Low Life: Clearview Estates

Clearview Estate – “Where the future waits for you!”

Clearview Estate was built during the Projects boom of the 1950s when housing estates were a leg up, a place where one could regroup and move forward. The original Estate was a city block with four large fifteen-storey high-rises (two of them connected together); a smaller fifth building was added twenty years after that and by the 80s desperate attempts to revitalize the project led to removing much of the green space in the middle and added town homes that ended up being as neglected as the rest of the Estate. Unlike other housing projects, Cleaview hasn’t been featured in horror movies or was made on land that developers wanted to claim for other uses. The lack of low-rent housing in the city had made razing and rebuilding it not politically feasible so politicians have turned blind eyes upon it.

The Estate was made with noble goals, but almost no maintenance happens – to save money for the city housing authority – and the eventual belief that people living in it somehow deserve to had seeped into popular culture like pus out of a wound. Every election cycle politicians drag out a handful of success stories as though it makes up for the horror stories that go unreported. Clearview isn’t where you go when you hit rock bottom. It’s what happens when you hit rock bottom and are handed a shovel and told to start digging.

LAYOUT

North-East: Crack Towers. Even the management refers to Haversham Towers as Crack Towers. Most of the dealers and customers are small time and the police don’t even bother responding to calls about drug use in the Estate any longer thanks to the reputation of the building. The management does try and root out dealers, but it takes time and tribunals and isn’t always successful – nor safe.

North-West: Concrete Jungle (once known as Greenview Heights) is a concrete slab of a building that was painted green, covered in moss and meant to resemble the parks within Clearview Estate. Theyh saved the money spent on the exterior by not plastering any of the interior. The moss is long gone and the green now resembles some of the more distressing options in the Dulux colour chart. The building is cracked, decaying, moldly and in the worst shape of the four original buildings.

South-West: The Twin Towers, so named because they were connected together at the tenth-storey mark. The only part of Clearview to have underground parking, it earned a new name as the Trade Towers post 9/11 since a lot of the underground parking is used up with various spray paints and cheap chop shops on stolen vehicles.

The South-East addition of Galloway Place – known as the Gallows – is a seven story hellhole, even to the people living in it. Each rentable room can fit a bed and small couch, sometimes a dresser. There is one communal fridge in the hallway of each floor and the basement contains communal bathroom and showering facilities. Clearview lore has it that you can catch STDs just by breathing in the air of the Gallows basement. It’s the last place you live before being homeless, the one place that takes cash with no questions asked.

The Clearview Greens town homes are all similar eighties two-storey affairs with faded green siding. Almost none have working shutters anymore and thirty years of neglect has not been kind to them either.

REALITIES:

Building maintenance is non-existent. Power and water failures are common.

Most everyone uses cell phones linked to the crappy free city wi-fi since reliable internet service is a joke. TVs, on the other hand, aren’t a problem. One company is said to have actually showed up with a SWAT team top guard them while they and installed TVs for four homes and no one batted an eye. (This didn't actually happen, but it's entered local folklore as fact.)

Jobs are scarce, and getting a job rather difficult since many employers automatically dismiss anyone living in Clearview from consideration. Insurance is a joke.
The police tend to only come in cars of two or more, and seldom after dark. While there are gangs in Clearview, the general belief is that the police are the worst gang of all.

The local school – Thompson Farms Elementary – is notorious for its lack of gym, auditorium and even cafeteria, to say nothing of textbooks that aren’t grossly out of date. Typing classes are still taught on typewriters in order to save money.

Things have changed a little, thanks to social media. Some people posted enough photos of the state of decay in washrooms and units that the city had to begin spending some money in cleanups, but unfortunately the moment public attention turns away the city does as well. And the public has a rather short attention span.

Sadly, this isn’t the worst of the projects. Everyone has heard of Henry Horner Homes and Cabrini-Green in Chicago. Everyone knows it could be far worse than it is, but some days that isn’t the comfort it tries to be.


General Note: Despite the conditions of living at Clearview, it is better than being on the streets would be. Building repair is entirely done by local work at best but people do try and look out for each other the same as they do anywhere else. There are assholes everywhere, after all, and where one lives does not change that. 

