The Strange: Why to Play

The last several posts were on Numenera, from Monte Cook Games; this time I'm going to do something similar about one of the other games they've created and published, The Strange. Today we'll look at reasons why you might want to consider picking it up to play, and why you might want to pitch it to your friends.

We'll start with the premise of the game, which is that in the earliest days of the universe there arose an alien civilization that quickly developed advanced technology, on the order of Kardashev IV or V - masters of the universe itself, who decided that the cosmos simply wasn't sufficient for their purposes. They altered reality itself, creating the foundation of what we know today as dark energy; they designed it as a universe-wide computational network, which they could use for nearly any purpose they felt like. They'd upload themselves into the network, transfer across it to whatever world they wanted to visit, and literally 'print' a new body on the other end of the trip.

Somewhere along the way in the billions of years since then, things have gone awry. This first civilization is gone entirely; perhaps ascending to a post-cosmological existence as a Type VI civilization, perhaps simply going extinct from boredom, perhaps destroyed by planetovores (we'll get back to that terrifying word soon), perhaps something else unimaginable. The dark energy network remains, however, and has grown along with the universe itself - with a distinctly odd quirk.

The network is so powerful a processing system that it can simulate microscopic segments of an actual universe, you see. Some worlds - those which have the good fortune to develop sapient life - are what get termed 'Prime' worlds - those whose collection of thinking, dreaming, creative minds seed the dark energy network with their creativity, giving birth to recursions - fictional worlds that generate from the ideas that take root in it. Most worlds only generate a few of these worlds from so-called fictional bleed, but Earth is special, with a vast number of fictive worlds in what gets called the Shoals of Earth. Why? You'll need to read the book for that; I'm personally going to discard that tidbit in my games.

This brings us to the core of what makes The Strange a unique game: by default, your character is a recursor, someone capable of translating from Earth to one of the recursions around it, and even out into the dark energy network - the Strange, or the chaosphere, as some refer to it. Over the course of a single game session, you can go from being an agent of the Estate on Earth, tracking down a group of smugglers who've been bringing items from the Strange to Earth for sale to the high fantasy world of Ardeyn where you're a traditional adventuring group to rubbing shoulders with Sherlock Holmes.

That's really the big draw of this - any world you can imagine can exist, including multiple iterations of the same basic world, each with a different twist on the storyline. The Holmes of Arthur Conan Doyle is there, as is the Holmes of the Sherlock TV show and the Mr. Holmes movie. Multiple versions of Alice in Wonderland exist, each one twisted in unique ways. In some cases, recursions have merged or been infected by external sources, creating versions unknown to the dreams of the people whose dreams and stories first spawned those world. There's a version of Camelot infected by a nanotech virus, and a version of Harry Potter where lightsabers have replaced wands and the Force is taught alongside magic.

You can make of this game any number of things; PCs can be agents of the Estate, as the default assumes, or they can work for a secretive government agency, alien groups that have chosen to hide from planetovores in the Shoals of Earth, or even unwitting independent recursors who have no idea of the conflicts going on around them.

And there most certainly are conflicts; the Estate is trying to prevent direct lines between Earth and the Strange out of fear, the Office of Strategic Recursion is trying to militarize the Strange, agents from the Weird Science recursion of Ruk are trying to destroy the Earth to free their recursion-faring world-ship from where it got stuck, and more. Creatures either native to the alien environment of the Strange or evolved from species that once populated a Prime world try to get access to Earth for any number of reasons, as well.

And that brings us to the planetovores - creatures of impossible power, which prey on Prime worlds to conquer and consume them. The events which led up to the creation of Ardeyn and the Estate were sparked by one such being attempting to gain access to the Earth to overwhelm and consume it. Some planetovores simple seek to become gods over a Prime World, ruling eternally over a world where their will controls all the recursions and the Prime world itself. Others seek to consume the vital essence of the world, predators escaped from a long-lost recursion and evolved to godlike power over the long ages.

Essentially, if you liked shows like The X-Files, Supernatural, Grimm, or Constantine, or similar types of books, the Strange is a game you'll want to give a look. In the course of a single session it lets you go from a cop on the streets of Earth to a heroic knight in a high fantasy kingdom to a deep-space explorer in a sci-fi recursion. You can borrow shamelessly from your favorite pop culture and literature, because the recursions around Earth are literally made of these things. And you can even delve into the swirling fractal chaos of the Strange itself, exploring the universe that underpins the universe - and perhaps even explore alien worlds in the 'real world' in the process.

So give it a look!

Numenera: Cyphers, Artifacts, and Oddities

Today, we'll look at a selection of numenera devices and items that could show up in Pat's campaign; these are in addition to the randomly-rolled devices that might be found as treasure in the process of adventuring through the Ninth World.

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Oddities are strange things with no clear purpose, which may or may not be able to be adapted to some form of useful function. Often, they're used in the same way that curios and kitsch have been throughout human history - half trade object and half display piece. Here are some that can be found around the City of the Missing, in the shops, on shelves in homes, and on display in public spaces.

• A small piece of apparently unbreakable glass that slowly ripples like the surface of a pond.
• A small cup that instantly cools anything placed in it to 40 F (4.4C), although the cup itself remains room temperature.
• A brass-colored disc that occasionally bounces up onto its edge and spins several times before falling over again.
• A small metallic shrub that produces several (1D6+1) pieces of brightly colored glass every week, which crumble away a day after being picked or falling off.
• A pair of metal sticks that can be used as hairsticks, which causes keratin in contact with it (hair and fingernails) to turn a vivid shade of blue.
• A bottle of bubbling translucent green liquid; it doesn't seem possible to open it.
• A dozen rings seamlessly joined together, each of which can be tapped to produce a musical tone.
• An egg that defies all efforts to crack it open.
• A particularly shiny red rock that constantly remains hot enough to be unpleasant to touch but never actually harmful.
• A small stronglass ball that tastes like sweet mint and leaves the tongue stained yellow if sucked on.
• A nearly-empty jar of purple gel that never quite can be scraped completely empty; the gel smells like roasting meat but tastes like motor oil.
• Two balls of red fur that will envelop whatever touches them until pulled free, providing a soft and warm slipper or mitten.
• A bottle that has a static charge around it, which contains an incredibly bright point of light inside.
• A metal cage with a miniature star inside, which produces startlingly complex music from time to time when storms rage across the surface.
• A spindle-shaped piece of blue stone with a golden rod stuck in it that occasionally vibrates and produces fragments of not-quite-human voices, none of which speak a familiar language.
• A glove sized for a creature half again as large as a human with seven fingers and two thumbs.
• A boot of incredibly durable and flexible synth shaped for a creature with velociraptor-like claws.

This is just a sampling of the oddities, but it hopefully provides an insight into the sheer amount of cruft that the Ninth World has lying about as detritus of the prior eras.

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Next we have a sampling of the cyphers in the area; some are as-found widgets, while others are modified or augmented by the skills of those in the area.

Wind Capsule
Type: Usable (Anoetic)
Level: 1D6+2
Effect: These usually come in the form of small glassy bulbs filled with a silvery liquid that aren't quite as fragile as they look, but which will still break open when thrown. Each one contains a repair-function nanoswarm that lacks any direction, which will sample the environment and attempt to 'repair' it according to ages-obsolete programming. The result is essentially a short-lived Iron Wind that fills an area out to a short distance from the impact point that then drifts with the prevailing wind, constantly and rapidly rebuilding everything in the area of effect. Regardless of what results, any living creatures are effectively rendered part of the terrain in a horrific fashion.

Shinshot Node
Type: Wearable (Anoetic)
Level: 1D6
Effect: This set of stronglass bracelets are shot through with glistening metallic threads; when the activation button is pushed, the wearer feels a sharp tingling where the bracelets touch their skin, followed by a sharp awareness of all metallic objects in their vicinity. For the next 28 hours, they can project a powerful electromagnetic force at any object within a  long range, with the effect of propelling the object with sufficient speed and force that it counts as a ranged weapon (up to 100 pounds per cypher level); items can only move in a straight line away from the bearer, however. Users may make a Speed check equal to the cypher's leel to attempt to use this force to launch themselves into and through the air, if they're light enough.

Purification Shot
Type: Anoetic (Injectable)
Level: 1D6+2
Effect: These ampules of bright green goo can be pressed against a creature's skin and injected, an action that most find only marginally preferable to the idea of dying. The injected goo neutralizes all poisons and diseases of equal or lower level than the cypher, while granting an additional Might check to overcome those of higher level. The reason users find the idea of letting their ailment have its way is that the goo causes the users to feel as if they're burning up from the inside, spending the next 28 hours with all actions save the additional Might check modified by two steps to their detriment.

Encryption Pod
Type: Occultic (Usable)
Level: 1D6+3
Effect: This is a matched set of dark spheres, each with an array of buttons and dials along one side, with an opening on the opposite side. Any information-containing object fed into the hole before activation will be rendered into a metallic cylinder engraved with a cipher containing the original information, the difficulty of the cipher being equal to the level of the Encryption Pod. Feeding the rod into the other device of the pair will cause it to reconstruct the original materials, the cipher cleanly removed. Convergence agents often carry one half of these pods to encrypt their findings to send to their superiors.

Hopper
Type Occultic (Wearable)
Level: 1D6+1
Effect: This hefty piece of machinery is surprisingly light and easy to move; fastened into a harness with backpack straps, it hardly impedes the wearer's movements even before activation. When used, it generates a field that modified the effects of inertia for the user, giving them two assets on all movement tasks and all attempts to avoid being moved against the user's will. When active, the user hears a high-pitched sizzling sound and can't smell anything but the scent of burnt sugar. The effects of the device last for four hours, after which it burns out.

