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Designing a Focus is a lot harder than writing a Descriptor.  There’s a lot more to balance and the Focus, by its very nature, has more impact on the character than a Descriptor does.  On the other hand, there are so many Foci and they take so many different tacks that it’s hard to compare […]

Premise:  Numenera PC’s don’t know much about prior world technologies and can’t identify Cyphers.  Hilarity ensues (and people probably die). Ok, here’s the idea- let’s strip off all the identifying characteristics from Cyphers and make them really just a shot in the dark. Sure it sounds crazy, but here’s the catch: when you activate a […]

Keeping it weird is one of the most important jobs of the Numenera GM.  It’s a weird setting, with a lot of potential, and players expect a lot from us in the way of strangeness.  Here are a few tips I’ve come up with for doing it, in no particular order.  For advice from the […]

Tucked away in the optional (what Monte Cook calls the “advanced”) rules chapter are a couple of playable non-human races for player characters, one of which are the reddish-violet Varjellen.  Harsh and alien, I find the Varjellen extremely compelling as they just don’t value things in the same ways that humans do.  First off, Varjellen […]