Low Life: System

Dice: Risus, but with OVA dice (u3 for 3 dice and so forth). OVA dice work akin to Yahtzee, a la:

u3: 6 from [6, 4, 1]

u6: 8 from [2, 1, 2, 5, 4, 4]
The chief benefit of this is that an increase in dice is no guarantee for victory and also fits into discovery and useage of ones abilities.

Regular Cliche: you have 7 dice to put into normal cliches; none can be more than 3 dice.

Power: You have six dice to play with. You can have one power at 6 or two medium powers (3/3 or 4/2). One power is generally reserved for the more powerful abilities, two for complementary ones that fit the character.

Power level: low-tier X-men is the mental starting point. So the limited abilities of the original X-men could qualify and so forth. Characters will get more powerful as the game progresses in their abilities rather than gaining more powers.

Boost: You begin with 0 dice in boost. This is gained via RP, awesome moments etc. and basically becomes bonus dice to apply to situations in the game. If you want your PC to begin with Boost that regenerates daily (1-2 points) you can add some flaw to your power(s) as agreed by the GM. (In x-men terms, Cyclops not being able to turn off his powers or Beast looking like a beat would qualify.)

Damage: Roll dice, whoever wins the encounter (the defender wins ties) does the difference between them (in the above example, 2 damage). Certain abilities will increase this naturally as will weapons.

(Armour exists, reducing total damage from a hit by 1-2 points.)

Health: Regular people have 5-10 health as their base, depending on jobbs, general health and so forth. If you have abilities that are combat/survival;-based, you get more health. [Roughly 3 points/level, though variation can apply.] This does mean that PCs are not initially any kind of bullet-sponges and will need to act accordingly. It means the average person will have between 10-15 health most likely in total. 

Note: This is very rough and a first draft: it can be altered before the game begins, or even during play (if everyone is seen as having too much or little health).  

LOW LIFE: an RPG Campaign

(To ring in the new year; this probably wouldn't run until after Mid-Feb. since I won't be around for the start of that month.)

Low Life is centred about low lives, the disenfranchised and the unfranchisable. The PCs all live in a housing project that the police try to avoid when possible – it’s the kind of place where even those who live there would consider a carpet bombing to be a civic improvement, the sort of housing that it’s a crime to live in but somehow not a crime to own and rent out. Landlords are delinquent at best, malicious at worst, and it’s the last step before the streets for many families. The Everway Housing Project started life as an attempt to boost the lives of the destitute, back in the day when living in the projects just meant you were in a slump and being on welfare wasn’t seen as a moral flaw. Now it’s the kind of place the city likes to pretend doesn’t exist, one bad apple in a bunch scattered together like boils in the heart of what once was a vibrant downtown core. You live in a place of the violent and grubby desperation that lies under all the grandiose ambitions of the world, and you know just know wrong the american dream can be and just how ugly those who can help really act once the media can’t see them.

No one admits to living here if they can avoid it; many employers write off anyone who comes from it as a matter of course. If the police come, it’s in riot gear and in the knowledge almost no one is going to be stupid enough to try and video them. Not everyone is a criminal – far from it – but it’s easier to be one than anything else, and too easy to fall when you’ve got nothing left to live for at all. Most TVs have been sold to pawn shops, many others are broken as a result of items being hurled through them after seeing another report about affluenza or another TV show set in some mythical America that doesn’t exist at all.

Only something has changed. Perhaps an accident, or some government weapon. One day you were normal, and now – now you’re something more than human. You can do things other people can’t. Things out of stories and comic books, are an impossibility walking about a world of drab possibilities.

Longfellow wrote that ‘One half the world must sweat and groan that the other half may dream’... only now it is far more than half, and your groans have been among them. You have power. And those in charge are probably shitting themselves right now...

System: Unsure, at the moment. The Cypher System Superhero variant might work well because it would work better for more gritty games. I think? The OVA-Risus variant could work as well (and require less work on everyone’s part).

Note: PCs will have 1 or 2 powers. Power ceiling will be at weak-marvel range. In other words, you can have Invulnerability, but it will have limits. Be super strong, but only to so many limited tons of weight. Be fast, not still visible to people. Etc.

If you have one power, you can pass entirely as human if you want to. If you have two, you don’t pass as human anymore. (Exactly how far you want to take that is up to each PC; consider Nightcrawler in the x-men as a rough starting point – you need to hide your appearance.)

