Torment: Tides of Numenera Devs on Adapting Numenera

Rock, Paper, Shotgun has published an interview with Torment: Tides of Numenera’s creative lead Colin McComb and associate producer Thomas Beekers about their adaptation of the Numenera ruleset and setting. The interview isn’t very recent (it was originally available only RPS supporters), but has only now been made available to the wider public. An excerpt:

RPS: What’s your favourite thing about the setting?

McComb: Well, I’m a big Gene Wolfe nerd. The whole Book of the New Sun has been a huge literary influence. Shadow of the Torturer, Claw of the Conciliator, that whole series. I just love the idea of thinking about what it is that humans are going to become, what the world is going to become after we’re all dust. It ties in really well with our legacy question, too what does one life matter? When you’re talking a billion years in the future, none of this is going to matter, that made it a natural fit as well.

But of the setting itself, just the fact that it’s so weirdly evocative and imaginative and cool.

…

RPS: Are you doing stuff with GM intrusions?

McComb: Yes, we are.

RPS: How does that work when there’s no GM?

McComb: That’s a randomised thing that’s going to depend on the number of sleeps you have, the. I’m trying to think of what things effect that without giving away any spoilers. There are things that are going to happen in crises the encounters and the battles that you’ll have where suddenly things will take a turn for the worse and you can choose to accept that or reject it and get the XP for it.

Beekers: But it does work differently. That’s a system that works very well in pen-and-paper and you really have to just make it work on computer, so we’re doing something similar but it’s different. We’re at the stage now where this is something you have to play to see how it works, so anything we say right now will be a bit up in the air because we’re going to have to play it and see how it works and then adjust it to make it work.