporate the water, or phase through the walls surrounding the water. Cyphers are unpredictable and you can generally depend that PC's will be able to solve a lot of problems you throw at them with a Cypher and some creativity. (Though make sure you keep a hidden solution on standby if they accidentally hit a wall))

    Some have said that the Numenera system doesn't do well with adaptation to other settings and I agree, to an extent.
    The Cypher system does well with certain kinds of settings, mainly those that can handle a bit of weirdness, and can incorporate the cyphers themselves. For example I would never try to run a normal high fantasy setting like Forgotten Realms with Cypher, since this isn't a system where you can just give someone Excalibur. However I am thinking of using it to run Eberron, since it manages the low-level but ubiquitous magic feel that cyphers present. For what you're going for, Cypher was more or less already designed for (just with more blinking lights). It's not without its flaws (some things will need a little of your own work to fill in the cracks.) but it's certainly sounds like it would handle your proposed setting far better than something like an urban intrigue focused game in a distinctly low-magic setting.
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    Default Re: Numenera - What's it for, how does it play, and general questions

    My players are so off the walls and bonkers they love the freedom the game gives them. Yet I see no reason why it can't play a more story focused campaign. It's just up to the GM to make a serious story campaign that works in the inherent weirdness of the world. For example it might seem hard to get PC's all over the place in the beginning if you take this world at face value. Then you got to think. There are flying mounts, teleportation devices, portals, cyphers, artifacts, and other lost technology that could easily make transport between areas viable when called for. Or you could focus it on a single region (the steadfast) where everyone is close enough that mounted beasts will easily get them where they need to go. So no matter how off the walls your players are you got options to make sure they can get to where they need to be in a reasonable time.

    Heck in the 9th world guidebook one people even have airships.

    My game I'm running is a story focused game but the villain is an spoiled brat of a kid with an omnipotent mask terrorizing people all over the steadfast and beyond. Due to his special connection his mask gives him to the datasphere he is able to be anywhere as a villain and has taken special interest in tormenting people he knows the PC's will be coming across. The PC's are on an epic quest to find the remaining titans of an ancient Empire that could help them. When they finally find one of these Titans they see it is a vast computer system/AI. The other titans have fallen offline one by one and now only four remain including the one they found (Chernobog).

    In my campaign they have been turned into different forms either by the kids choice or some misfortune. As they have progressed they have regained their original forms as well as masks that allow them to morph between the two forms.
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    Default Re: Numenera - What's it for, how does it play, and general questions

    I think I'll give the core book a try. Even if it just turns out an interesting reading experience on what other people are thinking about such a type of campaign.
    Quote Originally Posted by Ravian View Post
    Numenera is not a game where you pick up a random belt that gives you a few bonuses which you promptly forget about as soon as you add the new numbers to your character sheet. Cyphers are great as treasures, they almost always do something impressive (at least when used smartly) and you always have a motivation to get more of them since they're all single use objects.

    Artifacts are also cool when you want a step above what cyphers have to offer, but use them sparingly. Too many of them and it starts to feel like another Christmas tree. (Though it should be noted that most artifacts are necessarily permanent either, you just get more out of them than cyphers)
    Items that do the job of a mundane tool but slightly better have started to bore me for quite a while. Especially when you think of magic items as a writer instead of a player or GM, they don't really do anything unless the bonus is huge. But say a character in a story gets a +1 sword. Apart from the scen in which he is amazed over this magic sword, the magicness won't ever become noticeable again, unless it also doubles as a key (of a door, or unlocking the invincible overlords death). +2 Strength is nothing, it only makes a difference when you get to +10 or above. But potions and bombs, that's where all the fun is happening. Not a potion with 2 points fire resistance, but a potion of total fire immunity.

