I think I'm too deep in this Numenera project because all I can focus on today is why people wouldn't want to play this game. It's making me less confident that I could successfully run this game in a way that doesn't make these matters more glaring.
I talked about the "Spend Pool To Save Pool" problem the other day, that still holds true. But there are a few other things that might be offputting to people.
Armor. Armor in Numenera is a flat reduction in damage taken. Easy, yeah? Well... You deal flat damage based on the weapon you're using. Light Weapons deal 2 damage, Medium weapons deal 4, and Heavy weapons deal 6. Enemies have between 0 and 4 Armor (typically, some Strong enemies have more). Additionally, when the PCs are WEARING Armor, they get the same benefit, but now every time you want to spend Effort on a Speed task, you need to pay additional pool to do it (+1 for Light Armor, +2 for Medium and +3 for Heavy, they grant an amount of Armor to their penalty, generally).
Mitigation: People with light weapons spend their turn helping the heavier hitter, or the guy with the biggest Might Pool (for spending on Effort for extra damage) deal damage. You can spend your own Might pool (Or Speed for ranged) to try to inflict more damage. But this again leads to "Spend Pool to progress" that the game is built around.
Progression seems like it could be an issue. I've talked about XP as Currency specifically with Numenera in mind. [More on this below]. Progression is very... lateral? It's not getting more powerful, it's getting more weird abilities and accruing Cyphers and Artifacts. You gain Power sure; you gain points for your Pools and Edges and Effort levels, but it's not the same as a character going from doing 3d6 damage to 4d8 or going from rolling 5d6 for a check to 8d6. This may make it feel like you're the same character all the way through, instead of evolving. Hell, the game says it's perfectly fine for a Tier 1 character to work with a bunch of Tier 4s, and they're right! That person can still contribute.
Mitigation: Players should be given Artifacts or status or a lot of Role playing rewards. Give them opportunities to join organizations, and spend the 3 XP to get the full benefits of membership which can extend beyond pure mechanical (In one game I had planned but scrapped I had a special list of cyphers for sale if you were an Aeon Priest acolyte/member, compared to the shorter list for non-members).
Character Builds. This is not a "Build" game. In the core rulebook, there are 3 Types, which you could call a base "Class" (Glaive, Jack, Nano), 13 Descriptors, and 27 Foci. You get to pick 1 from each category. After that, there are only 6 tiers, and you don't always get every ability from each tier. Glaives, for example, get to pick 2 of the starting 5 abilities, plus whatever their Focus gives them.
Mitigation: Various supplements add extra Descriptors and Foci. The second core rulebook adds 3 new Types (Arkus, the silver tongued, Wrights, the crafters, and Delves, the... delvers), 35 new Descriptors, and 36 new Foci.
GM Intrusions. Ooooh boy, this is the GM Fiat Mechanic. Literally at a point when the GM wants to nudge the story, or add some trouble to a scene, they can Impose a GM Intrusion, typically focused on a player. That player then receives an XP point, and that player can then give an XP to a different player, so 2XP are awarded per intrusion. Players can also spend 1 XP to negate an intrusion, or spend 1 XP to make an intrusion of their own at any time, to swing the situation in their favor... but again, spending XP.
The GM Intrusion is the little bends of luck, narrative twists, the ambush, the moments when a character is climbing on a cliff and a rock comes loose, forcing quick, desperate action from the entire group... And I can imagine SO MANY PLAYERS hating this. Because you don't have to foreshadow it. You could learn a machine opens a panel somewhere in the floor, try to scout the floor for like "where it could fall out" and succeed, and the GM could still go "Yeah, Bob, the floor opens up beneath you." Now, the GM could allow the successful search from earlier serve as an Asset on the check to avoid falling in. I would do that. But how many people would be mad at "We searched for the opening and it just appeared under me???"
Mitigation: Sorry, Ain't got nothing. The best way to reduce this is like... roll for it to see if "something happens" in secret? The GM typically doesn't roll in Numenera but... ehhhh...I don't like this. You could also treat them like Offers, kind of like a Devil's Bargain in Forged in the Dark games, but that completely cuts out the "Spend 1 XP to negate an Intrusion" which I guess could be fine?
From the GMing side, you need to make this game about finding cool or weird shit. It does not work as well as a "find the bad guy and stop him" game. You can stop things like, Transdimensional rifts, but it needs to also be a lot about Discovering Things.
I really like this game but these friction points are feeling really big to me right now. I'm hoping is that it's because I'm so deep in it that I'm losing the big picture. You need to be up front about these though when pitching the game, so you're not blindsiding players.
