How Much Do You Care About Novelty?

John Dallman said:

Were they used to "Steampunk" as a fashion style, rather than a subgenre of science fiction?

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Honestly? Hard to say. It was the early 1990s, and steampunk was just really starting to show up as a notable fashion style.

OTOH, at least half of the group were at least somewhat active in LARPing, SCA, NERO and other forms of live roleplaying.

Dannyalcatraz said:

It was the early 1990s,

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Ah, I did not catch that this was back then. I can see it having more of a wow factor, given that things like Elseworlds comics were still relatively new.

Anon Adderlan said:

Monte Cook is one of the least imaginative designers I know of, yet he continues to produce games which have the pretense of the strange and weird. So much so he literally names his products after them.

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Yeah this.

And it's made incredibly suspicious of Invisible Sun, because it's a "A roleplaying game of surreal fantasy, secrets, and magic that is truly magical.", which is like just a list of things Cook has shown himself to be bad at multiple times now! Especially as the original marketing campaign was really being super-mysterious about what it actually was and trying to push FOMO as hard as possible.

If it was Grant Howitt or something claiming this, I'd have dropped the $200+ entry fee in like, a heartbeat. Monte Cook though come on! I don't want the coveted "Got Fooled Again" award, which is probably what's actually in that big box!

Ruin Explorer said:

Yeah this.

And it's made incredibly suspicious of Invisible Sun, because it's a "A roleplaying game of surreal fantasy, secrets, and magic that is truly magical.", which is like just a list of things Cook has shown himself to be bad at multiple times now! Especially as the original campaign was really being super-mysterious about what it actually was and trying to push FOMO as hard as possible.

If it was Grant Howitt or something claiming this, I'd have dropped the $200+ entry fee in like, a heartbeat. Monte Cook though come on! I don't want the coveted "Got Fooled Again" award, which is probably what's actually in that big box!

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"The Strange" wasn't bad conceptually at all, but then I always got the idea Cordell may have had more influence than Cook there. Of course, from my POV its critically hampered by being based around Cypher.

Dannyalcatraz said:

It was the early 1990s, and steampunk was just really starting to show up as a notable fashion style.

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Yeah in the early 1990s even most SF nerds didn't have a particularly clear idea of what "steampunk" might entail, if they were even familiar with the term (it didn't even begin to get popularized until The Difference Engine in 1990, though it does technically predate that I believe).

And as a result, most people's vision of steampunk in that era (and really until the very late 1990s, I'd say) was just extremely romanticized "Victoriana", with, a most, maybe a small helping HG Wells or similar thrown in (despite Space 1889, the original Wild Wild West etc.).

I feel like the 1999 Will Smith Wild Wild West was probably the end of steampunk being at all mysterious to people though.

I can definitely see the concept of steampunk Iron Man hitting players pretty damn hard in, say, 1992 or 1993.

Thomas Shey said:

Of course, from my POV its critically hampered by being based around Cypher.

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Right?

There are now VERY few gaming systems that will make me do a "Nope" and Grandpa Simpsons turn out of there. I got a lot more open-minded as I got older on this!



But Cypher is one of them (and Palladium is another).

Thomas Shey said:

I can accept, in theory, that this might in some cases be a case of quality-of-life intention where its perceived that the special characters on the dice are more reliably read and interpreted than just using a particular number would be. I'm not sure I believe it'd actually be true, but it could at least be sincere in intention.

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For many with dyslexia, symbols are much more reliable than numbers.
For those with dyscalculia specifically (the numeric component), running totals from numeric dice is much harder due to 6/9 and 3/5/8 confusions. In mental math, I usually don't have huge issues, but even in mental math, I get 6/9 confusion at times.
So, for me, d6 dice pools using pipped dice, counting successes, are much preferable to the same size dice pools but totalling, or using numeric labeled dice (as in WoD - the d10 count successes often slows me to ensure I'm not misreading 3/5/8 nor 6/9) in either mode.
The count symbols mode used in Mouse Guard's symbolic Dice, in FFG's Star Wars and L5R, in Free League's dice for their games, and in Modiphius' combat dice all are MUCH faster for me. More importantly, tho', is I'm more accurate as well.
I'll note, however: the WFRP3 dice have too many symbols... L5R5 with it's 4 symbols is really a sweet spot.

Ruin Explorer said:

Right?

There are now VERY few gaming systems that will make me do a "Nope" and Grandpa Simpsons turn out of there. I got a lot more open-minded as I got older on this!

But Cypher is one of them (and Palladium is another).

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There's got to be like four different things that put me off the system, but some people just love it.

aramis erak said:

For many with dyslexia, symbols are much more reliable than numbers.

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I'm dyslexic, but I can't say I'm going to find random new symbols easier to pick out than numbers I've been working with for decades.

aramis erak said:

For those with dyscalculia specifically (the numeric component), running totals from numeric dice is much harder due to 6/9 and 3/5/8 confusions. In mental math, I usually don't have huge issues, but even in mental math, I get 6/9 confusion at times.

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I can see that one to a point, though I always found myself swapping numbers in sequence rather than confusing them.

aramis erak said:

So, for me, d6 dice pools using pipped dice, counting successes, are much preferable to the same size dice pools but totalling, or using numeric labeled dice (as in WoD - the d10 count successes often slows me to ensure I'm not misreading 3/5/8 nor 6/9) in either mode.
The count symbols mode used in Mouse Guard's symbolic Dice, in FFG's Star Wars and L5R, in Free League's dice for their games, and in Modiphius' combat dice all are MUCH faster for me. More importantly, tho', is I'm more accurate as well.
I'll note, however: the WFRP3 dice have too many symbols... L5R5 with it's 4 symbols is really a sweet spot.

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I'd personally find more than two a problem.

Dungeon Crawl Classics has tons of novelty!

Making a character? Roll up four randos and whoever survives is your character!
Cast a spell? Roll a d20 and see what result you get off the random table!

Thomas Shey said:

There's got to be like four different things that put me off the system, but some people just love it.

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Cypher's big turn-off for me was the pricing at release.
There are several bits I'm not so fond of - the Difficulty being a 1-10, but having to multiply it for the TN... and everything expressed as difficulties.
The fluff text was in the "just enough to be tantalizing, but not enough to let me be certain I get it."
The rules themselves feel a bit too generic aside from the classes; I'm too lazy to check the actual term used in the rules for the classes.

On the other hand, when I was able to get the bundle for $20... the read alone hit my minimum 1 person for 1 hour per 2 dollars spent metric. Some interesting setting ideas... Numenera reads to me as a love-letter to Vance's Dying Earth series.