Tides of Numenera - Post-Funding Update # 34

InXile entertainment's latest post-funduing update was posted two days ago, and it has information on the Gullet Stretch Goal, and about character advancement.

Updated our Journal (34): Only 5 days for the Gullet!

Kevin here. By now I hope you've all seen the recent Torment video, which revealed the first glimpses of the game.

We've made good progress on our The Gullet stretch goal. As Thomas mentioned in update 32, the Gullet is an area in the Bloom that is currently not planned to happen, but which we feel would add a lot to the flavor and pacing of the location.

You can read George's description of the area in update 32, but maybe it's good to explain a bit more what we feel it would add to the Bloom. As you would expect from a Torment area, the Bloom is heavily focused on dialog and narrative choices, as well as offering opportunities for exploration and discovery. The Gullet by comparison is closer to a puzzle in the sense that it offers a specific problem you have to overcome, with multiple solutions to success. Once in there's no way back and it's about using the tools at your disposal to get through. Exploring the location in more detail will allow you to find (the remains of) previous victims of the Bloom that were trapped in the Gullet, and scavenge for tools and knowledge that will aid in the challenges ahead. (The Gullet isn't a Crisis per se, but is relevant to one.)

Character Advancement

Adam here. I'm going to talk about how character advancement will work in Tides of Numenera.

Before that, I should tell you how it works in Numenera tabletop, because it's not a strictly traditional advancement system. First, as we've often said, you get XP when you solve problems, complete quests, and make discoveries—not for individual kills. Second, XP is spent, not accumulated – like cyphers, XP are a resource not intended for hoarding. Most of the time, you'll have less than 4 XP, because that's how much most character advancement steps cost. Third, you can also spend XP on short-term benefits—on things other than character advancement.

That last one raises a couple of obvious questions. Why would you spend XP on short-term benefits when you can give your characters lasting benefits like new abilities (or flipped around: what happens if you spend all your XP on short-term benefits and get to the final confrontation with a 1st-Tier character)? Also, if the game has enough XP such that players can spend some on short-term benefits and max their Tier by the end, what's to stop them from spending all their XP on advancement up front, basically maxing out their Tier halfway through the game? How could we balance the game like that without scaling?

Our answer to these questions is what we are, in Torment, calling Discovery Points (DP). Throughout the game, you will gain both XP (per character) and DP (for the party).

More information.

Enticing lore. Makes we want to pledge extra to get those "From the Depths" novellas…
Hm, does anyone know how "meaty" (or long) those are supposed to be?

They finally presented the XP system and as a Numenera GM I can tell you it is almost identical. They added a bit of extra options on how to spend it but they kept all that there are already in the system.
It seems the game is going to be pretty close to PnP rules and that excites me. The rule system is much better suited for a game like PST than D&D ever was.

Yes I liked some of the concepts

It also made think about auto-balancing games instead of tweaking stats and progress manually. When players make the wrong choice during leveling have a mechanic in place to counter that.

Except the obvious and overkill pay to reset. I like the event idea here during counters allowing for more xp.

I'm still not a big fan of not getting combat XP, not in this game, nor in PoE. It just feels odd to me. Perhaps in time they'll be able to turn me around, but for now I prefer the classic XP system.

Originally Posted by Maylander
I'm still not a big fan of not getting combat XP, not in this game, nor in PoE. It just feels odd to me. Perhaps in time they'll be able to turn me around, but for now I prefer the classic XP system.

Have you tried Underrail? I find the alternate way to gain experience Styg introduced, oddities, to be exellent.