Immunity Serum
Type: Occultic (Injectable)
Level: 1D6+2
Effect: This complex band can be activated by being pressed to exposed skin, an action that deals one point of Might damage as it samples flesh and blood before injecting the person with a serum that renders them immune to all forms of poison and disease for the next 28 hours; even ambient radiation damage is shrugged off by the user, as their genetic structure and immune system are massively bolstered. A side effect of the injection is that the user spends the next week with a craving for an alien flower that they've never seen before.

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Artifacts are the powerhouse devices of Numenera, ways to add semi-permanent abilities to characters. Fairly rare and often fairly powerful, they're the truest treasures of the Ninth World. Here are a few that have been found around Guran.

Gravity Arc Projector
Level: 1D6+1
Effect: This staff has a silver-tinted translucent ball at one end with an intense point of light inside, suspended in a silver crescent with several thick cables coiling down the length of the staff; these connect to a softly humming ovoid at the other end. At base, it can be used as a light bludgeoning and slashing weapon that deals 4 damage rather than 2. Activating it has one of two effects, either of which trigger a depletion roll.
Gravity Pulse: A single target within a long range is subject to a Speed attack; if the attack hits, the creature is violently slammed into the ground, dealing 10 points of bludgeoning damage as the force of gravity magnifies immensely around it for a moment.
Anti-gravity: For ten minutes, the wielder of the staff is able to fly up to a long range each round, effectively freed from the hold of gravity.
Depletion: 1 in 50 (1-2 on a 1D100)

Sky Crane
Level: 1D6
Effect: Similar in design to the Gravity Arc Projector, this staff is capable of projecting a precise telekinetic effect that enables it to lift up to 500 pounds per level at up to a long range, moving it at about five miles per hour from one point to another. Each activation targets a single object and lasts up to one hour. It is possible to use this to enable an entire group to fly if the artifact is powerful enough, by lifting a platform under the group and moving it toward the desired location.
Depletion: 1 in 100

Mnemonic Puzzle Box
Level: 1D6+3
Effect: This intricately detailed cube is able to capture the mind of a living creature and run it as a virtual simulation, effectively allowing a creature to survive death if used within the first minute or so of death. The resulting mind is of a level equal to the level of the artifact in terms of how well it can think; while this will not allow a nonsapient beast to become sapient, it can enable those who use it to think more swiftly and clearly than they might have in life. A box can only capture one mind, thereafter serving to simulate it perfectly for as long as the box exists. Most human minds don't handle this well, as the box doesn't have sensory inputs by default, although it can be connected to external devices and even installed in synthetic bodies.
Depletion: --

Blessed Blade of Wonder
Level: 1D6+1
Effect: An elegant-looking sword-hilt that, when activated, creates a probability field that anything that touches the shimmering distortion projected from the blade will be violently harmed. This distortion deal damage equal to the artifact's level, which counts as a light weapon. The damage that results varies from moment to moment, with everything from simple crushing and tearing to outright manipulation of atomic matter, with severe radiation burns and transmutation of materials happening. One notable event involving the first Blessed Blade of Wonder remains enshrined in local lore: an abhuman was struck by the field and had the path of the blow transmute into diamond, the slab of which remains on display in the town hall of Guran to this day. Each activation of the distortion "blade" lasts for ten minutes.
Depletion: 1 in 20

Numenera: The Eye-Man and the Agent

Continuing with detailing things that might go into the theoretical Numenera campaign, we have today two potentially significant NPCs for the campaign - the girl turned nanotech nightmare known as the Eye Man and the agent of the Convergence, Iamol the Blessed.

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The Eye-Man
Level: 5

The Eye-Man, in its current state, is a swollen mass of vaguely humanoid flesh that slowly moves around the abandoned bauble mines, the creature's reddened skin interrupted by numerous eyes that blink and stare, none of them quite alike. Most appear human, although some have decidedly strange pupil shapes or iris colors. There doesn't seem to be any pattern to how the eyes are placed, but each of them has 1-3 holographic images flickering around it; some are recognizable, such as the occasional flash of the state called She or the terrain around the Amber Fort, while others are completely alien, with complex swirling fractal shapes abounding.

The Eye-Man poses no threat if not attacked or impeded, slowly continuing to wander the mines in search of something it can't seem to find, occasionally stopping in place and twitching as if several conflicting movement impulses are affecting it at once. At all times it keeps up a quiet muttering tone that seems to be a mixture of Truth and several other languages, some of which have the distorted sound of a human voicebox trying to produce decidedly alien phenomes.

Motive: To appease the Fort AI
Environment: Guran Bauble Mines
Health: 50
Damage Inflicted: Two attacks per round; one is a physical bashing attack that deals 5 Might damage, the other is a holographic storm that inflicts 2 Intellect damage to anyone within a short distance
Armor: 1, due to the confusing holographic flickering
Movement: Short
Modifications: Perception of threats as level 1 due to constant influx of data; makes Intellect attack as a level 7.

Combat: Attempting to fight the Eye-Man might well be an exercise in futility, as the creature is infected with nanites under the control of the Fort AI that continually attempt to modify and upgrade it toward a state that the original creature - a young woman named Lusil - simply can't be warped into. As such, Might and Speed damage dealt to the creature is repaired with alarming swiftness, letting it regenerate up to 5 health every round, as well as rendering it functionally immune to poisons and drugs.

The Eye-Man doesn't respond to threats or attacks until it gets hurt, at which point the muttering it continually emits rises into a shriek somewhere between that of a terrified young woman and a modem trying to connect to another system, swinging at aggressors with swollen fists until they retreat from view or the Eye-Man is slain. Each round, it also emits a massive pulse of swirling, confusing fractal patterns that strain the eyes and disrupt the thoughts of those who see it, dealing Intellect damage in the process.

The most effective method for defeating the Eye-Man is by dealing Intellect damage to it, which actually attacks the nanite infestation and, after 50 points of Intellect damage are dealt, releases the Fort AI's hold over the creature, allowing the stress-fractured personality of Lusil to re-emerge. At this point, regular healing efforts, particular those involving genetic therapy and tissue reconstruction, will be able to restore the young woman's form to wholeness, but she'll need healed of her mental damage to return to lucidity.

Interaction: At baseline, the Eye-Man is simply a puzzling entity that lives in the bauble mines, difficult to fight and almost impossible to kill. If freed from the nanite infestation and restored to health and lucidity, however, Lusil is a tremendous wellspring of information on the dangers and mysteries of the Amber Fort.

While still infested, players who listen to the muttering will hear the creature sliding in and out of Truth, with the understandable parts sounding like a mix of fearful pleading by someone and monotone status updates from a computer system attempting to reboot and continually failing.

Use: The first encounter with the Eye-Man should happen while the players are attempting to track the neurovorg in the bauble mines; the creature can often be found near the corpses of the other young women who went missing at the same time as Lusil, the holes bored into their now-empty skulls a testament to their ends at the hands of the neurovorg. Investigation by players skilled with the numenera should reveal the nanite infestation and the possibility of recovering the creature it was made from, once they hear the 'pleading' part of the muttering.

Once rescued and restored, Lusil allows players to make knowledge and lore checks about the Amber Fort as if specialized in all relevant skills as long as she's consulted about the topic.

Loot: If completely slain, players can harvest 1D6 disgustingly fleshy cyphers from the remains.

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Iamol the Blessed
Level: 7

Iamol looks as if he's only in his late twenties, in the prime of his youth and health. In truth, the man is a deceptive and sly nano who is over a century in age, his youthful vitality maintained by his alliance with the neurovorg that typically dwells in his basement. He farms the local crossel berries, quietly augmenting them with his knowledge of the numenera to ensure that his crops turn out larger, more birghtly colored, and more powerful in terms of both flavor and stimulation than those of others in the town.

He maintains an act of being slightly slow and easily baffled by the world around him, insisting that his crossels must grow so well because the 'Gods of the Sphere' have blessed him. Those who happen across him when he's applying his chemical supplements to the plants join the wild animals he catches in feeding the neurovorg's appetite, adding to the mystery of things that go missing around Guran.

His primary reason for being in Guran is the discovery of the Amber Fort and the way into the depths of the structure, which he hopes will yield enough secrets of the numenera for his to surpass his superiors and become a Magus of the Convergence in his own right.

Motive: To amass knowledge of the numenera and power
Environment: Guran
Health: 70
Damage Inflicted: Melee attacks inflict 7 damage as he uses an incredibly sharp electrified blade artifact that causes all Speed actions to be modified by one level to the detriment of those struck; he also has an artifact that permits him to fire rays of crackling blue-black gravitational energy that deal 3 crushing damage to up to three targets at long range each round.
Armor: 3
Movement: Long, due to hidden internal augmentations

Combat: If forced into a fight, Iamol will attempt to cut down anyone near him as quickly as possible, reserving the gravity beams for those who try to flee in different directions. His internal augmentations allow him to move quickly from target to target, and he'll focus on whoever seems likely to harm him the most, until someone tries to flee, at which point he'll run the victim down. His primary motivation in combat is to silence anyone who might reveal him; if anyone gets away, his crossel fields will go up in flames, his house burn to ashes, and Iamol will soon become the boogeyman of the region, kidnapping travelers and stragglers to feed his neurovorg ally at hidden redoubts through the area around the Amber Fort.

Use: Iamol's primary use is to be a link to both the Amber Fort, the town's missing people, and the Converge itself. He should remain undiscovered until the players are around Tier 3-4, at which point they can pursue his defeat to end the threat of both him and the neurovorg once and for all.

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Next time, we'll look at some cyphers and artifacts specifically for this campaign.

Numenera - Creatures of the Ninth World

Today, some creatures for Pat's first adventure, including the Neurovorg that I wrote up the first version of at my now-defunct blog Cyphers and Oddities.

