Anyone actually playing Numenera?

Had two games of The Strange die on the vine before the first session. No idea why, but it seems like followup on it is way lower than on 5e.

Oh user, you sweet sweet fool

Numenera threads aren't for talking about games. They're for talking about soyboy numale SJWs and how Monte KEK (and that's always how it appears because they're newfags who can't into filters) ate a penis.

But wouldn't that be off-topic? Why not make a productive post and be excellent?

Monte Cook

See this guy's name thrown around alot but can never tell exactly what reputation, do people like him or hate him?

Depends on what you define as "people"

He was one of the creators of the most played RPG ever that is also still the most played. (assuming you count only very minor changes as the same game ala 3.x/3.pf)

He's got a ridiculous list of adventures made, of course he's so ignorant that his playtesters for his modules say that he literally will not take feedback, even if it was obviously wrong.

He was the man who attributed the term Ivory Tower to bad game design and that's ultimately why Veeky Forums uses the term.

He also was a big design influence on 5e DnD, before he stole a bunch of the market research and ideas, quit abruptly, and used it to make his own company while alienating a bunch of his contacts at Wizards with his betrayal.

He's kind of a famous, sometimes really genius idea stealer, douchebag who made some millions of dollars off kickscammer.

So to whether people like him or hate him, the answer is yes.

>ignorant should be arrogant

...

Thank you user, fun and totally pointless fact, I originally made that image for Veeky Forums after recovering the long taken-down article from a web archive.

While a lot of blame is deserved by MC, it's always proof of peoples idiocy that of the multiple designers, the one who openly decried and admitted to the wrong-doing is the one most reviled instead of the ones who tried to hide it.

Ah, system mastery, i.e. "Yeah, we intended for that to be a trap option, what, of course we playtested it extensively, what do you mean it's broken, you're broken!"

>I originally made that image for Veeky Forums

Really? Very interesting. I've had it for a long time.

...will you autograph it for me?

Print it out, mail it to me, and I will sign and scan it for you and post it in thread.

>some weapons doing more damage than others was because of bad playtesting
Here's your reply user.

What's your address?

I tried. It fell apart because all the players were new to rpgs in general and didn't know how to roleplay. I'm now taking some things from the setting and my campaign and using it in a godless Shadow of the Demon Lord campaign.

>this feat that costs the same amount of points but offers less ability to meaningfully interact within the game world than an identically-priced feat is because of bad playtesting

Correct.

Obviously Monte Cook Games LLC,
Soyboy lane, Seattle, WA 80085
Canuckia

>He also was a big design influence on 5e DnD, before he stole a bunch of the market research and ideas, quit abruptly, and used it to make his own company while alienating a bunch of his contacts at Wizards with his betrayal.

i've heard this a lot and looking at numenera it is obvious, but is there stronger evidence to back this up? i know about his departure from 5e but not about the burning bridges.

i don't like how his company is entirely built around cults of personality.

>cults of personality
That's how indie RPG's sell. Are you familiar with Lamentations of the Flame Princess? The only reason you are is because of what the creator sums up beautifully, most RPG's can be fun with any group, it's not about ability, it's about Show Business.

I've met almost everyone who works in his company, and even Colin McComb, a notoriously antisocial RPG guy, is mostly alright in person.

I only have evidence that would seem fake because it's Veeky Forums, but if you want to extend some suspension of disbelief, I had a long talk about this with a certain OSR designer at GenCon who told me about how their relatively tiny community sees him after what he did came across their grapevine.

I have serious, confirmable evidence, and my involvement is part of why I love joining all these Numanuma threads, but I'm not going to post my real name...

>I had a long talk about this with a certain OSR designer at GenCon who told me about how their relatively tiny community sees him after what he did came across their grapevine.

i know zak has a weird relationship with monte and shana stemming from their defense of succubus type monsters, but i'm curious to hear more.

i also know that some members of monte cook games are very anti-zak, which means a careful line of supporting contessa without supporting stacey's supporters/gaming community.

not that zak is the osr. in fact, i prefer the non-zak osr designers a lot more.

The gender/race politics is the absolute worst part of our hobby. You just reminded me of 1984 and the two minutes of hate. Nonetheless it is something that MCG dedicates a lot of time to courting despite it's horrendous credibility, which can get complex when random controversies occur.

Numenera and in-fact all books they publish go out of their way to commission equal amounts of asexual, male, and female art and likewise three-way split their pronoun usage. It feels incredibly forced.

>horrendous credibility

what do you mean? sorry, i'm not trying to be dense i'm just trying to understand. the loss of credibility following monte breaking with wizards during 5e development? or am i missing something?

>split their pronoun usage
I don't know how people can deal with this, It makes reading the books so fucking annoying.

>before he stole a bunch of the market research and ideas, quit abruptly, and used it to make his own company while alienating a bunch of his contacts at Wizards with his betrayal.
Holy shit, I've actually heard this repeated by somebody else completely unrelated to Veeky Forums who claimed to have insider knowledge of the on-goings of various RPG publishers. Weird.

