The Players and GM review the Numenera RPG system. Listeners Questions will be answered in Episode 165
Knights of the Night
KotN Acutal Play Podcast - 164 Numenera Review
(upbeat music) - Hello, and welcome to "Night to the Night" actual play podcast. This is our discussion on the Numenera RPG system. The weekly feedback is first, but the review starts at 16 minutes and five seconds. And now, please enjoy episode 164, the Numenera Review. (upbeat music) Before we get into the player review of Numenera, we'll cover a little bit of the current feedback. The listener feedback for Numenera will recover in the next episode, as our review is over an hour-long job. I'm Facebook in regards to episode 162. Stuart Warren said, "Gotta love the science superstition "of rolling in this episode." I used to play role master tables and numbers everywhere, so crunchy. And one of our players was the big believer in being able to control the outcome of the role. But then again, he did role above 95, five consecutive times to kill the end campaign bots. The local gods who had been driven insane. So maybe there is something about making your own luck. - To which John would say? - Yeah, what, yes. - The audience cannot see John shaking his head no, but it's definitely happening right now. - You believe in a random determination? - Die rolls? - And as far as a dice is perfect, which they're not. - Now, is Bob your uncle or cousin or cousin? - Bob would be his cousin. - Cousin, so. - I know, I can't play with him, so I can't believe how badly he is. - It is, I can't give him any, how bad luck he is. - I think he was selective interpretation. - All I know is that I was on a roll rolling 20s and 19s in the open, I wasn't cheating or anything, despite what you say. And then you guys insisted I use that stupid plastic contraption that-- - It's called the dice tower, yeah. - The dice tower, thank you. Whatever mojo I had going disappeared instantly. - And the way you're cheating while rolling. (laughing) - Well, that's, I don't know. - There's rolling and sliding, Mike. There's a difference in sliding. - I wasn't sliding, I was sticking the landing. - Look, Bob's rolls are getting a tape of it. - He's tried every way you can roll. Drop boxes and call. - Yeah, he has some like a little thing he really is. - No, no, I have to bounce this off the side of the book and then it has to go over here and say I wonder where he gets that crap from. (laughing) - I don't know if it worked though. It was hilarious. - No. - Science! (laughing) - He mentioned-- - Yeah, I prefer to hold on to my superstitions about rolling. - Right. - If I were to die, let me control it. - Doesn't affect me. (laughing) - I don't-- - I'm like a big fan. - I'm like a big fan. - Because it's science! - I said, okay, take a five. - He mentioned one of his players rolled 95, five consecutive times for the final boss. I gotta wonder if I was at that table, would it be more exciting, because our players are doing really good in a moment of strife for like, is he fucking cheating? Am I sitting down to face the final boss and this man is over here cheating? - Well, if you're rolling it, I said on the open. - If he-- - Yeah. - Is he opening a shot and you're fired in an arrow to get 95 three times? I don't know why you're going 95. - It's 100%. - It's 100%. - It's 100%. - Yeah, I don't know when you rolled that for, what was it for? - It was rollmaster, which is like-- - Oh, rollmaster. - You're supposed to talk about it when that spins. - But I don't even know. - I was trying to think of D&D when I was rolling, so-- - I used to have a critical table. - When you're bleeding out, I think you're rolling or something. - That's about it. - I used to have a critical table, so now you used to DM D&D in Scott here, rolled three consecutive 20s, I think, to have this incredible compounded critical hit. - You used to have some of those tables in first, so once, the ultimate. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Fairly. - I thought it would have done well with the old melee, gurps, 'cause you had to roll under your DX to hit. - No, anyway, roll high. - So he just rolls lousy? - Yeah, yeah. - No, no, no. - It's definitely a positive thing going on with the-- - I guess what I'm saying is I'm anticipating the law of averages or whatever the laws that-- - Large numbers. - The thank you, to come into play with Bob. And it-- - I'm just-- - I'm not awaiting it that he's-- - He's still waiting a half. - He's a rolling 17, 20s around. - That's what I mean. - And if you see in the beginning of-- - And if you're Bob-- - Screw this place, go to Vegas. - Yeah, there's number theory, and that's theory, and that's fine. But when you're sitting down and rolling, all bets are off. Maybe we don't understand everything. So there, I know all about statistics. - And that's how we feel about dice. - In regards to episode 163, Ari said that he was downloading it now. This was our latest episode. Later on, he said, "One more thing. I'd love to hear how you do with Numenara World with another role set. The world sounds like so much more than the clunky rules allow." - Ooh. - And the guy that Scott Wove and the party tried to demolish was, again, a goodie. - Drizz index. - Yeah. - And thirdly, he said, in regards to Earththon, you guys played it too? - Nice. We've been playing it since 1994. Care to share some of your thoughts on the game? - You've been playing one year longer than I've been alive. Oh wait, shit, the other way. Evermind. - One year. - Since you were one? - Yes. - I remember having a book on my shelf, and it's about my extent. - And I'll do every time. - Earththon came out when you were born 1993. - We've certainly haven't played it since 2000. - You found another correctly that it had magic that would go in great sweeping arcs, and that when the magic was high, demons would come out. So they built these underground things to hide, like some else somewhere or some scholar. - Cairns. - Some alpha scholar did some research and found that the next wave was coming. So they built these underground places to hide. And then you as characters are supposed to come out and start exploring what they think the magic's receded. - Yes, but it had elves, dwarves, they had all the living men-- - Thousands of years or something like this. - Yes. - And they had a bunch of different-- - They're on the New Earth. - The dice mechanic I thought was, depending on what level you are, you roll the certain dice. - Do dice eight or one dice eight minus or plus. So it had to do with your skill level as far as that goes. - And yeah. - Again, we haven't played it probably in, I'd say close to 15 years or so. We gave it a little spin for one adventure. - Mm-hmm. - Maybe two. I know IDM-1 and maybe Doug did one as well. - Oh, Doug, we're going way back there. - It was a very creative world. - But it's supposed to pop to elliptic, but not really. - Right. - It was definitely a very creative setting. - If I remember correctly. - It was a slow combat system. It lasted a little bit longer than some of the other systems we played in the past. - Right. - And seeing somebody. - Right, slow for us. Oh my God. (laughing) - But yeah, I really like the history of the world. They wrote some pretty good adventures as well. The writers put out some good adventures. - Yeah, a lot of software facilities. (laughing) - Yeah. - It was very interesting. But for whatever reason, we, you know, I think maybe that was 3.5 around the same time. And it just, we stuck with what we knew and what we enjoyed at the time. So yeah, good stuff. - Alpha Jop said, "Just in time for some late night coding." Luke Green said, "Yeah, I'm preced to the left of me. "Yeah, I'm preced to the right of me. "And here I am stuck in the middle with you." Stuart Horn said, "Murphy's certainly "danced in your dice cup this game." Oh, and I have expected Tealah to drag off a snack with her. The most recent episode, the final episode, I ended with the fade off of her going off into the sunset. - Couldn't drag Jacob out. - Yeah, yeah. Well, actually he was left back. Wasn't he? - Yeah, he was one. - He was the other universe. - Although it might be fun to always bring back Ichabod as kind of like a punching bag that you know, he never speaks, never interacts, but we're always. - Oh yeah, he'll be screwing NPC for sure. But he never fails to fail to tie someone up. - Let me have another government. We'll put him in charge. - Richard Watts commented and said, "That's the way combat "is supposed to go," unquote. I love that line. Excellent fun and with editing, the pacing was pretty tight. Good job in looking forward to the round up discussion in a new manera, which would be fine right behind this. - I probably thought that was too easy of a victory. - I wasn't upset about it. - No, it was slightly anti-climatic. - But. - Sometimes I guess that's good. - It goes our way once a decade, so it's better. - Take and race it. - And race it. - We just ran away. - It's gonna be remember when, remember when. - That one combat where we just kick their asses. - And then it has it. - We're still talking about a dagger plus one I got from Scott. - Holy shit. - Which, it was cursed, you died. - That's the most treasure I ever got from. - Looking over at Google Plus, Jeremy Land posted, he was posting as he's catching up. So he was back on 157, which was feedback loop. And he said as part of the transformation, Teela's mic pool and mic edge go up. Her base damage is four, so she can then use effort at plus three damage per level of effort. Which is an option that the NPC Ravage Bear doesn't have. Which gets her to the seven damage point. Also as far as an alternative to D20, I toyed with the idea of using 3D20 and taking the middle results, thus giving you the same range of numbers, but your chance of a one are one in 400 instead of one in 20. Since you'd have to roll two ones to get the same. - What? - I was just saying that the actual breakdown of the ranges of numbers and choices, this is where it really loses me. - Loses you in what sense? - Interest or ability to-- - The fact that you're hitting, yes, all of that, but I am astounded that people take the time to understand all the possibilities and knowing the numbers. When, in fact, I wonder if it's just, it was a dice roll meant to include just a random element, not necessarily you're thinking through all these different-- - What's math, man? - I guess I am! (laughing) - I'm looking. - Staying up and leaving, man. - All I know is that someone challenged some load out I had in one of my start track headlines because I wasn't optimizing the damage per second, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Shut up, you know, I'm playing honestly. - I'm surprised you said that. - Is this level versus that level? It just gets down to-- - You were role-playing, right? - Yeah. - I guess, in New Manera, don't you agree that there's something depressing about the 20 side of dice in there? How difficult it is to manipulate? - You guys, for a lot of the things when I switch it comes to dice, I think are more advanced at this stuff than I am. 