Has anyone played it? Run it? Any thoughts?
Seems well-supported and the examples of play make it seem to be a pretty fast, easy to learn and eary to play game. The idea that you can take any movie you've seen, book you've read or even other game you've collected and incorporate it into The Strange is intriguing...
I've played and run the other Cypher game, Numenera, and have a bunch of the Strange books, but rapid-fire multi-genre is for the more excessively caffeinated, a group I no longer am part of.
>>44284729
Is this game supposed to be like the Sliders tv show, where you travel between dimensions and worlds?
>>44287314
Sort of... but you're not on an out of control ride. Your equipment and, to an extent, you acclimate to the new world you're in so you're not a total outsider once you're there. You also won't ever run into an alternate version of yourself... well... unless there's some reason for it but these worlds are not alternate earths.
They can be ANYTHING your GM can think of or steal from. You might go from a world where you're helping a super-sleuth solve a mystery using deductive reasoning (or so he says, anyway) right to a world where you're part of a ragtag fleet fleeing a robot army to find sanctuary on a world settled by the fabled 13th colony to maybe a world where Dark Lords from other realities are stealing Earth's probability energy, etc.
The worlds come into existence because of The Strange... some ancient field of alien construction. No one is sure why it was created but it apparently got away from the builders' control... and now things reside there. Bad things. Things that can consume whole planets. In fact, one of those motherfuckers showing up on our doorstep was how we found out about the Strange.
In the game, you play a person who is part of an agency that goes on excursions into the Strange for various reasons. You 're one of the Quickened and that gives you the ability to "translate" into these other worlds without the aid of something like a gate or portal. They also allow you to bend the rules a bit based on certain qualities you've chosen at character generation: spinners twist perceptions, vector's move in unexpected ways, paradox's can rewrite facts, etc.
I'm only reading about it. I haven't gotten to play.... but I want to.
>>44284729
It's a Monte book. Nobody has even touched it.
>>44288241
Go on with your hate-mongering. It's not min/maxFinder or Dark Shitheresy but a nice game.
Try it. Or perhaps you are afraid of having fun?
It's pathetic every time one of you start complaining about Monte Cook or any designer you dislike just for flaming/drama/attention. Get back to your basement with your ponies!
>>44289249
>Try it
Not them, have done. It's like Monte looked at fate or some other rules light system and went "People like this? It's not D&D enough!" Then he made a system that fails at being D&D or a good rules light narative thing.
>>44288202
Holy fuck this sounds nice
>>44289562
what have the cypher system to do with D&D besides being written by Monte?
You don't even try anymore haters.
>>44289682
Numenera is basically D&D with a coat of nanotech paint. Half the item and the monsters are classic D&D fare with muh mysterious technology stamped on it.
That said, The Strange sounds miles ahead better than that. It's also Bruce Cordell's work, not Monte.
>>44289881
Even if that was true, the system (what was being discused) has nothing to do with the particular setting of Numenera. Keep trying moron.
>>44289965
You sound like you're fun at parties. The Cypher system uses D&D as a foundation, then uses some Fate-inspired narrative mechanics to try and distract from the fact that it's a creatively bankrupt system.
>That insane moment where one troll responds to himself for an entire thread.
We get it, you don't like things you don't know anything about.
>>44290472
Replies: 12
Posters: 11
>>44284729
I've GMed it a few times.
It's a very versatile, clean system that allows high customization. It's very broad, but not extremely deep.
Every character has a shifting set of powers determined by random tables and/or the GM, that can lead to fun things like phasing someone through an airplane and watching them fall backwards out of the plane as they hang in air while it waits to run out.
If your players play in the base setting, they are Men in Black, but for beings from other dimensions instead of just other planets (usually).
I've run one of the premade adventures as well, it was okay. Probably an above average one compared to most other systems.
>>44289965
I know the strange is a different setting from numenera. That's a good thing.
I was replying to your "Cypher has nothing to do with D&D" post.
