I'm surprised more people aren't talking about The Strange.

[Evenglare]

As much as everyone loves planescape and dimension hopping I'm surprised the strange doesn't get more time here. It's literally every possible setting you could ever want. I got my copy in about 2 weeks ago and I'm in love with it. I am a big Numenera fan, but the strange just completely takes it to a new level. Just spreading the word of this amazing RPG.

 

[innerdude]

I don't have anything to say about the system itself, or its parent system Numenara, having never so much as seen either book. But its lack of popularity isn't surprising or difficult to explain, given the circumstances.

• It's an offshoot of a d20-based system that doesn't neatly fall into a classic genre niche. Is Numenara high-tech fantasy or low-tech sci-fi? Someone looking for "classic D&D" isn't going to look at Numenara and immediately think, "Hmmm, this looks like a great fit." By the same token, someone looking for space opera isn't going to naturally gravitate toward it, and those are by far the two most popular RPG genres.
• From all reports, it's d20-based, but is very different from 3.x, 4e, and 5e. So even if someone WANTS to use the system as presented, it has to be taught and re-learned by players.
• There's a lot of competition in the sci-fi category--Fantasy Flight's Star Wars and 40k, any number of Fate / Cortex / Cortex+ offshoots and conversions (Firefly, Diaspora, Starblazer), Savage Worlds with its brand new Sci-fi Companion and recently Kickstarted Last Parsec campaign setting, to say nothing of the old standbys of GURPS, WEG Star Wars, Star Wars Saga, and Traveller.
• For good or ill, having Monte Cook's name on a project garners an immediate following, but also a lot of detractors. I guarantee you there's a huge swath of folks over at RPG.net that won't have anything to do with it simply because his name is involved.
• Monte Cook Games released it in the heart of the 5e launch. Getting lost in the shuffle was almost a guarantee. By contrast, it looks like Green Ronin went out of their way to SPECIFICALLY avoid the immediate 5e launch "rush," and held out its AGE system releases.

 

[Evenglare]

I agree with all your points which is a shame really. I'm still a bit surprised nevertheless because our community has a way of developing a very strong following for niche games. I suppose here on enworld most people are a bit bias towards D&D which is to be expected. Your point about the games using the d20 system is true but a bit misleading. The games don't actually operate on the "d20 system" it uses a d20 primarily but the system is actually called the Cypher System. When I hear d20 system I think of the actual system that all those incarnations of D&D used. Regardless, I'd like to garner attention where it's deserved and this deserves it so much, I dare say this game is even better than numenera. While they are fundamentally the same, the strange adds some nice creation rules that were absent / not needed in numenera which I absolutely adore.

 

[delericho]

It's a rules-lite system, which limits the scope for discussion of rules and rulings, character builds, conversions... which is an awful lot of what gets discussed here.

Likewise, there's no real scope for discussing the business behind the game - a lot of the discussion here is about WotC's management of the D&D brand, or WotC vs Paizo, or... again, Monte Cook Games don't allow the same scope for discussion, because they just get on with doing that they're doing, and do it well.

There's actually surprisingly little discussion of campaigns or individual adventures, or the ins and outs of storytelling. Which is a shame, but goes some way to explain a relative lack of discussion.

Still - anything in particular you would like to discuss?

 

[fjw70]

The basic premise of the The Strange sounds interesting, but I bought Numenera and it really didn't grab me. It looked okay but not interesting enough for me to stray from my preferred system (D&D).

 

[Eminence_Grise]

I think Numenera tapped into a niche that wasn't exploited yet, or at least wasn't as popular as it is now. It's very original.

I find the concept of the Strange hard to describe to potential players. I'm not sure if my difficulty of describing the setting is because of me or because of the book.

Although I love the concept of Strange and it's execution, the 2 recursions (Ardeyn and Ruk) are not grabbing me in any way. Since they are the most detailed recursions, it's a lot of pages that I won't be using.

We're currently playing a Numenera campaign, where I'm adapting classic D&D adventures to Numenera. It's very rewarding. I'm not sure my players will want to jump in the Strange after that.

 

[Greatwyrm]

There's a lot I like about it, but there's really two things that have me stuck right now.

The first is how do I make recursion-hopping a feature and not a bug? The idea you can go absolutely anywhere is cool, but I want it to be more than a wide street to cross on the way to the next objective.

Second, I play almost exclusively online these days. How the &$%* do I manage character sheets for players in four different states when 1/3 of their info changes every time they go someplace new?

 

[Nergal Pendragon]

I've also seen Numenera drop in popularity since 5E came out, so I'm not surprised that an even-more niche offshoot just isn't garnering any attention. Realistically, I kinda suspect that Strange is a dead-end for online play just due to its recursion-hopping mechanics. That limits it to a table-top setting, and unless you're very lucky the only groups you'll probably find are Savage Worlds, Pathfinder, or DnD.

Announcement timing, as mentioned earlier, was also bad.

So, I kinda suspect that the Strange is simply dead in the water.

 

[Evenglare]

Well a new book was just announced for the Strange a few days ago.... so I think dead in the water might be a bit harsh.

 

[Nergal Pendragon]

If no one's playing it, then calling it dead in the water isn't harsh; it's a statement of reality.

It sucks majorly when that happens to a good game, and the Strange has a lot about it that is good. But, at current, it might as well not exist as far as what I can see of how many people are playing it.