No no, it's required to feel included, or else you'd just assume they weren't speaking to you. You only read every third sentence.

Sorry, it was a bit off-topic drawing into the Zak/Contessa thing. The gender/race war has no credibility, it's a thing to gain publicity, popularity, and money by creating a fake controversy. Show business but worse. i.e.
>men and women exist therefore at least 50% of all RPG books need to be written by women,
or
>black people and white people exist, therefore at least 50% of all RPG books need to be written by black people.
and for some reason
>LGBTQ make up almost 0.05% of the population, therefore they should be writing at least 50% of RPG books

I wish I was using less hyperbole.

i know MCG got in a lot of internet shit fights about writing a native american inspired mini setting for the strange, so i guess at least some of that is to prevent future blow-ups.

Yeah, Thunder-Plains or something close. It was cultural appropriation which is yet more baseless insanity. The unfortunate part is that it actually does raise sales, because all the reasonable people don't care if they do stupid things, and all the extra market might buy a book or two to show they appreciate their political correctness.

>splitting pronoun usage
Have these community college dropouts hear of the words: they, their, them, your, or you? You use it because the identity of an object is a variable, not to protect someone's fee-fees.

Whoa, those are our words. Only those who are not male or female are allowed to call ourselves they, them, or their. You've already got he and she, you priviledged bastards!

Everyone shut the fuck up and tell me what core Foci are good for an unnarmed build.
Please, I'm new to the system.

Don't like dice pool systems, so I don't use it, but the technology and cyphers are easy enough to convert over so I use those. Some of the adventures have interesting ideas to loot for sci-fantasy.

Linguistically its annoying.
Although I'd love to see a book that dispenses with such writing practices.

Bonus points for telling them to get fucked

Always fascinated to hear these stories. I keep bouncing around the outside of the industry and every time i do i get stories like this

Literally any, just be a glaive and use your type for heavy armor and focus for Fuses Flesh and steel to be a near invincible warrior.

There's also an unarmed Foci in character options "Needs no Weapon"

Dice pool?

Retards aren't allowed to use Veeky Forums

Remember to always ignore /pol/tards

Its not a dice pool, I used the wrong term. My bad.

Campaign is on-pause this week to run a one-shot Shadowrun game to remind everyone how bad a system can be.

anybody got a pdf of this? I checked the share thread, but no such luck.

I've been running Numenera campaigns for about three years now. Current one is halfway through tier four, going pretty well.

I've made adhoc rulings on class abilities when I feel something is lacking or is too powerful, but the base mechanics are untouched.

What's the campaign about

Rpg rem uz

What is this code?

Nu Men Era.

Just saying.

Spaces are dots

Numenera is interesting, the system is built from tight interlocking mechanics that are never showcased how they're supposed to be used together.

The game really fucking needed a Replay/Actual play included with the PHB explaining why you'll almost never die because you used your stat pools.

>Retards aren't allowed to use Veeky Forums
You should leave, then.

The edge on these soyboys. It's ok user, I'm sure some rainbow haired twink will reward you for your valor!

I gave it a read and it seemed incredibly mediocre. It also doesnt seem to have a tone, which makes it a hard sell.

Hate.

Everybody hates him.

Everybody who doesnt, should.

I checked there actually, but didn't see a numenera listing.

Retards are all that's left on Veeky Forums because you idiots kicked all the smart people out for having badwrongfun.

It's under Cypher system, and then campaign settings

thanks!

Well, he did a better job with numenera than meals and crawfish did with 5e, so it's clear he was the brains of the operation, personality faults being put aside.

>deliberately but objectively shit choices in the game.
There it is. The ultimate silver bullet to end any 3.5 debate.

3aboos will actually defend it

The funniest thing is that Paizo didn't bother to fix it in PF. It got even worse.

>That rogue trick that lets you reroll 1's for sneak attack damage

I see his point. 5e is super obvious and I've gotten bored of it faster than any other edition. 3.5e is super not obvious and lasted a much longer time. But also is super frustrating to start.

He's clearly arguing for a happy medium between the two extremes. He's clearly arguing for fourth edition.

>linguistically its annoying
As a professional linguist, I simultaneously have no idea what you mean by this and am offended by whatever idea you were attempting to communicate. The usage of third-person pronouns to describe a person or persons of unspecified gender in the English language is entirely linguistically sound and also grammatically acceptable. What you probably meant was, "I don't like it."

I've definitely been noticing a waning player base in regards to 5e as well, /5eg/ is starting to resemble /pfg/ more and more.

I think you're probably misunderstanding them if you think they do. They just love the parts without that bullshit because they have system mastery.
>Who cares if subpar options exist if you never see them actually chosen or in play except by idiots.
Would probably be their argument. That or talking about how some optimal options are situationally useless depending on the campaign type.