Don't get so defensive. Nobody likes Numenera. The Strange looks like it could be very good, but it's a new game and needs time to get known. So instead of playing the Monte fanboy card, talk about The Strange.
>>44288202
Reminds me a bit of TORG.
>>44290687
You were the first to bring Numenera, people here were talking about the strange and I mentioned the cypher system (which is a settingless system).
>>44290780
You over-reacted to his post, you should learn to not be a sperglord.
I love the Cypher System and I hope the thread dies just to spite you.
>>44290761
Except TORG was good?
(Just kidding. As someone who ran TORG a little back when it came out, my informed opinion is that TORG was not good.)
>>44290839
>learn to not be a sperglord
not gonna happen
>>44290889
I never played it - only know it from bad fanfiction of Sailor Moon. Long story.
Honestly, I've only got a single session of D&D as the totality of my real RP experience. ANYTHING sounds better than nothing.
(...He said ironically, having heard of FATAL and Dungeons: the Dragoning 40,000 7th Edition)
>Caring about the names on a game book's cover
Really? I couldn't care less. If the game is fun, I don't care if it was collaboratively designed by Jar Jar Binks and Adolph Hitler.
>>44290989
TORG had some great ideas with the Possibility Wars and invading alternate realities. Sadly, me and my group felt the rules were craptastic and ultimately not worth the hassle.
(I'd be all for TORG running on a modern system that can handle it.)
>>44290889
I'm convinced that any game can be good with a good GM. I played TORG. My GM made it fun. It's fondly remembered by all those who played it... except That Guy, of course.
>>44290989
>(...He said ironically, having heard of FATAL and Dungeons: the Dragoning 40,000 7th Edition)
Try to find the rules, ok some of the rules, to Hybrid RPG. Hopefully they're still up on the internet somewhere.
>>44291046
See? YMMV. The rules led to some epic card plays which led to some incredibly memorable scenes in our game.
Interestingly, as the example abve seemed to allude to, there's no reason you can't end up on the TORG earth in one of the recursions (aka alternate worlds).
Pull any old game you've had on your shelf - those games you wished you could play but never could - and they can be recursions. Shoot ghosts with a proton stream, pilot your Battlemater across a battlefield and lay waste to an enemy's mech with your PPC, fight Horrors in Barsaive, sit in a certain cantina to watch Han shoot first, slap Iomedae in the ass, vote for Dunkelzahn....
>>44290989
>only know it from bad fanfiction of Sailor Moon. Long story.
This was magical, thank you. Sometimes it's the little things, you know?
>>44291191
I want to go into alternate worlds where every cliche porn plotline is real.
You drive to your job and pick up a barely dressed hitchiker chick who "pays" for a ride with a blowjob. Then you get to your job - cleaning pools, of course - where the woman of the house sunbathes nude and gets horny watching me work so she fucks me right out there for the neighbors to see. Then I leave my job and go home where I catch my girlfriend going down on her best friend and they invite me to join them. Then we get arrested for all the noise we make and the female police officer decides I need a cavity search... except she has be search her cavities. I pass out from all the banging and loads blown and wake up in the infirmary to find my dick is already in the cute nurse's throat. The cute doctor comes in and reprimands her.. for not knowing how to give proper blowjobs and proceeds to demonstrate the proper technique after which I'm set free on a technicality and, as I drive home, there's a barely dressed hitchhiker chick...
>>44292552
enjoy your AIDS
>>44292707
Have you ever seena porn movie where a character gets AIDS? That'd be some government ting like Reefer Madness if you have.
>>44284729
I want to run a Planescape game with it.
>>44287314
If anything I say it's more like a sketch comedy ensemble show.
>>44291216
What, you mean you read that too? Niiice. Or am I completely misunderstanding you?
I wouldn't put it past me!
>>44292552
So... a Slide into FATAL?
