One of the things for which Numenera (and the Cypher system as a whole) is rightfully lauded is how easy it is for the GM to prep material for the game. The cornerstone for this is creating stats for NPCs: You can literally just say, “He’s level 3.” And that’s it. You’re done. By assigning that single number, you know everything you need to know in order to run the NPC.

(In this, Numenera is actually quite similar to older editions of D&D, where assigning a Hit Die to a monster was basically 95% of what you needed to do. But Numenera streamlines the process even further.)

This is nice for pre-game prep, but where it really empowers the GM is during play: If the PCs go somewhere unexpected, it’s trivial to keep up with them. If you have a cool idea for a creature, you don’t need to table it until you have time to stat it up. The creative act of adding a character to the game world is closely wedded to the act of realizing that idea mechanically.

Experienced GMs will, as they get comfortable with a system, figure out how to improvise stat blocks no matter how complicated they are: They’ll know the key stats they need to decide up front, and they’ll learn the various options well enough that they can sort of lay them in on-the-fly. For example, when I’m running D&D 3rd Edition I’ll jot down the skill point total for an improvised NPC and basically “spend” them when it feels appropriate for the NPC to have a particular skill. You can do something similar with spellcasters and their spell lists. What you can see here is that Numenera basically gives even brand new GMs the same ability that experienced GMs need to spend time mastering in more complicated systems.

So why would anyone choose a more complicated system? Why wouldn’t every game go with a simple “pick one number and you’re done” approach?

Because complexity can be leveraged to make the game cooler. It’s basically the same reason that every board game isn’t “roll 2d6 and race each other around a board with blank space.” Simulationists appreciate being able to make more detailed or consistent mechanical models. Gamists appreciate the variety of tactical challenges varied stat blocks can create. And so forth.

FRACTAL NPCs

Okay, so Numenera trades the advantages of complexity for the advantages of simplicity.

Well… not quite. Because this is where Numenera does something very clever, in a way that is often overlooked as people focus on its really fantastic “easy prep” features: When you’re statting up an NPC, you don’t have to stop after saying, “Level 3.” You can keep adding layers of mechanical detail. You could give a Numenera NPC as much detail as a D&D 4th Edition stat block — replete with differentiated skills and a grab bag of special abilities — and the system lets you seamlessly do that. (And, importantly, provides just enough mechanical structure so that these additional details are mechanically relevant.)

The way this works is that “level 3” remains the baseline for the NPC, and everything else is an exception to that baseline.

You can get a good sense of the different ways you can push (or choose not to push) the system by looking at the creature stat blocks in the core rulebook or the Ninth World Bestiary. But you can actually push it even further than that: You see value in having an NPC with a different rating in thirty different skills? You can do that. And just because you do it with one NPC, it doesn’t mean you need to do it with the next NPC.

I’ve come to think of this as the Numenera stat block being “fractal” in nature: The closer you look at it, the more detail you can see. And what’s interesting is that it can also be selectively fractal; you can look for more detail in one aspect of an NPC, while allowing other aspects of the NPC to simply default to a broader and simpler structure.

You may notice that this also neatly formalizes what the experienced GM described above is doing an informal fashion: Starting with a broad definition of what the character is capable of and then selectively adding detail (specific skills, specific powers, etc.) as desired and/or needed.

A couple days ago, in response to Numenera: The Aldeia Approach, Tomas mentioned that he was “still trying to find the right way to describe Numenera” to new and prospective players. This can be tricky, particularly if your players aren’t familiar with the source material Monte Cook is drawing inspiration from. (If you can only read one thing to grok Numenera, I recommend The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe.)

My approach is to try to let the players appreciate how utterly incomprehensible the gulf between our world and the Ninth World is. That fundamental, existential mystery – that the history of the world is beyond human understanding, and yet that history inexorably shapes every facet of the world in which their characters live – is, in my opinion, the heart of what makes Numenera special.

So I structure my introduction to the Ninth World around five bullet points.

