Heroic, But Perilous

Time has long since passed since the Old World was destroyed in the End Times. Since that time, eight Mortal Realms have arisen from their remnants, each keyed to one of the eight Winds of Magic and connected by the magical portals known as Realmgates. Sigmar survived the End Times and was borne to the Mortal Realms, uniting the survivors and bringing the gift of civilisation, as well as finding the other gods and appointing them divine protectors of the Eight Realms. Grungni taught mortals metalcraft, Nagash imposed order on the spirits of the restless dead, the savage twin-god Gorkamorka cleared the wilderness of monsters, and Sigmar established a great Parliament of the Gods. It was a new golden age under the protection of the Pantheon of Order, but it was not to last. Rivalries and sins caused cracks and fractures in the world and it is though these that Chaos entered the Mortal Realms. Their worship spread and spread untold, until the emboldened Dark Gods unleashed their legions on all of the eight realms. The gods of the Pantheon of Order together had the strength to stand against the Chaos, but riven by rivalries and jealousies, they failed and what remained of the Pantheon of Order was catastrophically defeated at the Battle of the Burning Skies. Thus, was ushered in the Age of Chaos… It was compounded by the Necroquake, a great ritual by the Supreme Necromancer, Nagash, to harness the Winds of Magic that was undone by Chaos and forcing the dead to rise and changing the nature of magic as it flowed into the realms and unleashed devastatingly predatory living spells that stalked the lands.

All was not lost. Sigmar, the God-King still yet faced the forces of Chaos, rampaging Greenskin Hordes, and Nagash’s legions of spirits and undead servants, for he had his Stormcast Eternals, paragons of humanity whose mortal souls are reforged with the celestial energies of the Cosmic Storm and hammered into living weapons of Azyr upon the Anvil of Apotheosis. Yet they are few in number, and so he put out calls to former allies. Yet it was not enough, for not all answered his call, and so he turned to the people of the Mortal Realms. The mightiest of souls and most powerful of realms came together and entering into Bindings which bound small bands together to fight for the Mortal Realms. Together, they are SOULBOUND, and as a new era looms, the Age of Death, they are needed more than ever!

This is the set-up for Warhammer Age of Sigmar – Soulbound: Perilous Adventures in the Mortal Realms, a roleplaying game published by Cubicle 7 Entertainment based upon Warhammer Age of Sigmar, the miniatures wargame from Games Workshop. Warhammer Age of Sigmar was originally published in 2015 as a replacement for the venerable Warhammer Age of Sigmar—upon which Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Fourth Edition—and as of 2024, is on its fourth edition itself. Although perilous as the roleplaying game’s subtitle suggest, this is not as grim or as grotty as other roleplaying games set with the Warhammer universe, certainly not like Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. Instead, it is a world of high and heroic fantasy, one in which the Player Characters are bound—or Soulbound—into small groups, or Bindings, which last a lifetime. They embody hope against the death and chaos, and Chaos, and this can be expressed through Soulfire, that collectively, they can make them do amazing and truly heroic things!

A Player Character is primarily defined by an Archetype, which sets his starting Attributes, faction or cultural heritage, Species, and initial options in terms of Skills, Talents, and equipment. The five Species are Human, Stormcast Eternal, Aelf, Duardin, and Sylvaneth. A Stormcast Eternal is a reforged soul, the Aelf and Duardin are similar to the Elf and Dwarf, but not the same, and the Sylvaneth is a living tree. A Player Character has three attributes—Body, Mind, and Soul—which typically range between one and eight, with two being considered average. There are several different factions, such as the Daughters of Khaine, devoted to the Aelven god of battle and bloodshed, and the Idoneth Deepkin, said to have been saved from Slannesh’s gullet and now reside in the most hidden place of the Mortal Realms, its ocean floors; and the Duardin mercenaries of the Fyreslayers and the scientific privateers in their great airships, the Kharadron Overlords. There are twenty-three Archetypes. For the Human there is the Battle Mage and Excelsior Warpriest; For the Aelf there is the Black Ark Corsair, Darkling Sorceress, Hag Priestess, Witch Aelf, Akhelian Emissary, Isharann Soulscryer, and Isharann Tidecaster. For the Duardin there is Auric Runesmiter, Battlesmith, Doomseeker, Aether-Khemist, Endrinmaster, and Skymaster. For the Stormcast Eternal there is the Knight-Azyros, Knight-Incantor, Knight-Questor, and Knight-Venator. For the Sylvaneth, there is the Branchwych, Kurnoth Hunter, and Tree-Revenant Waypiper. Lastly, anyone can become a Trade Pioneer.

What is missing here is options for Orruks or Ogors and other Species. Not all other Species are suitable as Player Characters, the options are limited, as those especially for Humans, although the Stormcast Eternal are a variant of Human, one initially idealised, but each time a Stormcast Eternal dies and is reforged, he loses some of his humanity. To create a Player Character, a player selects an Archetype, several Talents from the Archetype’s list, and spends some given Experience Points on improving the Archetype’s skills. He also sets long and short term goals for his character and together with the other players, sets long and short term goals for the party. Completing these is a major way to earn Experience Points. Connections between the Player Characters are determined, either making them or rolling on the given table, and each player also has a set of questions to answer that help round out his character.

Krylla Heartseeker
Faction: Daughters of Khaine
Archetype: Hag Priestess
Age: 110
Height: 6’ 9”
Eye Colour: Gold Eye Type: Mesmerising
Hair Colour: Deep Red
Distinguishing Feature: Strange arcane markings on chest

Body 2 Mind 2 Soul 4

Melee 3 (Average) Accuracy 2 (Poor) Defence 3 (Average) Armour 1
Toughness 8 Wounds 4 Initiative 3 (Average) Natural Awareness 2 (Poor)
Mettle 2

Core Skill: Devotion (Training 1 Focus 1)
Skills: Awareness (Training 1 Focus 0), Determination (Training 1 Focus 0), Guile (Training 1 Focus 0), Reflexes (Training 1 Focus 0), Theology (Training 1 Focus 1), Weapon Skill (Training 1 Focus 0)

Core Talent: Blessed (Khaine)
Talents: Fearless, Forbidden Knowledge, Blood Binding, Red Mist

Equipment: Ceremonial armour (Light Armour), sacrificial blade (Dagger), a bloodstained ritual chalice (Holy Symbol), a whetstone, manacles, pestle and mortar, and 280 drops of Aqua Ghyranis.

Mechanically, Soulbound uses a dice pool using six-sided dice. The basic aim is for a player to roll dice and get results that equal or exceed a Difficulty Number to generate successes. Both the Difficulty Number and the number of successes required will vary. A Test adheres to the format, ‘DN X:Y Attribute (Skill), where ‘X’ is the Difficulty of the Test, ‘Y’ is the Complexity, or the number of successes required to succeed, and the Attribute and Skill indicating which should be used. For example, a Dexterity Test of Difficulty 4 and Complexity 2 is shown as DN 4:2 Body (Dexterity); a Channelling Test of Difficulty 3 and Complexity 4 is shown as DN 3:4 Mind (Channelling). Most Tests only require a single success, but Tests with greater Complexity will require more. Advantage and Disadvantage will adjust the Difficulty down or up as appropriate.

The number of dice a player will roll to perform a Test will depend on the appropriate Attribute for his character and the degree of Training the character has in the skill. If none, or Untrained, the player just rolls a number of dice equal to the Attribute. For each level of Training—either one, two, or three—a player will add an extra die. In addition to Training, a Player Character can have Focus in a skill, again, either one, two, or three levels. For each level in Focus, a player gains a single +1 bonus. These bonuses are used to adjust the results of the dice after they have been rolled.

For example, the high priestess is testing Krylla Heartseeker to determine if she is worthy of being assigned an important. To prove her worthiness, the Game Master sets the Test at DN 4:2 Soul (Devotion), meaning that Krylla Heartseeker’s player must roll two successes of four or more. Her player assembles her dice pool of four from Krylla Heartseeker’s Soul and adds another one for the single level of Training she has in the Devotion skill. In total, she is rolling five dice. Krylla Heartseeker’s player rolls two, three, four, five, and six. This gives Krylla three success, more than enough to success, but she also a level of Focus in the skill, so uses it to adjust the result of three to a four, and this gives her four success. Enough to succeed and Kyrlla to a give a very impressive answer that persuades the high priestess that not only is she worthy of the task, but is given some secret information about it as well.

In addition, all Soulbound have access to Mettle. This partly regenerates every turn after use and can be used to take an extra action, use a Talent or Miracle, and temporarily either double the Training or Focus in a skill. The Binding as whole has access to Soulfire that can be spent to achieve the maximum successes on a Test instead of rolling, to reroll as many dice as necessary, to recover Toughness or all spent Mettle, or to cheat death. Soulfire is a shared resource and every member of the Binding must agree to its use. If a Binding does not agree, a player can still use the Soulfire, but this increases Doom by one. Doom is measure of the hopelessness in the Mortal Realms and it grows as the levels of fear, envy, doubt, and anger rise. On one level it reflects how bleak or tense the current state of the Mortal Realms, but on another, as it grows it draws the enemy to the Binding and will make them powerful foes, increasing their armour, giving them extra attacks, and granting access to powerful abilities. Doom can be decreased, but it takes time and effort.

