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Numenera
Numenera Discovery
They say there have been eight worlds before ours. Eight times the people of this Earth, over vast millennia, built their civilizations, reaching heights we cannot even fully imagine now. They spoke to the stars, reshaped the creatures of the world, and mastered form and essence. They built cities and machines that have since crumbled to dust, leaving only their barest remnants.
This is the Ninth World. The people of the prior worlds are gone—scattered, disappeared, or transcended. But their works remain, in the places and devices that still contain some germ of their original function. The ignorant call these magic, but the wise know that these are our legacy. They are our future. They are the
~NUMENERA~
Set a billion years in our future, Numenera is a tabletop roleplaying game about exploration and discovery. The people of the Ninth World suffer through a dark age, an era of isolation and struggle in the shadow of the ancient wonders crafted by civilizations millennia gone. But discovery awaits for those brave enough to seek out the works of the prior worlds. Those who can uncover and master the numenera can unlock the powers and abilities of the ancients, and perhaps bring new light to a struggling world.
This is the Ninth World. The people of the prior worlds are gone—scattered, disappeared, or transcended. But their works remain, in the places and devices that still contain some germ of their original function. The ignorant call these magic, but the wise know that these are our legacy. They are our future. They are the
~NUMENERA~
Set a billion years in our future, Numenera is a tabletop roleplaying game about exploration and discovery. The people of the Ninth World suffer through a dark age, an era of isolation and struggle in the shadow of the ancient wonders crafted by civilizations millennia gone. But discovery awaits for those brave enough to seek out the works of the prior worlds. Those who can uncover and master the numenera can unlock the powers and abilities of the ancients, and perhaps bring new light to a struggling world.
416 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 2018
10 people are currently reading
66 people want to read
About the author
Monte Cook
211 books125 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.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
January 21, 2024
Qualità manuale (impaginazione, illustrazioni, disposizione regole): ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Testo piccolo e qualche refuso sparso, ma qualità elevatissima della carta e dell'impaginazione. Immagini evocative e suddivisione dei capitoli di facile comprensione. Ogni pagina è una scoperta e fonte di idee.
Ambientazione: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Fantascienza e fantasy in un connubio perfetto. Il pianeta Terra all'alba di una nuova era. Un futuro remoto dove l'umanità raccoglie le ceneri di civiltà ormai cadute.
Sistema regole: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Il Cypher system è una meraviglia. Probabilmente la migliore evoluzione del d20 system, sistema di regole immediato, semplice e veloce.
Uno dei migliori giochi di ruolo in circolazione
Testo piccolo e qualche refuso sparso, ma qualità elevatissima della carta e dell'impaginazione. Immagini evocative e suddivisione dei capitoli di facile comprensione. Ogni pagina è una scoperta e fonte di idee.
Ambientazione: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Fantascienza e fantasy in un connubio perfetto. Il pianeta Terra all'alba di una nuova era. Un futuro remoto dove l'umanità raccoglie le ceneri di civiltà ormai cadute.
Sistema regole: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Il Cypher system è una meraviglia. Probabilmente la migliore evoluzione del d20 system, sistema di regole immediato, semplice e veloce.
Uno dei migliori giochi di ruolo in circolazione
August 8, 2019
This is book one of the two “core” rulebooks for the Numenera role-playing game, though you have everything you need to play the game with this one book (the other book adds two additional character class types and some additional rules). Numenera is a setting of our planet Earth a billion years in the future. Many civilizations, human and other, have come and gone and the Earth looks very different from how it is in our present time. This book contains a wealth of setting information, three character class types, game mechanics, equipment, a bestiary, a section on running and playing a game, and three short adventures. This is definitively a well put together book for player and game master (GM) alike.
The Numenera system is based on the Monte Cook Cypher system. The D20 is the main die that it rolled with players trying to roll a Target Number to complete tasks (striking an enemy, dodging an attack, skill checks, etc.). The Target Number is based on the difficulty rating of a given task (which is set by the GM) and is the difficulty rating multiplied by 3 (for example a task could be difficulty of 4, which means 4 x 3 =12, thus a roll of 12 or above on a D20 means success). Of course, this means that a difficulty 10 task requires an impossible roll of 30 on a D20. This heroic task can still be done as skills, equipment and other assets will contribute to reducing the difficulty rating, thus reducing the Target Number. Additionally, players can spend points from their three attributes (Might, Speed and Intellect) to boost their chances of success, but players need to be aware of resource management as these three attributes also represent a character’s health and having a pool in an attribute reduced to 0 can mean death.
