snip

[TheDiceMustRoll]

snip

 

[Neyuzivit]

i want this avatar

 

[Taluntain]

Someone put the prosperface on that cat plz.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Is Monte Cook the bloke with an utter hardon for mages and total disdain for non-magical classes?
Fake edit:Yup, he is, if the 1d4chan page on him is anything true.

Which ecplains some of this pitch though.

 

[Alex]

Is Monte Cook the bloke with an utter hardon for mages and total disdain for non-magical classes?
(snip...)

I wish. If Numenera took that as a design philosophy, it might have been at least entertaining. Also, the KS already has 189,000 out of the 210,000 it needs.

 

[roll-a-die]

Is Monte Cook the bloke with an utter hardon for mages and total disdain for non-magical classes?
(snip...)

I wish. If Numenera took that as a design philosophy, it might have been at least entertaining. Also, the KS already has 189,000 out of the 210,000 it needs.

Numenera is good for what it is, a setting powered by a really really simple rule set designed to be simple enough and easy enough your grandmother could play it. It's really good for zero setup games, and for filler games in my experience.

The Strange is utterly fucked though. They should have gone full sliders or not at all.

 

[Xathrodox86]

Is Monte Cook the bloke with an utter hardon for mages and total disdain for non-magical classes?
(snip...)

I wish. If Numenera took that as a design philosophy, it might have been at least entertaining. Also, the KS already has 189,000 out of the 210,000 it needs.

Numenera is good for what it is, a setting powered by a really really simple rule set designed to be simple enough and easy enough your grandmother could play it. It's really good for zero setup games, and for filler games in my experience.

The Strange is utterly fucked though. They should have gone full sliders or not at all.

I'll be playing Numenera this weekend. What should I be expecting from it? Our GM is a cool bloke, and he's obviously very passionate about the whole thing, but I have this eerie feeling...

 

[Night Goat]

This project will only be funded if at least $210,653 is pledged by Fri, Sep 16 2016 6:09 PM PDT.

That's a very specific goal.

 

[Coma White]

Getting some Mage: The Ascension vibes from this one. The built-in structuring stuff seems interesting, but I feel like some of this setting and attached lingo gets in my way.

I think Monte Cook as a lead designer is really good at some things and really neglectful of (or just doesn't care much for) others.

EDIT: Though I love the sort of meta idea of the game being more real than real life, and breaks in play being attributable to attributes of the world itself. Very cool.

 

[Leechmonger]

i want this avatar

What's up with all these pen and paper RPGs embracing SO RANDUM XD recently? Is Tides of Numenera that influential?

 

[Modron]

What's up with all these pen and paper RPGs embracing SO RANDUM XD recently?

To be fair, haven't PnP RPGs have always pretty much taken the kitchen sink approach just to give the players a really wide base to draw from.

 

[Leechmonger]

To be fair, haven't PnP RPGs have always pretty much taken the kitchen sink approach just to give the players a really wide base to draw from.

I wouldn't know, I never played them. It was my understanding that these games were relatively cohesive and built around one theme (high fantasy, lovecraftian horror, etc.). Recently the theme seems to be "disjointedness".

 

[roll-a-die]

Is Monte Cook the bloke with an utter hardon for mages and total disdain for non-magical classes?
(snip...)

I wish. If Numenera took that as a design philosophy, it might have been at least entertaining. Also, the KS already has 189,000 out of the 210,000 it needs.

Numenera is good for what it is, a setting powered by a really really simple rule set designed to be simple enough and easy enough your grandmother could play it. It's really good for zero setup games, and for filler games in my experience.

The Strange is utterly fucked though. They should have gone full sliders or not at all.

I'll be playing Numenera this weekend. What should I be expecting from it? Our GM is a cool bloke, and he's obviously very passionate about the whole thing, but I have this eerie feeling...

It really depends on the GM, in general the system is simple and the setting is deep, the system's designed for player and GM negotiation before rolls take place. GM assigns a task a difficulty level from 1-10, you tell the GM what you have that modified the difficulty level(This could be an item like a cypher, an asset(Information, or some kind of advantage in the task), skills at the task, special abilities, if you are expending effort etc. Then you roll a d20. Say you want to lie to skeptical human, that's a 7, it's pretty close to impossible without skills, however you do have skills you are trained at lying more than that, you have knowledge of a subject that interests this skeptic, and can distract him from the lie with that. That's an asset, both of these would take the difficulty 7 roll, which has a target of 21, down to a difficulty 5 which has a target of 15. You could knock it down further by spending 3 or more intellect points for something called effort.

