Torment: Tides of Numenera introduced a system called The Tides, which then found its way over to the tabletop game via the Torment Tides of Numenera - The Explorer's Guide, a setting book for the tabletop game. They exist similar to magnetic fields and gravity; a sort of force that just exists in the world. They also serve as a way to track player behavior.
Now, this sounds like Alignment right? The maligned system entrenched in the discourse for decades. And I guess you could call it one, but where alignment is more prescriptive, telling you what behaviors are expected based on your section of the tic-tac-toe board, the Tides are descriptive, changing as you take actions, and only taking effect on a Tier increase. I kinda want to poke and prod at system a bit and see if I can work out some thoughts on it.
So, the Tides. They come in 5 colors that represent certain types of behavior. The Tides do not care about intention, good, evil, just what action was taken. I think it's best if I just transcribe the table from the book here.
The Tides
| Related Concepts | Increased When | For Example | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Blue | Reason Wisdom Insight Logic Forethought Enlightenment Spirituality | the character takes actions that show a love of knowledge, spiritual growth, or planning and forethought | Goes out of the way to sseek the numenera or identify their use. Uses reason or insight to talk their way out of a problem Spend time learning or seeking spiritual wisdom./td> |
| Red | Passion Emotion Action Change Pathos Zeal | the character takes actions based on emotions, or tries to experience life at its fullest. | Appeals to emotions to talk their way out of a problem. Fight their way out of a problem. Creates a new device, weapon, or work of art. |
| Indigo | Justice Equity Community Society Utility The greater good Fairness Compromise | the character's actions are focused on a greater good or a large-scale community perspective. | Offers a compromise between two warring parties. Convinces someone to risk their money or life for the sake of the greater good. Verbally justifies their actions by pointing at the results. |
| Gold | Empathy Philanthropy Charity Compassion Sacrifice Martyrdom | the character take actions that benefit others (regardless of who those others are and whether the character receives an indirect benefit) | Aids a poor clave against an attack by raiders. Gives money or numenera to someone and gets nothing in exchange. Spends time teaching their skills to others. |
| Silver | Influence Power Admiration Respect Adoration Prestige REnown Fame | the character's actions increase their own reputation or their power in others' lives | Lies so that people will respect or fear them. Volunteers for a task after hearing that it's impossible. Uses indimidation or their own reputation to bluff through a problem. |
The way you gain points in a specific Tide is by taking actions that align with them that aren't routine activities. You shouldn't earn a point of Red or Silver for telling stories in the bar, and you shouldn't earn Blue for identifying cyphers you find on your adventure, since that's just an expected behavior. Players should have points in multiple tides, but whenever you gain a new Tier, your alignment reflects whatever Tide you have the most points in. If Johnboy Weedwacker had 1 Red, 2 Silver, and 4 Blue, they'd be Blue Tide attuned at Tier 2. This count doesn't empty or reset. If Johnboy earned 3 Gold and 3 Silver on tier 2, and made it to Tier 3, they'd now be attuned to the Silver Tide, since they'd now have more points in Silver than Blue.
The rules state players don't start with a Tidal alignment, but I feel like if you wanted to have that effect at Tier 1, either because it's a short campaign, a one shot, or you just want to, you can use their backstory or just ask what they'd like to be attuned to to start.
So what's the benefit of this system? Well for one, a player isn't tucked into a box labelled Lawful Neutral at creation and feels like they have to stick to that. This also can work as a reputation system, or a modifier on one. If someone has heard of you, the Tidal Affinity can affect what or how they know of you. A person who is Silver aligned might be seen as this larger than life person from the tales running wild, while someone of the Indigo affinity may be known as someone impartial, or who had helped improve a different community. Affinity might also affect how you interact with, potentially giving you an Asset on a task to decive, persuade, or whatever other interaction with them, if you are aligned. If a party has a Red, a Gold and an Indigo aligned person, the shopkeep, who may also be Red aligned, may address all of his questions to the other Red player, subconsciously. The "magnetism" of the Tides. A final benefit is that if a task is particularly aligned with the player's Tidal attunement, you may gain the Major Effect on a regular success, instead of on a natural 20. I don't know how I feel about that one, but it feels like it'd be great for a really swingy cinematic moment.
The drawbacks of this system though, are pretty big. First off, it's a LOT of overhead for GMs. If you let players know their score, you still need to make sure they're marking it. You also now need to adjudicate if a task is worth a point, and if it's worth two different kinds of points. Also this system doesn't work well for parties where 1 person Takes Charge, while the others are more passive followers, since you need to be assertive to gain these points and actually Do Something, and not just follow along with someone else's plans. Even pushing back against it might helpful, but totally doormat players won't get anything out of this. It's also very arbitrary. It's a system built enormously around GM Fiat. If the players don't trust the GM this may rub people wrong because it could allow a level of like... "GM Decides what my player is like!" type behavior too.
Reading through it again, I think it's really neat myself. I'd love to run a game with this system to see how it feels in play. It adds a LOT more work, but also, I could just roll a D5 in a VTT to randomly assign random NPC alignment so it's not bad there. I feel like it'd add a lot of texture to a game. But also, it could suffer from similar effects of "Well I'm X aligned so I need to keep acting like that". No matter how much you say "no, this reacts to what you do so if you do other things, you'll earn other points", that may not break the mindset, nor would it do much to someone who feels like they need to "spec" into a single Tide.
Anyway, shit's cool. I like Numenera.