Another interesting game mechanic is GM Intrusions, which allow a GM to create a complication that a character must deal with. GM Intrusions are either done by the GM giving the player Experience Points (half of which the receiving player gives to a player of his/her choice) or if a player rolls a natural 1 on a D20 (no Experience Points are given in this case). Players can also use Experience Points (not the ones they just receiving from the Intrusion) to pay the GM to not introduce the GM Intrusion.
Numenera’s system offers a very flexible game system for GMs and players to understand and address a variety of encounters. Its more relaxed approached makes for easy encounter building for the GM and because the majority of the dice rolling (with only a very very few exceptions) is handled by the players, the GM is free to focus on running the game. The setting’s use of Numenera (tech devices from the past, which are separated into three groups- oddities, cyphers and artifacts) adds additional flavor, one-use powers (cyphers) or multi-use powers (artifacts) that characters can find in the course of their adventures. Overall, I was impressed with this setting/system.
The Numenera system is based on the Monte Cook Cypher system. The D20 is the main die that it rolled with players trying to roll a Target Number to complete tasks (striking an enemy, dodging an attack, skill checks, etc.). The Target Number is based on the difficulty rating of a given task (which is set by the GM) and is the difficulty rating multiplied by 3 (for example a task could be difficulty of 4, which means 4 x 3 =12, thus a roll of 12 or above on a D20 means success). Of course, this means that a difficulty 10 task requires an impossible roll of 30 on a D20. This heroic task can still be done as skills, equipment and other assets will contribute to reducing the difficulty rating, thus reducing the Target Number. Additionally, players can spend points from their three attributes (Might, Speed and Intellect) to boost their chances of success, but players need to be aware of resource management as these three attributes also represent a character’s health and having a pool in an attribute reduced to 0 can mean death.
Another interesting game mechanic is GM Intrusions, which allow a GM to create a complication that a character must deal with. GM Intrusions are either done by the GM giving the player Experience Points (half of which the receiving player gives to a player of his/her choice) or if a player rolls a natural 1 on a D20 (no Experience Points are given in this case). Players can also use Experience Points (not the ones they just receiving from the Intrusion) to pay the GM to not introduce the GM Intrusion.
Numenera’s system offers a very flexible game system for GMs and players to understand and address a variety of encounters. Its more relaxed approached makes for easy encounter building for the GM and because the majority of the dice rolling (with only a very very few exceptions) is handled by the players, the GM is free to focus on running the game. The setting’s use of Numenera (tech devices from the past, which are separated into three groups- oddities, cyphers and artifacts) adds additional flavor, one-use powers (cyphers) or multi-use powers (artifacts) that characters can find in the course of their adventures. Overall, I was impressed with this setting/system.
February 11, 2020
Read in preparation for running my first ever ttrpg session (ie, Dungeons and Dragons, but a different system - less die-rolling and fighting and more storytelling/creativity!), and this is an excellent reference book. Sometimes it is a bit general / repetitive (and, a couple times, defensive), but again, that is often necessary! My feelings for it are likely caught up in my overall admiration for the system itself, but this has been a welcome break from all the novels I was reading - I just couldn't get into anything for a while.
Read
December 31, 2021This is a very big Humble Bundle for the game Numenera, the science-fantasy game of far-future weirdness. This is almost a dying earth setup — far in the future, when several fantastic civilizations have already crumbled, littering the earth with technology indistinguishable from magic — except here there’s no Vancian sense of human depravity and failure (e.g., the mechanic in Robin D. Laws’s Dying Earth RPG where you have to roll to avoid giving in to your vice). In fact, in this second edition, the core of the game could be summed up by the subtitle of the core book: discovery. Much like in D&D, your heroes are given the job of exploring the world and (kinda sorta like D&D) maybe making it a better place.
I really love large parts of this game, while also getting somewhat overwhelmed when binging the books. This is of course a problem with bundles in general (or tv shows that drop all episodes at once), but there’s something particular about it here: part of the explicit goal of this world is to be Weird — the heroes are exploring a world where very little makes sense or even obeys the same laws of physics.
