Numenera: the Beale of Boregal, part six

This recording comes mostly from a laptop mic, and so the audio quality is dubious. I recommend listening on speakers rather than headphones if possible. Many apologies.

Here begin the spoilers for the starter scenario The Beale of Boregal, and as always be aware that our podcasts are not entirely family-friendly.

Post-Game Chat

Link to episode 06

We basically chew the fat about our feelings on Numenera, the scenario and some general RPG stuff. It was a pretty mixed experience: Arthur was not impressed, Dan hasa variety of issues with it but is strangely drawn to it nevertheless, K really just wanted to play Dying Earth, and I quite liked it but struggled to get a handle on the setting and expectations.

This discussion goes all over the place. We talk about a lot of little aspects that didn't really come up in play, and do some analysis of the mechanics and setting now that we've seen a bit more of things.

We talk about the importance of having similar expectations for a game to creating suitable characters (and thus the advantages of group chargen), and the difficulty of forming a firm impression of the setting. On the whole, with only Arthur having read the book, we came away with the feeling that it's basically a mashup of all sorts of things that Monte Cook thought were cool, but with no overriding coherent aesthetic that tied it all together for us. I expound on the dearth of proper ecology in RPGs, and on flavour balance between classes. Arthur finds the magic/tech balance unsatisfactory considering the source material cited by Numenera.

GM Intervention is considered a bit with some discussion of FATE's Aspects and their relative merits discussed. In passing, paladins are judged and found wanting - I've personally always thought they're inappropriate as a base class and possibly as anything but a very specific PC with a very specific background in a very specific group. Connections also come up, and while we like the idea they seem riddled with pitfalls.

The Nibovian Wife briefly annoys us all, but there's already tons of discussion of that particular issue, you can find it easily.

We also do a very small amount of levelling up with the handful of XP we've earned. It isn't particularly riveting.

Hope you enjoyed it; again, many apologies for the recording quality. I'll try to do better next time.