Last year I picked up Monte Cook's Numenera book, on a whim. Having enjoyed the Pelgrane Press Dying Earth RPG from a few years earlier, and also being a fan of the concept of, shall we say 'Super-future Sci-fi fantasy', I figured Numenera would be right up my ally.

Of course I have been dimly aware that Mssr. Cook has been rather over hyped as a game designer for some time and I found Numenera to be sadly lacking, with an overly simplistic and oddly unworkable rule set and far too little attention paid to fleshing out the setting that was, in theory, the entire point of the game.  To whit, I am still not entirely sure where the weight of the book has gone, since neither the rules, nor the setting information have filled it.

You may, then, be wondering what, exactly, this has to do with 'The Strange', aside from the fact that they are both from Monte Cook?

Quite simply, The Strange is very nearly Numenera with a miniscule number of changes to the setting, such as changing the class names. Mostly changing the Class Names.

Just as in Numenera you have three classes that can best be described as 'Physical Guy', 'Magic Guy', and 'Clever Guy'. And just like in Numenera you can't call them by common sense names, but have strange jargon names like 'vector', 'Spinner' and 'Paradox'.  Bonus points if you can tell me which class does what based on the names.

Like Numenera, character design is summed up cleverly, but hollowly, by saying you are a adjective noun who verbs, where the Noun is your class and the adjective and verb come from fairly short lists of options.  

This is not unlike saying defining your D&D character by saying 'I am a Sword Fighter who dual wields', really. Its a bit of a gimmick, though it does accurately describe the bulk of character creation.  Of course your 'stats' are mostly pre-defined by your class, and your class is essentially a list of powers that are, purely fluff wise, based on your class's theme.

The biggest change comes in the verbing part of character creation, due to the unique setting of The Strange.

Let me pull back a bit so this will make sense.

Numenera is set at the very end of life on Earth, millions or billions of years in the future.  The Strange is set now, today.. if that TV show, Fringe, was more true than we'd like to admit.  The Strange, from which the game takes its name, is the weird energy that forms the interstistal space between multiversal worlds, and is the source of all your character's cool abilities. Yes, even if you define yourself as a mundane fighter, you still are awesome at mundane shit because you are magically powered by magic.  I mean by The Strange.  

Implicit in the game design is the idea of trans dimensional hopping, and three dimensions are presented, to include modern earth. Your 'verbing' is specific to which dimension you are presently in.

See: Unlike most dimension hopping settings you don't actually port over your character directly but translate him instead to the new paradigm, which usually means changing your powerering Verb. Modern Earth characters can't have the verb 'Slays Dragons', for example, which is specific to the fantasy dimension.

Fundamentally, however, the concept of your character remains the same, forcing you to redesign your character into three different versions of the same character for three different settings, and presumably more if they release additional books with additional settings. So on earth your Vector might be a former linebacker, while on fantasy-world he is a stone golem, with all that implies.

While the Idea is neat enough, I don't think it works as a game concept, if only because of the amount of work entailed from the players. Forgive me my prejudices, but in my experience most players are lazy gits.

Further, due to the rather rigidly contrained numbers, there isn't really much mechancial difference between worlds.  Your former linebacker with an uzi becomes a stone golem with a repeating crossbow, and mechancally is throwing the same numbers down against equally ruthlessly balanced npc/monsters. That same Vector, translated to bio-mechanical future-world becomes a Warrior Caste bio-cyborg with a blaster rifle... and still throws the same mechanics in combat and uses most of the same powers, a blatantly illusory choice at the end.

Further tying this game to Numenera is the idea of cyphers. Since ordinary equipment is so bland and ordinary, your Strange can pick up super awesome magic stuff, either somewhat permanent or limited by uses, called Cyphers. These are identical in practice to the Cyphers in Numenera, except that the Fluff more or less changes them from Super-Science artifacts of previous eras to doo-dads powered by the extra-dimensional energies of The Strange.

