Now that the dust has settled, what are your final thoughts on Numenera?
>>46493156
Dust? What dust?
Anti-Monte's hate it, because Monte.
I actually read some of the fiction it springs from, and find the game a lot of fun to play or run.
>>46493553
we always had fights in Numenera threads back when the game was just a kickstarter dream
>>46493156
The system has a good concept with the dice pools, but is honestly kinda clunky with the precise execution.
Anyone else agree?
>>46493156
I don't care
>>46493663
Roleplaying games are all clunky. Someone who uses the phrase "elegant mechanics" is so far down the gamer rabbit hole they have no concept anymore.
>>46493792
Some are clunkier than others.
>>46493792
Keep telling that to yourself, if it helps you sleep.
>>46493808
No argument there, but Cypher doesn't have enough numbers to be truly clunky.
>>46493850
Provide examples, then.
>>46493851
Cypher is numbers-y as fuck. Basically the whole game is resource management with the resource pools.
>>46493663
Numenera/Cypher does not use dice pools in the classic sense. "Boost Pool" might be a better phrase.
>>46493156
Great potential wasted.
>>46493869
Three pools that all use the same process is too confusing for you? Really?
>>46493867
Why should I? You already made it clear that any examples provided will be met with snark.
>>46493921
Considering how lopsided Edge and Effort can be once you've got some XP under your belt, yep, it's clunky as fuck.
I like it a lot and have run a couple of successful campaigns.
>>46493156
Good idea, mediocrily realized.
>>46493156
It's too simplistic.
I don't like it.
>>46493156
It's too complex.
I don't like it.
>>46493156
My wife's boyfriend likes it, personally haven't tried it yet
The setting is great but the classes and much of the fluff is just so cheesy it's a pain to read. System lacks depth and frankly is just boring.
>>46493156
It's stupid. The entire thing seemed like a testbed for bad design ideas, abandoned as soon as they were realized.
>>46493156
One guy can get the ability to reshape reality.
Another guy can get the ability to stand watch ALL NIGHT long.
It's not a good game. Both the setting and the mechanics have good ideas behind, but the execution is full of flaws. OTOH it's not outrageously bad, and surely someone will (and does) find a way to make good games out of it.
The thing that REALLY weirds me out is that it's hailed as a sort of story-game by folks who probably have never seen a game outside of d20, becuase it sure as hell isn't.
>>46496532
nice bait
>>46493156
Fun setting. Ambitious.
Unbalanced, boring mechanics.
>>46493156
Best mechanics I've used in my life desu. Everything flows smoothly and works fast. With a pretty cool setting to boot. I like that as a GM I literally don't have to make a single roll and I have a whole lot of hooks to hang adventures on.
I think /tg/ spergs don't like it just because it doesn't satisfy their autism.
>>46493156
If this didn't have Cook's name attached, nobody would have given it a second glance.
>>46497032
Personally I have my own hateboner for Cook, but can someone explain to me why people hate/love him?
Sold the books, regret it I want them again. Will probably buy again. Have the PDF but I want dead tree.
>>46493156
>Now that the dust has settled
>nanodust
>haha
>>46497051
After he helped make D&D 3.0, he admitted in a blog post that he and the other game designers were using "ivory tower design theory" similar to MTG to design the abilities and feats of 3E. That is, feats/abilities are intentionally unbalanced so that power players who invest a lot of time in the game will figure out what is "good" and what is "worthless" from a pure number-crunching aspect. Casual players will take trap options that are inferior. He admitted that this was a mistake but the reputation has dogged him ever since, especially since people complained that he favors magic-users in every game he makes (and especially so in 3E).
>>46499097
He also has a quite bad record for the press releases for 5r- You see, Cook was on the riginal design team for 5e during the long playtest phase, and he had a regular column on the WotC website. In a climate tense with anticipation and edition wars, in his posts he often put his foot in his mouth by stating things that showed he had not looked at D&D past his own work (see the infamous "I invented passive perception" line). Cook left Wizards well before the release of 5e, and went on to kickstart Numenera.
