Numenera 22 – um, some other numbers.

We got pretty much through Weird Discoveries, the 10 instant adventure supplement for Numenera. They’re planning on doing one for Numenera 2 and I’m psyched for that because they are really minimal set-up adventures that are generic enough that they can be slotted into any remote area of the Ninth World (which is… like, most of it) but full of Numenera flavour. 

I wish more games designers would do this because it definitely suits my purpose and I bet there’s a bunch of 40+ GMs who find themselves with not quite enough time and want someone else to do the heavy lifting.

There are two we never got into, one because I couldn’t fit it in and the other because the lure didn’t get taken: that’s one of the things I thought would be a problem with this setting – that there’s so much weird stuff that the players might not be able to differentiate between things that were worth investigating further and things that are just weird and awesome.

Anyway, me needing a break from running Numenera coincides with the using up all the instant adventures I was planning on using, the release of Numenera 2, Bryce being on paternity leave/sleep deprivation mental vacancy, me spilling coffee over all my damn notes and the release of a bunch of other interesting RPGs. There are still other things in particular I want to run for Numenera – The Devil’s Spine short campaign is quite a different thing from the freewheeling explorer’s for hire High Plains Drifting shit we’ve been doing. There are two other downloads from MCG, one of which is excellent. And there are six adventures for free in N2. So we have plenty of mileage left in a game I enjoy and I’m pretty satisfied with that. I enjoy the Cypher system as a game system too and I’m looking forward to playing The Stars Are Fire with it (see other post where I dribble over other games).

I do find that if I don’t recap, I have no recall of what we did. There has been a few times where I just have no idea what I’m doing if someone doesn’t remind me. So I should really get back on that…

Oh boy, I haven’t updated since they were looking for Jip Krofwarten. There’s been some water under the bridge since then… in brief; they found Jip, found out that he was indeed another Meef-alike called Jip Krofwarten, and he was wanted by some heavy powers because of his relatively innocent involvement in a heist. Jip was trying to play the angles to try to get out of the situation rich and alive, but the players largely didn’t care to get involved in the caper and Red turned him in to the authorities for a reward. 

The situation was not resolved as Jip would not give up the location of the artifact he’d stolen from the thieves who’d stolen it from one of Giana’s father’s lieutenants (it was his fellow clone, Meef, who had them). When torture wouldn’t work on him, they decided to grab his girlfriend and kid of the street and torture them instead. 

While all this torture and manly resistance was going on to Meef’s benefit, Meef was conning a dying airship captain out of his flying ship. With the means to skip town and get away from the various dangerous entanglements Jip’s situation had ensnared them in, they were invited along to meet Dracogen, creepy af shadow entity. They had problems, he had solutions: for completing a job, they’d learn the way to the Temple of The Blind God (although Jip also claimed to know how to get there, before they handed him over to be tortured). 

They took their flying ship, The Ruffian, out to a remote village that had appealed to Dracogen for help. They fixed their wagon… leaving their village smashed and burned but danger free. (This adventure would be impossible to describe without revealing the twist, but it was a good one, I enjoyed it.) And Dracogen was well pleased and coughed up the information. 

So taken was he with them that he had further work for them, a delve into the famous Orgorek. They had been approached by Jip’s future Mother-in-Laws, incensed that the party had endangered their daughter by handing Jip over for torture. So they worked out a deal with Dracogen to have Jip freed inexchange for exploring the Orgorek. 

They flew way up north, The Ruffian outfitted with crew, a sex yurt for Red trailing off the back and a welded-on crew cabin. they checked out the Orgorek and found a bunch of interesting things, not least of which was an Octopus explorer they named Vern whose skim-craft had crashed into the heavily defended Orgorek.

Heading home they were almost taken over by the Iron Wind, but found last second shelter in a chasm, their ship crashing into ancient structures. They encountered a priestess with a problem, sort of solved the problem, and then fixed their ship up enough to head off home.