The art is starting to really come together for me here. A lot of folks loooove the Numenera art. I don’t dislike it at all, but it doesn’t bowl me over or make my brain crackle the way other game art can. Here, though, some stuff does get me! Love that red knight. Some of the landscapes really work here. Some still don’t though, like the weird floating mask things. Stuff like that seems too random and takes me out. But then the weird folk who hunt humans are pretty rad, and well designed—they look unsettlingly alien.

I’m starting to find the fusion of science and fantasy more appealing here too. This one I am almost certain is symptom of just increasingly familiarity. Initially, I thought the tech seemed too…I dunno, New Agey? I have a hard time nailing this down. It still feels…violet. But I am OK with it. I’ve really come to like the robot designs.

But I dunno, am I sold on this? I’m not sure. I doooooo kind of want to read the proper Cypher System rules. I’m not going to rush out or anything—I still have Invisible Sun to attempt to comprehend—but if we cross paths, I might pick it up…

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That sounds bigger than it really is. Cyphers are pieces of single use scavenged tech that are defined by keywords. Artifacts are basically the same, but have multiple uses. Oddities are the best—weird bits that have no real purpose other than flavor. They come in a bunch of tables at the very end. I love all of this. It’s like an unholy combination of a GURPS power book and a collection of Mothership-style “what’s in your pocket” tables. I really, really love the way this works to balance special powers in the larger game (no single cypher can ever unbalance play, as it is only a single use) while allowing players to hone in on the sort of the powers they want to specialize in, thus defining their character through their use of tech (which is a bit like the way Gamma World’s progression is really rooted in scavenging better equipment).

I was expecting something like Shadowrun’s Street Samurai Catalog, but instead, I got a tech/equipment system that takes a game with a ton of difficult-to-manage variety like Shadowrun (think a party with a mage, a decker and a street samurai, all managing different game systems) and streamlines the mechanics. The variety is still there, but the crunch is minimized. It’s pretty brilliant!

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Befitting a game organized around experiencing wonder, the monsters are frickin’ weird. There is very little here that conforms, visually, to fantasy tropes. Which isn’t to say there is nothing prosaic—there are bug monsters and lion serpents and things I can intuit at a glance how they act. But I admit I am slightly overwhelmed by the lack of anything so obvious as a dragon to kind of ground my understanding. The art is above average though, and I can sort of see a through-line in all the monster designs, but I’d like a little more.

Again, I find my best touchstone is Talislanta, which just excels in excess (the Mercandian Soldier even reminds me of Talislanta’s Thralls). For whatever reason, I don’t expect the monsters of Talislanta to form a compelling gestalt, though, where I do for Numenera. It seems like that’s what the designers want! But when I start trying to piece stuff together, it winds up being too much to parse. The rare time a monster book isn’t my way in.

There are lots of cool monsters I want to lift for other things, though. A monolith that hungers for flesh? A titan whose head is an abandoned city? Heck yea. I really like the ghouls who lick their blades after they attack and get insights into their opponent from tasting their blood. That scratches at one of the problems, though — there are lots of monsters with cool little puzzle details that I want to see solutions for sussed out in play, but for a game arranged around discover and awe, the bestiary has far more opponents than inhabitants.

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So, Numenera is a very light mechanical RPG, using a D20 for resolution. Only the players roll; they’re trying to beat values on a sliding difficulty ladder that reminds me vaguely of Fate. Characters are defined through key words (though not, like, totally open ended keywords as in HeroQuest, there are constraints and those build in a lot of structure that makes me feel comfortable). Magic items are little doo-dads that have a bunch of unique minor effects, so they have a lot of application, feel special and can interact with each other in lots of ways (good and bad). It’s a way more welcoming and usable system than I expected (the last Monte Cook game I read was Invisible Sun, which is neither).

The game is arranged around exploration and discovering things to wonder at—the world has a deep history, full of lost technology, weird magic, strange civilizations. Page after page after page of stuff that I feel should thrill me (I love the fact that there is no experience rewards for combat and that damage is basically static). Especially since I love Cook’s Planescape work and at enjoy the majority of his other D&D material I’ve read. And I like worlds with similar histories, like Talislanta or Jorune. But for some reason, Numenera leaves me under-wondered. The same is true of the videogames (and Planescape Torment was for a long time my all-time favorite).

So what’s my malfunction? What am I missing?

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