Combat uses the same mechanics. Initiative is done in a fixed order according to Initiative values, each Player Character can act and move once per turn, and the engagements are fought out in zones. It is not overly tactical, but terrain and cover will be factor, and combatants can undertake actions such as charge, called shots, defend, dodge, grapple, improvise, dual wielding, and more. An attacker’s Melee or Accuracy values are compared with the defendant’s Defence to determine the Difficulty Number of an attack. Weapons inflict a base damage, plus the number of Successes rolled. Armour worn reduces damage and damage reduces a defendant’s Toughness and then his Wounds. Having no Wounds left means the defendant is mortally wounded. Wounds can be minor, serious, or deadly, depending on much damage they inflict. A mortally wounded defendant is stunned, cannot recover Toughness, and must death tests on subsequent rounds. Alternatively, a Player Character could choose to make a last stand, in which case, he is no longer stunned, regains all his Mettle, is immune to all damage, his Melee and Accuracy get better, and his damage ignores armour. This lasts only one turn before the Player character dies, so it had better count.

Beyond the basic rules, there is guide to the endeavours that the Soulbound can do between missions, though never lasting longer than a week, because Chaos never sleeps! This can be to increase the Bond between a Binding, Cleanse Corruption, Create a Spell, Repair Equipment, Train a Companion, and others. There is a full list of equipment, including Aetheric Devices, such as Kharadron devices, weapons, and armour wielded by the Kharadron Overlords and their forces. These include Aetheric Lenses, Arkanaut Armour, Rapid-Fire Rivet Gun, and a lot more. Most have a power requirement and can be plugged into the Basic Aether-rig used by the Kharadron, limiting the number of devices that can be wielded over the course of an adventure. The Regular Maintenance Endeavour is required to maintain an Aether-rig between adventures.

Background is given for the Mortal Realms—Azyr, the Realm of Heavens, Aqshy, the Realm of Fire, Chamon, the Realm of Metal, Ghur, the Realm of Beasts, Ghyran, the Realm of Life, Hysh, the Realm of Light, Shyish, the Realm of Death, and Ulgu, the Realm of Shadow—and the Realm Gates as well as daily life, safety, entertainment, and so on. These are accompanied by various adventure hooks, details on the Realm of Chaos, various factions, and a deeper description of The Great Parch. This is located in Aqshy, the Realm of Fire, where Sigmar first unleashed his Stormcast Eternals, and covers its geography and history and is designed to provide a starting region for the Game Master and her players. Religion is given a similar treatment, including such gods such as Gorkamorka, and Nagash, and the Chaos Gods—Khorne, Nurgle, Slaanesh, and Tzeentch. These traditional four, all of whom fear the rise in power of Nagash and his undead hordes, are joined by the Horned Rat.

Just as the Mortal Realms are divided into eight, so is magic lore, with each lore being tied to a specific realm. Magic energy churns and swirls throughout the Mortal Realms as it has done since Nagash’s Necroquake, empowering even the weakest of spellcasters. Worse, this roiling wave upon wave of aetheric energy have created Endless Spells that have proven to be danger to the original caster, his enemies, and anyone else they come in contact with. (Unfortunately, only one Endless Spell, the Purple Sun of Shyish, is given in the book.). Arcane spellcasting requires a successful Mind (Channelling) Test and extra successes can be used to Overcast a spell, often to increase its duration or the damage it inflicts. Bonus dice are rewarded when attempting to cast spell of a Magic Lore in its associated Realm, for example, casting Amethyst Magic in the Realm of Death, Shyish. If a Channelling Test is failed, then a player must roll on ‘The Price of failure’ Table, which can be anything from the caster simply losing control and suffering damage to inadvertently summoning an Endless Spell! (Depending on how unlucky your spellcasting Player Character is, again, the Purple Sun of Shyish is not enough.) Some ninety spells are listed across all eight Magic Lores and there is even a guide to creating new spells.

In comparison, Miracles are treated as individual Talents that require the ‘Use a Talent’ action to cast and one or more points of Mettle. There are some generic Miracles, but most are tied to particular god and his worship. Rounding out is a decent bestiary of nearly fifty entries, which covers automata, beasts, daemons, mortals, spirits, and undead, from minions, swarms, and warriors to champions and chosen in terms of power levels. They include the People of the Cities of Sigmar, pets and mounts, monstrous beasts, disciples of the Dark Gods, the legions of Nagash, and Greenskin hordes. This is a solid selection and provides a lot of depth in terms of NPCs and threats.

One of the best descriptions the mechanics in of Soulbound—and any roleplaying game—in the core rulebook for Warhammer Age of Sigmar – Soulbound: Perilous Adventures in the Mortal Realms is, “The dice and the rules are tools for you to use to create memories. They are little cuboid wildcards that can completely flip a story on its head, and turn a moment of crushing despair into one of joyous celebration.” There is further advice for the Game Master later in the rulebook, which actually suggests that if the prospective Game Master has not yet learned how to be a Game master, then she learn using the Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Soulbound Starter Set. The Game Master advice covers the rules, but also looks at setting up a game and making it feel like the Age of Sigmar. It states that Soulbound has four tones—mythic, hopeful, tragic, and dark—and takes the Game Monster through them one by one. Besides talking about humanising the setting despite it being about a continuing, often epic war against Chaos, it provides various tools for the Game Master to adjust Soulbound to get the game she wants. This includes using a Point Buy system to create Player Characters, setting up different campaign frameworks, such as making it grim and perilous rather than heroic and perilous, and more. Overall, the advice is good, but it does leave the basics to the Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Soulbound Starter Set. This does leave Soulbound with a disparity between the ease and lighter nature of the rules and the more advanced nature of the Game Master advice, as if the Game Master should be able to pick this book up and easily run a game from its pages without needing to refer to another product in order to learn how to use it.

Physically, Warhammer Age of Sigmar – Soulbound: Perilous Adventures in the Mortal Realms is very well presented with lots of excellent artwork. It is well written and benefits from lots of examples.

Warhammer Age of Sigmar – Soulbound: Perilous Adventures in the Mortal Realms offers both a new set of dice mechanics for playing in the Warhammer universe and a new—to roleplaying—setting within the universe. With it comes a lighter, faster set of rules and a more heroic style of play as well as a setting that is nicely detailed, but not as accessible as others in the Warhammer universe. This is due to the lack of familiarity with it and the differences between it and the Old World, as well as the lack of a scenario which would have provided a way into the setting of the Mortal Realms. What this means is that it requires some adjustment, because Soulbound really is its own thing in terms of roleplaying and has relatively little in common with its forebear, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. The easier, faster style of play could have been eased with advice on why player would want to roleplay a particular archetype and there could have more options for humans compared to the other species. Lastly the lack of scenario also hampers that process, intentionally speedy, of getting into the game.

For the player and the Game Master who wants to get out of the mud and muck of a grim and perilous world, and take a heroic stand, push the fight forwards, and face the forces of Chaos, the Dark Lords, and the undead in righteous fury and make a difference—as heroes—in the Warhammer universe, then Warhammer Age of Sigmar – Soulbound: Perilous Adventures in the Mortal Realms is exactly what they want. High fantasy in a heroic and perilous world.

[Free RPG Day 2025] Battle for Nova Rush

Now in its eighteenth year, Free RPG Day for 2025 took place on Saturday, June 21st. As per usual, Free RPG Day consisted of an array of new and interesting little releases, which are traditionally tasters for forthcoming games to be released at GenCon the following August, but others are support for existing RPGs or pieces of gaming ephemera or a quick-start. This included dice, miniatures, vouchers, and more. Thanks to the generosity of Waylands Forge in Birmingham, Reviews from R’lyeh was able to get hold of many of the titles released for Free RPG Day.

—oOo—

Battle for Nova Rush is a scenario for Starfinder, Second Edition and in terms of support for Free RPG Day 2025, feels very much like a reset. Back in 2018 for Free RPG Day, Paizo, Inc. published Starfinder: Skitter Shot, a scenario in which four of the cheerfully manic, gleefully helpful, vibrantly coloured, six-armed and furry creatures known as Skittermanders, have an adventure and find themselves in possession of their own starship. They would then have further adventures in subsequent releases for Free RPG Day. Battle for Nova Rush involves a familiar setting, though not Skittermanders. Well, almost not Skittermanders. The scenario is designed to played with four First Level Player Characters—all of which are provided—and can be played through in a single session.

The scenario begins in classic Science Fiction fashion. The Player Characters are locked up in the brig of a starship. The vessel is the Nova Rush, previously owned by a thrill-seeking amateur archaeologist, but recently captured following a violent hijack by Captain Phaedra Firestorm. The Player Characters will need to find their way out of their cell, several methods including persuasion, intimidation, and deception, being suggested. Their gaoler is surprisingly helpful and quite happy to see them go up against Captain Firestorm. The Player Characters will soon garner the aid and advice of the ship’s Virtual Intelligence, Captain Concierge, a Skittermander, who will be very helpful. As they proceed through the ship, dealing with pirates, it will quickly become apparent that the ship is under attack by the ghastly sounding ‘Corpse Fleet’, so repairs are required before the Player Characters can climb to the bridge and face the pirate captain. Once she is defeated, they can make their escape a second time, this time from the battle.