And yet, even though there’s a few notes here and there in the books about how the Weird plays best against a backdrop of mundanity, the focus of the book is on the Weird, which tends to blend together. Like, how many machine intelligences inimical to biological life, dimension-hopping demons, and structure beyond all understanding do we need? The answer Numenera gives is: all of them!
Perhaps reading this book with some group of gamers in mind would help winnow the options, but right now, this tips over from brain-expanding to mind-wiping, leaving me with only a bare purchase on what this game might be. And more importantly, how to take a game like this and make it not D&D. (Really, so many of the given adventures feel like they could be redone as D&D modules without losing much.)
All that said, here’s some things I really love:
* Almost every part of character creation asks you to make a connection with the world and/or with the other PCs (e.g., so you have some weird affinity with fire — but one of the people in the party is immune to your fire and you don’t know why)
* I just love the sentence form of character creation, which leaves you with some really clear ideas, like “I am a clever glaive (warrior) who metes out justice.”
* The notion of GM and player intrusions as ways to forward the story
* The idea that a player rolling a 1 or a 20 might not be a statement about that character (you fumble/you critically hit) but a way to move the story
* The instant adventure idea, which is a map of encounters (or just a map) with notes about what keys the PCs need to find in order to move forward (and of course the GM can move those keys around to make sure the PCs get them)
* So many great ideas about bits of weirdness here or there (though, sad to say that I am so awash in weirdness that I don’t think I can remember many)
* Player-facing rolls for everything (e.g., if the player is attacking, the player rolls; if a monster attacks, the player rolls)
* Notes here and there about “how to use X in a game”
* Delightful art (though since the science-fantasy setting lets them do anything, sometimes the art feels disconnected from the game in a way, like you could find these paintings of haunted cliff-cities in any game or comic — a problem I think would be easy to solve with captions, really).
Books in the bundle
CORE
* Discovery (core rulebook)
* Destiny (expansion rules for community and new community-centered character types)
* Player’s Guide (just the character creation and basic rules from the above two books)
SUPPLEMENTS
* The Ninth World Guidebook
* The Jade Colossus
* The Ninth World Bestiary 1 & 2 (ooh, a few notes on ecology)
* Technology Compendium
* Into the Deep (about the ocean, mostly weird locations and some rules for underwater adventuring)
* Into the Night (about space, mostly weird locations)
* Into the Outside (about dimensional travel, mostly weird locations)
* The Devil’s Spine (multi-part adventure — and I love the sidebars troubleshooting when the PCs might balk or interfere)
* Torment (guidebook for the world of the video game)
* Weird Discoveries (ten instant adventures, meant to play with minimal preparation)
Glimmers (short pdfs)
* Beyond All Worlds (22p) (an adventure into a hell dimension)
* Escape from the Jade Colossus (30p) (dungeon dive adventure, complete with pre-gen characters)
* In Alternate Dimensions (14p) (mostly random tables and suggestions for ways to make dimensional travel interesting)
* In Strange Aeons: Lovecraftian Numenera (13p, most on statting Cthulhu monsters in Numenera)
* Injecting the Weird (23p) (mostly random tables for weird things (structures, people, animals, etc.), just to remind you how weird the Ninth World is)
* Into the Violet Vale (25p) (adventure where the PCs, escorting a prisoner, get caught in a pocket dimension with a monster)
* Love and Sex (14p)
* Maps of the Ninth World
* Skein of the Blackbone Bride (27p) (adventure, the PCs hired to recover an automaton body, but have to find it and then figure out who the body really belongs to)
* Taking the Narrative by the Tail: GM Intrusions & Special Effects (7p)
* The Hideous Game (22p) (investigation-heavy adventure where monsters are playing serial killer games with people)
* The Nightcraft (10p) (a spaceship)
* The Octopi of the Ninth World (12p) (they’re intelligent, armed, and control the oceans)
* Vortex (19p) (adventure to rescue someone from a dimensional temple)
I really love large parts of this game, while also getting somewhat overwhelmed when binging the books. This is of course a problem with bundles in general (or tv shows that drop all episodes at once), but there’s something particular about it here: part of the explicit goal of this world is to be Weird — the heroes are exploring a world where very little makes sense or even obeys the same laws of physics.
