Road War: It's Numenera

One of my stranger thoughts about my "Road War" campaign is, "This is also Numenera." I am not basing the game on a real-world version; all my locations and maps are made up. This is a "Road Warrior" world, but in that sort of strange, generic, desert-ruin, Hollywood-movie-style landscape of "this could be anywhere, but nowhere" setting.

AI Art by @nightcafestudio

This is a strange sub-plane of Numenera somewhere or even a part of the world where nano-technology has adopted a post-apoc road-war reality. It is modern-day, but it isn't. There are fantastical monsters alongside muscle cars, rocket launchers, and machine guns. None of the weapons are "modern-day," but they are like that.

Or this world would fit in as a  "recursion" in The Strange. This would make sense if you wanted this world as a "standalone" experience. I could go either way and easily "flavor" an area of Numenera if I wanted to.

Suppose you look at the world of Numenera being like an entire planet under the control of rogue nano-machines and massive underground AIs of past civilizations. In that case, you get a "Westworld" feeling, but instead of a company running the show, something else is. An AI, an alien intelligence, a computer that ran an automotive theme park, or the "God of the Road?" Who knows? A massive automotive factory could be lost underneath a desert, cranking out muscle cars, and many machines and AIs aligning their world-view on competing versions of the apocalypse based on 1980s action movies. And since this is a billion years on, those get twisted, and there were probably a few hundred thousand "1980s" style eras (of different alien cultures) the machines can pull a reality from.

And the Numenera rulebook says you can play the game from strict high fantasy to sci-fi. Post-apocalyptic and horror are in there too. Nothing in the book says that you can't play the game as a Road Warrior-style game. And since you can paint the game with any feeling, like calling lost tech magic and glaives "fighters," I can easily flavor the entire Road War area as a post-apoc 1980s movie.

AI Art by @nightcafestudio

One of the enormous problems I had with previous iterations of this world I played with Car Wars to Pathfinder 1e was linking it to Earth. I had to deal with geography, roads, maps, governments, history, cultures, borders, and the possible lack of the above. Things change, why, and how? Is this group still around? What about this border? What about the military? The Internet? Satellites? Technology? Air travel?

With my Road War world in its own self-contained "hex crawl" sort of place, I can play a more local-focused game and not worry about the big-picture details. I just have one map of one valley; the rest of the continent and world feel free. The cultures? Your typical post-apoc mix with a Southwestern style, and then go as wild as you want. Why? No idea; that is the media and information the local underground AI pumps out. Other sources, even alien sources, mix in there, but you can easily have a "themed" area of this world.

I don't want to worry about "what happened to the real world?" I don't have to write history. And I don't have centuries of geopolitics breathing down my neck. The world is that magical place of blacktop highways, deserts, fortress cities, strange ruins, ghost towns, remote stations, abandoned sprawl, and lawless crime zones.

I am using the Cypher System since that feels like a better fit, but since Numenera is 100% compatible, anything from those books can drop in. Tech, cyphers, monsters, or artifacts? They all work or flavor them to fit in. Aliens or other species could show up, and no one blinks an eye. They are just "other landers," which is how things work.

Will I play the standard setting? Likely, yes. Is the Road War version of the setting fun? Oh, yes! Any of the AI-generated art fits for cars and scenery since those are so strange, they fit right in. Some are normal, and some are insane, but everything is fantastic.

AI Art by @nightcafestudio

The needs are simple. Food and resources. Oil, steel, fabric, glass, and rubber for the cars. Roads. Towns. And minimal technology in other areas. Yes to radio and vinyl, and no to TV and digital. No computers or internet. Wire-based analog rotary phones in small areas. Books. Telegraphs. Newspapers. Hand-carried mail and package delivery. Movies on large film reels. Film cameras. The feel of the 1950s without the slide into the 1970s. And if the technologies are not the same, the Numenera equivalents are "like those" since they align with the whole reality zone of the area.

Which is essential. The tech of the area matches the flavor and feeling. Cyphers are subtly adjusted to match 1950s tech or even 50s science-fiction devices. People get together to watch movie-like entertainment, and maybe these are found like cyphers that play a movie once, and that is it. So everyone has to be there to experience it together. Some watch, others write down, and maybe others draw the things they see. And others take it in, knowing this is the only time they can.

The radios are playing strange songs. Books, dances, concerts, and plays are popular.

AI Art by @nightcafestudio

Then there are the roads. On which survival depends. The wastelands are home to many lawless areas, and those forces of chaos descend on the fortress communities of those seeking to build, not destroy. The convoys keeping the good places fed and supplied need to get through. Air travel is not seen that often, if at all. And the world is simple in some ways and fantastical in others.

So it is Numenera. Or The Strange. Or is this a standalone Cypher world? But as Numenera, this flavor is as valid as the high fantasy or science fiction version. As the game says, it is all flavor. What matters is having fun.