'Cause it doesn't really-- - If you're not interested in whatever that's fine. - Is that not interesting? I just don't-- - I thought you could see-- - I should say, I think I look at it much more simply and narrowly as a introducing a random element versus the way I think you feel, Tom, as someone who's like, look, I don't like being restricted a 5% chance to get a one versus a 20 all across the board when it should be this bell curve, which I can understand, but-- - I don't need to look at the roles that minutely if the game works like it should, in my opinion. I mean, you can't deny the fact that your guy was supposed to be a glade and should have been able to be a great warrior, and we're fighting the displacer beast for lack of a better term, those digital cats, and you're the only one that couldn't hit them. When your primary role was a warrior, your sister can, this nano can, and your guy is failing, and it's simply because of the dying. In my opinion, you should have had a chance to do better and it should have been just natural because you're a warrior. You're the one that should be doing the attack. And if it isn't working, then maybe it's because the mechanics are broke. And that's why I tend to look at stuff closer is like, this isn't working the way it should be, in my opinion, but we'll discuss that in a moment in the feedback. Moving back to Jeremy Land and Google Plus, you also mentioned that 159, that was a fucking awesome description and accompanying sound clip when the data beast, Quantum Prowler, broke apart and reformed. Quantum Prowler. - How's it going? - I think we used it once. - We used it once, we should keep using that. I'm gonna use that as London tonight, one time. - I don't know why you would. - I'm gonna call it one, Roberto comes to my house and we'll call him a quantum Prowler. - Maybe he can be a tech bar. - He's gonna be the name of the bar. Don't you guys, that's the name of Bob's new character. - Quantum Prowler. - There's like online bars around here, or include. - Oh, cafes? - Yeah, I like cafes. - Internet cafes. - Internet cafes, right. - Jeremy Land coming in at 162, which was a Take Me Home episode, and said, giving guests a single XP to give to players is a great idea. It encourages players to bring friends, which exposes more players to the game, just brilliant. So there you go. - All right. - Kudos to Scott for giving Rachel an extra. I mean, going back to his last comment, kind of got lost in the quantum Prowler bullshit. - Bantar. - Bantar. - Yeah, Bantar. - Thanks for, he said he liked your sound effect and the description of the creatures. So we appreciate your positive comment and we glad you liked it. - Indeed. Moving over to rpgcrosstalk.webs.com. Mad Mulener said, sounds like we have another member of the quote, "frustrated at D20 Mechanics Support Group." - Sounds. - That's right. And mentioned that there are fate and cortex system hacks out for noumenera. So if the Knights like the story, but are over the system, you have a few options up your sleeve. I think though, Scott might be a bit presumptive that the party will go back to the vizier. And I'm sure if they can smuggle the site in there, they would be more than happy to discuss a few things, threaten the vizier. - Steel, any ideas you want from our Dresden NPCs? And here is our city sheet. So after that, you put in two links. One of them is a PDF and it shows there's, they're playing Dresden right now. They just started it. And I listened to it, they're doing a really good job. I enjoyed it. So again, that's the dice heroes. But he had a link and it showed his city and the location and the faces. And then there was a second link and the second one showed the faces, that the actual photos they used of actors and people that were representing their characters. - Cool. - And one thing that you may find interesting is their current warden of, I believe they're playing in Las Vegas, is a gentleman named Lee Hall. (laughing) - What is that actually Lee Hall? - It's similar to how we use Ryan fucking Nelson. - Right. - But Lee Hall would have only meaning to us at this table rather than all of the nice things. - I expect the photograph wasn't of Lee Hall. - No, Lee Hall. - Right. - The photograph is not of our friend Lee Hall. - Cool. - And that's it as far as the feedback goes. Quick look at the fan page we had. The fan group has been starting their own game and it's a fake base game as far as I can tell. And they seem to be having a good time. So that's all fun. Adam Adangi also had a post about inspiring mood music. People were posting different music that they'd like to play during their adventures. Logan Swanson talked about his dungeon world game and how difficult it is to play with lots of people. Giving me a bit of sympathy and he actually mentioned that in his post, but it sounds like he's having fun. In Ari also mentioned the thing that we were just talking about which was the Diceros starting their Dresden campaign. Other than that, we just had the Numenair Plow which should be probably tied up soon since Numenair is all but done. And it is currently stalled at a tie between Tila and Sig for first place. So, although everyone does have a vote. - A rule of the basement. - And a king of the basement. - Tila and or Sig. So with that, we'll just a quick reminder. Amazon link, I'm KOTN Podcast.com. Appreciate anybody uses that. Send some money our way helps support the podcast and we'll go on to the adventure. Well, actually in this case, not adventure. We'll go on to the discussion of Numenair. All right, this is the player feedback and GM feedback for Numenairo. To start off, I guess we'll talk in broad strokes. How did each of you enjoy the world that Manicook created? It's a relatively unique world. Once I read a little bit of the PDF, I got excited about running a quick one shot in it 'cause it offered so much variables. You could really do anything you wanted with the world. - I don't know if anybody cut it up on that. The next one, he's doing other kick sirens called the weird strange, the strange. - Thank you, Michael. - But that almost sounded like a perfect, you know, this was one node in the strange that it would fit in. - Right. - So it's interesting to flush it out now. - 'Cause it's still a new Numenairo. - It's a new setting, but the same. - They explain a normal world in day 20? - So when do you guys think about the world overall? - It's great. - It's good. - After I started reading about the steadfast, I just devoured each and every city in it. And I think I slowed down when I got to the beyond. - The beyond. - It had me go up for it. - And I grabbed and started at the beyond and started reading for some reason. I skipped the step back. - Because I think the reason I did it was Scott was talking about putting it in a setting that would fit the beyond way better than the steadfast. - Yeah, we hadn't begun the character creation yet, so I was just-- - I want to. - Even then, my character comes from the steadfast and I have a history of what he did there, now that we visited it or it even came up very much. - Right. - I wanted to use it 'cause it was cool. - I'd say that Mani Cook has a history of writing outstanding the settings. And this is no different. This is something really good setting. - I would say about the system itself, one of the strongest points of the system is, is the setting that he developed. And that's not to say there are other strong points 'cause it's not, we all obviously have our grievances with Di20, but the system itself, he created a very interesting system. But the setting, I thought, was just exemplary and really, I could have done anything with that story. I wanted to run something that was a little bit like, and it didn't quite end up where I wanted it to be. I wanted to run it as if it was a quick episode of "Firefly" just with one little twist in it and there was a twist and it was okay. But it didn't end up being exactly what I wanted it to be, but based on what your characters came up, the character design you guys came up with, it just went itself to something I thought a little bit more challenging than just a quick "Firefly" episode. So anyways, that's-- - I think the general consensus was that the setting was fantastic. - Right, and I didn't hear anyone really complain about a lack of idea or inspiration from the setting. - Yeah, because I didn't read the Numenair book, coming into it, I really had a hard time to think it's starting, grasping what it was all about and what the world is and how much do the people really know about tech and how much, what the character class is where I had a hard time just and what the world was like and-- - Yeah, I think you wanted to fit it into a slot and say, "This is an apocalyptic." - Yeah, it's not really. - Right. - Okay, this is sci-fi. - No, it's not really. - It's fantasy, it's not-- - It's fantasy. - Yeah, it's none of those things and it's that uniqueness that makes it so cool, but yeah, there's a definite time investment in this setting. - Right, absolutely. - You have to really read into it so it's hard to grasp just from it. - Just figuring out, is there a calendar and what language do people speak and how do they communicate to each other and how do they get back and forth and there's half the people are living in the Stone Age and the other half of people are living in a high-tech world of supercomputers that we don't even have now. So it was hard to know where you were at and where your characters are getting fit in there. - What about the character creation part of it? How did everyone feel about creating their characters? Was it simple enough with the three types of character classes and then all the, obviously, all the iterations that kind of spun off of those three main, the Jack, the Glaive and the Nano, right? - I like getting it started. I'm not sure I liked the character progression. You kind of have like four options and then you pick among those four, but you're always gonna have the same four options every five levels. - So you're talking about more leveling up? - If we call it that, I don't know, I was smacked down when I said leveling up. - It's a tier, right. - Right, but then-- - But the creation of the character. Don't give me a chance at that. You just fling out your character. Did you feel like you knew your character by the time you were done designing it? - I'll speak for myself. Yes, I had an idea of where I wanted to go with the character. I had an idea of how we got there. I liked how we explained, how we all kind of got our character. And this is just very personal observation. I just don't see how's the moon play tested well enough to exist for a first level character. - Right. - In the way we played it. Because I'm like, how does this, how do you-- - As well as some of these-- - That was not, how's it the moon, I think, was one of the least that was not a notice by the listeners at all. - Yeah, I remember that in a totally different forum, not attached to R. - Well that's right, it was on Reddit. It was on Reddit, someone was like, how