>>44289249
>Dark Shitheresy
Is this really the best you could come up with? Come on. "Dark Hereshitty." "Dark Horrible-sy." "Dork Heresy." You're not even trying.
>>44293791
You should find a group of non-assholes to play with. Or maybe your group should...
>>44293999
Dick HerSecretly
>>44293983
> So... a Slide into FATAL?
No. Something sexual and fun. FATAL is neither.
>>oh it was not a criticism, just an observation. You're not travelling to betweens worlds so much as jumping into a totally different story and Setting where you play a totally another role. Much like the actors in a sketch comedy show.
>>44294052
Truthy.
>>44288202
Sounds kind of like Doctor Who but without the Doctor. Which is good.
>>44290687
>Nobody likes Numenera.
Not true, but carry on, since this is not a Numenera thread unless you want to use some part of the Ninth World as a Strange recursion.
>>44284729
I ran a 4-session The Strange campaign a few months ago. I reflavoured the agency as a branch of the SCP Foundation with the idea that Cyphers were basically SCPs from other universes. The PCs were tasked with investigating the deaths of two Foundation agents, both of whom died accidental deaths in the same city within a week of each other. Their investigation eventually led to a car dealership that was using imported cybertech to make sentient (and homicidal) cars. The climax was a fight in the factory against the cyber-augmented retailer and his murderous assembly line.
The second half of the game involved the PCs investigating an SCP facility that has been literally warped into another dimension, with the goal being to assess the situation, recover any salvageable artifacts, and terminate anything hostile. They went most of a session just exploring the facility, which was running on emergency power, and eventually had to blow the nuclear reactor and escape the former scientists and guards which had been warped by a Dead-Space-style Marker SCP into self-mutilating cannibals.
The third session involved them jumping to the wrong dimension, a desert hellhole, and seeking refuge in an abandoned tower that was half-buried in sand. As expected, the inhuman residents were not happy, but they managed to escape after signalling to a passing sand skiff and scrambling on board, fighting back against the creatures all the while. They eventually ported back to Earth, a few key relics in tow, and reached Tier 2 (or Sphere, or whatever it's called).
My thoughts to come in part 2.
>>44295658
Ah, I should mention that the car investigation was two sessions, the other two took one session each. Anyway, my thoughts on the system.
The Strange is an okay game. It's fast to play and pretty easy to learn, but that simplicity comes with some pretty hefty costs. Namely, starter characters are pretty narrow and you don't get THAT many abilities as you level up. More importantly you don't get to change your character progression either - if you're a Nano who Rides the Lightning in Numenera, you MUST take Nano and Rides the Lightning abilities as you level up. The Strange uses Cyphers to mitigate this, as well as a new mechanic of Ability Swapping.
Anyone familiar with Numenera knows what Cyphers are, but for those who don't they're single-use magic items that you're meant to find (and use) frequently. There are even mechanics in place so that you can't hoard them. I dislike this system because it makes magic items cheap, disposable, and honestly really boring. Imagine if Scrolls and Potions were the only magic items in D&D, and you were supposed to get 1-3 of them every encounter. They become so commonplace that they stop being cool bonus treats and become standard rewards for adventuring, like gold.
Ability Swapping is the way that The Strange tries to be different from Numenera and fix the limited character abilities issue. Basically, whenever you swap dimensions you keep your class (Fighter, Mage, Thief) but your specialization/power suite (investigator/healer/marksman/pyromancer/etc) changes. It's always the same in that dimension, so if you have Carries a Gun on Earth you'll always have Carries a Gun when you're on Earth, you don't get to change it when you come back. What the designers intended was, basically, that you can mix up your character's appearance and abilities between worlds to try out new stuff and keep the game fresh.
Ability Swapping is a bad mechanic, though, and I'll explain why in the next part.
>>44295836
First, every time your players go to a new dimension they have to choose a new ability suite for their characters to have. That means pouring over a few dozen abilities, choosing one after however much time that takes, reading up on how it works, writing it down, and THEN having to remember all that when combat starts. In practice this is confusing as hell and really, really unfun for new players. They just made a new character, why do they suddenly have to re-make them?
