Hey Veeky Forums.
This game has neat artwork, and has (at least caught my attention enough that I'm making this thread).
>Has anybody played it?
>What's it play like?
>What does it do well?
>What does it not do well?
What are the existing settings for the system like?
Anybody who played it have any interesting storytime?
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Nobody has tried Numenera and has something to share?
I've played it and ran it somewhat. I personally like it for its crazy and strange (no pun intended) setting, but that is for Numenera; I picked up The Strange but did not like the setting as much.
It plays fairly easily I'd say, I like that any character can attempt anything, so even the big brutish warrior can attempt charm, but not as easily as the silver-tongued rogue, so to say. The class systems are interesting enough, and the whole character creation really sparks a lot of my creative juices when I look at it.
What I feel it does best is the skill rolls and how you deal with them, and how it feels sensible when making them - especially for tasks that lets a character just outright ignore a roll. The rogue previously mentioned would possibly be specialised in tasks related to charming people so that level 2 task is so easy for him that he doesn't even need to roll, but the warrior would.
What it does not do as well, is combat. Almost every combat I've played through in this game has felt clunky and stale. There are too many static numbers for my like; armor is static, weapon damage is static, to the point of sometimes you're not even able to scratch an enemy, which doesn't feel very satisfying in the end. A combat I ran included a creature of armor 3 or something, and a member of the group only had paired knives that did 2 damage each, and unless he got a super high roll (which adds to your damage) he was effectivly useless in that combat. In the same way, in another where I played an armormaster, I could never be hurt unless some ridiculous thing happened. Which also felt boring.
If you're interested, I could post a little storytime of the one-shot game I did for a few friends. It's not that great in my own opinion but it's something at least.
>Setting is weird in a good way
Well, I'll have to check it out for that at least, even if I end up using another system, I do like me some interesting setting books.
>Interesting Character Creation
always good.
>Skill rolls make you not have to roll for the stuff you're really good at.
That's neat. Sortof like taking 10, but better?
>Bad combat, too many static numbers.
Hmm. That's too bad.
>Storytime?
I'd love some storytime, user.
Do you know Dominion? It plays close to that its a deckbuilding game with very few interactions between the players.It has a fantasy theme paced onto it and is doing it really good.Very thematic. I do enjoy this game a lot and you can combine it with every other Thunderstone game to change it up a little.
Neat things: with the other combinations of thunderstone it is always different. plays fast and you have nearly no downtime if everyone knows what they are doing. The rules are easy to understand and you can play different modes if you look the rules up online.
Stuff that it is bad at: It takes a lot of time to set it up you want to play 2 or 3 games in a row so it dont feel like you wasted a lot of time setting it up. Putting it back into the box and sort the cards is a pain in the ass because it takes so long. I would recommend it 7/10 only because of set up and taking it apart again. With the epic thunderstone rules of the game 9/10.
Well the way skill tests work is that the GM sets a level of difficulty which is 3 x the level, so a level 2 task would mean 6, which would then need to be rolled over on a d20. However, if you are trained in a skill related to that test, you lower the difficulty by one, in this case, to a level 1 (or rolling over 3), but if you have additional modifiers like extra help, a good useful item or being specialised instead of trained, you lower that again one more time, and if the test gets to 0, there's no need for a roll. Which I like.
Storytime coming up.
>Dominion
First time hearing of it, actually.
>its a deckbuilding game with very few interactions between the players.
Like, you build your characters with cards in a deck?
What do you mean few interactions between players?
>you can combine it with every other Thunderstone game to change it up a little.
I think you meant to post in a different thread.
The group is a band of mercenaries that take on odd jobs to get money wherever they can, and at the time, they catch wind of a rumor from down south, in the mountain region known as the Black Riage. Supposedly, there's a village that is quickly vanishing due to people being kidnapped at night. They're a month late for the summons, so they hurry down there to see what is going on.
They arrive to meet a farmer, and his daughter, the two last members of the otherwise deserted farming village. They tell of people vanishing in the night, with no signs of violence or struggle, and one villager allegedly saw one of the missing people just up and leave one night, heading up for the mountains.
The group spends the night in the village and gets some food from the farmer, as they have some to share. They start hiking up to the mountainrange (and fortunately manage to dodge wild packs of beastmen in the hills). After a few days of searching in the general direction of this assumed "up and leave" farmer, they stumble upon an ancient, mechanical gateway dug into the mountain. One of the members of the group is a practicioner of the strange Numenera devices (a catchphrase for all things weird in the world) and studies it, getting it open. The group heads inside...
It's okay.
Its been a while, and we only played one session but I seem to recall combat being a bit clunky with the way resources work. Something about hit points also being the resource you use to get bonuses and fuel special moves? Someone will have to verify if that's true. Regardless, it was clunky for reasons and my players weren't really sure what to do combat-wise.
Socializing and exploration were fine. The game has an emphasis on consumable items, with a whole contrived bit about you can only carry X number of consumables on your person before... radiation or something kills you. So you can only carry X consumables, and you're constantly finding consumables. So there's this encouragement to be constantly using consumables, because otherwise they're wasted, and IIRC the book has this laundry list of fun little consumable things to give the players. It's to prevent the hoarder mentality (i.e. end the game with 99 ethers).
This is a cool idea, but I think it wasn't really made for my players in particular. At first, they very genuinely thought that the whole "you can only carry X number of consumables because radiation" was an obstacle provided by the setting to be overcome. They kept coming up with progressively more elaborate solutions and explanations as to why they should be able to bring along as many doodads as they wanted. Eventually, I just leveled with them that the game was designed a particular way and that it promises that doing it this way will be fun. They relented and we collectively decided to move forward.