    The one thing I'm a little disappointed that they didn't include more of are discoveries. Discoveries are essentially magic locations. Devices too large or otherwise difficult to move for easy use, and more like dressing for dungeons. I was really hoping they'd have a table for generating discoveries like they did with other numenera, but it sadly was skimmed over with a more general "Make up something weird". I understand that making up your own things is likely preferable for such big setting pieces, but it would be nice for something a little more defined when you just need something weird to be in a room (besides a monster)

    I suppose that is one of my biggest concerns about Numenera, as a treasure hunting game they excel at the treasure part, but the hunting is placed a little more on the GM's head. I'd really have appreciated if they made a book solely about locations (not just setting locations like the Guide to the Ninth world does. I mean something more like dungeoncrafting books that D&D makes) something to help the GM make just as weird and interesting of sites for adventures as the setting manages for their monsters and treasures. Actually one of the more counter-intuitive points in the core book I found was the encouragement to make your dungeons big and vague. Essentially doing away with strictly defined maps like in other games and instead give your players a sense of scale by saying it takes them over an hour for their characters to cross this bridge, and otherwise separating the interesting parts of the dungeon by vagaries rather than describing every room they go through. While that's all well and thematic, I feel that it runs counter to a lot of player sensibilities. If I told my player that they spend an hour going through empty corridors, they're probably going to want to roll a few dice just to make sure they didn't miss something. If I describe more, they're going to want to poke whatever it was with a stick. Even more, I fear that it encourages rail-roading by giving them the illusion of an expansive dungeon, when in reality you've only given them a few linear encounters seperated by a lot of empty "you spend a few hours searching through huge and impressive but ultimately uninteresting rooms before you arrive at the next pre-ordained encounter.
    Yeah, that was something I was afraid of. Most RPGs are terrible at explaining how they are supposed to work outside of combat, treating it as something completely obvious that any first time GM will obviously know inside out. And Monte Cook always seemed one of the worst offenders to me who doesn't appear to understand why anyone would be interested in player agency. I love mystery and ambiguity more than most people, but it's important that there is the appearance that there is a reason and explaination for everything, even if we can never learn the answer. Just throwing some glowing lights and tentacles at the player and calling it weird and mysterious doesn't do it. (Which is why I don't like most of Raggis LotFP adventures, even though those by most other writers are great.) Things are only weird and mysterious if they don't fit into the normal pattern. If there is no pattern for the ordinary, then nothing is extraordinary. Planescape is super weird, but when you are familiar with regular AD&D, then you know the patterns that are being violated. From what I've read of Numenera, the Ninth World sounds like a super freaky joyride completely disconnected from anything familiar, which is why the setting doesn't sound very appealing to me.

    Do you think the game still works decently when there is some pattern and familiarity with the cyphers, or does the fun come from constantly trying out new weird toys?
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    Default Re: Numenera - What's it for, how does it play, and general questions

    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
    I think I'll give the core book a try. Even if it just turns out an interesting reading experience on what other people are thinking about such a type of campaign.

    Items that do the job of a mundane tool but slightly better have started to bore me for quite a while. Especially when you think of magic items as a writer instead of a player or GM, they don't really do anything unless the bonus is huge. But say a character in a story gets a +1 sword. Apart from the scen in which he is amazed over this magic sword, the magicness won't ever become noticeable again, unless it also doubles as a key (of a door, or unlocking the invincible overlords death). +2 Strength is nothing, it only makes a difference when you get to +10 or above. But potions and bombs, that's where all the fun is happening. Not a potion with 2 points fire resistance, but a potion of total fire immunity.


    Yeah, that was something I was afraid of. Most RPGs are terrible at explaining how they are supposed to work outside of combat, treating it as something completely obvious that any first time GM will obviously know inside out. And Monte Cook always seemed one of the worst offenders to me who doesn't appear to understand why anyone would be interested in player agency. I love mystery and ambiguity more than most people, but it's important that there is the appearance that there is a reason and explaination for everything, even if we can never learn the answer. Just throwing some glowing lights and tentacles at the player and calling it weird and mysterious doesn't do it. (Which is why I don't like most of Raggis LotFP adventures, even though those by most other writers are great.) Things are only weird and mysterious if they don't fit into the normal pattern. If there is no pattern for the ordinary, then nothing is extraordinary. Planescape is super weird, but when you are familiar with regular AD&D, then you know the patterns that are being violated. From what I've read of Numenera, the Ninth World sounds like a super freaky joyride completely disconnected from anything familiar, which is why the setting doesn't sound very appealing to me.

