Numenera RPG Night

So we've added another character to the odd group already gathered.  We now have a Doomed Jack who wields two weapons, he is mad because he's been shown all the ways he could possibly be killed in the future by various numenera objects that his is bound to encounter.  He also believes he has been shown a numenera that could bring about the end of the world and he has taken it as his mission to stop this.

He's an extra wrinkle to be thrown into the party, we'll see what havoc it wreaks.

Last night I brought the new party member into the group, we had run a one off the last time due to an absent person so the characters have some ret-conned history with each other.

They are going through the adventure from the main rulebook called the Beale of Boregal, so spoiler alert; if you haven't been through it yet, stop here.


They have tracked the source of the interruption of normal life to the aldeia of Embered Peaks.  The girl that they helped get healed told them someone named Boregal is there and is causing the problems and he is scared.  As they arrive in Embered Peaks they are shown the level of madness that has arrived here, probably due to Boregal.  There are several buildings on fire, nobody is trying to put them out, some are completely burned to the ground.  They see a number of people fighting each other and quite a few people talking to themselves or some other invisible thing.  Ripley, the mad nano who speaks with the dead, fits right in, she doesn't think anything is strange here.  The other two, Telus and Bashek, know something is definitely wrong here.  They ask one of the less crazy people where the town leaders are, they are told "Any that might still be alive would be in the magistrate's office in the center of town, it's the large circular building."  They made their way through town avoiding any troublesome citizens and find the large building the person told them about.  Inside is a slight man, in a robe who seems to be feverishly looking for something.

The group interupts him and asks who the town leader is to which he tells them, "The Magistrate is in charge, but he is very very busy."

"Where is he?"  Telus askes gruffly.

"He is in his office and not to be interrupted!" replied the young man, with only a slight hesitation at Telus' aggressive attitude.

Seeing the man motion towards a door behind a large desk Telus moved over swung it open, ignoring the man's protests.  The door opened into a semi-circular room with three other doors in it, the door immediately in front of the PCs was the grandest of the three so the group assumed that was where they wanted to go.  This was when an old friend of Telus and Bashek shows up, Corbyk had followed their trail of mayhem across half of the beyond on some mission of his own.  After asking the young man where the most obvious of the group, Telus, had gone he opened the door the other three had previously entered and greeted them.  He explained that he had tracked them to here and had already learned part of what they were doing and wanted to join them in their travels.

The group of four now split up one going to each side room to see what they might find and Telus attempting to find a way through the central door.  Telus realizing there were two locks that he didn't have a key or solution for returned to the young man, and aske him his name while dragging him into the room.  After learning the man's name was Chahil, Telus convinced him to unlock the large door.  The door opened into a fairly large office lined with bookshelves, a desk on one side and a conference table on the other.  The group spread out into the room. Telus walked into the center of the room, looked around and demanded Chahil show them where the Magistrate was.  In order to amplify his demand Telus stomped his foot and again demanded to be shown where the Magistrate was.  Apparently he had found the perfect place to stand and stomp as his foot came down on a button hidden in the floor and the floor beneath is feet opened up and dropped him into a darked pit with a circular set of stairs, he hit the stairs and then fell all the way down to the floor.

The rest of the group laughed a little and took the stairs down while Telus regained his feet and inspected some of the new dents in his shield and some of his body parts.  At the end of the stairs was a lit hallway that went to another door with a mirrored panel on one side of the door.  Again Telus forced Chahil to help them, fearing for his life the young man was more than happy to be of assistance.  Beyond the door was what appeared to be a strange mortuary, there was nearly a dozen bodies laid out on tables.  They all had a strange burn mark on their forehead.  Near the head of one of the bodies is a disheveled man, he is leaning over and appears to have whispered something in the corpse's ear and put his ear to the corpse's mouth.  Ripley was ecstatic, finally someone who saw the world as she did and talked to dead people.  When Telus walked up to the man to determine what he was doing, but before he could say anything, the man thanked him for coming and asked him if they were here to hinder or help him.  Telus told him they were here to help, two which the Magistrate asked him to grab a piece of equipment for him and then he started muttering something about how it's not working and something about wrong questions.  He then took the tool that Telus brought him and held it out to Corbyk and told him that he should just go cut him out since nothing's going to work.  The Magistrate then led the group down a hallway into a strange room that was half filled with numenera parts and was dominated by a soft spongy mass that seemed to be attached to the wall.

More of this story to follow

A note about Numenera and The Strange.

About three years ago I stumbled on a Kickstarter for an RPG called Numenera.  It seemed to be getting quite a bit of support and I was quickly growing tired once again of the D&D 3.5 rules.  I started to investigate the game and it sounded interesting, the idea of what our world would be like so far in the future plus the idea of having streamlined rules that promoted story, action and wild ideas. One of the selling points was the creator, Monte Cook.  I really wasn't familiar with him, but after seeing what types of materials he had generated in the past I decided to take a plunge and see what I would get.

