A Retrospective / Review / Critique of The Strange

 Forewarning

    I would like to make it clear that I have enjoyed playing The Strange and the group I play with have all enjoyed it as well. We originally started playing it as an alternative to our main 5E campaign since our normal DM was feeling a bit burnt out and we ended up turning it into our main campaign for several months. As we played it, everyone had a character and whoever had anything prepared would step up to run a one-to-few shot.

    It was fun and we had a great campaign which we have decided to end for now, but the entirety of this post is going to consist of me basically tearing down this game because it comes so close to being great. As I have come to expect with Monte Cook / Cypher System games, it has poor organization, low-resolution maps, and issues writing rules in a way that makes using them easy. Someday I will write up something about that, but I won't be focusing on that for today's review. Now, lets get started.

A Briefing on the Setting

    The setting for The Strange is very interesting. Basically, some alien precursors created a super-travel network that sits outside of our dimension. Eventually, they all died but the system was left behind. Through some unexplained mechanism (which is likely a bug), this Dark Network (aka the Chaosphere or the Strange) started producing simulations (called recursions) of different realities based on the collective unconsciousness of humanity (which means a lot of worlds based on fiction). However, there are certain creatures in this dark network that would very much like to get out and eat (or worse) planet Earth. The problem is that there isn't a direct path to Earth, since everything is effectively plugged with the recursions.

    However, this was a transportation network, which means that it is possible to open up paths into it from earth. Anyone messing with high end particle physics or quantum anything has good odds of "pinging" the network and opening up a portal directly to the strange. If one of those opened and was not immediately sealed, it could be apocalyptic.

    Now, some people are able to "translate" themselves from earth to a recursion, back, or even between recursions. When this happens, the network works as intended and creates a new body for them at the destination that is adapted to the environment. 

    All told, it is really cool, and that is enough of a summary to likely get your creative mind firing. One of the things that The Strange is made for, is sending your characters into your favorite fictional property and playing Fanfiction: The RPG. 

Philosophical Issues

    Now, one aspect I neglected to mention from my summary of The Strange was "the spark." Recursions are filled with people, but most of them aren't able to comprehend or believe in the true nature of the multiverse. They are basically simulated people and the simulation just doesn't let them realize that. Someone with the spark can, because someone with the spark is a full and real person.

    To take this one step further, the book specifically calls out that if you watched someone without the spark long enough, they would settle into an incredibly precise routine (provided there wasn't anything outside of it to disrupt it). People without the spark are NPCs in the most literal sense. Effectively, they are P-Zombies, which is something that looks and acts like a person but has no internal consciousness or experience of life. And, to add a step of complexity to it all, anyone of them could theoretically gain the spark and become full, sentient people.

    Earth is special because everyone born there has the spark innately (which makes sense, they aren't being simulated at all). However, the ethics of doing things with or to the spark-less is touchy (can they give consent?) and it inherently makes it hard for players to care about them. "They aren't real people, so it doesn't really matter," is a very easy stance to take. 

    Most (but not all) recursions are majority spark-less. In small recursions, there can be none. In a summary: the ethics/philosophy of the spark is icky and it legitimizes player's murder-hobo tendencies. Neither of which are good, and it is definitely not helped by the book providing just enough information to make this a problem but not enough to get any hard answer to the questions the spark raises. And to be clear, I have seen stories about people struggling to convince their players to help the "not-people" or not use catastrophically destructive methods since it doesn't really matter. 

    Of course the spark has uses - it helps keep recursions in a base state for one - but it has just been implemented poorly. It achieves its goals, but introduces massive ethical problems and actively sabotages parts of the setting. Honestly, a better way to do this would have been to have everyone be a real person, but have the system simulating the world mentally shackle them. 

The Status Quo

    The Strange has a very powerful status quo that resists interruption very well. It comes in two forms: mechanical and fluff. Lets start with mechanical.

    In The Strange, the primary method of locomotion through recursions is Translation. There are also portals, but most portals are Translation Portals that effectively just translate you. The problem with Translation is that is shunts your current body into some limbo space and creates a new one with new equipment in a different recursion, which explains why you are always properly adapted and provides a good excuse to change powers to fit the genre. The problem with all that, however, is that anything you were carrying got left behind. 