    Do you think the game still works decently when there is some pattern and familiarity with the cyphers, or does the fun come from constantly trying out new weird toys?
    Numenera has a pattern considering it has warring kingdoms. Also ciphers can be very minor or they can be quite dramatic. My player got what he didn't know was a time delayed thermo nuclear charge. He was trying to discover its secrets and at one point wanted to implant it in himself because he thought it would do something cool. He is playing a cyborg. Then came a bad encounter and he had to hurl the thing at an enemy. He was disappointed to see it do nothing and then several rounds later explodes killing the enemy and nearly killing everyone else. It also destroyed several important NPC's for that location but eh. By then they were getting near the ending.

    This same player discovered some beetles in a forest and is determined to find out what they are and what use they could be (he found them at the beginning of the campaign IRL a year ago), and if they are harmless he wants ot mutate them into something more interesting. To this end he is slowly building up devices in his lab and or looking for one to conduct experiments in. Most people in the world consider him to be a crazy wizard. Which he actually is. Then there are teleportation ciphers, wall phasing, mind reading, ray projectors, wall projectors, ropes, seeing devices, implantations and the list goes on. Not all of them are mechanical and many of them are biomechanical or chemical in nature.
    Last edited by Gamgee; 2015-04-14 at 01:12 PM.
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    Default Re: Numenera - What's it for, how does it play, and general questions

    I got myself the rulebook (and the bestiary for my weird monster series), hoping to get some nice ideas for exploring strange places. Even though Ravian said the part on discovering places is lacking, it made me realize that my approach of "wander around monster haunted tunnels until you find the magic item" is barely scratching the surface of this campaign style. Still hopeful that the rules might get my on board too.

    But the very first thing I noticed from reading the just the introduction: Why does this game use a d20? This really looks like a system that is build around a d6 (actually a d6.67) and you do the conversion from Task Difficulty to Target Number only so that you can use a d20 instead. But the only difference it makes is to get those "critical" effects on 1, 17, 18, 19, and 20. Couldn't you do the same thing with a confirmation roll? The way it is presented it seems like constant multiplying and dividing by 3. Why not just a d6?
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    Default Re: Numenera - What's it for, how does it play, and general questions

    Well, a d20 allows for more fine-grained modifiers on rolls. A +1 in a d6-based system would be incredibly huge.

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    Default Re: Numenera - What's it for, how does it play, and general questions

    Given that every +3 turns into one step down in difficulty class, and that a +1 is almost worthless on a d20, this seems to be something that probably wouldn't be missed if it hadn't been included in the game. Dealing only with step up and step down seems a lot easier, and I've looked around a bit and some people mentioned rarely seeing any of those +1 and +2 showing up in the game anyway. Even if it's not a lot of trouble in actual play, it seems like a completely unnecessary additional step to get to a resolution that they could have left out of the original design.

    Though that being said, so far I think the core mechanic looks quite neat. I especially like the interplay of pools and edges. With high Effort, you can go nova. But with high Edge, you can go pulsar, never running out of pool.
    The number of possible situational modifiers looked a bit intimidating at first, like in D&D 3rd ed., but actually those are all just step up and step down, quite like advantage in D&D 5th, I belive. The rest mechanic to recharge your pools, with each rest per day taking more and more time, also seems like a very nice idea. The rules could be shorter, but seem still pretty easy and probably memorizable almost in full once you understand them.

    What did surprise me though is the seemingly very limited number of cyphers a character can have at once. In a party of several characters the number of total cyphers would still be quite decent, but for being a very central thing of the game, having just two at first level seems a bit underwhelming.
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    Default Re: Numenera - What's it for, how does it play, and general questions

    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
    What did surprise me though is the seemingly very limited number of cyphers a character can have at once. In a party of several characters the number of total cyphers would still be quite decent, but for being a very central thing of the game, having just two at first level seems a bit underwhelming.
    I think the general idea is that cyphers are meant to be constantly used and new ones found. The cypher limit is a clunky mechanic to dissuade players from hanging onto cyphers, waiting for the perfect opportunity to use them.

    From what i have experienced, cyphers are a lot more powerful then most 1 shot items from games like 3x/.5 pathfinder etc. If players were able to horde them up to much and dump them all in a super nova like display i think it would be counterproductive to the game.

