Numenera Review Part 2: GMing Numenera

[Captain Marsh]

So I started an occasional review of Numenera a few weeks ago by posting some concerns about the engine at the heart of the game.

The mechanics of Monte Cook's much-heralded Kickstarter-funded RPG struck me as surprisingly clunky and math-heavy.

In part two of the review, I want to talk about my first time taking the game out of the garage.

I ran a game last weekend with four players at the table - two jacks, a glaive, and a nano, all fairly experienced gamers.

First, I'll say that the mechanics are, in fact, a bit awkward.

To recap, the GM sets a difficulty level (1-10), the players try to adjust the difficulty level of each task dowwnward using skills, special effort, and other tactics.

The final number is multiplied by 3 and the players roll a d20 to try to beat that amount.

(So a difficulty seven task knocked down to a difficulty four task would be multiplied by 3 to produce a challenge number of 12...)

There was some muddly confusion over all this, and a bit of exasperation, but it wasn't the end of the world.

Second, I'll say in as uncomplicated a way as possible that we had a really great time playing Numenera.

The general setting, which is sort of a mishmash of post-apocalypse-sci-fi-fantasy-horror genres with lots of "magical items" and tons of general "weirdness" was a big hit.

In my adventure, I adapted parts of Cook's "Vortex" module with my own home-brew adventure.

The session involved a group of PCs with amnesia trying to sort out their identities, first by escaping the clutches of a mind-controlling alien, then by infiltrating a mysterious temple to recover vials which contained their stolen memories.

Along the way, they battled margr goat-men, encountered a group of parasitic "Filthers" -- intelligent parasites who use captured humans as their digestive systems -- and fought their way past deadly claw-bots.

The players loved their mix of powers and abilities, and really enjoyed the throw-away "cypher" magical items that are a big part of the game's flavor.

So that was all good.

Finally, I'll say that, sadly, parts of Cook's goal in creating Numenera remained unfulfilled -- at least so far -- at our table.

The game as written is supposed to encourage really innovative, colorful, in-character role-playing and storytelling.

Players are rewarded with experience points largely for coming up with cool narrative events and bits of drama.

Similarly, GMs are encouraged to regularly throw cool plot twists -- intrusions -- at the PCs that add spice and color.

I really like the idea of a mechanics-driven, constantly-reenforced story element boost in a game's design.

It nudges you not to just fall into a combat-round-after-combat-round rhythm...

But the simple truth is that this "live theater" stuff is hard.

A lot of the time, despite my nudging, my players fell back on saying, "I stab him with my spear" or "I shoot him with my buzzer."

Meanwhile, on the fly, I found it pretty difficult to come up with cool, colorful intrusions as often as the game suggested.

(I succeeded maybe 25% of the time in brainstorming something cool...)

Still...the bottom line is that I took a head-count at the end of the first session and everyone wanted to try another Numenera session.

So maybe we'll get better at upping our game in the way that Cook envisions?

Still to come in my series of reviews:

I'll look at the published adventures that have appeared so far and finally at the 9th World setting itself.

[Elendur]

This is going back to your first review part, but I'm trying to understand the core mechanic here. If difficulties 7-10 equate to a d20 target of 21-30, does that mean there is zero chance of success, or is there something modifying the d20 role?

Does a natural 20 always indicate success?

Just seems like it would be frustrating for a player to be faced with a DC 7 and not know that they could never succeed with applying some extra effort. Is the difficulty communicated to the player somehow?

[Ratpick]

Elendur wrote:

This is going back to your first review part, but I'm trying to understand the core mechanic here. If difficulties 7-10 equate to a d20 target of 21-30, does that mean there is zero chance of success, or is there something modifying the d20 role?

Does a natural 20 always indicate success?

Just seems like it would be frustrating for a player to be faced with a DC 7 and not know that they could never succeed with applying some extra effort. Is the difficulty communicated to the player somehow?

The difficulties go from 1-10, meaning that for most of the tasks (difficulties 1-6) players don't have to spend effort to succeed. Having seen a part of an example of play from the book, I also believe that the GM is supposed to telegraph to the players what the difficulty of the task is before players roll, so that they know whether they even have a chance of succeeding before spending effort.

