I so desperately want to play in a long Numenera campaig but my group just won't shake off from PF. I too support every single Monte Cook Kickstarter in the hope that, one day, it will happen.

Listing Dune, Hyperion and The Dark Tower as references makes me want to try this game out, love those books.

Regarding player intrusions - I find those mostly come up in situations where players ask open-ended questions looking for some sort of boon. The classic, "We search the room. Do we find anything useful?" or "Do I recognize anyone in the tavern?" or "Is there any chance the shop has a...?" Instead of being on me to figure out, I just come back with, "I don't know... is there?" It's all those crazy schemes that players have that hinge on some silly mundane item to pull off. It's the classic scene from 'The Princess Bride': Westley: "What I wouldn't give for a holocaust cloak..." Fezzik: ::Pulls one out of his shirt:: "You mean like this one?"

@snieves4

Ай бұрын

Ive done that this week. “Hey we need a crowbar…” Isnt that a part of youre equipment pack? “Yeah!”

I've been catching up on your prep podcasts for numenera and have been hoping for this! Thanks! I've been a huge numenera fan and have plenty of material but haven't had the chance to play yet, but I will soon. Thanks again for making this and the rest of your great content.

Numenera's one-number monsters absolutely inspired me to strip down my D&D monsters to very simple stats so I could focus on theme and description (and also use easily adjust any monster to challenge my players at any level).

@gedece

Жыл бұрын

yeah, the main problem there is that players have spells that require different saves, for example. So you still need something beyond one single stat. Or you roll all your saves based in that stat and people feel cheated by it.

@MannonMartin

Жыл бұрын

@@gedece Do players really care what stat monsters use to roll saves? Not that I'm advocating for 1 stat monsters. To me it dumbs things down too much and makes the set dressing too obvious. If I know the only difference between monsters is descriptions and they are all mechanically the same they just feel like cardboard cutouts to me. Not that every monster must be mechanically distinct. I'm not going to pay a massive amount of attention to that, but I need enough for some verisimilitude. Having said that I don't know how much I'd care if all saves were done with one stat. It would dumb things down such that you wouldn't have specific weaknesses, but you could still have monsters with stronger or weaker saves.

@JaredHayter

Жыл бұрын

@@gedece you could use advantage and disadvantage to simulate a monster's strengths and weaknesses. What I chose to do was halve the bonus for weak saves. I will admit that the real challenge was coming up with one special action or property for each monster to differentiate it. Without that, they feel samey.

@bryan__m

Жыл бұрын

@@MannonMartin granted I have the benefit of being 7 months in the future, but in the new book Mike's launching on Kickstarter, he points out that for most rolls, it doesn't really matter what the bonus is. So you pick a monster's good stat (which is the same bonus as its attacks and its proficient skills, still just 1 number to remember), then anything else, you can roll it first. If it's a really low number it fails, if it's a really high number it succeeds. In the middle you can just knock a few points off of the 1 number you're remembering and do the math. (I'm doing an awful job paraphrasing as I've only read bits of the preview and the real book doesn't come out for months). From a GM perspective, it might sound very same-y, but the player doesn't have any way to know what's in the stat block. Over the course of one combat they won't feel or notice the difference of +/- or two here or there. So instead of coming up with some complex statblock with saves of +7/+5/+0/+1/-1/+0, just say 2 high saves at +6 and 4 low saves at +0 and your players will never notice.

@MannonMartin

Жыл бұрын

@@bryan__m No actually I totally agree. Monsters strait up should NOT have a different number for every stat. They don't have to all follow the same pattern, but it really should be something quite simple like they get high, medium, and low values and all their stats are one of those three numbers, and the medium is usually just strait +0 until you get to high level monsters. I wouldn't want to oversimplify it by saying they all get the same pattern, but most monsters should be at least that simple, or simpler. I don't even know why there is a separate stat block for every damn animal. There's tons of mammals, or birds, or lizards that should really just have one template for a whole category of animals. True some have special abilities, so maybe those get their own stat block... Or maybe you just have a list of special abilities added to the standard template if it's that particular animal. There's talk of doing something like that for Druids... Why not for the DM too and make their lives simpler? We don't need a stat block for every individual creature... We just don't. Hell you don't even need different stat blocks just to have some size variation you can just have a standard bonus to HP and damage to size them up and still run the same block. I'm not saying you dumb it down to 1 block for all land beasts... That goes... too far. But you could easily have one for all felines, or even generalize it to agile, stealthy beasts. One for smallish, rodent like creatres. One for birds. Fish... ect.