Battle for Nova Rush comes with four pre-generated Player Characters. They consist of Chk Chk, a male Shirren Mystic; Dae, a nonbinary Pahtra Solarian; Iseph, a nonbinary Android Operative; and Navasi, a female Human Envoy. All four are given a double-page spread, which includes an illustration, detailed background, advice on playing the character, explanations of how they operate in combat, exploration, and healing modes, what they think of their fellow inmates, and lastly their full stats. The Player Characters are very well presented, just as you would expect for a release for Free RPG Day from Paizo, Inc. The scenario also includes a nicely done set of deckplans for the Nova Rush.

Physically, Battle for Nova Rush is as professionally presented as you would expect for Paizo, Inc. It is in full colour, the art and cartography are excellent, and the adventure is well written.

Battle for Nova Rush is a straightforward, even clichéd Science Fiction adventure. The Player Characters begin as prisoners, have to escape, fix a few things and fight a few things before confronting the villain of the piece and escaping once again. Consequently, it is an undemanding affair, but one that still leaves room to showcase the Starfinder, Second Edition rules and let the players have a good time.

The Other OSR: The Hand of God

Troika! is both a setting and a roleplaying game. As the latter, it provides simple, clear mechanics inspired by the Fighting Fantasy series of solo adventure books, but combined with a wonderfully weird cast of character types, all ready to play the constantly odd introductory adventure, ‘The Blancmange and Thistle’. As the former, it takes the Player Characters on adventures through the multiverse, from one strange sphere to another, to visit twin towers which in their dying are spreading a blight that are turning a world to dust, investigate murder on the Nantucket Sleigh Ride on an ice planet, and investigate hard boiled murder and economic malfeasance following the collapse of the Scarf-Worm investment bubble. At the heart of Troika! stands the city itself, large, undefined, existing somewhere in the cosmos with easy access from one dimension after another, visited by tourists from across the universe and next door, and in game terms, possessing room aplenty for further additions, details, and locations. One such location is The Hand of God.

The Hand of God is the second entry in a new series of scenarios for Troika! from the Melsonian Arts Council begun with Whalgravaak’s Warehouse. This is the ‘1:5 Troika Adventures’ series, which places an emphasis on shorter, location-based adventures, typically hexcrawls or dungeoncrawls, set within the city of Troika, but which do not provide new Backgrounds for Player Characters or ‘Hack’ how Troika! is played. The Hand of God lives up to these tenets, in that it is a dungeoncrawl that takes place in the upturned hand atop the tallest statue to a god in the temple district of the city of Troika. The Player Characters are plucked from their dreams and the scenario opens with them waking to find themselves atop the extended index finger, in the giant nest of THOG, the demon bird. It is a strikingly silly and utterly appropriate cold opening for the Player Characters and the scenario, and it makes the scenario incredibly easy to slot into a campaign. The Players Characters fall asleep one night and when they wake up, there they are. What the Player Characters can see below them is the fingers of the hand, a gondola spanning the distance between the index finger and the thumb, bridges between the other fingers, a tower on the middle finger whilst water rushes out of the tip of the finger to fall to a lake below, a ramshackle wooden town on the little finger, and far below on the palm, forests and mountains surrounding the lake, and even perhaps a way down. It is a wondrous vista, a sight unlike that in any other roleplaying game and The Hand of God never lets the Game Master or her players forget it. There are constant reminders of what the Player Characters can see throughout the adventure.

The Hand of God is a pointcrawl, consisting of locations linked by specific routes and connections, making deciding where to go from one location to the next easy to decide. It is literally laid out in front of them, like the palm of well, a god’s hand. As the Player Characters descend, they will encounter the denizens of the hand, like the Goblins at the Gondola Station led by Frenki, the elderly radical mazematician ostracised for his experimental maze design, and Skink, the priest from Jibberwind Temple, currently riding the gondola back and forth in silent contemplation, who could be provoked enough to start a fight—and would quite like it if you did. In a cave down the thumb, the sleazy, flat cap-wearing Crenupt the Undead, who has been thrown out of Jgigji, the tumbledown town of living dead on the little finger, who might have goods to sell that he very likely stole and if that fails, the means to take revenge by stealing everything from the town if the Player Characters will help him. All he wants is a lot of wine. A lot of wine. The index finger is scored and scarred by Sofia the Giant Serpent as she endlessly circumnavigates the finger, her iron scales cutting deep into the stone of the finger, whilst just above in the crags, three Harpy sisters all want food, but one also wants to hear fine music, another to see beautiful paintings, and a third to read beautiful words, and they all hate each other!

The hand has several major locations. They include Jibberwind Temple, which is home to the cult of the Perfect Fingers, dedicated to Thog, its looping corridors acting more as wind tunnels and its treasure vault the target of many an inhabitant of the hand, whilst Thark Village is being put to the torch by Automonous Arrests and Adjudication Inquisitorial sect of The Indelible Order of Allotted Idols as the villagers huddle in the crypts below and attempt a ritual which might save them. Elsewhere, there is Jgigji, the town of drunken undead, a wizard’s tower/folly where the wizard’s work is likely the actual folly, and a community of Parchment Witches—one of the signature character types in Troika!—who set snares and net traps for beast and intruders, using the skins of the former to create some of the best parchment across the spheres whilst squabbling about anything and everything. All of these locations and their various factions are interlinked and many of the people that they meet will share information or ask for help in return for it, pushing the Player Characters onwards in their exploration of the statue. The descriptions of the scenario’s many NPCs do vary in detail, but all are going to be fun for the Game Master to portray, some of the less detailed ones really leaving room for the Game Master to develop how she wants to portray them and make them memorable.

Escape is the ultimate aim for the Player Characters in The Hand of God. But there are also plenty of mini-locations and dungeons to explore, treasures to find or steal, and of course, there is the view to look at. Other options are suggested as to why the Player Characters might want to go to The Hand of God, whether that is find one of the treasures in the statue, locate a curse-eater, or discover their future from Vow, the Spider-God who can read the threads of fate. Many of these reasons might also explain why the Player Characters might want to return to The Hand of God in the future.

Physically, it all helps that the content of The Hand of God is presented in very accessible fashion. The maps are great and the adventure is decently illustrated. The scenario needs a slight edit in places.

The Hand of God manages to feel big, but is delightfully self-contained, more or less in the palm of a god’s hand, a pointcrawl as memorable for its location as its content, such that it is more of a ‘handcrawl’ than a pointcrawl. The Hand of God is fun, easy to drop into a campaign, and like any good Troika! scenario is weird and wondrous.

Immediate Idiosyncrasy

Weird Discoveries: Ten Instant Adventures for Numenera does something interesting and it does it very quickly. In fact, it has been designed to do it quickly. It is a supplement for Numenera, the Origins Award-winning Science Fantasy roleplaying game of exploration and adventure in the very far future, originally published in 2013 by Monte Cook Games. What it does is set out to solve the problem of wanting to roleplay and not having time to prepare to roleplay. It wants to do what board games allow, which is easy set up and readiness to play straight out of the box—or in the case of Weird Discoveries, off the page. To do this, it presents scenarios that can be read through and set up in the same time as it takes to grab a board game off the shelf, open the box, and set everything up. Once done, each scenario will provide a single evening or session’s worth of gaming as a board game would. Or in this case, roleplaying. Now it should be noted that Weird Discoveries: Ten Instant Adventures for Numenera is published for use with the first edition of Numenera, but the simplicity of the Cypher System, means that adapting or adjusting the supplement’s ten scenarios to Numenera Discovery.

All ten scenarios in Weird Discoveries: Ten Instant Adventures for Numenera follow the same format. Each opens with a brief summary followed by the details and the scenario’s salient points, before describing the scenario’s starting point for the Player Characters and the wrap-up, how it can be ended. Also detailed are the scenario keys, the clues and the MacGuffins or objects, that the Player Characters need to find to push the scenario’s plot onwards. This is followed by the scenario itself. Each scenario is constructed around a map or a plot, which always has links to further details, such as location and NPC descriptions, as well as stats. They include descriptions of the possible GM Intrusions, the means by the Game Master challenges, imperils, and rewards the Player Characters.

Some of the locations or plot points are marked with symbols for the scenario’s keys. Depending on the scenario, these can be a set place or the Game Master is given the option to place them a choice of different locations. The layout is always simple, clear, and easy to use straight from the page. The scenario proper is followed by ‘More Details’. These are not necessary to actually run the scenario, but if the Game Master has time to read through them, provide her with extra information which enables her to expand the scenario. This is not just with details that will enliven her portrayal of the scenario, but advice on how to insert the scenario into an ongoing campaign, including a map of where it might be located in the Ninth World, and lastly, the Experience Awards for completing the adventure as well as possible further ramifications. The Experience Awards are the only thing that the Game Master needs for this section if she does not have time to read through this third section.

Further support for all ten scenarios comes in the form of ‘Show ’Ems’, twenty full colour illustrations designed to be shown to the players as they roleplay through each scenario. There is also a ‘Numenera Cheat Sheet’ for ready rules reference and a set of six ready-to-play Player Characters. The handouts help bring the scenarios to life, whilst the pre-generated Player Characters enhance the ready-to-play nature of the anthology. There is also a list of possible Cyphers—the devices and unguents and gases and concoctions—that the Player Characters can find to enhance themselves temporarily during a scenario. Further support comes in the form of an excellent introductory guide to improvised Game Mastering. Overall, the combination of format and support makes the scenarios in the anthology both easier to prepare and develop beyond the single session game play they are designed for.

