Monte Cook Games Announced Numenera 2: Discovery & Destiny!

Monte Cook Games has just announced - live at Gen Con in their first panel of the convention - it's latest Kickstarter, set to launch next month. And it's a big one - Numenera 2, consisting of two core books called Discovery (which revises player character options) and Destiny (which has systems for base building). It will be fully back-compatible with the original (2013) Numenera. More info as I hear it!

Photo courtesy Jon Smejkal
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Facts coming through on social media:

• "Numenera 2 is meant to replace the existing Core Book, but not the whole Numenera line. Feels like Numenera 1.5, but the Destiny book is new" - TPT's Shane on Twitter.

[video=youtube;NTa7jA98ClU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTa7jA98ClU[/video]
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[ArchfiendBobbie]

Double

 

[ArchfiendBobbie]

First of all, I am not a fan of Monte Cook or Skip Williams. Jonathan Tweet? That's another matter...
My problem with your post is the idea that these well established designers were going to fade away, because they were vocal, about their opposition to what was going on at the time with DnD, WOTC and Hasbro. The mistakes made by WOTC with 4e, and the near death of DnD cannot possibly be put on the shoulders of one man's vehement unhappiness with the system.

Skip Williams continued to do freelance work, did some work for Kobold, and Dungeon a Day. Since he has been in the industry from the beginning I imagine he is retired, or partly?

Your proposal that you would help burn WOTC down rather than have those designers together again, and comments about them "redeeming" themselves later, seem to indicate that, yes, you are lacking objectivity.

Tweet I didn't criticize, for the most part. I just said he was part of a team that was ultimately toxic to its members. Some teams are like that; talented people, but putting them together brings out the worst in them.

The thing is, a lot of people back then were certain that Cook would, like Williams has. He was very vocal, a lot of the worst flamewars in the 3.0 vs 3.5 conflict were based on statements he said, and he was openly opposing what was pretty much the ruler of tabletop gaming at the time. For a lot of people, this came across as the career equivalent of dousing yourself in kerosene and lighting a match. Some of the conflicts that, frankly, he started raged up into the 4E era and are still banned subjects in some parts of the community.

And, really, to a degree the failure of 4E can be put on his shoulders, since that edition was born from that very conflict as much as it was from a desire to innovate. He may not have been the person who put out the fuel for the edition war that raged, but he is the one who sparked it. From that point on, every gripe and debate blazed with full glory as WotC got to watch their forums try to reenact the French Revolution. And I might give him a pass for his complaints not being invalid if it wasn't for how he presented them and how clear he was that he was ticked at Hasbro and willing to burn bridges behind him.

There are still people who don't like Cook because of that mess, and I know that for awhile in the 3E era he was effectively a pariah as far as parts of the community went; even in some parts of the fandom that were on his side, there were many who didn't like him simply because of the conflict that he helped cause.

You don't go from "designer of the game we're playing" to "not welcome to discussions by many of its fans" that quickly without "redeemed" being the right word for the status he enjoys currently. And, frankly, I respect him all the more for that.

But as I accepted I will be shelling out for Numenera 2 as soon as it launches, I have also accepted that he wasn't always the most pleasant members of the DnD community. I do not doubt that he very much is every bit the game designer worthy of having his name on a company, but I also do not doubt he once was very much a massive problem.

Skip Williams isn't retired; he makes maps now. Just for a very small company that doesn't always credit him...

Burning the company down is because I believe that the team combination itself was toxic and brought out the worst in everyone who was on it. Not because the people themselves are toxic, but because the combination of them was. Cook fueled a massive edition war, some people think Williams simply went crazy due to some of the later errata and Sage's Advice columns, and Tweet... Actually, Tweet was okay. If he was flapped by being on that team, I don't think anyone saw any sign of it. But the fact that these were all established, respected people before and how things went during and a bit after... That kinda suggests it was something about that period that negatively affected all of them. Cook, at least, recovered and went on to show that was just an insane period of his life. Tweet remains unflapped, because I suspect he's too cool to let something like that bother him. And Williams simply faded away...

At the very least, that team ruined at least one game designer, if you ask me. And another was almost ruined by the experience. So, no, I don't want to repeat it.

 

[Lylandra]

So... maybe the problem with the dev team back then was simply that they didn't form a team (too many wannabe-aphas?) and their company put them under immense pressure on top of that?

Anyway, I'd always prefer 3.5 to 3.0, even if they could have averted some of the worst mistakes in 3.0 (especially balance-wise) with more extensive playtesting and listening to feedback.

But... I also still have a love for some aspects of 4e. Especially the "everyone attacks" paradigma, the AEDU as a general idea (opposed to the strictly daily limited spells), the idea of rituals and martial practises (which should not replace,but complement utility magic), the primary-secondary ability score design and the greater variety of ability score usefulness. Also, the encounter and monster designs. So much better and much more variable (and in many cases better paced) than the 3e stuff. Unless you'd enter condition madness...

 

[Shasarak]

Let's take a look at the long-run results of that combination: Cook ended up bashing Hasbro massively, making comments that helped massively fuel the ongoing edition wars of that era between the two versions of 3E, and helped set the foundation for the rules revision, and resulting near-death of DnD, that was 4E. And in the end, Cook managed to regain a lot of the respect he lost during that era by publishing a ruleset that is pretty much nothing like the ruleset he fought for.

Maybe you should give the creators of 4e more credit for their work then Monte considering that he was gone long before 3.5?

 

[ArchfiendBobbie]

Maybe you should give the creators of 4e more credit for their work then Monte considering that he was gone long before 3.5?

I would if Monte were actually gone.

Despite not working for WotC anymore, he still continued to develop for 3E. In particular, licensed products for WotC for awhile. He also, after 3.5 hit, continued to support the 3E rules and effectively was a splinter developer trying to continue a set of rules WotC had moved beyond. And he continued to write and make statements about the development of 3E, making him very much an ongoing source of inside information for much of the playerbase about the logic that went into 3.5. More than a few of the ongoing rules conflicts that led to the changes 4E brought had origins in a complaint made by Cook.

One particular row that got a bit vicious was Arcana Unearthed vs. Unearthed Arcana. One was a Cook 3E product, the other was a Wizards 3E product. It should be pretty obvious who won that conflict... Many people I knew on both sides of the edition wars ignored Cook's product because they were tired of him and just wanted him to go away at that point.

 

[Aldarc]

Thank you, [MENTION=2525]Mistwell[/MENTION], for clarifying your position. I now recall your participation on Malhavoc Press's now defunct forums. I was a participant there too, though I cannot remember which moniker I used there.

I am saying I am having a hard time reconciling his previous fairly intense and aggressive criticism of his former employer for doing something which now he appears to be doing for his own company. I want to know why the change in his thinking on the matter. I want to consider if his prior words on the topic are still applicable to his new product. Him changing his mind because he's the publisher doesn't mean a consumer should change their mind. After all, the consumer is in the position he was in when he first criticized these types of actions 14 years ago. The consumer isn't the publisher, and if it's the fact that Monte Cook is now the publisher than has changed his mind, that would tend to suggest the consumer might gain more wisdom from his words when he was also a consumer and not a publisher.

Again, I am not entirely sure if these situations are analogous. Monte Cook Games, for example, is aiming for a niche market that does a lot of Kickstarter promotions. I'm skeptical that there was any "mind change" involved here. I think that it more likely involves (1) how new iterations of the game since Numenera - i.e. the Strange, CSR, Invisible Sun (albeit not Cypher System) - have diverged from Numenera, and (2) the multiplication of Numenera options across books were making the game less new player friendly.