the hell do we play this? How does the moon stuff? And I'm like, oh cool, I'll be able to read on what people think. And the only comment was go listen the nights of the night. (laughing) - Gee, thanks. - Well, I'm not sure that's how you should have played it. - This is nothing against, 'cause I think you did a great job and we built a lot of stuff. But my point is that you have a very disturbing-- - Everybody's got these descriptors that are helping them and you got a descriptor that is actually holding you back and is dangerous to the poor. And it doesn't, I don't understand why you, I know it's later on, it's useful, but why would you wanna start with something that's not useful? - Well, to answer the question you asked, I thought the character development was fantastic and that you got a character that was rich and ready to play as far as role-playing went. - Right. - Now, I think that the character progression, as Mike pointed out, there's some definite flaws in the system. Starting characters do not have enough skills. - Right. - The only thing they can use to differentiate themselves on a dice roll is whether or not a skill applies. And most characters start with one. - Right. - Two. - That's ridiculous. Because that means anything that they're doing is coming down to a die 20 unless they're spending resources on it. - Right. - So, character development, I thought it was great. It fully fleshed out and gave you something to work with. Character design, I wasn't really thrilled with. - Right. Anyone else have any feedback about character development or character creation, excuse me? - In creation, what do we have three nanos in our group and not one of them? - Yeah. - You look like the other one. - That's right, very valid. - And that was a concern with mine. I was like, what, there's three classes? There's one of those glazing and jacks. That's gonna be ridiculous. Everybody's gonna be saying. - I couldn't try to be more like Sig 'cause I had, my character had a new manera background, he had a specialty in it. Wasn't just trained in it, he had a specialty in it. And I kept thinking he should be able to do that some of the new manera stuff that he was doing with all the scanning and stuff. But I didn't want to step on his toes in that regard, so I just let him run with that. - I think every nano in our group could have scanned and-- - I could have picked it, I didn't pick it because you had it. But I could have upgraded it at a later time and picked it, but I'm like, huh, he's got that, so I'll let him run with that. - There's reasons to have it, but it's hard to say that everyone uses it differently. It's just a small pool of things to pick from it. - Had we played longer, I probably would have picked it up because that would make sense for that character to have that particular bullet. - You know, I'm sorry to jump in. I think new manera as a keyword and as a ubiquitous quality to the world is I think in the long term, it's kind of broken or maybe we just haven't played it enough. But it feels like, 'cause I know that when I got to a certain level, I got the skill new manera. And it's almost like our wildcard where we can apply it literally to everything, 'cause technically everything in the world is new manera. - So it's a new manera equivalent of "I'm London". - You really, thank you, right. So sink into the point. Is that a weakness? Is that a strength? Or is that something that is deliberately so broad and vague that you can make it fit whatever you need? - And I think that's something that would have been revealed if we would have kept on. - Okay. - You know, kept the system going. Which way we ended up playing it, because I certainly played it. - I know it sounds like that really quick because I was trying that the players start with not enough skills. You don't have enough effort. You don't have enough edge to really affect the roles like you want them to. So it's almost like in the beginning of the game, characters are broken. They don't work well enough. And you've got to get up. - Well, isn't that case of me having a two channel? - Where they start actually being playable. - Yeah, it's like we're playing a zero level character where we're trying to get up. - I mean, maybe we're not supposed to be, I mean, they specifically say that we're supposed to be above the average cut. And yet there's the majority of the time I'm rolling a die 20 and that die is deciding it. - The average cut. - There's no way I can fucking affect it. - Get it, people. - Is it like? - Well, it is not no way, but I could expand. - It's very minimal. - And it expects by what? - Is it like for the darkness and your point of mind? - There's no way to affect it. - Sorry, if you roll one, it's okay. - Is it like roll the darkness and you're playing ordinary humans instead of hunters? - Me? - I'm just saying I could see as the characters grew and they were more powerful and they've got more skills and they've got more effort and they've got more edge that I could feel like I could control things, that I wouldn't actually affect things. - I could see it though, 'cause like I was like on the verge, I already had two edge. And all I needed was a third edge and I can be able to say, yeah, I can always-- - Effort. - All the time. - Yeah, I could just have one effort all the time. - I could do these things. - Well, you could do these things effortlessly. - And then, you know, by the time you're fifth, sixth level, you could say, oh, I'm putting two into it and it doesn't cost me anything. - Right. - The great example is Nina's partially out of phase. It did absolutely nothing, too. - Yeah, not really. - I think I had to-- - Until level two. - Right, besides colored story, it had a lot of that. - Yeah, well, yeah. - Some of the descriptors require forethought from the gym to actually confirm it, which is-- - Well, you saved yourself from-- - From Tila, by-- - Merging into-- - At what cost, Mike? - At what cost? - At what cost? - I need a defense-- - My phase Virginia, I guess, I don't know what else. - Given an hour, she could have, like, actually faced all the way into it. - I think to hack the hell out of his ability, he started with just the ability to turn things on and off without lifting a finger like he has a remote control. And yeah, I achieved it on that, I think, a couple of times. - Well, but with my acquiescence, though, I mean, it's not like we didn't talk it through. - That doesn't mean it's a strength of the system. - No, it doesn't mean it's a strength of the system. - Well, I think there was, and I don't want it still, you're thunder, because I know, John, you mentioned that in your character, you got so frustrated because there are things you're supposed to be good at, and you couldn't. No matter how far you went, or as many points as you spent, or tried, or re-rolled, or whatever, it's still just a beach time roll. - Yeah, but that's the kind of-- - I started counting over six times in the fucking adventure, and it wasn't just him. It was me multiple times where I would roll the dice, and then it was like, God, I just worked everything I could to make this work, and this is what I'm supposed to be good at, and I still can't do it. And then I say, fuck it, I spent experience. So let's talk about the fact that you're spending experience. That's a pretty fucked up system. - Right. - To me, that just is so wrong. I mean, I know they wanted to emulate something. - I want to level up. - There's fake points, but I want to fix a die roll. - But yeah, I mean, to this day, it makes no sense to me. - Yeah, 'cause then I'm willing. Okay, fine, I'm spending experience on my roll, but it doesn't change the goddamn thing. I still gotta roll that 20 set of dice, and fuck me if it didn't come up with two again. - Right. - And I'm talking four or five times in the game. - Uh-huh. - That's just-- - Yeah, that's frustrating, right? - That's a broken mechanic. I mean, don't tell me that I can affect the game, and then I can't. - Right, and I think that's, before we get too much off on that particular tangent, because I'm sure they'll be, that'll take up at least half of our podcast. I want to talk about some of the other mechanics of the game that people may have enjoyed or not enjoyed. We talked briefly about skills. There certainly is a cipher rules, and the rules for artifacts. There's one thing that bothered me, mechanically speaking about the game, was for a game that invests so much of its story and its effort and pages and pages upon, this is a game of exploration. This is a game about finding things, which lends itself to a story, which generally leads itself to social confrontation. I couldn't find one fucking social role for social combat in 500 pages of, or however long that core book was. There was no social combat, and maybe that's a supplement coming out in the future, but I was a bit annoyed that I couldn't make social combat interesting. Some of our more interesting encounters in our stories, whether it be shit luck or chagrin in World of Darkness, or whether it be fate, certainly, with the first real Dresden story we told. - Delivering, yeah. - Delivering. Were these incredibly tense moments of social combat? I think to Bob, with the wife Peter, as one of the flashbacks in chagrin, and how much tension there was, there was a mechanic in place. We were rolling dice, but we were role-playing at the same time, and it balanced itself really well, I thought. - I think a lot of listeners will point out that that is one of their favorite. Also, I've heard a lot about when you and Mike were in the Cleveland Clinic in the office building, and going up against Constance, where that was nothing but a social combat, and there was mechanics in place. - Now, we could have role-played it out when all hippie died three. - And in the D20 stuff, that's cool. - Yeah, but they don't have anything. - I enjoy the fact that there's a little bit of structure there to guide it so it doesn't feel like someone's gaming the system by just being a really good role player, as opposed to maybe some of the other players who are a little more quiet, more strategically. - Well, that's true, John. You scoffed, but there, I mean, I've heard-- - I was just running where you draw the line. Oh, he's too good, stop. You're just running all the time. - No, there's just, I mean, if you don't have a role in place that allows for mechanics, it's that these character is good or bad at social manipulation, and there's dice rules and ball vices. - And then it kind of relies on whether or not the person playing the character has that social skill. - Yeah, it can really role-play their own-- - Yeah, and that's not the way it's-- - And that bothered me about the system. I thought that there should have, in a system that swears that combat and loot isn't what it's about, well, then you damn well should have a social system in place, and that's my one little system pet peeve. Now, I will jump up and down and say, Cypher's really cool. I will say that the artifacts are really cool. - I wouldn't-- - The setting is really cool. - Yeah, the setting