Optionally, you can have your power be stronger than the norm, but when you push it your appearance changes etc.

Theme/Tone: This game is about what happens when the least in society gain power, and how society responds. It is up to the players if their characters decide to be villains, heroes, or inhabit the shades of grey everyone else lives in their lives in. We live in a digital age, and that will affect everything for good or ill – you won’t be able to hide, but neither will the regular media be able to smear you quite as easily as they would otherwise.

Note: this will be a superhero-style game if players want that: my default assumption is that PCs will take steps to improve their own lives via power(s) – ideally with the aid of others, since they aren’t that powerful on their lonesome – and no one is going to put on suits to fight crime. Which doesn’t mean PCs can’t do that, only that it should be run by other players and such as well as to what tone people want the game to take.

The arc the campaign itself takes will be determined by the players and GM prior to the start of the game so that everyone is roughly on the same page. 

Secrets of the Weave: Character Listing

PCs

Ankita, the Mechanical glaive who Fuses Flesh and Steel [Out2lunch]
Kishan, the Learned nano who Rides the Lightning [Tass]
Molly Skips, the  Impulsive Nano  who Exists in Two Places at Once [Thistle]
Rel, the Jack who ?   [Chaos]

NPCs

Bastom: ruler of Jortul, the City of Children

Oburrr: aeon priest who is apparently the entire clave in the town

Phey: Moss-covered 'youth' a shade shorter than Molly. 

Campaign: Secrets of the Weave

Everyone knows of the Wandering Walk, the road that some say crosses the entire world, the road that is littered with pilgrims and travellers. But the Winding Way is something else, a path few know about and fewer approach an understanding of. The way isn't a road, in any strict sense. it is narrow and winding, connecting the claves and aldeia [villages] of the Beyond together, slowly, into a more cohesive whole. Who, or what, is doing this is unknown but the roads formed by the Way are all marked by dead stones, glass like a mirror made of darkness. The paths are too narrow and winding for use by merchants, and few travel between the aledia of the Beyond for reasons of safety or sanity -- but adventurers are slowly finding the Winding Way and making use of it, as are those people brave enough to try and visit their neighbours in a world where every village can be world unto itself, with only the claves of the aeon priests providing a common tongue of nothing else.

Your wanderings have taken you to the edges of Jortul, known as the City of Children for only children can easily traverse the inner city of small buildings and ramps designed long ago for inhabitants smaller than human adults and perhaps devoid of legs. The local ruler is seeking people to take goods to the north, for Jortul trades with most towns -- for free -- in exchange that no one tries to destroy the city and plunder the gardens said to be hidden under it that crate it's bounty of fresh produce. And since no one knows how far the war in the north extents, they've had little luck getting anyone to venture into the deep north along the mountains known as the Black Riage.

Until, perhaps, now ...


For Tass and Lunchie [a reference]

things learned in the last 3-4 years:

• most towns do not have the same wealth of numenera that Milvane had. (Or, if they do, it has been more thoroughly plundered.)
• there are very few stories about Earthlings, or people looking like them. Clearly their other cities are far better at non-involvement. That, or they are spread out further than it is comfortable to think about.
• flashes of genius are common: most places have at least 1-2 working items from the past, and sometimes even someone who knows roughly how to use it still. (The exceptions tend to be places where things went rather south and a lot of people died and/or mutated so the community avoids such things like a plague.)
• the Truth is definitely alive in a way that other languages aren’t. If you speak it to someone in a town, within hours to days everyone in the town knows the language. Sometimes they realize how strange that is, but not that often.
• Clife is known just about everywhere that there are a lot of mutants (if only by the mutants); knowing of him generally affords one a wary respect.
• the long-dead(?) nano known as Iksobar isn’t common knowledge; most aeon priests refuse to admit he/she/it ever existed; Milvane either had a superior library or there was more to Miralb than meets the eye. Or both.  
• Ralc Orfta is active and infamous as a treasure-hunter of numenera as much as for armour that it said to be the highest achievement of some prior world.
• automatons tend to know a little more about the ‘broken weave’ than most, and it seems to be tied into the datasphere somehow. Beyond that, most think it just a term without any real meaning if they think of it in depth at all. 
• If Jisell or her clones are active, you’ve heard nothing at all. The odds are very good they are somewhere in the Beyond but it is a very large expanse of space.
• From time to time you get rumours out of Milvane that have turned the group of you into very strange stories.*

* none about Victa, thankfully.