The new game company kept it's backers up to date, showed some artwork, provided some short stories.  We all knew that work was being done and that the team had a schedule.

One year later the rulebook was delivered, it was well made, well written and provoked my imagination.  Now all I had to do was try and fit it into my rpg schedule, I was still playing d&d 3.5 with a group at a game store on thursdays and was running an epic storyline for my monthly Saturday group.  The d&d
group was set on only playing d&d so I wasn't able to get them to try something new and I had to finish my epic on Saturdays, so Numenera just had to wait.

A few months after they delivered the first pieces of the Numenera Campaign, MonteCookGames also announce another game, "The Strange".  The ruleset was to be mostly the same so I was already familiar with it and the setting and concepts drew me in.  Knowing that the new ( now one year old ) company was able to complete its projects I decided to back The Strange for a bit more than I did for Numenera.  The following August I had a nice collection of The Strange products on my doorstep.

A few months after that MonteCookGames started advertising for evangelist/demonstrators for both of their games.  I wasn't sure if it was something I wanted to do, the minor rewards sounded good and I had been looking for a way to game. ( I had left my d&d group by then )  So after thinking for it for a while I signed up to be part of their AssetTeam.  Since then I've run a couple of demos, with small turn outs but things went well. I am may be running a few demos as Capricon this year.

Now about three years later I get to run a full-time campaign, that meets mostly regularly and has some strange characters that I have recently posted about.  Hopefully more to follow on a more regular basis.

Something I was thinking about for my other hobby, RPG.

 My wonderful wife pulled together a nice week long trip to Florida that also included a three day cruise to the Bahamas.  I've been on one other cruise, a couple of years ago.  That cruise was also a short three day trip that left LA with a final stop at a Mexican port.  The thing I like about these cruises is the relative freedom, considering you're trapped in a floating hotel.

During our California cruise I found that I just enjoyed the relaxation, whether is was laying on a lounge chair by the pool or napping in the tiny shoebox room.  It was the feeling that it was my time for whatever I wanted, I could go visit the buffet nearly any time I was hungry or the pizza bar late at night.  For our Bahamas cruise we did a little bit more, we spent nearly the entire alotted time on the cruise line's private island ( probably about 2 square miles ).  We made sure to go to the shows they had in the evenings and again had a wonderful, relaxing, enjoyable time.

During this last cruise a thought occured to me.  Wouldn't an RPG cruise be fun?  Like a gaming convention only with real destinations.  Everyone could do the excursions during the day and then in the evening when it was time to relax just set up shop at a table in the buffet dining area and play some D&D or anything for a few hours.

If you've been on a cruise and are a gamer, has this ever occured to you?  Do you think it could work?

Numenera RPG

As I've seen from a lot of rpg gaming groups schedules are a lot of hit-or-miss.  My Monday night pulp savage worlds group has lost a player so we've switched to Numenera.
Numenera promotes the weird, but I don't know if I could expect what we got.

Going from most strange to least the players made a Mad nano who Consorts with the Dead.  She carries around her mother's shrunken head, because that's what they do in their Aldeia.  It is assumed that each daughter would kill their mother once they became of age.  Then they would venture out into the world to find a mate so that they in turn would have a daughter.  She is currently wandering the world looking for that mate.

The next is a Tough Glaive who Fuses Flesh with Steel, he is a member of a cult/religion whose member's main purpose in life is to become completely machine.  He is on his walk-about to see the world and gather parts to incorporate into his being.

The last is the most "normal" he is a Rugged Jack who Explores Dark places.  I have yet to hear a driving force behind his adventures other than to become rich.

Their first adventure had them visit Shadewalker Shanty and help the aldeia track the Shadewalker their aldeia is built around.  They had arrived shortly before the ancient numenera machine raised itself up and flew away.

More posts to follow about Numenera

note: In Numenera Aldeia is another term for a village in The Beyond.

What I've been doing

So fairly quickly I lost interest in Rift, I can't put my finger on why but I did.

We started playing The Secret World when it released July 2012 my wife and I played quite a bit together, even had a regular planned group that included another couple.  That is slowing down for me now as well only logging in for the short raid they have in the game, maybe I will get the urge to dive deeper into it again,..

I'm dabbling a little bit in Firefall but haven't been able to get my wife to try it.

So since I don't have much going on in the MMO/Computer game world I will probably be posting some things about my tabletop RPG hobby.

I've been GMing a weekly Savage Worlds pulp game recently, prior to that I was playing a little D&D 3.5 at the local game store.

Our pulp game is made up of a number of non-standard pulp "heroes".  We have a fugitive fortune teller from the middle east, a world war one veteran turned grocery store owner, a former assistant to Nikolai Tesla who is also an anti-government liberal, a precocious reporter for a local newspaper and recently we have added the secretary for a private detective that takes on cases that her boss doesn't have time for.