was awesome, but as far as the game mechanics went, I'll say Cypher's were a great game mechanic. I'll say that I even, in some instances, enjoyed the leveling up aspect of the four different areas. I didn't mind that I wasn't a player, but as a GM, it rang true to me, it was interesting. But-- - What instrumental increases in certain skill areas balanced, and then you suddenly-- - Yeah, I mean-- - It made sense to me. It felt real when I read it. But what I hated was the fact, or really disliked, I shouldn't say hey, what I really disliked was the lack of a social combat, and I really, really, really disliked the almost, and maybe it's just me, maybe I didn't read it well enough, but the flippant nature of skills. - Make up your own skill. - There was-- - Okay, get that to some extent, but how about if you give me 20 concrete examples of skills and how they would apply, and then say, go wild with it, that I can deal with. - Yeah, this is a start, so-- - Here's a list of 20 skills. - Make up. - What do those do? - I didn't care for that, dude. - What does that mean? That's just one word on the page. How does that apply and play? I don't know. - Well, it doesn't matter what the skill name is, versus whether you are specialized or trained in it, and that seems to be where the mechanic comes into play, right? - That's the only mechanic. - That's the only mechanic. - But I don't know, it's almost like they treat them like aspects, where they expect you to make up your own skills and stuff, and that doesn't make sense, but aspects-- - But then it should've really been built into the system or as an aspect, or as a-- - I'm making the character, I don't remember that being part of something I would pick or choose, or-- - Right, and you get one of them. - Or something like that. - And that was my-- - If you fucking get one. - You know, here's one, and I don't even know what the fuck it does. - Yeah. - 'Cause I have no concrete example, so his skill section was-- - No, no, no, I get that, but I'm saying Thomas is saying that Jacks get more than one. Yes, I had up to three, I think, right? - I'm supposed to flex skill, yeah. - No, that was-- - Do you ever get more skills besides leveling up and deciding to pick-- I want to get a skill? - Yeah. It's too nebulous, it didn't have any there, there. I could grab hold of it and say, okay, you're really good at paddling, 'cause for your character, Michael, when you were playing Nina, and be like, well, I have stealth, well, what does that mean? Could you move silently? Can you pick pockets? Can you-- what the fuck does that mean? - Are you hiding in shadows? - Yeah, let's make it mean everything, because we're telling story here, so-- - 'Cause I can use alertness, you know. - What even a character does it not? - Right. - Even a character creation, you should be able to pick one or two skills, just to flesh out your character to-- - Right. - Put it in point, and this is kind of a character. I got these skills, or this kind of a-- - But I think it becomes aspects, like what Thomas is-- - Yeah, I have no problem with it saying-- - And you can't pick anything else-- - Here's 10, here's 20, here's how they work. Now, create your own, because you could have any skill in the world. - 20, yeah, please. - You could not. - I would have felt comfortable, but I felt like I was really winging it with skills, and I didn't enjoy that particular game mechanic. - I wonder if social combat is kind of-- the majority of people who play these games are probably going to go with combat. You know, I don't know if they're all 40 plus years old in these games that have played for so long. I think you've identified a gap. I think that there is a definite hole out there for social combat, and I would submit that you're not gonna find it until you write it. - Yeah. - And in a way, we almost have to create a fate, a world of darkness companion, to build these social combats. - I think fate doesn't do your job. - Yeah, I love fate-- - Out of all the systems we've played, I think it's the best part. - So, that was one mechanic. Let's talk about characters. Michael had indicated one of his favorite parts of listening to some of the prior podcasts, wrap ups, was when did the character feel like your own? I mean, when did you really feel like Bas or like Nina or Eshman go all the way around the table? When was that point? Maybe we can go around the table so everyone doesn't talk over each other. We'll go from right to left, around your video dial. - I like the character creation. A new man there had helped me flesh out my character, and I kinda knew who she was right at the beginning. - Okay. - And just ran with it. You know, she's kind of a orphan, you know, young orphan street-wise. It was kind of impulsive, trying to prove herself and had little fear even when it was-- - Right. So you felt like you knew where right from the start? - Yeah. - Was there a point when you really felt like, wow, she was, that was like her shining moment when she really just came onto the stage as-- - I guess one of the first battles where I jumped in after the spider and-- - Oh, right. - Retreat your weapon. - Yeah. - With no regard, not even reasonable amount of fear. - Right. That wasn't the first battle. First battle against me. - Well, yeah. - All right, J-- - That's what I ran away from. - Ashman, when did you feel like Ashman really kind of came into his own as the-- - It actually was during-- - The prophet. - The prophet. - Creation too, and when I was reading, I wanted to pick a healer. That's where I was first thinking. I wanted someone in the group to heal, so I was gonna be the healer. And I was reading the description of the miracle worker, the only thing I could find that had healing stuff in it, that said that he could, that other people see him as a god. So I thought that would be kind of cool to run with that, and that's where I got that idea from. - Right. - People see him as a god, maybe he is a god. He just doesn't know it, and he could become one one of these days, so that's where I picked that up and just ran with that. - Right. Did you have a moment when Ashman really kind of came into his own, you obviously felt comfortable with him from the beginning, but like a moment where he thought he really shined during the story? - Nothing, especially. - Turn it on. - Tom, what about Tila and-- - I don't have to agree with what that's been said so far. It was during the creation. - Well, I want to stop for a second, just, I'm sorry to interrupt you. - I think they didn't. The first three people also, they felt like they knew their character and character creation, so-- - They felt impressive. - I believe they did, because I think they did a fantastic job with setting up the folk eye. When you choose a focus, it didn't really outlies what your character is gonna be about in the near future, but it also does tie into additional characters on how you interact with each other. And it was during the rolling of oddities when it came up as a music box, it was like, this just makes perfect sense. This is our mothers, this is what he uses to calm me down. - I mean, it was all during character creation that really helped define who my character was, so I think they did a great job. - Okay, great. And was there a moment when you felt that Tila really came into her own and really kind of fleshed out your thoughts of her-- - Yeah, even the first time she transformed into a bear and then the recovery thereafter, kind of an outline of what my character's life was gonna be like. And even before that happened, I knew that's what it was gonna be, but yeah, that was-- - Right, but it really, it lived up to your expectations. - I thought so. Like what about a boss? - I didn't like the character initiation just like everyone else. I think I felt the character really gel for me the first night in trying to prepare for Tila's transformation. And that it was that moment of drawing of lines where it's like, look, whether you guys like me or hate me, it doesn't matter because she's gonna be changing in a few minutes, so this is what we have to do. And this is how we have to survive in the desert. And I really kind of felt like the caravanor's son, the protective brother, and also the glaive that can still fight. - Right, all of you guys might have to, but this is a bigger issue. So that first confrontation, the planning, and then the absolute debacle of all our plans being destroyed because Tom was rolling-- - First contact with the enemy. - Yeah, I rolled out of my fucking mind 'cause I was attacking the fucking player. - Yeah, true enough, true story. Okay, Thomas, Felix, what did you feel like you really knew Felix as a character during the story? If it happened at all? - Definitely when I first met him, I knew how he was going to act the entire time. I didn't quite get a handle on his back story till way later, and I have a thing written out. I'm not like, I'm gonna post it anyway, but I know what happened to him in the past, and I'm happy with how that turned out. But the time when I definitely felt this is what the character is all about. - Right. - Is when I fucked up hunting three times in a row. - Right. - And he didn't give up and just kept doing it. - Right, by the way, he got hunting a very tough airbag. - It's a desert rat. - Desert rat in the ground. And then again, when we were talking to the sultana, and I was the only one not talking to sultana all the way out in the middle of nowhere, desperately waiting for some of us to go-- - Cross hair, on her forehead. - Terrible, they're wrong. - Right. - Very Felix. - All right, and John, what about Sig? What do you feel like you knew him very well, or when he really kind of, you know, coming to his own? - When I was reading the back story, I was coming up with the character, so I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted, and then I picked his book eye, and probably during character creation, he really started to gel in your mind. - I have to say that money in his company did a fantastic job of character creation. - Yep. - If everybody off the bat knew, you know what I mean, that was just phenomenal. - Yeah, that doesn't happen too often in a lot of systems, but you know your characters that well, route the bat. - They have a number of points either, so if you have this, who does this? - I don't know, there are other, this is something that it sounds to do. That fate has, three of your aspects have to do with other characters, and it's supposed to build. - During the feedback for fate, I said I didn't know any character in my entire life, and I'm 46 years old, there is not one character in my entire life that I knew better than London, when I created that character. - I have. - So what I'm saying is fate has the potential to do that. - Yes. - But I don't think it always works. - Right, I agree. - I think, as we see here, we got six out of it. - Yeah, everyone, it really worked. - Did you know that? - That's pretty fucking impressive. - Did you know that five of us here, Greg, I forgot was, but I mean, all of us felt that that was the case. - Right, and