Turns out you can’t play Torment: Tides of Numenera [official site] with your eyes closed. So much for my big plan to try and avoid spoilers. It’s simultaneously one of the RPGs I’ve been looking forward to the most, and the one I’ve deliberately learned the least about. Planescape Torment fans should need no explanation as to why, but though I apparently have no self-control, it at least puts me in position to tell you whether the current beta is worth your time now or whether you should wait.
Let’s get hands on with the only game this year allowed to use any variant of a ‘mysterious amnesiac’ story without being pelted with rocks and rotten fruit.
The Numenera pen-and-paper roleplaying system does a lot of interesting things to simplify stats, combat, and to offer players more choice in action and outcome. I am extremely interested to see how those systems translate to Torment: Tides of Numenera [official site], which is using the setting and system as a basis for a spiritual successor to the beloved Planescape: Torment. The first chance to see some of how it’s working is in a video below, as Jeremy Kopman – who has the excellent job title of ‘Lead Crisis Designer’ – talks through the game’s encounter system.
I’m interested in Torment: Tides of Numenera [official site], but not for the typical reason around these parts – I’ve only ever played the first two hours of Planescape: Torment, to which the game is a spiritual successor. Instead, my interest is the result of playing the game’s other source material: Numenera, a pen-and-paper roleplaying game set a billion years in the future, which throws out much of the levelling, stats and combat of D&D-derived games in favour of a streamlined system that favours storytelling and improvisation above numbers and hard rules.
Curious about how many of the pen-and-papers unusual systems were being translated to a computer RPG, I spoke to inXile’s Colin McComb and Thomas Beeker – creative lead and associate producer, respectively – about bringing effort, cyphers, GM intrusions and backstories to the PC.
I’m looking forward to inXile’s Torment: Tides of Numenera, like nearly everyone else who works at RPS. The difference is that I never played Planescape: Torment, the game Tides aims to spiritually succeed. Instead my interest comes from the other end of its name, since I’ve been playing Numenera, the Monte Cook pen-and-paper RPG that gives this new game its setting and some of its mechanics.
Last month, inXile’s Brian Fargo spilled several important beans about post-Black Isle, post-Planescape plans for a sequel to the legendary RPG Torment, in a brand new and rather tasty-sounding roleplaying setting from ex-Wizards of the Coast man Monte Cook. While there still isn’t too much firm’n’fixed to go on, the game’s gone live with its very own website and the first reveal of its new, full name.
Rumours have been swirling for years about a possible sequel to Black Isle’s legendary and powerful roleplaying game Planescape: Torment, but the closure of the original studio and the jealous guarding of the Planescape rights by owners Wizards of the Coast seemed to have put paid to any comeback. But with original Interplay boss Brian Fargo very much back in the RPG business with current studio inXile’s wildly successful Wasteland 2 crowdfunding, everything changes. He and his team have come up with a way to make a new Torment game: this is really happening.
And there was much rejoicing.
Read on for details of its new setting, the people involved, whether it’ll link to the original game, which thematic aspects will recur, how the combat may work and how they’ll get it made.
