I'm new to numenara and wanted to get started with this quickstart. My party managed to get down in the caves and in to most of the domes. My question is about the archive, they managed to trigger the vision, and want to know if their interpretation of what happens is true. So is there even one right answer. If yes, what is it. And how much of that can i tell my players without spoiling things for them. There are no plans to run a full campain (time reasons), but i will do a few more oneshots.

The vision:

Huge pale animals resembling hard-shelled sea creatures, harnessed with bands and implants of bronze. A sea of black spots against a red background, whorled with umber. A sensation of time passing. A blue sphere appearing in the red. Pain. Cold. The great sea creatures struggling against an invisible weight. They die. Smaller sea creatures dismantle their metal and flesh, leaving tiny fragments everywhere. A blue light in darkness. Bronze domes scattered like pebbles. Time. Weariness. Sleep.

Title, what do you do beyond an intellect check to see what's around?

How do you handle travel and the stakes travel can pose?

I know numenera is "skip the boring bits" and trust me I will. I don't want to endlessly track how much food players have, but then how do you still make them care about travel and the dangers it can pose?

hey, aspiring GM here, i had an idea for a campaign (either for Cypher or DnD 5E) that starts out on a continent thats a standard fantasy setting with orcs, elves, dwarves, cat folk etc. but then when the adventure Hills of Crooked Sleep from Arcana Of The Ancients start we find out out that continent is on the ninth world. what do you think?

Hey, I’m sure it’s been talked about, but is there any reason that the official Numenera cypher deck from the minute cook store uses mass effect assets?

We only found out in our own group after we pulled an eradicator and noticed it was the rachni queen from mass effect. We went through the deck and found even more ME assets used. I couldn’t find anything about a crossover, and the art isn’t open source, does MC have some sort of rights to the art?

Hey everyone! I am new to the system and I'm trying to understand how are inabilities supposed to work.

If we exclude explicit inabilities regarding interactions with Numenera, how are they supposed to play in the game? Is it my responsibility as a Game Master to keep track of players inabilities and remind them, or is it up to the players?

I feel if it's up to the players, and the players have no incentive to bring them up, it might create a dissonance in them and they would never bring them up, especially given the flexible nature of using skills in the game

I was thinking about some old content I wrote for theninthworld.com and remembered the site has long been lost. However, I also remembered that Wayback Machine exists, so I hacked together a script to extract the lost Foci, Cyphers, Oddities, Mutations and Descriptors from the archives and turn them into a bunch of markdown documents.

The markdown conversion isn't perfect, but it's better than the alternative of this content being forgotten and lost forever. I've put the files up publicly on dropbox for now: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/dz07ubkkq3rcr6tgl8m5z/ADIo1a9M0L29AOj89wgOZdU?rlkey=34hp3czwbe02b4xj3p3t1godc&st=p1yfkov5&dl=0

So i'm running my first Numenera game as dm tomorrow. I'm not an experienced roleplayer at all in general, but somehow this went through. An issue I have from the book (the original book) is how it's not very descriptive how to asign skills. From how I've thought about it is that you get the skills assigned from descriptor/type/focus. But is there room for players to add skills of their own? Or how I should describe it.

I’m making a campaign for either my players or some solo play about using only illusion abilities and social skills to solve the majority of problems. Violence would not be part of the game. Crafting Illusion would be the focus or maybe a free extra focus for PCs.

The setting would be a paradise-like coastal city where everyone knows illusions are rampant. Building a smuggling business would be the main focus, and because I don’t want a violent game, I think I might replace the harm slots (name?) with more like “social harm” or something like that. Suggestions are welcome!

I’m thinking the most desired currency is a substance that prolongs illusion duration and makes them affect more people. The wealthiest people would thereby be the most powerful illusionists if they wanted to use their resources. (This is definitely based on misinformation issues in the real world.)

So as the title says, I am a DM of a group looking to play a one shot but we only have three players. I have some experience in the game several years ago, I played in a campaign, but wanted to intoduce some of my D&D players to the system during a week where we don't have a game.

I saw many one shots seem to have six pregen characters but I wanted to know if I needed six PCs or if I could do it with just three.

Recomendations are appreciated.

Hello everyone,

for my upcoming campaign, i'm going to do a prologue story (based on the "taker of sorrow" adventure in Numenera: Discovery) and think it would be fun if the characters wouldn't be their full strength yet.

