Numenera?

[Pyrephox]

@Jennkryst Once upon a time, I wanted to make a fantasy archeology MU*, with shades of Annihilation and thought about the same problem, in that people tend to blow through content at a very high rate of speed. (See also Arx trying to keep up with people’s hunger for clues).

Keeping exploration hunger fueled is a big issue. It might be a place to look towards coding and procedural generation to some degree. Say, a ruin that has a shifting, changing interior backed up with a bit of code, where every time a new group goes in, they get a room that throws some ideas and potential cyphers at them to use, then saves that room and displays it to GMs on command to decide if it’s got some fun hooks for an ongoing plot, or remains a one-off.

[Jennkryst]

@Pyrephox Yeah, you can delve deeper, return with keys or new cyphers to unlock secrets like a Zelda Dungeon, come back with a MASTER OF MAGNETISM to learn about hidden switches (or other rooms linked thematically to different focuses), venture through the Datasphere… tons of things.

[Paradox]

I have dm’d numenera a dozen times for different groups at cons and in the group of friends. I have never once gotten bad feedback on the setting. Because it alllll works. It lets you be free. Awesome setting and execution for what it is trying to do.

[MisterBoring]

@Jennkryst What you need is a static starting area… say 16 rooms of grid that represent the starting village. The rest of the grid is generated as the world is explored by the people playing Discovery characters while the village is expanded and upgraded into a bustling city by the Destiny characters. Maybe have some major plots baked into uncovering certain grid squares, but the majority of them are randomly generated or otherwise minor spaces in the world. That’s just what I came up with thinking about it for a few minutes.

[Jennkryst]

@MisterBoring Yeah. Past a certain point, you’ve explored all the local area, though. At a point it takes people longer and longer to go explore, and if they are gone for a month, are timestopped from being in the city.

Which… admittedly, could reasonably take longer than the mush exists. But it is a thing! Or we get some Destiny people to build FastTravel points!

[MisterBoring]

@Jennkryst said in Numenera?:

Which… admittedly, could reasonably take longer than the mush exists. But it is a thing! Or we get some Destiny people to build FastTravel points!

And also gives people a reason to rotate through their alts. Player 1 Character A is going to be gone on a long trip, possibly never to return, so they start playing Character B while the timer counts down.

[Jennkryst]

@MisterBoring On the one hand, some folks won’t alt. On the other hand, I just had the realization that if the ruins are close enough, there could be multiple single-scene excursions into it, so you don’t have to get the same group on again and again and again.

Which… does feel a bit more like a revolving door, and means that people might get hurt and just not press on. Everyone will always be at 100%.

Still. Bunch of ideas that can be worked with.

Edit to add: what if we Stargate Atlantis it, and make the whole damn city a ruin to explore?

[MisterBoring]

@Jennkryst Could just pull from SG-1 and Atlantis and make it where there’s a ruin to rebuild into a city and a weird teleportation system that takes players to and from ruins, and then also if some players want to do the whole “we’re traveling through the wilderness a long distance because we want road trip adventures” they can do that too, and maybe end up in some of the same places with teleport access.

[Jennkryst]

@MisterBoring Make the fast travel to take investment/effort to build and maintain… possibly a resource to use. Maybe even XP since there will be a theoretical cap to how much can be spent on stuff character advancement.

I’m just randomly spitballing ideas here, no thought has been put into making this actually work on paper, let alone in practice.

Edit to add: and given that there is a tier 5 teleport for Nanos, and a number of Teleport artefacts/cyphers, the real trick is going to be figuring out how to balance stockpiling of equipment.

[MisterBoring]

@Jennkryst said in Numenera?:

Edit to add: and given that there is a tier 5 teleport for Nanos, and a number of Teleport artefacts/cyphers, the real trick is going to be figuring out how to balance stockpiling of equipment.