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Neurovorg

Level: 4 (12)

At first glance, the neurovorg seems to be a wholly artificial construct, made of stained metal, synth, and glass in the form of a large hound or humanoid, depending on whether it chooses to be bipedal or quadrupedal at the time. The limbs are partly exposed, with pistons and thick metal cables visibly shifting as the creature moves, while the head of it is a disturbing mass of articulated digits wrapped around a few drills and other surgical equipment. A single optic system glows above the surgical gear like some kind of infernal eye.

A closer look reveals the real horror of the neurovorg; the translucent synth and glass houses gray and pink organic material, glistening wetly in available light. Much of the mass is arrayed in lumpy coils along the creature's armored neck, the repurposed mass of brain matter the neurovorg has forcibly extracted from victims as a combination of supplemental processing power and feedstock for the creature's chemosynthesis factories. Arrayed along the underside are a variety of needles, each one capable of producing a different chemical compound with a wide variety of effects.

Perhaps most disquieting of all is the fact that these brain-eaters speak, but in a distressing amalgam of voices, as if drawing individual words from the original owners of the brains that fill it.

Motive: Hungers for neural tissue

Environment: The fringes of any region populated by intelligent creatures

Health: 25

Damage Inflicted: 4 damage, plus possible drug injection

Armor: 2

Movement: Short when bipedal, long when quadrupedal

Modifications: Perception as a level 6; Stealth as level 2; all intellect-based tasks as level 8 when recently fed, or level 2 when hungry.

Combat: Neurovorgs have no concerns about whether or not their prey are aware of them when closing in; the stink of decaying tissue surrounds all neurovorgs, making it hard to avoid noticing their presence. The creatures prefer to strike fast and withdraw with a victim clutched to them rather than engaging in a drawn-out battle. If forced into an extended fight, the neurovorg is more than willing to switch stances to its advantage, as well as using the wide array of chemicals at its disposal.

Neurovorgs prefer to focus their attention on a single foe; if their victim fails a Speed Defense roll, they must make an additional Might Defense roll to avoid being caught in the manipulators on the creature's head. Victims who are captured by a neurovorg can make an additional Might Defense check each round to break free, but are subject to an Intellect attack each round the deals 3 Intellect damage as the creature drills into their head and begins harvesting fresh brain matter for its own use.

Bipedal neurovorgs are capable of bringing their injection manipulators to bear, stabbing opponents and delivering various chemicals with successful attacks. A bipedal neurovorg finds it difficult to capture a victim, and will typically switch to quadrupedal mode as an action once they have pacified an opponent with their drug cocktail.

Possible effects of the drug injections include:

Corrosive: The neurovorg injects a strong acid in its opponent, bypassing Armor and dealing 5 damage.

Hallucinogen: Victims of this injection must make a Might Defense check or spend the next fie rounds unable to tell friend, foe, or nonexistent terror apart.

Poison: Victims of this injection must make a Might Defense check each round until successful; each failure deals 3 Might damage.

Soporific: Victims of this injection must make a Might Defense check or have all their actions modified by one level to their detriment for ten minutes; additional injections of this drug extend the duration without adding to the effect.

Anesthetic: Victims of this injection must make a Might Defense check each round or drop whatever they happen to be holding; they also gain 1 point of Armor for ten minutes due to the numbness of their flesh failing to register damage dealt to it.

Paralytic: Victims of this injection need to make a Might Defense check each round or move one step down the damage track; if lowered to 'dead' by this drug, treat it as being paralyzed - alive but unable to interact physically with the world, although purely mental actions remain possible - although this will quickly change unless the neurovorg is driven off by the victim's companions.

Regenerative: Neurovorgs have no use for deceased neural tissue, and may inject a chemical cocktail that restores 3 to Might and Speed if their victim shows signs of being at risk of death prior to harvesting.

Antivenin: This functions as a level 5 cure for poisons, as well as a certain cure for the neurovorg's own poison, anesthetic, and hallucinogenic injections.

Interaction: Neurovorgs are intelligent and can be reasoned with, although their craving for brain tissue means that they will spend much of any social interaction attempting to bargain for brains. A neurovorg who is given a steady supply of brain matter can be convinced to provide usable doses of many chemical compounds, including the regenerative compound it sometimes uses to stabilize victims. Of course, to obtain such a supply, the characters have to be willing to regularly sacrifice other living, thinking beings to the neurovorg as feedstock.

Use: A series of disappearances in a major city and the sudden availability of a wondrous new healing compound is linked by rumors of some strange automaton lurking in a noble's menagerie.

The poor of a city have begun disappearing with alarming regularity, only to turn up some time later with a hole drilled in their heads and much of their brain missing from their skulls. Sooner or later a NPC important to the PCs goes missing, only to turn up on their doorstep with a hole in their head and clear signs of brain damage, ranting about the translucent brain-eater with the voice of the damned.

The PCs encounter an ancient neurovorg chained up in a ruin of a prior world; the creature is starving, barely above animal sapience, and will bargain desperately to either be freed or provided with brains, promising to provide drugs in exchange for either. If freed, it may attack the group out of desperate hunger - or it may attack a nearby town, leaving the settlement full of warm, vacant-eyed bodies when the PCs arrive, the neurovorg sitting in the middle of the town as it processes the freshly acquired neural tissue into the promised drugs.

The group comes across a town that seems overly welcoming to unknown outsiders, happily pressing gifts and trinkets on them. The truth comes out when the party is ambushed in the inn the next night, with the villagers intent on subduing them to be fed to their local god - a neurovore that dispenses hallucinogenic drugs and regeneratives in return for a steady supply of neural tissue.

A butcher has surprisingly few staff tending to the slaughter of the animals that come in; investigation when a worker (or the butcher herself) goes missing reveals the presence of a captive neurovorg being fed the brains of the animals in exchange for powerful preservative compounds.

Loot: A neurovorg's body can be salvaged to produce 1d6+1 chemical cyphers and possibly a single cybernetic artifact.

GM Intrusions: The neurovorg shifts stances from biped to quadruped unusually quickly, taking a PC by surprise; unless the character makes a Speed Defense roll at a two step detriment, they find themselves caught in the creature's grip, the main drill whirring up to speed only an inch or two from their forehead.

The neurovorg sprays an anesthetic mist from an injector, causing everyone in immediate range to make a Might Defense check or drop whatever they're holding as their flesh goes numb for a few seconds.

The neurovorg, recently fed, has prepared the area with sharp objects coated in soporific chemicals. The PC steps the wrong way and is cut by one, taking one point of damage and having to make a Might Defense roll or suffer the effects of the soporific injection.

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Mange-Cat

Level: 2 (6)

These predatory creatures resemble leopards at first glance, until the six eyes on the head and the two extra pairs of legs become evident; their paws are outfitted with gripping digits that enable them to climb nearly sheer surfaces with phenomenal speed. In addition to the claws on each of their feet, they have sharp teeth and a set of fangs capable of injecting venom through a bite. Mange-cats are somewhere between pack predators and scavengers in the southern foothills of the Black Riage, they remain a persistent nuisance in the settlements of the area.

Some attempts at domesticating the creatures as guard animals have been made, but they do poorly without the social environment of a pack, and any attempt to confine them results in the creatures frantically trying to find a way out to run and hide. Their keen hearing enables them to live in abandoned structures as well as above ground, using their ears as sonar to let them track potential prey, leading to occasional infestations in abandoned mines.

Motive: Hungers for flesh

Environment: The foothills and caves of the foothills of the southern Black Riage.

Health: 10

Damage Inflicted: Claws deal 4 damage, while the bite deals 2 plus a Might poison that inflicts 2 per turn until two successful defense checks are made against it.

Armor: 0

Movement: Long when running; short when climbing

Modifications: Running, climbing, and leaping as level 4; auditory and visual perception as level 5; resistance to fear and intimidation as level 1

Combat: Mange-cats prefer to attack as a pack from ambush, leaping from trees, cave walls, and ledges in groups of three to six, attempting to target a single large creature as prey; one will typically try to bite the target while the others dash around it and claw, trying to weaken and cripple it. If they successfully down their prey, the one trying to bite will try to start dragging the victim off, with the others acting as a defensive screen or acting to help carry the weight. Given their tightly-knit pack mentality, successfully scaring one off or killing it will usually break the morale of the entire pack and send the rest scattering.

Interaction: Mange-cats are opportunistic vermin, lurking out of sight until the players let their guard down (taking a ten-minute or hour-long recovery break, for example) before springing an ambus on the most-injured or weakest-looking character. Clever players may be able to scare or trick them into charging into another threat, if they want.

Use: Mange-cats are little more than annoying nuisances, but their ambushes can be a surprising thing the first time, and a reminder that the Ninth World is full of life later on.

Loot: Mange-cat lairs typically hold 2D6 shins in shiny bits of metal and glass, and occasionally have a cypher buried in the midst of the refuse of former victims.

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Hopefully these two creatures give you a taste of what kind of weird and unsettling creatures the Ninth World can hold; next time, we'll look at the Eye Man and the Convergence agent.

Special thanks to Darcy and Jssra for added ideas on the Neurovore.

Numenera - Anatomy of Adventure

Last time, we saw a group building their characters; today, we'll look behind the GM's screen at how a Numenera adventure can be built, and how it differs from the more usual tabletop adventure design.

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In most games, where XP is awarded based on defeating opponents in combat and a sizable chunk of the game book is deoted to the mechanics of combat, adventures tend to focus on the size and difficulty of the fights that will be encountered. Some do better at making things more complex than this, providing suggestions of how to bypass combat via social skills or providing the difficulty of various hazards like traps and environmental threats, but the rules for dealing with these alternate scenarios tend to be thin compared to the robustness of how to have a combat.

