Tides of Numenera

addd 10^3 to that still... Sun has grown quite a lot in Numenera. From present day it'll be approx 2*10^9 years.

There's also a companion sourcebook to the videogame, as some elements, like the titular tides, aren't actually in the corebook, and the video game's set in a wholly different part of the globe.

From what I've gathered, the writing is good, but it's a bit too short and the beginning of the game has way more quests/NPC/exposure than the last part.
Probably not a worthy successor, but a good crpg in the spirit of PS:T I guess. I've planned to play it next week-end, I'll see.

>tfw I got a few Numenera resources for backing ToN
>tfw Monte signed mine
>tfw I don't even play the game and someday this book will just be thrown away by my family

>And why magic seems science on steroids?
Because in the world of Numenera, a billion years of scientific advancement and multiple apocalypses has left advanced technology difficult to understand on earth.

The Tides don't exist in the tabletop game, they're basically the video games way of modelling an alignment system. The tabletop doesn't have alignment at all.

The magic is science from a billion years in the future, an apocalypse happened, people have kind of rebuilt in the ruins but have no idea how these things work.

Everything is explicitly advanced technology, but many of the people in the world treat it as magic. If you've seen your grandmother explain how she opens her email it's like that X10.

Tides are their version of alignment.

Magic is Vancian.

There have been eight previous worlds. You may refer to them as ages, aeons, epochs, or eras, but it’s not wrong to think of each as its own individual world. Each former world stretched across vast millennia of time. Each played host to a race whose civilizations rose to supremacy but eventually died or scattered, disappeared or transcended. During the time that each world flourished, those that ruled it spoke to the stars, reengineered their physical bodies, and mastered form and essence, all in their own unique ways. Each left behind remnants. The Ninth World is built on the bones of the previous eight, and in particular the last four. Reach into the dust, and you’ll find that each particle has been worked, manufactured, or grown, and then ground back into drit—a fine, artificial soil—by the relentless power of time. Look to the horizon—is that a mountain, or part of an impossible monument to the forgotten emperor of a lost people? Feel that subtle vibration beneath your feet and know that ancient engines—vast machines the size of kingdoms—still operate in the bowels of the earth. The Ninth World is about discovering the wonders of the worlds that came before it, not for their own sake, but as the means to improve the present and build a future. Each of the prior eight worlds, in its own way, is too distant, too different, too incomprehensible. Life today is too dangerous to dwell on a past that cannot be understood. The people excavate and study the marvels of the prior epochs just enough to help them survive in the world they have been given. They know that energies and knowledge are suspended invisibly in the air, that reshaped continents of iron
and glass—below, upon, and above the earth—hold vast treasures, and that secret doorways to stars and other dimensions and realms provide power and secrets and death. They sometimes call it magic, and who are we to say that they’re wrong?

>/v/ is saying it got ruined by SJWs
I feel like /v/ says that about everything.

They do. One of the companions is bisexual. According to /v/ this somehow ruins the entire game.

I'm about 25 hours in and I'm having fun with it.
The writing is not as good as in planescape and feels a bit forced at time and the game mechanics are a bit weird but overall it's pretty much a (somewhat lesser) successor to planescape:torment.

It's Vance's Dying Earth with less rape. That's literally it.

Also Book of the New Sun with less rape.

What is it with the dying earth genre and rape?

System is light and fairly plain. With no redeeming features. It is the follow up/successor to Planescape but it fails in every regard. From all the different factions Planescape you now have a choice of The Cult of the Changeling God vs The Order of Truth, contrite science vs religion stuff. The lore, backstory and features are cobbled together in a very dull way, I get the impression that people worked on their own thing and then simply slotted them in to place to make it fit.

You have the Endless Battle which exists for... reasons which is not at all directly lifted from the Blood War.

All skill checks are now Vancian for easons that are not immediately obvious.

As for the crpg, the prose is long-winded, boring and without any interesting points. The vast majority of it is purple prose which offers no meaningful narrative save to describe things which really do not need to be described in such detail. The characters are uninspired, boring and tedious at times. There are SJW shit in, but it is like most of it uninteresting and shoehorned in, one of the first characters to join your party is gay (for reasons) another suffers from being in multiple places at once (again for reasons, totally not a metaphor for any gender/sexual disorder). The backgrounds are nice to look at, but really is the only redeeming feature, character art is poor and character animation non-existent.