And yet, even though there’s a few notes here and there in the books about how the Weird plays best against a backdrop of mundanity, the focus of the book is on the Weird, which tends to blend together. Like, how many machine intelligences inimical to biological life, dimension-hopping demons, and structure beyond all understanding do we need? The answer Numenera gives is: all of them!
Perhaps reading this book with some group of gamers in mind would help winnow the options, but right now, this tips over from brain-expanding to mind-wiping, leaving me with only a bare purchase on what this game might be. And more importantly, how to take a game like this and make it not D&D. (Really, so many of the given adventures feel like they could be redone as D&D modules without losing much.)
All that said, here’s some things I really love:
* Almost every part of character creation asks you to make a connection with the world and/or with the other PCs (e.g., so you have some weird affinity with fire — but one of the people in the party is immune to your fire and you don’t know why)
* I just love the sentence form of character creation, which leaves you with some really clear ideas, like “I am a clever glaive (warrior) who metes out justice.”
* The notion of GM and player intrusions as ways to forward the story
* The idea that a player rolling a 1 or a 20 might not be a statement about that character (you fumble/you critically hit) but a way to move the story
* The instant adventure idea, which is a map of encounters (or just a map) with notes about what keys the PCs need to find in order to move forward (and of course the GM can move those keys around to make sure the PCs get them)
* So many great ideas about bits of weirdness here or there (though, sad to say that I am so awash in weirdness that I don’t think I can remember many)
* Player-facing rolls for everything (e.g., if the player is attacking, the player rolls; if a monster attacks, the player rolls)
* Notes here and there about “how to use X in a game”
* Delightful art (though since the science-fantasy setting lets them do anything, sometimes the art feels disconnected from the game in a way, like you could find these paintings of haunted cliff-cities in any game or comic — a problem I think would be easy to solve with captions, really).
Books in the bundle
CORE
* Discovery (core rulebook)
* Destiny (expansion rules for community and new community-centered character types)
* Player’s Guide (just the character creation and basic rules from the above two books)
SUPPLEMENTS
* The Ninth World Guidebook
* The Jade Colossus
* The Ninth World Bestiary 1 & 2 (ooh, a few notes on ecology)
* Technology Compendium
* Into the Deep (about the ocean, mostly weird locations and some rules for underwater adventuring)
* Into the Night (about space, mostly weird locations)
* Into the Outside (about dimensional travel, mostly weird locations)
* The Devil’s Spine (multi-part adventure — and I love the sidebars troubleshooting when the PCs might balk or interfere)
* Torment (guidebook for the world of the video game)
* Weird Discoveries (ten instant adventures, meant to play with minimal preparation)
Glimmers (short pdfs)
* Beyond All Worlds (22p) (an adventure into a hell dimension)
* Escape from the Jade Colossus (30p) (dungeon dive adventure, complete with pre-gen characters)
* In Alternate Dimensions (14p) (mostly random tables and suggestions for ways to make dimensional travel interesting)
* In Strange Aeons: Lovecraftian Numenera (13p, most on statting Cthulhu monsters in Numenera)
* Injecting the Weird (23p) (mostly random tables for weird things (structures, people, animals, etc.), just to remind you how weird the Ninth World is)
* Into the Violet Vale (25p) (adventure where the PCs, escorting a prisoner, get caught in a pocket dimension with a monster)
* Love and Sex (14p)
* Maps of the Ninth World
* Skein of the Blackbone Bride (27p) (adventure, the PCs hired to recover an automaton body, but have to find it and then figure out who the body really belongs to)
* Taking the Narrative by the Tail: GM Intrusions & Special Effects (7p)
* The Hideous Game (22p) (investigation-heavy adventure where monsters are playing serial killer games with people)
* The Nightcraft (10p) (a spaceship)
* The Octopi of the Ninth World (12p) (they’re intelligent, armed, and control the oceans)
* Vortex (19p) (adventure to rescue someone from a dimensional temple)
September 20, 2019
This is an interesting RPG set a billion years in the future and is in the genre of Science Fantasy. When I was reading up on it, it reminded me of Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun which is one of my favorite books and as the introduction makes clear the setting is inspired by this book primarily although a useful bibliography is given.