For the most part, it’s been quiet for the both of you since that time. You’ve acquired a foundling, stayed in some towns for a season at times (depending on travel and needs) but the urge to Do Things is growing, and the world is full of secrets and mysteries you’ve barely plundered, and knowledge and power you can use to become more, or change who you are... and Zia, for all her canny madness, thought far too small indeed.

The world is full of opportunities. So what ones does your PC look for, and to what end? Becoming ‘normal’ again? Wealth? Immortality? Knowing secrets that no one else knows? Protecting people from harm and terrible things beyond understanding? There are answers to be found, and questions to learn and things to discover that could shake the foundations of the world.

Between-Campaign Info

Things you have learned in four years:

The Aeon Priesthood is headquartered in Qi, a vast city of mind-boggling size, it’s population perhaps dwarfing the entirety of Thaemor. But the larger countries that make up the Steadfast are far richer affairs, and with that wealth comes politics and posturing and a war far too the north with an enemy some darkly suspect doesn’t even exist. The Amber Pope is powerful, perhaps even a just man, and there is no denying that the papacy learned many terrible secrets and lore from the amber monolith – Jisell alone was proof of that. But knowledge is a far different thing to wisdom, and the aeon priests found further from the capital, scattered about the beyond and seeking to understand the numenera for its own sake, tend to be true seekers and teachers both.

It is not as if the Steadfast is a terrible place. Far from it, but it is a place of merchants and armies, not one for wanderers who call none of their kingdoms home. The vastness of what the inhabitants of the Steadfast call the Beyond is many things – it is far more dangerous, but there are few kingdoms, many villages that seldom even see brave merchants, let alone seekers such as yourselves. There are caravans to guard, merchants to protect and wars to be had, but they are small things with small goals, the spectacle of the ninth world playing out like children with toys they barely dip into a sandbox.

Zia is, perhaps, mad. But she turned Milvane into far more than town. And the world is awash in information, in secrets, even in power if one has the will and wherewithal to claim it. Few people do. Most towns are small affairs, the inhabitants hungry to choose safety over freedom, but there are always other options, always new routes. And the further you go from the Steadfast, the less worry you have about local rulers claiming prizes or the local clave of aeon priests declaring that all numenera must be brought before them.

Even the Wandering Walk that some claim circles the world is crowded with hungry pilgrims and envying eyes. But further, east of the ocean, are lasts no one in the Steadfast as mapped. Towns, villages, entire kingdoms who may not even know the rest of the world exists. And you are strange, but not too strange for most places. The world is full of knowledge; the question is, what do you desire to use it for?

Numenera Campaign 2

Yonder GM is waiting on the world guide before running the second campaign. Plans thus far:

Travel! The first campaign was a test-run of the system for everyone, hence being based in one area with everything radiating out from that. This campaign will be more a case of travelling along various roads, pathways and exploring parts of the Beyond and even further. Players shall be poked beforehand about what they want in terms of awesome things to find/character growth/skills/learning and the campaign that develops will weave itself around that. Some characters from the first campaign may return, possibly not.


Characters

Some players are playing characters from the last game, others new ones. This campaign is going to allow the foci and descriptors from the main rule book along with the character options book. (Players playing characters they already made who want to rejig them and the like are welcome to chat with me on that; have no problem with it.)

So far the concept is to make the characters all one family (adopted or otherwise). As the ninth world doesn't conform to modern earth players are free to ignore the structures -- for power and otherwise -- in our understanding of families and go nuts making up some other structure, formal or otherwise. Figure out something neat everyone can agree on -- which, ideally, doesn't involve the PCs being slaves to the hive mind of a dicebot patriarch. Because there are limits.


Fallout from the first campaign:

The village of Milvane has become a power unto itself in Thaemor , using technology from long-dead civilizations and alliances with nearby communities to hold off both the kings armies and perhaps fracture the entire kingdom. In less than a year the town went from a nothing town in a minor kingdom to a force to be reckoned with, said to have access to armies all its own and an army of machine-men and mutants at its disposal.

No one agrees on what happened or even why, just that the town showed people how much could be gained if they were willing to take the risks necessary for growth. Since there at least a dozen small towns in the Steadfast have ceased to exist, become craters, or far worse with the Aeon Priests scrambling to put out fires.