I would not bother with the game at all really, it is not worth the price tag as it fails to live up to anything resembling a Torment. Though there is at least one cameo that made me smile, a being you encounter in the Smoldering Corpse Bar makes a brief show and fulfills a similar role. With so much given over to the potential of combat, it is stupid as to how few instance of combat their is, the majority of things you will do is all revolving around your stat pools, as I mentioned early this is now Vancian and can only do a number of skill checks (you increase the chance of passing them with effort points based on your skill pool) before you have to rest, adding a tedious element to what should be a smooth flow of dialogue.

A more cancerous version of Gene Wolfe's Solar Cycle - Book of the Numale Sun

When the guy said magic is Vancian, he was talking about the setting, as opposed to the /day mechanics.

What the hell is a Vancian skill check?

You are only able to use them a limited number of times before you must rest.

Motherfucking Adahn shows up?!

It's a pretty good way of showing that Civil, Moral and Military authority has completely broken down.
Yeah it really is just a pale imitation of Planescape with a less compelling set of philosophical underpinnings; the point of PS was that belief is all, the point of Numenera is that all has been done before and that any belief has already been achieved, It's an unfortunate dichotomy.

No, O. As mentioned above it was shoehorned in entirely.

This may come across as unduly harsh, but from the prose to the morality to the philosophy , everything about the game appears to be a layman's Planescape.

No, but there is someone who goes around lying and telling people that's their name.

>the beginning of the game has way more quests/NPC/exposure than the last part
I have no idea how anyone got that far except people whose job it is to review games. Everything about this game is forgettable. The music, the NPCs, the companions, the setting, the small interactions with the environment, the factions, the aesthetics, the morality system, the antagonist. All forgettable. I still use "Endure. In enduring grow strong" as a phrase I use in conversation to this day. I can't remember a single thing about my companions in T:TON. I still remember Deionarra's theme off the top of my head. I can't remember any of the music in this game. I still remember the quest where you help a guy grow a tree just by asking people to believe it will grow. I can't remember the quest I did a few days ago. I remember the VA of Morte and Annah to this day. I can't place any of the VA in this game. The whole thing is like water off a duck's back to me, it's just kinda there.

This. Everything about the game is forgettable, boring and cliche.

As pointed out this is not Planescape torment. This is Numenera.
I've yet to go really in depth in the game, but little bit of triva that I know.

In original Torment there was a creature/object called the Vault of the Ninth World. Which in story explained that all stored items placed in the vault were actually stored in basically a Warehouse-World called the "Ninth World"

Well People of Numenera call their world the "Ninth World." I wonder if we'll see any connection. Planescape IS about travelling to different worlds.

Of course I'd forget my pic.

>mfw it is suffering Cipher Sickness and can't take any more items

>the point of PS was that belief is all,

I do love the headcanon that TNO did not commit anything nearly as bad as we are lead o believe only he believes it is to be the most colossal evil and so it becomes. It has been confirmed that he is not the cause of the Blood War or the Pronouncement of Two Skies and that it is slowly dooming all the Planes.

What but belief can do this?

...

/v/ hates video games. If it says a game is bad then it might be good. IMO Tides has awful mechanics but is a fun ride if you like weird fantasy.

The crime that I thought TNO was guilty of was loving Ravel and of breaking her heart, which kicked off the Faction War in the future.
> is a fun ride if you like weird fantasy.
For sure, but as and I mentioned in , it's basically Planescape Torment but with less interesting mechanics and story. I get what they were going for, trying to be Dying Earth (CHUN the Unavoidable 4 lyfe) or Books of the New Sun, but it fails in that it flinches away from the odd mix of erudite and savage that those settings possessed and instead comes off as bland and overly tropey for people more familiar with the genre's conventions.

There is a Veeky Forums-related reference in the game but only oldfags will get it.

TNO was strongly hinted at being a reincarnation of Bigby from Greyhawk.