"You are walking on this, debris filled wasteland, you recognize some of the junk in the floor as being parts of long broken numenera. The sound of clinking reaches your ears and, downwind, you see a huge creature rummaging in the waste, it's at least as big as a house and it's walking on eight of its 10 legs, the remaining two are occupied moving pieces of dead tech, moving it around and trying out some of the buttons as his dozens of eyes appear to look carefully for any kind of change. When the piece of trash it's holding does nothing, he throws it away and picks up a new one... but it stops and slowly turns towards you having sensed your scent in the wind. It looks at you with many eyes, his sight wandering between each of you, looking at you, seizing you." "I take my sword and prepare for an incoming attack" "The beast looks at you and then at the weapon in your hand, it seems to consider the distance between you and it and then turns away, almost as if showing pity on the size of your sword. Its eyes focus once again in the junk at its feet and it begins his rummaging once more, losingnall interest in you and your comrades." "I have a book about the creatures of the land, maybe I know something about such creature?" "You spend a few minutes looking through the book and find a small entrance on a creature that could fit this description, not much is known about it, but you at least know it will not show any aggression unless it feels threatened. It appeares to have nearly human or human-like intelligence." I feel like that would be a good way of introducing the beast you gave as an example, sure, I have no idea what a oocirhtoso is, but with a cool description that leaves parts of it to the imagination, players can build one for themselves.

@chunkychew6995

Жыл бұрын

Hoollly shit that's awesome how long did that take you to write!?

@LddStyx

Жыл бұрын

The book gave exactly the same information as the scene in-front of the characters. It would be cooler if either the book or their observations included unique facts. Maybe they see that creatures young disassembling the discarded piece of tech. Or the book mentions their migratory patterns or maybe some fact about it being enraged by mirrors.

@bAtACt1X

9 ай бұрын

well done. When I was a young GM I loved to impress my players with cool ideas like this one needing long monologes (or needing many short ones). And I had complicated plost with confusing twists and deep NPcharacters. Well, today my plots are simple, my descriptions and explanaitions short. I try do set a stage to interact with in all kinds of ways (thats why I like future settings) At the end of a session my players should have talked more than me. And most times it works much better then 20 years ago.

Ah the number of times that I have presented alien situations to my players and they didn’t do anything with it. Now I understand.

I dunno. Numenera does use plenty of fantasy tropes- they're just not flavored as such. There are wizards that throw fireballs and shit, but they don't use mana. Their spells are fueled by an ancient, decrepit web of nanotech, and their magic words are garbled versions of root access commands that cause a catastrophic failure. On one hand, I get that there's certainly more work for the GM to sell the tropes they want to use. To use your example creature, it's all in how you introduce it. If you just have it wandering around the wilderness, with no context clues, then it really is the GM's fault that the players attack on sight. Instead, introduce it like Lovecraft introduced the Mi-Go. Have the characters searching out a great sage, and the sage only speaks to them from the shadows. Then, as they walk away, they see out of the corner of their eye they see that the sage they met was actually this creature with too many eyes and wings like a moth.

@NIL0S

3 жыл бұрын

Taking a note of that ;)

@FelipeKana1

3 жыл бұрын

Great point

@jeanMvang

3 жыл бұрын

I totally agree. I understand the message from the video though. It took me personally a couple of times over to understand that specifically for Numenera and all of its components, they are frameworks and tools for those GMs who really want to push their creativity. In the rulebook, there is a section where the rules allow you to increase or reduce the "Weird" to your group and liking. There are no wrong answers. I like the Lovecraftian feel of it. I believe it is my job as a GM to properly layout the important elements to properly insert my players into the world of Numenera.

@the-patient-987

Жыл бұрын

I came to comment something along those lines. The game relies heavily in the simple human motivations of most farmer and hunter/gatherer people that lives in the world to contrast it with the unfathomable weird nature of all other things happening around it. Like you said, it's all about how things are introduced and giving keys so the characters can make their own ideas of the world. Even they're wrong or variably confused. The core of the game is trying to figure out an alien mixture of cultures.

@anomanomom239

Ай бұрын

Yeah. It is just that when you see a giant, many tongued, psionic, parasitic worm -- the last thing you expect it to be is a local version of fantasy dragon.

I've been running a Numenera campaign for 6 months now. 2 of my players are very seasoned RPG veterans, 1 has mostly played D&D/Pathfinder and 1 is completely new to RPGs. This whole setting is based on using your imagination as a GM and being able to create a setting/scenario and allowing the players to live in it. So, if you're a GM who prefers an RPG that provides more constructed encounters and rules, then this system isn't for you. If you enjoy collaborative storytelling where the goal is to allow players to do cool things and you to throw crazy, oddball situations at them, this is going to be your jam. The only thing I prefaced my players with when we started was that they aren't themselves when they play this game. They are adventurers who have been raised in a world where curiosity and looking around the corner to see what's next is part of the every day. And we've been having a blast. I'm sending them halfway across the galaxy this week. They're getting zapped there by a 300 foot tall automaton that rose up out of a mountain it had been lying dormant in for the past 500 millennia. A mountain they were previously pillaging from, but found out they were actually pulling pieces of it's brain functionality out. Just crazy, weird wacky stuff. And I love it!