It does mean that the Steadfast is a little less safe to travel in and is shaking up some aldeia even in the Beyond as places try and replicate the success of Milvane. Luckily, most people attribute all of that to Zia -- whose PR has been very, very good -- and almost no one is aware of the hired help who did more than the villagers themselves to bring about those changes.


Rules Changes:

PCs will get to pick the cyphers they begin the game with.  I am going to assume that they have done trades, made plans etc. before the first session so their initial complement of one-shot tricks is at least decent. You'll be able to find traders selling some in aldeia, various oddities and cyphers as you explore places and we'll explore the PCs making the cyphers from found things a lot more than the last campaign did. Ideally.


If there are critters in the book you want to show, or certain weird shit you'd like to see happen, poke me about it. The plan is for a longer campaign with plots growing at a slow build over time.


Sessions:

Given schedules, hoping for at least twice a week.

Ze New Year!

So. Plans. Currently Fennec and Kentari are running games.

I (aka Alcar) am just doing one side game at the moment.

The plan, at least for me, is as follows:

The numenera world guide comes out late this month; I'll snag it, read it it and etc. and sometime during February there shall be a new Numenera game offered up. I've hashed out the idea in the channel, but the basic premise will be the game is set a few years after the first one and the game will be about the pcs travelling/exploring rather than being based out of any one location.

As players know the system/setting well now, the character options book shall be free to use for the game, which shall let everyone go nuts with options for new PCs.

The PCs of the previous campaign won't show up, but they will be stories/legends in this game that players get to make and have fun with it. For reference, the town of Milvane has become a city-state within the kingdom of Thaemor ruled by itself, due to alliances with underground-dwelling 'humans', robot allies, energy sources akin to perpetual power for the settlement and so forth. That one town managed to become such a thing is making other towns consider options and shaking the status quo of the Steadfast, sending reverberations out into the Beyond of what can be accomplished with the old world if one comes at it with a vision of the future.


Alternatively, if players aren't up for numenera gain so soon, we can always figure out some other game to run instead. Sparkie just insists the game can't use Amber, of course.

SPARKIE: THE EXPANSION

https://twitter.com/dicebotofdoom

Now my dice rolls in games will appear online! Unless using it murders me again and esper.net has another fit. But it will show dice rolls and NOT be dicebot-shaming but a small sampling of my being AWESOME. 

(Also, to get this to work I had to turn Alcar into MY bot and that is the best thing in ever. So there.)

Numenera Character List & XP Log

Player Characters:

• Ryll the Mystical nano who Controls Beasts [Caltak]
• Victa the Intelligent jack who Explores Dark Places [Thistle]
• Ankita the Mechanical glaive who Fuses Flesh and Steel [Out2lunch]
• Kishan the Learned nano who Rides the Lightning [Tass]
• Ayjh, the Swift jack who Works Miracles [Beardliest]
• Sparkie the Fire Elemental Bot who Rolls Dice to Decide Destroy Distort Reality

To those who want to streamline making their character, I recommend this!

Overall Type Composition:

• Glaive = 1
• Jack = 2
• Nano = 2
• Dicebot = 1

Experience Points:

• General: 3 to Ryll, Victa, Ankita, Kishan
• GM Intrusion: 1 to Ankita, Kishan
• GM Intrusion: 1 to Victa, Kishan
• General: 2 to Ryll, Victa, Ankita, Kishan
• [8/16] RP: 1 to Ryll
• [8/18] Discovery/RP: 2 to Victa, Ankita, Kishan, Ayjh
• [8/19] Discovery: 2 to Ryll
• [8/20] RP: 1 to Ryll
• [8/20] Discovery: 3 for all PCs
• [8/26] GM Intrusion: 1 to Ankita, Kishan
• [8/27] GM Intrusion: 1 to Ryll, Kishan
• [8/27] Discovery: 2 for Victa, Kishan, Ryll.  1 for Lunchie for kitten discovery.
• [8/29] GM Intrusion: 1 to Ankita, Kishan
• [8/29] Discovery: 3 to all PCs
• (9/1) 3 for Victa, Ankita, Kishan

Experience Gain Totals (By PC):

• Ankita = 21
• Ayjh = 8
• Kishan = 23
• Ryll = 18
• Victa = 19

Numenera NPC Listing

Milvane & Environs

Abed & Odelar

Conjoined twins (mutants) who run the Suskind apoethecary and place of healing

Ashwil

Local farmer who was killed by Earthlings for desecrating their dead.