FIRST

The Ninth World exists one billion years in the future. Between now and then there have been eight mega-civilizations. These mega-civilizations are literally beyond our understanding. Our life here in the 21^st century isn’t a mega-civilization; it’s barely a precursor to one of them. And the people of the Ninth World know very little about them as well. We know that one of them mastered time travel; another ruled over a galactic empire; another explored a multiverse of different dimensions. We also know that at least one of them wasn’t human and that, in fact, for a time there were no humans on Earth at all. (We also don’t know how or why humans came back.)

SECOND

To get some sense of what the mega-civilizations were like, look at the Clock of Kala. (At this point I’ll point at the map: I printed out a large, poster-size version of the map on vinyl. I either hang it on the wall or roll it out on the table, depending on the venue. But you can just as easily open the book and point.) It’s a massive, perfectly circular plateau several thousand miles across. Vast features of the landscape (on a scale larger than the tallest mountain) are utterly artificial extrusions from the dim recesses of a forgotten prehistory.

THIRD

But the Clock of Kala is nothing but a toy to these mega-civilizations. To give some sense of what they were capable of, consider that the planet Mercury is gone. The people of the Ninth World don’t miss it because they never knew it existed, but at some point in the past the entire planet was plucked from its orbit and they did something with it. What? We don’t know.

FOURTH

But the touch of the mega-civilizations can also be seen at the other end of the scale: Even the dirt beneath our feet is, in fact, artificial – particles of plastic and metal and biotechnical growths which have been eroded by incomprehensible aeons; each bucket of soil filled not with stone arrowheads, but with compact power supplies and the cracked crystals of ancient data storage devices.

FIFTH

Our game begins in the Steadfast. You can think of the Steadfast as a Renaissance civilization. But instead of rediscovering the technology of Ancient Greece and Rome, the Steadfast is rediscovering the technology of these mega-civilizations. This technology is known as numenera, which mechanically take the form of cyphers (items which can generally be used once) and artifacts (items which can be used repeatedly before breaking down). It should be understood that most of the time it can be assumed that people are NOT using these items the way they were originally intended; their original purposes are often completely enigmatical. But we can do the equivalent of finding a CD and using it as a mirror; or finding a cellphone and using its screen as a flashlight.

From here you should be able to pivot to a pertinent discussion of whatever location or other campaign frame you’re planning to use, whether that’s the Wandering Walk or an aldeia or something even more esoteric.

HOW MUCH WEIRD TO PUT IN THE GAME?

The ineffable mystery of the Ninth World’s history, unfortunately, seems to create some barriers in itself. The minute you quantify something or define its precise outline, the mystery ends and that which was engagingly enigmatic instead becomes pedestrian. The rulebook thus frequently emphasizes how important it is that the GM never allow the players to box the setting in like that.

Some have interpreted this advice to mean that the GM should just make everything random and inexplicable (which they naturally find frustrating). But that’s not the point. The point is that no matter how much you figure out, there will remain more that you don’t. This doesn’t render exploration or investigation pointless or without reward, any more than the fact that real world scientists haven’t completely solved the Grand Unified Theory makes the work of Newton or Galileo or Einstein pointless or without value.

There’s a Lovecraftian aspect here: The world (and the past epochs of the mega-civilizations) are fundamentally not comprehensible by mere humanity; and if we were to do what was necessary for us to truly understand them, we would no longer truly be human.

So how much weirdness should you, as the GM, put in the game? Too much and the game turns into random ramblings. Too little, though, and you end up with something pedestrian; something lack the essential spark that makes Numenera special.

The first thing to understand, perhaps, is that the amount of weird will vary by circumstance. There’ll be places with very little weird. And there will be places which are through the looking glass. That internal contrast is essential, actually, because it allows the “weird” to define itself.

With that being said, if you find yourself creating something for Numenera that feels a little too normal – something that you could just as easily find in a game of D&D or Star Wars or vanilla Traveller – take a moment to step back and figure out how to add at least a little dash of the weird. Take at least one aspect of it and think about how you can twist it; how the influence of the numenera could transform it.

The Aldeia Approach is actually a specific example of how you can do this: Basically you take a typical Renaissance village, add one piece of numenera, and ask yourself, “How does that change everything?” As you’re getting up to speed with the Ninth World, that kind of showcasing of a single weird aspect of the setting will take you a long way.