@nopenever9829

Жыл бұрын

The only thing I prefaced my players with when we started was that they aren't themselves when they play this game... im confused ... you are ALWAYS playing "a Charackter" and not yourself in RPGs ... This is how this works, you are supposed to do that in every RPG

The original might&magic setting is probably the best version of this trope. For those who don't know: It's a high fantasy world with the basic monsters, magic, etc. Except it was once part of a huge galactic human empire, which still exists, but cut off from that empire by a war with the 'Kreegan' who are an alien empire, or through some local cataclysm. As this world was disconnected from contact with the empire for hundreds or thousands of years, all advanced electronic equipment gradually deteriorated through lack of imported resources/expertise, most of it no longer even existing. The best equipment in the world is usually swords/armors/etc which are highly decorative. This is because they are actually just ceremonial gear, for show, granted to high officials in the empire for wearing on state occasions. Despite it never being meant to serve as actual combat gear, it is still the absolute best that exists on the planet and it cannot be reproduced, as it was crafted in great foundry-worlds from high tech materials using high-tech processes. There are 'technological' artefacts here and there, but they are extremely rare, and usually nobody knows what they are, how they work or if they work. In some cases they take on a religious mystical aspect (for example, the 'oracle' of a certain kingdom being an ancient AI on a crashed spaceship that nearly no-one is granted access to except for the high council, and even they don't really know what it is). Folk tales in the world all speak of this ancient past of technological glory and a galactic empire, but all described from the lens of a fantasy setting by people who have no idea of any of that. For example, a folk tale could speak of a great cataclysm that happened in the far past, where the gods decided to abandon the people and dropped great balls of fire all over the planet. What actually happened might have been a space-ship combat above the planet where the Kreegan shot down the human sattelites, following which the 'gods abandoned the people', that in actuality being the loss of contact with the empire. etc etc. The game also presents it amazingly well (I think it was M&M5?). You just play in a high-fantasy world for like 50 hours. Then you get granted access to the oracle. You enter the hall, and everything looks completely alien. It actually takes a moment before you realize, oh shit, this is sci-fi tech, what the fuck is going on here. It really gives you as the player the feeling of what a person in that world setting would feel entering there. Something that is completely and utterly alien. There are dwarves and elves etc, but these are explained to be engineered races, dwarves being humans engineered to withstand higher gravity planets, etc. Not that anyone on the world will know that. The empire still exists, the galactic war is still going on. The beauty of this setting is that the players can be anything from peasant louts born on this abandoned world, wielding a broken sword, to agents of the galactic empire dropped on the world to recover some important artefact, in a race against Kreegan commandos, equipped with energy weapons. It's really a fantastic setting.

@dreamcore7

3 жыл бұрын

M&M series are fantastic in that regard. I am more familiar with 6789 then first 5. Oracle thing was in MM6, can't tell about previous games. Sci fi + Fantasy is perhaps one of the greatest genres.

@brandonkelbe

Жыл бұрын

Sounds like you’ve read a lot of the books or actually played it. Sounds good though, idk why people hate on it.

@Rynewulf

Жыл бұрын

@@brandonkelbe Old video game curse. Some properties that are quite cool and used to be big, aren't anymore so are looked down on. Ones that are still popular like say D&D and Elder Scrolls but also old and have lots of weirdness in there are given a kind of backwards benefit of the doubt for their older entries that relatively unpopular properties like M&M or Glorantha or Numenera just don't get

Numinera seems like my kinda thing cus the whole lovecraftian scifi fever dream sounds pretty relatable.

I've been running/playing Numenera for just about 10 years, and have rarely ran into the issues you presented in this video. We love that the concept is that everything is weird as shit. There are whole chapters in both the original and the updated rules (Discovery and Destiny) that talk about realizing the Ninth World, and how to present it to your players. There's also a list of books, tv, movies, anime, video games and much more in the Appendix that they suggest at least looking at to get a feel for what it's like. My pitch has always been: Imagine Horizon Zero Dawn meets Heavy Metal 2000 in the art style of Moebius ( French artist Jean Giraud). Don't get me wrong, I still really enjoyed your breakdown on how you changed the way you and your group plays! Have an awesome day!

3:30 lol... the way I GM, I do not use the "monster manual" names with encounters... this is something that GM's should try. Don't call it an "Orc Shaman", use your brain to describe the red-eye'd menacing robed humanoid wielding a large Stave with a glowing green orb floating above it... A "Roper" becomes an assault from above, with purple tendrils latching onto your limbs, sucking the very strength from your body... they then uproot you from the ground drawing you upwards into the darkness... You need to stop thinking of "name-picture-statblocks" and bring back the mental imagery... it makes mundane into mystery. This then sucks your players into the game more. This is a lost art to GM/DMing, if you want to make the most of the roleplaying games, you'll need to uncover this skill. Players whom have gamed with such GM's with this gaming method (describe don't tell) will then fully appreciate Numenera. Got some good notes through this video, I usually ease the players in slowly with a few human goals (ex: Be an escort for a Trader, and travel to the next town... slowly ease some relatable creatures against them and later work in some of the bizarre... don't shoot the big wad at them)

@jacobb5484

2 жыл бұрын

Only give the name picture and description if they either roll high to see what they know about it or have some past experience or backstory. That way they are inherently active and engaged with the info coming naturally rather than making meta assumptions and assuming how the story is supposed to go. An frost orc shaman could be anything from a vicious brute, to a cloaked figure performing burial rites after a failed battle, to a starving hermit exiled for heresy depending on context and how the players engage. If you say it’s a frost orc shaman you’re predisposing them to assume combat and likely plan engage that way immediately.