    In other words, you can't bring stuff with you by normal methods of travel. In fact, you don't even necessarily get setting adjusted gear (ie a gun doesn't turn into a crossbow automatically), but instead an entire new set of gear. It certainly tripped my group up regularly, but I do see how it can be helpful for DMs who want to take stuff away from their players.

    Translation also has other problems mechanically as well. While Translation does require some checks to make sure things go well, it generally doesn't fail which means that all of the tables about getting lost, gaining penalties, or ending up in different recursions just don't get used very often, if ever (never mind that the entire party can chip in XP to keep re-rolling dice). 

    Further, Translation can be done from basically anywhere and it can be done by a single person if necessary, which means that your players will always feel like they have an escape hatch, no matter the situation. And, because the players aren't the only ones who can translate, this makes trapping or catching villains extremely difficult, since there isn't a way to track people across recursions unless they keep using keys that take them to specific places (and choose to leave them behind?). 

    Translation has a lot of issues (including a weirdly complex system for working with others that never comes up in a balanced party), but it is only one of the two major mechanical status-quo problems. The other, comes with bringing items from one recursion to another.

    Translation leaves everything that isn't a Cypher behind, meaning the main mode of travel doesn't work for this. Instead, you need to use a very rare "Inapposite Gate" which brings items or people directly from one recursion to another without adjusting them. You want to bring that dragon's hoard back to Earth? Need an inapposite gate. Want to bring an AK into the world of Lord of the Rings? Need an inapposite gate.

    The problem, however, is that different recursions can run on different rules. Earth doesn't have magic. Some places don't let any advanced technology function. So on and so forth. So what happens is that the item or creature begins to break down. Sometimes it just leaves behind a non-special thing or creature that fits into the setting, other times it breaks down into dust. It depends on what rules are necessary for that item or creature to exist and if the recursion it is in supports them.

    For example, imagine you drop a dragon onto Earth. Well, Earth doesn't support magic and by most definitions dragons need it to breath fire, fly, and sometimes even exist at their size. First it will lose access to abilities or powers that rely on magic or impossible biology. Then, it will begin to revert into either an acceptable form (a particularly large lizard like a Komodo Dragon) or it will die and wither into dust. Obviously, this doesn't happen instantly, but it does make anything special coming to Earth or a recursion where it shouldn't be a self-correcting problem most of the time.

    So, it should be clear now that two major mechanical systems exist to basically prevent players from doing things to a large degree. Visiting many different settings or worlds is cool, but the setting loses something when interaction between them is so capped like this. Still, with that out of the way we can now talk about the fluff methods of enforcing the status quo.

    The first, and perhaps most glaring, issue comes from the organizations in the setting, particularly The Estate. In simple terms, all of the organizations are well funded, well established, basically aware of each other, have basically complete understandings of the Strange, and have tons of portals and recursion keys to most known recursions. They are well set up for some cool spy-vs-spy or political games, but they are not well set up for discovery or exploration games.

    Also, building on all that, the setting information presented within the books is normally written like it is a solid fact, instead of "this is what The Estate thinks" like it really is. This is more of a tone issue than anything, but it is worth mentioning how solid and explored it makes the setting feel when compared to how it tries to sell itself.

    The other major issue with the fluff is that the only really credible threat that has been set up is that someone could open a portal to the Strange and a big nasty monster could get through and eat the entire planet. The way everything has been set up, it feels like any problem less than the total destruction of the planet will just take care of itself in under a week. That is not helpful in most situations, since only having one scale of threat makes it lose its luster pretty quickly.

    Finally, a quick tidbit on the fluff of the setting, is that the Status Quo is so powerful that there is basically no historical evidence of the Strange. 

Issues with Recursions

    Now, I will begin focusing on some more specific gripes instead of general ones. As I have previously mentioned, Recursions are the simulated worlds that make the Strange such a cool setting. Each one is effectively meant to be its own world, with its own rules. Because of this, players can change their powers and even appearance every time they change recursions (this is something the actual characters usually don't control). It is a cool idea and fits really well into the setting. It allows every adventure to feel like an entirely different campaign, and allows the stringing of one-shots together super easily! However, the way this is mechanically implemented is not easy.