    I should also note that cypher limit isn't black and white. You can carry more then your limit but it's "risky". The book doesn't go into great detail about what the risks are but what i used to do is give players carrying more then their limit a -1 to all rolls for each cypher above their limit. Then i would also do things like incursions where some of the additional cyphers would explode or trigger at random. Stuff like that. My rule of thumb was if your carrying your limit or under they cyphers are generally reliable, but above your limit not so much.
    Aside from "have fun", i think the key to GMing is putting your players into situations where they need to make a choice that has no perfect outcome available. They will hate you for it, but they will be back at the table session after session.

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    Default Re: Numenera - What's it for, how does it play, and general questions

    eh, I find the concept of Numenera great, but the corebook and world it presented was meh.

    also, I do not like the mechanics for Artifacts. I'm not one who really cares for one-shot items like Cyphers, while artifacts that could break at any time because of a roll just makes me see them as longer term temporary things, and makes me question if getting any of them are worth it. I'd rather have stuff that works consistently without fail. particularly the guns.
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    Default Re: Numenera - What's it for, how does it play, and general questions

    Quote Originally Posted by Kaun View Post
    I think the general idea is that cyphers are meant to be constantly used and new ones found. The cypher limit is a clunky mechanic to dissuade players from hanging onto cyphers, waiting for the perfect opportunity to use them.

    I should also note that cypher limit isn't black and white. You can carry more then your limit but it's "risky". The book doesn't go into great detail about what the risks are but what i used to do is give players carrying more then their limit a -1 to all rolls for each cypher above their limit. Then i would also do things like incursions where some of the additional cyphers would explode or trigger at random. Stuff like that. My rule of thumb was if your carrying your limit or under they cyphers are generally reliable, but above your limit not so much.
    So stashing them at different places in your home or the local aeon priest would also be an option? I feel a bit concerned that when the GM picks what cyphers the PCs have and they can have only so few, one could easily slip into giving the players just the right tool for a problem you already know they will encounter later. It can be avoided by experienced GMs, but for new GMs that seems quite inviting to set up obstacles with a single solution for which the players have to find the right key. But with a group of three or four first tier characters, you still can have 8 or so cyphers on you at any time. And at 5th tier it would be double that, probably not that bad in action.
    The list of non-numenera equipment could be longer, though.
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    Default Re: Numenera - What's it for, how does it play, and general questions

    to be honest i used the random tables to put every cypher in my games. Otherwise i would get overly worried about whether or not each one would be useful. Randoming them all was my way of saying "screw it, the pcs can work it out". The option to sell the ones that don't want is also there, i think the default value was like 25... tokens of currency.... (i forget the setting term) which is a decent ammount.

    The Technology Compendium - Sir Arthur’s Guide to the Numenera splat adds a ton of extra cyphers and some good tables that references the core books cyphers as well.

    Also stashing them around the place is viable.

    As a side note; if you're looking at the books, i don't want to say Character Options splat is necessary... but i would highly recommend it if you decide to run a game.
    Aside from "have fun", i think the key to GMing is putting your players into situations where they need to make a choice that has no perfect outcome available. They will hate you for it, but they will be back at the table session after session.

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    Default Re: Numenera - What's it for, how does it play, and general questions

    Generally my opinion on Numenera boils down to, system is great and I would love to use it more often, except its a little difficult to adapt to everything I'd like to play. The setting is a little more hit or miss, but I certainly don't hate it. (Honestly I sort of wish they gave a less defined world, if only because I prefer they leave me more room to fit more weird stuff of my own design)