I generally agree with you. But. I GM/DM a lot of RPGs, and recently started a West Marches type campaign with a lot of new players. Some who have barely delved into a fantasy genre at all. They have no problem with any monster from the Monster manual. And I rolled on a Gnoll demon pet from the Volo and Gnolls came with Shoosuva. I have never seen or heard about it, neither have my players. Yet, when I showed them a picture, it was good. I understand that Numenera is too alien, but I never keep my players full in the dark. They always have ways of obtaining info. If they rush without investigation, yea, they can expect to possibly die a horrible death. But if you (and your players) understand what kind of RPG Numenera is, it is a fantasic and wonderous experience.

"Here are the special tricks I use to run Numenera: [a long series of things explicitly extant in Numenera]"

Sounds like the problem isn’t the world building’s originality but rather the way they incorporate all these “got-ya” moments that discourage exploration and learning the world.

@FelipeKana1

3 жыл бұрын

It doesn't sounds like they're supposed to be "gotcha" moments. They end up being because of the strangeness. One authors' completely free imagination is always absurd to another mind.

@kyecaven

3 жыл бұрын

I feel like the problem comes when you run numenera like Dungeons & Dragons. Tell stories, not to be a video game that is able to be played without a computer. That being said I do think there's an issue with things turning into gaudy hell houses. So I like to draw on stuff the players IRL find weird. Data mining, infrastructure, how muscles work, pistol shrimp, the Marianas Trench, tectonic plates, and other weird but grounded things. I ensure that first contact with any of numeneras "weird" is no weirder than a reflavored version of those. But I ensure all answers lead to more questions, questions that ask you to delve deeper, and let's just say there's a reason some deep dark corners have been left unexplored. But you never START there. I think of it like how encounter scaling works in dnd except with numenera it's about how twisted and absurd the mysteries become.

I run Numenera since years. It's a nice science fantasy romp and I have played a 4 season campaign. Thinking on running a season 5 to use the new books.

@NIL0S

3 жыл бұрын

PS: Seskii are the Numenera dog analogue :)

I have a simple tweak that could make it fun; a lives system. It can allow exploration without a game over immediately and can create informed decisions in terms of interacting with the world. I don't know what exactly the story explanation would be, but there's probably enough weird stuff in there that you can come up with something or never explain it, or somewhere in between and you would be fine. There could also be something you could do with those corpses of your character lying around that could add something to the game, like a previous version of you became a zombie and you have to deal with your zombie self right now or end up fighting more of yourself. Look to the SCP Confinement Series by Lord Bung here on KZread for extra inspiration. And you can adjust the difficulty/tension based on how many lives you give your characters.

@jacobb5484

2 жыл бұрын

It would be easy to use the statue from Outer Wilds. Have them early on interact with a relic that takes a bio scan and prints out a copy before transferring their consciousness on death x number of times.

@danielhuelsman76

2 жыл бұрын

@@jacobb5484 Sure, why not?

I mean...what you're describing is Gamma World where you, the player, can actually understand how your character feels. Numenera feels like that - a good sfnal version of a lost-knowledge post-apocalypse. Having a frame of reference is fine and all, but sometimes the displaced feeling is the point. Numenera seems to do that better than anybody

George Lucas: "Darth Vader's suit is made from Woodoo hide."

@c.d.dailey8013

3 жыл бұрын

O_o All the time I thought it was made of some kind of metal machenery. At least that is what it looks like in the movies. Edit: That would make more sense. It is like how people in real life get metal implants to fix skeletal problems. Metal and machines makes Darth Vader and Star Wars in general more grounded.

@yuin3320

Жыл бұрын

Are you judging big mean space daddy's bdsm suit?

Great advice, mate. I'm running a Rogue Trader campaign where the PCs are eventually going to travel to another dimension by flying through the Tyrant Star in their star ship (any one who knows about the Haarlock Legacy trilogy from Dark Heresy will know the implications of that lol) I've been wracking my brains for ideas what this dimension is like for years now and it's ranged from a dimension which takes place inside a universe size Eldritch Abomination to the SCP universe, to my own 'dimension between dimensions' in my own 'fantasy/diesel punk' setting. So now I might have to reel that back a bit so the PCs don't just get lost. Thanks again mate!

@yuin3320

Жыл бұрын

I'm curious what you did and how it went for you! I was coming up with a little advice but then realized you commented this years ago.

@Ralndrath

Жыл бұрын

@yuin3320 hey, thanks! I'm afraid the campaign didn't get that far. One of the players got way too intense into the game and it played hell on my anxiety. So, yeah, put it to a stop, which was a shame. Never got around to deciding what they would travel to, though lol

This actually sounds a bit like Jack Vance’s dieing earth. Inumerable ages have passed many creatures and societies and ancient artifacts of fantastic variety and oddness where you cant even begin to wager whats going on outside of your immediate knowledge and locality.

@losdeldostacos8007

4 ай бұрын

It's very influenced by Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun, which also takes place on a far future earth.