RUNNING WITH NUMENERA

I’m also asked with a surprising frequency why I spend so much time talking about Numenera here on the Alexandrian. As with most of the RPG-related stuff you’ll find posted here, it’s a reflection of what I’m actually running and playing at the table. I’m at 40+ sessions of Numenera and, honestly, my players just keep screaming for more. I literally can’t run it often enough to keep up with the demand.

So as long as we’re discussing how to introduce the game to new players, let me also talk about why, once you start, Numenera is a game you’re going to keep playing for a long time to come:

Simple Prep. Everything in the game basically boils down to assigning it a level. It literally can’t get any easier than that. But the great thing is that the system allows you to selectively do more detailed prep whenever you feel it’s necessary by assigning things additional levels specific to certain tasks or abilities. This sort of fractal complexity, where the game only becomes more mechanically complicated when you think the cost is worth the reward, is incredibly effective. You never feel unnecessarily bogged down by the rules; you also never feel limited by them.

Creative Lubricant. The entire system is designed around some simple mechanisms which encourage the GM and players to take creative chances. GM intrusions for example provide a safety net that allows the GM to take really big chances because the players have a streamlined mechanism for telling the GM that they’ve gone too far. Major and Minor Effects also get the players thinking creatively outside of the box.

Tremendous Support. The Numenera product line is phenomenal. There’s fantastic setting material, a multitude of scenarios, fabulous bestiaries, and even more amazing stuff on the way. (My prep for Numenera often consists of just flipping through one of the bestiaries and saying, “I wonder what will happen when they see one of those things?”)

The game also features a large dynamic range when it comes to PC abilities, which allows the game to shift its focus and content over the course of a campaign (which helps to keep things fresh). And I’m very much expecting this to become even more true with the greater emphasis being placed on PCs getting involved in managing communities, building organizations, and the like in the upcoming second edition of the game.

Numenera 2: Discovery and Destiny, the second edition of the game making the exciting promise of expanding its core gameplay to include developing local communities and rebuilding civilization in the ruins of the past worlds, is just around the corner.

One response that I’ve seen frequently to Numenera from GMs is that they can’t quite wrap their head around the setting: The core rulebook uses a combination of techniques for presenting the Ninth World, and for many people one or more of those techniques clicks. For others, they don’t. Or, worse yet, the combination of techniques is baffling in its own right. So what I’d like to do here is to focus on just one way of approaching the Ninth World. It’s not one that gets much attention in the core rulebook, so it might work for those who couldn’t find anything to latch onto in the core rulebook, and the focus on just one angle of approach might also be useful for those who find the totality of the Ninth World just a little too much to take in all at once.

Perhaps more importantly, as a GM I’ve found this particular angle — which I’m going to refer to as the Aldeia Approach — to be specifically valuable when it comes to creating cool scenarios for the setting. It’s kind of like a “default action” for the GM: The setting is capable of doing all kinds of other cool stuff, but if you’re ever at a loss for what to do next (or what your first step with Numenera should be), the Aldeia Approach will faithfully serve up something you can use.

A FEW BASICS

Before we dive into the Aldeia Approach, a few general words on grokking the Numenera setting.

First, it’s not a bad idea to read some of the fiction that Monte Cook cites as the primary influence for the game. Not just because it will help you tune into the milieu, but because it’s all really fantastic fiction that you should read in any case. I would direct your particular attention to:

• The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe
• The Dying Earth by Jack Vance
• Dune by Frank Herbert
• Eternals and New Gods by Jack Kirby
• The Zothique Cycle by Clarke Ashton Smith
• Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind by Hayao Miyazaki

Second, pay attention to how Cook has structured the setting to make it accessible to newcomers (particularly new players): The core of the setting described in the core rulebook is the Steadfast, where a Renaissance movement is reclaiming the lost technology of past civilizations the same way that Western Europe reclaimed the science and technology from Ancient Greece and Rome. The Steadfast very specifically resembles the real world Renaissance in both culture and civilization so that you can easily latch onto it as an entrypoint into the world.

As you move beyond that entry point — into an area of world literally referred to as the “Beyond” by residents of the Steadfast — you begin encountering larger and larger amounts of the weird. Exploring the Beyond is really the point where you start dipping your toes into the truly exotic bizarrity which the Ninth World can be. As you move even farther out into the world, you’ll start encountering the truly alien aspects of the Ninth World.