there's six of us, but seven with Greg. - There's seven of us. - I don't want you to come across a podcast. - There really is six of us. - I agreed with it. - I have five, too. - I forgot to call myself the bear. - You ain't gonna do that to you. - I really had one, you didn't linger. - Lager, didn't I, can't say it either. - You're cut off. - I'm not driving. - John, did you have a moment where you felt that he really came into his own? Like, all the ideas you had of who he was kind of just fused into one scene that worked for you. - He likes to tinker and make things work. And when he was able to save his life by transforming Kila into a bear, that he was able to figure that out. (laughing) And it's funny because, I mean, in my head, I was thinking the exact same moment. I'm like, I wonder if he's gonna say that moment. I'm sure that you did. - Well, the thing that was, to me, so remarkable about that moment is, as much as we're going to very shortly, bitch, about die 20. - I looked out there. - You rolled a 17, and missed by one, and took an experience point to re-roll the die on a 17. - In fate, I would've just gotten it by adding an aspect. - Right. - I'm sure I had to. - Exactly, well, and maybe not though, because you don't always succeed in fate, 'cause you still have to roll the fudge dice. - I mean, if I was one off, it would just be an aspect. - Exactly, but I just thought it was amazing that the dice roll in that particular instance, on something that was really important, everyone around the table actually cooperated for once. This doesn't mean the mechanics seems just amazing. - Anytime he was kind of amazing. - He was able to tinker, I thought was interesting. Unfortunately, didn't work well for teleporting back home when we were trying to figure out how this was. - Well, yeah, that was as much my jamming. - It was the dice, too. - It fault is it was the dice or you, or anything. - That was one of the times I mentioned that John had got extremely frustrated. - Yeah. - 'Cause he's supposed to be good at something. You kind of counted on him being good at something. - Right. - 'Cause it was-- - You never have one answer to a question. It's like GM 101. It's like a fan's GM, it's GM 101. There's never one solution to a problem. - It was like that. - And I tried to give the second one of, or you failed, but something happened, but then no one really picked up. And I should have again sensed that. Again, pacing, pacing-- - I don't know, I thought by universal adapter idea to interface with the technology. - And I missed it again. You gave me an opportunity. It was me, it wasn't you at all, it was me. - I just, Tom and I were so happy that it looks like it reads exactly what we need. I just have to-- - If I could go back. - That was a lot. - I was like. - If I could go back, it was so pissed. - If I could go back and change one thing about my GMing for the entire story, that would be the one thing I'd change. I would have let him-- - I thought that you were a claw. - Come up with the answer. I was off the night, I was, there's no excuse no matter how tired you are or what not. I decided to play, and I did not GM that scene well, because, in the back of my mind, I wanted John to be the hero. That was his scene, his turn to shine. And the dice said, fuck you, it's not happening. And instead of taking the out, that might gave me, I forced it on John, which actually contributed to everyone getting more frustrated, and it seemed just-- - That's an actual, that's an actual different way of looking at railroading. - Yeah. - I mean, because you had a preconceived idea in your mind, and you wanted-- - I wanted that scene to go. - And I don't do that very often. - The first thing you could do is a GM. - Okay, I even want-- - Terrible. - They took that mind pill and tried to do it-- - Yeah, you gave it another option. There was an option all over the place, and I'd reflect-- - Oh, this is John, John. - John is going to make this happen. - Oh, again. - I'm trying to be where to roll, he's like, I don't want to roll. - I don't want to roll. - I don't want to experience it. - I don't want to go. - Ooh, fight. (laughing) I was like, we're not doing this right. Somebody figured something out, 'cause I'm out of experience, or I'm necessary for the fight. - Okay, but we're living in the cloud world for a while. - But at the same time, though, I mean, Bob has made a history for five, 10 years of rolling atrociously consistently all the time. - It doesn't matter what system it is. - It doesn't matter. And so, part of me was thinking, everyone of us is the Bob for the day. - Bob's gone, so this shit luck has been going around the day. - No, right. - But the D20 system does not help. The other systems, you had options to-- - Yeah. - Sausageam tool, where you fail forward. Okay, he fails to do this. Well, he still does it, but it is a very, very-- - That's why he did, but no one picked up on that, and then instead of redirecting you guys back to it, I just, yeah, that was not my favorite scene. And this, these are my next question, actually, which is, what is everyone's favorite scene? We'll start, everyone wants to think. Start with John. - I guess it was the social fallout after I transformed Tila, which was-- - So, the-- - All the crossbow to the back of my head while we walked. - After that's our battle, how everything kind of fell out from your transformation. - Yeah, and he was so burnt out, he didn't realize for our time that that was even going on. - I like that. - Right, that was your favorite scene in the story. Okay, how about you, Mike? - I think my favorite scene was the first Tila transformation. - Yeah, that was a comedy of, not even a comedy of errors, I don't think that's really a good descriptor of it. It was just-- - It's a pretty good descriptor. - It was just-- - Now they weren't, they weren't heirs, they were just highly unlikely of that. - Well, bestly plans, I mean, they just won after another. - We had five levels of contingency that you destroyed in a matter of two roles. They just-- - The funny thing is, is that usually the scene is, no GM plan survives the contact with the players, right? 'Cause it doesn't matter how well you put a, I think of everything, no, you didn't. They're gonna think of some other way, you gotta react to it, you gotta move with it. This is the case where the characters actually didn't survive contact with the characters, which is a very rare instant, because you guys had everything planned out, and she's rolling point. - I know with unbreakable ropes, we buried her into her head in the same, we had dynamic deferring, we had food for-- - We had a music box. - We had the music box, and then we had the-- - Oh, shit. - You know, the non-combands moved to a safer location. - I was trying to turn it off at the beginning. - Oh, yeah, yeah. - We had the gooey rove that time brought, and it all just went to hell, and then we did. - But it led itself to a really cool scene, obviously, but-- - No, and maybe I need to amend my original view about money-cooking, but I just thought to myself, how does that focus survive play testing to become a standard-- - Do you know how it does? It's people just ignore it. Okay, I go off into the woods and I hunt, and I come back in the morning. There, done. - Yeah, yeah. - Okay, so. - I think the way we played it is what made that particular folk guy so challenging, but we're playing a, what could be a one-shot, he made it part of his character, so let's make it part of the story. - I wanted to play it that way. - Right. - And I would submit that it would be a great way to begin any group's new manure adventure, as that being the focus of that early adventure, because what I felt, Tom and I talked about this online later, that any story or background or mission that we had became irrelevant in my head, in my words, it is relevant because we're too busy trying to deal with another night of her transforming, and we gave our best shot and she went through, like, tissue paper, so what the hell are you gonna do next? - Right, what's next next, I'm gonna bring. - Right, and so it's like, who cares if we are on a mission from the salt and if we're gonna be torn apart, not me, because I was safe, you guys are already torn apart. (laughing) - I'm pretty sure you're all full. (laughing) - All right, okay, but. - Okay, Tom, what was your favorite scene in the story? - I actually had two of them, and one of them. - I found mine out for you. - Oh, did you go ahead? - Okay, Thomas. - Near the end of the, was that the first fight? - No, the first fight was versus you, the second fight was versus just first the arachnid, and then the Murnan. - Yeah, the Murnan, and then the Cheerog as well, it was a triple battle of the sand dune in all hell. - Just winning that combat in general. When we faced down the Murnan, I got some help from both Michael and Mike, and then I managed to get like three people in two rounds, it was really great moment. - It was, you're firing up the ballista, was extremely impressive. - Oh, and his interdimensional scrambling of two of the Murnan at the same time, it was. - The last guy you feel was like right behind you, and you're like, it was just. - Yeah, that was my moment, it was good. - I think my, actually I have two of them, one of them was just a quick one, and it's when we were getting ready to pay to get onto the lift, and John goes fuck that, and just flips the switch, and he comes up by itself, and they're all screaming at us, like what do you do? And it was just one of those moments where he had a skill and a talent to use, and it worked perfectly into the story, and you as a GM didn't say roll a dice, you just said it happens. - Right. - That's the way those types of things should go. - Right. - The second one is much more involved, and it's when John threw the switch in my character's head, in the middle of battle, like it's a chair hug, and the outcome that came from that was just epic. I thought it was brilliant. I mean, just the fact that it worked, and that it should have worked. - When we were fighting the-- - And then it all-- - It was a Tana's man? - Yeah. - And I saw other two of them, I was like, oh, I'll flip her a switch. (laughing) - I'm having one. - Yeah, I thought we were in a big fight, and I thought we were gonna be blazing fast. - It was so brilliant that it happened, because my character has a progression. When I go up a second tier, she starts to get control of it. - Right. - Now there's a story point on why I start to get control of it. - Right. - And it's just that organic thing that happened. Again, because of the role of the dice. - But still, it should have happened. - It was a difficulty level of 22. - Yeah. - I don't have the book in front of me anymore, so I don't know what that constituted. I made that incredibly challenging for-- - I still found it for him too. - And again, this one of those cases where you have to just, is a GM for all the aspiring GMs out there. - You go. - You go with the blow. Man, when something like that, crazy shit like that happens, it lends itself to so