My main problem with the official Numenera setting (at least the first edition, I don't know if this changed in the second) is that it goes so out of the way to make everything as unexplainable as possible that in the end the world ends up feeling shallow. Like, the books offer examples of weird stuff, but almost no insight on why it happens "because that's the point". The result is a world that in my opinion has almost NO LORE. Everything is weird. Everything is wacky. I understand that some things are better left unsaid so players and GMs can fill in the gaps, and that mystery is cool, but I feel Numenera goes way too far. The setting books always were incredibly disappointing to me because they often feel more like a weird stuff brainstorm session than an actual depiction of a world. I totally agree that Numenera works better when distilled a bit with some amount of familiarity and occasional ground-level explanations to the madness. Too much weird makes the weird not feel weird anymore.

@jeanMvang

3 жыл бұрын

I love Numenera and the Cypher System, but I also agree with you. It makes it difficult when everything in this world seems half done or lacking lore. It took some change in perspective in my opinion as a GM running this game, because I had to go in using everything as a tool to create my own stuff. For GMs and players who are used to a certain way of playing, it can prove very difficult to play/run. If you haven't already it's worth giving it another try.

@dinbabwa452

Жыл бұрын

It's weird but it's up to you to make it less weird. If players want to learn about something from the past and you wish to flesh that out go for it. The game makes exploration actually meaningful because you are doing it together instead of reading about it in a lore book reference

this is reminding me of nothing so much as The Roadside Picnic. that which would become S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

The Orc shaman example is a bit silly. If I take a random official D&D book, and tell my players that in front of them is an Tsucora Quori they will also be as clueless as the Numenera example you gave. There are TONS of monsters my players and even more the characters wouldn't know.

@Rynewulf

Жыл бұрын

Except the Tsucora Quori example misses the point of the Orc Shaman: no one knows what a Tuacora or a Quori is. But everyone has heard of fantasy orcs, and everyone has heard of shamans. So everyone automatically responds to the name Orc Shaman, and very few people respond to the other. Game design bebby

If I was a player in the vanilla numenera I would beg the question. How do the other explorers / adventurers deal with those things ? After all if this profession still exists there must be some way they deal with encountering unknown creatures and unknown objects. Some procedures or tools.

@ryhmorhaz

3 жыл бұрын

Right: Aeon Priests are the ones who study the numenra and theorize about it

Around 7 ish when he is talking about no clue and doing random things and seeing what happen and bad outcomes. I was like "you mean like in real life when you are in a unknown situation and you need to choose your actions wisely and it maybe the wrong choice." I love it give me more.

@yuin3320

Жыл бұрын

Real life has the worst fucking gameplay ever. I almost want to leave it at that, because it really does say enough on its own, but even in real life you can see a person and say "Hello" and they won't rip their own head off and bowl it at you as it projectile vomits hallucinogenic piss everywhere. There are many unknowns that make life stupid and unfun and not at all fit to be a game, but even in real life we are told a great many things that give us a foundation for how we relate to the world and some expectations that we carry with us which inform how we can interact with our world and what things we might expect from said interactions.

Solution: give your players a hitchhikers guide

Numenera is slick and stylish and thoroughly modern in aesthetics, but it's no more gonzo than Metamorphosis Alpha or Gamma World were over forty years ago in the dawn of the TTRPG hobby. Hell, it's tame compared to Realm of Yolmi, or even a good chunk of modern OSR and indie RPGs. You're just plain too young to remember how games worked in those 70s and 80s but this is nothing new, and only marginally more imaginative than average. Monte's been around for ages and this is him being nostalgic to some degree. He's certainly designed the system to let you survive experimentation and risk-taking better than most games of this nature do, so it isn't like he's ignored changes in tastes when it comes to PC mortality. Playing an exploration & discovery based game in a universe where most things are initially incomprehensible and often dangerous takes a mindset you obviously don't have, but thankfully you're the exception among roleplayers, not the rule.

Sounds way much more interesting and compelling than a fantasy world where society and the things that populate it somehow manages to conform to a modern-suburban mindset where the players are not challenged to question their assumptions and expectations (or just fill in the blanks with lazy metagaming stereotypes). Aliens are supposed to be alien and incomprehensible. Mysteries are supposed to be mysterious. The point is not to "win" and make an unkillable murder-hobo, but to survive and tell tales about it later.

So wait that numenera game was actually based on something heh

I think this sort of thing can work quite well, however the problem with it is that the PC backgrounds more than likely don't correspond with what the players see. If for example the PCs were pioneers going into a strange, unexplored land then it would work perfectly. This sense of confusion would likely immerse the players more if the intended experience paralleled something like Marco Polo's first time seeing an elephant. Or the Aztecs seeing conquistadors on horses with the closest reference it could possibly have being an alpaca, an animal that was never used in mounted combat. These problems can be mitigated or even turned into interesting gameplay by giving the players ways to learn about what's directly ahead of them without the risk of immediate death (such as the bolts in Stalker/Roadside Picnic). In conclusion; by reframing the unknown and giving some small ways to interact with the world to test the waters you can turn a confusing mess into an intriguing mess.

Do you play with the unimaginative?

Reading Gene Wolfe can give you window into Numenera.