    That said, I certainly think its possible to make something a little more defined with the tools it offers. Once again I've been interested in playing Eberron with the Cypher system. The most work that needs to be done is adapting descriptors for the various fantasy races. As far as the numenera themselves I'm more inclined to just adapt them on the fly as they come. If the players randomly roll a cypher that detects lies by absorbing psionic energy and twitching when it hears deceptions, that's easily adapted into a medallion or something with the same effects. Meanwhile a wristband that fires a gas pellet that knocks people out is just as easily called a one-use wand of sleep. That said I'll probably put a little more work in for some of the artifacts and oddities. Artifacts because they're more permanent and so usually are just as defined by their construction as their actual effects. (For example I'm pretty sure one of the artifact examples was a cloning pod, something I'd be a little more wary about using in a fantasy world (except as maybe some sort of aberrant xoriat fleshwarping device, but it'd still take some work to get the flavor right)) Oddities because a few of them get a little too weird, for example "gloves that give the wearer a high-pitched squeaky voice." This is technically because most of these device's true purposes are likely unknown, which is why they appear to only do useless things. (For example those gloves might have been designed for a creature with non-human vocal cords so they could to speak to humans on a recognizable frequency for them, on a human it just makes them sound silly. Or it could just be that they require an unknown component that allows them to actually mimic voices instead of sounding weird.) Of course since in Eberron I'm ruling that most of the magic devices the PC's will find were likely be built by humans quite recently, there purposes will likely be much more clear, with oddities merely acting like magical art pieces or curiosities without a practical effect for adventurers. (Like a magical music box, or a silk scarf that doesn't tear or get dirty.)
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    Default Re: Numenera - What's it for, how does it play, and general questions

    I see now why you called Discoveries disappointing. There isn't anything on them!

    A list with 30 discoveries villages might be using for their own benefit. That's all. In a game about exploration, I think discoveries should actually be the single most important thing of any adventures. Cyphers and artifacts are byproducts that fall off during the exploration for a Discovery site. I would buy a book on nothing but Discoveries, but this is really very much disappointing.
    I find it very odd that these play such a little to nonexisting role in RPGs in general. Trying to think of good examples, BioWare has been using them a lot in their games for many years for very great effect. I think in Mass Effect and Dragon Age, almost every second level is really a Discovery site.

    Spoiler: DA
    Show
    The Elven Mirror
    Shrine of the Urn
    Caradin's Anvil
    Primeval Thaig
    Sundermount Cave
    Gallows Guardians

    Spoiler: ME
    Show
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    Thorian on Feros
    Rachni Egg on Noverria
    The Citadel
    Haestrum's Star
    Collector Ship
    Collector Base
    The Lair of the Shadow Broker
    Mars Facility
    Weather Control Tower on Tuchanka
    Prothean Database on Thessia


    The only comparable thing I can think of in a published adventure is the final area of City of the Spiderqueen. In a dungeon exploration game like D&D, that is rather weak.

    If anything, Numenera made me realize the huge mistake I've long been making, by treating hunts for ancient magic treasures as normal dungeons with some monsters and obstacles, and one or two nice magic items in the very back. The whole place should be a discovery, even if you only find two small pieces that seem practical to take back to your village to share with your people.
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    Default Re: Numenera - What's it for, how does it play, and general questions

    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
    If anything, Numenera made me realize the huge mistake I've long been making, by treating hunts for ancient magic treasures as normal dungeons with some monsters and obstacles, and one or two nice magic items in the very back. The whole place should be a discovery, even if you only find two small pieces that seem practical to take back to your village to share with your people.
    Yeah i have been thinking along similar lines lately. I'm doing a west march/hex crawler using SW's at the moment. I have never been a fan of "dungeons" but i am trying to get better at them.

    I have found now that every dungeon should tell a story. Not just be a series of rooms that stand between the players and something interesting.

    EDIT: with regards to there not being much on discoveries.

    Numenera is written with the idea of everything being a mystery. I think Monte decided that if he populated the world full of these discoveries they wouldn't be a mystery they would just become part of the meta as players read the info and discussed them online. So he decided to supply the tools for making them and some inspiration, then leave it to GM's to make their own.

    I get his reasoning but i'm not sure he conveyed his intentions well enough.

    When making up my own discoveries, to keep them inline with the weirdness of the world. what i would do is try and come up with a random Thing, then i would come up with a random use completely unrelated. Then i would take that combination and try and make some sense of it.

    for example;

    Thing = A synthetic tree
    Use = Reduces the pull of gravity.

    Then with that combination i would try to come up with a little story as to why such a thing would exist; It's a machine of alien design, its resemblance to a leafless willow tree is coincidental. It was originally part of a space elevator system used to convey freight into orbit. A secondary unit would be installed within space craft, the two would sink up and open a channel of inverse gravity would appear between them. The machine is old and only semi-functional, sporadically opening up gravity wells within a 2 mile radius.