>>46499238
Pretty obvious he was brought back to WotC to be sacrificed on the altar of angry nerd-dom.
Now, with D&D being a brand that just happens to produce something RPG related once in a while, the risks of it vanishing are no better than at the collapse of 4e.
>>46493156
I know nothing about it (other than Monte Cook designed it, not that this really impacts my thoughts on it) and I don't think I know anyone who's played it.
>>46493156
Hard to play, both because the rules are clunky and unbalanced and because the setting is barely there.
>>46496866
Fun idea for a setting. It's not fleshed out at all, and Monte gets all defensive about it by saying the details should be up to the GM. If I'm going to make everything up myself, I don't need to buy his book.
>>46500735
>It's not fleshed out at all,
Perhaps you should go back to that first Forgotten Realms box for 1e for another look. Gazetteers are the baseline, and the Numenera book includes one for an area the size of Europe. Then there's that whole second book...
Make the name of the damned bar and the bartender yourself. You were going to anyway.
>>46493156
I don't like the setting at all. But the Cypher System is kind of neat, even though I don't think I'll be using it any time.
>>46501510
Same
>>46493156
>setting
it's high fantasy that is just called scifi to be different, which alone rustles so many of my jimmies. as far as fantasy settings go it's pretty expansive but has nothing I found particularly interesting, and no central conceit aside from being tarted up as a scifi setting to make it interesting.
>game
seceral good ideas (not all of them original) in a bundle that fell short of being better than the sum of its parts, along with several questionable or outright bad ideas that bring the whole system down to "why would you do this" levels of design philosophy. It's not something I have any strong desire to play or run, and honestly I'd be dubious if someone else suggested it for a game.
>>46501439
There are maps, for sure, but something like Numenera really needs more about people and cultures than is given in any of the books. I couldn't even tell you for sure whether or not bars exist in Numenera.
The classes are dumb and completely generic. I don't get the point of making a class system if you're just going to make three soulless versions of the same crap. The cypher is nice tho
yeah the game lacks a metaplot
>>46501607
that actually made sense to me, archetypes following the pretty broad fighter/rogue/mage idea is fine. I don't know who thought the soft-serve icecream approach was the best one to adopt though, the chocolate-vanilla swirl class feels both uninspired and mechanically less than both other options.
>less power for more versatility
I get that in principle, but in execution they still look terrible.
>>46501664
>the chocolate-vanilla swirl class feels both uninspired and mechanically less than both other options
exactly, that was the lower point IMO. I disliked the system behind the classes, the skills were just uninspired, like a chore task for Monte.
Also why is he so obsessed with D20 dices.
>>46501607
>>46501703
In a case like this, why are there even classes? A game like this could have just gotten by with a skill list.
>>46493156
Neat settings
System is could be better. Having to effectively spend health to expend effort never feels good, and sometimes results in nothing being accomplished for the waste of resources. Also, a GM who runs it will never want to stop, because it is a super easy to run system.
>>46501771
i was quoting
this
>>46501703
>>46501785
yeah i don't get it, and then Monte just smash the three classes with a lot of options to make subclasses or diversify your character, shit like that. I mean i love that side of the game, i just don't see the point of the classes.
>>46493792
This is borderline bait. Yes, anything that tries to model some kind of reality using dice and stats is bound to be kind of dense, but some systems just try to model fiction instead, and inbetween the two there's a lot of wiggle room.
Some systems end up feeling clumsy and stilted because of the amount of rolls involved in various situations, others handle it a lot more smoothly, that's just how it is.
If you want to be one of those people who get triggered as soon as someone says clunky or elegant, that's on you, but anyone who's played more than one game system knows they're not all the same.
>>46497051
He likes to make magic REALLY good and fighting REALLY bad.