Numenera differs from this in that every encounter is effectiely broken down the same way; the GM assigns a level to the challenge, the level determines the target difficulty, and the players are free to try anything they want to achieve their goal. If they encounter a sentry robot in their way that's stood in place for hundreds of thousands of years, they can attempt to see if they know anything about it, if there's a known way past it, if it speaks a language they know, and even attempt to negotiate with it via pantomime. They can try sneaking by it, fighting it, recruiting it as an ally, tricking it into letting them by, or whateer other scheme they can devise.

Any of these could be worth XP in two different forms - the GM Intrusion, where the GM complicates the life of the players and awards the victim an XP to keep and an XP to share with another players, and the reward for discovery. Finding the robot sentry and determining that it's active, then finding a way past without destroying the robot is very definitely worth XP for the party, with perhaps an extra point tossed in for the PC who came up with the successful idea or whose idea made the GM laugh the hardest.

As a result, when Pat looks over the list of characters and goals the players have, the first things that stand out are Susan's drive for vengeance, Allie's desire to explore the world and naive lack of understanding of the dangers around her, and the desire Chris has for new devices to study and understand. As such, a few things about Guran are instant hooks - it's a town with mysteries about things that are missing, and a surplus of numenera oddities in the form of the blue baubles that crashed the town's economy.

Pat sketches out the presence of a Convergence member in the town - not the person that Susan is hunting, but someone downstream from them, reporting to them through a few layers of control. This operative is in the town looking for the secrets of the past, starting with the strange headless statue known as She and the supply of blue baubles that litter the street. In Pat's version of the game, She will be the currently-nonfunctional reader and projector for the data stores in the baubles - nearly indesctructible archives from a forgotten civilization, containing the entire store of their knowledge, if only the correct baubles can be located and fed to She for reproduction - and if She can be repaired and reactivated.

Allie's desire to explore ties in with the Convergence agent needing more baubles and buried parts hidden in the bauble mines; exploring the mines and the dangers they pose will play a significant part in the campaign itself. The agent - a young-looking man secretly nearly a century old, his cover being making a living as a crossel berry farmer - will directly tie into the first few adventures, as he keeps a nightmarish creature he terms a neurovorg in his basement and sends it to store or retrieve supplies from the mines. Susan will be familiar with the terrible beasts, giving her a clear sign that the Convergence is active in the town.

Inside the mines are ancient machines, mostly buried in the mountainside, mostly unoperative; most can be salvaged for a cypher or two, in capable hands, but the real treasure is at the back of the mine, where a wall of indestructible amber-like material has been uncovered. In truth, this is the lower reaches of the Amber Fort, a 'haunted' ruin in the mountains north of Guran, a location that was once like the Amber Monolith that helped forged the Order of Truth, but the gravity-defying machinery failed it ages ago, leaving it fallen until it became entombed in the crust of the world. A thoroughly deranged AI dwells inside it, able to fitfully interact with She and the baubles.

PAt notes this all down, and marks that the very first event after the first bit of general faffing about the game will be Susan and Allie waking in the middle of the blue-tinged night to see the unsettling spider-hound shape of the neurovorg skittering out of the village, north toward the mines. Most of the adventure assumes they'll pursue, but Pat notes that if they try to backtrack it, they'll be able to identify the general area of town it came from - an area near the morgue where it apparently leapt off a roof. The neurovorg is a level 4 creature, but the darkness and often-stirred dust raise the difficulty two steps, making counter-tracking it a level 6 challenge.

Tracking it to the mines should be trivial, as Susan is trained in tracking things and the neurovorg wasn't trying to obscure itself. Simply getting inside is a problem, as the mines have been barricaded to keep people out; the creature is flexible, and squeezed through a space hardly large enough for a human child, but for the players the barrier is a level 5 challenge to get through. Bypassing this will get them into the maze-like network of the mines, where tracking the neurovorg becomes significantly more difficult. Defunct machinery emerges from the walls, giving the nanos a chance to scavenge cyphers if they feel the need to do so.

There'll be four primary challenges inside the mines; trying to find the neurovorg is a level 8 tasks, so the group isn't likely to have much luck, but if they do they can confront and defeat the creature, robbing the agent of his best tool early in the camapign. They'll encounter a still-powered doorway, locked against intrusion, which can be defeated with a level 4 Intellect test to defeat the locking mechanisms; the door can be salvaged for a few cyphers, if anyone wants to try, but that's a level 6 tasks that risks dealing 6 Might damage if it fails. They can find multiple fragments of an etched map - the rough exploration of the Amber Fort's upper leels, essentially backed up here by the agent in case his primary map goes awry; deciphering the map and figuring out what it's a map of is a series of level 4 Intellect checks.

The last of the mine's challenges is encountered on the way out - one of the people who've gone missing in recent months is a young woman who went exploring in the mines with her friends; they ran afoul of the neurovorg, with the creature neatly disabling the other two with drug injections, but the girl escaped only to stumble into a pool of nanites that tried to 'repair' her to interface with the deranged Fort AI. Now, she's a vaguely humanoid creature surrounded by flickering holographic images with dozens of staring, bloodshot eyes all over her body, staggering through the mines and trying to process the orders being fed to her by the AI. The neurovorg avoids her, having learned the hard way that she's become immune to the drugs it uses thanks to the nanites. The 'Eye Man' is a level 5 encounter that can go any number of ways; while she can certainly be fought and killed to free her of her burden, the Ninth World is a vast place with seeming miracles. If the nanites can be purged from her system and her body regenerated, they can restore the girl to herself and gain an ally with extensive knowledge of the Fort's dangers buried in the depths of her mind.

Also in the mine are a few explorer's packs and a rolled-up bundle of notes in a level 10 cipher that are coded communications between the agent and his direct superior; later events will let the notes be more easily read, but for now they're a tantalizing mystery for the players. Upon return to the town, the group can make plans to hunt for the neurovorg, if they never found it or it escaped, explore more of the town, investigate She, and/or plan their first excursion to the Amber Fort, an event that will draw the attention of the agent to them.

Pat notes that everyone should get 4 XP for completing the adventure, plus whatever they acquired from GM Intrusions, and that killing the Eye Man will make future adventures notably harder, then closes the prep notebook.

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And there's the outline of a full adventure; next time we'll go over a few possible creatures that might be encountered during the adventure, including the neurovorg and the agent!

Numenera: Characters

Yesterday, we looked at the overview of Numenera as a game and what it offers at the table. Today, we'll look at how a hypothetical group of players might build their characters for a game set on the fringes between the Steadfast and the Beyond, which essentially mark the known civilized lands and the rumored places on the fringes of civilization, beyond which nothing is truly known.

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Our group of hypothetical players consists of Allie, Chris, Jean, and Susan as players, with Pat acting as the GM for the game to be. Pat has already pitched them the location - the town of Guran, which has enough of a write-up in the core book to have some material ready to go, and ample room to expand - and given them copies of the information about the City of the Missing. After flipping through it and the Player's Guide, they quickly talk about what each of them wants to try out.

Allie wants a character who comes from a mostly civilized land, the sort of person who started off as the idle child of a wealthy family and decided to go 'experience the world' on her own. She decides that she likes the unfocused feel that a Jack can have and selects that as her Type, then settles to look over the descriptors and foci to figure out what might work for her concept.

Chris has an idea of a character from a small town in the Beyond where the local nanos and Aeon Priests have managed to tap into a seemingly perpetual dynamo that produces an endless supply of power; as such, electric lighting and heating is common in the settlement, and the locals have learned to adapt the subsidiary devices linked to the massive device. His character is going to be someone who Rides the Lightning, a clever explorer who wants to find more devices to harness and utilize the way his people have.

Jean wants to be the unbreakable vanguard who marches in at the head of the group, shrugging off the dangers of the lost eras of the world and keeping the others safe. She knows she wants to be a Glaive, to maximize her ability to use armor to keep herself safe, and she's looking at Tough as a descriptor. She has a vague notion of being someone whose early life was spent as a gladiator, learning to fight and survive, and that now she doesn't feel right unless there's a risk of danger in her life.

Susan has a full concept ready to go, having read things over in advance. She wants to be a Vengeful Nano who Focuses Mind Over Matter - a person whose past is kept carefully hidden, because she doesn't want anyone to let her target discover that she's still alive. As she explains to the others, her character is the result of a research program by a member of the Convergence, the dark mirror of the Order of Truth, where she was experimented on as a young girl, eventually unlocking telekinetic powers in an uncontrollable fury that destroyed the research facility and left her former tormentor assuming that everyone was dead. Now she hunts the Magister responsible for her powers, determined to make him suffer as she suffered. Her latest lead has brought her to Guran, but she'll follow any lead she finds to the end in order to have her revenge.

Allie suggests that, after looking the characters over, her Jack is Naive and Explores Dark Places - she completely trusts Susan's nano after the latter was on a caravan ambushed by Convergence servants that Susan's character tore into in her fury against the Convergence in general, possibly also acquiring the lead that brought her to Guran. Given Allie's desire to see the world, she decided to tag along with the worldly-seeming and driven nano, oblivious to the dangers she's being brought into contact with thanks to her sheltered upbringing.

Once Susan agrees, Jean suggests that her Tough Glaive who Masters Defense might have been hired by Allie's parents, who are less naive than their child, and so where Alliw goes, Jean goes. The idea of a sturdy figure dedicated to getting her naive explorer out of trouble when she trots off the cliff is appealing, and so she enthusiastically agrees to it. Jean's glaive is less trusting of Susan's nano than Allie's character is, but as long as the psychokinetic doesn't threaten her charge she won't complain.

