What do you guys think of Numenera?

In what way isn't it functional?

It's more like vague instructions on how to make your own RPG than it is an RPG, as almost everything is left to GM fiat. Let me be clear, it's not even a kit for making an RPG like GURPS is. It's just a whole lot of "I dunno, do it yourself," way beyond the extent that GM fiat has to exist in every RPG. Numenera will make you mad that you bought a book with nothing in it.

You know how Veeky Forums's newfie's likes to think D&D is the pinnacle of overpowered magic? they're actually unknowingly describing Numenera.

If a player goes the craft illusions route your game is already over before it began.

Really bad game.
Uninspired, derivative, lazy kitchen sink setting with unlimited pretense.

How are illusions game breaking?

Hi, Wayne. Why is your identity relevant to this discussion?

Pretentious piece of crap that feels like it's being different for the sake of being different.

It's fine, has hateboners around Veeky Forums much like Dungeon World memes

I kind of like the "build a character" idea, but the idea of spending the same points that make up your life pool just... no.
Still i'd probably like the game if it wasn't for the fact the guy who ran Numenera for us house ruled the FUCK out of it AND tried to mix it with 5th edition D&D and a frustrating campaign all about a talking silver ball that railroaded us along but could never tell us why or gave us any reason to actually DO anything besides "the ball told us to"

I'm on break, so I'll post quickly, and check the thread again on my next break.

Numenera has a really neat setting, IF you're willing to dig through Monte Cook's awful dickwaving. The anons who mentioned purple prose and different for difference's sake are 85% correct. also. However, I enjoy setting tinkering and therefore it was nothing to dump the retarded shit and make it functional. The best way to describe it is something like Tales Of Alethrion mixed with Samurai Jack (minus the evil overlord) mixed with Star Wars (on a smaller scale). Most people dig that sort of science fantasy, but Monte just fucked it up bad.

Mechanically, it's a good system. Casting from HP isn't so bad, and means players manage resources more. Character creation is pretty simple, and few options are really bad. The ones that are, you can tell. It's not my favorite system, but i run it twice a month and I don't regret buying the core book.

It's the main game I GM.
I've seen you do these threads for a while now, just make it a general with links n shit

Plus it's full of bullshit like the XP system

>Okay, uh, your sword breaks as you're swinging it. You can spend 1xp to avoid this or accept it and gain 1xp

Or the fuckery that's in the themes...
>You have a bow! uh... okay. You could have chosen "I control motherfucking gravity" or "illusion god" or "dominate all minds" but you own a bow at least until it breaks - see the xp system
>ah but here's a new drawback for you because bows are uh, very, um, you know what fuck you. Spend XP or you skewer a fellow player now.

Most gear and items in the setting are basically one shot devices; class/ability balance is abyssmal, and a lot of it just feels pretentious as fuck.

However the artwork is absolutely beautiful.

I've heard Numenera is extremely original, what's all this about being derivative?

If your gm has a weapon breaking as a gm intrusion, then that is a shitty gm. And I know it's one of the examples they give for some gm intrusions, but still.

Tg hive mind has singled this game out for the hate-boner.

I played this for the first time a couple of months ago at a convention. I only played because the video game was coming out and I wanted to see the setting and how it felt, and I gotta say I love this game. the way you make the characters, the xp system, the cyphers, the intrusions, everything. The fact that you cast from hitpoints, which many people hate, is what drove me to loving it because I felt is was a good way of showing how a character gets haggered over time. TG might hate it, but its the most fun I've had being a gm!

It's original, but most GMs and Players can't grasp the setting because its hard to reference. It's neither scifi or fantasy, and its not quite post-apocalypse either. An easy Veeky Forums reference point is like an argi-world in 40k that has been abandoned, and all the PCs are just normal medieval-ish people who happen to live in the ruin of an emperor-class titan - etc. I usually don't explain the setting to players, I just present them with the world, some reference images if I'm on roll20, and some nice descriptions. I've found the more you start to get into the "7 past worlds" and the "ancient advanced empires" the more your players will want to engage with that off-limited setting stuff, instead of engaging with the actual setting

I was hating on it before I ever made it to Veeky Forums.
See, thing is, what I remembered Monte Cook for were such gems as the planewalker's handbook.

But... I got the book. I read the book. At first some things didn't ... feel quite right... But the more I looked into it, the more I learned, the more I understood... It was depressing, user. It was like waiting on Fantasy Craft to get a 1.5 edition and its spellslinger's guide when they'd moved on to mistsomething and had abandoned it all along... It was like wishing alpha-omega had been completed. It was despair in between two really pretty hardcovers.

tldr; Veeky Forums's hateboner with Numenera is Monte Cook

I think the thing I like most about it is the d20 difficulty system- and I know that technically 3d6 might work better- but I still like it for its simplicity.
The system isn't without its faults though, and I now use the cypher system book rules, since its basically the same system but patched.
The only thing I house rule is the armor system, because it's very broken. (its an hourly drain system, and I houserule it to a cap on max)

Sums it up pretty good

It's annoying, and so is this thread.

That's the same sort of faggotry that you see in 3.5 games where "oh you rolled a 1, you fall on your sword and take damage" except in Numenera you can use XP to say no.

You do realize gms do this other systems too, right user?

I'm willing to bet nobody would give a toss about these threads, or even make them to begin with, if they hadn't turned it into a video game that made /v/ completely lose their shit (ie any RPG that isn't Japanese or The Witcher).

I'm willing to bet that you're wrong and don't know who Monte Cook is.

How much would you be willing to bet on that?

70 quadrillion shins

That's because no one hates games more than /v/

you actively eat at your own HP every time you perform an action, regardless of your focus.

>Jump really high 5 times, solve 5 puzzles, and run in circles for half an hour
>die

Not quite, It's just that all of the shitty parts of Numenera are caused by Monte Cook

...

That's really disingenuous. You have recovery rolls. You can rest. Having your health pools be your ability resource isn't bad, and I've literally never had a player die because they utilized their abilities and spent points from their pools.

It's what I call "name fatasy"
The only thing unique about it are the names of things

/thread

Nu Men Era

Wayne is a weird bit that's crept onto Veeky Forums in the last few weeks. I can't tell if it's one guy forcing a meme or if it has actually caught on.

Regardless, based on a newspaper comic, EVERY problem with this board was a deliberate choice made by the nefarious poster/game-dev/site-designer known as Wayne. Or it isn't his fault, but he has chosen to be our outlet for blame. Or maybe you are Wayne. I don't know.

>The only thing unique about it are the names of things
so literally every kind of fiction that's younger than 2500 years?

You do realize this system encourages it, right user?

>Nu Men Era
holy shit i see it now... an advanced critique of Cultural Marxism and postmodernism...

let me grab my pen...

*begins frantically scribbling notes*

Remember the whole cash grab with making Numenera Torment? Trying to get money based off nostalgia exactly as Civilization Beyond Earth did?

That came out you know. Like a while back. Literally no one talks about it.

>*begins frantically scribbling notes*
Well don't be a fag about it

>Be you
>Be shit GM
>Can't think of interesting GM instrusions
> HUR DUR your bow breaks

gary gygax invented every creature in the monster manual from thin air don't fucking dare question that

pic related

As a fan of the original Torment, I thought Tides of Numenera was quite good. It has its flaws and it's missing a lot of content promised in the Kickstarter, but the depth of the original is there in the plot, themes, lore, and characters.

I really don't think Numenera is a mechanically outstanding game, but the amount of flat out falsehoods in this thread is ridiculous.

>make a shitty setting with an interesting backstory
> people naturally prefer the backstory
>therefore, keep the backstory from them and force them to slog around in the mud
Do you hate your players
Why not play in the past? Fuck the actual setting and use the backstory as setting instead

A cuck.

You eat your "HP" if you overexert yourself on an action. If you push your body to its limits too often without resting you get injured or die.

You don't spend "hp" on your regular actions, just if you put extra effort on them or if it is some kind of special skill that taxes you in some way.

I fucked Monte Cook in the ass at Gen Con 3 years ago. He came as soon as I put it in him, and insisted that I call him a "sissy bottom bitch boy" and he kept calling me dad. It was really weird and I wish I hadn't drank all that 151.

>Numenera

DOO DOO DODODO

So instead of addressing them, you're going to...?

Do nothing. They are either trolling or already made up their mind so nothing I could say here will change it.

Others are already trying and failing to do that.

I could maybe make an effort to inform those who are reading this thread and are undecided, but the chance of the correct information getting past is 50% at best.

Just read the damn book, you'll know who's an idiot who is memeing vs who knows how the game actually works.

It tries to be original, it really does, but ends up being completely bland instead.

The selling point is that the setting takes place millions of years in the future.

You might have made an interesting meta-plot of of a premise like that. Book of the New Sun is mentioned as an inspiration. In that setting the sun is dying, and humanity needs to either pull their shit together and do something to prevent their extinction or they will die out. But wait, there are also hyper-advanced aliens dicking around with humanity, their motives indecipherable. And there are powerful forces, remnants of mankind's lost interstellar empire, who only care for fighting over the scraps that remain with no mind to handle any sort of planetary crisis. The countless millennia of fighting has left the earth almost barren, even metal is scares as so much has been destroyed already.

That's some fucking drama right there, that's something I can pick up as a player/GM and make something out of.

Numenera wants to shake up your standard fantasy, and go for the far-future setting. Yet nothing is done with that premise. There are remnants of ancient technology. They function as magic spells. There are organisations, kingdoms, republics, city states and all kinds of polities. They are indistinguishable from anything you might have in any fantasy setting etc.

Numenera wants to be different from your standard fantasy setting, but changes only the window-dressings without realizing that nothing important is different.