much. - And in my opinion, that was one of the better moments of the game era. It was like, that should never happen. Fuck if it didn't just happen. - Right. - And what did you roll, Joe? - You were the 19, didn't you? - I think you rolled a 17, and he needed 18. - I rolled a 17. - He said fuck it, I'm spending the experience and he actually rolled an 18. - I thought it was a 19, but it was-- - In your way, it was what you mean. - I'm not listening to it. You have 20 straight times, nine times. - It could have been a 19, but I just remember he beat it and it was like, that was, yeah, maybe what? A 15% chance of succeeding at that? But still, it even seems like less than that when you're trying to roll. - Yeah, it's either 10, 19, or 20. - I think that's an important point to remember when we're trash and die 20, that shit like that probably wouldn't happen how it's made of the die 20 roll. - It wouldn't have made it this cool. He would have spent a fate point, bumped it up, and said, I succeeded. And we would have made it interesting, but it wouldn't have been that wow factor. That's good point, Michael. There's that wow factor of wow, he just rolled an 18 when he had a second. - And I feel kind of bad about dissing D20 and saying that it sucks and sucks and sucks, because sometimes it's a good suck. When bad things happen to your character, that makes for a good, and then get that. I do fully understand it. My frustration comes from telling me I'm good at something and allowing me to spend all these resources and really not changing my chances of rolling. - That's succeeding, right. - The chances are just fucking 5% for any number. - That's all there is to it. - I'm going to get back to the main thing here. - Yeah, go ahead. - Because in-- - You know, I think gross noises all three of that in. - Because when I, in Dresden, came up with a plan to take over the ghoul or ship, and ownership of all the ghouls, it's just the idea of coming up with a cool plan, it's cool that I thought to flip her switch would have been interesting whether or not it was a difficult roll. - If you had enough resources. - Added extra to it, but I think if I had gotten that idea and said I'm going to do this, look, it happened, it would have been interesting even then. - I'm sure it still would have been interesting, I agree. I thought it was a little bit more of drama because of the die roll again. - Well, I think it was mentioned a while ago in the feedback from one of the listeners, and it's kind of like D20 giveth and take it the way. I mean, sometimes the dice do exactly what they're supposed to do to make that an exciting moment. Sometimes they just suck the life right out of the fucking game. - All right, Jim, favorite scene in the story. Going back to Sig in his switch flipping, I thought it was cool. At first, when I was thinking about him being able to go into her mind and switch the handles on and off and affect her change and stuff and skin, I'm thinking, you know, I don't think the skills really supposed to do that. I think we're stretching what it was, and I'm like, I don't know if this sounds right or not, but then just roll playing it out in everything I've got, I thought it was pretty cool. It made for a really, really good scene, and that was fun when we visited again back during the sand dune. Spider wherever thing that he was actually able to do. So again, I think that was cool. At least it was one point where we're in the middle of a fight and Sig grabs his head and falls to the ground because he got caught in feedback loop or something. - Yeah, and while Jim and I were like, "Don't you dare," 'cause we didn't know if he was flipping my switch again. - Right, yeah, no idea what's making him happen. - It's not the time you do that, right. - What is he doing? - And Michael, what was your favorite? - I don't have a unique one. I liked everybody's answers. I mean, there were a lot of great points in the adventure. - Right. - They have to say it's all the combat times, but the times of the most tense. - Yeah, but like when we were fighting the glow tigers, that was kind of cool. The number, zero and one tigers and stuff. - Yeah. - The binary. - The binaries. - Tigers, right. - We never did come up with an angle. - Never a good one, anyways. - Even the end of the end game where we had the battle that wasn't, it was kind of anticlimactic, but there was a lot going on there. - There was. And you guys, that was a time when the dice did not fail. You guys just, it was mostly a much more difficult battle and you guys just literally sliced through it. - Talking to the salt was fun. - Right. - Yeah, the opening. - My favorite two scenes, I would say, much like Tom, I had a tie. I did enjoy the scene with this. I mean, this is the description of the tiers, the platforms that you guys went up and it's his palace and the way he conducted himself. That was a really neat storytelling session. But for me, the two combat, the binary beasts, I thought it was just such a surprise. You guys were so out of your element and the reactions and the different ways that you handled it, I thought were really clever and I thought that battle kind of was a, even though you were never really threatened with any kind of imminent demise, I thought it was kind of a cool battle. - I think a lot of things happened that were calling that battle. Mike and I fighting back-to-back and my character. Again, the dice just worked, where I said, oh, I saw him slice, I'm gonna try this instead and then I happen to roll a 19 or whatever. And Mike says he's gonna do the same thing and then again, he happens to roll an 18. It's like, he changed his style really, and it actually worked, and that was just random. I mean, there's no reason that should have happened. - I found that challenging because in a way, we're still learning the new manera world, conceiving of how everything is in new manera. And then we find ourselves in a pocket universe where we were, yeah, those physics or those criteria have completely changed. And I'm like, I wasn't sure whether we were living in a projection or was it a hod deck? Or was it, we're still in a cell and this is just part of the viziers. - Which is kind of cool. The way those things are going through your mind 'cause they didn't know that. - Right, 'cause I was thinking it was really ultimately a loyalty test by the vizier. - I actually discussed with the boys. - We aren't the originals. - Right. - That the people that were in the wagon were the originals. - Yeah, the primes. - We were the primes. Yeah, they were the clones that got made up to go after ourselves. I'm like, that would be fucking awesome. - But then we think we're the primes and we're not. - If we were the replicates, I'm like, that's gonna mess me up a bit. (laughing) - I should actually suggest it, it's gonna be difficult. - Right. Sometimes it's good to steal the players' ideas. - I did think about it. Everyone was so into their character. And for a one shot, maybe it would have worked, but I didn't know if we were to come back to it or not. So I didn't know the long-term complication. And I had really the second scene that I really enjoyed in my head, visualizing the battle at the Sand Pit, where there was this huge caravan cart that was teetering on edge. People were trying to grab things off of it and keep it upright as best they could, but there was also creatures kind of surrounding you and following in on you, and just watching everyone kind of in their own element there. I thought that was- - But you always got the shine in that. - Everyone got a chance really in that battle one way or another. Nina helped Felix, who was being stalked from behind by one of those murders didn't realize it on top of the dune. And Felix, of course, had some grand moments. Tila got a chance to actually turn. And again, it was one of those cool turns where he flipped the switch, which kind of feeds into why I love that scene so much, not just for the scene itself, but for the after effects. And everyone, I mean, the glade got a chance to stand strong. I should've been, well, there was cowering under the wagon in a sink. You got caught in that feedback loop and in failure knees. So I thought everyone really had a moment in that battle. And it was a long battle is, I think Ari mentioned that when he was having sugar in flashbacks, no pun intended there. It was a really cool moment where we've got a chance to shine. And I really enjoyed that battle a lot, but there was- - Yeah. And I think before we get out to the listeners' questions, one thing obviously the 800 pound gorilla in the room, the elephant in the corner is the mechanic, we talked about the other mechanics, but the mechanic that we all like to discuss, which is die 20 itself. The big question is, how did everyone feel about going back to a die 20 system? After literally what's got to the amount to almost five years of playing either the storytelling system or fate, and again, with the dungeon world thrown in, with a couple other systems, small systems thrown in, how did everyone feel going back to a die 20 type system? - Just for me, just for me, because everyone else had a bad night once or twice. - The dust never treated me bad, except for the character defining moment where I failed three times in a row to catch something. - Early on. - That's what my job is. - Once with great skill. - Once with great skill. - Except on it. - At the very least with great perseverance. - Right. - And like I said, it fed into what my character does, so I was pretty much okay with it. And I do kind of like how modular the role is, because you can have a lot of influencing factors, which is kind of number crunchy, but it's nice to have a lot of leeway in how many things affect the dice roll, because when you're sitting down and saying everything's a plus or minus two, and the scale's so much smaller, that everything you do matters a lot, which is good in some cases. I just kind of like-- - And I'll back up money real quick here, not 100%, but at least maybe 50%, 'cause you guys will all get your chance to hammer it. And I will too, because I found it very frustrating, although I didn't have to roll, which was, again, maybe one of those unique mechanics that we really didn't come across or talk about was the fact that I never rolled one die except for an initiative roll, I think. - I think that's unique. - You know, that-- - I mean, we did the same thing and done it. - And it really allowed me to try to paint a story and tell a story as opposed to focusing in roles. But any time you roll a die, it's a chance to tell a story. And if you fail, and I know it's frustrating to spend all your experience and to spend all your effort to try to make one thing happen, but you can make it into an interesting story, still, by failing. We do it in fate all the time. The thing with fate is we get control whether or not we fail the role. In die 20, you don't. And that, I don't wanna call it the illusion, 'cause it's not an illusion, but that taking away of control and making you roll a die 20 instead of a more adjustable system