Sample file Sample file CREDITS Writer/Designer Monte Cook Rule Developers Monte Cook and Sean K. Reynolds Additional Writing Shanna Germain Lead Editor Shanna Germain Editor Ray Vallese Proofreader Michele Carter Cover Designer and Lead Artist Kieran Yanner Graphic Designer Sarah Robinson Artists Samuel Araya, Helge Balzer, Mark Buhalo, Chrom, Florian Devos, Sara Diesel, Dreamstime.com, Jason Engle, Kali Fitzgerald, Guido Kuip, Eric Lofgren, Patrick McEvoy, Jeremy McHugh, Brynn Metheny, Michael Perry, Roberto Pitturru/Fabio Passamonti, Scott Purdy, Lee Smith, Matt Stawicki, Mark Tarrisse, Keith Thompson, Prosper Tipaldi, Cory Trego-Erdner, Shane Tyree, Bear Weiter, Adrian Wilkins, Kieran Yanner Cartographer Christopher West Alpha Playtesters Shanna Germain, Ray Vallese, Colin McComb, James Bell, Erik Mona, Danica King, Sean Reynolds, Stan!, Hyrum Savage Dedicated to JD Sparks (Jay Peterson), who journeyed with me all through the lead-up to Numenera, helping to form my view on science fiction, fantasy, and everything that is cool about wild and wonderful ideas. Sample file © 2013 Monte Cook Games, LLC NUMENERA and its logo are trademarks of Monte Cook Games, LLC in the U.S.A. and other countries. All Monte Cook Games characters and character names, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are trademarks of Monte Cook Games, LLC. Printed in Canada. TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 2 3 4 NEW WORLD, NEW GAME PART 6: THE NUMENERA 275 Dreaming of the Future 4 Chapter 17: Technology 276 The Amber Monolith 6 Chapter 18: Cyphers 278 Chapter 19: Artifacts 298 PART 1: GETTING STARTED 11 Chapter 20: Oddities & Discoveries 314 Chapter 1: Welcome to the Ninth World 12 Chapter 2: How to Play Numenera 15 PART 7: RUNNING THE GAME 319 Chapter 21: Using the Rules 320 PART 2: CHARACTERS 19 Chapter 22: Building a Story 340 Chapter 3: Creating Your Character 20 Chapter 23: Realizing the Ninth World 354 Chapter 4: Character Type 26 Chapter 5: Character Descriptor 47 PART 8: ADVENTURES 365 Chapter 6: Character Focus 52 Chapter 24: Adventures Overview 366 Chapter 7: Equipment 77 Chapter 25: The Beale of Boregal 367 Chapter 26: Seedship 379 PART 3: PLAYING THE GAME 83 Chapter 27: The Hidden Price 385 Chapter 8: Rules of the Game 84 Chapter 28: Three Sanctums 390 Chapter 9: Optional Rules Sample113 file PART 9: BACK MATTER 399 PART 4: THE SETTING 129 Appendix A: Character Creation Walkthrough 400 Chapter 10: Living in the Ninth World 130 Appendix B: Bibliography and Resources 402 Chapter 11: The Steadfast 136 Appendix C: Kickstarter Backers 403 Chapter 12: The Beyond 174 Glossary 411 Chapter 13: Beyond the Beyond 213 Index 412 Chapter 14: Organizations 222 Numenera Character Sheet 414 PART 5: CREATURES & CHARACTERS 227 Chapter 15: Creatures 228 Chapter 16: Non-Player Characters 269 5 6 7 8 9 3 Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. ~Sir Arthur C. Clarke DREAMING OF THE FUTURE ’m a dreamer. I’ve had a lot of dreams. But for twenty years, two dreams of mine have stuck with me, no matter what else I was doing or what I was working on. Projects came and went, but these two dreams Ialways hovered in the background. The first was a roleplaying game system where players got to decide how much effort they wanted to put into any given action, and that decision would help determine whether their action would succeed or fail. This would be a simple but elegant system where sustained damage and physical exertion drew from the same resource (so as you became wounded, you could do less, and as you became exhausted, you were easier to take down). Where your willpower and your mentalSample “power points” were file the same thing, and as you drew on your mental resources, your ability to stave off mental attacks waned. And where it was all so integrated into the character that it was easy to process and keep track of. But most of all, I dreamed of a game system that was designed from the ground up to be played the way people actually played games, and to be run the way that game masters really ran them. The second dream that stuck with me was a world that fused science fiction and fantasy, but not in the usual mixed-genre sort of way. Instead, it was a place that felt like fantasy but was actually science fiction. Or perhaps it felt like science fiction but was actually fantasy. Could I achieve both at once? The well-known quote from Sir Arthur C. Clarke that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” seemed to lie at the heart of this concept. In my mind, I envisioned strangely garbed priests chanting well-rehearsed prayers and invocations, using sacred instruments and making precise gestures, but then we realize that