    In order to change your powers for a different recursion, characters change their Foci, which is the source of their most flavorful and unique powers. The problem is that this is an annoying thing to do. Because this is basically half of your character's powers, that means half your character sheet needs to be changed each time you change recursions. For the first time in a recursion, this can mean basically going through character creation. And the higher tier your character is? The more powers you need to copy down and the longer it actually ends up taking.

    Changing Foci is such a pain that it incentivizes finding one of the Foci that travel with you, so that you never need to change it, or just not traveling, both of which go against the intent of the system. And, as I mentioned previously, gear doesn't get translated 1 for 1 and instead a new loadout is handed to you in the new recursion. It was confusing and annoying, and people kept trying to have 1 for 1 translation and I can't really blame them for it.

    Because recursions are simulations, they are of limited size. Tiny ones can be as small as a room and large ones as big as a planet, but they are not infinite in size. This has its drawbacks, but it also has benefits. For example, it helps keep people from staying too long in any one recursion and pushes them to explore more. I honestly don't consider this a problem, but I have seen people complaining about it. In this case, it seems more like a design decision with one intent that some people like and others do not.

    While I am talking about exploration, however, we come to the problem of discovering new recursions. The wonder and curiosity this setting sparks would obviously be supported with some method of exploring new recursions, right? Nope. There is nothing about exploring new recursions, and only a few ways to manage it. The most likely method players could use to explore recursions is to get a random recursion key and use it to go somewhere. These, however, are usually cyphers that are placed by the DM. Alternatively, they could fail a translation roll. This, however, is unlikely as long as the party is in good condition and working together and even if the roll fails, there isn't a guarantee of getting thrown into a random recursion. 

    Another option for finding new recursions is to wander through the Strange/Chaosphere itself. This is incredibly dangerous and disorienting, with the capability to kill characters if they stay too long without good preparation, but it does allow them to find new recursions. However, this method of travel is like going through an Inapposite Gate, which means that characters don't get translated to fit into the setting. Depending on where they end up this can be unfortunate (no new powers) to dangerous (magic powers don't work in sci-fi) to deadly (one recursion is made of sentient creatures living on the sun). If all of those seem too problematic, it has been noted that random portals will sometimes just open up in the world so a DM can just use that instead. Still, that isn't a great solution either. 

    On a slightly different note, and as much as I hate saying something like this, Ardeyn and Ruk (the books example Fantasy and Sci-fi recursions) could have benefitted from being simplified and more focused. Both of them are very big and have lots of details that are hard to cut away. Ruk is especially problematic with this, with different factions, a city environment, and several environments outside of the city. 

    Both Ardeyn and Ruk are interesting setting, no doubts about it, but they are also both giant exceptions to most every other rule of thumb about recursions. They are filled with people with the Spark and who know about the Strange, were created under anomalous circumstances, and regularly interact with the real world. It is all very interesting stuff, but it is all completely at odds with the rest of the setting's stance on recursions and incredibly complex. Something simpler, better fitting, and just as flavorful would go a long way to making the overall setting better.

    One more note on Recursions, is the question of how does one profit from them? The different factions are regularly arguing with each other and dealing with "recursion miners", but it isn't explained how anyone actually profits from this. Sure there are huge amounts of resources being poured into creating recursions that produce limitless uranium or gold, but how do you profit from that? Most forms of travel get rid of anything you are carrying in this setting after all. Even when the setting comes close to answering the question, the most we get is a shrug and a "eh... maybe they are bringing back cyphers to sell," which is not helpful.

Tonal Dissonance, or What does one do in a Strange campaign?

    By this point, it should be clear that there is a lot of confusion in the design of this setting, particularly about how it should be used or played in. The setting has the tagline "Explore - Defend - Create" but none of those are well supported. As I have just covered, exploration was forgotten if you wanted to find something new in game. Defend makes sense, since you apparently have no choice but to constantly fight of planet destroying threats. And as for creation, the closest you get to that is a very long and difficult process known as a "Genesis Quest" which allows you to create your own recursion and grow it by giving it time and XP. Otherwise, there isn't a whole lot of creation going on here.

    The Estate is the main "good guy" organization, and the baseline faction for players to work with. From the way they are written, they suggest that the game should be played like a game of Secret Agents. However, it was apparently not decided if there should be more Superspy or Spy vs Spy shenanigans or something closer to the SCP foundation. Still, that can be papered over in an actual campaign.