Chris has settled on being a Mechanical Nano who Rides the Lightning, the better to represent that his character relies heavily on his understanding of the numenera acquired in his hometown. Reliant on the machinery he wields and the secrets he's learned to understand, he decides that he met the others during the same caravan, and the clearly uncanny nature of Susan's abilities and her crusade against a mysterious organization that might hold more knowledge for him to plunder is too tempting to resist.

Susan, with the first fully developed character, is already well along in working out the rest of her characters; she's trained in tasks that involve intimidation, threats, or inflicting pain by torture, all of which her character has done in hunting her target. Being trained in finding and following tracks falls into the same group of utility. She's become something of a shadowy terror for the Convergence since gaining her freedom from them, hunting them down and leaving no survivors. Being trained in Speed defense adds to her hunter-killer vibe, and she notes that she needs to select a bonus medium weapon - one that she plans to have be a slashing weapon. Focusing Mind Over Matter at Tier 1 means she can deflect attacks with her mind, spending an Intellect point to make herself go from trained to specialized in her Speed Defense for ten minutes at a time.

She looks at her type, the Nano, and spends two points in Speed and four in Intellect, leaving her with 7 Might, 11 Speed, and 16 Intellect; she's not physically powerful, but she's fast and her mind is powerful enough to destroy her foes. She notes down that she's considered trained with the numenera and that she's practiced with light weapons, then moves on to her chosen abilities. It isn't much of a choice; Onslaught matches her hostile view on the world, letting her strike things with a powerful bludgeoning force, while Push is a rough shove with no clear source, augmenting her intimidating aspect. She writes down that she has a light slashing weapon (a long, sharp knife), a book on the numenera (scavenged from the wreckage), and a set of clothing that includes a well-made hooded cloak.

Chris starts off from his Type, feeding three points to his Might, one to his Speed, and two to his Intellect, bringing himself up to 10 on Might and Speed and 14 for his Intellect. He picks Onslaught and Ward as his starting abilities, knowing that his Focus will give them both an electrical aspect - the Onslaught will look like a lash of lightning from the gauntlets that make part of his outfit, and the Ward will be a bubble of electromagnetic force that traps bits of metal and forms a shield of sorts around him. He selects a light piercing weapon as his starting weapon - a stabbing blade, highly conductive - and describes his outfit as having numerous bits and pieces of machinery woven into the rough cloth.

His Mechanical descriptor gives him an extra 2 Intellect, bringing him up to 16, and causes his training in the numenera to become specialized - he's spent plenty of time studying how his devices work and can be modified, unlike Susan's character. With it comes an ability to sense whether or not the devices around him are active - with a minute of study he can determine whether or not the world has active machinery or not, and he gets the Hedge Magic ability for free; the numerous small things built into his clothing serve to explain his ability to do so. He also, unfortunately for him, has an otherworldly air around him from all the small things on his person constantly emanating a subtle field of static, making charm, deception, and persuasion tasks harder for him by a step. He notes down that the descriptor gives him an extra oddity, and moves on to his focus. He writes down his sack of batteries and power cells, then adds his two abilities - Shock, which allows him to zap things with his hands or electrify his condutive blade, and Charge, which allows him to fuel devices to reactivate them. With those written down, he just needs his starting cyphers and oddities.

Jean has a Tough Glaive who Masters Defense, and she chooses to go straight along the description. Tough grants her +1 Armor, giving her a perpetual 1 Armor no matter what, and a +1 on her recovery rolls, letting her heal 1D6+2 points during each recovery action she takes. She notes that she's trained in Might Defense, meaning she's better at simply toughing out damage, and adds a light bashing weapon to her inventory - a length of metal crudely weighted into a light mace. As a glaive, she dumps five points into her Might Pool and one into her Intellect, giving her a starting score of 16 Might, 11 Speed, and 8 Intellect. As a glaive, she's also practiced in armor, reducing the cost of wearing it and the speed pool penalty for it by two each, and she's trained with any weapon she cares to wield, taking no penalties in using any of it.

She chooses jumping as her physical skill, taking it to indicate that her character would leap onto enemies while fighting in the arena, trusting her superior durability to see her through to the other side. She selects a medium piercing weapon - a shortspear that she decides will be made of a translucent plastic as hard as metal - and a medium bashing weapon - a warhammer made of stronglass, medium armor, and adds in the explorer's pack to her gear, then moves on the her abilities; Thrust, to make better use of her primary weapon, and Bash, so that her warhammer and the backup light mace are more useful. Lastly comes her focus, Masters Defense; she writes down her shield, and the way that she can choose to effectively be trained in Speed Defense if she takes a penalty to her attack rolls on any given round. That leaves only her cyphers and oddity to worry about.

Lastly, Allie has her Naive Jack who Explores Dark Places. She chooses to work out from her Type, starting with the Jack's ability pools. She puts all six points into her Speed, leaving her with a Might and Intellect of 10 but a Speed of 16 - she's nimble and quick, relying on her agility to get her out of trouble when Jean can't rescue her. She notes that she's practiced with both light and medium weapons, selects visual perception as her trained skill of choice, and notes that by default hearing perception is her flex skill unless changed. She writes down a rapier - a medium piercing weapon - and a hunting knife - a light slashing weapon - as her starting weapon choices, noting that both are decorated a bit because they were gifts from her family when she set off into the world. Her explorer's pack and light tools get written down with these before she heads to her ability choices; she chooses Hedge Magic to represent all the knick-knacks she's collected since leaving her home, each one a prize to her even if others see them mostly as junk, and chooses to be considered trained in Speed Defense, classifying it as a preternatural level of luck on her part.

Naive gives her a 1D6+2 recovery roll, makes her trained in Intellect defense and resisting temptation, and makes her trained in all perception tasks - effectively specializing her in visual perception and, when her flex skill is set to it, hearing. She marks down her inability to see through deception or determine hidden motives, and moves on to her focus. Since she already has an explorer's pack, she adds an extra 50' of rope, two more days of food, and an extra pair of minor glowglobes to her inventory. She notes that she's trained in searching, listening, climbing, balancing, and jumping, and decides to change her default flex skill to running, as she's now specialized in both seeing and hearing at all times. With that, she's done with her choices, and ready to get her cyphers and oddities, along with the others.

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Next time, we'll look over at the GM's side of things, and what Pat is cooking up to challenge this unlikely group of explorers in the blue-lit town of Guran.

Numenera: The Overview

This week and perhaps next we'll be going over Numenera; like last week, I'll be looking at it from the context of a hypothetical group of players, and after we do an overview of the basics of the game we'll go over the process of how that group generates their characters. After that, we'll look at how a hypotheticla Numenera GM might construct an adventure for this group, and we'll even detail the adventure and rewards that go with it.

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Unlike the Cypher System, Numenera - which came first - has a very distinctive science-fantasy vibe to the way it was designed. Character types come in the form of Glaives, who are the powerful warriors of the setting. They excel in the use of arms and armor (or no arms or armor, depending on the Focus in question), rely primarily on Might and/or Speed Pools, and while they certainly appreciate the mysterious power of the numenera - the ancent relics of the past worlds - they aren't as versed in them as others might be. That said, nothing's stopping a person from making a glaive whose idea of opening a fight is setting off a fireball in the middle of their foes.

Nanos, by contrast, are the masters of the mind by default - somewhere between priest, wizard, and scholar of the past worlds, they have supernatural-seeming powers derived from their understanding of the technology of the past. Even their name, nano, suggests that much of their power comes from an ability to interact with the nanotechnology-soaked world on a the level of those machines. Usually not very skillful with weapons and only lightly armored in a conventional sense, they can still be fearsomely durable. Skill in comprehension of the numenera and use of their Intellect Pool tend to be hallmarks of nanos, but you can certainly find 'wizard with a sword' types out there.

The last of the types is the jack - as in the jack-of-all-trades, who borrows a bit from both other types as well as doing a bit of their own thing. A natural fit for the role of rogue, jacks can still cover quite a wide range of character options, from a rough and tumble fighter who likes to mix it up to a more cerebral sort who explores ancient mysteries and ruins of the past right on to someone whose only appreciation of the strange world around them is whether or not it can make them a few coins in the process.

The main thing to keep in mind when surveying these character options is that each one may suggest a particular kind of character, but the nature of Numenera - of the Cypher System as a whole - is that you can flavor those types via selections of descriptor and focus to give them a feel that is wholly unique. A Tough Nano who Wears a Sheen of Ice is going to be an imposing figure for any regular NPC to experience, while a Swift Glaive who Needs No Weapons is going to be completely unassuming outside their relative fitness.

Numenera was the system that introduced the core ideas of the Cypher System - ten levels of difficulty, divided into threes; players roll almost all the dice; six tiers of character capability; the concept of descriptors, types, and foci; and so much else. It also suggested that, by being a billion years into the far future, people don't have to worry about things like anachronisms. The PCs can have a roll of durable plastic bags to stuff things in, or a set of binoculars, despite carrying around swords and wielding what appears to be magic. Where some other games have encouraged grognard pride in being able to name and describe the various types of polearms and whether or not they'd be of any use in a fight in a cave, Numenera is among those that gently suggest that perhaps it's okay to not directly adhere to details unless the group actually feels doing so would add to the fun.

Cyphers, in Numenera, are the essential component - bits of weird technology and alien machinery repurposes from their original tasks, whatever those might hae been. The explosive device your character is carrying might have been a combustion chamber in an engine, a battery, a conduit for some hyperdimensional energy, a graviton condenser, or something even weirder. The ball of goo that you can squeeze to make a short-lived lightsaber equivalent might have been a focusing lens of an omnidirectional laser, a bearing in a signaling device, or the egg from a creature that belonged to a past world that might have one day hatched into a creature capable of sailing the interstellar winds of dark matter. Their existence is both the definition of character evolution and player ingenuity.

