"Does anyone even play this?" edition
>Pastebin:AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
>What is Numenera?
A TTRPG set into the Ninth World, built on the bones of the previous eight, which rose and eventually collapsed.
Players are going to play as heroic adventurers, gifted by supernatural strenght and powers, obtained throu radiations, drugs or cybernetic enhancement.
http://www.numenera.com/
It even has it's own Magical Realm rulebook
http://www.montecookgames.com/store/product/love-and-sex-in-the-ninth-world/
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>>43845518
Gonna post artworks til anyone comes by
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>>43845413
I want to, but I don't have anyone to play with.
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>>43845705
I had to force my players to play this, after 2 sessions they fell in love and never want to go back to D&D
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>>43845807
Post a pdf and I might try it with my group
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https://vk.com
/doc8807382_317499445?hash=93a93f7b7021c4b5bd&dl=896042f694b3c81c42
o-ok
>>43845551
The fuck is that
>>43845413
Why do we have a general when we can't get a real thread to reach autosage?
Do you have anything you actually want to talk about? I'd love some numenera discussion, but this shit doesn't happen in a vacuum.
>>43846441
It looks like a biomechanical riding cricket that's stored in the canister in a liquid form. Almost certainly a long duration, one use item, that'll help the player cover a long distance.
The filename shows that it comes from the cypher and artifacts sourcebook. (Named after Arthur Clarke, the guy who said sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.)
>>43845413
I played Numenera for three sessions. I also ran four session of The Strange, the companion game to Numenera. I tweaked the premise so that the party was less Stargate-meets-X-Files and more SCP-meets-Sliders, with the containment of dangerous artifacts as their number one priority. My completely biased opinions are thus:
>The dice rolling system is interesting but ultimately too simple for my group, who got tired of it after two sessions.
>Attribute pools representing both effort and hit points meant nobody ever wanted to spend Effort on anything because it was essentially damaging them to do so
>Enemy difficulty rises quadratically since it raises the target number as well as their damage and hit points, a DC 6 is way tougher than two DC 3s.
>The adjective/noun/verb character creation is interesting but it really doesn't allow players to branch out into multiple specializations. Characters felt really limited and narrow
>I hate how 'magic items' work. I like my items as being hyper rare, nearly indestructible objects that give moderate bonuses but are nevertheless priceless and very useful. Disposable magic items is an atrocity.
>Character advancement is pretty minor and PCs can never really achieve any serious heights of ability by the end of the game.
Overall my problem with Numenera is that the game has the THEMES of a high-fantasy, epic sci-fi adventure game and the MECHANICS of a low-fantasy, gritty heroes game. It's GrimBright, in that the world is fantastical and bizarre and sublime but the heroes never really rise above being human beings, and everything is so out of control and -grander- than you that there's no real way to -change- anything.
>>43846840
That's because its basically 'book of the new sun; the RPG, as drawn my Moebius.'
I personally love that pools are used as both HP, and effort points. I can see why that can make characters leery though. My players generally have no problem spending points... As long as they think spending them will get the results they need.
>>43846962
Well, that's the conundrum isn't it? You COULD spend those points lowering the difficulty and increasing your odds of success... OR you could save them, accept the lower odds of success, and use them later to, you know... NOT DIE.
The big one for me is spending points to increase your chance of success when dodging an enemy's attack. There's almost no point to it, since you're essentially just guaranteeing that the attack is somewhat successful, and making a failed roll even MORE dangerous and debilitating for yourself. Likewise, spending points to improve your odds with an attack isn't helpful unless you're losing that many points or more every round of combat already.
I care a lot about resource management in my games, and Numenera's just irks me like you wouldn't believe. I would be 100% okay with the game if you reduced all attribute pools by 30% and gave characters a fourth 'Health' attribute. Oh wait, that's GURPS.
>>43845413
I feel like a mix between Numenera and Barbarians of Lemuria would hit all the right spots.
The only issue would be how to manage spending effort/hero points and health.
>>43847100
Spending points to dodge is self defeating by default, and I wish the game did a better job of explaining it. It's system mastery bullshit.
However, the trick to making players spend points is to make surebthat when they roll, they should really want to succeed. Having them roll when it's inconsequential is pointless.
That said, your primary like of defense is might. The nanos and jacks in my party are wary of spending might, because as you said, it's HP. However, the glaive with his deeper pool, might edge, and armor, is much more likely to spend might on a roll. This helps to reinforce the idea that he"s a stronger, sturdier character. I like it, but I can see why others wouldn't.
>>43847209
I don't know how your game works, but could you get what you want by using barbarians as is and just incorporating cyphers?
