Off the Shelf: Numenera

In Numenera, characters explore the ruins of the past and discover wonders to help build a better future. - Numenera Destiny, page 4.

As I'm pulling out my Cypher books, I will bring Numenera out of storage and onto a shelf for a while. This is an extraordinary, speculative, almost "lost Earth" sort of setting, a billion years in the future, where the world (and universe) has suffered multiple civilizational collapses.

This is one of the best science fantasy settings out there, not necessarily a Dying Earth dystopia (but it can be), but more of a strange, nanotech, super-science, living world, nightmare, bio-goo, AI-infused, mutational, psionic, oddly technological, energy-manipulated, genetically engineered, dimensionally travelling, broken networked, lost stellar, future world filled with who-knows-what and what-the-heck-is-that everything and strange we-have-no-clues.

The setting can be post-apocalyptic, quasi-medieval, weird horror, or a hopeful new world. Or all of them at once. It's similar to Gamma World, but not exactly. Gamma World is more D&D in technological dungeons with gotcha technology that can kill you for no reason, plus robots and mutants. Additionally, the setting assumes you are rebuilding society, rather than accumulating personal power.

There is an open question: we are in the Ninth World, the previous destroyed eight times over, so what is the point? Considering this world may never be destroyed again, that is the hopeful outcome you will be a part of. If not, you have a hundred million years to figure that out.

Numenera is more of a massive setting with any flavor you want. Start small, initially, with just a town and some ruins, and gauge your interests and those of your players. Figure out the ruins, the local bad guys, some locals, maybe some points of interest, a few places down the road or coast, and the stories you want to tell. Start with more minor, personal conflicts, and then gradually grow your scope.

Give the players a few memorable and worthy places and NPCs! You could create a town and place a holographic cabaret at its center, making it a popular spot for both travelers and locals. This place has been here since the city's inception, and no one knows how or why it works; it simply seems to function continuously. After you get player interest, draw them in with a few mysteries and unexplained messages that the holographs begin to give the players, sending them on quests around the area. Perhaps it will stop one day, and the characters will need to fix it or replace the power source. Let them make it their own. If they love the place, send them on quests to repair, upgrade, or improve it.

In these post-apocalyptic settings and games, there is often "no reason to care" about a harsh world with no hope. Numenera gives you plenty of tools and reasons "out of thin air" to get players to care and hook them in. Use them. Combine fantasy and unexplained technology. Give them a mental cry for help. Have monsters form out of goo. Let them discover an android trying to paint a painting with no brushes, paint, or canvas, and not realizing there is nothing there to work with. What happens when the characters give the android something to paint with? Can they talk to it? Will it respond if it finishes a real painting?

This is a better game than Gamma World, as it offers an extraordinary experience. It fills that "mutants and mayhem" itch, while presenting a system of rules where anything can be created by the referee, since the underlying Cypher System is capable of inventing almost any challenge or monster out of thin air. We don't need "product identity" since we can create it ourselves.

Gamma World tends to be either "primitive villagers in a high-tech nightmare dungeon" or "a medieval world with mutants and plant people visiting the ruins." There typically isn't a "bigger picture," and the game trends towards the D&D "increase my personal power over all else." Gamma World is also very loot-oriented. Once you get that 6d6 laser rifle and a stock of power cells, a set of good power armor, and a few energy grenades, you are set to start fighting warbots.

This is also the point at which many campaigns typically end. Back in the day, we were kids, and we did not have many more stories than "get loot, get power." Numenera is a longer-term campaign, more focused on narrative, worldbuilding, exploration, and story than treasure and personal power. These days, I am far more interested in story than mechanics.

That personal power thing is also D&D's Achilles' Heel, especially the newer versions of the game. If you are not interested in that "character build," then you are likely not interested in 5E at all.

If your imagination fails you, the game features three amazing bestiaries, plus a few dozen additional creatures in the core book. There is no lack of interesting, strange, "we have never seen that before" foes in this game. And you could reskin and mod all these, too, or pull monsters in from the Cypher System or the Strange games (and those two bestiaries). Five monster books? Go to town.

Numenera is a fantastic game, with one of the best science fantasy settings ever devised for creating your own stories, ruins, monsters, peoples, and places. It goes beyond your typical "mutants and mayhem" style of dungeon-first ruin crawls, and it world builds and gives you a vast space to create stories within. The game can be too imaginative for some, and I wish more people would play and appreciate this one.

What brought this game back to my mind was Daggerheart and the "you create your own world" starting point. Where that game falls short is that you are still in a fantasy system, and your concepts, magic, spells, and powers are all "sort of D&D-ish." You don't get to play with lasers, robots, technology, teleporters, bio-monsters, power first weapons, or any cool science fiction devices and technology. You don't have hover bikes, submersibles, high-tech wetsuits, jet-skis, hover-boots, concealment cloaks, space ships, hover platforms, mutants, cyborgs, androids, or AI computers with nano-bots.

You are still stuck in that D&D fantasy world.

Numenera gives you all that and more.