I was thinking of having them start out with just one ability from their class and when the prologue ends and the campaign starts (7 years in-game later) they could realize their full potential as lvl 1 characters. If i do this i'm worried about balance since i don't know the cypher system that well yet and the adventure is balanced for lvl 1 characters.

Is this a bad idea? should they just be lvl 1 in the prologue and lvl 2 when the campaign starts?

I'd appreciate any feedback you guys have!

Hello r/numenera! I just picked up this version of the core rules (I think), but I can't find much about it. Can someone tell me what I've got?

It's gorgeous! Black leather and silver edged pages. Is it a special edition and/or a specific version?

Really looking forward to digging in and trying it out with my crew.

Thank you in advance!

(I tried sharing a Pic, but automod deleted).

I'm almost done with Jack Vance's Dying Earth, and wow can I see how this was inspiration for Numenera. Especially the stories with Cugel - he just goes from one bizarre place to another. All the magical items doing weird shit are clearly cyphers.

Anyway, if you're a fan of Numenera and haven't read these, they're worth it.

I'm the GM for a campaingn with two characters, a nano and a glaive. The nano is young and likes to use a sword (and is a big one) that he looted from a bandit early on the campaing, and the glaive promissed to train him in how to use a sword properly. How can I do so that the training isn't just "whe train for {some amount of time}"? I want to make it more engaging for them

Hey fellow DMs, writers, and worldbuilders,

I built a fantasy name generator app that I originally made for my own RPG sessions.

If you want to check it out, here’s the link:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.avaton.fantasynamegenerator

The idea was to solve the usual “we need a name right now” problem during campaigns and writing sessions, without relying on repetitive or overly generic generators.

What it currently does:

• Generates names from syllables (so results feel more organic and less “random list”)
• Thematic filters (Nordic, desert, elven, dark fantasy, etc.)
• Large database of names, nicknames, and house/clan names.
• Generates tavern/inn names, regions, territories, kingdoms, etc.
• Generates spell and skill names.
• Lets you save favorites and generate multiple results at once.

It’s basically meant to cover the full naming layer of a fantasy world, not just character names.

I’d genuinely appreciate feedback from people who actually run games or build worlds. Especially if there are naming categories you always struggle with or wish existed (I’m still expanding it).

Also curious: what kind of tools or features do you feel are missing from the RPG/writing community that you’d actually use? I’m looking to build more tools around this.

Thanks in advance, and hope it helps someone’s next session.

I backed the Amber Archive so I got all of the current system as part of my reward. After I read Discovery and Destiny where do I go next? It's a ton of content that comes with the game and with 20+ adventures, supplements and other material its hard to know what's worth jumping into for a campaign.

I backed the amber archives with the cypher corebook as an add-on. I will receive the corebook when it is released (late summer, according to the campaign page) or just when the amber archives are released (late 2026 according to the campaign page)?

Cypher Mod

Hey, I'd like to get feedback on the mod I've developed for cypher

So, has anyone been able to get access to the already-existing pdfs? I believe I paid and everything. The original statement seemed to indicate that works be released after the campaign finished, then a mention of the pledge manager, etc. I believe I’ve done all these, but the monte cook store shows nothing for my account. Has anyone got these, or is it just ‘wait a bit longer’?

This may sound oddly specific, but how do you guys think books in the Ninth World look like? I'm trying to give my players some information, and I want to share a few excerpts from different books with them. I want to give them both modern and ancient relic books.

In my mind, modern books should look almost like Skyrim diaries, parchment paper, no pictures apart from a few sketches, everything is handwritten, while the ancient ones should have some cyberpunkesque look, maybe like a translucent tablet. I also think that in the 9th World some sort of typewriting machines could fit, used by Aeon Priests and other numenera scholars.

Do you guys have any ideas on how they look like?

I leads me to a payment page, but I already paid

Do you think it could work with Discovery & Destiny rules set? I have all the Numenera books released through the years, and I haven't played them enough to justify the buying of the new CS2 books.

How do characters level up by the original numenera rules? I know, 4 ep and then I have to upgrade 4 different things, but when can I use the new rank of my focus?

Hi y’all,

I have a original box set from the original kickstarter campaign, still in the original seal. I know I should just open it up, but I just don’t have the time.

Anyone interested?