the instruments are technological in nature, and some of the gestures are actually fingers playing over buttons or sections of a touchscreen.... But that was all twenty years ago. Time passed. I worked on hundreds of projects for different companies—including my own. I never completely forgot about those ideas, but they mostly faded away into the recesses of my mind. Then, I was lying in bed one night about a year ago, and in my mind’s eye I saw two figures pulling tattered cloaks around themselves to ward off the chill as they walked. The two trudged across a grey landscape, wary with each step. And as this scene receded, I saw that the terrain they crossed was a massive gear, and the landscape was in fact an unbelievably huge and ancient machine. The key to this scene, I realized, was that the figures were in no way part of this terrain—perhaps they didn’t even understand the concept of the machine—but they were accustomed to it. It was a part of the world they lived in as much as mountains, rivers, and forests are a part of ours. All at once, I knew that it was time to create this game and this setting that had been brewing in my consciousness for twenty years. It was time to create NUMENERA™. At the time of this writing, I have worked as a professional game designer for twenty-five years. I’ve written articles, adventures, sourcebooks, and roleplaying game settings (along with short stories, novels, scripts, and comic books). 4 DREAMING OF THE FUTURE I’ve designed or co-designed four roleplaying games based on earlier versions of other games, designed a miniatures ACKNOWLEDGMENTS game, and worked on a few computer games, card games, and other miscellaneous projects. But I had never During the making of designed a roleplaying game all on my own, from the ground up, based entirely on a setting of my own creation. this book, we received I had always wanted to. The games I worked on are all things I’m very proud of, but none expressed exactly how I invaluable assistance— wanted to play an RPG. It seemed like it was time to give it a shot: to try to put down on paper what I’d been doing in directly or indirectly—from the games I ran for so long. I’ve never been a GM who relied heavily on rules. Instead, I tried to focus more on story, the following people, places, fun, and gameplay. Even when I ran a game with a rather rigid ruleset, I would add in new elements so that there and things: would be spells or creatures or player resources or something that was more mysterious or more flexible to give the Brazilian Game Fans story a little breathing room. To allow both the players and me to be creative rather than always rigidly defined. Borderlands 2 To create a new setting to go with these rules, it would have to fit the sensibilities of the narrative system I Bill Cavalier was creating. Since the rules were more about story, mood, and ideas than about rigid definitions, the world Paul Chapman had to be that way, too. It had to be a world of weird mysteries and intriguing questions. Sir Arthur C. Clarke The traditional ways of presenting RPG setting material made it difficult because they were also usually Eric Coates Florence and the Machine fairly rigid—closed and defined rather than open-ended and mysterious. And understandably so. RPG setting Fringe design is all about giving a GM the information she needs to run a game, and that can be a lot of information. Glasya I knew I could do this new setting justice thanks to two things. Grizzly Bear The first was a product line I worked on a long time ago called Planescape®. It was a setting full of mystery. It never Ken and Marilyn Harrison allowed itself to be pinned down. Planescape was weird and wild and imaginative. It was a setting about mood and Scott Holden Kickstarter ideas and amazing vistas more than it was about nailing down every little detail. It experimented with narrative voice Ryan Klemm and different kinds of presentation that stressed story, emotion, and flavor. So I knew it could be done. Iced Soy Mochas The second was a product I worked very hard on a few years back called Ptolus. Ptolus was a d20 setting, but it inXile Entertainment abandoned most of the traditional RPG approaches to presenting setting material. Instead, it took inspiration from Jewel Box Café travel guides and nonfiction books. With Ptolus, I learned that there were ways to present information to GMs and Two MacBook Airs players that made their lives easier and their games more fun. With that kind of presentation—informative and yet One MacBook Pro Two iPhones flavorful thanks to its art-heavy and visual nature—I could take a Planescape narrative approach and still make a One iPad very usable product.