A steal for the price. Touches on one aspect of the cypher system I was wondering how I would implement. The GM intrusion. Great advice on how to use them, and use them creatively.

Ring Side Report- RPG Review of Taking the Narrative By the Tail: GM Intrusions and Special Effects

Originally post at www.throatpunchgames.com, a new idea everyday!

Product- Taking the Narrative By the Tail: GM Intrusions and Special Effects System-Numenera Price- $0.99 TL; DR-Length hurts this short book 83%

Basics-This small, six-page guide give ideas and suggestions for how to better implement GM intrusions and new ways critical successes and failures can impact your game.

Crunch or Mechanics AND Fluff or Story-GM intrusions are a mixed bag. As the guide and main book point out, the GM doesn't roll dice. Therefore, this is HOW the GM rolls dice. Want a character to trip and make a scene? Offer an intrusion. Want an item to start beeping strangely? Offer an intrusion. This book honestly offers NO new mechanics, but it really explains mechanics that are already part of the system. And it explains the hardest to grasp of the Numenera core rules. For that, I really liked it. There is no story whatsoever, but this is all about how to tell the story. You're adding to the story through these intrusions since its part experience offer and story alteration. It's the same story as mechanics. Here is HOW to write a Numenera story, and, HOW to mess with the players/story on the fly. For that goal, it's done really well and taught me how to better execute that part of the rules and story. I would have liked more discussions on how often to do intrusions. I've never been in a game of Numenera, so I don't know how often other GMs add intrusion. Are they a major way to add experience points to a game? This guide should have addressed that. Special effects kind of get half a page. For an idea that gets top billing in the title, it really needed more! 8.5/10

Execution- This is an extremely short book, but it's also less than a buck. The product does have some new art, which is nice for such a short book. It reads quick and well, but there isn't a lot there to make it long. Its well done, but I would have liked a bit more. I'd suggest a few more suggestions for both the intrusions and especially the special effects. Also, if you publish a six page minibook, the seventh page should not be a giant advertisement! I've bought all those books, but for a dollar, I don't like 1/7th of my book to be an add or half a page is old art from the bestiary! 4/5

Summary- This is a short book that any Numenera GM should really read. There is nothing for players in this book. I can say from experience that the hardest part of GMing Numenera is intrusions. When/how should I do it is a major problem when I run my games. I do feel better equipped to add better thought out intrusions into my game more often. However, I do have some remaining problems. The addition of special effects was kind of a joke. It's got equal billing, but less than one half a pages. That should have been its own six page guide. All said, this is a decent guide to GM intrusions, but not much in the way of special effects and its extreme short length hurts the guide. 83%

Some Nice tips and options and I guess it is only 99 cents, but still, it is kinda thin. I would rather it be bundled into something larger meant for GMs.

Originally published at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2014/04/30/tabletop-review-taking-the-narrative-by-the-tail-gm-intrusions-special-effects-numenera/

Taking the Narrative is the latest in a line of short supplements for Numenera by Monte Cook Games The PDF page count clocks in at seven but that includes both covers and each of the five pages with content have art and/or sidebars taking up a lot of room, so the content is brief and to the point. Of course, the piece is less than a buck hopefully you weren’t expecting some long tome revealing hundreds of pages of new information about the Ninth World.

Taking the Narrative is all about GM Intrusions and how to use them properly. For newcomers to Numenera, a GM intrusion is when the GM throws a monkey wrench or a roadblock into the player’s actions. It could be a door has a failsafe built in which prevents it from opening via electrical tampering. It could be an attack by some other life form. It could be that they drop their grappling hook halfway up a steep climb. A GM Intrusion can take pretty much any form. The catch is that an intrusion gives a Player (or players) XP for occurring and players can also trade in. So there is a nice trade-off for the DM acting as the fickle finger of fate. As well, a player can nullify the GM intrusion by refusing the XP and spending one of his own to craft a way (in-story) that the PCs sidestep this potential calamity. The end result is that everyone in the game, GM and players alike work together to craft the narrative instead of some games where the GM is God, what they say goes. Sometimes, those games can be ruined by a bad GM who delights in punishing his players or treats the game as something they have to win by beating (killing) the PCs. A bad GM can turn a game into something that feels like PCs are just along for the ride or worse, ruins the game that the players don’t want to play it or any other tabletop game at all. Thankfully Numenera is designed to prevent such a GM from dominating the Ninth World experience. GM Intrusions aren’t meant to prevent a PC from achieving their goals or “winning” the story. They’re meant to spice things up by throwing a new piece of drama or danger in. A Good GM intrusion is something like you are a day’s hike from your goal, but a terrible storm erupts cutting your progress in half. This allows PCs to duck into a nearby cave where there might be a subplot or subquest awaiting them. Maybe even an underground tunnel that brings them to the goal. Who knows? Of course they can always go the route they had planned, just at half the speed and possible taking damage from the storm. Either way the adventure continues as planned. There’s just a wrinkle in the roadmap so to speak. A bad GM intrusion would be, “While you are sleep a horde of hundreds of terrible thingies sneak up on you. Prepare for combat without any weapons or armor. Also, they have acid lasers.”