The decade opens with ‘Beneath The Pyramid’ in which the Player Characters track down missing beasts to gigantic black pyramid floating over a ruined city and try find their way in from below. Simple enough, it is followed by the more complex, ‘Inside the Horror Pyramid’. These are the only two directly connected scenarios in the anthology, but the second is a much nastier affair, the Player Characters finding themselves trapped within the pyramid and stalked by dangerous energy creature with a penchant for eyes! The Player Characters need to find the means to get through a sealed door and then out of the Pyramid, hopefully eyes intact. ‘Natural And Unnatural’ places a village in peril when the device it relies upon for clean water disappears and the Player Characters have to find out where it has gone. Should the Game Master want to, the scenario has ways to expand by adding links to other entries in the supplement. Divine right versus divine reputation clash in ‘The Spider Knight’ when the Player Characters give aid to a young women who claims her throne has been usurped and potentially discover how far she will go to reclaim her family seat. ‘Please Help Us’ opens with the Player Characters being asked to help free a group of explorers trapped in a Cypher device, but doing so means angering a nearby group of religious Inhumans.

The sixth adventure, ‘Guilty!’ does something usefully far more complex, but in the two-page spread format of Weird Discoveries. It is a murder mystery set in a town divided by a river in which members of the Varjellen community from one side of the river are being murdered by humans from on the other side. Of course, there is more to it than simply that, but it is neatly presented as an elegant little plot flowchart with all of the various details in just the place both narratively and geographically. It is the most pleasing of all the entries in Weird Discoveries. A daughter has gone missing in ‘Lost in the Swamp’, but what if she does not want to come back? Whilst in ‘Mother Machine’, the inhabitants of another village are under attack, but nobody knows why. There is a surprisingly good reason though… ‘From Here To Sanguinity’ reveals the perils of worship in the Ninth Age, whilst in the last entry, ‘Escape from the Obelisk’, the Player Characters find themselves trapped in another floating object and have to find a way out. This time though, they are up against a deadline as they have been infected by a scientist to see how they react and need to find a cure before they can escape. It still feels a little like the second scenario, and perhaps actually setting in the Black Pyramid of ‘Beneath The Pyramid’ and ‘Inside the Horror Pyramid’ would have been a nice call back.

Overall, the scenarios in Weird Discoveries: Ten Instant Adventures for Numenera are short and solid, rather than amazing or epic. That is not the aim of the anthology after all, which is to provide easy-to-prepare scenarios that showcase the weirdness of the Ninth Age in short sharp packages. Of the ten, ‘Guilty!’ stands out as the most interesting.

Physically, Weird Discoveries: Ten Instant Adventures for Numenera is very well presented. The maps are clear and the artwork is excellent, whilst sidebars give links and notes for the Game Master to add further to the scenarios. Notably, the two-page spread for the scenarios—one two-page spread for the introduction and background, one for the scenario itself, and one for the extra content, keep everything handily organised and accessible.

Weird Discoveries: Ten Instant Adventures for Numenera is exactly as advertised. A very serviceable, very useful, and superbly supported anthology that provides the means for the Game Master to bring a scenario to the table in mere minutes, but if he has the time, also the scope to expand each scenario and set it up in previous sessions. Overall, Weird Discoveries: Ten Instant Adventures for Numenera is such a good idea that you wish more roleplaying game settings had a supplement like this.

The Other OSR: Whalgravaak’s Warehouse

Troika! is both a setting and a roleplaying game. As the latter, it provides simple, clear mechanics inspired by the Fighting Fantasy series of solo adventure books, but combined with a wonderfully weird cast of character types, all ready to play the constantly odd introductory adventure, ‘The Blancmange and Thistle’. As the former, it takes the Player Characters on adventures through the multiverse, from one strange sphere to another, to visit twin towers which in their dying are spreading a blight that are turning a world to dust, investigate murder on the Nantucket Sleigh Ride on an ice planet, and investigate hard boiled murder and economic malfeasance following the collapse of the Scarf-Worm investment bubble. At the heart of Troika! stands the city itself, large, undefined, existing somewhere in the cosmos with easy access from one dimension after another, visited by tourists from across the universe and next door, and in game terms, possessing room aplenty for further additions, details, and locations. One such location is Whalgravaak’s Warehouse.

Whalgravaak’s Warehouse is the start of a new series of scenarios for Troika! from the Melsonian Arts Council. This is the ‘1:5 Troika Adventures’ series, which places an emphasis on shorter, location-based adventures, typically hexcrawls or dungeoncrawls, set within the city of Troika, but which do not provide new Backgrounds for Player Characters or ‘Hack’ how Troika! is played. Whalgravaak’s Warehouse lives up to these tenets, in that its dungeoncrawl takes place in a large, in places, impossibly large interdimensional warehouse that served as major import/export house for the city of Troika. Whalgravaak was once known as the cruel, but efficient logistics wizard who could get anything from anywhere and ship anything to anywhere, which made him and clients rich as the city became a shipping nexus between the spheres without the need or the expense of training staff to crew and maintain the golden barges that still traverse between the spheres today. However, Whalgravaak grew paranoid in his old age, destroyed the instruction manual to the great device by which goods were transported, and retired. When the device became a threat to the city of Troika, the Autarch ordered Whalgravaak’s Warehouse permanently closed and locked. That was centuries ago. Whalgravaak is long dead. His warehouse still stands, a looming monolithic presence in a bad part of the city. Nobody goes in and nobody comes out. Though some claim there is movement on the room. Now, someone wants something from inside and have decided that the Player Characters are best equipped to find their way in and navigate its darkened offices and deep storage bays with their vertiginously stacked crates, which surely must still contain something interesting after all that since Whalgravaak himself died?

Whalgravaak’s Warehouse gives one main reason why the Player Characters might want to break into and explore the warehouse. This is to locate a book called The Tome of Sable Fields, for which they will be paid handsomely, but there are others and the Game Master can easily come up with more. Finding a way into the warehouse is a challenge in itself, but inside, the Player Characters will find strange worm-headed dogs gone feral, creeping bandits and burglars looking for goods to fence or places to dump bodies, cultists who worship the still breathing nose of a titan, a clan of dustmen sieving the heaps of dust on the expansive roof of the warehouse where the air glows aquamarine like the Dustmen of Charles Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend, and more. There are rooms full of great lengths of rope that are mouldering into slime, a vegetable store where an onion has become an Onion Godlet, a room of sponges so dry it will suck the moisture from anyone who enters, and a set of employee records laden with bureaucratic despair… The roof is a post-apocalyptic hexcrawl of its very own, a separate environment that is essentially a desert of dust, marked only by the flickering head of one the giants that still work in the warehouse below and an Oasis of Tea, that will take the Player Characters days to explore. They had better come prepared for hot weather!

Locating The Tome of Sable Fields is a relatively simple matter and the Player Characters may do so relatively quickly, but actually getting hold of it is another matter. It is actually suspended over the very means by which Whalgravaak transported goods from one dimension to another by a crane. Unfortunately, none of the parts of the crane are talking to each other and the only way to get the crane operating is to get them to talk to each other. Essentially one bit of the crane is more noble than the other and the Player Characters will probably need to persuade them to overcome their individual problems and snobbery. This will drive them into exploring the warehouse further in the hopes of finding the means of getting each one to co-operate.

As part of the ‘1:5 Troika Adventures’ series and thus a dungeoncrawl, although one in a warehouse, Whalgravaak’s Warehouse is designed to be played like a dungeon and explored like a dungeon. Thus movement, noise, and resources become important, the Player Characters need a source of light and the scenario is played out in ten-minute turns in true Old School style Dungeons & Dragons. This also means that Whalgravaak’s Warehouse is played differently to other adventures for Troika!, with less of an emphasis on narrative play and more on environmental, location-based exploration. In keeping with the style, the adventure is perhaps deadlier and more challenging than the typical Troika! adventure, requiring more caution and care than a Troika! player might be used to.

Physically, Whalgravaak’s Warehouse is very well presented. The artwork is as weird and wonderful as you would expert, the cartography is decent, and the layout is clear and easy to use. There is also good advice for the Game Master on how and why she should use Whalgravaak’s Warehouse, and a clear explanation of what is going on in the warehouse.

Whalgravaak’s Warehouse is a great set-up for an adventure. Take the warehouse of an interdimensional import/export house, abandon it for centuries, and then turn it into an industrial dungeon with weird Dickensian undertones. The result is eminently entertaining and constantly going to screw with the heads of both the players and their characters as they discover one example of industrial decline after another and just what happens when you leave a dangerous interdimensional magical industrial complex alone for far too long.

Your Numenera Starter

The setting of Numenera is expansive one, potentially taking the adventurers into space, into other dimensions, and even deep under the sea, but always exploring the mysteries, secrets, and technologies of the past. Its detail lies in these places to be explored rather than the core setting of the Steadfast, as described in Numenera Discovery, the core rulebook. This also leaves plenty of space for the Game Master to add her own content and as described in Numenera Destiny, the players and their characters to make it their own by building and supporting a community. As open as the setting is, what it means is that Numenera does not have a ready starting point and it is perhaps in danger of overwhelming the prospective player or Game Master with just how expansive a setting it is. A solution then would be to provide a starting point. Somewhere small with a limited scope that is in no danger of overwhelming either player or Game Master and then builds from this basis with a story that will eventually take the players, their characters, and the Game Master out into the wider and more wondrous world of the Ninth Age. This is exactly what The Glimmering Valley does.