I’ve seen a number of people complain that the setting (by which they really just mean the Steadfast) is just “D&D with a patina of science fiction”. That’s not really true, because the Ninth World is fundamentally different from D&D. But it is true that both D&D and Numenera use a heavily fictionalized version of the Renaissance as a common starting point to provide something that’s easy-to-run and easy-to-understand. And you can, in fact, have entire glorious campaigns solely within the comfortable confines of the Steadfast. Nothing wrong with that. But there’s also nothing wrong with skipping the Steadfast entirely and jumping straight into the more outrageous aspects of what the Ninth World has to offer.

THE ALDEIA APPROACH

The word aldeia is another name for “village” in the Steadfast and the Beyond, and buried away in one obscure corner of the core rulebook is this text:

Around these claves [of Aeon Priests], small villages and communities known as aldeia have arisen. Each clave has discovered and mastered various bits of the numenera, giving every aldeia a distinct identity. In one, the inhabitants might raise unique bioengineered beasts for food. In another, people may pilot gravity-defying gliders and race along the rooftops of ancient ruins. In still another aldeia, the priests of the clave may have developed the means to stop the aging process almost entirely, making the residents nearly immortal, and some are no doubt willing to sell the secret — for a staggering price. Because the aldeia are remote and separated by dangerous distances, trade of these discoveries is occasional and haphazard.

So communities often have some form of numenera that they’re capable of exploiting. But that construction can also be inverted: Aldeia arise because there is an exploitable form of numenera in a particular region. They’re like technological mining towns; communities growing up around an economic resource.

And the Aldeia Approach basically latches onto that concept: If you’re wondering what to do with Numenera, you can’t go too far wrong by looking for an artifact or cypher and then asking, “What happens if an entire community is based around this?” In my experience, at least one (and usually several) playable scenario hooks will become obvious as you’re answering that question.

In terms of introducing the setting and building its complexity over time (for both the GM and the players), the Aldeia Approach is also an ideal way to launch a campaign: Frame the PCs as some form of itinerant wanderers, and simply have them encounter interesting aldeia in the course of their travels. When you feel like you’re starting to get a grip on things, move up to a small regional town: Such towns would be based around trade with several smaller aldeia, so list a half dozen or so prevalent numenera technologies the city has access to and think about what the resulting town looks like. (Maybe you even run an urbancrawl there.)

The Aldeia Approach is so robust that you can practically randomize it. For example, let’s combine the random numenera tables from Sir Arthour’s Guide to the Numenera (you could just as easily use the tables from the core rulebook alone) with S. John Ross’ Big List of RPG Plots (which I’ll just use in order for the sake of argument) and see what we end up with.

GOLD ‘NADO

Deployer (Atmospheric): “The device collects the most widely available atmospheric aerosols within long range (such as drit dust, water droplets, pollen, bacteria, or smoke). It brings these aerosols together in a whirling tornado that centers around the device itself.” An aldeia has figured out how to reverse engineer a deployer and produce them in a bespoke industry. In combination with specially designed filters, they’re used to mine surface gold. (Or perhaps something more exotic?) Combine with Any Port in the Storm: An unforeseen interaction between the deployers cause their “prospecting ‘nados” to collapse into a single, massive tornado which now threatens the aldeia. (Maybe this even happens with some regularity and the aldeia has gotten used to “battening down the hatches” when it happens?) The PCs are forced to take refuge… but the real danger is in whatever location they’ve taken refuge in.

The threat could be human in nature (a serial killer in a locked up inn, perhaps). But let’s pick a random page from the Ninth World Bestiary and see if we can end up with a threat: “A skysmasher arrives as a red blaze across the sky, leaving a trail of light and smoke. (…) Skysmashers live out most of their span in some useable above the sky, crashing down to solid groun only to spawn and lay eggs.” What if the skysmasher crash actually triggered the malfunction in the prospecting ‘nados? What if its eggs hatch very quickly after being brought to earth and begin trying to breach the PCs’ sanctuary?