like fate, I think, and especially after five straight years of systems where we can kind of massage the die rolls if we want to, whether it's spending willpower and storytelling system or whether it's spending fate in fate. - Well, I don't think it's just that, though. - I think that if you're a good enough role player, and it's not to say that you guys who aren't complaining about it aren't, but if you just roll with it and just say, okay, I failed. Okay, let's just further the story. Instead of being so pissed at the mechanic, you probably can still tell a pretty good story. That being said, if we play new manira again, I would like to play with anything besides die 20. I would play a fate system, I would play a world of darkness, a story-telling system, anything makes up for die 20 'cause I don't like to see my players frustrated. That's not fun. I mean, is there supposed to be some conflict between us? Of course, I'm trying to put obstacles in your way 'cause conflict is story, but I want us to succeed in the end against all odds and tell a good story. And when I saw you guys getting so frustrated, that's really what sold me on the fact that I didn't love it. But go ahead and everyone give their views on that. What you mentioned earlier was all valid. But I think the difference between the world of darkness and fate and new manira to pick three systems is that the bell curve in fate is heavy to the middle, very heavy to the middle. You know what the outcome's gonna be. It's gonna be your skill, and then it's gonna be added by four dice that are plus or minus or blank. That's all they are, that fast majority falls in the middle. So your skill is gonna determine that and you have a lot of skills. - Yeah, that's one small lump. - Because you don't have-- - Right, yeah, just, I mean, your eight pairs of bell curve are, the bell curve is not big. - And what I'm saying is it-- - No, I'm saying the bell curve is in the middle. It's huge in the middle. - Yes, I'm saying. - It's wide. - Well, I think it's-- - I think it's flat. - I think it's pretty damn-- - Maybe it's bigger. - Your plus one or minus one. If you include the middle plus one minus a lot of weight-- - It's like 60% of that is in the middle. That's huge. - Well, as I'm saying, it eats up so much there's nothing left over for vast swings at the end. - Okay, it's valid. - It's not-- - The other one is-- - I'm describing it a different way. - Right, the other one is World of Darkness where you have a dice pool. You have a ton of dice, which then again, they're probably-- - Okay, I had a ton of dice. - And, yeah, definitely I had a ton of dice. - One success. - Again, your chance of getting that is huge. - Right. - Numenera, it's a fucking flat line. I'm sorry, but a die 20 is a flat line. - It's a flat line. - There's a 5% chance for any number to come up and there's nothing, everything else is an illusion. You cannot affect that. - Right. - You do not affect that. - Well, your die roll is a flat bell curve, but-- - The success rate is not a flat. - Belt. - I mean, it's not a flat bell ever at all. - No, if you can bring it down low enough that it's zero, you automatically-- - But even out of four, and even out of eight, you've got a pretty decent sized bell curve. It's when it gets to the 12s. - I disagree. - If you roll a one or a two, that's a 10% chance. Chances are, if you're rolling in Numenera, then you roll a one or a two, you're failing. - Yeah. - Yes. - That's a 10% chance of failing. - But if you're successful, if you need a four to succeed, you're gonna succeed 80% of, well, no, it's gonna be-- - What is it? - What is it? - 50, 50, 20, 80% of the time. - Okay, this is also really, really petty, but it bugged the shit out of me. Adding these skills and doing everything reduces your chance. It takes away from your target number. - Yes. - That bothered me more than in D&D where you added to the die. - I don't know why. It's the same goddamn thing. But it seems to me that if I'm adding 10 to the die, that's better than I'm moving that-- - I rolled the one. - I rolled the one. - No, it's the 11. - Yeah, he said, "Oh, it was not a one." I still missed 'cause it needed to be a 15. But I still got a higher number. I didn't get a fucking one. - And it's so stupid and petty, but I mean, these are fucking mind games we play anyway. - But that's my major complaint about this die system is it's a die 20, without a doubt. But there were other things too that bothered the hell out of me. Spending what basically comes down to fate points? Or if it's World of Darkness, what you would consider willpower? That's experience. Why do I have to lose experience to do that? Why can't you make it a separate mechanic? Why experience? - I agree too, that that seems to be-- - That makes no sense at all to me. - I had a hard time. - You don't want to have to run a bunch of shit out of me. And spending out of your pulls, I get what he was going for. - What was your might, Mike, your character? It was a glaive and he had a mite of-- - I had a pretty high mite. - It ultimately was a 17. - Okay. - All right, you have 17. My character I intentionally made to a very, very low. She was only at 10. - Okay. - What was her might? So he was almost twice as powerful as I am. - Right. - Doesn't mean a thing in that game. - Oh yeah, you did not-- - Not a fucking thing. - With the flow tigers, you kick the ass and he-- - Right, right, right. - Man, absolutely nothing. The fact that, I mean, even if we're trying to-- - So we have more to drain, but that's it. - Even if we're trying to knock down a door. - Right. - We're trying to power through something that's blocking our way. We're both rolling a die 20. - Well, me very hard to get skilled. - It doesn't matter if he is twice as strong as I am by his, by his strike ball, his mite, his twice as high as I am, he still rolls a die 20 just like I am. - And unless he happens to have a skill in knocking down the horse. - Or will he have become-- - Or he spends effort, which drains his pull. - I'm sorry, I had a thought I just wanted to think there. If we, again, and it's not that I want to keep playing the new manure system itself. But as a GM, I have every right in my repertoire to say it costs you three mite, even if you have to knock down the door. 'Cause it's so beyond your skill. So all of a sudden, that drains you. And if we played it more, I would probably start resorting to things like that to show the difference. Now, is it really the GM's job to show the difference between the two characters? - What's it changing the game? Because no one would even mention that. - Yeah, they do. - That does. - It does, yeah. - I mean, what would you show up in the comment, though? - Base on character description. It does a door to knock down. Would you say, Tom? - Say, handle it. - Your base number is a three, and Mike, your base number is-- - You could make the numbers different. - You could make the numbers different. - Yeah. - You could make the level, 'cause you could make the level different, but you could also make someone spend points. You could also make someone spend points just to even attempt an action. So that's something you could do as a GM to show the difference between you two. But I would prefer something a little more concrete than me having to constantly be, well, again, I don't have any dice to roll, so what am I pitching about? But I would like it to be showing different ways than that, and I guess if you were talking, my name is sitting around here doing counterpoint, you would say, well, he can burn through a lot more. Well, you can give him a higher, you can give you, meaning Tila, a higher level to have to succeed at because she's not as strong, and three, you could make her spend Mike to even attempt it because it's so difficult and would be pounding your shoulder out. - I think we're back to my original point, which was when the characters first start out, they have so little skill. They have so little things that can affect the dice that I didn't feel my character was unique in that sense. What made my character a hero was the role-playing ability that, well, I was given that by the way that the system created the character, but that's what made her unique, is the style in which I played her, not her attributes, not her stats, not her skills. I was rolling a die 20 like anybody else, and my chances most of the time were exactly the same as anybody else's. Didn't like that. - The weapons all had set damage. Really, my might or these abilities are really a measure of stamina and endurance, not a measure of strength or power. But can't you add effort to damage when you do an attack? Isn't that one of the options? - We found that out later, yeah. - But yeah, you start with an effort of one, so you have virtually no effect that you can do. - One of my edge made it so hard to get to. - I could throw more punches or I could get more attacks than you could there were time, but really. - And I think I mentioned even during one of the episodes that I didn't think that the game would really hit stride until we were in second or third tier, and there's something wrong with that. - There's something seriously wrong with a game that you don't start feeling like you really have it up until the third tier. Out of six? - Yeah, remember when we first saw a player now as asking, what's the difference between our characters and the normal person walking down the street was explained that our characters are like super unique and rare and have these superpowers that other people don't know. - That the rest of the world must be fucking cash, right? - And then I think, you know, I go, my character really, he can barely get somebody a headache and it would take him a long time before he did any serious damage to him. - Right, right, he didn't do too much else. (laughing) - Yeah, but it means that much different from-- - And then Tila, he's E2.0 and having five hit points and one magic missile can kill ya? - No, but we stopped playing D&D. - Right, yeah, we did. - If you're comparing a D&D magic user, then yeah, think about what you're comparing. - Does anyone else want to hammer on die 20 when we're at it? - No, I was gonna actually-- - What were you gonna say? - I remember having a problem in fate where I was fighting the Goolord and he was rolling shit and I just kind of tripped him and bashed his brains in. Geon doesn't have to roll, it's a good thing. He can fudge things when he needs to, in my opinion. - I agree, I actually enjoyed not having to roll because it allowed me to tell the story more and that's a good thing. I mean, I wasn't necessarily always looking at how many hit points they have left, how many health boxes they have left, how many, I didn't have to really focus on that. I still had to keep track of the enemies and how weak and wounded they were, but you guys really want to be reporting all the roles and all the damage to me. It wasn't neat mechanic, it really was. And I like it a lot. Again, there's a lot to be impressed with, new manira. - Again, we were going to invent that. That first came from Apocalypse