Monday, March 17, 2014

Numenera RPG - Early Impressions

I recently bought the "Numenera" RPG by Monte Cook, a weighty tome that is beautifully produced and loaded with fascinating ideas. It is a science fantasy games that celebrates all things weird.

There is real buzz about this game from what I can see online, and also among my fellow local gamers. The premise is interesting...a billion years from now, our planet has passed through different phases and is now in it's "Ninth World". It resembles 1000AD in many ways, though there are remnants everywhere from the previous worlds.

These remnants are the numenera. Some can be used by characters to augment themselves temporarily ("Cyphers"), more complex items that can be used for longer periods ("Artifacts") and objects that have no game mechanic advantage, but add flavor to the game ("Oddities"). The general thrust of the game is find the numenera and make good use of them.

Character creation is easy and innovative. It's based around a statement, for example, "I am a charming Glaive who howls at the moon". The first adjective is selected from a list determines who the character is, what they're really about. The next word,in this case "Glaive",is the character class, chosen from three options: Glaive (warrior),Nano (scientist/mage) and Jack (all-rounder and rogue)...this is what the character does. The last part of the sentence,again chosen from a list, gives the character unique qualities. This all translates into stats,skills and abilites for the character. In the example above, I'd be a charismatic warrior who changes into a beast five nights a month.

Just reading through the various combinations that this leads to is exciting and should make for some great games.

The system itself is easy too, with everything based around a difficulty scale from 1 to 10. You multiply the difficulty by three, and the resulting number is what the player needs to match or exceed on a D20 to succeed. This is the case regardless of the task, whether it's combat or climbing a mountain. The difficulty number can be reduced in a number of ways, with the right equipment,skills or effort. Also, the GM never rolls the dice...this appeals to me as I'm coming to this as a GM who is used to that arrangement from "Apocalypse World" games.

I'll be doing a one-shot of the game at my local club later this month to see how it plays and there's already a lot of excitement about this. If you haven't checked this game already and are looking for something fresh and full of ideas,I strongly recommend taking a look. I'll post a review of the demo session in a few weeks time.