To be honest I would have been more impressed with this product if it had been more closely linked with the Numenera stuff... or more probably, if Numenera had been presented simply as one possible Interdimensional Realm of The Strange, and the various facets of character creation tied to trans-dimensional travel had been made more optional.  The setting of The Strange lends itself well to an X-Files sort of game play, except for the fact that everything gets paradigm shifted (So nothing is weird at all) and your characters are presumed to already be clued into this whole dimension hopping thing.

On the other hand, the Players Guide, which this review is for, is not a bad purchase at only twenty dollars as it gives you the very complete game without all the bloat of the full book. Sure, you don't really have the bestiary, but having seen the Numenera Bestiary, I can tell you that you aren't really missing much... since critters are almost completely defined by their difficulty ratings.  It is possible that the setting information for Fantasy World and Bio-tech world would be worth the extra price, but that is, for me, mere speculation.

So, in the end, I can recommend the players guide as a starting point for the curious, and a decent resource for people willing to try out the 'new' Monte Cook engine on the cheap.

Quote from: Spike;788006Just as in Numenera you have three classes that can best be described as 'Physical Guy', 'Magic Guy', and 'Clever Guy'. And just like in Numenera you can't call them by common sense names, but have strange jargon names like 'vector', 'Spinner' and 'Paradox'. Bonus points if you can tell me which class does what based on the names.

Like Numenera, character design is summed up cleverly, but hollowly, by saying you are a adjective noun who verbs, where the Noun is your class and the adjective and verb come from fairly short lists of options.

You made a critical hit here, if your intent was to make me run as fast as possible from this game, and never look back. :rotfl:

Quote from: Turanil;788024You made a critical hit here, if your intent was to make me run as fast as possible from this game, and never look back. :rotfl:

Pardon me while I back away slowly from the guy pitching a class-and-race-based fantasy system in his .sig complaining about character creation being based around selecting options from a list.

Glad to see Spike back with a vengeance.

Fluff-wise I should like The Strange even better than Numenera, being a perennial fan of Rifts, Torg and cross-genre madness in general. I'm still uncertain towards the much-maligned system, though. We're just two sessions into our Numenera game and we've had maybe two dice rolls (no combat yet). I'll probably pick it up eventually, pending judgement on the system's performance in actual play.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;788027Pardon me while I back away slowly from the guy pitching a class-and-race-based fantasy system in his .sig complaining about character creation being based around selecting options from a list.

Maybe it was the jargon? I sure don't mind it but it does rub some people the wrong way.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;788027Pardon me while I back away slowly from the guy pitching a class-and-race-based fantasy system in his .sig complaining about character creation being based around selecting options from a list.

Touché !

Honestly, I don't understand the complaint of the people about the character generation and the game system of Numenera/the Strange. There is 2 nice character generators here : http://darkliquid.co.uk/playground/numenera/ and here http://www.prime-junta.net/numenera/index.html which the character cration very easy. But I guess it is my win to like the system and the setting

Nice review, by the way !

Don't get me wrong: I have no problem with the sentence structure creation system. I think describing it that way and forcing it to fit that format is somewhat restricting and gimmicky, but it works just fine.

Mechanically I have to go by play reviews I've seen from Numenera, and what I can see of the system (since I've got too many games to convince my players to try one just for a review...), in which you've got too little 'wiggle room' to construct challenges based on the fixed difficulties.  You wind up, as I understand it, with one of three circumstances: Too easy, too average, and too hard.  Now, any given game might produce a challenge that fits one of those three catagories, certainly but Numenera, and by extension The Strange, seems to force every roll into those three.  


As an aside: I noticed back in the heyday of BESM/Tri-stat that three choices, while mathematically appealing, seems to be one too few for good game design.  I saw this in comparing the Tri-Stat system to GURPS (with its four stats), and I noticed the three classes with True20/Blue Rose.   It's just a little too simplified, a little too rigid.   I suspect a part if comes down to replayability. Tri-stat didn't get old until the third or fourth run through of character creation.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;788027Pardon me while I back away slowly from the guy pitching a class-and-race-based fantasy system in his .sig complaining about character creation being based around selecting options from a list.

There is no "class as race" in my book. Then, I don't know The Strange, I just read the review and find funny this passage, the way character creation process is described, and especially the weird sounding names. Now, if I were reading through the game itself, I might have another opinion.

I still remember when I bought a Monte Cook gaming book on some multiverse's planes, and found it extremely poor/useless/lacking. I said so on some forum, and was literally insulted by MC fans who could not tolerate anything but that people should be ravings about any MC book.

Quote from: Turanil;788114There is no "class as race" in my book.

That's... nice, I guess? I'm not really sure what it has to do with anything that I said.

QuoteI said so on some forum, and was literally insulted by MC fans who could not tolerate anything but that people should be ravings about any MC book.

Ah. I get it. You're a clueless spinner who specializes in non sequiturs.

Quote from: Spike;788100Mechanically I have to go by play reviews I've seen from Numenera, and what I can see of the system (since I've got too many games to convince my players to try one just for a review...), in which you've got too little 'wiggle room' to construct challenges based on the fixed difficulties.  You wind up, as I understand it, with one of three circumstances: Too easy, too average, and too hard.

That doesn't match my experience with the system, but I'm also having some trouble parsing what the actual complaint is supposed to be.

The "fixed difficulties" feature 15% shifts in the probability of success. So claim here is that, if a 55% chance of success is "too average", then a 40% chance of success is "too hard" and the game somehow missed the sweet spot by skipping over 45% and 50% chances of success.

Shift those numbers to whatever base value of "too average" you like, it still boils down to claiming that the system's effectiveness or ineffectiveness hinges on a 5% shift. And that seems a trifle absurd.

(If you're talking about the construction of larger challenges like a creature or a group of creatures, the system basically gives you complete flexibility to define the individual components of those creatures to whatever level of fidelity you desire. So the complaint would make even less sense to me.)

Well, Justin: I have been debating tracking down the "actual Play" reviews and linking to them, to address my point.  I'll admit to being rather facile in this particular review when it came to mechanics, given that I'd already done the due diligence with Numenera more than a year ago.  

Obviously I need to do that now to defend my honor!

I've yet to see any actual play of Monte Cook's games (outside of 3e) at conventions, but people do like to buy and read his books.

We've had an interesting experience with Numenera:

Our first session running it, I hated it.

Our second session running it, I loved it.

The big issue for me was divorcing the idea of the number of points in a given attribute pool being equivalent to DnD style atributes. They are more of a representation of how much effort you can expend in certain areas, and your edge (or whatever the 'discount' is called) is more indicative of your strength/intelligence etc.

I find the rules to be less abstract than D20 is to be honest.

I backed both Numenera and the The Strange and, to be honest, wish I hadn't of bothered. I think I got suckered in with the nice Numenera KS art and hoping The Strange would add something to make the former useable.

It doesn't.

I'm converting it all over to other systems and having to add so much to the setting material and removing all the crappy bloat and pointless waffle that it's tiresome in some respects. The Numenera setting, when de-D&D-ified and removed of all naff fantasy references dressed up as sci-fi and actually nurtured into some semblance of coherence is actually good. The group I run it with are enjoying it now - but utterly loathed it RAW using the bog-standard setting and Cypher system (Which was by far the biggest issue).

As one player put it too me, amongst other unflattering comparisons, that it was basically a glorified game of Top Trumps in comparing stats. Ultimately the Cypher system is gimmicky as are the actual in-setting "Cyphers".

In short - I'd avoid both. If I though I could actually get anything for my Numenena hardcopy (Deluxe - what the HELL was I thinking ...) and other hardcopies I'd get rid today. You have to do so much with it that it may as well be just a home-brew game.

Quote from: El_Phantasmo;788686As one player put it too me, amongst other unflattering comparisons, that it was basically a glorified game of Top Trumps in comparing stats.

I can't actually track that comment meaningfully onto any mechanic in the entire game. It seems to be alluding to comparing cypher level to NPC target level, but that doesn't actually involve character stats.

This is like reading a critique of D&D that says, "The problem is that the fighty-guy's spells can't affect skeletons." It's not 100% clear what the guy's actual problem with the system is, but you're pretty sure it's wrong.

Shorter Justin Alexander to El Phantasmo: "Who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?"