The Forever Deam: Session One

Preamble: I started a Numenera Campaign called "The Forever Dream" online. It is played using the site Roll20, for dice rolls and visual aids, and over Skype for voice chat. I have four players and we're going to be gaming weekly for the next two or three months. I'm intending for this to be a short campaign with the option to continue at some point in the future. Just FYI, the opening entry can be found HERE. Additional post can be found by clicked on "The Forever Dream" tag on this blog.

 As a reference point to readers, here are the group's characters:

Mobius: the INTELLIGENT NANO who CONTROLS GRAVITY

Suiko: the GRACEFUL nano that LEADS

Lucien: the TOUGH GLAIVE who HOWLS AT THE MOON

Moardeki: the MYSTICAL JACK who RIDES THE LIGHTNING

   

The Session: We gamed for about three hours on Friday, 01NOV2013 starting at 2000 US eastern time. The entire group was present.


Adventure Summery: The story began with a small group of wayward adventurers from the theocracy community of Bless. They were sent into the massive and insanely dangerous forest swamp which surrounds their home town on an important "Divine Quest." The trade caravan that arrives twice a year like clockwork is a day late. Suiko's team was dispatched to investigate the trader's uncharacteristic tardiness.

The team left at the crack of dawn. The first leg of the journey was painfully uneventful. The party aimless searched the swamp for hours to no avail. Around midday the group finally caught a break. A large mechanical tread print was found in the mud. The group quickly deduced that it was most likely made by the caravan which happened to be an armored mechanical monstrosity built in worlds past. The tech savvy man named Orion who owned and operated "The Star-Crossed Trading Company" stubbornly maintains it's the safest way of transporting goods through the swamp. "Sure it's expansive," Orion would comment when asked about his caravan by non-Blessairens, "...to keep old Betty up and running but it's worth it. That psychedelic brew those cultist create in that death trap has made me a shin-thousandare!" 

Using his impressive feral-like taking skills, Lucien picked up the caravan's trail and led the group deeper into the swamp. After advancing for a few minutes, the party happened by a brutal sight. A group of 20 Laaks had attacked and were about to devourer one of Bless's most ionic inhabitants. The gravity defying telepathic floating Jellyfish known simply as "Nercos." This odd species is the creation of the Living God "Nercomadusa." There sole purpose is to serve Him and to assist His followers while in their moral shells. Having arrived just in the nick of time, the party rushed to the Jelly's aid. Mobius  used his psychic abilities to lift the Nerco out of harm's way while Moardeki electrocuted the swarm of small lizards by volleying a few electrically charged crossbow into the water. While doing very little himself, Suiko led the group to victory by issuing good advice to his comrades. 

With the Laaks fried, the party revived the Nerco and Mobius contact with it. Lacking the intelligence for direct commutation, the Jellyfish relayed it's story telepathically by sending emotions and flashes of memories. Some time after the group was deployed the Care Taker of the town released numerous Nercos into the swamp unprotected on a search. Although the Jelly didn't specify what they were searching for the group came to the logical conclusion that they are also combing the wilderness for the traders. After the short interaction the group continued onward with the Jelly in tow. Following at a safe distance.

About an hour later the group encountered a very strange and very curious pool of water. In the pool where humans, adhumans, and local wildlife loudly chatting away with each other. Upon closer inspection, it was discovered that something very weird was happening. The conversationalists were in fact just severed heads mounted on metal polls. Clearly not a natural phenomenon, Lucien approached the disembodied heads.With lighting fast speed, a metal tentacle surged from beneath the water and wraped around Lucien's leg. The creature emerged from the water, revealing it's true nature. The creature was clearly a robotic horror from built ages ago. It had a massive metal torso, two deadly sharp crab like pincher, and a mass of grey tentacles.

Grasping Lucien, the robot atempted to slam him against a conveniently located jagged rock but it failed. At the last possible second he slipped out of the hold, rolling to (relative) safety. Luckily for the party, the crudely programmed robot momentarily lost it's query which caused it's targeting software to glitch and execute a line of junk code. Abandoning it's primary function, the automation entered "kill everything that moves with reckless disregard to self preservation" mode. Also fortunately for the group, the creature was in disrepair. Suiko spotted a few weak spots on their fearsome attacker and pointed them out to the party. Exploring their adversary's vulnerabilities;Lucien, Mobius , and Moardeki eventually dismantled the rampaging device but at great cost. The harrowing battle left the entire party tired and wounded. They took a long rest and patched themselves up the best they could before continuing.