Despite what they say, the Martial foci and such are decent, barring the bows one, which is literally just, you craft bows, go at it. The masters weaponry one is good, just bland. And at high levels basically turns you into something that can insta kill anything half your level. This is true of most of the martial foci. And the Glaive class gets criticism for not having much to do outside of combat. I think that's both an advantage an a disadvantage, the glaive is incredibly good at directing combat encounters. And most of the out of combat stuff in Numenera is based on skills and items and such. Not on character powers. For instance, the Nano has 2 first tier esoterie in the main book that aren't just for combat. And the jack at first tier has Flex Skill, and that makes it the most versatile early on. Later on it kinda equalizes, at least within the niche of the profession and descriptor of you character. Nanos have a slight lead for non-combat at the higher levels however. Esoteries are kinda cheating.

The setting itself is what sells most people on the game. I'm not going to spoil it more than people already have. But there's a cypher in it, that you can use that causes cascading people turning into killer black smoke explosions. The range on it is one mile, and it then causes anyone within that range to puke up black smoke and take like 9 damage to all thier pools, and then it happens again, and again, untill there's no one left within a miles radius of everyone it effected.

The best thing is if you didn't have someone who knew how to identify numenera, you could see that and not know what it does. That's one of the horror things in Numenera. And why you typically bring along a nano or a jack who can identify these things. Because otherwise a Clumsy Glaive who kills shit real good, could kill everything in the city pulling that fucker out of his bag.

 

[roll-a-die]

To be fair, haven't PnP RPGs have always pretty much taken the kitchen sink approach just to give the players a really wide base to draw from.

I wouldn't know, I never played them. It was my understanding that these games were relatively cohesive and built around one theme (high fantasy, lovecraftian horror, etc.). Recently the theme seems to be "disjointedness".

It really depends, if you want disjointed, check out 2nd edition DnD modules. Nothing like finding "Thor, with Mjolnir" in Castle Ravenloft obstensibly a place filled with vampyrs and creatures of darkness. But you'll take some time out of your day to kick Thors blonde arse hair off.

Or to go more modern, look at WH40k, new World of Darkness, even only including the bigsplats, Exalted(Any edition), DnD5th Ed/Forgotten Realms, anything popular in the last 20 years, etc. All of these have those same elements of disjointedness. I would say Numenera has a fair few advantages, in that disjointedness fits the setting. It's supposed to be somewhat random, the setting is based on that. And you can end up with horror occurring from it. Just imagine the horror of a world where any possible doomsday device might be laying 2 inches under the synth soil, any one you can think of. Perhaps even the exact one you think of.

 

[Coma White]

im not sure how i feel about being absent from the table means you just turned into a normie for the session...

Would like to hear more --

 

[Coma White]

Watch the gameplay video bro.

Real world = Shadow
Being absent = faded into shadow, IE, the real world ate you up for a bit

No I get this. I meant I want to hear why you aren't sure of the idea.

 

[Coma White]

It doesn't really solve the problem here. In fact, in the example, I saw this:

Player 1 has free time. Player 2 does not have free time.

Player 1 uses the app to arrange a special thingie, get some extra XP, and also get themselves a special one-off power that allows them to handwave the obstacle that was in their way.
Player 2 fades into shadow and misses out on XP and plot progression. That just means the lore of the setting has an explanation for player absences, and it doesnt work with, around, or circumvent the issue of people having no time to play.

Also, that whole "I had a flashback and now the problem is solved" mechanic fucking disgusts me. It'd be like if in LOTR, they got to the moria door and then were like "well shit, I dont understand this riddle!" and then, pippin goes "wait I know the answer, it's the elvish word for friend. I was here 3 years ago. So much for dramatic tension, am I right?"

I agree. This is partly why I I think Monte Cook is a brilliant designer half the time and not the other half.