THE KINGDOM’S HELM

Ocular Helm: “The wearer of this strange helm sees a variety of visual sensors, clarity enhancers, viewfinders, rangefinders, and other aids to sight.” Let’s say that there’s a great lake which is perpetually covered in a strange, silver-green mist. Navigating through this mist has proven virtually impossible using traditional means, but a set of island kingdoms within the mist control a limited number of ocular helms. The Elite Order of Helmsmen are charged with navigating the lake, guaranteeing the security and prosperity of the islands. Better Late Than Never: Someone has stolen one of the ocular helms. The PCs are hired to track them down (or maybe there’s just a bounty and a bunch of people are trying to find it).

Another option: The PCs find an ocular helm in the course of some other adventure (probably while exploring some mouldering ruins). When the island kingdoms receive word of this, they can’t let the PCs keep it. It’s a huge security risk! But even if (some) of the kingdoms are willing to just make a generous offer, there are other factions in play that will just try to steal it from the PCs.

And another: Some strange technophage has destroyed the ocular helms controlled by the Elite Order. The kingdoms desperately need to secure another: Cue a heist in the great city of Qi, or maybe just a treasure hunt in pursuit of ancient rumors.

EXACTION EXHALATION

So I initially roll up Device Enhancer (Restorer), a cypher which can be attached to a different cypher or artifact and that device now restores a total of 4 points each time it is activated (in addition to its normal function) or 2 additional points if the device already restores points. So I roll again and I get Exalted Vapor, which allows the user to inhale a potent chemical that restores 6 points to any pool. So what we end up with is a vapor which restores 8 points of Might when inhaled.

Let’s go with the obvious: A secluded village where special sauna chambers filled with strange vapors restore the afflicted to health. The exalted vapor cyphers that are placed in these chambers are created by a set of ancient machines held in caverns deep beneath the village.

Combine this with Blackmail: When the PCs arrive in the village, they are surprised to see it clutched by poverty and hardship. The wealth flowing into the saunas seems to just vanish into the vapor. Poking around, they discover that a murden has stolen a crucial numenera artifact which creates one of the reagents required for the exalted vapor. The murden is blackmailing the town into crippling payments and is threatening to destroy the irreplaceable device if they don’t comply.

Weird Discoveries is a collection of ten “Instant Adventures” for Numenera. The concept behind these instant adventures is basically what I talked about in Opening Your Gaming Table. I’ll let Monte Cook explain:

It’s Friday night. Your friends have gathered at your house. Someone asks, “What should we do tonight?” One person suggests watching a movie, but everyone else is in the mood for a game. You’ve got lots of board games, and that seems like the obvious solution, because they don’t take any more time to prepare than it takes to set up the board and the pieces.

Those of us who love roleplaying games have encountered this situation a thousand times. We’d love to suggest an RPG for the evening, but everyone knows you can’t just spontaneously play a roleplaying game, right? The game master has to prepare a scenario, the players need to create characters, and all this takes a lot of time and thought.

Cook’s solution to this problem is to create one-shot scenarios in a custom format that makes it possible for the GM to run a four hour session after quickly skimming 4-6 pages of information.

This basically boils down into three parts:

First, a two page description of the scenario’s background and initial hook.

Second, a two page spread that generally looks something like this

and which contains the entire scenario. (This two page spread is the only thing you’ll need to look at while running the adventure.)

Third, two more pages of additional details that you can use to flesh out the scenario. (These pages are optional. If you don’t have time to read them, the evocative details they provide can easily be replaced by material improvised by the GM.)

The basic idea is that these scenarios give Numenera the same commitment profile as a board game: You pull out the rulebooks and dice. You quickly explain the rules. You hand out pregen characters to the players. And while they’re looking over their character sheets, you spend two or three minutes quickly reviewing a scenario.

Then you play for three or four hours and… that’s it. No prior prep commitment. No long-term commitment from the players. Just pick it up and play it.

WHERE THIS GOES A LITTLE WONKY

First, there’s the weird decision to kick off this book of stand-alone one-shots with two linked scenarios where one is clearly the sequel of the other. (The first scenario is “gaining access to the pyramid” and the second is “exploring the pyramid”.) This isn’t the end of the world and if those had been given at the end of the book as a sort of variant on the form, it probably would have been fine. But one of these scenarios is actually used as the free promo for the book, and I actually held off buying it for awhile because it appeared that the book wasn’t actually delivering on its promise.