The Glimmering Valley is published by Monte Cook Games and everything that a Game Master and her players need to start their first Numenera campaign. A starting point, some plots and some storylines, some mysteries and some locations to be explored, a threat, and above, a place to call home. It does all this, but it also does something else—it keeps things limited. It does this in several ways. First, it restricts the Character Types available to the core three in v Discovery, that is, the Glaive, the Nano, and the Jack. The others, the Arkus, the Wright, and the Delve, from Numenera Destiny, do become available later in the campaign when it is possible to transition into one of the new three. Second, it limits the Special Abilities available to the Player Characters, as many of those with more overt effects, such as ‘Bears a Halo of Fire’ or ‘Wears a Sheen of Ice’, would be decried as sorcery, whilst those for which there is no training or reason for it, like ‘Works the Back Alleys’ or ‘Fuses Flesh and Steel’, are simply deemed inappropriate. The abilities available to the Player Characters in The Glimmering Valley tend towards skills and the mundane. Third, it grounds the campaign in the Glimmering Valley, a narrow valley some twenty-five miles long, with the minor settlement of Neandran at the head of the valley, and a larger settlement, Ketterach, at the bottom of the valley. The Player Characters have grown up in Neandran and like the majority of the other villagers, have never travelled more than a few miles into the surround forest, let alone as far as a metropolis as Ketterach. The Player Characters know almost everyone in Neandran and certainly have a relationship with many of the village’s notable figures—all of whom are detailed. Fourth, it applies Clarke’s Third Law, ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’ assiduously. This is because the inhabitants of Neandran look upon the strange things around them and found elsewhere in the surrounding forest as magic rather than technology. Once the Player Characters reach Ketterach and the wider Ninth World, they are likely to discover that this is not the case and so have a revelation. It means though, that playing through The Glimmering Valley is going to be a very different experience to that of a standard Numenera campaign. And for any Numenera veteran, it means roleplaying a very different outlook.

So why do all this? Simply, simplicity. What The Glimmering Valley wants to do is avoid any possibility of overwhelming the prospective player or Game Master with a wealth of detail. To that end, it limits choices for the players, gives their characters a clear outlook on the world, and shifts the setting to the fantasy of its science fantasy rather than the science. Effectively, the world in which the Player Characters begin is akin to the fantasy of Dungeons & Dragons with the medievalism, and what they discover in end is the highly technological and weird world of Numenera. In addition, the last chapter in the book is specifically ‘The Player’s Guide’, provided to inform the players about the world in which their characters live in. When given a copy, this greatly aids the players’ knowledge about the setting and enables them to establish relationships with the NPC.

As the campaign begins, the nature of the dream that for generations the inhabitants of Neandran has changed. Just slightly, but enough to pique the interest of the Player Characters and they wonder why it has changed. For the Game Master, there is initially the same information she gives to her players and then descriptions of its various locations, flora, fauna, and more. There is strangeness all about—strange objects that protrude from the valley floor and walls, the infinite house of the local witch, a point in the river where the water flows into the air, a glade of six-foot square, translucent blue cubes in which can glimpsed some strange creature, and stairs which go up to nowhere. Some of these lead deep below and into the sides of the valley into highly detailed complexes, into what are effectively ‘science dungeons’. They are unlike any other dungeon in each case, in one case, more a puzzle that the Player Characters need to work out with their fingers, though there is guidance on using a more mechanical, rules-based for those playing groups who dislike puzzles. These complexes will take time to explore, but the campaign does allow for that time and even projects of the Player Characters’ own. Accompanying these are a number of encounters and more, including the movement and growth of factions into the Glimmering Valley. These include the arrival of biomechanical nomads, the rise of the machines, and even an invasion of ‘Skeksis’-like aliens! The movement and growth of all of these is slow at first, but becomes more apparent later in the campaign. This does allow time for the Player Characters to explore, learn, and prepare.

The campaign is supported with a bestiary and chapters for each of the factions. There is advice for the Game Master throughout, with the sidebars used extensively for references and stats. However, what The Glimmering Valley does not do is set the Game Master up as well it does the players. The set-up for the players is very good, preparing them for the campaign and telling them everything that they need to do so. For the Game Master, there is not this same level of information and consequently she does not learn anything about the event-based aspects of the campaign until she gets to the relevant chapters. There is no overview for her prior to this when there really should have been. Whilst The Glimmering Valley is good in its way as a starter campaign for the players, it is less so for the Game Master. There is not the step-by-step process for the Game Master as there is for the players, so it is not as suitable for the first time Game Master and certainly not as suitable as the author necessarily intended. For all the simplicity of The Glimmering Valley, the campaign needs more effort than it really should to set up for a first campaign.

Physically, The Glimmering Valley is very well done. Both the artwork and the cartography are as excellent as you would expect for a supplement for Numenera, and the book is well written.

The Glimmering Valley is a good first campaign for the players, taking both them and their characters from positions of relative unawareness about the world to realising how big and how different it is by having them make discoveries and uncover dangers and face them. There is a genuine sense of growth and progress to the campaign which will all lead to the characters being prepared for the wider world, as well as both their players and the Game Master.

Numenera’s Destiny

Numenera Destiny changes the way in which Numenera Discovery is played and the why it is played. Set billions of years into the future after multiple, highly technological and advanced civilisations have risen and fallen, Numenera is a Science Fantasy roleplaying game of exploration and adventure in the very far future of the Ninth World. In the course of this adventure and exploration, the Player Characters discover secrets, protect communities, and recover and make use of the technologies of the past—Artifacts, Cyphers, and Oddities—to continue to learn and explore. Numenera Destiny, the companion volume to Numenera Discovery, provides a core motivation for the Player Characters, the means to support that motivation with new Character Types and mechanics, new Foci and Descriptors, rules for creating, supporting, and developing Communities, breaking down Cyphers and rebuilding them to new purposes, plus new organisations and creatures, and lastly four scenarios. This motivation centres on the Community. Where in Numenera Discovery it might be a place that the Player Characters simply pass through or come to rescue of, with Numenera Destiny, the Player Characters become part of that community. They protect it. They lead it. They develop it. They build a better future for themselves and the other members of the community, and in the process, they create rather than just scavenge.

Numenera Destiny begins with the new character options. The three new Character Types are the Arkus, the Wright, and the Delve. The Arkus is a natural leader, potentially head of a community, an army, or even a faith, but ultimately a charismatic and social Character Type. The Wright builds and crafts, able to interpret plans and devices found in the ruins of the past, and using ‘Iotum’, scavenged components, design and create cyphers, artifacts, and installations. They are more than mere scholars—they are doers. The Delve is the ultimate explorer of the ruins, but also highly skilled in extracting the ‘Iotum’ that the Wright needs to build. The Arkus begins play with ‘Demeanour of Command’ which forces others to listen to him when not in combat and is naturally a ‘Community Leader’, which increases a community’s rank when he is present. He has precepts which grant him an advantage when dealing with others, such as telling an uplifting ‘Anecdote’ or having a ‘Connection With an Organisation’. Later on, an Arkus can gain followers. The Wright is Trained in Crafting Numenera, and when actively working as a ‘Community Builder’, it improves a community’s infrastructure, is ‘Always Tinkering’ and can create new random Cyphers. He has Inspired Techniques like ‘Right Tool for the Job’, crafting temporary tools from Iotum, gain ‘Extra use’ from an installation or artifact without triggering a depletion roll, and ‘Scramble Machine’ for devices nearby. The Delve spends less time in a community than the other Character Types, and is Trained in ‘Salvaging Numenera’ and as a ‘Community Explorer’, improves its capacity to find resources, open new trade routes, and so on. He has ‘Delve Lore’, which includes ‘Find the Way’ when he is lost and ‘Familiarise’ which enables him to study a region and gain temporary benefits whilst there. Of the three new Character Types, Delve is actually the least interesting, especially at Tier One. Fortunately, the Type gets more interesting at higher Tiers.

It is notable that all three new Character Types have core Community abilities that get better as they improve in Tier. However, Numenera Destiny goes further by providing Community abilities for the three core Character Types from Numenera Discovery. Thus, the Glaive has ‘Community Defender’, the Jack has ‘Community Fixer’ which improves a community’s health or infrastructure Ranks, and the Nano has ‘Community Scholar’, which also improves a community’s health or infrastructure Ranks. Together this balances the old Character Types with the new, though the additions are not as interesting as those for the new Character Types, especially as the Community abilities for the Jack and the Nano are identical.