Bomus

A farmer who has a blue-dome shield around his farm to protect it from predators. Where he found it and how it works are secrets his family shares with no one.

Bozek

The Justice of the town, an ex-Glaive.

Clife

A prominent supporter of mutants, Clife is a thin, hooded mutant whom others largely avoid.

Edekam

Apprentice Aeon Priest, who spends most of his time helping Abed & Odelar.

Eley

A pale, inhuman mutant who lives in Palot and is apparently Yurt's aunt. She desires a means to travel without, well, problems.

Elix

Blue-haired girl with cybernetics who makes inventions in a stone home outside the town.

Figel 8124-dash-240351

Earthling who is trying to learn more about their species. By stealing old records.

Gatryn

'Defective' Earthling who lives in one of their non-war suits. Cannot survive outside it.

Holdun 3043-20932

Male Earthling in charge of a living crystals where the Elders live

Jisell

The local Aeon Priest.

Lsames-Oscan

mayor’s son, a member of the town Guard.

Miralb

The second Aeon apprentice, she is frail and clearly unsuited for rigors so spends most of her time in the Drill reading books about numenera and history.

Orlin

Frail elderly mutant(?) in a wheeled chair, Orlin is eldering and weak, pushed about by a quiet relative [Linfey] who seldom talks; the mayor speaks with him often, always in private.

Pyrag

Earthling who set the bomb in Milvane.

Ralc Orfta

Salvage hunter who wears armour known as the Glory of Iksobar; she is famous [though no PC has heard of her] and done many famous and impressive feats, though being tricked into fusing with a rock during a poor use of a teleportation cypher will probably never rank among those.

Rochl

A farmer whose family owns seven(!) fields; they have repurposed machines from a previous era to till fields over protests by Victa and the Guard; as they’re outside the town proper, the mayor has no authority over them.

Ruk

A young girl living in the deep woods north of town; her family travel the forest in search of treasure and she was born with an invisible left leg.

Setcala

Town Guard and volunteer for the border guard who seems entirely normal save that his head floats in the air at least a foot from his body at all times.

Soqua

A tall, stout man who is friendly as a person rather than just a merchant; he is the face of the Store and is in charge of acquisitions and new supplies.

Stoll

Shapesmith’s son, and member of the Border Patrol.

Tavrul

Earthling in a WarSuit who turns out to be a citizen and not a defective at all. Much to his shock. Has not been killed by a PC.

Victa

Local guide and map-maper who is infamous for her attitude toward others.

Wolh

Shapesmith whose arms are made of some miraculous blue metal that can cut and shape objects.

Yurt

young mutant with stone arms and legs; he can move reasonably well with floatstone bands around his limbs and is pretty inventive in his use of it.

Zia-Oscan

The Mayor. A politician through and through; it’s not always a bad thing.

Altering type abilities

 I don't expect characters to be set in stone for the first few sessions regarding type abilities. Given that we have PCs overlapping glaive, nano and jack, getting said tier 1 abilities from the character options book'll be allowed if players want to have their their pcs abilities overlap each other a little less.

(This option is in place mostly because of nano overlap: two of the nano abilities are pretty much de rigeur for PCs, so expanding the palate gives the players potential other decent options. It can be rped as we wish in game if players want to do that; if not, that's fine too.)

Campaign Glossary

Abhuman: Humans who have discarded humanity to embrace more bestial lives; some bands of mutants qualify.

Aeon Priests: An order of scientifically-minded individuals determined to understand the Numenera. They use the trapping of religion to strengthen their power and the Amber Pope is generally accepted to be the force that stops the Steadfast from descending into war.

Angulan Knights: An order of human knights dedicated to removing stains on humanity, such as mutants.

Gaians: humans living somewhere in the far North; the Amber Pope has declared war upon them.

Margr: abhumans who have some aspect of the goat about them but otherwise don’t look alike; the most common abhumans, they live lives of brutal violence and kill each other (and anything else) out of rage, lust, or for the sheer sport of it.

Milvane: the name of the town the PCs are based out of.