World, as far as what I know. - When he was smart, no, to include it, you know, is what I'm saying. You know, he could have gone with any mechanic because God knows he could have picked another mechanic besides Die 20 and we all would be seeing the praises of this system 100% probably, except for maybe the low power level at the start seems to be something that annoyed some of you. - I had a bit of a problem in my folk eye and that it seemed really hard to apply it outside of combat or something. I spoke to machines and I thought I'd have in conversations with machines or something. - Right. - But we could have excelled out to the desert pretty fast so you didn't really have a chance to apply a third tier. - Yeah, that's true. - If I was playing a more technological-- - My third tier, how interesting would your character have been? - It still sounds like they apply to combat 'cause one of my abilities I get later is to make machines friendly with me, but it says if you have a 50% chance to become friends with a machine. For instance, if someone throws a grenade at you, it doesn't blow up. - That's kind of combat, could I do it on Teal? I don't know. - Yeah. - She has a pretty complex condition and it's just not, it seems like it's combat. It seems like a lot of 'em are geared towards combat. - Yeah. - For a system that insists it's about investigation. - I wanted to mention something of character creation. They have connections that you can form between characters in your focus. They see that this character is X or Y. They're a good idea because they forge connections between characters before the game even starts and you kind of want people to know each other. - Right. - You're hanging out because-- - At a bar, right, we all know-- - You're in a tavern. - Are you asking? - No, no, I think that's a great idea. - Right. I still don't like this specific way of doing it. - The way I was implemented? - Yeah, because of every single person who has the power to jump using lightning, for example, I believe, was briefly going to do that. - Yeah, that was a fun point. - Oh, it was interesting. - And he couldn't do that until, like, what, third tier? - Yeah, yeah. - Something tier. Every single person who has ever had the power to jump through lightning had someone who could jump with them. - Yeah, I think that was a really good idea but I think you're right. If they would have given, like, four or five choices for each character, that would have been fun. - Yeah, I know storyline-wise, the power is probably unique. No one else in the world has him, so it is unique. - And he might be expanding upon those in future, gives him a chance to expand upon him in future supplements. - You know, and that's probably a really good point to point out that he is making a product. - Yeah. - And he's gonna make expansions and-- - He wants to sell things. - He wants to sell things. So if there's room to expand and detail more, I think it's a lot of it by design. And I get it as an adult and I consume it. I'm like, "Hey, I see it," but-- - And so then, let's go around the table before we get to the listener's questions. And just a quick, would you play the system again? Did you enjoy it and would you play it again? Starting with Michael on the right about whether you like the system and you would play it again. - Yes, in a word. I did have problems with the Di-20. I think it adds some to the storytelling in some certain directions. And I don't know that you could just replace the Di-20 with something else without fiddling with the rest of the system because I think there's a lot of pieces of the system that count on that Di-20 being there. But overall, yes. - Okay, Jim? - Yeah, I'd play it again. I'd like, if we did play it to skip a couple levels and go a little bit higher than just second level or play it in a different role system, would be fun. Or maybe this system, 1.5. - Something tweaked. - Tom? - I'd love the characters. I absolutely love the characters and I'd love to see them again. I don't know if I could tolerate Di-20 again. - Right, I thought that was pretty obvious from the feedback and from some of the sessions as well. Mike? - Yeah, I liked it. I'd play it again. - Okay. Thomas? - It had its problems, but I really did enjoy it. I think before we hacked the hell out of it and do another system, we could maybe try it at a tier three for a while, see how that changes things. - Right. - It's just a different power level. See how much that affects things with more edge and more effort. - I mean, like, took forward in time and... - Sure. - Why not? - All right, at the very least, it started tier two. You know, everybody got bumped up to it. - Right. - Yeah, I mean it's tier two and the last. - Last. - Yeah. - Same thing I got used to. - Same thing. - Same thing, never managed it. - No, he's a sub tier behind. - What the fuck? - He's a sub tier, I don't know. - We're tier like 1.75. - Sounds made up. - Well, let's spend all your points on your roles. - Mutants. - Hey, John, what about your thoughts? - I wanted to try hacking it. Just 'cause I'd like to try that. - Well, I'd like to hack it. - I don't know if it'd work, right? Because the way I was thinking, I wouldn't want to change it to like fate or something. Because slifers go away, artifacts go away, and they're really interesting parts of Newman era that I wouldn't want to see. - I don't know, I think whatever's doing this wants to include those and just rewrite them. - I don't want to do that work. I'll save it right up front. I'm not doing that shit. - And really the law wanna quit me. And if you're gonna hack it in there, you're gonna-- - I've never done it well. - And I will only change my answer to this effect. If everybody else out the table wants to play again, obviously I'll play it. I'll try not to complain as much as I did. You can GM. - Do you want to have to roll? - I would submit this, that especially for some of the characters who are, I think, are more geared towards the technology. If we played again in an urban setting, like-- - Which is the idea, actually. - Yeah, then we would get back and-- - I created a revolution, like a revolution story line that you could go back to the town and try to overthrow the visitor. - If we did one more where the skills of Nina, the skills of Sig, and even-- - Well, apparently we're bumping into third levels that actually have skills. - I haven't had this shitload of skills already. I got like six. - You're a Jack. You and I have skills. - We don't have to figure out-- - A social thing. - Does anyone think, just as a brief aside, does anyone think that maybe, I appreciate John's candor in saying that fate really might mess with the mechanisms of that mighty built into the game? What about World Darkness? What about the storytelling system in Dye 10? - If I knew it better, I could give you-- - Couldn't maybe that lend itself to a hack better than the fate system, which seems-- - That's why, because I mean, John's point is very valid. Fate does not do equipment while at all. - Right. - And Numenera and Cyphers and all that, that's like-- - Well, at least intrusive hack I was trying to think of would be a dice hack where we roll different kinds of dice and get up out there. - Some kind of bell curve might have much less to complain. - As they rank it, we'd get towards the middle and we'd be what? - Most of the time, very skilled or whatever the hell falls in the middle of the bell curve, that wouldn't make sense. You'd have to rewrite how that's written. - Well, again, again, I think just because Dye 10 has numbers on it, and Dye 20 has numbers on it, it lends itself a little bit more, and plus, World of Darkness is much more equipment-oriented. I'm just wondering if the storytelling system itself doesn't lend itself to a better hack than fate. I mean, I enjoy the fate system, don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to compare one system-- - No, it doesn't give it to me, I'll be out to everything. - But for Numenera, you could do something along the lines of you need one success at level of difficulty. You might need two successes to succeed if it's level 12 or 15, or if you could just change things around and do it from a different perspective. I was just thinking off top of my head that maybe-- - I've never given it any thought, so-- - I could see maybe using my skill to get it to earn a dice, and I'm using my weapon to get a dice. And so, instead of lowering the number that I'm trying to hit, I'm trying to-- - You're giving me your increasing number of dice to roll those-- - Or you roll two die 10, two to 20. Doesn't change things a ton, but it does take away the huge, at least by half, it takes away the huge percentage, so all of a sudden, instead of a 5% chance of rolling a one, you've got a 2.5% chance of rolling a two. Anyways, just throw that out there. - I wouldn't say that I think we could certainly revisit this world again, but it would be an urban environment where I think a lot of the skills and abilities would translate, especially for the Nanos and the Jax. - Right. - And I believe it can be anywhere. - Yeah, I believe it's a plot of every-- - Right, how about a happy round-up world where we roll two 20 set of dice and pick the best part of it? - Wow. - I don't know. - Yeah, I'm good. - Are you just going to experience point to roll both again? - Yeah. - Obviously. - There's a lot of different hacks that could be done, and I'm just trying to wrap my head around the fate hack. It seemed difficult, so maybe there's an easier way. Onto the listener questions real quick, 'cause we'll go back to our side. - The two 10-sided dice would be a one and 100 chance of rolling a two. - Ah, that's a good point. So let's do a one-ton-cent chance. - One-ton-cent chance. - Yeah, you're right. It goes to one-percent chance as opposed to, 'cause it's a 10% chance to roll one, and then a one-ton chance of 10 is one. So you take it, you literally remove it by one-fifth. - It's the incredible annoyance of-- - I think one-ton-one of those here. - Chiles, I don't know numbers. (laughs) - All right. - All right. - Onto the listener questions. - Okay. (upbeat music) - Thanks for listening to the Knights of the Knight of Action Play podcast. Visit kotnpodcast.com for more information on this and other adventures, where you will find character stats, photos, storytelling props, and even a forum for comments and suggestions, or you could email us directly at feedback at kotnpodcast.com, or contact us via Twitter, or leave a message on Facebook. All music for this podcast was created and performed by Zen Audio Smith. If you'd like custom professional music created for your podcasts or business, please visit zenaudiosmith.com. And please, join us next episode for more Vistri and Adventurer. (upbeat music) - That's what I have always heard in rec referred to. - That's what I call it. - That's what I call it. - That's what I call it. - Oh, anyway. (laughing) - 162. - More than the voice of my head is starting to sound like you, and that's what it's going to be. - 162. - I'm glad I can change your life, Mike.