I've pretty much fallen out of love with it. The book is gorgeously laid out, the rules I have no big issue but something about the book didn't rub me right and as a whole it didn't click with me.  

I had trouble articulating the reasons why until some other posters on some other forum pointed them out.

The settings section is written like a D&D Gazetteer, which is frankly, boring. For a game a billion years into the future, it doesn't quite emphasis the weirdness. Not enough at least.

Lack of rules support for out-of-combat stuff. Not even a non-combat skills list, "make it up," Cook writes.

Overall it feels like a game to wean D&D and PFRPG players off D20 and generic fantasy settings.  Nothing wrong with that approach but I feel I'm not the target audience for this book.

I managed to find a buyer for my copy of the rulebook so not all is lost

Quote from: fellowhoodlum;712247Lack of rules support for out-of-combat stuff. Not even a non-combat skills list...

Hmm.... Go to Index. Look up "Skills". Flip to page 25. Oh look. A list of skills. Meanwhile, there are more non-combat rules than combat rules (even ignoring the stuff that's just core mechanics).

I find it remarkably difficult to take reviews (even casual ones) seriously that contain obvious factual errors.

With that being said, I'm having a mixed experience with the game. On the one hand, I'm currently running it for three groups and the experience from behind the screen is great. Everyone seems to be having a lot of fun. The setting is evocative and the GM intrusions a fantastic enabler.

But the point-spend and difficulty-adjustment mechanics are a mixed bag. The big problem is one of pacing: More traditional resolution mechanics tend to fade into the background:

1. Player proposes action
2. I call for a skill check (plus a difficulty number or modifier in some systems)
3. A roll is made
4. Action continues

What happens with Numenera is:

1. Player proposes action
2. I call for a skill check (plus a difficulty number)
3. The player proposes skills/assets that would modify that number
4. I approve those skills/assets by announcing a new difficulty number
5. The player decides whether or not to spend effort
6. Effort modifies the difficulty number again
7. A roll is made
8. The action continues

Step #6 is occasionally skipped (if effort is not used), but the process still feels laborious even as our familiarity with it increases.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;712260What happens with Numenera is:

1. Player proposes action
2. I call for a skill check (plus a difficulty number)
3. The player proposes skills/assets that would modify that number
4. I approve those skills/assets by announcing a new difficulty number
5. The player decides whether or not to spend effort
6. Effort modifies the difficulty number again
7. A roll is made
8. The action continues

Step #6 is occasionally skipped (if effort is not used), but the process still feels laborious even as our familiarity with it increases.

So 1-4 and 7-8 are the same as in any other rpg ("Do I get any bonus to this roll for being a dwarf?"  "Yeah, sure, take a +2") and in 5-6, Numenera has reinvented FASERIP's Karma.

Or so I presume, anyway, I haven't read the game.  Doesn't appeal to me with what I've read on it so far, but I don't think I'm the target market at all.

Interesting that with your group the added step is becoming more of a pain the more familiar y'all get with the system, rather than blending in.  Hmm.

The Strange uses the same basic mechanics, doesn't it?

I found Numenera to be a very pretty product which didn't quite stand up to the rigors of actual play. I've gone into great detail about what bugs me but a lot of it has to do with Monte trying to lift ideas from games like FATE (GM Intrusions seem to owe a lot to FATE's Compels) or Dungeon World (with the GM-never-rolls thing), but the mechanic is wonky, Monte shows little understanding of how those borrowed mechanics work in their native contexts and so applies them haphazardly, and to add insult to injury the sample adventures quite clearly weren't playtested.

Oh, and there are no rules for PC-on-PC combat, or contested actions between PCs, so if two characters want to fight a duel (or arm wrestle, or have a dance-off, or compete for the affections of their employer, etc.) you kind of have to wing it. Whilst rulings-not-rules can go a long way, coming up with a decently calibrated PC-vs-PC combat system on the spot is a big ask.

EDIT: Whoops, I tell a lie. There are specific rules for PC vs. PC combat tucked away in a box on page 98 which is woefully easy to miss. Of course, those rules aren't necessarily appropriate for non-combat situations where you just want to resolve a contested action. Either way, I would humbly submit that those rules are a little too important to stuff in a box somewhere; there's still no guidance on contested actions in the quick summary of the rules, where you'd expect to find such a thing.

I have Numenera.  I backed Numenera.  I've tried to digest Numenera and determined that I'm just "old".  

*sigh*

The book is nigh unreadable to me.  The font is too small, the words too crammed together and I'll be damned if I'm going to get a magnifying glass out just to read an RPG!

It looks gorgeous.  Everything I hear about it is wonderful.  But, 10 minutes after I crack open the book I have a splitting headache and set it aside.

It was obviously written for a much younger man than me. (Which saddens me, to be honest.)

Ben, maybe you can try to print the PDF with an increased size. You'll loose the borders of the book (and the page numbers) but the text size will be bigger and easier to read.

Quote from: Ben Rogers;713220I'll be damned if I'm going to get a magnifying glass out just to read an RPG!

Oculi de vitro cum capsula!

So, I was thumbing through a friend's copy before our last session.

Holy shit, it is a gorgeous book.

I really, really like character generation.

I really, really like the setting. Dying Earth, Dancers at the End of Time, Book of the New Sun, Gamma World, Rifts, Planescape all do come to mind.

I am not so sure about the system. I'd love to see it in actual play before committing to picking up that monster. Maybe I should look into getting the PDF? It's well above my self-imposed $10 barrier for picking up RPG PDFs, but I'm slightly tempted to overlook it this time.

From what reviews I've been able to read, I realize that the mechanical novelties are nothing world-shattering, but I am very trad in my gaming proclivities, which makes me reticent to pick this up and get saddled with a huge tome of a game that I might end up never running. It's not like I don't have more than enough sitting in my plate right now.

Quote from: The Butcher;726379So, I was thumbing through a friend's copy before our last session.

Holy shit, it is a gorgeous book.

I really, really like character generation.

I really, really like the setting. Dying Earth, Dancers at the End of Time, Book of the New Sun, Gamma World, Rifts, Planescape all do come to mind.

I am not so sure about the system. I'd love to see it in actual play before committing to picking up that monster. Maybe I should look into getting the PDF? It's well above my self-imposed $10 barrier for picking up RPG PDFs, but I'm slightly tempted to overlook it this time.

From what reviews I've been able to read, I realize that the mechanical novelties are nothing world-shattering, but I am very trad in my gaming proclivities, which makes me reticent to pick this up and get saddled with a huge tome of a game that I might end up never running. It's not like I don't have more than enough sitting in my plate right now.

I still haven't had a chance to play, but i think the setting is robust enough, it is worth it for that alone if you are not into the mechanics. The biggest hurdle for me i think will be the players only rolling. Until I play I won't know i how i feel about that, because i never played in an rpg where the gm didn't roll. But looking at the system, a d20 version would be pretty easy to cobble together from the base parts. So far there are three players in my group who have expressed interest in playing, but just haven't had the time yet between other campaigns. One of the players is very excited about the system, it really hit a chord with him for some reason (which i didn't expect because he is more of a d20/3.5 guy).

I have run several sessions and love it. It's a dream to GM as the system is so light and simple - you can stat lots of things on the fly and react to whatever crazy ideas your players come up with. And it really encourages creative play due to flexibility and the plain weirdness of the cyphers and artefacts that get dished out.

But the majority of my group is fairly gamist - they like mechanical crunch and tricks. The system hasn't pulled them all in due to its simplicity. So we have moved on to playing 13th Age which is more in the sweet-spot for us and it's pretty damn good.

But I still really like Numenera personally.

I think I'll pick this up for the artwork alone. Everything I've seen online is gorgeous.

Thread - read.
Website - read.
.pdf - bought.

Looks like the kind of setting that is 100% up my alley, now we'll see about the system.

Quote from: The Butcher;726379From what reviews I've been able to read, I realize that the mechanical novelties are nothing world-shattering, but I am very trad in my gaming proclivities, which makes me reticent to pick this up and get saddled with a huge tome of a game that I might end up never running. It's not like I don't have more than enough sitting in my plate right now.

It's really worth it, even if you don't end up running it with the original system, or not all.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;726382I still haven't had a chance to play, but i think the setting is robust enough, it is worth it for that alone if you are not into the mechanics. The biggest hurdle for me i think will be the players only rolling. Until I play I won't know i how i feel about that, because i never played in an rpg where the gm didn't roll. But looking at the system, a d20 version would be pretty easy to cobble together from the base parts. So far there are three players in my group who have expressed interest in playing, but just haven't had the time yet between other campaigns. One of the players is very excited about the system, it really hit a chord with him for some reason (which i didn't expect because he is more of a d20/3.5 guy).

Or an OD&D (1974) version with glaive, nano and jack as the three core classes, for that matter. That's what I might do (and would like to attempt to design), though I gotta say, for all my previous postings about how I dislike the system, the more I read it (I got myself a physical copy since then), the more I want to run it as designed, to see how it works in actual play.

Here, you have a YouTube recording of a game session of The Strange run by Monte. Gives you an idea how the system's supposed to work in practice. Looking at it, I think I can live with a lot of elements like GM Intrusion and make them work for my gaming style.

The only thing that still makes me think "Hmmm maybe not" is the GM not rolling any dice, and the players rolling all the dice instead. But even that . . . I think I could make sense of it from an emulative standpoint, and make it work with my campaign.

It may be worth a shot.

In any case, Butcher, Numenera is worth checking out. Really.

I like the system myself (as I said before), but I think its worth it just for the setting itself and the gorgeous book.

Quote from: Emperor Norton;726821I like the system myself (as I said before), but I think its worth it just for the setting itself and the gorgeous book.

Agreed. Just from an inspirational standpoint, visual and otherwise, it's a great RPG book to have.