Mrrog: six-legged beasts of burden, boasting two tails, pale to dark ridged skin along with eyes on the front and sides of their head, Mrrog generally have one family of 4-6 adults living near a human settlement and offer themselves to adventuresome types as free mounts. They appear to understand some measure of the Truth, though their motives are largely unknown.

Mutant: Humans with obvious differences from the base human form; not all mutants are obvious and there are some who will see manifestations of foci as mutations.  

Palot: Small village of mutants two hours south of Milvane; many of the mutants never leave it owing to the nature of their mutations.

Scarwood: Forest east of the town where the trees grow quickly; when cut down, the wood of the trees is shaped by brute force into curved segments that harden under intense heat, so most of the homes have the same curved-square look to them.

Shin: Unit of currency. More impressive and intricate found objects are worth more than a single shin. Likewise, oddities, cyphers etc. can be traded as well as need be.

Truth: Common/Basic language for the Steadfast, also found in the Beyond to an extent.  

Economics of the Ninth World

The basic unit of currency is called a ‘shin’. Which means, essentially, ‘monies’. What constitutes a shin will vary greatly from nation to nation, and sometimes even from town to town. In most major cities, a ‘shin’ is a coin-like object that has been stamped as being legal tender by the agents of the crown. It, of course, costs a fee to get all ones shins stamped but this too will vary. Most nations will accept the currency of other nations (though at a reduced rate).

Smaller settlements rely mostly on a barter system among locals, with actual shins being reserved for trading with merchants and caravans that come through the town. As such, most businesses will accept a certain amount of shins before asking for other forms of payment, or shins of a specific colour or texture in some places. For example, you may enter one town that only accepts green shins and have to find a) either new shins or b) someone to paint your shins for you.

Unlike shins, oddities and cyphers have value everywhere. Attempts by kingdoms to mark them in the manner of shins have met with resistance and outright failure. To say nothing of trying to mark a cypher and then having it explode as a result. Trade in all these items is common and based on the uniqueness of the item and what the other party needs or desires. Adventurers based in an area can always trade potential items they might find later on if locals have reason to trust them. Artififact trading is common as well, though since no one knows when it is going to shut down it isn’t as brisk as that of cyphers or oddities.

GM Note: I don’t plan to be a stickler for such things in-game. PCs will likely run into towns and places where their shins are essentially worthless but it’s very unlikely to find a place where the locals won’t trade in oddities, cyphers or artifacts. Lastly, there is always the currency of favours and news of what is happening in the wider world.

        Regarding Equipment

Players going ‘hey, wait, I need X for my pc to make sense and can’t afford X’ can be worked out prior to the game with the GM. For example, instead of a compass one can find worldstones (black stones make by Aeon Priests that always point north: essentially lodestones) that are a) cheaper and b) not quite as good.

Numenera PCs: things to keep in mind

Creating a PC is pretty easy all told. The only thing you need to keep in mind is that no two PCs can have the same foci.

Beyond that:

Your Description (Mystical, Strong, etc.) includes with it choices for the reason your PC joins the party.
Your foci includes one link to another PC (either new or ongoing if you've met before).
Your type (glaive, nano, jack) includes 3 basic background options and a roll for  your connection to the rest of the world.

This alone is a pretty solid basis for a PC: the rest, being how it all fits together, why your PC became an adventurer, what you've done beforehand and the like is entirely up to you. The setting outlined in a prior post is designed for short adventures, explorations around, under and sideways to the town of Milvane -- where the PCs go from there is up to everyone.

We'll play a few sessions and then figure out where the game will go: do the PCs thank the mayor and depart, do players make some mix of old/new PCs and set out following some quest or rumour? All this is up for grabs with nothing written down in stone; I plan to have a few intro. adventure hooks and seeds done up, and see where things go from that, with the 'mayor sends PCs on quest(s) hook existing for short adventures at the start.

One advantage of the game is that there is no need for a mix of Glaive, Jack, Nano in a 'party' and the like, so player absence isn't a huge deal. In game it will be explained by skedaddling back to town for supplies/cyphers/?, ditto with other players arriving on site. We'll figure stuff out and finagle things as needed. It should be fun, though gming and rarely rolling dice will take some getting used to.

(I bet he'll get used to it JUST FINE. - Sparkie)