    From there you slot it into the world and try to figure out how the locals would interact with it. Like maybe there is some local merchant king who was converted the area around the tree into a unconventional fighting arena and has made a fortune charging admission.
    Last edited by Kaun; 2015-04-15 at 06:53 PM.
    Aside from "have fun", i think the key to GMing is putting your players into situations where they need to make a choice that has no perfect outcome available. They will hate you for it, but they will be back at the table session after session.

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    Default Re: Numenera - What's it for, how does it play, and general questions

    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
    I see now why you called Discoveries disappointing. There isn't anything on them!

    A list with 30 discoveries villages might be using for their own benefit. That's all. In a game about exploration, I think discoveries should actually be the single most important thing of any adventures. Cyphers and artifacts are byproducts that fall off during the exploration for a Discovery site. I would buy a book on nothing but Discoveries, but this is really very much disappointing.
    I find it very odd that these play such a little to nonexisting role in RPGs in general. Trying to think of good examples, BioWare has been using them a lot in their games for many years for very great effect. I think in Mass Effect and Dragon Age, almost every second level is really a Discovery site.

    If anything, Numenera made me realize the huge mistake I've long been making, by treating hunts for ancient magic treasures as normal dungeons with some monsters and obstacles, and one or two nice magic items in the very back. The whole place should be a discovery, even if you only find two small pieces that seem practical to take back to your village to share with your people.
    I will say that if you're interested in more locations, you might want to check out the Ninth World Guidebook. It has a number of weird locations throughout the ninth world, though they're treated more like adventure sites.

    But yeah the way discoveries were treated in the blurb that mentioned them I expect things more like portals and pools and fountains with bizarre properties (to put it into D&D vernacular) features that can significantly change the nature of a dungeon, without requiring you to design the whole thing around it. Something like a table that could just be rolled if you needed something cool to be in the center of the evil Aeon Priest's clave or something.

    You may also want to look at the technology compendium. It's mostly the regular numenera, but there's an introductory chapter that describes various forms of advanced technology that make up the setting, including various descriptions of possible uses of such devices in a location. (Things like walls made of solid energy, or tunnels with accelerated time for quicker travel to the other side. Once again it's nifty, but it's still very ill-defined. I'd definitely prefer a few easy tables for quick suggestions. I do know that the Ninth World Guidebook as a quick table to inject a little weird into an otherwise normal village (inhabitants get food from insects that follow them around and excrete a tasty paste formed as a byproduct of the insects absorbing psychic energy the humans project or something weird like that.) Would have liked to see something similar for dungeons though.
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    Default Re: Numenera - What's it for, how does it play, and general questions

    While I think the setting as a whole is too weird, I actually like that part of the book. There is too much strange stuff in that world everywhere, but taken for themselves, many of the ideas are pretty good.
    The Guidebook could be quite useful as a resource book if it's similar, but I have to flip through a copy before I decide to buy it.
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    Default Re: Numenera - What's it for, how does it play, and general questions

    Quote Originally Posted by Lord Raziere View Post
    eh, I find the concept of Numenera great, but the corebook and world it presented was meh.
    (snip)
    I had a similar response to MC's Arcana Unearthed/Arcana Evolved and the world of the Diamond Throne. AU/AE was genuinely interesting and a nice fresh PoV on 3E mechanics... but the world of the Diamond Throne was so utterly inspired. It didn't surprise me when it was revealed that Monte never used the world for his own games.

    Say what you like about Ed Greenwood but at least he uses the world he created! :)
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    Default Re: Numenera - What's it for, how does it play, and general questions

    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
    While I think the setting as a whole is too weird, I actually like that part of the book. There is too much strange stuff in that world everywhere, but taken for themselves, many of the ideas are pretty good.
    The Guidebook could be quite useful as a resource book if it's similar, but I have to flip through a copy before I decide to buy it.
    It's got some ideas, but I definitely would recommend you look it over before you invest in it. A lot of things presented are still in the same weird science magic vibe of the rest of the setting, so if you're doing your own thing you might not like everything. I probably would have gone without it if I had had the idea of using the system for Eberron sooner, since it doesn't offer much else besides setting.
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    Default Re: Numenera - What's it for, how does it play, and general questions