My thoughts on this:

• Ensure that the depletion mechanic for Artifacts (at least the ones that have depletion) is always checked, perhaps even by automating it in the code.
• Have very thorough guidelines for awarding cyphers to players, so that while people may horde them, they aren’t gaining just piles and piles of them week to week.
• Possibly house rule that the Cypher limit applies to owned cyphers. A Tier 5 Nano can only own 5 Cyphers total. They may lose or use some, and gain others in the future, but can only own whatever their limit is. If they’re at their limit and discover a new one, they can decide whether to dispose of one and take the new one after its been identified.
• I’m honestly not sure how I’d work in the Destiny crafting system to this, as I haven’t played with the Destiny side of Numenera yet.

[Pyrephox]

I’d reward people somehow for using cyphers in the same scene that they get them. Cyphers have always been the hardest part of Numenera in actual play - it goes against every hoarding instinct players have, and it’s hard for GMs to come up with a steady flow of interesting, useful one-shot objects to keep tossing out there.

This would definitely be where I’d use code+crowdsourcing - encourage everyone to put potential cyphers in a database that GMs can then either consciously pick from or just roll and get granted a few randomly. If you want to be SUPER cool, you could even set something up that would create random items under some parameters.

And then, of course, reward people for using them almost immediately.

[Jennkryst]

Given that people can go to a merchant and buy specific cyphers (maybe another option for excess XP, making sure that the inventory is in stock), they could easily have like… a standard load out, or whatever. When they are in the field or in a plot, of course, they wont have time to run and find an NPC to buy replacements from.

I need to look into Destiny, too. Need to figure out why BadStuff doesn’t happen to merchants for having too many cyphers at a time.

[MisterBoring]

Turnover of Cyphers in your pool is just part of the flow of the game. Also, between the core book and various supplements, there are already hundreds of cyphers to use, in addition to several sets of charts for randomly generating new ones, and assuming the game includes Destiny, crafting them.

As far as NPCs and Cyphers go, I believe that’s purely up to the GM.

I think with proper staff oversight and a tiny bit of incentive, Cyphers aren’t that big of a deal.

[Paradox]

In the past while running it I have told the table that cyphers which are carried over from one session to the next cost xp. So one cypher carry over free. Two costs 1. 3 cost 3 4 cost 5 and so on

Like a lot of modern games cyphers are part of the game currency for story telling and get hoarded. The best approach IMO is they don’t carry over and need to be used in the sessions they’re earned.

[MisterBoring]

The book actually suggests as an alternate rule to put a timer on them for how long they last before they fizzle out on their own. A MU could do something similar using code.

[Jennkryst]

Thinking on some other issues.

1. when players inevitably want to fight eachother, as opposed to NPCs… how do?

2. since cyphers have levels, should level be a factor in number of cyphers carried?

3. should artifacts factor into the number of cyphers, or no?

4. see also: numenera vehicles.

And probably some other things I’ll remember when it is inconvenient and I can’t come back to put them on the list before I forget again.

[MisterBoring]

@Jennkryst

Answers to your thoughts:

1. You will have to hand write your own custom rules for PVP situations, as PVP actually flies in the face of the game design. One of the core conceits of the game is that only one person should roll in any given action, and that it should almost always be the player.

2. I don’t feel that would be a good idea, since almost all of the cyphers have a level that is variable. Two cyphers of similar level have a similar effect, but one takes up more space in your “cypher slots” sounds like something potential players would complain about in the long run. If the staff is doing their diligence to create situations where cypher turnover is happening regularly, there’s no need to put further constraints on number of cyphers owned / used.

3. Nope. Artifacts are not cyphers, so they should factor into that. That said, Artifacts are meant to be rare, so again, if staff is doing their diligence on that, you don’t have to worry about a lot of them existing, especially if you use plot to write them out of the story. (That big laser gun artifact you found is actually the power supply for this one thing over here, and when you install it, you can’t get it back. Sorry.)

4. Also nope. See staff doing a responsible job of controlling the flow of these things into the game. (Also if it’s basically the Numenera equivalent of a Ford Focus, do we really care if there are bunch of them?)