Numenera 2 - Destiny
My #RPGaMonth for October is Numenera 2 - Destiny, the latest incarnation of Monte Cook’s Numenera game.
What is Numenera 2?
Numenera 2 means that there are two core books. The first Numenera - Discovery is more or less the same thing that was already the first Numenera. One may look at reviews for that, the differences are small. The greatest being that you now have Player Intrusions as well. A player intrusion is the reverse of a GM intrusion. Instead of getting an experience point for a complication, you pay with an experience point for a greater positive effect which is described in detail in your character's type.
What is Numenera - Destiny?
So, Numenera - Discovery is about the players discovering the so-called Ninth World. The Destiny book is different. The focus of the campaign is on playing in a community setting. The players help to start a community, make it prosper and steer or influence it. The games here will likely be more bound to a specific location where your community may reside. Instead of sole exploration, the management of resources has now a great deal of importance.
The analogy might be like a part of the game Civilization where you start with the first city. You may pick a spot where the community starts or take over a site abandoned or something like that. The characters are now kind of the wise women or wise men which help develop everything. The game has two different play modes. There is the normal RPG part, where the characters act like before and interact with persons on a detailed and individual level. But there is also a long-term level, where each action is measured in full months. E.g. it takes 2 months to train the local people in defence, or 1 month to establish a new trade route or something like that.
The community itself is described in a couple of stats (mainly rank, health, armor, damage) and a couple of resources that are available, like how many pieces of Thaum Dust the community has stored, or how much food and water is produced.
Players action can change the stats of the community and different communities may interact with each other via their stats. Like the rank 2 killer robot tribe attacks a rank 4 community with health 20 and armor 1. On a successful attack the robot deal 2 points of damage, but due to the armor only 1 point of health is decreased. Probably the defences at the perimeter of the community were a bit lax, but nevertheless fast enough, such that only a few casualties occurred.
How does it feel playing?
We only did three sessions, so I can’t comment on long-term motivation, but it is really a different beast if you like me have played more or less only on an individual level. Playing the long-term actions has a certain feeling like role-playing a strategy game like Civilization. It is much fun and helps to overcome the limitations of such a computer game by the power of imagination. It is a bit like the modes in Microscope where you switch between a global view and a local narration. It gives you all those ideas, where to start a new individual RPG session. For example to build the protective force field that helps to mitigate the killer robot tribe problem mentioned above you need certain resources (long-term action “build force field”). To get those you may need to explore a certain abandoned site where the needed parts may be located (long-term action “find iotum”). But there are strange people living there with whom your community can probably trade, etc… You get the picture. In each of those cases you stay on the abstract long-term mode, but also switch to individual character mode, where the party explores the site and directly interact with the people there.
Final thoughts
Right now, I like the ideas very much. It is sometimes a bit fuzzy which level or mode to chose to play that, but it is so inspirational to think in a more big picture way. I will certainly come back to have a longer try.
What is Numenera 2?
Numenera 2 means that there are two core books. The first Numenera - Discovery is more or less the same thing that was already the first Numenera. One may look at reviews for that, the differences are small. The greatest being that you now have Player Intrusions as well. A player intrusion is the reverse of a GM intrusion. Instead of getting an experience point for a complication, you pay with an experience point for a greater positive effect which is described in detail in your character's type.
What is Numenera - Destiny?
So, Numenera - Discovery is about the players discovering the so-called Ninth World. The Destiny book is different. The focus of the campaign is on playing in a community setting. The players help to start a community, make it prosper and steer or influence it. The games here will likely be more bound to a specific location where your community may reside. Instead of sole exploration, the management of resources has now a great deal of importance.
The analogy might be like a part of the game Civilization where you start with the first city. You may pick a spot where the community starts or take over a site abandoned or something like that. The characters are now kind of the wise women or wise men which help develop everything. The game has two different play modes. There is the normal RPG part, where the characters act like before and interact with persons on a detailed and individual level. But there is also a long-term level, where each action is measured in full months. E.g. it takes 2 months to train the local people in defence, or 1 month to establish a new trade route or something like that.
The community itself is described in a couple of stats (mainly rank, health, armor, damage) and a couple of resources that are available, like how many pieces of Thaum Dust the community has stored, or how much food and water is produced.
Players action can change the stats of the community and different communities may interact with each other via their stats. Like the rank 2 killer robot tribe attacks a rank 4 community with health 20 and armor 1. On a successful attack the robot deal 2 points of damage, but due to the armor only 1 point of health is decreased. Probably the defences at the perimeter of the community were a bit lax, but nevertheless fast enough, such that only a few casualties occurred.
How does it feel playing?
We only did three sessions, so I can’t comment on long-term motivation, but it is really a different beast if you like me have played more or less only on an individual level. Playing the long-term actions has a certain feeling like role-playing a strategy game like Civilization. It is much fun and helps to overcome the limitations of such a computer game by the power of imagination. It is a bit like the modes in Microscope where you switch between a global view and a local narration. It gives you all those ideas, where to start a new individual RPG session. For example to build the protective force field that helps to mitigate the killer robot tribe problem mentioned above you need certain resources (long-term action “build force field”). To get those you may need to explore a certain abandoned site where the needed parts may be located (long-term action “find iotum”). But there are strange people living there with whom your community can probably trade, etc… You get the picture. In each of those cases you stay on the abstract long-term mode, but also switch to individual character mode, where the party explores the site and directly interact with the people there.
Final thoughts
Right now, I like the ideas very much. It is sometimes a bit fuzzy which level or mode to chose to play that, but it is so inspirational to think in a more big picture way. I will certainly come back to have a longer try.