The system is a very interesting system. It is rules light and designed to be very conducive to an improvisational sandbox style of play and should be very easy for a GM to run. I was looking for a game like this and as I read through the book it became clear that it would work exceptionally well in this style of play. The mechanics are both innovative and straight forward and very flexible. I have yet to run the game though, so I do not yet know how well it works in practice. PCs have three pools of energy that they can use to power special abilities. They make all the roles, so if they are attacked by a monster, for example, they roll to dodge, rather than the GM rolling to attack.
There are some flaws to the game. In particular, Monte Cook, who used to design for D&D is overly influenced by that game. The game has very advanced science that is effectively treated as magic, but sometimes the abilities just feel utterly like magic and not as incomprehensible science and technology. For instance, cold is often treated as a force instead of as an absence of heat and this gives it a magic feel instead of a incomprehensible technology feel and so on. The game also eschews too much technology which is comprehensible. There is no reason not to have radios and flying cars treated as if they were magic. In fact, the bibliography is filled with novels that do ust this sort of thing.
The overall layout of the book is excellent. There is a lot of art in it. Including a large number of small pictures which give an evocative feel of the world. They also have notes in the margins that cross reference to other parts of the book (incredibly handy) and also provide short notes. It's telling that in these notes they often give monster or NPC stats that are perfectly workable but that take only a sentence or two.
This reviews rating is very tentative and it could go up or down a star depending on exactly how it all works in play.
The system is a very interesting system. It is rules light and designed to be very conducive to an improvisational sandbox style of play and should be very easy for a GM to run. I was looking for a game like this and as I read through the book it became clear that it would work exceptionally well in this style of play. The mechanics are both innovative and straight forward and very flexible. I have yet to run the game though, so I do not yet know how well it works in practice. PCs have three pools of energy that they can use to power special abilities. They make all the roles, so if they are attacked by a monster, for example, they roll to dodge, rather than the GM rolling to attack.
There are some flaws to the game. In particular, Monte Cook, who used to design for D&D is overly influenced by that game. The game has very advanced science that is effectively treated as magic, but sometimes the abilities just feel utterly like magic and not as incomprehensible science and technology. For instance, cold is often treated as a force instead of as an absence of heat and this gives it a magic feel instead of a incomprehensible technology feel and so on. The game also eschews too much technology which is comprehensible. There is no reason not to have radios and flying cars treated as if they were magic. In fact, the bibliography is filled with novels that do ust this sort of thing.
The overall layout of the book is excellent. There is a lot of art in it. Including a large number of small pictures which give an evocative feel of the world. They also have notes in the margins that cross reference to other parts of the book (incredibly handy) and also provide short notes. It's telling that in these notes they often give monster or NPC stats that are perfectly workable but that take only a sentence or two.
This reviews rating is very tentative and it could go up or down a star depending on exactly how it all works in play.
February 4, 2019
An excellent updated rulebook that adds without taking anything away. New rules and changes to Types are simple but inspired and the new adventures are all excellent, even if only used as reading material. This book won't require a GM to update from their original core book as most of the changes are relatively minor - although the Jack has had a fairly substantial overhaul - but any new GM, or indeed one who loves the Numenera setting and wants to have a slightly more refined ruleset, will find plenty of thought-provoking ideas here. Numenera is my favourite system that I have GMed and I am very glad that the quality of releases continues to be of stellar quality.
August 26, 2018
Simple RPG. Amazing world. Extremely imaginative and not just and LOR or sci-fi world - something new and weird. The book itself is extremely well put together and amazing artwork. The writing at Moments is beautiful
May 19, 2022
A great ttrpg rulebook and setting, with Monte Cook’s penchant for incredibly creative settings and a really weird and interesting system. Reading it gave me constant ideas for what I would add in a campaign I run
February 3, 2019
One of my favorite systems.
January 14, 2021
Monte Cook built an incredible world, lore, and setting! This is an elegant system and this book is full of inspiration and instruction. Very happy with Numenera - did not disappoint!
April 17, 2021
Fantastic.
December 31, 2021
4.5 stars! gave me back all my passion for running tabletop rpgs. rtc!
March 22, 2023
Great ruleset, and a very personal description on how to play the system. My rating can change after I run the adventures.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews