Numenera weirdness purposeless?

[Guang]

I almost named the thread sell me on Numenera, but there's just one specific thing that's ruining it for me. The artwork is beautiful, the npcs, locations, and whatnot are awesomely weirdly imaginative, but it seems that there is no point to any of the weirdness, that it is just weird for the sake of being weird. I initially loved how weird it was, but it seems that nothing *means* anything, that there are no secrets or history to be discovered, just one long drunken viewing of fantasia and alice in wonderland.

Am I wrong? Is there any point to any of it? Are any of details of the previous worlds actually discoverable? I'm just about ready to give up on the whole system, and am hoping someone can point out something I've missed.

 

[Nagol]

They're as discoverable as the GM wants them to be and the history is what the GM wants it to be. In many ways, I think of Numenera as a spiritual successor to the original Gamma World.

My take on the world is it is currently trapped in a very long dark age where individuals and small communities have managed to cling to something that sets them apart and many somethings await discovery. So far, each something has failed to spread -- mostly because the ability to replicate/power/control the items was one of the first things lost.

Were I to run Numenera, I'd spend some time deciding how the somethings worked, what they were for originally, and how the world ended up as broken as it is. Then with that established in my own mind, I can plant clues and underpin the map with a originally rational design now hidden be destruction and change that the players may discover and use.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

They're as discoverable as the GM wants them to be and the history is what the GM wants it to be. In many ways, I think of Numenera as a spiritual successor to the original Gamma World.

That just about sums up my disappointment with the game. When I buy a book, especially an expensive one with high production values, I'm looking for two things: 1) a coherent and detailed explanation for what is in the world and why it is that way; and, 2) a mathematically-sound mechanical representation of how everything in the world interacts.

IfI wanted to make up my own history, then I would play a generic system that asks me to do that anyway.

 

[Nagol]

That just about sums up my disappointment with the game. When I buy a book, especially an expensive one with high production values, I'm looking for two things: 1) a coherent and detailed explanation for what is in the world and why it is that way; and, 2) a mathematically-sound mechanical representation of how everything in the world interacts.

IfI wanted to make up my own history, then I would play a generic system that asks me to do that anyway.

I understand that, alright. It would've been great to get a bunch of hints and partial narratives at least to hang a history around as opposed to the setting going fully gonzo just because. Though a detailed explanation would probably harm the "exploration of wonder" element the game is going for.

 

[Guang]

It's good to see that I wasn't alone, that I wasn't misreading the text and missing something.

Though a detailed explanation would probably harm the "exploration of wonder" element the game is going for.

I wasn't looking for some overall Theory of Numenera. What got me to lose interest were several bits of advice to the DM with suggestions on how to "fully gonzo just because". I like mysteries, but if I'm running the game, I need some direction to where the solution of this mystery is heading - either that or I should just piece together my own mystery instead of using theirs.

 

[Isida Kep'Tukari]

I find the experience rather freeing, personally, because I tend to do most of my GMing off the cuff. There's a fantastic amount of inspiration from every corner of the world. If you like more structure, the cities of the Steadfast have somewhat more unifying tech (often culled from the same source) and larger organizations with defined goals.

There's an infinite amount of fascination, because if I decide that the Clock of Kala is an actual clock that starts up at certain dates of celestial significance in one campaign, in the next I can say it was a trap for some ancient destructive force and that the Shear accidentally broke the lock on its cage, or in the next one I can say that whatever made the Shear in the Clock of Kala was just a trial run of some ancient weapon or tool and is now being activated against past targets of dire significance... And the players cannot even have meta knowledge about it, because while they might know what the Clock of Kala looks like, what it IS is my determination and mine alone. They can't figure it out just by reading its entry in the book.

I find it no more difficult to come up with plots for Numenera than I do for your typical D&D dungeon crawl, city adventure, or wilderness exploration where you have to rescue the princess from the tower (or the ultraterrestrial from an interdimensional prison), uncover the grand vizier's evil plan (which is a bargain made with the royal household artificial intelligence to free its nanobot children in exchange for killing the king), or gather a rare herb to cure the elder druid (or convince a recently-awakened regeneration pod to share its bounty with "foreign organics"). It's just now the players cannot "look behind the curtain" so easily, either from the text of the game books themselves, or the books, movies, and other media that draw from more popular fantasy and sci-fi tropes. The weirdness of Numenera gives you an element of surprise that keeps players on their toes, in my experience