Fuckin' got em

I just hope it'll be cleaned up in numenera 2

But you are using hyperbole.
First, because they make up something closer to ten percent, roughly comparable with the population of the black community. Second, because fifty percent would never be enough to satisfy them.

Huh, you're right. If you include people who say they are bisexual with people who are gay and transgender it actually approaches 4-5% in the U.S. I am more educated now.

So all you need to do to meet their quota is say that you're a bisexual white man instead of a straight white man. You need to actually say it too, repeatedly, or else it'll be assumed you're straight because you don't tell literally everyone at every possible opportunity how special you are.

I think I'm having an idea for selling RPG products.

How is cypher?

Come off it. Anybody old enough to be posting here would have spent their entire education being taught that using they/their to refer to a singular person is always wrong, and so would probably be annoyed by seeing it suddenly become commonplace.

A lot better than you'd expect, but only suited for short campaigns.

You tend to reach max level quickly.

Is that not a problem in numenera?

Numenera is cypher system, just with better rules for armor and fewer Type options in the core book.

What's a good way to extend campaigns? Double xp costs?

Split XP gain 50/50 into XP useable for permanent character advancement and XP useable for short/long term benefits/re-rolls is the common house-rule.

Zak says it over and over again and he's persona non grata to a lot of those guys so be careful there.

That doesn't work. Trust me, I've tried.

If it didn't work, why would so many industries be doing it? The average consumer just doesn't care, and the idiotic who live by it can't get mad about it then.

It's acceptable, but most style guides recognize that it's not ideal. Personally, I think it's fine in casual speech, but it annoys me when I see it in formal writing. Alternating pronouns for hypothetical persons are almost as bad, though.

I don't see why masculine pronouns shouldn't be used for indeterminate gender, unless the person's gender is relevant (and in an RPG rulebook, that's rarely the case).

Wrong for the American dialect. Singular "they" is perfectly acceptable in other English dialects.

Male pronouns are now phatic due to their wide and accepted use.

Gender pissing contests in rpg books make them virtually unreadable.

If you look at 18-34 in the US, it's up above 15%. And it's been steadily increasing for a while.

Honestly, any straight person who doesn't admit to being a little bit bi-curious is a fucking cop.

Fantastic. Maybe by the time period Numenera's set in, non-American English dialects will be relevant.

Wiki doesn't have that high a %, except in San Francisco which is WAY outlier.

Not the other user, but come off it yourself. When you hear, read, or speak 'they' you understand exactly what is meant. You would have to be intentionally defiant or incredibly dense not to understand its usage as a singular.

We can go down grammatical, historical, you-name-it arguments that all side with singular 'they' having a logical basis and a track-record for use, but at the end of the day the users of the language are its creators and arbiters, and that machinery welcomes and accepts it.

>any straight person who doesn't admit to being a little bit bi-curious is a fucking cop
Are you serious or is this the new /pol/ bait ? If serious, you do recognize that "alternative" sexualities are pushed forward a lot right now yes ? The obvious consequence is that many will try it, we'll obviously have more than what we had during the last centuries but it won't grow past 10% (maybe 15 but that's really pushing it), and for obvious reasons (I'm talking here about "I've been X for 10 years and I'm confident in my choice", and not "I'm trying X, it's so envigorating !" & "Oh yeah, it's only been 6 months but I can totally feel it, I'm reborn !")

GMing my first campaign of it currently. I really dig the system it's self it's the lore i'm iffy about in places.

Also this is the most strange/cringey pdf I've ever read.

This seems like the most relevant place to ask. Is the cipher system any good? It looks pretty nice but I have trouble telling because I think everything looks nice on the surface

>NEW
>MEN
>ERA
I know you might be thinking "How more blatant can this shit get?" but let me tell you, once you read this travesty you'll know, it gets much worse.

The entire thing is essentially a beta male fantasy world where men get impregnanted, men get castrated all the time, genderless multicolored gender studies professors walk around doing "magic" to create new genderless multicolored gender studies professors and so on and then you realize "oh right, this was the game written by the guy who got fired from wotc for using his expense account to fly to japan and participate in an "art" show where the "artist" cut his own penis off and then fried up slices of it and fed them to the audience".

Yes, Nu Male Era is that bad. It's got all the fetish shit of a super degenerate white wolf game with all the terrible writing of a failed writer from the worst era of D&D.

Also OP, kill yourself shill rat.

It's fun and easy to learn.
It's the easiest shit to GM for, you just need to come with a number from 1 to 10 to create an npc and it's stats all the other shit can be winged or created as you wish.
On the player side its also really easy to use even if it's the first rpg the play, come from DnD background or from a more narrative focused approach. There are some minor "trap options" that are technically inferior but have some fluff attached that makes them seem equal to the rest. In general this options can be avoided by power gamers while at the same time be good enough for people who just want to role play.