Second, not every dimension allows every power. Some abilities are only available on Earth, others only in Sci-Fi realms, others are Fantasy-only, and a few are universal. A couple are setting specific, like a psychic power ability that is exclusive to a J-Pop technicolour universe that's basically Akira meets Deus Ex with Sailor Moon thrown into the mix somewhere along the way. What this results in is players finding ability suites they really like, then being forced to give them up and take a new one that fits the setting of the next adventure.
Third, tracking ability suites and dimensions travelled to can rapidly get out of hand, and requires the player to have multiple character sheets, one for each dimension. You might be asking "Why not just erase the old info on your sheet?" Well, the answer is that every character can (and the game suggests SHOULD) have a different appearance, race, and possibly even gender for each dimension. Tracking all that on one character sheet, plus every ability suite for every other dimension, is incredibly impractical. Thus, multiple character sheets, meaning you make a new one every time you go to a new world.
Final thoughts in the next part.
>>44295996
I'll try to summarize what feedback my players gave, as well as my own thoughts.
1. Nobody liked how simple the dice rolling was, not even the newbie. The first session it was fun and novel, the second session it was starting to grate, and by the end of the fourth session EVERYONE was aching for something more interesting.
2. Attribute pools serving as hit points meant that almost nobody wanted to spend Effort, because it meant giving up durability for upcoming fights or challenges. Generally speaking, unless you've got a lot of Edge it's better to accept the worse odds and save your points. Here's why:
Scenario 1: Player spends points and succeeds. They lose some resources but accomplish the task.
Scenario 2: Player spends points and fails. They lose a LOT of resources and don't accomplish the task.
Scenario 3: Player spends no points and succeeds. They lose no resources and accomplish the task.
Scenario 4: Player spends no points and fails. They lose some resources and don't accomplish the task.
The difference in success between 1/2 and 3/4 is, usually, only about 15-30%, so spending points from your pool is ALMOST NEVER WORTH IT. The only time you should spend points is when succeeding on a task is significantly more advantageous than failure, or when you absolutely positively MUST have a guaranteed success at something. My players realized this early on and it made them play very conservatively. Better to accept a slightly high risk of failure than to guarantee resource loss, at least about 80% of the time.
3. Monsters are poorly explained and laid out. I couldn't find anywhere that listed how many hit points monsters had (I eventually assumed it was 3 times their Challenge Rating) and generally speaking they're pretty boring. Which leads to....
4. Lack of tactical options. Players didn't feel like the game offered much in terms of meaningful choices, because the 'best' course of action was usually clear and had very few alternatives.
The Good:
-the cypher system is seriously flexible, you wanna be a swashbuckling synthetic pirate who rides a giant beetle into battle? well if your Dm is ok with it you can.
-as a DM it is easier to improvise when things don't go as planned,
-The pool system and how it interacts with effort (some of the above seem to hate this but personally as a player this has allowed me to determine which rolls I place value on succeeding.)
-The game is efficient, doesn't require much paperwork once you get going and you don't get bogged down with stuff along the lines of rolling and adding up 10d6 then 4d6 three times and reducing those rolls by the fire resistance before applying it to hp which also has to be recalculated every turn cause regeneration and enemy cleric etc.
The bad:
-balance, you can break the game hard by combining various abilities
-setting wise the Strange invites derailment of plot, its too easy for players to essentially walk away from any problem they don't feel like dealing with.
-some people will always miss their wizard toolbox from dnd
As a group we found Numenera more fun than the Strange (3 numenera campaigns, 2 strange campaigns). It's less paperwork, less derailment, and as a setting it is much easier to work with.
>>44295658
>>44295836
>>44295996
>>44296209
This is true.
I am playing in a the Strange game, but so far I have to say I'm not impressed in the least.