Even in Numenera this is an issue.
>>46496578
>muh balance
some people just want the setting to not be retarded, basing classes on "balance" inevitably results in awfulness like weaboo fightan magic because it's not fair that wizards can do stuff that thugs can't.
If balance is at the top of your list for what a game should focus on then stick to games without the role-playing part.
>>46502125
Weaboo fightan magic is good and fun you fucking mong.
>>46497051
Whatever you think of his work what gets a lot of people is how it sounds like he's jacking himself off when he writes about what he's done. Seriously, read what he has to say about Numenara on his website. Obviously you hype up your product, but it's pretty ridiculous.
Yes, we get that everything having levels and players rolling for everything is different, but it's not a fucking eye-opening revolution in game design.
>>46497051
I heard Cook once shot a man, just to watch him die.
>>46502434
So did Donald Trump, and he is running for president.
>>46493156
Good and fun game to play with like minded people
>>46502434
yeah and he hangs his head and cries.
>>46497051
>>46502491
retarded people?
>>46502491
Like minded people being the key word. It's a niche game in an already niche hobby. I love it but have a hard time getting players that are interested and invested.
>>46502568
Both of these fine excerpts are from a editorial from Kobold Quaterly
>>46502568
>>46502621
How come he has not moved into the narrativist trend?
>>46493156
One of my groups started a Numenera campaign and asked me to play. I took a look at the rules and opted out, the setting and the system looked boring as fuck.
>>46502621
I have to agree with the sentiment here that a character built through play will likely be more interesting, but 1) he's greatly exaggerating his point and 2) he sounds like a pretentious twat.
I've found it a great beginners game that isnt traditional fantasy or scifi.
The system is easy and helps people get into rp. I'm not sure the system has a lot of depth but who cares, its good for a fun time.
>>46493156
The bestiary and setting material are useful to mine for ideas. I don't like the character classes, the core resolution system or the designer.
>>46502664
Numenera is his idea of "narrativist".
>>46502125
This is what 3.5 brain damage looks like.
>>46493156
Pretty cool setting that is almost impossible to use correctly.
>>46502664
After reading numerna I never got the impression he wanted to get out of the crunchy/builds style of character advancement he just wanted to take the same old feat system and fluff it different. A more narrativist designer would likely be skeptical of including the majority of the advancements because of how little narrative weight they have. My major complaint with the system is that it doesn't want to commit fully toward being a lightweight flexible game or a crunchy combat sim. It's bland and lacks focus.
>>46493156
Simple and solid on mechanics, some slips in specific points, interesting ideas in others.
It won't please crunch heavy players despite having lists, for it has a simple structure and hard numbers. Setting is best approached as alien discovery, which also isn't a common crowd favorite.
It would be nice if there would be a different way to spend points for pools, make Edge and spending more interesting. Also, guidelines on how to design your own Verb.
>>46502125
>the rewards of 3.x
>>46502568
Oh, this explains 3rd edition wizards at least. Since they were able to do like basically whatever they wanted AND switch from day to day, that means they obviously weren't optimized.
>>46502883
>14:44:44
Time quints confirm the truth of your statement.
>>46493156
Having read the book, I honestly can't tell what the setting is supposed to be like. I would love a straight up weird-science setting, but it has way too many tropes of generic fantasy to feel like that.
When we played it, the adventure was a very basic one that was essentially a D&D adventure with different names stuck in it. The system was functional though, a little boring for my tastes, but it did the job with minimal need to look stuff up.
>>46496578
Go on, post the actual text of high level nano abilities, and show how they're obviously superior to a Glaive.
Because you're doing the same thing people have done from the first Numenera threads - reading the name "Move Mountains" and thinking that actually means you can move mountains, instead of it just being a flavourful name for very crude telekinesis.
>>46506059
Not that guy but when I last read numera the nano had all the most interesting abilities. Less of a mechanical issue and more of a problem that much of the glave options are bland.
