What do you think?
Rate this book
The Devil's Spine
It begins simply enough. Doesn’t it always? A nobleman’s estate needs tending in his absence. But what secrets lurk in its shadows? What deals has this man made with whispered voices in that darkness? And once such a discovery is made, can it be undone?
The Devil’s Spine entwines three distinct adventures into a single thrilling nonlinear story. The terrifying devil’s spine graft will claim a life, and the clock is ticking. Removing it will send the characters to the depths of The Mechanized Tomb, into a web of Viral Transmissions, and ultimately off the corebook map and into uncharted territory when they go Beyond the Maelstrom.
GMs can run these adventures (in any order) as a mini-campaign, or ignore the frame story and use them each as standalone adventures. They give gaming groups a taste of the fantastic Numenera setting and showcase the narrative structure of the game and its evocative world.
In addition to introducing new locations not covered in the Numenera corebook, The Devil’s Spine offers new creatures, characters, and items to add to any campaign.
The Devil’s Spine entwines three distinct adventures into a single thrilling nonlinear story. The terrifying devil’s spine graft will claim a life, and the clock is ticking. Removing it will send the characters to the depths of The Mechanized Tomb, into a web of Viral Transmissions, and ultimately off the corebook map and into uncharted territory when they go Beyond the Maelstrom.
GMs can run these adventures (in any order) as a mini-campaign, or ignore the frame story and use them each as standalone adventures. They give gaming groups a taste of the fantastic Numenera setting and showcase the narrative structure of the game and its evocative world.
In addition to introducing new locations not covered in the Numenera corebook, The Devil’s Spine offers new creatures, characters, and items to add to any campaign.
96 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2013
About the author
Monte Cook
211 books124 followers
The game designer
Monte Cook started working professionally in the game industry in 1988. In the employ of Iron Crown Enterprises, he worked with the Rolemaster and Champions games as an editor, developer, and designer. In 1994, Monte came to TSR, Inc., as a game designer and wrote for the Planescape and core D&D lines. When that company was purchased by Wizards of the Coast, he moved to the Seattle area and eventually became a senior game designer. At Wizards, he wrote the 3rd Edition Dungeon Master's Guide and served as codesigner of the new edition of the Dungeons & Dragons game. In 2001, he left Wizards to start his own design studio, Malhavoc Press, with his wife Sue. Although in his career he has worked on over 100 game titles, some of his other credits include Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, The Book of Eldritch Might series, the d20 Call of Cthulhu Roleplaying Game, The Book of Vile Darkness, Monte Cook’s Arcana Evolved, Ptolus, Monte Cook's World of Darkness, and Dungeonaday.com. He was a longtime author of the Dungeoncraft column in Dungeon Magazine. In recent years, Monte has been recognized many times by game fans in the ENnies Awards, the Pen & Paper fan awards, the Nigel D. Findley Memorial Award, the Origins Awards, and more.
The author
A graduate of the 1999 Clarion West writer's workshop, Monte has published two novels, The Glass Prison and Of Aged Angels. Also, he has published the short stories "Born in Secrets" (in the magazine Amazing Stories), "The Rose Window" (in the anthology Realms of Mystery), and "A Narrowed Gaze" (in the anthology Realms of the Arcane). His stories have appeared in the Malhavoc Press anthologies Children of the Rune and The Dragons' Return, and his comic book writing can be found in the Ptolus: City by the Spire series from DBPro/Marvel. His fantasy fiction series, "Saga of the Blade," appeared in Game Trade Magazine from 2005–2006.
The geek
In his spare time, Monte runs games, plays with his dog, watches DVDs, builds vast dioramas out of LEGO building bricks, paints miniatures, and reads a lot of comics.
Monte Cook started working professionally in the game industry in 1988. In the employ of Iron Crown Enterprises, he worked with the Rolemaster and Champions games as an editor, developer, and designer. In 1994, Monte came to TSR, Inc., as a game designer and wrote for the Planescape and core D&D lines. When that company was purchased by Wizards of the Coast, he moved to the Seattle area and eventually became a senior game designer. At Wizards, he wrote the 3rd Edition Dungeon Master's Guide and served as codesigner of the new edition of the Dungeons & Dragons game. In 2001, he left Wizards to start his own design studio, Malhavoc Press, with his wife Sue. Although in his career he has worked on over 100 game titles, some of his other credits include Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, The Book of Eldritch Might series, the d20 Call of Cthulhu Roleplaying Game, The Book of Vile Darkness, Monte Cook’s Arcana Evolved, Ptolus, Monte Cook's World of Darkness, and Dungeonaday.com. He was a longtime author of the Dungeoncraft column in Dungeon Magazine. In recent years, Monte has been recognized many times by game fans in the ENnies Awards, the Pen & Paper fan awards, the Nigel D. Findley Memorial Award, the Origins Awards, and more.
The author
A graduate of the 1999 Clarion West writer's workshop, Monte has published two novels, The Glass Prison and Of Aged Angels. Also, he has published the short stories "Born in Secrets" (in the magazine Amazing Stories), "The Rose Window" (in the anthology Realms of Mystery), and "A Narrowed Gaze" (in the anthology Realms of the Arcane). His stories have appeared in the Malhavoc Press anthologies Children of the Rune and The Dragons' Return, and his comic book writing can be found in the Ptolus: City by the Spire series from DBPro/Marvel. His fantasy fiction series, "Saga of the Blade," appeared in Game Trade Magazine from 2005–2006.
The geek
In his spare time, Monte runs games, plays with his dog, watches DVDs, builds vast dioramas out of LEGO building bricks, paints miniatures, and reads a lot of comics.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 26, 2018
The Devil's Spine is a short campaign that was released shortly after the original release of Numenera. It offers three seperate adventures that can be combined to form a short to medium campaign. Without wanting to spoil the adventures too much, the basic plot is that the party has to complete 3 tasks to heal someone from a possibly devastating spinal parasite.