 

[Andhaira]

Yawn, CRPGs been there done that back in the day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majestic_(video_game)

Monte is a fraud hack, Numenera and the 'Cypher' System suck ass. Truly games made for the hipster generation by a hipster who thinks he is hip but is actually an ass. No wonder he got kicked out of D&D 5e design team, he could not hack it with real game designers.

 

[Coma White]

Monte is a fraud hack, Numenera and the 'Cypher' System suck ass. Truly games made for the hipster generation by a hipster who thinks he is hip but is actually an ass. No wonder he got kicked out of D&D 5e design team, he could not hack it with real game designers.

 

[Night Goat]

Monte is a fraud hack, Numenera and the 'Cypher' System suck ass. Truly games made for the hipster generation by a hipster who thinks he is hip but is actually an ass. No wonder he got kicked out of D&D 5e design team, he could not hack it with real game designers.

Planescape was David Cook, Monte Cook had nothing to do with it. And even if he did it wouldn't matter, how many good developers from 20 years ago aren't total hacks today?

 

[Coma White]

Planescape was David Cook, Monte Cook had nothing to do with it. And even if he did it wouldn't matter, how many good developers from 20 years ago aren't total hacks today?

Oh wow, I totally brain farted here.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Oh wow, I totally brain farted here.

In your defense, Monte Cook has made a career out of being confused with David "Zeb" Cook.

 

[roll-a-die]

Monte is a fraud hack, Numenera and the 'Cypher' System suck ass. Truly games made for the hipster generation by a hipster who thinks he is hip but is actually an ass. No wonder he got kicked out of D&D 5e design team, he could not hack it with real game designers.

Planescape was David Cook, Monte Cook had nothing to do with it. And even if he did it wouldn't matter, how many good developers from 20 years ago aren't total hacks today?

Well actually, http://imgur.com/a/YvpdC

 

[Coma White]

I think the big flaw with his design, and with tabletop RPGs nowadays in general, is character attachment. More often than not, in my experience players come into a campaign with the idea and intent of carrying their special little snowflake all the way through. And they expect you as the GM to facilitate this. The problem with this is that, on some base level, it totally guts stakes and danger.

Let's say you buy into Invisible Sun, get a group together, bullshit some encounters together. And your players spend all this time coming up with their wacky powerful dream characters. And the first session in, someone does something stupid and gets wrecked by a phase beast. Or tries to jump across a chasm of fire and fails. Whatever. That player is going to feel cheated out of all the time he spent on crafting his four-armed smokestack-for-a-head sorcerer or whoever. He won't be motivated to go through all that hard work again, and really I don't think he should have to.

In my experience, modern players turn their characters into creative fetishes. And modern systems are designed to facilitate this. Anyone who's played AD&D will know this is NOT how campaigns back then were run. Players don't know it -- and more often than not I think they'll perish the thought -- but this is why it can be so hard to keep gaming groups these days going. Because secretly, nobody but the GM REALLY wants to be there. Even if they don't know it themselves.

Well actually, http://imgur.com/a/YvpdC

I could have sworn Monte was involved in Planescape.

 

[Beastro]

To be fair, haven't PnP RPGs have always pretty much taken the kitchen sink approach just to give the players a really wide base to draw from.

I wouldn't know, I never played them. It was my understanding that these games were relatively cohesive and built around one theme (high fantasy, lovecraftian horror, etc.). Recently the theme seems to be "disjointedness".

It really depends, if you want disjointed, check out 2nd edition DnD modules. Nothing like finding "Thor, with Mjolnir" in Castle Ravenloft obstensibly a place filled with vampyrs and creatures of darkness. But you'll take some time out of your day to kick Thors blonde arse hair off.

Or to go more modern, look at WH40k, new World of Darkness, even only including the bigsplats, Exalted(Any edition), DnD5th Ed/Forgotten Realms, anything popular in the last 20 years, etc. All of these have those same elements of disjointedness. I would say Numenera has a fair few advantages, in that disjointedness fits the setting. It's supposed to be somewhat random, the setting is based on that. And you can end up with horror occurring from it. Just imagine the horror of a world where any possible doomsday device might be laying 2 inches under the synth soil, any one you can think of. Perhaps even the exact one you think of.

Thank you, postmodernism!