Post by ironfox on Dec 5, 2013 23:14:39 GMT -5
Has anyone here checked out Monte Cook's new game Numenera? The system is OK. Maybe a little flat but it works, especially for the kind of game he envisioned. But the setting is FANTASTIC! Its so weird and creatively inspiring. I haven't been this excited to play in a game's world in a LONG time.
It's set roughly one billion years in the future and the earth has seen the rise and fall of the world eight times. Characters play in what's known as the Ninth World.
Exploration is the soul of Numenera, so combat is a bit streamlined and characters don't gain xp from killing monsters. Instead, the GM awards players xp whenever he intrudes on a scene to make things more difficult. Like if the GM feels that the players are having too easy of a time, so as they're climbing a sheer mountainside, here comes torrential downpour to increase the difficulty by a step or two.
The residents of the Ninth World know very little about the worlds that came before but there are some things that are evident:
1) At least one previous civilization was the seat of a galactic (perhaps intergalactic) empire.
2) At least one had the ability to terraform the planet.
3) At least one had mastered stellar lifting. (The ability to re-position stars and alter their luminosity).
4) At least one traveled to other dimensions and other levels of reality.
5) At least a few of these were not human.
I can't remember the other three things. I know there are eight but I can't be bothered to go get the book out of my car. Too cold out there. But its really an incredible setting with a very narrative style. For example, character creation is accomplished by coming up with two words and a specific action in the following format.
"I am an Adjective Noun who Verbs." or "I am a Clever Nano who Creates Illusions."
Your Adjective is more than just a descriptor here, it also has in game effects. In the above example, Clever reduces the difficulty of tasks involving lies, trickery, slight of hand and a couple others by one step.
The Noun is your character type, or class in other systems. There are three. Glaive, Nano and Jack. The Glaive is analogue to Fighter, Nano to Wizard and Jack to Rogue.
The Verb is the character's focus. Creates Illusions is pretty cut and dry. Your character creates illusions.
You can mix these up however you wish. You can be an Intelligent Glaive who Explores Dark Places or a Strong Nano who Howls at the Moon. (This one pretty much makes you a werewolf.)
Another thing that helps out with the narrative nature of the game is that players make all the die rolls. If a player wants to hit something, they roll to hit. If they are the target of an attack, they roll to dodge. This frees up the GM to focus on the story. Especially since creating NPCs is as simple as saying "This is Corovac. He's level 5." That's it. As far as game mechanic is concerned, level 5 is all you need to know. This sets the difficulty of everything that NPC does. You can tailor this to make fairly more complex NPCs like "This is Corovac. He's level 5 but defends against Intellect damage as a level 7 and sees through lies as a level 6." and so on.
I can go on for a very long time with this so in short. Check it out. Maybe you won't like it but its at least worth a look.
It's set roughly one billion years in the future and the earth has seen the rise and fall of the world eight times. Characters play in what's known as the Ninth World.
Exploration is the soul of Numenera, so combat is a bit streamlined and characters don't gain xp from killing monsters. Instead, the GM awards players xp whenever he intrudes on a scene to make things more difficult. Like if the GM feels that the players are having too easy of a time, so as they're climbing a sheer mountainside, here comes torrential downpour to increase the difficulty by a step or two.
The residents of the Ninth World know very little about the worlds that came before but there are some things that are evident:
1) At least one previous civilization was the seat of a galactic (perhaps intergalactic) empire.
2) At least one had the ability to terraform the planet.
3) At least one had mastered stellar lifting. (The ability to re-position stars and alter their luminosity).
4) At least one traveled to other dimensions and other levels of reality.
5) At least a few of these were not human.
I can't remember the other three things. I know there are eight but I can't be bothered to go get the book out of my car. Too cold out there. But its really an incredible setting with a very narrative style. For example, character creation is accomplished by coming up with two words and a specific action in the following format.
"I am an Adjective Noun who Verbs." or "I am a Clever Nano who Creates Illusions."
Your Adjective is more than just a descriptor here, it also has in game effects. In the above example, Clever reduces the difficulty of tasks involving lies, trickery, slight of hand and a couple others by one step.
The Noun is your character type, or class in other systems. There are three. Glaive, Nano and Jack. The Glaive is analogue to Fighter, Nano to Wizard and Jack to Rogue.
The Verb is the character's focus. Creates Illusions is pretty cut and dry. Your character creates illusions.
You can mix these up however you wish. You can be an Intelligent Glaive who Explores Dark Places or a Strong Nano who Howls at the Moon. (This one pretty much makes you a werewolf.)
Another thing that helps out with the narrative nature of the game is that players make all the die rolls. If a player wants to hit something, they roll to hit. If they are the target of an attack, they roll to dodge. This frees up the GM to focus on the story. Especially since creating NPCs is as simple as saying "This is Corovac. He's level 5." That's it. As far as game mechanic is concerned, level 5 is all you need to know. This sets the difficulty of everything that NPC does. You can tailor this to make fairly more complex NPCs like "This is Corovac. He's level 5 but defends against Intellect damage as a level 7 and sees through lies as a level 6." and so on.
I can go on for a very long time with this so in short. Check it out. Maybe you won't like it but its at least worth a look.