The key theme of Numenera is one of discovery - humanity is only recently re-emerged on the face of the Earth through unknown means and for unknown reasons. The only race that might know - the octopi who dwell in the deep oceans, slowly growing and evolving over geological time - have no interest in helping to enlighten the revived scions of Earth. At least eight supercivilizations have dwelled upon the Earth and either abandoned it or perished, and there's no promise that it was only eight or that they all arose on the Earth. As such, the mysteries of the Ninth World are vast and deep, and the largest rewards of experience and treasure come to those who venture into the unknown places in search of the secrets of the past.

It's an unusual take on the world, since defeating opponents doesn't grant XP the way it does in many other games, and that frees players up to get innovative with their problem-solving in ways that they generally might not otherwise. When the goal is to get the ancient artifact away from the abhuman tribe and take it back to the Aeon Priest, but observation reveals that the abhumans keep a nasty kind of ultradimensional parasite in check, the plan to distract the abhumans, snatch the artifact, and run away becomes measurably more viable than simply killing the tribe and looting the artifact from their blood-soaked settlement.

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Tomorrow, we'll look at a hypothetical group of players and the characters they might create to showcase how Numenera can handle both typical fantasy and exotic sci-fi concepts in the same group without a hiccup.

Numenera: Why to Play

In a similar vein to the last few days, there's another product by the same game company - their flagship product, really - that I have a certain fondness for, and today I'm going to explain why you might want to consider trying it out. The name of it is Numenera, and the system it uses is what was tweaked into the Cypher System.

The premise is simple enough - it's set in the far-distant future, one billion years from now; there have been at least eight grand supercivilizations that developed technology capable of feats that might as well be magic from our perspective. The debris of these lost worlds is now scattered across the world, the solar system has been engineered by each civilization in turn, and now, somehow, humanity has been returned to the world amid the fallen wonders and strange ruins of the worlds that were.

It is, more than anything else, an excuse to play a fantasy game without caring about anachronisms. If you want to let people who are effectively wizards and warriors zoom around on swoop bikes, you can. If you want a massive robot to attack the town without having to couch it as a golem and then come up with reasons why the PCs can't make one, you can. If you want to have echoes of familiar places and names, you most certainly can.

You can nab whatever exotic and fantastic locations you want to, from cities built like wasp nests around towering spires of a seemingly unbreakable alien metal to deserts of powdered glass and churning nanotechnology to places where the very laws of physics are bent and broken in baffling ways. It's an excuse to play up the strange and the weird, to let your most bizarre imaginings from your childhood out to play. The first major adventure has PCs exploring riding an ancient supersonic maglev train, fighting psychically aware viral masses, and harassing underwater civilizations to keep themselves from being eaten by alien parasites.

In the games of it I've run so far, a jive-talking techno-wizard with power over lightning and a murderous sneak-thief were hired to retrieve ancient relics from a flying fortress, tangled with a 'demon' made of light that his in mirrors, and tried burning down half a city to get a healing artifact back from a thief, and a dream-soaked mountain of muscle paired up with a vengeful telekinetic to rescue a bunch of mesmerized townsfolk from an egotistical manipulator of magnetism in the heart of a derelict starship infested with acid-spewing humanoid slug-things. At no point did the game bog down on rules or arguments over what can or can't be done.

The mechanics are simple and flexible, with everything that could oppose the players having a level from 1 to 10, and difficulty arranged by multiples of 3 according to the obstacle's level. A locked door, and angry brain-eating cyborg wolf-beast, a puzzle of shifting color-coded lasers, and the challenge of navigating a party among the social elite of a city that worships mutants can all be codified the same way. Characters can be distilled down to a single line of text - things like a "Tough Nano who Wears a Sheen of Ice" for a surprisingly well-armored wizard-analogue, or a "Mechanical Glaive who Fuses Flesh and Steel" for a heavily mechanical cyborg super-soldier who can wade right into battle with the best of them, or an "Intelligent Jack who Explores Dark Places" for a rogue-like character who might bear a striking resemblance to Indiana Jones.

More than that, it's a game that encourages creativity - the most wonderful treasure are the cyphers, one-use items that can have wild and unpredictable abilities, which are universally pieces from older and much larger machines. That cylinder that explodes when you throw it? That was actually a fuel cell for a massive war mech. The clear lens that flashes you into light, teleports you a long range, and then turns you corporeal again? That was part of a communication network, and that was just the residual charge of use. The squidgy bit of organic matter that looks kind of like a bit of brain that grafts itself to you and grants you a skill of some bizarre and exotic science? It's the last still-living bit of what was once a massive library of the collective skills, knowledge, and wisdom of a past age of the world.

And each of these one-use items can be readily replenished, so you're encouraged to use them as creatively as possible to overcome your obstacles. That light-teleport lens might be something you can use to impress people at that party. The explosive might spew soot into the laser grid, revealing the only safe path through. The skill you get might let you puzzle out how to repair this ancient war mech and take it stomping toward the giant blue fungal horror enroaching on your town to save everyone.

If there exists any game system that can recapture the excitement of an old-time roleplayer's early games without delving back into the overly complicated morass of old-school rule systems, Numenera is it. I encourage you to check it out, and maybe join me next week when I'll be assembling a Numenera adventure here at the Renegade Octopus.

Cypher Star Wars: Adventure Design

The last two entries in Cypher Star Wars have gone over the process of creating player characters and outfitting them. Today, we'll look behind the screen at how a GM might go about assembling an adventure for a Star Wars game.

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Certain things form the core tropes of Star Wars - exotic locations, dangerous spaces, strange aliens, and space opera action. As such, these things need to be at least partially accounted for when designing an adventure in the game. Going off the initial putlay of the adventure, we have a group of two Jedi (one a Trandoshan), a smuggler with a silver tongue, and a droid bounty hunter who have just arrived at the polluted city-moon of Nar Shadda in pursuit of a Sith warrior and a squad of Imperial commandos during the age of the Old Republic. They'll be operating out of a semi-legal hangar space that belongs to a spice smuggling organization, trying to keep out of trouble until they find their prey.

As such, the GM outlines how things start - the arrival in orbit, initial negotiations with traffic control, contact with the smuggler's ally, and negotiating a berth for their ship. Given that they're all Tier 1, the GM assigns the initial negotiations a difficulty of 3, as the traffic controllers are always looking for a chance to shake a bribe out of ships arriving in the system in grand Hutt tradition. Getting past them will mean dealing with the contact, a level 4 task because if they're honest the contact is going to see a stark difference between "Hey, give us a berth" and "Hey, give us a berth while we hunt Sith."

Once they reach the docking bay, depending on how well things go, they'll have access to an array of facilities, but to actually pursue their overall goal they'll have to go explore the Smuggler's Moon. The GM decides that the droid will get a chance to roll an Intellect check when looking for bounties; if Kris beats a level 5 difficulty, she'll find a contract that describes a Sith in sufficiently vague terms, a contract by a Hutt who has had an entire floor of a docking structure taken over by the Imperial commando team. Given that the takeover was at lightsaber-point, the Hutt would like the Sith eliminated and provides a list of locations she's been frequenting.

Failing that, they'll get to spend time frequenting sabbac dens and cantinas until they overhear people talking about a docking structure with a level occupied by unruly Imperial, in stark defiance of Yotta the Hutt's usual clientele, and they'll be ambushed by a level 5 Bothan bounty hunter seeking the bounty that the Sith put out as soon as the team arrived on-world. The bounty hunter is outfitted with a pair of thermal detonators that deal 5 damage to everything within a short distance, and a blaster. If taken alive, the bounty hunter can give directions to the Imperial docking area in exchange for her life and freedom.

The docking bay is a series of catwalks around a Fury-class interceptor, with three pairs of Imperial commandos on patrol, positioned so that each group can always see the other two while moving. Four more Imperials are off-duty aboard the ship, unarmed and unarmored for five rounds after an alarm is raised, while four more are working on the ship, apparently installing upgrades and handling repairs. Each set of two operates as a level 3 group with six Health and 2 Armor, outfitted with blaster carbines that can hit out to long range. The Sith warrior isn't present, currently. Risks of the environment include falling, as the catwalks are open over the yawning chasms of Nar Shadda, and occasional rains of rubbish from upper levels.

If the players hit the Imperials but have to retreat before defeating them all, the squad leader will signal the Sith Warrior and they'll hastily finish their work before leaving the world in four hours. Defeating the commandos or managing to sneak or bullshit past them will let the players search the ship, gleaning clues that the Sith is looking for a nexus of Dark Side power in the lower levels of the world, where the air is polluted to the point of being acidic, dealing 1 point of environmental damage per round to anyone not adequately protected.

Descending to the lower levels will show clear signs that the Sith came this way - dead bodies cut in half by a lightsaber from a multitude of alien species, signs of Force lightning crackling across the walls, and so on. Questioning surviving aliens will direct the players into the heart of Gutter Scum territory, a stretch of particularly unstable construction and toxicity (damage upped to 3 per round of exposure; mostly relevant is a GM intrusion causes environmental suits to be disrupted) home to a gang of notoriously violent aliens.

Passing through the area will expose the group to attack by packs of half a dozen gang members, each one a Level 2 creature armed with vibroblades that deal 4 damage on a successful attack. It's also a good time to include environmental GM Intrusions - gouts of acid steam from failing pipes, sudden pitfalls looming out of the green-stained mist, gangers leaping out of hidden alcoves during a fight to land on characters' backs, and so on; the idea is to give them a supply of XP to use during the next encounter for rerolls.

