Fulminata reviewed Numenera by Monte Cook
Review of 'Numenera' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
The much anticipated latest RPG from Monte Cook. Numenera is a science-fantasy set billions of years in the future inspired by Arthur C. Clarke's famous quote about sufficiently advanced science being indistinguishable from magic.
The rulebook is a beautiful 400+ full color tome using the textbook style layout that Monte previously used in Ptolus. I think it works really well, and am somewhat surprised that no one else has emulated it. Only somewhat, because I imagine it's a somewhat time consuming format to produce.
Despite the page count, it's a relatively rules-light system. The core rules take up less than 30 pages of the book. Mechanically it’s still a fairly traditional RPG. There are some interesting bits borrowed from less traditional games. For example, it uses a player facing dice system: the GM never rolls dice. Also, with the GM Intervention rule the GM can offer a player XP to …
The much anticipated latest RPG from Monte Cook. Numenera is a science-fantasy set billions of years in the future inspired by Arthur C. Clarke's famous quote about sufficiently advanced science being indistinguishable from magic.
The rulebook is a beautiful 400+ full color tome using the textbook style layout that Monte previously used in Ptolus. I think it works really well, and am somewhat surprised that no one else has emulated it. Only somewhat, because I imagine it's a somewhat time consuming format to produce.
Despite the page count, it's a relatively rules-light system. The core rules take up less than 30 pages of the book. Mechanically it’s still a fairly traditional RPG. There are some interesting bits borrowed from less traditional games. For example, it uses a player facing dice system: the GM never rolls dice. Also, with the GM Intervention rule the GM can offer a player XP to declare that something bad happens to that player. Intervening in the story is something that GMs do all the time, but Numenera provides a game mechanic to back it up.
It differs from less traditional games in that the player still has no narrative control over anything in the world other than their character. The only real exception being the option to spend an XP to avoid the GM Intervention mentioned above.
Overall, this is an interesting game and I plan on running at least a session or two of it.
Update: I have since run a one-shot game of this for six players at our local game-day/minicon and it seemed to go over well. The mechanics appeared to be easily grasped by everyone there despite only one having looked at the rules prior to play. While this isn't a game I'm likely to run or play in much myself, it does seem to be a solid game.