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Post by greatwyrm on Nov 17, 2013 7:29:18 GMT -8
I must admit, I didn't know GURPS was partially written in iambic pentameter. If you put the sourcebooks in the correct order, it's also a palindrome.
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Post by inflatus on Nov 17, 2013 11:36:39 GMT -8
I must admit, I didn't know GURPS was partially written in iambic pentameter. There is a GURPS Greece, that should fit nicely. Sourcebook for everything. Oh, yeah...
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Post by passerby on Jan 28, 2014 16:10:40 GMT -8
Just wanted to chime in and say for a game that supposed to be simple and light on the rules and supposedly story driven, however it's the opposite: it's very mathy to adjudicate anything. Players can spend points on every roll to drop the difficulty, character training, items and circumstance may also drop the difficulty a step or just subtract or add 1 or 2 to the roll. Then you got to multiply the number by 3 and then roll. For example: So, you start at 5 difficulty (which needs a 15 to hit on a d20) and try to hit something big and nasty. Player is trained in Bash (which costs 1 might point to use), but he has an edge in might of 1 so it's free. He is trained in his gravity hammer, so the 5 (15) becomes a 4 (actually a 12). Then he deciders to apply some effort and spends points from his might pool, (essentially burning "hit points") for a better chance to hit, so the 4 (still a 12) then becomes a 3 (now a 9). He spent 3 points of his pool, less his edge of 1, for a total of 2 points, but now he's thinking about spending more effort to even further reduce the difficulty. The second point (and all points thereafter) of effort after the first doesn't cost 3 but 2 (for some charming reason), but now his edge doesn't apply (and in fact he may have used his edge for the bash anyway, so he's going to have to pay the full 3). He opts not to spend any more points form his might pool, because it's akin to getting damaged. His gravity hammer is well-balanced so he gets a +1 to his roll on the d20 (effectively needing an 8), but oh look, the horrible hungry beast is prone so reduce the 3 (a 9 on the d20) difficulty to a 2 (which means 6), but remember the +1 on the roll for the balanced weapon... so now the player needs a 5. The character subtracts 3 from his 15 might and marks down 12. Phew! okay, now he can roll the dice. A 6, hooray... a hit. Let's work out damage now. It's a flat number based upon the size of the weapon, but the player can pause the game again and decide if he wants to apply effort to increase damage if he didn't use his edge to hit or if he has at least 2 edge in might. He spent the edge in trying to hit, so he cannot apply more effort. A medium weapon does 4 damage, the big creature has 3 armour, so the big bad nasty thing loses 1 might. This is going to be a long fight. And when the player dodges the thing's attack (the GM never rolls dice, it's always in the hands of the players). He has to start all over again. 5 difficulty, because a level 5 monster is a level 5 difficulty in all areas, dodging, attacking, charming, swindling, sneaking passed, throwing, tickling, you name it - it's always 5. So start at 5 difficulty (15) and work out if you got any training in dodge, if you want to spend points from your speed pool... and oh you can spend all your speed points, effectively "impairing" (game term of being injured) your character to reduce the difficulty steps) to close to 0, even if you don't have edge, or you can not spend points and take the risk of getting 3 points of damage (damage isn't rolled). But oh look you bought plate mail armour for 15 shins (a pittance) because you a wandering mad max plate mailed warrior... and your armour value is 3, so don't worry... this creature will never harm you... well never harm you unless you kill yourself by spending all your points on each of your rolls.You are your own worse enemy. In one sentence: The system is broken. It's not unfixable, but it's going to require too much work. It's got far too much math in every dice roll, and worse the dramatic action is paused each throw by the player weighing up the pros and cons of spending points out of one stat pool to hopefully prevent the damage to another stat pool. Perhaps even the same stat pool. If you have any strategist players at your table, be prepared for a 5 second think on each and every dice roll. I ran the game for 12 sessions during the playtest period, with 2 groups, wrote reams of feedback that quite obviously never made it into the final version (these issues and more were all in the play test). I also helped fund the kickstarter for no small amount, and I'm sorry to say that my group will never play this game. General consensus, it has some novel ideas (character creation, GM intrusion) but overall the game mechanic is severely broken. It's too complicated with this plus, minus, spend, multiply out and roll. It's also entirely unbalanced, between PCs characters ("...entertains" as compared to "...exists partially out of phase") as well as to the actual critters the players faces. Armour is too powerful as damage has no variance. And there are some tricky NPC vs environment, or NPC vs cypher rolls that feel weird when that player rolls them. It feels rushed. If they didn't have a print deadline for less than a year after Monte started the kickstarter, this may have been a better game. Lastly, a 2 page index for a roleplaying is inexcusable. It doesn't even have "combat" in the index. The Star Wars RPG from FFG on the other hand... damn the dice mechanic is awesome.
