This Saturday I did my first Twitch stream of Numenera. I've been streaming D&D for about 11 months and this was my contribution to the growing energy of the Numenera 2 Kickstarter.
The group that we assembled was mostly first-time Numenera players. The exception was a friend who has played Numenera twice with me before at Meetup events.
It was a blast! I made myself nervous with my initial scenario, which was intended to tie into the Ellomyr narrative of the Kickstarter. As the KS campaign went forward my scenario fell out of touch with what had been unveiled. I tried a couple of revisions but knocked out my final scenario that morning in about 45 minutes.
The players were amazing. They went through the Numenera Player's Guide in the days before the game and got their characters set. They developed connections between themselves and gave me a lot of detail to work with! As much as I love reading the Numenera setting, my players immediately started declaring details and creating their own things. One player created an order of information gatherers that rival the Aeon Priests. Another decided that she was actually a relic from a previous civilization.
A great thing about Numenera and its system is that it gives me and my players a way to deal with those ideas. When they impact the game and allow a benefit, they can spend XP to make things happen.
Getting into gameplay, I had a strong idea of what the players wanted based on their character details. That was the best thing about waiting and creating my story. I knew what to expect. This is really my sweet spot as a GM- getting some character details and having a scenario that supports and challenges them. If I have that, I can comfortably run a game and have a good outcome.
As a stream, this was a great, memorable experience. We had some people watch right away and share their experiences and opinions with the game which helped us out a lot! It's a great experience to stream and share a game!
The game went well, the players did great. I think the hardest part was when one player's concept challenged and confronted other players. I think for those other players, it was less fun and made their experience feel less comfortable, but they dealt with it and got themselves around it. I could have offered support for them, but I wanted to do it when it was needed and not remove their agency or opinion from the game.
At the end, the best response was that the people who had played Numenera or Cypher before continued to feel positive about it. One new Numenera player went on to say that she hoped to play her character again and explore more of Numenera. The final player has actually changed his plans as a GM to focus on a new Numenera campaign! That's a win for me, too, because it means I have more people to talk Numenera with!
I love the Cypher System and Monte Cook Games. At home, I've been running Predation on a bi-weekly basis for a couple of months. I like Predation and find it a lot of fun to run but it's a different game. Each player controls their own Player Character and another player's Dinosaur Companion. This isn't too tough but does add a layer to combat scenes or complex interactions, where we usually go through declaring actions twice each - once for the Player Characters and once for the Dinosaur Companions. I think that's the hardest part of the game for me, in terms of leading play and resolving scenarios.
The group that we assembled was mostly first-time Numenera players. The exception was a friend who has played Numenera twice with me before at Meetup events.
It was a blast! I made myself nervous with my initial scenario, which was intended to tie into the Ellomyr narrative of the Kickstarter. As the KS campaign went forward my scenario fell out of touch with what had been unveiled. I tried a couple of revisions but knocked out my final scenario that morning in about 45 minutes.
The players were amazing. They went through the Numenera Player's Guide in the days before the game and got their characters set. They developed connections between themselves and gave me a lot of detail to work with! As much as I love reading the Numenera setting, my players immediately started declaring details and creating their own things. One player created an order of information gatherers that rival the Aeon Priests. Another decided that she was actually a relic from a previous civilization.
A great thing about Numenera and its system is that it gives me and my players a way to deal with those ideas. When they impact the game and allow a benefit, they can spend XP to make things happen.
Getting into gameplay, I had a strong idea of what the players wanted based on their character details. That was the best thing about waiting and creating my story. I knew what to expect. This is really my sweet spot as a GM- getting some character details and having a scenario that supports and challenges them. If I have that, I can comfortably run a game and have a good outcome.
As a stream, this was a great, memorable experience. We had some people watch right away and share their experiences and opinions with the game which helped us out a lot! It's a great experience to stream and share a game!
The game went well, the players did great. I think the hardest part was when one player's concept challenged and confronted other players. I think for those other players, it was less fun and made their experience feel less comfortable, but they dealt with it and got themselves around it. I could have offered support for them, but I wanted to do it when it was needed and not remove their agency or opinion from the game.
At the end, the best response was that the people who had played Numenera or Cypher before continued to feel positive about it. One new Numenera player went on to say that she hoped to play her character again and explore more of Numenera. The final player has actually changed his plans as a GM to focus on a new Numenera campaign! That's a win for me, too, because it means I have more people to talk Numenera with!
I love the Cypher System and Monte Cook Games. At home, I've been running Predation on a bi-weekly basis for a couple of months. I like Predation and find it a lot of fun to run but it's a different game. Each player controls their own Player Character and another player's Dinosaur Companion. This isn't too tough but does add a layer to combat scenes or complex interactions, where we usually go through declaring actions twice each - once for the Player Characters and once for the Dinosaur Companions. I think that's the hardest part of the game for me, in terms of leading play and resolving scenarios.
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