Another bit of wonkiness comes from the way that Cook tries to streamline the presentation of the scenarios through the use of Keys. Each Key is some essential element of the scenario which could potentially be found in several different locations within the scenario. Each key is given a symbol, which is then used to indicate the locations where that key can be found.

For example, in a mystery scenario a Key might be:

Evidence that Supect A is innocent.

And that Key might be indicated by a little blue triangle. Then you look at the two page spread and you might see an NPC marked with a blue triangle, and their description will include:

If Bob is the KEY, then if the PCs really grill him, he’ll eventually admit that he saw Suspect A on the opposite side of town at the time of the murder.

In general, you’ll see two or three different places in the scenario where that little blue triangle shows up. That basically mirrors the redundancy suggested by the Three Clue Rule and it makes a lot of sense. And highlighting those essential bits with a visual cue in the form of the Key symbol also makes sense, because it flags the importance of including that bit for the GM.

A couple things mess this up, however: First, the table that tells you what each symbol means ISN’T located on the two page spread. So the simple elegance of the two-page spread is marred because you keep flipping back to that essential information.

Second, the “if” nature of the Keys tends to make it much more difficult to run the scenarios cleanly. The intention seems to be that the GM should control the pacing of when these keys are triggered, but in practice trying to keep track of the locations where a particular key is available (and whether or not this might be the last opportunity for it) requires a totality of understanding for the scenario which stands in sharp contrast with the goal of being able to run it off-the-cuff. (For off-the-cuff stuff, I generally want to be able to focus on the content directly in front of my nose without having to think about distant portions of the scenario.)

In general, you can probably just ignore the “if” portion of the text and run most of the scenarios with the Keys present in all of their potential locations. There are a handful of scenarios, however, where you can’t do this. (For example, a “missing piece” of a machine which can be in several different locations and actually be completely different things.)

In any case, these scenarios would be better if the keys were simply hardcoded. And I’d recommend altering them in whatever manner necessary to make that true before running them.

BAFFLING CARTOGRAPHY

The other thing that doesn’t quite work are, unfortunately, the two-page spreads themselves. These take two forms.

First, there are flowcharts which show how the PCs can move from one scene to another. (Go to the home of the murder suspect and find a clue that points to where the murder suspect is.) These mostly work fine, although there are a few scenarios with mysterious extra arrows that don’t actually represent any tangible information. (The intention with some of these seems to be “the PCs are done here and can now go follow a lead from another location”, but that’s ideographically confusing because the arrow implies that there is a lead here that should take you there.)

Second, and unfortunately more prevalent, are the spreads based around maps surrounded by blobs of text that have arrows pointing to various sections of the map.

The best of these are the dungeons, because they at least make sense. But they’re not very good dungeons. One keeps talking about how you can explore beyond the rooms shown on the map… except there are no exits from the rooms on the map. The other is composed of mostly empty rooms. And in both cases, most of the room descriptions don’t match the visual representation of the room that they’re pointing at.

This is because, as far as I can tell, the maps were drawn largely at random and then the various bits of content were “associated” with the maps by drawing arrows that just kind of point at whatever’s convenient. And this is even more apparent when you look at some of the other two-page spreads. For example, consider the spread we looked at before:

That’s supposed to be the map of a city. Except it obviously is not. And one of the content bubbles is “three dead bodies lie here”… except the associated arrow points into the middle of a wall. Another content bubble is “monster that’s explicitly moving around in the ruins”, but it has an arrow pointing to a very specific (and obviously completely meaningless) location

Another common technique here is “rough sketch of a wilderness area that’s radically out of scale with random arrows pointing at it”.

WHY IT DOESN’T MATTER

Because the scenarios are really good.

They cover a wide variety of nifty ideas backed up with fantastic art that’s designed to be shown to your players as evocative handouts (instead of featuring imaginary PCs doing things).