At the end of the excursion into the depths is an area strangely clear of the acid mist, but which either Force-sensitive character can detect as a nexus of Dark Side energy with a difficulty 2 Intellect test. At the center of it, the Sith warrior is meditating, drawing upon the Dark Side and attempting to absorb it. If not disrupted, she becomes a Level 7 opponent who will happily try to kill them all, attacking twice per round with her red lightsaber. If she is disrupted, she's only Level 3, but a Level 6 Specter of the Dark Side - raw hate and anger manifest as a roughly humanoid mass - coalesces on the second round of combat, indiscriminately attacking anyone nearby.

If killed in the fight, the Sith Warrior becomes a Level 5 Specter herself, making a direct line for the ship in the Nar Shadda docks; if any Imperial Commandos are still alive, she takes one over and hastens to leave the planet before the PCs can reach her. If the PCs killed everyone, she dissipates before finding a new host. As for the initial Specter, the PCs have to defeat it, or else risk it consuming everyone on the lower levels and eventually wrapping Nar Shadda in the Dark Side. Success here brings 4 XP for each player, plus whatever they have left over from various GM Intrusions. The defeat of the Sith also leaves behind her lightsaber, an artifact weapon in its own right, and the defeat of the Specter leaves behind a few relics of the Force - cyphers, to be shared among the group.

Each player also gets a subplot; while Jack's Jedi could simply have the main thread as his story, the GM chooses to include two encounters for his trouble-seeking Jedi Warrior - a small gang of street urchins tormenting a young Twi'lek girl in the upper levels, easily scared off by a Jedi to rescue the girl and possibly find her someplace safer to be, and a gang of Gutter Scum trying to burgle an aging and derelict medical droid in the depths - if confronted without violence, it can be determined that they're trying to help one of their own, who has come down with rakghoul disease.

The smuggler's thread starts and ends with his contact; she asks him, when she hears that the group is going to have to go into the lower levels, to deliver a sealed package to a cantina just above the levels where the air turns acid. The group will get ambushed three or four times while he has the package, each group consisting of two Level 3 Bothan Thugs armed with vibroknives and a Level 4 Gand Hunter armed wth a pair of light blasters. Openng the package - which he isn't supposed to do - reveals a seemingly flawless diamond the size of a Wookiee's fist; if he doesn't deliver it, the ambushes continue indefinitely as long as they remain on-world.

The Jedi Consular's thread comes in during the later stages of the adventure; once they delve into the acid atmosphere, she can feel the pull of the Dark Side, and she has hallucinatory visions of the Sith imbued with dark power. She can, if she gets the chance, meditate in the Dark Side nexus, both taking a step toward her own doom and gaining an additional power - Force Lightning, a (2+) Intellect power that deals 3 damage to a single target in short range, with an additional 2 Intellect to add an additional point of damage, or an additional 4 Intellect to add an additional target within short range.

The bounty hunter's personal thread ties directly to the main story mission; when the Sith ship leaves the dock, the droid can claim the bounty immediately to gain enough credits to purchase an Expensive item, or the head of the Sith can be brought to the Hutt directly as evidence to gain enough of a reward for a Very Expensive item. Alternately, Kris can choose to have Yotta the Hutt give them a free upgrade to their ship, picking a more powerful shield generator, an upgrade to the weapon systems, or a n upgrade to the hyperdrive.

At the end of the game, the group should either being getting ready to follow the Sith ship (if they left the planet) or going over the Sith vessel more closely; in the latter case, log entries indicate that the next intended port of call was Tatooine, where the Sith warrior intended to undergo something called 'The Rite of Blood and Glass'. If the ship escaped, well, it certainly gave every indication of being headed for Tatooine when it made the jump into hyperspace.

Cypher Star Wars: Gear and Setup

Yesterday, the hypothetical group of Cypher Star Wars players assembled their characters; today, the GM will assign them their starting cyphers, tell them the beginning to the campaign, and then let them decide what they're going to use for their equipment selections. Jack, Mark, and Kris each get two cyphers with their Types as two Warriors and an Explorer; Mary gets three, as an Adept. Jack gave up all his weapon choices in exchange for a blue lightsaber, Mary traded her two Expensive choices for a green lightsaber, and Kris has chosen her two options as an electrostaff (which she describes as a medium bludgeoning weapon) and a techblade (a medium slashing weapon).

The GM's first decision is to assign cyphers rather than rolling them, to ensure a better fit for the starting characters; a melee-happy Jedi probably wouldn't pack a pair of thermal detonators around, after all!

Jack's Trandoshan Jedi is the first up, and the GM assigns him a pair of injectable cyphers - a stimpack full of red liquid that gives him a free level of Might Effort for ten minutes, and a kolto injection that heals up to the cypher's level in Might or Speed when used. Jack rolls 1d6+1 for each cypher's level, coming up with a 3 for the Stim and 5 for the Kolto. He also has an oddity - a fetish necklace of bits and pieces of creatures he has successfully hunted, a tally of his worth in the eyes of the Scorekeeper.

Mark's smuggler is next, and the GM assigns him a thermal detonator and a stim that can clear his mind, letting him recover up to the cypher's level in Intellect Pool when he uses it. Mark rolls 1d6+2 for the detonator, getting a 6 for a rather powerful little grenade, and 1d6+1 on the stim, getting a relatively weak pack that only heals 2 Intellect when used. He notes down that he got the stim from his contact, and suggests to the GM that he'd be willing to have it be something weirdly experimental, ripe for a GM Intrusion when used.

Mary's next; her Jedi Consular can have three cyphers, so the GM gives her a one-use holocron that can tap the Jedi Archives to answer any question with a degree of accuracy determined by the cypher's level, a holoprojector that can be programmed to display a realistic hologram of anything up to the size of a bantha for ten minutes before the power runs out, and a small crystal filled with swirling dark smoke and red lightning that can fully restore her Intellect pool, but also advances her toward the Dark Side. The GM throws in an oddity in the form of a dormant datacron that shows markings similar to those from the Rakata Empire.

Last up is Kris, whose droid gets a chemical spray that bonds parts for repair purposes, healing up to the cypher's level in Might, and a carbonite grenade that ensnares targets of the cypher's level or lower in frozen carbonite stasis for transport. Kris rolls 1d6+1 for both cyphers, getting a 4 on the repair spray and a 5 on the carbonite grenade. The droid also gets an oddity in the form of a bandolier that adheres things deliberately pressed to it, creating a trophy belt that the droid can use to showcase past successful hunts.

The GM outlines the start of the campaign - they've been hunting a Sith with a commando squad that attacked a Jedi training facility and fled after killing several Padawans, tracking them with the aid of the droid bounty hunter to the Smuggler's Moon, Nar Shadda. The game will begin with them coming out of hyperspace near the moon, in hot pursuit of the Sith starship; neither ship has strong enough weapons or shields to risk a straight-up dogfight, so they'll have to pursue the Sith to ground and hunt them through the twisted, garish mess of the overbuilt moon. Their goal is to capture the Sith, but the elimination of the commando squad is a benefit.

Mark says that he can have his contact arrange a relatively secure dock for them, away from the usual places that Republic citizens dock so that they won't be as obvious while they try to track the Sith down. Kris says she'll back the plan, and notes that she'll want to check the galactic network for bounties on the moon while they're there. Jack and Mary think it sounds good, and so the GM continues, noting that they'll be docking in the neutral turf between the Cartel factions theoretically loyal to the galactic powers, with easy access to holocomm facilities, a medical facility which doesn't always serve questionable purposes, and several outfitter shops that sell pretty much any good, legal or otherwise, that one could reasonably hope for. The group decides that, for now, they'll be living on the ship to avoid the surveillance that a hotel would bring.

The group turns to pooling their resources next to decide what they have in terms of equipment, agreeing that they should use it as a team since that was how the Jedi Council sent them out. Two Warriors means they have two expensive items, four moderate items, and eight inexpensive items, while an Explorer adds two expensive, two moderate, and four inexpensive. Mary has already burned her two expensive items to get a lightsaber, but she adds another two moderate and four inexpensive items to the list, for a total of four expensive items, eight moderate, and sixteen inexpensive items.

They agree that each of them gets a headlamp to wear when they need it, plus a knife for personal defense in an emergency, using up eight of the inexpensive items. They pool the other eight into four more Moderate items, giving them a total of twelve. They burn two moderates to get light armor for the smuggler and the Jedi Consular; Mark's smuggler wears a blast vest and reinforced pants, while Mary's consular wears robes reinforced with cortosis weave. Jack doesn't need armor, and Kris needs heavier gear. They burn three more to get each of the organics a healing kit, and another to give the droid nightvision capability as if using nightvision goggles. Left with six moderate, they pool them into three more expensive items, getting a total of seven.

Mark gets a medium blaster pistol as an expensive item, a relatively nice BlasTech model with engraving on the grip. Three more are spent to get environment suits for the organics, and another to get Kris a stunstick. Last, they pool the remaining two expensive options to get a very expensive item, outfitting the droid with a suit of heavy armor that essentially serves as armor plating bolted directly onto the droid's chassis.

With that, the group is pretty much ready to go on their first adventure.

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Next time, we'll look behind the GM's screen, such as it is, and see what might go into planning an adventure on the Smuggler's Moon for these PCs - and possibly go about making an actual adventure for people to try out.

Cypher Star Wars: Player Characters

So, since this is ongoing (my wife and I may have logged close to 24 hours in the last 48 playing Star Wars: The Old Republic), expect regular post on converting the Cypher System and possibly others to handle the setting of Star Wars. Today, we'll look at how a hypothetical group of players might build their characters to fit an Old Republic kind of game. We'll go with a total of four people for these purposes, each with their own idea of what they want to play.

Jack wants to play a Jedi, preferably something like a Trandoshan lizard-person; he's got this idea of a heroic lizard-person with a lightsaber who seeks out wrongs to right, guided always by the Force. Mark want to be someone like Han Solo - a charming scoundrel with a ship, who survives in the galaxy by wit and blaster. Mary wants to also be a Jedi, but she wants to secretly be a disciple of the Dark Side, channeling the power of fear and hate to achieve her desires. Lastly, Kris wants to be a droid bounty hunter, a machine purpose-built to go to strange places and hunt terrible beings in exchange for rewards.