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>>43847100
The pools\effort thing is a narrativist mechanics in an otherwise very gamist feeling game. It wants you to be spending your pools and XP to effect the game world and have interesting consequences; but all notions of concentrating on exploration and discovery aside, it feels like a wacky DnD-lite where you dungeon crawl conserving your resources (e.g. your pools and XP).
I quite liked the cyphers and especially the oddities. I loved trying to come up with any way to make them useful. That aspect of the game very directly encourages you to not hoard resources but spend them more freely, perhaps it should have done that with pools and XP as well.
The XP-for-rerolls should probably just be replaced with fate points or bennies, other games make those replenished every session for a reason. Spending XP you're never getting back on a reroll that might still suck is terrible.
GM intrusions are great, if you can keep the creativity up.
>>43847266
>when they roll, they should really want to succeed
Pretty much this. You want to set up situations where the players want there to be either fantastic success or catastrophic failure. If it's either here nor there you want to hold onto your not!HP so you don't get whittled down, but against some huge thing you're never even going to be able to succeed UNLESS you burn pools.
It's been awhile since I've played it, having done some other narrativist games I feel I'd have an easier time with it now. It basically does a bad job of teaching some of the concepts it runs on.
>>43847592
Part of what incentives my characters yo spend their points is knowing that if they save them, they usually won't end up using them all.
So if they don't use their points then they'll fail at all sorts of puzzles and social interactions and utility tasks.. And then have one or two combats that leave them with full pools after they've rested for ten minutes. At the end of the day all they've experienced is a succession of failures, with some some relatively easy and unsatisfying combat. They don't want that, so they spend points.
>>43846840
>>Attribute pools representing both effort and hit points meant nobody ever wanted to spend Effort on anything because it was essentially damaging them to do so
This takes time to get used to, I know.
But like someone said, glaives for might while nanos for intellect
As seen in thread, Numenera is kind of iffy to start for experienced players.
But has anyone played it with new/inexperienced players?
How did it go?
>>43850345
I've put a brand new player through a one shot, and he didn't have any problems with it.
That is all.
>>43851674
And how did you all enjoy it?
>>43853575
Well, it was a one shot where a party of salt-sea traders got washed away from their ship in a storm. They washed up near the underwater city, where they took the limestone chute down and met the mayor.
They agreed to go to a nearby wreck where they would reclaim an artifact for the city, in exchange for a boat. The city was low on oxygen, and the artifact would fix this. (City turns co2 into oxygen. Artifact clones organs. Mayors plan is to make banks of lungs.)
So the party heads on over, and gets harried by electric sharks. Once inside the derelict vessel, they start puzzling out the architecture and the various rooms and control mechanisms. (Mechanical tentacles that latch onto the body and interact with sentient minds. Powered by some sort of psionic hydraulic fluid, which is leaking all over the place.) Eventually they get the ice nano hooked up into the controls, and he grabs the artifact with a telekinesis cargo crane. (The artifact was discovered with the bodies of some dead treasure hunters the town had sent before. Too many sharks to grab it by hand.)
Once the artifact is close by the party leaves and grabs the artifact on their way out. While leavingnthey are attacked by the electric sharks, including their matriarch. Cue an underwater panic as they try to take down a giant sparking armor plated fish, which they narrowly won with no casualties thanks to an xp reroll. (The shark had swallowed their glaive, who was cutting his way out while taking might defense checks against stomach acid. )
I'd say everyone had fun, and the guy that was new to roleplaying was generally smoother at play then the guy who had mostly played DND. (I had two other players with previous numenera.) However, that could be due to their personalities.
All in all, I've numenera to be very easy to teach, especially to people that dont have preconceptions. So if you have experience with no games, or with many games, Numenera is very easy to get into.
>ITT no one gives a fuck of Numenera.
It's like Dungeons the Dragoning.
As brilliant and fun and cool it seems, no one gives a fuck or plays it
>>43847295
I'd mostly like bigger pools and the difficulty scale, since 2d6 is too grainy. Although I like leveling up, BoL already has lots of abilities and boons. Maybe something like Focus and Careers can be conflated.
Cyphers would probably fit easily, since heroes are meant to spend all their loot between adventures.
>>43857476
>BoL
?
Ruleset is a little babby's first RPG, in that it's very simple. Character creation in particular is a breeze. Great for people new to RPGs, but I would like to see a deeper rule system as an add-on.
>>43856022
>As brilliant and fun and cool it seems, no one gives a fuck or plays it
The people who think Numenera is brilliant have a very small reference pool.
Fun I won't argue.
>>43858269
I suppose.
Only played Dark Heresy 1e, RT, Pathfinder, uh... Valley of Eternity. And Numenera.
>>43858547
Game.
Tag.
Checkmate.