Numenera Destiny adds thirty-five new Descriptors. The majority of these are designed to support the three new Character Types. Thus, the ‘Articulate’ aids the Arkus who emphasises speech, ‘Beneficent’ is for the Arkus who wants to help, and ‘Civic’ is about working with the community. ‘Curious’ is for the Delve who wants to know more and ‘Risk-Taking’ if he pushes his luck. ‘Imaginative’ and ‘Industrious’ both suit the Wright. Of them all, it does feel as more of them support the Arkus rather than the other Character Types. Similarly, there are over thirty new Foci, and again many support the community and leadership aspect of Numenera Destiny, like ‘Imparts Wisdom’, ‘Shepherds the Community’, and ‘Wields Words Like Weapons’. There are fewer which specifically support the roles of the Wright and the Delve, though ‘Builds Tomorrow’ is exception for the Wright, whilst others such as ‘Adjures The Leviathan’, giving a character control over one of the horrors to be found in the ruins, ‘Dances With Dark Matter’ which grants substance and control of shadows, and ‘Emerged From The Obelisk’ which changes the character’s body structure from flesh to crystalline all support the strangeness to be found beyond the walls of the community in the Ninth World.

Not all of these character options presented in Numenera Destiny are necessarily new. For example, the Arkus and the Delve are similar to the Glint and Seeker Character Types respectively from Character Options 2, whilst several of the Foci and Descriptors originally appeared in Gods of the Fall and Expanded Worlds and other supplements. However, they have been adjusted and redesigned to fit the new edition of Numenera Discovery and the companion volume, Numenera Destiny. It is still possible to play using the earlier iterations or concepts of these Character Types and Foci and Descriptors, but the updated and redesigned versions are more interesting and supportive of the emphasis in Numenera Destiny.

Specifically for the Wright, Numenera Destiny provides detailed, but surprisingly simple salvaging and crafting rules. Anyone can engage in salvaging as they explore the Ninth World, but in the main, the Wright will be at an advantage over other Character Types when he does so. In addition to gaining Cyphers and shin (the catch-all currency of the Ninth World), a successful Salvage Task check will yield ‘Iotum’. This is the catch-all term for scavenged parts, which might be, “silvery canisters filled with colourless goo, or bubbling fluid contained within etched stronglass canisters the size of small houses.” Iotum are then used to construct all manner of devices and installations. ‘Iotum’ can be random items—and there is a table for that accompanied by descriptions of each ‘Iotum’ type—or they might be something that the Wright is looking for. This is particularly likely if the Wright is attempting to construct something from a specific plan. Determining if the scavenger has found the ‘Iotum’ he wants requires a second Salvage Task check. That then is all there is to the salvage rules with more detail devoted to the salvage found than the mechanics of finding it.

The crafting rules are more complex, but not by much. Whether an object or structure is commonplace or numenera, the latter meaning it will have abilities like a cypher or an Artifact, it has as an Assessed Difficulty representing how difficult it is to construct and how long it will take to complete. However, if a numenera object or structure, the Assessed Difficulty is higher. To actually craft an object or structure requires multiple Crafting Task checks, that is, one subtask for each level of the Assessed Difficulty. So, for a Level 3 Cypher, the player has to roll a Crafting Task at difficulty one, then difficulty two, and so on. This can be reduced by a Wright’s Training and abilities, but not Effort as that has an immediate rather than a prolonged use. The same mechanics are used for repairing items, making modifications, and more. The rules are backed with numerous plans, from wooden walls and stone keeps to waterskimmer and windrider vehicles. (Rules for vehicle combat are included in the appendix.) The new Cyphers include several that will help a Wright when crafting, such as ‘Crafter’s Eyes’, thick lenses that when worn provide informative diagrams that help with a construction task or helps the community like the ‘Hiding Alarm Nodule’ that when attached to a building sends it out of phase if it is struck by sufficient force, such as that which might occur during a siege.

A community itself has a Rank and several statistics. These are Government, its leadership and organisational structure; Health, representing the number of able-bodied occupants; Infrastructure, its buildings, roads, and so on; Damage Inflicted, the damage it can do against another community or a horde—either NPCs or beasts; Armour, which protects attacks by other communities or hordes; Modifications are abilities particular to the community which might be a unique building, NPC, or skill; and Combat, which consists of abilities similar to Modifications, but combat-related. It is possible that the values for all will change over time due to circumstances internal and external, and once it is large enough, it can conduct Community Actions. This might be to open up trade with another community, send the militia to the walls to defend against a horde, dealing with disasters, and so on. Here again, Numenera Destiny keeps things simple. A community with a higher Rank wins, whether that is in negotiating a trade agreement, withstanding an attack by a horde, or surviving an earthquake. That though is if there are no Player Characters involved. If there are, the different Character Types enhance the various stats for a community, the Player Characters can undertake some of the community actions, and the Player Characters can invest themselves in the community’s future. The Arkus can lead and speak for it, the Wright can improve and repair it, the Glaive can protect it, whilst the Delve, the Jack, and the Nano can support everyone’s endeavours.

The advice for both Game Master and players is that a community—whether is one that the characters have adopted or founded—is not simply there for the characters’ benefit. (If it is, it more likely to be based occupied and run by the Player Characters.) Whilst the Player Characters do gain from living in a community, the other inhabitants will gain also, and the interaction with the inhabitants will not be all one way, even if the Player Characters’ fostering of community places them in positions where it can direct its future. There are suggestions too on the types of adventures that can be run based around the adoption or founding of a community, as well as how a community might be laid out, and a lengthy list of long-term tasks that the Player Characters can undertake. Some are general like building up food or water stores, enhancing a community’s happiness, or even raising a child, whilst many others are specific to a Character Type. An Arkus could ‘Demonstrate Grace Under Pressure’ or ‘Cultivate Followers’, whilst a Delve would ‘Prospect for Iotum’ or ‘Find Specific Iotum’. Add in the table of random events and Numenera Destiny provides the means to run a campaign grounded in a community which could last years, both in terms of play and in the setting itself. The advice to that end is excellent.

As well as rules for creating and running communities, Numenera Destiny describes several actual communities of varying sizes that the Player Characters might encounter in and around the Steadfast, the starting area for Numenera, and then in the Beyond. They include a nomadic community that rarely stays in one place for more than a few years as the inhabitants follow the shambling mountain-like Dream Titans; an arcology that migrates up and down the Sea of Secrets off the coast of Steadfast; and a mountain city over which floats an enormous artifact called the ‘Changing Moon’, the façade and interior of which constantly changes and is the subject of study by scholars. There are several descriptions of smaller communities too, less detailed and intended to be used as ‘Starter Communities’ that the Player Characters can adopt, protect, and develop. All come with their own stats and they can just as easily be used as locations to be added to the Game Master’s campaign. Added to this are details of various organisations, including notable members, facilities, and benefits of membership. They include the Amber Gleaners, a network of scholars, explorers, delves, and other travellers who share knowledge of the routes and locations they discover with each other; the Order of Healing, a relatively new offshoot of the Order of Truth, whose members travel the Steadfast and the Beyond, offering healing and medical aid; and the League, an organisation of envoys that foster communication between communities and the benefits of civilisation, though some wonder if it has an ulterior motive…

Besides providing an array of new Cyphers and beasts and NPCs, again all of which are designed to support stories and adventures around communities—whether as allies, enemies, or hordes, Numenera Destiny includes four scenarios. ‘The Door Beneath the Ocean’ is a community-starter scenario as the Player Characters come to the rescue of refugees fleeing both an active volcano and a cruel slave keeper, and then decide where to establish a new home for them. ‘Trefoil’ gives the Player Characters the opportunity to go and hunt for a particular type of iotum, but the situation where it can be found is more complex than the rumours say it is. In ‘Red Plague’, the player Characters come to the aid of the village of Glaww whose inhabitants are suffering from a deadly disease, but to save them, they will benefit from the skills of a Delve and then a Wright. Lastly, ‘Terminus’ scales up, being designed for higher Tier Player Characters with plenty of playing background behind them and the time to build up a stock of resources. These are necessary when they discover a dangerous threat that is first a problem for their community and then the world. This fourth scenario is the least immediately useful, as its requirements are much higher, but the others work as good set-up for a community-based campaign.

Physically, Numenera Destiny is very well presented and put together. Although it needs a slight edit in places, the book is well written, and everything is easy to grasp. Above all, the artwork is excellent and this is a great looking book.

Numenera Destiny is not absolutely necessary to play Numenera Discovery. Yet Numenera Destiny offers so many great options in terms of what you play and how you play, taking a campaign in a different, more involved direction, and giving scope for the players and their characters to become more invested in the Ninth World, that ultimately, it really does feel as if it is definitely going to be wanted.

[Free RPG Day 2024] Second Contact

Now in its seventeenth year, Free RPG Day for 2024 took place on Saturday, June 22nd. As per usual, Free RPG Day consisted of an array of new and interesting little releases, which are traditionally tasters for forthcoming games to be released at GenCon the following August, but others are support for existing RPGs or pieces of gaming ephemera or a quick-start. This included dice, miniatures, vouchers, and more. Thanks to the generosity of Waylands Forge in Birmingham, Reviews from R’lyeh was able to get hold of many of the titles released for Free RPG Day.

—oOo—

In 2017, Paizo, Inc. published Starfinder: First Contact, a preview of and teaser for its then forthcoming Starfinder, the Science Fantasy roleplaying game which takes the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game forward thousands and thousands of years and to the stars. So it is most appropriate that as a preview of and teaser for the forthcoming Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Second Edition, Paizo, Inc. has released Starfinder: Second Contact for Free RPG 2024. Where the task of Starfinder: First contact was to introduce the new roleplaying game and highlight some of the differences between it and the Starfinder Roleplaying Game, the task of Starfinder: Second Contact is to reintroduce us to the Starfinder Roleplaying Game and highlight some of the differences between it and the Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Second Edition as seen in the Starfinder Playtest Rulebook.