For dangerous things I'd maybe try approaching it like poisonous mushrooms. Some people already know what poisonous mushrooms look like, either through study or through past experiences. Other times, you learn that something's poisonous by hearing stories, for example maybe one about how somebody brought back these unfamiliar mushrooms, ate them, and then got sick and/or died. Sometimes it's as clear as seeing a dead body in an area and figuring "well surely something here caused this" and after seeing that there are no external wounds, maybe the victim vomited or something to convey that what killed them was internal, you can put together at least a vague idea of what could have caused it (perhaps the mushrooms in the basket they were holding). Having something seemingly inoccuous be dangerous is a whole trope in and of itself, though, and you can play up that contradiction, like a cute little animal who's seen playing amongst a pile of corpses. Or for the succubus analog that Numenera has, you can treat it pretty much as you'd treat a regular succubus, just in Numenera it's an extradimensional automaton rather than a demon (though, in-universe, you might still have stories coming up about "demon women"); I'd at least think, granted the knowledge of succubi, a player would be wary of a stranger who is weirdly insistent on seducing them (or at least if they go along with it, they won't be entirely shocked when it ends badly) I think one of the bigger things that I'd just tell players is that things are intelligent surprisingly often, and I'd lean toward at least one of the PCs having telepathy of some sort, if not just handing out one or more devices to grant it, since, especially with the powers of a GM being able to create situations where it works, you can guide players to try more conversational approaches rather than swinging at, for example, a history nerd who happens to look like a lovecraftian monster.

I REALLY wanted to love Numenera. Like I REALLY REALLY wanted to get into it but at every turn I wasn't pleased. Thankfully I have found a system/setting that gives me what I want. Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea is painfully underrated 🥰 it's literally everything I want and most people haven't even heard of it!

This game sounds like if Caves of Qud were a pen and paper RPG. While worlds like this have decent worldbuilding it becomes a problem engaging people with it enough to make stories with them in it.

Just take the Old School approach. When Dnd started nobody knew the creatures either and the gm just described the creature and the players decided what to do.

interesting video, thanks for bringing the world to me

I mean eh, it's still better than the sorrow, dull and retarded universes that Hollywood proposes. I'm always interested in weird and incredible universes.

this is so important

What i got from this is that i really want to try this with people that never played a ttrpg before :D

I love you too Burger

i feel like it'd be great to take the creatures and put them into other RPGs

Is torment: tides of numenara set in the same universe?

@FractalSpiral1

3 жыл бұрын

Yeah. It's set on a part of the supercontinent that hasn't been explored by the Holdfast nations, and is relatively untouched by the Amber Papacy.

I personally love Numenera, but Imma be real with ya chief, I agree with this 110%. As a player, because my DM tried to be as weird, wild, and original as the setting, our group either had no idea what to do and got stalled and/or sidetracked repeatedly, or died (or worse) in increasingly gruesome ways by doing seeming benign things, like eating fruits from a tree or drinking water from a lake or nearby stream (also after seeing local wildlife doing the same, mind you). As a DM, I likewise found it increasingly difficult to create a campaign setting for Numenera, as up until recently, any settings i created felt like they lacked the all important super-science + eldritch weirdness that defines all things Numenera.

omg the 30s joke was killer.

Every 30 minutes YT reminds me that this video was uploaded. nice ed. this has been going on now for 10 hours. Should I be concerned? No, I don't care. nice

I just had a thought. Maybe the solution to all this is to combine Numenera with Riverworld. In the Riverworld setting people who has died from all over our history is woken up on an alien world and has to recreate society. But the Riverword planet is also kinda boring, because it is basically just one long river. What if, instead, some numenera AI decided to resurrect humanity in the ninth world in the same way. In Riverworld people are resurrected in cultural clusters, so you may get an area of 17th century japanese, an area of modern day scandinavians and an area of Neanderthals, all trying ro rebuild their cultures within the numenera. Jump forward a few hundred years and you have the Steadfast pretty much as we know it. Except you can put cultural traits on the cities and its people. Or you can put this in another area of the supercontinent. And you can even say that the resurrections are still going on, but now instead of the common folks i culturel clusters, the few that are awoken are the luminaries of history. And these may well be the heroes of the game. How cool would it be if your Nano, creating magic with the music of the spheres, was actually Mozart incarnated? Or your Glaive, Genghis Khan? Two things are accomplished here: The setting and its peoples will have cultural references the players can lean on. But also, the players can enter the setting as blanks. Stepping out of resurrection circles as grown adults means they can experience the ninth world as new as the players will. And the players can even create characters of any background they like, which means they will have a baseline for how to react to the strangeness around them. Thoughts?

@TheBurgerkrieg

2 жыл бұрын

the chances that I would see this comment were low but I am glad I did because this is fucking genius

@Accolonian

2 жыл бұрын

@@TheBurgerkrieg Well, I am trying to figure out if Numenera is for me, and after watching all the hype videos your video felt like a bucket of water in my face. Because you are right, I think players will feel a disconnect from the setting without reference points. Also, I have wanted to run with Riverworld for 30 years, but the trouble with it is for exploration purposes, you can only travel up or down river, so the physical setting is not as interesting as the setup is. I think I am gonna go with it.

@LilFeralGangrel

Жыл бұрын

this works because the when humanity first encountered the Octopi (yes octopi, as in the real world cephalopods but now they're part of an ancient hundreds of millions year old empire) they were all "oh, you're back?" which implies that humanity has been extinct for a while at least, only to just... reappear and that might be because of the numenera.

