Numenera: Adventures in the Ninth World

fireinthedust · Sep 4, 2013

Let's crack it open and get a discussion going on this.

I'm thinking about getting the Mrs to try her hand at GMing it, and I'm wondering if there's a good beginner adventure either the one in the book or else a D&D adventure we can "Science up" and stick somewhere in the Ninth World.

What would be a good module for her to do that for?

I'm loving the setting, and can't wait to get cracking on a game.

So far it's easy enough for the dice (rate an obstacle from 1 to 10, multiply it by 3 for the d20 DC (1=3, 2=6, 3=9, 4=12, etc, 10 = 30), then roll a d20 and try to beat that; if you're skilled at something, lower the DC by 1 (or 3: so a 6=18 would now be a 5=15)). There's no derrived numbers to look up or complex mini-systems beyond that. Means focus on story, I like that.

Isida Kep'Tukari · Sep 5, 2013

The GMing style encouraged in Numenera is very close to the way I've been DMing for years. The encouragement to "let the PCs do that," and "it's not cheating, it's awesome," and "NPCs are just numbers and whatever you can imagine; it doesn't matter if there's no rule for what they do" is very refreshing.

For a recent game (3.5) I ran, I had this villain that was going around capturing and swapping souls of creatures, creating these creepy hybrid creatures. For the first encounter, I busted out Green Ronin's Advanced Bestiary (a template book) and carefully found and applied appropriate templates. I worked on those two monsters for an hour or so, as they were quick and easy templates.

The fight lasted less than half that time.

When I did the final battle, I said, "screw templates" and just adjusted things on the fly. Infinitely easier, the players never knew, and I rarely had to slow down to compare notes. As long as things felt cool, that was all that really mattered. Numenera gives me the permission that is sometimes discouraged in some 3.5-esque play - namely, that you should be able to break your monsters and NPCs down and reverse engineer them, that you should be able to know where every bonus comes from. Numenera says, "Give them a difficulty, make them sound weird and cool, aaaaand go."

I love it for that. I also love a system that says, "Your first tier characters are pretty awesome already." It lets people write those cool backstories that, as a 1st level D&D character you as a DM would say, "How have you managed to travel the length and breadth of the kingdom, join the Kingsguard, and slain a dragon as a 1st level character?" In Numenera, you can. You can also start out as a lycanthrope. Damn few d20 systems let you do THAT. The XP system lets you change and modify little things about your character on the fly, the skills system is open, and the whole feel of the game is even more... cooperative than D&D, in a way.

I am seriously looking forward to sinking my teeth into this game.

Hand of Evil · Sep 5, 2013

just started reading it, looks very interesting

dm4hire · Sep 5, 2013

It's freeformed enough on the GM side that you could actually play without one per say; each player taking turns in the GM seat, making the game a truly collaborative story.

Jhaelen · Sep 6, 2013

Isida Kep'Tukari said:
When I did the final battle, I said, "screw templates" and just adjusted things on the fly. Infinitely easier, the players never knew, and I rarely had to slow down to compare notes. As long as things felt cool, that was all that really mattered. Numenera gives me the permission that is sometimes discouraged in some 3.5-esque play - namely, that you should be able to break your monsters and NPCs down and reverse engineer them, that you should be able to know where every bonus comes from. Numenera says, "Give them a difficulty, make them sound weird and cool, aaaaand go."

So, ... it's basically just like 4e?

Isida Kep'Tukari · Sep 6, 2013

Jhaelen said:
So, ... it's basically just like 4e?

Speak not to me of 4e. My experiences with that scarred me for life. Combat took forever. Skill challenges took forever. I tried with a couple different DMs, both times ended in exasperation. 4e filled me with frustration. Numenera fills me with excitement.

dm4hire · Sep 6, 2013

Numenera is nothing like 4e, not even close. It reminds me a lot of Alternity with the step method. The only difference being instead of changing your dice pool you change the target number. People are also accustom to rating things on a 1-10 scale which helps a lot.

So what really happens is we change how we perceive the difficulty on that scale. Same goes for monsters since they fall into that scale. Monster X rates a five, but thanks to what I know and have on me it is actually a three. Figure target number and roll the die.

4e or even other d20 games are not that flexible.

Jhaelen · Sep 9, 2013

dm4hire said:
Numenera is nothing like 4e, not even close.

Well, the part I quoted definitely reminded me of 4e.

Isida Kep'Tukari said:
Speak not to me of 4e. My experiences with that scarred me for life. Combat took forever. Skill challenges took forever. I tried with a couple different DMs, both times ended in exasperation. 4e filled me with frustration. Numenera fills me with excitement.

I've often read about combat taking forever for some groups in 4e. Luckily that never happened in our games (yet). Perhaps it's because we only started playing several years after it was first released, so we already knew how to avoid the grind.
Skill challenges taking forever, though, I think that's the first time I'm seeing that complaint. I have no idea what must have been going on in a game for that to happen.

Anyway, I definitely hope that with Numenera the initial excitement won't turn into frustration once you've played it for a while. Myself, I'm quite sceptical about it. What I've read about its mechanics so far didn't exactly convince me (quite unlike some of the things I've read about 13th age). The biggest plus for Numenera, imho, is the setting, which feels rather fresh.

dm4hire · Sep 9, 2013

I don't think it will turn into frustration if only because it is such an easy game to change. You have that core mechanic that is even more streamlined than True20 in that you are not constantly trying to figure out what all needs to be added in. At most you make two or three adjustments to the difficulty and then the player rolls.

The real problem is perspective and that will be what decides how a player handles it. I can sit down and play any d20 game without batting an eye for the most part. Sit me down at a Warhammer game and I don't like it. I don't even want to wrap my head around it no matter what edition, same goes for HARP or Rolemaster. They aren't hard, it's just that I don't like the mechanics and therefore make it harder out of disparagement.

I agree 13th Age is oiled well also, but then it is also similar to 4e/3e so again you're calling on familiarity. That will be, and I think so far it has, why it is the more popular of the two. They took 13th down the path people want to go down. Monte pretty much decided to go off grid and people can follow if they want.

pindercarl · Sep 9, 2013

Jhaelen said:
The biggest plus for Numenera, imho, is the setting, which feels rather fresh.

The system aside, what about the setting? Everything I've seen about Numenera suggests that the setting is very original, but each unique element distances the players and the GM from any common reference points. How much "studying" is required by the GM to get things going? There's not much worse than playing in a setting for a while and then having to retcon your campaign because you misunderstood a key element early on.