But they still didn't really ever use the consumable thingies. I think it's just because we usually play stuff that is very inventory-light, where the player characeters and meant to overcome each challenge with wits and bravery and skill, and so the idea of using a magic car battery that shoots an anti-gravity ray just didn't occur to them naturally in any given situation.
Inside, they find what looks like an old mechanical cave, with thick wires criss-crossing over the walls and murals long since having lost its paint. The place is in a state of decay and probably has been for centuries if not millenia. Lots of dust and such. During their exploration of this increasingly underground area, they come across ancient guardians that whirr to life barely, and are as easily beaten as their decayed forms offer little resistance to force.
A day's worth of exploration through darkly lit tunnels they come across a very barely illuminated room. A central room of some importance, they quickly understand, they arrive to find the walls lined with rows upon rows of alcoves where people are inserted and kept in place. Most look like they're in deep sleep, attached to wires and cables, but a few of them seem to have been drained, appearing almost mummy-like. In the center of the room slumps a giant being with a lot of metal plating; humanoid but thicker and slightly elongated. Not unlike the space jockeys from Alien. Upon its rusted carcass sits a tiny, hazy hologram of what appears as some female humanoid, curled up, silent. As they approach it, they catch its attention, and like a fawn, it skips off and vanishes through a wall.
They study the room and find a complicated series of instruments, a lot of screens, keys, runes and other strange numenera. Whatever the researcher did, it actives something within the structure, and the monstrosity in the center of the room comes alive to defend it. The battle is long, but not unlike the previous guardians, it does not seem to be fully capable of operating to the max of its ability. The group's rogue notices a hatch on the center of the creature, and dashes for it and with some quick maneuvering is ontop of it and luckily manages to tear it open. Inside is a similar humanoid to the hologram-ghost, but slightly more robust and thick, assumedly male. There's is only a torso and an elongated head, however, and it too looks very spent, drained. A quick stab to the chest causes the entire thing to topple over, and a very weak cough with some (blue) blood spurt from its mouth in a last breath of life. They step away from it, and as they do, the hologram ghost appears once more, and hurries up to the dead form inside the mechanical beast. It curls up close to its chest, uttering a few words in some old, dead language none of the group manages to decipher. A few seconds remain, and the hologram slowly fizzles away. The structure and the instruments around die.
In the end, the group manages to save most of the village, except the ones that have already died in their insertion. They make their way back to the village, and on their way, the villagers explain that something had forced their wills to the place, and few remember what or how it had transpired. One or two actively remember leaving the village as if called by something. No one was really sure why, though.
>Lots of consumable doodads, all over the place, and very limited carrying capacity.
That seems kindof fun to me. But I often play shadowrun and make use f all sorts of weird doodads.
What made them go there and why?
What was the hologram girl? What was the thing that looked like the hologram girl that was half dead until they stabbed it full-dead?
Did they find out? Or did they just say "oh well, weird shit happens" and go on to the next town?
For them, it was more or less a "oh well, weird shit happens", yes.
What happened behind the scenes was, the villagers were being mind controlled by an advanced AI that had been slowly losing power over a great many years. Luring them up to the base, it had inserted them into sockets to power itself of Man-Energy (think the Matrix) in hopes of keeping itself alive. The hologram girl was the AI, though appeared only as a ghost, and very protective of the creature in the last guardian. While properly alive, that "man" had been wired into the thing to protect the AI it had fallen inlove with, and died protecting it. The hologram ghost mourned its loss in the last moments of its own life, before the last bit of strained energy died away, exerting itself too much for even the villagers to sustain it.
Of course, not much of this came to light to the players, as I purposefully only described the scene in a visual sense and not in a narrative sense.
This thread goes into a few topics (NOT just the whole "lel ranged > melee shit") on Cypher's problems.
Right, I think it has the potential to be very awesome. It just fell flat with us, for one session. Maybe if we'd played longer, it would've clicked. And I'm certain that there are groups that would have an absolute blast with it.
Neat!
Oh, Thanks!
>Has anybody played it?
I have.
>What's it play like?
Boring
>What does it do well?
Simple mechanics, a baby could understand them
>What does it not do well?
It's a d20 system. Too simple, there's not much in the way of customizing your character.
jesus shit. I cant believe I read all that shit.
What's the problem, officer?
Cypher = shit
Not played it but like it enough to buy all the hard backs so far and use them for ideas for other games and settings.
The party member with the knife should be burning effort to up his damage.
There's a Thunderstone; Numenera board game based on the RPG. It's okay.
>Players are meant to overcome a challenge with wits.
>Don't think to use the magic tricks in their bag.
Where's the wit?
I kind of want to run this system but I definitely want to make some changes.
>Replace static damage with dice rolls where the average is equal to the static number
>You don't need to use your entire turn to move, you can move a short distance AND do a thing.
>ranged weapons get a penalty in melee range unless it is roughly equivalent to a pistol
Thoughts? Criticism? Suggestions?
Damage is closely tied to how much effort you spend, which is decided before you roll to attack. I'd recommend running a game at third tier or higher before you fuck with that.
>Moving and acting.
You can move an immediate distance and take an action, but moving it up to short is fine. Make sure to figure out a way to buff all the movement powers to compensate.
>Ranged penalty.
Only necessary if your players start making close quarters snipers to game the system. If that the case, then sure.