And despite my quibbles with some of the shortcomings of the presentation, the basic concept of the two-page spread fundamentally works: The maps and arrows don’t make any sense, but the essential content is nonetheless packaged in a format that makes it easy to simply pick up the adventure and run it with no prep time at all.

For my personal use, I’ll be basically ignoring all of the maps and using the content bubbles as either random encounters or logical progressions of an investigation (depending on the exigencies of the scenario). And I’ll take the time to lock down the Keys in a more concrete fashion, but I’m not anticipating that taking any more than 5-10 minutes per scenario, which is not an undue burden.

Ultimately, with ten full adventures, this book is incredibly valuable and I’m going to be getting dozens of hours of play out of it.

The final reason why the book’s shortcomings ultimately don’t matter, however, is because the roleplaying industry desperately needs more books like this: The board game renaissance is palpably demonstrating the power of memetically viral games that can be picked up and played as part of an evening’s entertainment. Games like Mice & Mystics and Mansions of Madness clearly demonstrate that the only reason traditional roleplaying games can’t hop on that bandwagon is because we’ve systematically ghettoized ourselves as an industry and as a hobby by embracing long-term, dedicated play as the only form of play.

With Numenera as its flagship, Monte Cook Games is fighting to change that. And I’m more than happy to help them out. (Particularly since their game is so much damn fun.)

Style: 4
Substance: 4

Author: Monte Cook
Publisher: Monte Cook Games
Print Cost: $24.99
PDF Cost: $9.99
Page Count: 96
ISBN: 978-1939979339

One of the tricks to running Numenera is to avoid falling back on your D&D-bred reflexes and having the game world default to a fantasy feeling. Although superficially similar to D&D fantasy due to its renaissance trappings, that’s not what the world of Numenera is: It’s a mélange of science fantasy on the far side of a billion years and eight mega-civilizations.

Keeping that in mind is the inspiration behind this techno-weird tavern. Whether you use it as a respite between adventures, a pit stop on a long and dusty road, or as an introductory mini-scenario to orient your players to the nature of Numenera, you’ll hopefully find it suffused with the unique flavor of the Ninth World.

(You could also take the various bar games and activities and split them up into multiple taverns, each with its own particular focus.)

GETTING A TABLE

The place is crowded, but it shouldn’t be too difficult to cadge a table near the center of the modular, multi-chambered, multi-tiered tavern (particularly if they slip a shin or two to the hostess).

Directly above their table is a gravity glide: Get a good push off and you’ll glide through an antigravity zone from one balcony to another. (Screw it up and you’ll end up drifting helplessly until someone lassos you.)

SAVANNAH MENU

A large, sunken table with a dome of shimmering energy atop it. The interior of the table appears to be a diorama depicting a miniature savannah dotted with small copses of trees, but on closer inspection you can see herds of animals moving across the grasslands.

A large, harpoon-like contraption is attached to the lip of the table and can be moved around its circumference on a rail. (You can sight through the energy fields built into the harpoon and use it to shoot one of the miniature creatures moving through the diorama.)

Menu-Tender: “It’s two shins per shot!” (That means if you can make the first shot, you’ll get a discount on your meal. If it takes two shots, you’re breaking even. Three or more and you’re paying a premium for your lousy aim.)

Making the Shot: Herds of gallen (long-bodied, herbivorous animals), shiul (massive, four-horned creatures), and ul’un (catfish-like creatures that levitate above the grasses and glide across the savannah).

It’s a Speed task (difficulty 4) to make the shot. On a success, the harpoon drags the creature up through the surface of the table (where it emerges full-size and ready to be cooked).

CHROMERIDING

A sleek, bullet-like shape about six feet long levitates a foot or so off the floor of the pit at the center of one of the tavern modules. A saddle-like depression notches into its top.

As potential riders approach the chromerider, their shins tingle. (This is due to an energy field. See below.)

Rider Rating: A dial can be set from 1 to 5. (The task difficulty of the ride is equal to the dial setting + 1.)

Chromeriding: This works like a Chase (Numenera, pg. 100). The rider must succeed on a number of Speed tasks equal to the task difficulty they selected. If the rider ever has more failures than successes, they’re thrown off the chromerider. (Riders who are thrown off land in a cushioning energy field that lines the bottom of the pit.)