Childhood's End - Arthur C. Clarke It's good

I can appreciate your version of the Numenera world. I personally lean towards some more grounded elements in the world as well. That comes down to preference. That being said, I disagree with your assertion that people can't function in a game without some frame of reference. There are examples of this being done well in video games with things like Metroid and Axiom Verge where you are dropped into entirely alien surroundings. If I wanted to capture something like that in an RPG, say I want to run a game where the party crash lands on an alien world that is entirely foreign to them, it would pretty much require the same level of abstraction that Numenera does. I do agree overall that the high level of weirdness is definitely Numenera's biggest challenge though. It's definitely not for everybody. Monte Cook and his studio seem to really like weird games though. I mean Planescape was largely his doing and it was one of the weirdest D&D settings ever. If you look at their other current games like The Strange and Invisible Sun they also score extremely high on the weird scale. To each their own.

You want eldritch science-fantasy? You want Cha'alt, buddy!

Numenaria sounds cool. I am all for fantasy and creativity. I looked it up on Google images and it seems really cool. It makes me want to break out my Krita and digital tablet and do art. I came to this video from a video about the lore of Amonket from Magic the gathering. I just love fantasy lore like this. Ameonket isn't too confusing. It is basically Magic the Gathering meets Egyptian mythology. In this video I am getting interested in the new game of Numenara. The idea of orc shaman is something that I understand. It reminds me of Thrall, my favorite character of the lore of World of Warcraft. Thrall isn't too hard to understand. He is a scary green humanoid monster. He has a magic that is tied to nature and the four elements. Thrall has a great subversion where his orc bretheren used to be evil and currupted by deamons but then overcome it and become good guys. Thrall leads the orcs out of being enslaved by the humans. They form a hole new faction called the Horde. The rorcs are familiar to fantasy people, but they are a refreshing break from the stereotypically evil orcs from Lord of the Rings. I didn't know there was a downside to creativity. Mind blown. I think of Numenara and other super strange things as fantasy nerds on hard mode. I am up for the challenge. I have my own fantasy story, Larrian. I do push hard to be as creative as I can. Now I see that it is good to have some grounding to help people understand. I am a big fan of science. I am not into the tech stuff that much. What I really love is nature. So that gives me ideas for the world. The creatures take a lot of inspiration from real animals. For example, one creature I have blogged about a couple of days ago is an Equespear. It is a creature that is based on a horse. It is shown in the the design. People savy to the fantasy genre may notice that it is similar to a unicorn and a pegasus. People savy to etymology would realize that any word or name that resembles equus has to do with horses in some way. Horses themselves are one of the most famous kinds of animals. So they are familiar even to the layperson. Equespear is a very special kind of creature. It is associated to the sun goddess. They have great powers of sun and light. Still the horse-like nature can help one get some idea of hat they are like. Think a white and gold unicorn that shoots sun beams from its horn. If someone would come accorss it, they can make some educated guesses. The really savy ones would know to use wood magic against the creature. I would have this buit in my mechanics. Even then that would have some grounding. Plants do love sunlight in real life, so magic based on them is especially effective. I think there are other things. I like to have my world of Lonlarrian very different from the real world. I recentaly made an overhaul in the geography to make it more different. Yet I can still have grounding by having certain climates. One can recognige things like a jungle, a desert, a beach or a temepeet forest. I try not to go off of real world culture very much. There is one part that I could make work. There is a presiddentail election. I have just seen the vice president debate between Kamala Harris and Mike Pence. I persoannaly rooted for Harris. It is a good example of the political divide in American culture. In a fantasy world I can make political commentary without making it grounded. I like to have a conflict of different factions with different ideals. Real world politics can help people figure out what facation believes in what ideals. They can even pick whitch faction they resonate with. They can root for the faction and do quests for it. One example is that I make a distinction between the tradition side and innovation side. The tradition side is about keeping up the status quo from the past. It is about serving the wealthy elite and to promote one's own nation. The innovation side is about progressing things into the future. It is about giveng equality for the poor and to appreciate other nations. If someone knows American politics, these sides willl seem familiar. Even the names tration and innovation are nearly synominous with the actual names for real world ideologies. That makes it easier to understand. I was origonally going to put real world ideology names. Then I realize that liberal sounds a bit too much like libertarian. That may confuse people. So it is better to have a different name like innovation or progressive. It is different sounding enough, but it still reflects the value of moving towards to future. I had some idea that too much wierd stuff would be confusing. So when I write my own story, I did end up putting in quite a few fantasy conventions at the start. It makes it familiar enough for people to understand what is going on. I set up the pretagonist as some hero of light, and I set up a character of darkness to be the bad guy. That is something that has been used often, even used to death. I do this for a while, so people can understand how the world works. Then later on I pull subversions, and then the story gets really wierd. If I show this right away, it may be too confusing. However if I put it in later, it will be shocking without being too confusing. One nice thing about Numeria is the pictures. It is pretty art. It also shows that this brand is marketet for the fantasy nerd demographic. So it shows who should go futher and who should let it go and move on. I am personally a fanasy nerd, so I am interested. Maybe conventions in the visuals can help with grounding. I do my own Larrian art. I am aiming for the same demographic of fantasy nerd. I do worry that someone may mistakenly think my stuff is for kids, because it is cartoony. I hate the animation age ghetto. Now I see a way a round it. I can look at art from a variety of fanatsy nerd stuff and get a good idea. I am familiar with World of Warcraft and Magic the Gathering art. I ought to look at more. There are times when I have my art fully rendered on Krita with realistic shading and texture. There are times when I draw characters with more ornate clothes. That is a step in the right direstion.