I love your lazy DM tables. I would pay for a lazy numenera (or generic tech fantasy) table supplement. Thanks for making this video!

@SlyFlourish

Жыл бұрын

Patrons of Sly Flourish get two pages of Numenera-friendly generators for Science Fantasy and Cyberspace. They’re in Uncovered Secrets volume 2 for Patrons. There’s a link to Patreon in the show notes.

@bluestarorion

Жыл бұрын

@@SlyFlourish Good thing I am a patron! Thanks for the heads up!

Cypher is a super-flexible system. The other launch game for Cypher was The Strange which shifts people around worlds, changing their characters appearance and capabilities as they manifest in alternate realities. A few years ago, using that as a springboard, I ran a mini-campaign of Torg (if you've heard of that) using Cypher rules and it was great.

I like how they have added a small image of the monster which represent s the size compared to an average human

I'd love to hear a light interview with some of your numenera players about the game experience so far. Got ya lazies in the post! Love your work and approach to gaming. chur.

Thank you for this video, I’ve been getting more and more interested in playing Numenera as I’ve watched your videos on it.

So happy to see new Numanera content coming out. I would really like to get into it, and I really appreciate this video. I am looking forward to listening to your podcast on Numenera.

I watched some of your numenera session preps a few months ago and you mentioned bundle of holding, and low and behold it was running right then so I scooped it up. It's definitely an interesting system. I'm not sure numenera itself is my cup of tea, but cypher System overall is really intriguing to me.

@NefariousKoel

Жыл бұрын

Grab the Cypher system core book, the newer all-red colored one. Although there's the usual caveat, common to all "universal" RPGs, that you'll probably want to spend some time listing out the player abilities & such you'll allow for your pictured setting, it's modular enough to make it fairly easy and has a printable setting sheet for doing so. You're just picking and choosing what you want. It also has numerous splatbooks of genre settings with a specific list of suggestions for each. Mixing genres is simple. On top of that, there are genre splatbooks featuring a lot of extras if you want to add even more. The Cypher system is simple and unified enough to make hacking it without mucking things up pretty easy too.

This is wonderful! I wouldn't mind running Numenera sometime and have enjoyed reading the books.

Another great source of inspiration for Numenera games would be Mark Lawrence's Red Sister series of novels.

I love this system. Thanks for the deep dive. I also have your lazy dungeon master’s guide.

It **does** seem very Destiny-ey! That's funny.

@bryan__m

Жыл бұрын

Whoa, the two DMs who have changed the way I run games the most, right here in one place.

Wish I would’ve seen this before Gen Con, but super excited to know what to look for next!

So glad to see you dig Numenera. Sadly where I live it failed. A publishing house translated a few Numenera books but they didn't sell well enough to justify the work, so the game doesn't get too much exposure here. As for "which monster is in which book?", you actually don't even have to check the index at the end of the book. Just a page or so before the random tables is a list of creatures by level. In that list, the monsters have a little symbol next to the name that indicates in which book the monster is listed. That list doesn't give the page number but its far closer to the random table.

Great video. In terms of inspiration I highly recommend “cage of souls” from Adrian Tchaikovsky. While the premise is different form numenera, it’s a very pessimistic book, the scenes, monsters and ideas can be dropped in numenera basically without changes.

Regarding "Multi Attack" - my standard is to make ONE move against each PC each round, with possibly one additional environmental effect against the group. With obvious exceptions if like... a character has disengaged from combat to sneak or defuse a bomb or whatever. So if there are big enemies n fewer numbers than PC's, those enemies get some sort of multi-attack spread across multiple PC's (as opposed to focusing against one PC). This could be an AoE, multiple attacks, a special rushing attack, etc. I'm especially fond of massive enemies that can pick up a PC bodily, and then use them as a weapon to swing or throw at another PC. If there is a pack of lower-level enemies that outnumber PC's, I use the group attack options and they act as a single unit against a single PC. That attack will often be multi-faceted with one damage source and an effect such as grappling, tackling prone, disarming, etc. If a bigger enemy is squared off 1-on-1 with a PC, they typically threaten their damage and an additional effect such as poison, burning, acid that melts equipment, partial paralysis, grievous wounds, etc.

07:52 Here's my suggestion:: GM _Catalysts_ ...You're welcome😏

I’d also love to hear your thoughts/a review on the Numenera starter set!

