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Writer/Designer Rule Developers Monte Cook and Sean K. Reynolds Additional Writing Shanna Germain Lead Editor Shanna Germain Editor Ray Vallese Proofreader 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, , Kali Fitzgerald, Guido Kuip, Eric Lofgren, Patrick McEvoy, Jeremy McHugh, Brynn Metheny, Michael Perry, Roberto Pitturru/Fabio Passamonti, Scott Purdy, Lee Smith, , 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 , helping to form my view on science fiction, , and everything that is cool about wild and wonderful ideas.

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© 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

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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

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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 ®. 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. Mateusz Kaluzny So that’s what I’ve tried to do. Kid Snippets A lot of the Ninth World can be credited to inspiration from two people, the French artist Moebius and Mary Robinette Kowal the writer Gene Wolfe. I’ve long been a fan of Moebius’s works, in particular his vision of technology, his M&M Salad synthesis of science and mysticism, and his method of infusing his backgrounds with deep, deep history. Mono Nick & Trish Every Moebius art piece tells the story of a world with a rich and wonderfully weird past. Ninth World Hub I’ve been a fan of Gene Wolfe—particularly his series The Book of the New Sun—since I was very young. In fact, Danny O’Neil as I write this, I realize that I was introduced to this series bySample my childhood friend file JD, a fact particularly poignant Road Trips to me because in two days I go to JD’s memorial service. He was a friend whose sensibilities about fantasy and Charles Ryan science fiction and cool, imaginative ideas were developed right alongside mine. Which is probably why even Tammie Ryan Treadmill Desk though we grew up and went our separate ways, we managed to stay in touch all these years. The world lost a Aaron Voss great, creative soul with his passing. Through his influence on me, he now lives on in the Ninth World. Sue Weinlein In The Book of the New Sun, Wolfe accomplishes with astonishing literary depth a work that at first seems Steve Wieck to be a fantasy set in the past, but eventually we learn that it is, in fact, a science fiction story set in the far, far David Wilson Brown future. It is brilliant and well written, as full of creative ideas as anything I’ve ever read. You should read it, too. Annie Yamashita I was fortunate enough to study fiction under Wolfe, and I learned a great deal about writing. Thus, his work George Z and his style will always be an inspiration to me, but never more than in Numenera, to be sure. And a special hat tip to our There are, of course, many inspirations for Numenera, so I created a bibliography for the game that you’ll find Kickstarter backers in Appendix B (page 402). But long before you get there, why not give “The Amber Monolith” (page 6) a quick (see Appendix C, page 403, read? The story sets the tone for the setting and establishes a great many details about the Ninth World, the for the complete list). kinds of things characters will do in the game, and the amount of latitude GMs and players have to stretch their imaginations here. Then read Welcome to the Ninth World, which presents things a bit more plainly. After that, read How to Play Numenera, and you’ll pretty much have a good handle on the essentials of what you need to know. The rest—character creation, the full rules, the setting, the creatures, and so on—are just details, although hopefully they’re fun and interesting details. (Here’s a hint that I hope will really help: use How to Play Numenera [page 15] to learn and teach the essentials of the game, and use Rules of the Game [page 84] as your reference tool when you have questions.) If you’re going to be a GM, read the Running the Game sections (page 319) carefully after reading the rules. There I’ve done my best to convey what the game’s all about and provide some of my secrets to running a great game. I sincerely hope that you find Numenera fun, full of wild ideas, and most of all inspirational so that you’ll create your own imaginative characters and stories. You’re about to embark on some amazing adventures.

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