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Post by SavageCheerleader on Jan 28, 2014 17:38:36 GMT -8
passerby...I am not going to lie...I find your displeasure, dislike, and even disdain of this system friggin wonderful. It is a shit sheep sheer pulled over the eyes of gamers. Sadly, like all things nerd, there will be droves who defend it because to find fault means my thing is no longer valid (see video games, console systems, movies, etc) Ah, geeks. Oh, and just because...isn't this a d20 base? bwahahahaha Thanks for the experienced feedback.
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Post by passerby on Jan 29, 2014 0:36:57 GMT -8
To each their own. If you can have fun in the system (any system), by all means continue having fun. Not for me and my group. After 2 years of Dark Heresy, we decided to diversify last year. So we signed up for all the playtests: D&D5e, SWEotE, Numenera and even went on a binge of D&D Basic, without and then with house rules, eventually culminating into Dungeon Crawl Classics. We had fun - no lies, but we got tired of seeing broken systems, and having to make house rules. We learned a valuable lesson, "you don't need rules" to have a good roleplaying experience - that's to say you can have really bad rules, and still have a good game. Of course, good consistent simple (not simplistic) rules elevate a good game to something even better. Numenera's setting is clever in that ANY story can be told within it. imo, this can be both good and bad for the game system as a whole. Good, because the scope is amazing, seriously anything can happen and it can be explained... Bad because if anything is possible, stories between tables will not be remotely similar, all we share is a system. There won't be shared "water cooler" talk. This is alleviated with adventures and setting guides, but if those are ignored my game with 4 players riffing on superhero powers, dealing with ancient gods that control the weather, worshipped by psychic bird people that live in floating tree globes and protected by mechs will be nothing alike to your tale with the entertainer, the delver, the illusionist and he who carries a quiver, who deal with the more mundane threats of the abhumans. From all the games we play tested (or just played last year) Star Wars won out by a huge margin. As a group, we universally loved the dice. The dice pools are incredibly quick to build, fun to read and each roll has so much narrative energy that experienced players cannot help themselves but add flavour and colour to any dice roll. We bought the final game, and that's what we're playing this year. With two other core books inbound, and tons more coming from FFG... it's going to be well supported. And something else I discovered, there is so much Star Wars on the net, over 30 years of story telling for their universe (think beyond the 6 movies)... that it's a an incredibly rich place to play in. Of course, the first house rule... no Gungans. Second, No Ewoks.
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Post by jazzisblues on Jan 31, 2014 22:35:39 GMT -8
Preface: I have played Numenera precisely once, and the gm was admittedly new to the system, and none of the players had played it at all.
I found character creation to be interesting but somewhat flat in terms of giving real meat to the character.
The game world has interesting possibilities that were not realized in the game that we played.
I found the success / fail ratio to be somewhat heavily skewed towards failure, but that might have been a result of inexperience on the part of the gm. (The other players and I felt that we were up against something far beyond our abilities.)
Abject unfamiliarity with the system was more of an obstacle than it usually is.
Would I play it again? Yes, I would give it at least one more try.