I'd think it'd be pretty easy to scale an encounter. Just as you know what to expect from a monster based on their tier, so can you rough estimate the defenses of your party.

I normally have the monsters damage and number of attacks change based upon number of players. Action Economy. Even a L2 creature can make multiple attacks. They may not do much, but they can make them. You can also have monsters do more damage than their level like x2 or even x3 depending on how the players are doing. Finally, you can have damage directly effect the health track and bypass the pools entirely for a super deadly event.

Does anyone know how t find a group for numenera? I’ve been looking in roll20 and a few other sites, but have been really struggling to find a group to play with.

I have a lot of those books in PDF, but I need to find the time to read them.

@SlyFlourish

Жыл бұрын

It’s worth it.

Hey Mike, I have the original Numenera; is it worth getting Numenera Discovery or are they similar enough that's its not necessarily worth making the shift?

@SlyFlourish

Жыл бұрын

The old one is fine and fully compatible. I don’t know if it’s worth buying the new one.

34:28 Or... What if you gave your 3rd level adventuring party a Talisman of Ultimate Evil, just to see what they'd do with it? Dangerous? Yes... But I am Chaotic Good :D Anywho... I do prefer running Numenera/Cypher System... I cant say I run Numenera exactly, as I've actually ported my D&D game to Cypher (only recently, mind you. Thanks WotC for blowing up the fandom!); because it was never a full fantasy game...instead, it took elements from Eberron and Dragonlance, and then I added bits that my high school friends meshed, adding elements of things like the Anime/Manga Slayers, The Elder Scrolls, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind... basically, the idea that the world USE TO BE a super-high magical technology world, with Flying Castles, Spelljammers, and the like...but then a Cataclysm happened about 2000 years ago... and only in the last 1000 years have civilisations began to emurge again. Over 90% of Magical Artefacts are gone... Traces of any previous civilisation are 97% gone... The world is basically anew, and the "sciences of magic" are still being learnt... ...all of this blends itself PERFECTLY to switching it from D&D to Cypher/Numenera. 43:18 Oh, no, mate... That's the worst way to do armour! Armour is like Damage Reduction in D&D (which basically never gets used); but lower level creatures CAN still be a threat. Firstly, most "Beast" creatures will usually contain a sidebar of a GM Intrusion or "Pack" option. Take the Seskii... it basically becomes harmless on its own once the player characters reach Tier 3, but a "Pack" increases their difficulty and damage...I cant remember the scale, but its something like +1 added Difficulty and Damage per 3 additional Seskii. Throw a Tracer in there, and that pack of Seskii can now coordinate attacks to distract and seperate the PC's into managable/even threats. Trust me here, if you cant find a detail in the Numenera 2 D&D, then check the Cypher Revised Rulebook... MCG included all options to scaling threats and damage, no matter what.

Would it be a perfect to play a Planescape game?

Anyone here use Arcana of the Ancients to run Numenera with 5e?

@SlyFlourish

Жыл бұрын

I used it in my Eberron game. It was great.

@epicbrowndragon

Жыл бұрын

@@SlyFlourish Did you say, “Eberron”?😊 My group ‘grew up’ on Eberron. Just started a new Eberron campaign using Montes Invisible Sun system (Cyphers system at the core, but souped up for magic) * not for the faint of heart, but - worth it if your group enjoys a lot of flexible magic.

Bwaaaa, it's pronounced beastiary! :)

just played cypher. i liked the static damage and the monster levels. overall i don't like the system. it feels like stripped down d&d. the benefit of fast turns comes at the cost of player agency. i also don't like how hit points are handled. gonna skip any games of this in the future.

Scrolls and potions are single use magic items, just saying. You don't have to describe them as scrolls and potions and you don't have to stick to the standard healing/spells. Or you could make the standard stuff more interesting. The Dark Sun Setting did something in that regard. Potions came as edibles, namely potion fruits. Scrolls didn't exist on paper or only rarely. Instead spells came hidden, blended into the decorative carvings on a staff, an odd pattern of pearls on a scarf, etc. Sometimes a little reflavoring goes a long way.

@bryan__m

Жыл бұрын

I'm not sure if you've played Numenera (either with the cypher system or the 5e version), but cyphers hit a lot different than a scroll or potion, and it's more than just form factor. A closer analogue might be to take a powerful permanent magic item, but only let it work one time. That being said, when Mike says he's used the idea of cyphers for a long time, if you look at his webpage that talks about them (search Relics), he includes a generator which IS just a spell attached to a different form factor item.