Description of the Ride: Each round it becomes more and more difficult to remain on the chromerider.

• Round 1: The chromerider bucks like a bronco.
• Round 2: The chromerider spins around the horizontal axis.
• Round 3: The chromerider spins around the vertical axis.
• Round 4: The chromerider tries to scrape the rider off on the metal poles surrounding the riding pit.
• Round 5: The chromerider splits into four pieces and tries to fly off in different directions. The rider must succeed on a Might task to hold the pieces together. Alternatively, a Speed task can be made at +1 difficulty to stay on just one of the smaller pieces.
• Round 6: The ceiling dilates open and the chromerider rockets straight up into the sky. (On future rounds, repeat the previous rounds… but now they’re 50 feet up in the air.)

JEMARA

Jemara is a form of choral karaoke. On a stage at one end of the tavern, there’s a free-standing arch made from sort of coral-like material, silver-and-red in color.

Stepping Through the Arch of Jemara: As one steps through the arch, a temporal schism occurs and they’re split into multiple duplicates of themselves all sharing a confusing, mirrored single consciousness.

This is an open success Intellect task: The level of success determines how many duplicates successfully emerge.

Performance: Ask the player what song they’re performing. The lyrics appear on their retina, super-imposed simultaneously across their many fields of vision. The Arch of Jemara pulses with light and projects music.

The singer(s) can make another open success Intellect task, using the Helping rules (Numenera, pg. 101) to gain a +1 bonus to their die roll for each temporal duplicate. The GM should use the result to determine the reaction of the crowd.

After the performance is done, the temporal schism ends and the duplicates vanish (although they may still flicker in and out of existence in an aura around the performer for a few minutes longer).

WARP DARTS

The warp dart board hangs in the middle of a long aisle. The trick is that the aisle is filled with gravity inversion fields, which means that the darts don’t travel in straight lines. (And the highest value targets are on the back side and edges of the board.)

Competition: If the PCs challenge each other, resolve the warp dart competition as a PC vs. PC Speed task (see Numenera, pg. 98). Highest result wins. (Let the victor describe their winning throw.)

A Challenger Appears: A level 6 NPC shows up, challenges the winner of the previous game, and offers a bet of 5 shins on the outcome.

PINANJU

A matte-black, fully-articulated mannequin stands in the center of a geodesic dome formed from silver filaments.

When activated, Pinanju is a martial arts simulator: The players must duplicate the movements of the mannequin while the dome generates holographic opponents. The game can be played cooperatively (using the Helping rules) or competitively (seeing who fails a combat check first).

Opponent Selection:

• Street Urchins (Difficulty 2)
• Glaives of the Beyond (Difficulty 3)
• Margr Beast Warriors (Difficulty 4 – Numenera, pg. 244)
• Angulan Knights (Difficulty 5 – Numenera, pg. 224)
• Gaian Witch-Ninjas (Difficulty 6)

(In the context of Pinanju, the actual stats of these opponents aren’t important. But you might like to show the PCs a picture of what they’re facing off against.)

A game of Pinanju is resolved in four rounds:

Basic Combat: Might or Speed task (using the difficulty of the selected opponent).

Covering Fire: During this round, the player must avoid the attacks of “bonus enemies” who pop up around the perimeter of the Pinanju ring by succeeding on a Speed task. On a failure, their next combat check is made at +1 difficulty. (These avoidance moves have to be improvised around the set routine presented by the Pinanju automaton.)

Basic Combat 2: Another Might or Speed task.

Swarm: In the final round, four opponents appear simultaneously. They effectively act as a swarm, requiring the player to make their Might or Speed task at +1 difficulty.

TOROID TOSS

Players receive a toroidal ring that slithers to the touch but not to the eye. They have to toss the toroid over a prize-winning peg at the far end of a strangely slanted court. However, the tossing lane is filled with dimensional fields – as the toroid passes through them, it reappears in seemingly random locations (often changing direction or the like).

Initial Cost: Requires 2 Intellect to plot out a potentially successful path through the dimensional fields. (If this initial cost is not paid, any throw is essentially random and has only a 1 in 20 chance of paying out.)

Final Toss: Speed task (difficulty 6). On success, receive a random oddity.