Looking at this, the GM takes a few notes and leans back to work out the rough details of a campaign as the players build their characters. Obviously the group will need transport of some kind - one of the tropes of Star Wars is that transit between worlds is easy for those who have narrative value, after all. Mark's character is an obvious choice for the pilot of some light freighter or the like, but the group can be linked together if someone else actually owns it - the two Jedi might have it as a loan from the Jedi Council, making them jointly responsible for upkeep, repairs, and upgrades of the vessel. The bounty hunter droid might be on board working as a repair droid in between bounties, the better to keep in oil baths.

The players, interested in having a ship, find this largely agreeable, with Kris pitching the idea that while her droid is a repair unit on the ship, it also serves as the one who knows all the hidden nooks and crannies to smuggle goods, and so serves more as the partner of the smuggler than anyone's servant. Mark agrees to the idea, and the GM adjusts the plan.

Jack thinks his options over, and decides he wants to generate his character as a Warrior type. Given his desired species and the timeframe of the game, he'll have been born on Trandosha, the homeworld of his species, but discovered to be Force-sensitive at a young age and sent to train on Tython. He wants his character to be a bastion of the Light Side, a Jedi Guardian, so he puts two points in his Intellect Pool and four in his Might Pool, bringing him up to 14 Might and 10 each in Speed and Intellect. Keeping the Force in mind, he decides to add the Magic flavor to his character for the supernatural touch, and starts looking over his options for his four starting abilities. Extra Edge immediately stands out - the intense training of a Jedi grants him an Edge of 1 in both Might and Speed, as befits a Guardian. Trained Without Armor is another good choice - he uses the guidance of the Force to avoid danger, not bulky armor. Given the nature of Lightsabers, most of the active Warrior options don't really appeal to him, so he turns to the Magic abilities, settling quickly on Premonition to give him a semblance of Force Sense, and Closed Mind to further represent his training; his will is backed by the Force, and no mortal attacks aganst his mind stand a chance.

He leans over to the GM at this point and asks if he can get Transdoshan as a descriptor; after some thought, the GM offers to reskin the flavor of the Tough descriptor to represent the Trandoshans, giving his natural armor, a kind of accelerated healing, and additional defensive capability. Jack quickly agrees, glad to get something that solidly represents the character he has in mind, and writes down the abilities from Tough, renamed to give them a proper feel. That just leaves his Focus and his equipment to figure out.

Defends the Weak and Commands Mental Powers both look appealing at first, but neither really fits the concept of a bold Jedi who seeks out the darkness in the galaxy to fight it off, so he looks farther down the list and lands on Looks for Trouble. It's the perfect match for his Jedi Guardian, who spends so much time looking for wrongs to right. He scribbles down his bonus damage and extra training, then looks over the suggested connections to other PCs. Given Mary's character, he suggests to her that the two of them likely have a past history, and that his Guardian sees it as a part of his duty to defend her, even when such protection gets in the way of her private studies. Mary likes the idea and the potential to inject some friendly bickering into the game and agrees to the idea.

Lastly, Jack pitches the idea to the GM that rather than all the weapons his choices give him, he only has one - a blue lightsaber; other than that, he fights unarmed, seeking to subdue rather than kill foes. The GM agrees, and Jack writes down his artifact weapon - a light slashing weapon that deals damage like a medium weapon. He writes it all down and sits back to wait for the others to be ready before he picks his remaining gear, envisioning his Jedi leaping around in a Force-powered blur of blue lightsaber and black-green scale, ready to prove himself to the Trandoshan's idea of a god, the Scorekeeper.

Mark wants to be a smuggler - someone who braves danger and gets through it with wit, charm, and a blaster. He's fine with being human, so he doesn't need a modified Descriptor the way Jack did. Given the wanderlust inherent in the character concept, he decides that the Explorer Type sounds like a good match, and decides that agility and wits are equally important to him. Three points each go to his Speed and Intellect pools, leaving him with a Might of 10 and a Speed and Intellect of 12 each.

He looks over the Explorer options and decides he doesn't need to flavo his character type any; Danger Sense, Decipher, Knowledge Skills, and Practiced in Armor fill out his four first-tier options. Decipher gives him an excuse to potentially be able to make himself understood anywhere in the galaxy, and he picks Piloting and Criminal Operations as his knowledge skills - his character isn't even remotely pure-hearted, and he's more than willing to rough it up if he has to do so.

Brash seems like a possible option for his Descriptor, as does Impulsive, but he ultimately falls back to the concept of the character and picks Charming; the bonus to his Intellect Pool and the skill training at any positive social interaction just fall in with his idea of a silver-tongued crack pilot, even if the piloting itself is hampered a bit by his inability to deal with Knowledge tasks. He pitches the idea that his contact is a member of the Hutt Cartel, and that perhaps they mutually owe each other favors through some complex web. The GM approves the idea, suggesting that the contact is a Bothan by the name of Leelanu, part of a spice smuggling operation operating off Nar Shadda. Smuggling spice while working for the Jedi seems like an exciting option, so Mark writes that down.

Next comes his focus - Fuses Flesh and Steel seems appealing, as he could be a cyborg with tricky options built into him, or who is Licensed to Carry because of his blaster, but that seems too much like abiding by the law for his character to do. He settles on Fights Dirty, because his character isn't above taking an advantage wherever he can. He asks the GM if his extra weapon can be a holdout needler with a burst of poisoned ammunition and writes it down when the GM agrees that it sounds reasonable. More important is the skill training in all forms of deception, making him even more capable of charming his way past obstacles - in situations where he has to pleasantly lie through his teeth, he may get to count himself as specialized in the action, lowering the difficulty two steps.

He asks Kris if she's willing to be on the other end of his connection, suggesting that the droid met his smuggler while chasing a bounty one day, and that the droid taught his smuggler some tricks he's added to his repretoire since then. She agrees, and so he writes it down and suggests that when he was contacted by the Jedi about flying the ship, he insisted the droid be hired as a repair unit, to give it a better way of crossing the galaxy in search of bounties. The others like the idea, with Jack saying his Trandoshan disapproves of bounty hunting in general but has yet to find a good reason to object to taking down any scum the droid goes after, while Mary says her would-be Sith is pleased at having a hired hunter on board. The GM scribbles this all down while Mark looks over the equipment list in preparation for the last of his gear.

Mary wants her Jedi to be a would-be Sith - a human strong in the Force who feels the call of the Dark Side and senses that her destiny draws her to it. Picking an Adept with a Magic flavor is an easy decision, and she looks over the list of available options carefully. She wants to be quick and clever, so she puts a couple points into Speed and the rest into Intellect, giving her 7 Might, 11 Speed, and 16 Intellect.

At this tier, she doesn't need anything from the Magic flavor, selecting Hedge Magic to represent her interaction with the Force, Magic Training as her esoteric knowledge of it, Onslaught as a method of combat, and Practiced with Light Weapons so she can wield a lightsaber. Other options, such as Push, Scan, and Ward, are all tempting, but she doesn't really need them to fill out her concept.

Looking the Descriptors over, Cruel and Mystical both catch her interest, but she settles on Doomed - her would-be Sith has terrible dreams of her fall to the Dark Side, and she lives with the knowledge that one day she will either be Sith or dead. She increases her Speed to 13 and notes down her skill training - perception tasks, Speed defense, and Intellect defense are all trained for her, now.

She looks over the Foci, skimming Focuses Mind Over Matter and Casts Spells as possible options before settling on Controls Gravity as an extension of the psychokinetic effects of the Force. She asks Mark if his smuggler might be willing to be a skeptic of her ability to use the Force, unwilling to believe she can do what she does. He agrees, thinking that his smuggler is a worldly sort who respects the raw skill and power of the Jedi while scoffing at their beliefs.

With the GM's permission, she marks her lightsaber as her two Expensive item choices, picking a green lightsaber as a Jedi Consular, then sits back to wait for the GM to assign cyphers and the others to be ready to talk about other equipment.

Kris wants to be a droid bounty hunter, making most of her decisions easy. She decides to be a Warrior, assigning all of her points to Might to give herself 16 Might, 10 Speed, and 8 Intellect, describing her droid as a powerfully built and heavily armored machine. She asks the GM if she can have an electrostaff and a techblade for her Type weapons, and writes them down.

She picks Bash and Thrust as abilities with little trouble, giving her a field of options for dealing with her bounties, then adds Practiced With Armor to help with her desire to be a nearly invulnerable machine and Physical Skills, picking running and climbing as her two options; her droid is good at pursuing fleeing targets wherever they go.

She glances briefly at other descriptors, such as Driven, but decides that Mechanical is the best one; she bumps her Intellect up to 10 and notes that she's skilled at any action involving identifying, understanding, using, repairing, or crafting machines - something she can use to justify healing herself with regular recovery actions despite being a machine herself.

Her Focus is also easy; she selects Hunts with Great Skill, and asks Jack if his Jedi might have once been caught in one of her traps, having had to free himself from it. Jack agrees, suggesting that their paths crossed at some point well before the droid was hired to crew the ship, and that she might have modified herself so the Trandoshan Jedi doesn't recognize her anymore. Kris writes it down, and adds her Focus skills, becoming trained in tracking and all forms of movement, which makes her specialized in running and climbing - her prey has little hope of escaping her now!

She considers her droid as it stands, nods, and leans back to see what the GM has for them now.

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Next time, we'll look at the group getting their cyphers, choosing their equipment, and the layout of an adventure that the GM cooks up while the players are busy getting their characters in order.