Numenera: Second Thoughts

We played Numenera for the second time yesterday. We had much the same group as before: Brindy in the chair, and Mark and Jill as fellow players. Jupiter was switched out for Andrew. Likewise, we had some, but not perfect, continuity of characters - Jill was using the same character as before, while I'd switched one "strong-willed Jack who wields two weapons at once" for another. The other two characters were new, and were both Glaives of one variety or another.

To a large extent, my decision to go with the same character again was motivated by a desire to see if the weakness I'd perceived in the previous game (where my schtick proved to make my character suck) was indeed inherent in the game, or if it was just bad luck.

So...

Well, the answer was a positive one: we'd made some key mistakes with our previous game, which had disproportionately hit my "two light weapons" character. And it was also notable that as soon as we met opponents who didn't have heavy armour on, the "two light weapons" approach became at least competitive (if not optimal... which is also a good thing).

One thing that still seemed very odd, though I'm sure it was right enough - the Jack is supposed to be the "skill monkey" type, but it did seem that both Nano and the Glaives had a much longer list of skills on their sheets than I did. Though that may be because a lot of stuff might be skills or might fit elsewhere on the sheet. Plus, of course, that "flex skill" that the Jack has makes a huge difference if the game lasts longer than one day.

And...

The setting is still excellent, with a lot of inventiveness on show. Actually, that may be the highlight of the game, beyond questions over the system - and potentially worth the price of entry in itself. (That said, from a player's perspective, that then serves as a reason not to buy and read the book!)

It was also remarked that a lot of the 'iconic' elements of the adjective/noun/verb descriptors actually become available at tier two. That suggests that, should we play the remaining chapters of the adventure, we should hit that stuff near the end. Which should be good.

All in all, this was a much more satisfactory session than the previous one. I still think some more familiarity with the ruleset would be beneficial... but that's both not really a surprise, and also something that bodes well for the remaining sessions.

But...

Another published adventure, and another... questionable effort. From the player's side, this seemed to be rather better than the previous one, in they we didn't seem to hit any points where we had to succeed on a given roll or go home. However, after the session, Brindy noted that he'd had to change the setup to build in some sort of actual motivation for the PCs to get involved, he'd skipped a big section of pointless and random wandering around, and that he'd cunningly avoided one of those "succeed or go home" challenges. None of which sounds too good.

Parting Thoughts

The second session was vastly more satisfactory than the first, and the lingering problems seemed to be confined to the design of the adventure itself. Given that this is probably the area where it least matters (since the GM can, one presumes, elect not to use prepublished adventures), and given that it seems to be pretty much a feature of published adventures in general, that's not too bad.

All in all, I'm glad we had that second session, am much more happy about playing in a third, and probably misjudged Numenera at least somewhat in my earlier post.