The introduction highlights how the Starfinder Roleplaying Game is going to evolve to be in line with Pathfinder, Second Edition, before jumping straight into ‘What’s New?’. These start with elements and skills that appear in the monster descriptions given in the booklet’s following pages. For example, the ‘Integrated Weapons’ appears in the entry for robots and new skills include Computers and Piloting used by both the Asteray and the Glitch Gremlin. Similarly, several of the spells are used by those creatures. They include Delete, a spell used to remove a limited amount of data, whilst the cantrip, Recharge Weapon, reloads a weapon with a round’s worth of ammunition upon a touch. The new weapons are a couple of laser guns, whilst the rest of the Starfinder: Second Contact is really all about the monsters. These start with the Asteray, Fey Tricksters born where the void and the First World overlap, they wander space looking for distractions and starship crews to consume, and end with the Cybernetic Zombie, which might have an arm cannon or a shriek module or repair nanites! In between, there are Security Robots, Glitch Gremlins—which of course, want to cause mayhem, Laser Wolves, and Ferrofluid Oozes, sentient puddles of ferromagnetic fluids that interfere with technological devices of all sorts. Every creature is given a full page description, stats, and an illustration.

Like the earlier Starfinder: First Contact, there is little to the background of the Starfinder Roleplaying Game to Starfinder: Second Contact. There is mention that Golarion, the setting for Pathfinder, is missing, that rumours arose during the Drift Crisis of super-size versions of Ferrofluid Ooze, capable of consuming whole ships, and that the AbadarCorp is responsible for the manufacture of most robots in the Pact Worlds, becoming a byword for guaranteed quality, but making their weakness commonly known so that criminals and spies can take advantage of them.

Being a release from Paizo, Inc., it should be no surprise that Starfinder: Second Contact is a slickly produced and well-presented booklet. Much like with Starfinder: First Contact for Free RPG Day 2017, Starfinder: Second Contact is very technical in nature in comparison to the other releases for Free RPG 2024. Nevertheless, Starfinder: Second Contact is a solid introduction to the technical elements of the roleplaying game, one aimed more at fans of the roleplaying game rather than the general roleplayer.

Discovering Numenera

Civilisations rise and fall, and even transcend, and they all leave their mark on their landscape. Islands of crystal float in the sky. Massive machines, some abandoned, some still operational, wheeze and groan to purposes unknown, thrust high into the sky and deep into the ground. A plain of broken glass stretches to the horizon. The Iron Wind whips across the landscape, fundamentally transforming all caught within its cloud, flesh and non-flesh alike, into new forms. Enormous humanoid statues drift aimlessly across the sky, their purpose long forgotten. A castle continues to expand and grow as more people settle within its walls. The Great Slab stands thousands of feet high and almost ten miles square, a block of synth, metal, and organics, its sides slick with a reddish-black oil that prevents anyone from climbing it or discovering the entirely different ecosystem on its top. Scattered across this landscape borne of nanotech, gravitic technology, genetic engineering, spatial warping, and superdense polymers are smaller devices, all together called numenera. Artifacts that protect the wearer with an invisible force field, arm him with a weapon with the power of the sun, or a pair of lenses that allow the viewer to read any language. Cyphers that when thrown detonate causing a singularity to rip at the fabric of the universe, ingested give the ability to see ten times as far as normal, or fires an anchoring magnet which then creates a bridge. Oddities like a musical instrument which only unmelodic notes, a cape that billows in the wind even if there is no air, or a synth disc that restores a single piece of rotten fruit or vegetable to being fully edible. These are all waiting to be discovered, utilised, and even traded for. The ill-educated may look at all of this and call it magic, but most know that these are the remnants of past ages civilisations—civilisations that reached the far depths of space, engineered planets, toyed with reality, sidestepped into other parallels, and more, waiting to be found, examined, and their secrets revealed. Many devices can be found and worked, some not, but all know that the knowledge of how they are made has long been forgotten. This is the Ninth World.

The Ninth World is our Earth a billion years into the future. It is one continent, still settled humans, though some are abhumans—mutants, crossbreeds, the genetically engineered, and their descendants, or they are visitants, who have come to Earth, but are not native to it. Many reside in the Steadfast, a collection of kingdoms and principalities that exist under the watchful benevolence of the Amber Pope, whose Aeon Priests of the Order of Truth revere the peoples of the past and their knowledge and technology. The Order of Truth not only studies the past and its technologies, it tries to find a use for them to the betterment of the peoples of the Steadfast. The peoples of the Ninth World make use of the technology that they can scavenge—and which the Aeon Priests tell them is safe to use, turning it into armour, weapons, and everyday devices and tools to enhance the mediaeval technology they currently possess. In particular, they employ numenera—Artifacts, Cyphers, and Oddities— bits of technology leftover from past civilizations, that may have an obvious function; may have once had an obvious function, but what that has been lost and the device is put to another use; or may have once had an obvious function, but what that was, has been lost and can no longer be discerned.

The is the setting for Numenera, a Science Fantasy roleplaying game of exploration and adventure the very far future, originally published in 2013 by Monte Cook Games. It is often forgotten what a big hit Numenera was, introducing a style of play that looked familiar—the exploration of labyrinths and complexes—but placing it in a very different genre and thus shorn of that familiarity and its historical constraints. Numenera would go on to win the 2014 Origins Award for ‘Best New Roleplaying Game’, the 2014 Ennie Award for Best Writing, the 2014 Ennie Award for Best Setting, and 2014 Ennie Award for Product of the Year, be the basis of its own set of mechanics in the form of the Cypher System, and introduce new ideas in terms of roleplaying, such as player-facing mechanics and Game Master Intrusions, a new way of narratively increasing tension and awarding Experience Points. Funded via a Kickstarter campaign, the second edition of Numenera is split into two volumes, Numenera Discovery and Numenera Destiny. Of these, Numenera Discovery, presents the setting of the Ninth World with everything needed to play including character creation, rules, Cyphers, a bestiary, advice for the Game Master, and some ready-to-pay scenarios. Numenera Destiny expands the setting with new Player Character archetypes, salvaging and crafting rules, numenera, scenarios, and more, all designed to facilitate campaign play in charting the future of the Ninth World is part of that play.

Numenera Discovery opens with some setting fiction, ‘The Amber Monolith’, before going on to explain what the Ninth World is and how it differs from other roleplaying games and even from how the world is viewed in the here and now, whether that is a more cosmopolitan outlook, an acceptance though not an understanding of the technology of the past, and a medievalism without the burden of history. The rules and mechanics are clearly explained before the character creation is explained.

Characters in Numenera are primarily humans in one form or another—visitants are an advanced option and one of three Types—Glaives, Nanos, or Jacks. Glaives are warriors, either wearing heavy armour and wielding heavy weaponry or relying on light arms and armour to give them movement and agility. Nanos are sorcerers, capable of tapping into the Numenera to alter reality or learn more about it, wielding ‘Esoteries’ to command nano-spirits. Jacks are somewhere in between, being flexible in what they can do, capable of learning to fight, using ‘Esoteries’, and more. At their core, each character is defined by three stats—Might, Speed, and Intellect, and a descriptive sentence. This sentence has the structure of “I am a [adjective] [noun] who [verbs]”, where the noun is the character’s Type; the adjective a descriptor, such as Clever or Swift, that defines the character and how he does things; and the verb is the Focus or what the character does that makes him unique. For example, “I am an Intelligent Nano who Talks to Machines”. A player will also need to assign some points to the three Stats and choose some options in terms of Background—how the character became a Glaive, Nano, or Jack—and select some skills from the Type. The choice of descriptor and the verb further defines and modifies the character, whilst the Background and the Connection help hook the character into the setting. Characters begin at Tier One and can advance as far as Tier Six, gaining skills and abilities along the way. An appendix details some non-human character options.

Here, though, are the first major changes to Numenera Discovery. Whilst Foci remain relatively unchanged, there have been changes to the Descriptors. Notably, this includes both ‘Creates Unique Objects’ and ‘Leads’, which have been removed as essentially what they did is covered in the second book, Numenera Destiny. One new addition is ‘Speaks With a Silver Tongue’, which makes the character highly persuasive. Of the three Types, the Glaive and the Jack have undergone tweaks to varying degrees to make both more interesting to play. The Fighting Move options for the Glaive now include ‘Aggression’, ‘Fleet of Foot’, ‘Impressive Display’, and ‘Misdirect’, as well as ‘No Need for Weapons’ and ‘Trained Without Armour’. These allow for some interesting combinations, such as ‘Aggression’, which grants the Glaive an asset on attacks whilst hindering Speed rolls against attacks, and ‘No Need for Weapons’, which increases damage from unarmed attacks, so the Glaive becomes a brawling berserker. ‘Fleet of Foot’ lets a Glaive combine movement with actions, and with ‘Misdirect’ which enables him to deflect attacks at him back at others, he could zip around the battlefield disrupting attacks.