    The way different recursions are presented brings to mind shows like Doctor Who or Stargate, where there are endless places to explore and discover. Unfortunately, it just isn't mechanically supported and there are no great reasons to do so in the default setting.

    Collecting Cyphers can be fun, each of them being like a single use superpower, but they are really hard to integrate if people aren't looking for them. They are meant to be so common that players are basically tripping over them, but they work better as rare items that need to be searched for (which would also help justify the existence of Recursion Miners).

    Take all this, along with difficulty setting up stakes or having unknown parts of the setting, and you get something that is structurally unsound. It wants people to be able to explore and create things, but actively sabotages that in many ways. The system is set up so that there is basically one arc, with characters who know nothing learning about the setting and working on a problem that has a easily followable path through recursions that the DM has set up. Basically, this a system that screams that it wants to be an open world, yet is built to be a linear story path.

The General Monte Cook and Cypher System Problems

    While they are less part of the setting, these problems actively make working with the setting much more difficult. I will eventually write up a Monte Cook Problems post at some point, so instead I will just speed through these.

    Layouts are confusing, with topics that don't flow into each other and specific rules or ideas in locations that you wouldn't expect or hidden in sidebars outside of the normal text. Abilities are described in ways that are not suited to understanding how to actually use it at the table, and some of them are completely broken (Range Extension seems to increase the range of everything, which gets ridiculous pretty quickly). Balance is actually kind of broken in many cases, like with the Adapts to All Environments Focus, which was one that could be taken to other recursions. I had a spinner who had this and a couple advancements to improve his recovery, and he was basically unkillable. He could nearly kill himself draining his pools on whatever he wanted and recover it all in under a minute. At higher tiers, some of the armor that the Focus gives makes this even worse, though I didn't play much with it.

    Further, some of the math can be a little bit wonky. For example, there are three classes of weapons: Light, Medium, and Heavy. Heavy weapons take 2 hands to wield and deal more damage. Light weapons only take 1 hand and deal less damage, but get a bonus to hit with an attack. Medium weapons get no bonus to hit and deal a middle amount of damage. It all makes sense, but the problem is its implementation. Characters can expend Effort (basically HP) to increase their chances to hit or their damage, with higher tier characters able to mix and match how much of either they want. The problem is that given the same amount of effort to apply, Light and Heavy weapons are strictly better than medium weapons. With one level of effort, a Light weapon can deal more damage than a normal Medium Weapon with more accuracy (from its bonus). A Heavy weapon deals more damage by default and can use the effort to increase the odds of hitting. A medium weapon would get to choose one, while the other two basically get both for the same effort.

    Another instance of the math being a little strange is how the central Classes work. There are 3 main stats (Might, Speed, and Intellect) and 3 main classes (Vector, Spinner, and Paradox). A vector uses Speed and Might, a spinner uses Speed and Intellect, and a Paradox uses just Intellect. It is a weird spread that could very easily have let the classes each specialize in one of the stats and have some backup from another. This ends up creating an uneven spread of usefulness among the 3 stats that flows down into other problems in the game.

    And as a final nitpick, each of the 3 classes have their own special powers but they have all been called different things. There isn't a good reason for Spinners to have Twists and Paradoxes to have Exceptions, when they could just be called Powers or something a lot easier to remember. They are flavorful currently, but not enough to justify the complexity.

Its not all bad

    Now, once again, let me tell you that I really enjoyed the Strange. I think it is cool, my group had a lot of fun in it, and it has a lot of potential. This entire post is me picking out the things holding it back from greatness, and I don't think I have even hit everything. Still, lets end this with something positive and talk about some of the cool things I enjoyed about the setting.

    Recursions are a fun idea, and some of the ones present in even the core book are really cool. There are tons of unique and interesting monsters that can be presented here, as basically anything is on the table. The setting also manages to fix the Cypher System's XP problem. I mentioned in my Unmasked retrospective that there is an inherent speed of progression baked into the system, but the Strange offers many places to dump extra XP into. Personal Recursions (basically pocket dimensions) are absolutely fabulous, with a lot of options for expansion. Creating your own recursion is more of a group effort and consequently has a higher ability to absorb XP, but the rewards can easily be worth it.

    And the entire setting is inspiring, with many little adventure seeds and potential hooks to pull on if you can get around the barriers the setting puts in. I just wish there weren't barriers there to begin with.