It's even worse than D&D, in my humble opinion.
Honestly from what I hear in this thread it really sounds a lot like someone telling a second-hand bad experience with Fate. Don't mean to troll, but going by the accounts of those who played, it seems that the system tries to be both freeform-narrative and crunchy at the same time. (I also don't like the amount of jargon in the books, but I only skimmed them).
>>44297783
It is not crunchy in the least.
Like a marshmallow.
>>44297783
The game doesn't try too hard to be crunchy, it just kind of throws tons and tons of content at you within the context of its mechanics. The content itself is often flawed due to the nature of Monte Cook.
Monte Cook has a fantastic imagination and great worldbuilding skill, he seems to have a rather big flaw when it comes to putting things to paper tho because when he get likes something its powerlevel reflects this. This is rather consistent throughout his works personal IP or somebody elses.
>>44297729
your comment... irks me. You point out a bunch of other peoples comments, go "yeah this" without adding anything other than "it's worse than this other thing that im giving no basis to not liking". that other thing you have stated is also the vaguest term. Do you mean D&D or d20systems in general? if actually dnd which editions cause there is a heck of alot of variation there.
>>44295836
>but only potions or scrolls exist
Hey, I remember you from another thread, you're the guy who doesn't know about Artifacts even though you've claimed to have played!
Either way, you should try reading the rule section, there are options to take abilities outside your focus, and you can change said focus, it's not always the same, that one is in the Gameplay help section so I forgive you because that section is hard to read.
>>44296209
At low tiers the effort system is better to not spend points, unless you are spending them on raising damage. However newer players never think that without someone telling them and setting their expectations in advance.
Every monster has their HP on their page, if you mean custom monsters then I believe it's the very first page of the monster section.
>Lack of tactical options
You mean no map?
>>44297688
>The pool system and how it interacts with effort (some of the above seem to hate this but personally as a player this has allowed me to determine which rolls I place value on succeeding.)
This is a "Your mileage may vary" thing.
If your GM gives you meaningful choices, you'll actually want to spend points.
If he often and only makes you roll for tedious bullshit, you'll not.
I'm currently setting up for a The Strange campaign but I'm risking being a dick with my plans. I have the players expecting a completely different sort of game. They're building characters blind with anything you might not find I a real-life modern setting completely hidden. They'll be disovering The Strange about 3 or 4 sessions in and, at the same time, discover the abilities that come along with it.
I'm hoping the bait & switch will actually be cool to them but y'never know..
>>44298171
3.5
>>44297729
Good to know I'm not the only one, and that I didn't write all that in vain.
>>44297688
If your group likes it then play it. Mine didn't, so we don't anymore. I don't think The Strange is a great game but if it works for your group, you should absolutely enjoy yourselves. If you come up with any homebrew or house rules, consider posting it online somewhere to help the groups that are struggling with the game.
>>44298267
>Hey, I remember you from another thread
I think you're confusing me with someone else. I know that Artifacts exist. They're just so rare and pretty decidedly optional, compared to Cyphers which even the game considers a CORE element of the system and adventuring. It's called the Cypher System and not the Artifact System for a reason.
>At low tiers the effort system is better to not spend points, unless you are spending them on raising damage. However newer players never think that without someone telling them and setting their expectations in advance.
I didn't tell my players about the cost to benefit ratio of Effort, they figured it out within 2-3 hours of our first session. One of my players is dyslexic and has math problems and he STILL figured it out by the end of the first session. So, you're dead wrong there, and I'm not sure where you're getting those stats.
>You mean no map?
I never mentioned a map, and maps have nothing to do with tactical options. 13th Age has no map or grid in its system and it has tons of tactical options. I'm talking about combat powers that do more than just deal damage to enemies, which my players found few and far between. We played at level/sphere/tier 1-2, as I feel the game intends you to start at the bottom, and all of my players were dissatisfied with the number and quality of the options available to them.