Whilst the Nano is unchanged, the biggest changes have been made to the Jack. Named for ‘Jack of all trades’, the Jack never quite felt distinctive enough between the Glaive and the Nano. Although there is some crossover still between the Glaive and the Jack with abilities such as ‘Trained in Armor’ and ‘Fleet of Foot’, but the new abilities like ‘Create Deadly Poison’, ‘Critter Companion’, ‘Face Morph’, ‘Link Senses’, and others all serve to make the Jack unique rather than being a bit of both the Glaive and the Nano, but not fully one or the other. One major addition is a set of suggested Cyphers that each character type can begin play with.

Lottie
“I am a Clever Jack who Speaks With a Silver Tongue”
Tier One Jack
Might 10 (Edge 0)
Speed 12 (Edge 0)
Intellect 16 (Edge 1) Effort 1
Cyphers (2): machine control implant, visage changer
Oddities: Small square cage that puts whatever single creature is inside it into stasis
Tricks of the Trade: Face Morph (2+ Intellect), Late Inspiration (3+ Intellect), Flex Skill
Skills: Interactions Involving Lies or Trickery (Trained); Defence Rolls to Resist Mental Effects (Trained); All Tasks Involving, Identifying, or Assessing Danger, Lies, Quality, Importance, Function, or Power (Trained); Persuasion, Deception, and Intimidation (Trained); Lock Picking (Trained) Inability: Studying or Retaining Trivial Knowledge (Hindered)
Equipment: Book of Favourite Words, Clothing, two weapons, explorer’s pack, pack of light tools, 8 shins Connection: You’re drinking buddies with a number of the local guards and glaives.
Origin: Born Lucky

Mechanically, Numenera Discovery—as with the other Cypher System roleplaying games which have followed—is player facing—and in its original version, arguably was one of the first systems to be player facing. Thus, in combat, a player not only rolls for his character to make an attack, but also rolls to avoid any attacks made against his character. Essentially this shifts the game’s mechanical elements from the Game Master to the player, leaving the Game Master to focus on the story, on roleplaying NPCs, and so on. When it comes to tasks, the character is attempting to overcome a Task Difficulty, ranging from one and Simple to ten and Impossible. This is done on a twenty-sided die. The target number is actually three times the Task Difficulty. So, a Task Difficulty of four or Difficult, means that the target number is twelve, whilst a Task Difficulty of seven or Formidable, means that the target number is twenty-one. The aim of the player is to lower this Task Difficulty. This can be done in a number of ways.

Modifiers, whether from favourable circumstances, skills, or good equipment, can decrease the Difficulty, whilst skills give bonuses to the roll. Trained skills—skills can either be Practised or Trained—can reduce the Difficulty, but the primary method is for a player to spend points from his relevant Stat pools. This is called applying Effort. Applying the first level of Effort, which will reduce the target number by one, is three points from the relevant Stat pool. Additional applications of Effort beyond this cost two points. The cost of spending points from a Stat pool is reduced by its associated Edge, which if the Edge is high enough, can reduce the Effort to zero, which means that the Player Character gets to do the action for free—or effortlessly!

Rolls of one enable a free GM Intrusion—essentially a complication to the current situation that does reward the Player Character with any Experience Points, whereas rolls of seventeen and eighteen in combat grant damage bonuses. Rolls of nineteen and twenty in combat can also grant damage bonuses, but alternatively, can grant minor and major effects. For example, distracting an opponent or striking a specific body part. Rolls of nineteen and twenty in non-combat situations grant minor and major effects, which the player and Game Master can decide on in play. In combat, light weapons always inflict two points of damage, medium weapons four points, and heavy weapons six points, and damage is reduced by armour. NPCs simply possess a Level, which like the Task Difficulty ranges between one and ten and is multiplied by three to get a target number to successfully attack them.

Experience Points under the Cypher System are earned in several ways, primarily through achieving objectives, making interesting discoveries, and so on. However, they are not awarded for simply killing monsters or finding treasure. There are two significant means of a Player Character gaining Experience Points. The first is ‘GM Intrusion’. These are designed to make a situation and the Player Character’s life more interesting or more complicated. For example, the Player Character might automatically set off a trap or an NPC important to the Player Character is imperilled. Suggested Intrusions are given for the three character Types and also for all of the ninety or more Foci. When this occurs, the Game Master makes an Intrusion and offers the player and his character two Experience Points. The player does not have to accept this ‘GM Intrusion’, but this costs an Experience Point. If he does accept the Intrusion, the player receives the two Experience Points, keeps one and then gives the other to another player, explaining why he and his character deserves the other Experience Point. The ‘GM Intrusion’ mechanic encourages a player to accept story and situational complications and place their character in danger, making the story much more exciting.

The major mechanical addition is the ‘Player Intrusion’, the reverse of the ‘GM Intrusion’. With this, a player spends an Experience Point to present a solution to a problem or complication. These make relatively small, quite immediate changes to a situation. For example, a Cypher or Artifact is expended, but it might be that the situation really demands the device’s use again, so the player decides to make a ‘Player Intrusion’ and at the cost of single Experience Point, give it one more use of charge or a player wants to reroll a failed task.

Creatures and numenera—Artifacts, Cyphers, Oddities—receive their own sections. There is a wide selection of both in Numenera Discovery, though with very little change between this edition of the roleplaying game and the first. A nice touch is that for each of the creatures, the Game Master is given an ‘Intrusion’ which he can use to make the encounter more challenging. One notable aspect of Numenera Discovery is that the Player Characters are limited in the number of Cyphers that they can each possess by their Type (Glaive, Nano, or Jack). Possess too many and a Player Character’s Cyphers begin to have side effects, sometimes dangerous ones. The people of the Ninth World know this and distrust those with too many. This limit is both a game mechanic and a setting mechanic. It both enforces the fleeting nature of Cyphers and the need to use—because using them is fundamentally cool—whilst at the same preventing any player from just hoarding them.

A good fifth of Numenera Discovery is dedicated to the setting of the Steadfast, its environs and beyond, literally, The Beyond. This is anything that lies outside of the nine kingdoms of the Steadfast and the Beyond the Beyond is also detailed. One such location Beyond the Beyond is The University of Doors, a place of learning found in an alternate universe that can only be reached via one or more hidden doors—getting to the door could be an adventure in itself. These sections are full of interesting details and places—such as the ‘mud’ city of Nihliesh, built atop an ancient, but immobile city-vehicle; that the lady Anatrea of Castle Aventur hosts salons for scholars and nanos, such is her fascination with numenera; and that a sphere of an unknown black material is rumoured to constantly roll across the Plain of Kataru. Several organisations besides the Order of Truth, including the Convergence, whose members value numenera as much as the Order of Truth, but for themselves rather than for society itself; the Angulan Knights, who are dedicated to humanity’s advancement and have the blessings of Order of Truth and ride the great xi-drakes as mounts; and the Jagged Dream, a secret anarchist cult dedicated to engineering conflict on a massive scale, are also detailed.

Similarly, a good tenth of Numenera Discovery is dedicated to advice for the Game Master on running the game. This covers how to use the rules, how to build a story, and how to realise the Ninth World. There is guidance on how to use GM Intrusions, including as a narrative tool and as a resolution mechanic, along with plenty of examples; handling the flow of information, when to have the players roll dice, how to encourage player creativity, and a lot more. There is advice on running the first few sessions and beyond, as well as suggestions on how to use the Ninth World by shifting the genre, for example, by making it a post-apocalyptic or weird horror setting, a look at what sciences and technologies can be found across the Ninth World, and numerous scenario ideas in addition to the three scenarios already included in Numenera Discovery. The three are each very different. ‘Taker of Sorrow’ is an introductory scenario for both players and the Game Master, an investigation into an outbreak of monsters, weirdly mouthy and emotional lumps of carnivorous flesh, that are plaguing the route the Player Characters are travelling on. It includes some diversions that the Game Master can place in the Player Characters’ way—and even places the second adventure, ‘Vault of Reflections’, nearby as a diversion, but otherwise, ‘Taker of Sorrow’ is a straightforward affair. That second scenario, ‘Vault of Reflections’, focuses on exploration and encounters with the weird technologies left behind by a previous age, whilst the third scenario, ‘Legacy’ is an investigative affair set in and around a university. Notably it uses an abbreviated adventure format that links its various scenes as a flowchart, and relies on a mix of stealth and interaction than the previous two scenarios. All three scenarios are new to this edition and do a decent job of showcasing the types of adventure possible in Numenera Discovery.

Physically, Numenera Discovery is very well presented and put together. Although it needs a slight edit in places, the book is well written, and everything is easy to grasp. Above all, the artwork is excellent and this is a great looking book.

As a second edition, the changes introduced with Numenera Discovery are more adjustments—for example, the tweaks to both the Glaive and the Jack character types and the addition of the Player Intrusion mechanic—to make the roleplaying game more interesting to play rather than a series of wholesale overhauls. Otherwise, the innovative rules and mechanics remain the same and as playable as ever. The fact that Numenera Discovery has not been changed since its publication shows how little needed to be changed to make what was a good game simply better.

Numenera Discovery is a very complete introduction to the Ninth World and more. It has everything that a Game Master and her players need to play Numenera—rules, scenarios, advice, the lot—and it remains the definitive edition of the core rules for Numenera.