    Quote Originally Posted by ScrivenerofDoom View Post
    I had a similar response to MC's Arcana Unearthed/Arcana Evolved and the world of the Diamond Throne. AU/AE was genuinely interesting and a nice fresh PoV on 3E mechanics... but the world of the Diamond Throne was so utterly inspired. It didn't surprise me when it was revealed that Monte never used the world for his own games.
    He just seems like a mechanics guy who considers setting and storylines only to be an afterthought that isn't really important. Numenera seems full of "and then do something weird, doesn't have to make sense".
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    Default Re: Numenera - What's it for, how does it play, and general questions

    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
    He just seems like a mechanics guy who considers setting and storylines only to be an afterthought that isn't really important. Numenera seems full of "and then do something weird, doesn't have to make sense".
    I honestly don't mind the weirdness, if anything Numenera would benefit from even less organization. Give me less of a defined world map and more of a bunch of building blocks and I think it would work better for everyone. That way I can make something of my own without having to worry about what's nearby and the effects that would have. The Numenera setting has just never felt like a world for grand arcing plots, it feels more like some of the old adventure cartoons I watched in my childhood, (I was too young to remember the names or much about them, but I'm pretty sure they were some form of anime and I thought they were weird and cool) pretty episodic, nothing really needs to make a ton of sense, just a bunch of guys with cool powers having an adventure in a place full of weird monsters.

    That's what the Numenera setting is for me, a place to do something weird without having to put too much thought in it. I don't think I'd have much of an interest in doing an overarching campaign there, more like a few quick adventures as a fall-back for a regular game. That's why I see much more potential in the system itself.
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    Default Re: Numenera - What's it for, how does it play, and general questions

    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
    He just seems like a mechanics guy who considers setting and storylines only to be an afterthought that isn't really important. Numenera seems full of "and then do something weird, doesn't have to make sense".
    I watched a couple of videos of Monte running games and i won't lie, he looks like a boring GM.
    Last edited by Kaun; 2015-04-16 at 04:53 PM.
    Aside from "have fun", i think the key to GMing is putting your players into situations where they need to make a choice that has no perfect outcome available. They will hate you for it, but they will be back at the table session after session.

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    Default Re: Numenera - What's it for, how does it play, and general questions

    d20 games sold like crazy for a decade, so there is a considerable audience for that.
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    Default Re: Numenera - What's it for, how does it play, and general questions

    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
    d20 games sold like crazy for a decade, so there is a considerable audience for that.
    Mainly because of the open game license. When wizards is offering their already popular system on a platter for anyone to use, it's pretty tempting to use that instead of trying to come up with something different. Not only can you focus more on setting, you don't have to be an expert game designer and go through extensive playtesting to ensure that the system works on a basic level. Add in the fact that there's a pre-existing audience of gamers already familiar with your system, and you can see why it would be tempting. (I know that some of my players get skittish whenever they need to learn new rules, though at least I was able to break them out of the d20 mold. Now they only want to play older editions of more obscure systems that are no longer in print anymore. )

    And you can't deny the basic system for Cypher is pretty smooth, just a single die roll for everything, heck the GM doesn't even have to do anything in a combat aside from picking targets and other ways to screw with players. As someone who's run it let me tell you that it feels wonderful to just shout out what a monster's doing and leave everything else in the hand's of the players after casually tossing out a target number between one and ten. Leaves you with plenty of time to think. I spent a couple hours preparing my game and it was a breeze (and I'm not even that much of an improviser)

    That's why I'm so anxious to use it in one of my favorite settings, because I honestly have very little complaints about the core mechanics, and I'm glad out of the few settings that would work for this system, one of my favorites works out perfectly.
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    Default Re: Numenera - What's it for, how does it play, and general questions

    The Cipher Core Rules are coming out soon. Don't know when. It's just the rules that can be adapted to any setting. No setting info inside of it I believe.
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    Default Re: Numenera - What's it for, how does it play, and general questions

    Anyone care to take a stab at where this game falls on the GNS spectrum?

    We tried playing it tonight, and it didn't seem to hit the marks for any of these styles. Maybe mildly gamist?

    Frankly I am not sure what audience this game is trying to appeal to and looked to be only one step more codified than freeform.
    Looking for feedback on Heart of Darkness, a character driven RPG of Gothic fantasy.

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