I think this might work as a fascinating video game. Maybe roguelike so that it's fine that your character dies again and again.

@BradKaehler

3 жыл бұрын

There is a Numenera video game. It's called Torment: Tides of Numenera. If you play it, get ready for a lot of reading.

You would hate "Book of the New Sun" so much

Even in D&D you really don't need it and it would often be best not to say outright orc or beholder. Let the players figure that out and have them come up with their own fun names for each monster.

Meta gaming is not bad. Playing with intentions that conflict with the rest if the group is bad.

0:36 I just googled it and it's nine. You can't count to nine mate ?

@ginge641

3 жыл бұрын

He's German, so nein, he cannot.

Roguelike the ttrpg...I like it, but something tells me the PC's will hafta roll up new characters constantly.

Thanks my Dude, how do you feel about the videogame placed in Numenera?

It seems to me your complaints are more a matter of the style of game and GMing you prefer then a reflection on the system.

The specifics don't have to be clear or even comprehendible if everyone becomes familiar with the basic assumptions of the world. It sounds like you and your players have been able to establish some consistent baseline assumptions about the world but have failed to reinforce or act on them in any meaningful way, which the mechanics give both the GM and Players every opportunity to do. Things are weird and dangerous. If the first instinct is always immediately to poke it with a stick then yes, the ignorance this setting purposefully creates presents a real problem. But Numenera is a game of discovery, which can be and is different than poking things with sticks.

Without mundanity, nothing is special or weird.

Back in the early 80s, reading the bestiaries like FF and the MMs, I would never have known what those creatures were. However, they still have them in 5th Ed and when I see the name, I already have some idea of what they do. Like the Githyanki...what the hell is that? but now it's known on sight. There's no difference between the three Numenera bestiaries. You have to read all of them from cover to cover to have some idea of what they do. I think owning the bestiary cards would also help in this memorization. Back in those old days, the players read the DM's guide, they read the bestiaries and modules. There would be no way to understand all the shit going on in D&D without immersion in the visuals and the lore. Again, this is the same for Numenera. The players must be have the books and read to understand some aspect of the setting they are in. They can't just walk up and create a character or read building character options and then have some idea of what the hell is going on. If you want to know what the hell is going on, you have to read the lore or the DM should provide the lore he wants people to know and the words used (like what an aldeia is). I'm halfway through the Numenera Core book 1 (p. 216). I just finished the Lore of the base book and I've been collecting these books for the past 10 years since it first came out. I recently read Arbiter of Worlds and I think what might be the best way to run Numenera is to cross it with something that some players might have an idea about and that would be Gamma World. I would use the Arbiter of Worlds world-building tips to set up my own version of Numenera (w/GW) in the form of a hex crawl. Random monster tables, events, dungeons, would include creatures from Numenera and GW. I think players could get around this (if I had anybody to play with that is lol).

Reminds me of axiom verge a bit when it comes to the feeling of bizarre

It's a game of exploration and discovery. If you don't want that, play something else. You obviously don't like it.

@richmcgee434

3 жыл бұрын

Yeah, lot of personal bias in this review, of you can even call it that.

@clarknova2649

3 жыл бұрын

My thoughts exactly. Also, he didn't really grasp the concept behind the setting. Numenera is not a game for everyone I guess

who hurt u dude... numenera is one of the best systems of all time

Definitely showing up two years late with an "um actually" but here goes. I'm certain you can roll for character knowledge about things. GMs are specifically encouraged to fill players in on what is known about the world and events without necessarily asking for rolls. Your point still stands about the setting not having much to hang your hat on, but the characters you play are supposed to be inhabitants of that world. Maybe you're getting confused by the setup for the videogame? As far as the diegetic strangeness of the Ninth World, it should be treated almost exactly like a high fantasy setting wearing a defamiliarizes scifi hat.

Sorry, but sounds more like the GM didnt grasp the setting and made it unnecessarily random or dangerous. Also it says everywhere literally: It is about exploration (and community building if u want)

HOLY SHIT YOU PLAY WARFRAME

Nu Men Era

The argument that "because the setting is so alien the players don't know what to expect" just makes you sound like one of those asshole gms. The person that puts a portal that turns the character into a deformed beast is the same one who will fill the dungeon with mimics and put traps in nonsensical places. A good game will still follow narrative rules, for example, not punishing the player for doing the thing they are supposed to be doing, and not killing a character without a dramatic purpose. As for monsters, they don't have to be a mash of earth animals or look like common dnd creatures, because players can get information from a huge variety of "symbols". Fire, spikes, sparks, sharp teeth, etc. Blaring sounds are obviously alarms, and anything that makes a beeping noise that gets faster will obviously explode. The gm can use comparisons, like saying a creature is colorful like a poisonous frog, or outright say some animal is preparing to pounce. I agree with the argument that the gameplay loop of "going into dungeons to find things you don't understand is stupid", but isn't that a problem with the gm or player not creating an interesting narrative or an actual history for their campaing? Also, dnd's gameplay loop is "going into dungeons to find treasure to sell", and it worked for a long time.