It makes sense why Monte Cook Games released a full supplement further explaining the concept of GM intrusions as it is a hard one for long time gamers used to letting dice act as the sole arbiter of fate. Some even have the mindset that when a GM sticks adds something not in the published adventure or rules that they are “cheating” or purposely trying to stick it to the PCs. That’s why it’s really important that all people playing Numenera read the GM Intrusion section in the core rulebook and understand how it works. It’s also why Taking the Narrative is a must by for any Numenera fan because it further fleshes out the concept, explains how it is an alternative to the way most tabletop RPGs are run (although not necessarily meant to be played) and most importantly, how a GM intrusion helps players and makes the game more interesting/fun in the long run. If you get the concept right off, you probably don’t need to by Taking the Narrative, but you should own it anyway for gamers in your group that have been burned by previous games and/or GMs and are expecting you to drop a tactical nuclear strike at any second if you show the slightest bit of disagreement or displeasure in how things are unfolding. It’s also helpful to give this to your GM if they think an “unexpected twist” or “didn’t see that coming moment” is more akin to Vince Russo style crash TV from late 90s WCW professional wrestling.

Besides a frank discussion of what a GM intrusion is and IS NOT, Taking the Narrative gives a whole host of examples of possible GM intrusions for various situations. Whether you’re a newcomer to GM’ing or you find it old hat, there are enough examples here to get your imagination rolling. Besides, you can always use one of the examples in your game. It’s what they are for, after all! You also get three brief paragraphs on minor and major Special Effects which occur when someone rolls a 19 or 20. There’s not much on the subject but between what is in the core rulebook and this little bit, you get a good sense of how the GM and player that scored the fortuitous role can work together to make a cool moment happen.

So while very short, Taking the Narrative by the Tail is a wonderful example of just what a supplement should be in this day and age of tabletop gaming. You get an in-depth clarification of what is something of a paradigm shift for some (but by no means all) gamers and a look at how to properly use it in your Numenera game. GM intrusions are one of the big features that makes Numenera stand out from a lot of other games with its built in checks and balances as well as the reminders that the GM and players work together rather than as adversaries. It’s a great concept that is further fleshed out in this supplement and it’s definitely something all Numenera fans should pick up. Hell, even if you’re NOT a Numenera fan, it’s something worth reading because it’s a nice look at how GMs should complement the narrative rather than dominate it.

At the price, it is hard to go wrong with this purchase. The document consists of a cover, five pages of content, and a final page with advertisements. The five pages cover the concept of Intrusions, providing additional explanation (beyond the core book) for their purpose and use.

Roughly two pages provide example intrusions of various kinds in bullet format. These are great for idea generation, though for my particular needs I would have liked a focus on typical scenes in a game and why and how to apply some example intrusions.

The document provides some additional example Minor and Major Effects, which I really liked. These are directly helpful in many common GMing situations.

Overall, I find this useful due to the many ideas presented, likely to be useful to nearly any GM. The how-to information is sound, but could have been better at bolstering the concept (especially for a DM not yet comfortable with using Intrusions) and strengthening a GM's methodology for applying Intrusions.

This article gave me some ideas for using GM intrusions in just about any game. From Fate's aspect compels to simply ignoring the dice and playing it by ear in d20 games, this is a helpful little glimmer into being a better narrator overall!