Numenera: What is normal?

 

The Ninth World is a wacky, topsy-turvy place so trying to figure out what is weird to the player characters isn’t the same as trying to come up with weird stuff for your players. To better center players and give them a basic idea of what they might know, I’ve decided to come up with a list of things we could assume that most people on the Ninth World know or overlook because they take it for granted.

• Earth’s atmosphere is considerably more dry than ours.
• The moon looks smaller, because it’s further away.
• There may have been nine previous mega civilizations but they for sure weren’t all human.
• There’s one supercontinent.
• People are down with the germ theory of disease.
• No metals or gemstones are particularly more valuable than any others.
• No Patriarchy! Finally.
• There’s not that many people.
• There isn’t a lot of movement from place to place (there are nomads and travellers and merchants, but not that many).
• No ethnicities as we’d currently understand them.
• A shin is a shin is a shin.
• Good old Earth is the second planet from the Sun. There used to be a small planet close to the Sun. It isn’t there any more.
• Humans in the Ninth World were gone, we came back. But after a billion years, we should have evolved far far far past our current state. And maybe we have.
• The Sun is doing great, thanks for asking.
• Days are 28 hours long.
• The only animal recognisable in the Ninth World from our time is the Octopus, which has evolved into intelligence.
• There’s no dominant or even widespread religion in this part of the Ninth World. The Order of Truth fulfills some of the same functions as an organized religion, but is adamant that they are not.

I’m sure more things will occur to me as we go on.