The three individual adventures are of vastly different quality, and especially the first one, "Viral Transmissions", does not showcase what makes Numenera such a wonderful game and setting. Instead of highlighting weirdness and exploration, the sense of wonder I love so much about it, it's a baffling combat slug fest. I already know I will have to re-write portions of it to make the Insidiuous Choir more interesting. Combat just isn't a fun or distinguishing feature of this game.
"The Mechanized Tomb" is a better adventure, but again, it feels mostly like a traditional dungeon crawl closer to D&D than actual Numenera. Here I will have to add more weirdness as well to make it more exciting.
The final adventure of the three is called "Beyond the Maelstrom" and was by far my favorite of the bunch. Some of the material from "Into the Deep" shows up here, as the party has to prepare for travel beneath the sea, investigating a mysterious storm. It's exotic, full of flavor, and I wish the other ones were like that.
It's a shame Viral Transmissions is so weak. Every single adventure of the Weird Discoveries collection is better, IMHO, but I'll work with it. Regardless, I know I'll be able to string the adventures together in a fun way, and will follow up The Devil's Spine with a 3rd party adventure, The Bridges we burn.
The Devil's Spine is definitely a nice font of ideas, and comes with splendid art that is set up to be shown as handouts. It could be so much more if the Insidious Choir was better defined. If you're just looking for easy to run adventures though, I would always recommend Weird Discoveries over this book.
Rating the adventures:
Viral Transmissions 2/5
The Mechanized Tomb 3/5
Beyond the Maelstrom 5/5
All in all 3.5 stars for me, rounded up to 4.
The three individual adventures are of vastly different quality, and especially the first one, "Viral Transmissions", does not showcase what makes Numenera such a wonderful game and setting. Instead of highlighting weirdness and exploration, the sense of wonder I love so much about it, it's a baffling combat slug fest. I already know I will have to re-write portions of it to make the Insidiuous Choir more interesting. Combat just isn't a fun or distinguishing feature of this game.
"The Mechanized Tomb" is a better adventure, but again, it feels mostly like a traditional dungeon crawl closer to D&D than actual Numenera. Here I will have to add more weirdness as well to make it more exciting.
The final adventure of the three is called "Beyond the Maelstrom" and was by far my favorite of the bunch. Some of the material from "Into the Deep" shows up here, as the party has to prepare for travel beneath the sea, investigating a mysterious storm. It's exotic, full of flavor, and I wish the other ones were like that.
It's a shame Viral Transmissions is so weak. Every single adventure of the Weird Discoveries collection is better, IMHO, but I'll work with it. Regardless, I know I'll be able to string the adventures together in a fun way, and will follow up The Devil's Spine with a 3rd party adventure, The Bridges we burn.
The Devil's Spine is definitely a nice font of ideas, and comes with splendid art that is set up to be shown as handouts. It could be so much more if the Insidious Choir was better defined. If you're just looking for easy to run adventures though, I would always recommend Weird Discoveries over this book.
Rating the adventures:
Viral Transmissions 2/5
The Mechanized Tomb 3/5
Beyond the Maelstrom 5/5
All in all 3.5 stars for me, rounded up to 4.
October 30, 2013
A collection of three adventures - Viral Transmission, The Mechanized Tomb, and Beyond the Maelstrom - originally proposed as individual 32-page adventures as stretch goals for the phenomenal Numenera Kickstarter campaign.
The volume includes a introductory/bridging adventure - Noble Pursuits - intended to support running the three adventures as a linked mini-campaign.
The Devil's Spine suffers from a sense of linearity, that doesn't quite fall into a complete railroad, but neither does it offer much room for individual decisions. The bridging concept robs the PCs of their agency to do as the will, instead forced to do the bidding of the single entity capable of saving their lives.
While Numenera remains a world awaiting greater detail and expansion, the geographic information in TDS seems at odds with those in the corebook. The adventures lack much depth and many encounters necessitate grinding and unnecessary complexity to get anything done (like finding and activating specific control interfaces to release a forgotten transport system - with controls positioned to maximise complexity over any sort of design sense).
While the adventure introduces a few new entities, what new numenera appear feel like the beginnings of a large pile of old school D&D treasure, likely to unbalance the game if not managed thoughtfully.
The mini-campaign might be rescued with some thought, creativity and application of depth - but, as is, it doesn't excite me about the prospects of the Ninth World one jot.
The volume includes a introductory/bridging adventure - Noble Pursuits - intended to support running the three adventures as a linked mini-campaign.
The Devil's Spine suffers from a sense of linearity, that doesn't quite fall into a complete railroad, but neither does it offer much room for individual decisions. The bridging concept robs the PCs of their agency to do as the will, instead forced to do the bidding of the single entity capable of saving their lives.
While Numenera remains a world awaiting greater detail and expansion, the geographic information in TDS seems at odds with those in the corebook. The adventures lack much depth and many encounters necessitate grinding and unnecessary complexity to get anything done (like finding and activating specific control interfaces to release a forgotten transport system - with controls positioned to maximise complexity over any sort of design sense).
While the adventure introduces a few new entities, what new numenera appear feel like the beginnings of a large pile of old school D&D treasure, likely to unbalance the game if not managed thoughtfully.
The mini-campaign might be rescued with some thought, creativity and application of depth - but, as is, it doesn't excite me about the prospects of the Ninth World one jot.
November 9, 2015
No esta mal la campaña aunque hay partes que me parecen demasiado forzadas y por ciertos momentos se vuelve mas dungeonero que aventura de descubrimiento. Pero bueno para eso esta el master que tambien tiene que trabajar y no solo leer.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews