Why is Numenera Different

So Numenera, Monte Cook’s new mind-blowingly illustrated, kickass kickstarted RPG is here. Monte is one of the designers who brought us the D20 renaissance that sustained the RPG world through the last decade or so, and you might be wondering if this is just more of the same – D20 Gamma World if you will.

            I got my digital hands on the PDF of the Numenera corebook at the beginning of August and had time to read it and prepare an adventure for Gen Con. Based on that experience, I can tell you that the only things this game has in common with the D20 system is that it does actually use a d20 to resolve tasks, higher rolls are better, and there are character classes (sort of). That’s where the similarities end. Here is why this game is different.

Creativity Trumps Rules

If you’ve followed Numenera’s development at all, you know that the big draw is the unique, far future setting. So why develop a whole new rules system for it? Why not use D20 and the OGL? My impression is that Monte set out to create a game where there are just enough rules to provide structure and differentiation between characters, but not so many rules that players make decisions based on them. We’re all trying to get back to AD&D here, back when you decided what your characters wanted to do, and then figured out how that got modeled in the rules. From my brief experience so far, I think Numenera succeeds. None of my players ever asked about rules before they decided what their characters would do next. This is about players being in charge of their story, not constrained in their actions because “there’s no rule for that.”

Players Are In Charge Of Their Own Fate

At its core, Numenera gameplay still comes down to players rolling a d20 to see if they succeed at a task, but the dynamics of those rolls are, in many ways, flipped 180 degrees from what you’d expect. The gamemaster sets a difficulty for each task, and the player uses the character’s skills, assets (tools, etc.) and situational advantages to reduce the difficulty before rolling. It’s all very smooth and very easy for both the players and the gamemaster. In addition, characters have attribute pools reflecting how smart, strong or speedy they are. These pools can be spent as “effort” to decrease the difficulty of a task further, but they also act as the player’s hit points, creating wonderful tension and giving the players more choices about how and when they use their resources. Again, this worked very well and the players got the idea very quickly.

            Another twist is that the gamemaster never makes any of these rolls, only the players. If a player is attacking, she rolls against a fixed difficulty and decreases it based on attack skills and effort. If an enemy is attacking her, she makes a defensive roll against a fixed difficulty, reducing it with defensive skills, assets and effort. This brings up a key question that illustrates very well how this game is different: What happens when a non-player character (NPC) is fighting another NPC? The answer is that the gamemaster just decides what happens. Why roll at all? Once you step over this line as a gamemaster, you’ll wonder why that wasn’t always the answer. Brilliant.

The Gamemaster Intrudes

As a Numenera gamemaster, I lose the ability to make die rolls, which means I can’t hide behind a screen and cheat rolls to railroad the players into situations. To compensate for this, Monte includes “GM Intrusion,” which amounts to the gamemaster declaring the outcome of a task or the appearance of a new, perhaps highly coincidental complication. This is simply being open and honest about what used to happen behind the screen, and now the players get to be in on the decision. If they accept, they also get experience points!

            This is a very different way of controlling the narrative and may be one of the most difficult parts of Numenera. When is something GM Intrusion and when is it just declaring what’s happening in the world? How will you make sure you don’t favor some players over others? I found I had to write down possible GM Intrusion hints for each encounter in an adventure – usually coincidental complications like “The Emmissary recognizes one of the PCs from childhood and singles him out as an example” or “The PC happens to walk up to the tower just as the rings activate.”

NPCs are not PCs

In most games, I spend more time making up the stats for a powerful NPC than the players actually spent talking to her or killing her. Numenera rejects the assumption that NPCs and creatures should follow the same rules used for player characters (PCs). PCs are in this for the long haul and require a rich set of abilities to differentiate themselves from their companions and let them shine in a variety of situations. Most NPCs and creatures need only the most basic stats, and maybe one or two special abilities to keep the PCs on their toes. In Numenera, a basic NPC can consist of only a short description (the most important part) and a level. This level determines the difficulty for all PC rolls vs. that NPC, unless the GM changes it under special circumstances (like the level 3 merchant who is level 5 when haggling or appraising). As a GM, this is so refreshing. All my time creating my campaign revolved around story, or special NPC and creature abilities tied to story. Not once did I have to determine an NPC’s strength, or initiative, or calculate a total attack bonus. And you know what? The PCs never knew or cared that my NPCs didn’t have a half sheet of numbers to back up the difficulty of their rolls.

Character Creation, Not Character Calculation

Monte wrote a very interesting Blog entry a few weeks ago about roleplaying games that center around success in character creation rather than actual play. He managed to put into words something that’s been bugging me for a while. It explains much of the attraction of myself and many of my players to story-based RPG systems, like Fate, over more min-maxable games. In Numenara, Monte picks a  middle ground where players make three choices from a fixed, but rich menu of characteristics. This is the distinctive Numenera character pattern of “I am an [adjective][noun] who [verbs]." The adjectives are things like Graceful, Tough, or Charming. The noun is one of the three basic character classes, and the verbs are colorful descriptions of special abilities called foci, like “Masters Weaponry” or “Exists Partially out of Phase.” After choosing your character’s three part description, there are still a few basic decisions to make about your stat pools and special abilities, but it’s very quick. After a fairly short process of very interesting decision-making, you’ll have a surprisingly rich and unique character that’s nothing like anyone else at the table. This system also lends itself very well to future source books stuffed with new adjectives and foci.

A World of Discovery and Cyphers

Numenera is set on Earth, but a billion years in the future. Eight advanced civilizations, some not even human, have risen and fallen, and the planet itself has been molded to fit their needs and is barely recognizable. By some strange twist of fate, the Earth is once again inhabited by humans much like us, with medieval technology except where they have discovered and adapted the unfathomable tools of previous civilizations  - the numenera. Whatever lofty purpose that smooth, self-heating platform once served, it’s now used to dry tobacco (or a Ninth World equivalent). And if you turn the dial on the small yellow canisters found in certain ancient ruins and throw them in the lake before the blinking light glows solid red, you can stun a lot of fish.

            This creates a world of pseudo-magic and great mysteries, many of them unsolvable. It gives the GM free reign to create anything at all, and to surprise the players. This is a game about discovering new things, and it is discovery, not combat, that gives the players experience points to develop their characters. This world also allowed Monte to create the concept of cyphers. One goal of the game seems to be to allow players to feel good about themselves because they come up with just the right creative solution for a problem. A Cypher is a relatively common piece of technology that can only be used once to gain some weird effect – sort of like scrolls in a traditional fantasy game, but available to everyone. A Cypher might turn a character invisible, or fly off and scan an area for life signs, or create a protective force field around the party. The possibilities are wide open, and the gamemaster doesn’t have to worry about creating a game-breaking cypher, because once it’s used it’s gone. I should note that coming up with interesting cyphers was one of the more challenging parts of gamemastering Numenera, but the table in the rulebook and the Cypher Deck are very helpful.

Overall Impressions

      Players adapted quickly to the difficulty system and the use of stat pools, but it took a little while for us to get the hang of GM Intrusion. Combat rounds, though more abstract than most players were used to, went well, though one of the more complicated combats would have benefited from the use of miniatures. Also, players became obsessed with finding beneficial uses for every weird piece of numenera they found, which was a lot of fun.

      Throughout the process of learning the Numenera rules, creating an adventure, and running it, three things really stood out as unique. First, the system is wonderful for gamemasters. I could concentrate on the setting and story and only add detail when it mattered, not because I had to complete a numerical model. In all situations, except when the PCs were involved, I could just decide outcomes without being subject to the tyranny of my own dice. It was liberating, both in planning and while running the adventure. Second, I could see that the players were immediately interested in their characters and knew what made them special. They played to their strengths, accepted the complications of GM Intrusion, and had a great time. Third, I fell in love with the weirdness and malleability of the Ninth World. At first I was worried that the players would hate that there were things in the world they couldn’t fully understand, but they took it in stride and rejoiced in what they did discover. When you think about it, the Ninth World isn't that different from our own. I don’t even really understand how my cell phone works – it’s essentially numenera.