To return to the review, I think this second part only affirms some of the suspicions I already expressed in my comments to your first review: Intrusions sound like a mechanic similar to Compels from Fate and Hard Moves from the Powered by the Apocalypse series of games. I personally think that the mechanic of "Throw an interesting plot-twist at the players, they get experience" is great for more narrative-driven play, but, as you said in, Numenera's case it goes unfulfilled. So, Monte really wanted to build a game that is driven by the narrative, but he wasn't successful in describing how the mechanics could be used for narrative-driven gameplay.

Here's my question to you: do you think the game does a bad job of informing the GM what types of intrusions to throw at the players in given situations? I ask this because when running Dungeon World (one of my favorite PbtA games) I always have the list of GM Moves to fall back one, being a list of twists in the story I can throw at the PCs when one is called for, and simply reflavoring one of those GM Moves to the situation at hand always returns interesting plot twists. From what you're saying, I get the feeling that Numenera could benefit from a list like that.

[Captain Marsh]

Elendur -

Ratpick describes it pretty well. I'll add a couple of thoughts. A difficulty 1 task translates into a needed die roll of 3 or higher, which is pretty easy but not a sure thing. A difficulty 10 task is, as you suggest, basically impossible on a d20. So if you can't use skills, effort and other strategies to reduce the difficulty level to a manageable point, you're basically screwed. Which means that players have a huge incentive to find ways -- mechanical and story-based -- to get that challenge level down.

Ratpick -

Cook does include lots of suggestions and ideas for intrusions, especially in his published adventures. That hand-holding helps. But the bottom line is that GMs are going to need to innovate story A LOT on the fly. Not everyone will be good at this. I pan to do the next gaming session with a long list of pre-meditated intrusions for various possible situations. (It may be that somewhere in Numenera Cook suggests doing this -- if so I missed it.)

I plan to do a final review type essay basically including some suggestions for how to successfully run Numenera. Having lots of intrusions scratched out is one...

[Ratpick]

Captain Marsh wrote:

Ratpick -

Cook does include lots of suggestions and ideas for intrusions, especially in his published adventures. That hand-holding helps. But the bottom line is that GMs are going to need to innovate story A LOT on the fly. Not everyone will be good at this. I pan to do the next gaming session with a long list of pre-meditated intrusions for various possible situations. (It may be that somewhere in Numenera Cook suggests doing this -- if so I missed it.)

I plan to do a final review type essay basically including some suggestions for how to successfully run Numenera. Having lots of intrusions scratched out is one...

Alright, that's good to hear. I'm still on the fence about Numenera (I'm absolutely in love with what I've heard of the setting but have heard mostly mixed and negative critiques of its mechanics), but it's at least a point in its favor that it has some suggestions and ideas for Intrusions. If I do pick it up and run it, I'm probably going to keep my list of Dungeon World GM Moves handy, because I'm sure I could easily adapt them into Intrusions with little trouble.

Speaking of which, as Dungeon World is released under the Creative Commons licence, you can read it for free. The relevant part with the game's GM moves can be found over here: [url]http://book.dwgazetteer.com/gm.html[/url] (You have to scroll down a bit.)

You could probably use the GM Moves as guidelines for Intrusions in your game, simply picking one that seems relevant to the situation and narrating it appropriately. The players are traveling in a desert when you suddenly decide to make an Intrusion: you declare that one of the PCs has stepped into quicksand (Put Them in a Spot). Ask the players what they do, and if they fail to save the character sinking into the quicksand you tell them that they sink down, only to find themselves dumped into what seems to be an underground ruin (Separate Them).

Also, don't tell the players that you're picking Moves (or Intrusions) from a pre-written list. The players should always be under the impression that things that happen emerge from the narrative, and part of maintaining that illusion is never telling the players the mechanic you're using.

On the other hand, Intrusion sounds so funny that if I were to run Numenera I could probably not stop myself from shouting "INTRUSION!!!" every time I made an Intrusion.

[Arnwolf]

I got the feeling that the skill system was inspired by thAC0. Love the setting but the mechanics could have been more intuitive.