Numenera, for example, had a lot of holes in its rules that was causing a lot of unclarity: e.g., crafting. And since the time of the core rulebook of Numenera, we have had several character options books that gave much needed love to the Glaive and Jack types, while also providing two new types (i.e. Seeker, Glint) to the fold. Additionally, I have seen discussion of using the CSR armor rules in Numenera in a number of online discussions. In many regards, the core rulebook for Numenera feels like a prototype for what would become the generic Cypher System. And I think that a lot of the work done since the first iteration of Numenera makes Numenera look a bit tarnished, unpolished, or incomplete by comparison.

From a business standpoint, and from both a GM and player standpoint, I completely get why MCG would want to consolidate a lot of their character supplements and CSR "lessons learned" into a new core rulebook that would make all the Numenera materials a little more newb friendly. It's much easier, for example, for me to be able to hand players one core rulebook rather than the core rulebook plus Character Options 1 & 2, the Tides of Numenera supplement, the Into the X options, and a few other books whose titles escape my memory.

As for planning a new version at the time the first is published, I don't see that as inherently wrong. Monte didn't agree with it 20 years ago, but he may have changed his mind (like he seems to have about many subjects - because he's human and 20 years have gone by and his entire life has changed in that span of time), and it may not have been that big an aspect of his objections to begin with. After all, he wrote 3.0 knowing that was the plan up front - he didn't like it but he still went ahead with it. So it doesn't seem it was a huge objection on his part even back then.

Okay, but I don't see any evidence to indicate that he planned this Numenera 2 revision at the time it was first published, hence my objection to what comes across as needlessly raising the possibility that it was planned as such.

 

[Morrus]

I would if Monte were actually gone.

This is coming across as a personal vendetta. Time to drop it, please. You are welcome to criticise designers' work, but not to attack them personally.

 

[Aldarc]

One particular row that got a bit vicious was Arcana Unearthed vs. Unearthed Arcana. One was a Cook 3E product, the other was a Wizards 3E product. It should be pretty obvious who won that conflict... Many people I knew on both sides of the edition wars ignored Cook's product because they were tired of him and just wanted him to go away at that point.

Hmmm... Considering the influence of Arcana Unearthed/Evolved on (later) 3.5E and 5E, AU winning a Gold ENnie for Best Game, as well as WotC's hiring of Malhavoc Press's Mike Mearls, I would say that Arcana Unearthed may have won that war in the longterm.

Apart from that, there's not too much to say other than your anecdotal evidence is anecdotal.

 

[Von Ether]

I hope this succeeds in making Numenera feel like its own thing. My biggest problem with ALL the cypher system games so far is that none of them feel like they make any mechanical changes to be their own thing. They are vastly different settings and content layered on a nearly uniform system that just isnt flexible enough to do justice to all these diverse types of stories.

I have never looked at a Cypher system game and thought it was THE system to run that game in over over a purposebuilt system for that genre.

That's sort of the crux of any generic system vs bespoke rules decision.

I'm a little confused by your statement though, because it should only apply to the Strange (unless you are also including the mini-settings for Gods of the Fall and Predation.) Numenera, at least, should not feel that way since it was designed for that world.

For me, there are usually two types of generics.

The effect-based mathy kinds like M&M, Hero and Gurps. Which can work for some people because you can tweak for an effect, but then others can only see the math and how that bleaches any flavor out of game. (A cone of summoned sorpio-flies vs cone effect: 15 meters x 3 meters at base, 12 damage, 2 poison damage for three turns, etc.)

The others have to be built with certain assumptions in mind.

The most common would be a d20 conversion of some sort. (The setting has to accept zero to hero growth and powers that come with a x/day sort of set up.)

Savage Worlds (Competent heroes at the start, Minis/tactical decisions where range combat can be strong, no-one is immune to very lucky shot, mooks live to serve both good and bad guys.)

Cypher (Competent heroes at the start, exotic themes available to the heroes, very common MacGuffins within the game, Heroes must pace themselves if they want to win.)

 

[Von Ether]

On a separate anecdotal note:

I've been running Cypher for about a two years now and I've noticed something.

When my players are completely new to the hobby, they pick up the system rather quickly.

When my players are long time rpgers, they tend to get tripped up because Cypher does several things that take some getting used to.