Honestly, the problem I personally had with "Torment: Tides of Numenera" is that it was clearly trying to emulate Planescape: Torment... to the point that it didn't dare to get TRULY original. It had sections that were as horrible as hell... but it wasn't an afterlife, it was just uber grimdark and failed to have the intended impact because it was just too ridiculous. And the storyline itself was WAY too desperate to be a repeat of Planescape: Torment.

13:50 Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda actually did þis very well, þe "more alien aliens" are used very sparsely because while interesting þey can't be used to tell many good stories.

I think if your players dont know how to stay immersed in Numenera, then they should watch the Studio Ghibli classic movie "Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind"...then tell them "Whenever you play Numenera, your options are always whatever Nausicaa can do"... She can fight, sure... But her first instinct out in the wastes is to think strategically... She'll even put herself in danger, to do something that she thinks is right... But her first instinct is not to pull a weapon and attack problem... (SPOILER, unless you kill her dad) So, yeah, watch Nausicaa...get into the mindset of Nausicaa... Even more so, as its listed among the bibliography of inspirations for Numenera!!! EDIT: Probably should have waited through the whole video... ok, half way through... As a GM running Numenera, the best cause of action I found to start my players off with is by using a Patron... they have a savvy, mysteriously advanced employer, who had/has some tasks for them, and through those tasks, they learn about encounters, dangers, and how to "delve" when going through places rich in the Numenera. This gave them enough player knowledge on how to handle encounters when they started adventuring on their own, and with a sizable array of Oddities, even had tools they could use to test things against that they could sacrifice. Yeah, Numenera is a narrative game, so the GM has to be up to the task to not be naming off creatures or objects, but describing them to the players, instead. Once described, the players then have the option to make a choice, and then you can continue... EDIT 2: 13:40 ...you know in the depths of the Ninth World, the Octopi have sustained a deep oceanic civilisation of ATLEAST millions of years, potentially hundreds of millions; as Monte Cook himself has said that the Octopi reaction to "humans" of the Ninth world was "Oh great, they're back". Thus, I present this prospect to you... How do you create something so alien, that its rooted in the present day? If Octopi in Numenera remember *US*, but have lived through all the passings of the 8 previous great civilisations that have called Earth home; how would you create their culture, and how they interact with Humans of the Ninth World? So alien, but not... ...I tend to keep them vague, instead focusing on the matters that directly affect them. Though, I do usually treat them as easily frustrated and annoyed; which is fun as hell!

Kazio d&d

Nice encapsulation of my own issues with Numenera--I love the idea of it, but keep bouncing off its sheer alien-ness. My own solution may involve lifting the whole setting and changing it from "5 billion years in the future" to "alien world human explorers find themselves stranded upon." That way, the players don't have that whole "it's Earth, but nothing is recognizable" cognitive dissonance, and can start building new frameworks from the jump.

Moebios

comentario

@luska5522

3 жыл бұрын

Parabéns

Yeaah. So... when the players are preparing to set out from town, you have them over hear someone talking about this thing the size of a house that throws its eyeballs at people. Maybe have the person they tell the story to say "nah, that's a whatzit, and they're actually friendly " then you go on with your day. If they don't pay attention they die. This is a group of lazy players and a GM who relies on tropes to do his work for him. After the players die a few times they start approaching things differently

In Elon We Musk!

I really love writing original stories based on alternative histories, but I know þat explaining such a world would require enormous amounts of backstory to explain why someþing in þis world is so different, because many minor þings influenced many daily þings in our lives.

You're totally allowed to swear at the begining of KZread videos, your video won't get taken down or anything. But wait, it's about money right? 🙄

Zoomers dont have any kind of imagination.

An RPG that fundamentally misunderstands that the genre default response to the unknown is to attack it.

why do game masters always speak whilst looking of in the distance?

It may be all "wonders" and stuff, but without clear explanations and rules numeneras just get boring at some point. "Just another weird thing, add it to the pile"

DCC Dying Earth does this whole thing in a package that just works a lot better

How to show your a poor GM in 10 minutes. Stick to 5e.

*all words are completely made up...

@richmcgee434

3 жыл бұрын

Hmmm. Interesting point. You might be able to make a case for some onomatopoeias being universal (at least for human vocalizations) and independent of language or culture, but even there you'd run into the spelling being an issue. If nothing else there's bound to be disagreements about (say) how many esses you need in hiss, much less whether the aitch or the eye even belong there at all. :)

Seems like the in-world lore exposition is poor. Just put slightly-incorrect short legends in. Do people in the settings know nothing about brain jars and multieye knowledge monsters?

>not allowed to swear in the first 30 seconds on KZread Yes you are, you won't get your video taken down. But oh yeah if forgot people use KZread for money now 🤢🤮

I do have to wonder what's the point of setting this on Earth? It's unrecognisable as such, so what's the difference between saying this is Earth several billion years and the future, and just saying its a different fantastic world?

@TimeWobblers

3 жыл бұрын

because it's the 9-ish civilization, and ours is one of the former ones. That means that as well as finding everything to be alien and stuff, there may be a lot of stuff you'd vaguely recognize, because it's still the earth. So there are the same laws of physics, and datasphere is what Elon Musk is trying to build after all! :) The very idea of the whole setting is "any technology, being advanced enough, looks like magic". Everything boils down to that, pretty much

No dogs? 0/10