>Numenera wants to shake up your standard fantasy, and go for the far-future setting. Yet nothing is done with that premise. There are remnants of ancient technology. They function as magic spells. There are organisations, kingdoms, republics, city states and all kinds of polities. They are indistinguishable from anything you might have in any fantasy setting etc.
>Numenera wants to be different from your standard fantasy setting, but changes only the window-dressings without realizing that nothing important is different.
That's why I think the new Torment game portrayed the setting better than the actual core material. Tides of Numenera is set in a completely different part of the Ninth World (supposedly beyond The Beyond) and drops the normal fantasy geopolitics of The Steadfast. The "mundane" hub city of Sagus Cliffs is isolated and decaying, and the other main locations (Valley of Dead Heroes and The Bloom) are very harsh and alien.

I don't know if you have a bad gm or if you are looking for you's, but that is not how you play numenera

How dare you like what I don't like

Lord knows half the people in this thread that are spreading lies don't know how to actually read

You're in luck, they made a supplement that allows you to play the game in the table top, it even gives you some options of how to travel there from the steadfast or beyond. I skimmed it and it seemed kinda good.

I think it serves the very important purpose of giving OP a safe space on Veeky Forums to post about cucks and numales every day.

>safe space on Veeky Forums
have you been reading this thread?

>standard fantasy shlock that claims it's not
People paid for this?

Seems like OP might have overdone it with the daily cuckmenera threads. Maybe he finally reached Veeky Forums's spam threshold.

See

No, it's even better than that. He got a weird bag of miniatures at a thrift store or something and decided to make each of them into a creature.

This thread is so trash, I'm surprised people aren't spamming "my peenus weenus"

>made /v/ completely lose their shit
lol no

Go to any crpg thread on /v/ and you will find people willing to defend pretty much every game, except no one ever even mentions numenara, much less try to find something good about it.

Every other new crpg released recently was better and more interesting.
I don't blame the setting tho, I blame the developers.

I loved the game until the last hour, at that point I realized the money had ran out and the devs were scrambling, I really need to finish it at some point.

what did you think of pillars of eternity?

I unironically like the setting. But I prefer to use it as a gateway to make something else.

I unironically like it, I know people rag on the combat a lot, I didn't love it but I didn't hate the combat. I like upgrading my keep, and I just wished the dlc had more to do with the main game.

Have an example?

Do you rate it higher or lower than torment? I have played pillars and found it mediocre, but I haven't played torment, or even heard much about it

Its been a very long time sense I played it, but I have to be honest and say I rate it higher than torment. Because in pillars you feel like you can move around and it feels like an RPG, torment feels more linear

this isn't /v/ but since people mentioned the vydia, I decided to take a look

out of all the modern western RPGS on steam, Torment: Tides of Numenara is the only one to have mixed reviews on steam.
That's not a good sign man, steam users forgive a lot. It takes a seriously flawed game to get bad reviews, or really prevalent performance issues.

I kinda have a small text, but not with me right now.
But it's basically taking the core premise of "buried" technology on a medieval future and toning down some of the stuff.

I'll probably give it a pass then, thanks for the opinion

I really liked it. The original is far better of course, but I think this one is worthy of calling itself a spiritual successor. The characters and locations are interesting, and if only they'd exploited the crisis system more (there's only one really interesting crisis in the whole game, imho), they'd have had a pretty solid game. All in all it feels like they lacked time, but there were some really nice ideas in it. One of the companion questlines actually teared me up, and another was pretty gut-wrenching. I'd say give it a try, at least, and try to go in with the least amount of information possible on the setting. That's what I did with the first Torment, that's what I did with this one, and I think it works best with how alien the world is.

I hope future dlc or a sequel fleshes it out more

That's a good idea, but I haven't played it with the new DLC, so it might be better but you would have to play to find out.

My friends and I played it for about 8 or 9 months. There was some good and bad in it. The xp system was pretty stupid, but I liked that you technically needed 16pts to tier up, so we weren't leveling up too quickly. Setting was also pretty bad, but our DM had some good material to work with.

imo, the cyphers are what made the game so much fun. All these things with little effects which you were actively encouraged to use creatively. Made for some whacky shit.

Have a good story?

The XP system is fixed by an optional rule in the core book.

What's the rule?

Use the GM intrusion XP as a short term reward for rejecting other intrusions or the other short term reward listed in the book.
The discovery XP is left for progressing the characters and mid to long term rewards.

I like that I can make come crazy combos, or recreate characters from various games. Also, rules are easy as fuck, perfect game for drunk parties.

I fucking hate XP management, NPCs working on totally different engine than players and total lack of balance between Nanos, Glaives and Jacks.

Oh, I've been doing this by mistake all along.

Having a PC that can control energy, and another PC that can become energy is a hilarious combo. In my game there is a glaive that controls gravity and a jack that employs magnetism and they have a rivalry to show which power is greater.

Yeah, last time I recreated Broken Lord from Endless Legend (basically walking armor full of nanites that sucks energy to survive). Other player was Glaive who Fuses Flesh and Steel, who became my squire, as I was some kind of ideal for him. Yet another was old friend of said Glaive, and was sure I want to drain his friend... fun times.

Stuff like that is probably only reason I still play minicampaigns in this system from time to time