Did I enjoy the game I played? Not particularly.
I don't think it's a BAD game, but I do think it needs to mature a bit, and will improve with some natural evolution.
J.
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Post by malifer on Feb 11, 2014 6:42:51 GMT -8
HyveMynd It appears a new supplement has just come out that will not only emphasize the title of this thread, it will probably make you like it a little more Numenera does indeed suck balls"it provides game master advice on how, when, and why to add love and sex to your game; tips for sex- and love-driven storylines; and ways in which to handle sensitive topics at the table."
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D.T. Pints
Instigator
JACKERCON 2018: WITH GREAT POWER COMES GREAT RESPONSIBILITY June 22-July 1st
Posts: 2,857
Currently Playing: D&D 5e, Pathfinder, DUNGEONWORLD, Star Wars Edge of the Empire
Currently Running: DUNGEONWORLD, PATHFINDER
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Post by D.T. Pints on Feb 11, 2014 7:33:54 GMT -8
Yes my "topic" is quite sensitive...especially when handled at the table.
If you time it just right, its like Johnny just read that...(note to international parties Johnny Carson late night talk show host)
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Post by Fiona on Feb 18, 2014 19:56:58 GMT -8
I can't seem to find any real information about the setting itself other than the whole, far future of earth, magic is science thing. The art work looked really neat for it though, but that's hardly a reason to buy a game. That said, if this is a bad example of science fantasy, what's a good example?
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HyveMynd
Supporter
Dirty hippie, PbtA, Fate, & Cortex Prime <3er
Posts: 2,273
Preferred Game Systems: PbtA, Cortex Plus, Fate, Ubiquity
Currently Playing: Monsterhearts 2
Currently Running: The Sprawl
Favorite Species of Monkey: None
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Post by HyveMynd on Feb 18, 2014 20:23:14 GMT -8
It's not really a "magic is science" setting. It's more of a "magic could be science or it could actually be magic, because it's whatever you want it to be, as we're too lazy to make a decision".
That is my biggest issue with the Numenera setting; it's everything and the god damn kitchen sink, where anything and everything goes, because hey, whatever. It's a tasteless gruel from everything being mashed together. Everything is so unique, bizarre, special, one of a kind, mysterious, and never before seen, that it all becomes trite and boring.
The artwork is, for the most part, fantastic. But absolutely none of that comes through either the writing or the rules. You could use Numenera to play any generic standard high fantasy game with absolutely no rules changes what so ever. I don't consider that to be selling point or a strength.
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Post by Fiona on Feb 18, 2014 20:24:52 GMT -8
I'm not really interested in Numenera beyond the art. Ultimately I'm really just asking: If I like the art for Numenera (and I do, mucho) what sort of tabletop games or novels would you recommend? I don't have a lot of experience with science fantasy.
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fredrix
Master Douchebag
Posts: 2,142
Preferred Game Systems: Fate, L5R, Pendragon, Gumshoe, Feng Shui
Currently Playing: Pendragon, Song of Ice and Fire, L5R, Feng Shui, Traveller
Currently Running: Fate, Coriolis, Nights Black Agents
Favorite Species of Monkey: 1970's NTV, dubbed by the BBC (though The Water Margin beats it)
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Post by fredrix on Feb 18, 2014 22:22:34 GMT -8
I'm not really interested in Numenera beyond the art. Ultimately I'm really just asking: If I like the art for Numenera (and I do, mucho) what sort of tabletop games or novels would you recommend? I don't have a lot of experience with science fantasy. On novels, the obvious place to start is Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun
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Post by Fiona on Feb 19, 2014 2:16:10 GMT -8
Book of the New Sun eh? Thanks, I'll give it a look.
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Post by pigsinspaces on Feb 23, 2014 14:15:25 GMT -8
Or Jack Vance's "Tales of the Dying Earth" is great fun... In fact the Dying Earth rpg was a bit of a laugh itself.
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