Torment Torment: Tides of Numenera Thread

They also blogged about playing PS:T to death, just to be sure they'd get it right.

It's obvious that a lot of people who like/claim to like PS:T completely don't get it. I've sometimes suspected that they haven't maybe even played it and are just saying they like it because it's the thing to like. Upon further reflection though I think that just might not be true; they have played it, they did like it, and still managed to miss the entire point of the exercise.

That part I don't understand.

 

I'm sure they play or are aware of the new shit, that's why we get hand-holding journals, on-screen walkthroughs and other related "game design school" shit.

McComb, when playing it now after TTON was done didn't seem like he played in 20 years. And he was more worried about tits and trash combat, thank god he noticed those, made TTON much better.

 

If I had read that, it disappeared from my memory. I found it http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...-at-pax-prime-2015.101481/page-3#post-4117234

Bonus:

Perhaps you should have cut the whole game.

 

From what I've seen of Adam's blog, my guess is he plays a lot of Depression Quest

 

Yes.

 

You left out the bit where I call Konjad a fucking cunt.

EDIT: (for Kony) What? If you need a trainer cause the 10 OPTIONAL combats in TToN are 'teh hard' for you then you must be a cunt! Don't pick the combat option if you don't have the build for it. Fuck me...

 

Most people wouldn't recognize great or even good writing even to savew their lives, I've seen so fucking many people to praise both PST and Fallout 3, 4 or Skyrim. Anyone who praises bethesda's writing is a fucking brainless moron. Most people also have fucking horrible taste, and even if they praise PST always take it with shitload of salt.

 

Alas we'll never know http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198115716026

However through some reverse engineeeeeering I have figured out that he's played Sorcery! parts 1 and 2, Party Hard, and Captain Forever Remix.

 

Eh..not really...there's a lot of non-human types in the game, and what's to say that everything has to keep mutating and evolving? Why wouldn't there be humans in a billion years objectively speaking? That's a bit of a nonsense argument as fantasy/sci-fi often does this. Maybe they had a technology that regulated climate etc in such a way that made evolution or mutation redundant?

I do however find the 'billion years into the future' thing a bit of a distraction precisely cause it creates this kind of autist discourse. Should have left it at 100,000 years as that would give enough time for 9 civs to come and go and still be short enough timeframe to not cause doubt about humanity's ability to survive.

 

He seems so reasonable and spot-on... wtf happened?

 

If everyone would have a clue about about what the setting says about humans before talking it would be much better. There were not 9 civilizations of humans nor humans evolving and mutating for a billion years. The humans that exist currently in Numenera have appeared relatively recently essentially by "magic" probably just so Monte Cook can do his "diversity is when everyone is brown" utopia.

 

The 9 civilizations would make much more sense if it'd be set something like 10,000 years in the future, even cursory clance in the history shows that around europe and mesopotamia there's already been lot more during known history.

 

Numenera is worldbuilding for people who don't like worldbuilding, and just want a big ol' sandbox where they can put whatever the hell they like. The beellion years thing with all that it implies is just a means to an end; a convenient excuse to provide that.

It's pretty clear that this is the focus for Monte Cook Games. Their next one, The Strange, takes this a step further. In it, the idea is that secondary worlds called Recursions more or less spontaneously appear, and players can shift in and out of them, becoming a version of themselves fitting each Recursion. Meaning, absolutely anything goes, even more so than in Numenera. The recursions described in the base materials includes boringworld (this), one that happened when something like World of Warcraft became a recursion, and one really old vaguely Cthulhoid sci-fi-horror one.

I can see how you could have fun with that. It's also not at all what I want from worldbuilding.

 

I am pretty sure you mean South Europe and not the savages in the rest of the continent with their mud huts, cannibalism and human sacrifices.

 

Being that some of those were non-human they can be anything. And the corebook makes it clear that it shouldn't be known what they were. The past is intended to serve as the fuel for the "magic" and the mystery. That's it. Whether you like that or not it's something else, but it's pretty pointless to analyze it when it's stated fairly clearly that it was intentionally left as barebones as possible.

 

I played less than 5 minutes of Tyranny and it is already better than Numenera. Cohesive art style, down to the very character models, nice looking interface, beautiful presentation down to the very CYOA Conquest section with the unseen person moving the pieces around.

Take some notes, inXile. That's how you make a compelling game.

 

Yeah, although it's huge missed opportunity, exploring and finding about old civilizations would give great sense of mystery.

 

I have no exp with the pnp but I thought this is exactly ... what you do in the pnp?

You already have "fun" exploring the stuffs of previous worlds in TTON

 

Hey, I agree with that. Would have been more interesting to me than "this strange device sings the blues when the moon is full only because lololooool" but it is what it is.

 

You explore them yes.

Finding out about them is entirely up to the GM. The official materials have zip to say about that part.

 

In fact if I remember correctly the GM is encouraged to NOT explain them.

 

And that's clearly intended... and tbqh it looks nice to me having that kind of "freedom".

 

Those are mysteries for mystery's sake though, they aren't in context. DRRMMMFSDDDDDDRRKAAAAAAAAAAAARRTTEEERMAAAAAPRRRRRRRAAAAAAALEEEEEMTTTAAAA. See, this is a mysterious thing, but it's not interesting because it's not connected to anything, you aren't even sure if the writer himself didn't just randomly press keys on his keyboard. This is Numenera in a nutshell, you aren't sure if the writer didn't just put random words together. A fountain of worms, a moon made of cheese, the soil is metal shards, a chair made of cats, a table with a live octopus on it, an orphanage for weirdos.

 

What tier is it?