While scavenging useful components from the broken robot another Nercos appeared. It relayed to the group that there was a large building in the heart of the swamp and urged the party to go there. The group reluctantly agreed after the Jelly shared some memories of structure. The building execrated water from every orifice and was surrounded by hostile looking abhumans called Margr. But next to all that craziness was fresh caravan tracks. Having no other leads, the group marched forward...surely heading directly into harms way.


Conclusion: The session continued after this point but we stopped soon after. The adventure was not able to be completed within a single game session. However, finishing this write up as the party arrives at building at the heart of the swamp is a logical closing point.

I award the party 2 XP for the discovery/partial exploration of the structure and that was it.


Notes: First off, I apologize for whatever grammatical and spelling errors that exist in this post (or anywhere else in my blog.) Currently, I'm dong all my own proof reading and I'm not very good at it. Feel free to email or message me any mistakes and I'll to my best to fix them in a timely manor.

- This is a Home Brew Campaign takes place in an unknown location within the default Numenera World Settings.

- The Living God "NERCOMADUSA" and His "NERCO" servants are based on real Jellyfish.

- LAAK are found on page 243 of the Numenera Core Rule Book.

- The creature in the pool was a MESOMEME, found on page 246 of the Numenera Core Rule Book.

- When the MESOMEME grabbed Lucien, that was a GM INTRUSION. Found on page 88 of the Numenera Core Rule Book.

- MARGR are found on page 244 of the Numenera Core Rule Book. 

     

Numenera Campaign

Numenera is a science fantasy roleplaying game set in the far distant future created by Monte Cook. From a purely mechanical standpoint it's a very streamlined and straight forward system. It was designed to lessen the burden on Game Masters so they can spend more time on story and world crafting. As a soon to be Numenera Game Master, I really appreciate it.

For one thing, it's so easy to come up with obstacles on the fly. Everything that the PC encounter has a standardized difficulty level from 1 to 10 which applies to anything the player do to interact with it. Lets say that there is a level 3 metal door that the players need to get by. The target number the PC need to roll is always three times it's level, so for this example they need to roll a 9 or better for any action. It doesn't matter if they choice to pick the door's lock or bashing it down, their target remains 9. However, if a player has a skill or is carrying a applicable asset (such as ram or lock picks) the task becomes easier.

In Numenera, bonuses or penalties to actions are not common. Any skills or assets a player has usually drops the difficulty level specially for the action attempted, which in turn lowers the target number. Another way the player can drop an action's level is by applying effort. By choosing to exerting extra effort into a given task, a character makes it easier at the cost of points from their stat pools. For the full run down on Numenera stat system, check out this link: http://www.numenera.com/stats-and-training-in-numenera/

Two other very interest features of Numenera are it's experience mechanics and character creation. Experience points are not handed out for killing monsters, instead they are earned through discovery and GM interventions. GM don't have to roll dice (unless they want to) so they use interventions to add complication to the narrative. The GM offers up a challenge to the player which will grant them 2 XP. However, if a player has unspent experience on hand they can choice to refuse it by paying 1 XP and forgoing the 2 XP bonus.     

Character Creation is very quick and painless compared to more complex systems such as Pathfinder or Shadowrun. In my experience, building a character in pathfidner or shadowrun takes about 30 minutes using Hero Lab, or an hour or longer by hand. There are so many options in systems it takes time to figure out all the specifics. In Numenera, it takes maybe half an hour by hand or considerably less time if you use the character create app or prime-junta.net. There are only three major choices you have to make and this sentence is a tool to guide you through the process :

_Name_ is a _Adjective_ (descriptor) _Noun_ (Class) who _Verb_ (Focus Ability)

All you have to do is fill in the blanks and they then pick a few options. This sentence is also a handy way of describing your character. It hits all the key points a gives a clear idea of your character is capable of.  

 Starting next week I'm going to be running a short Numenera Campain on Roll20.com called "The Forever Dream"The game is set in a very weird town, even by Ninth World standards. The town is called "Bless" to it's residents and by "Jellyvill" or "That wet and smelly village full of floating telepathic jellyfish" (they look like the above photo.) But to the players, it's just home sweet home. They have lived in Bless all their lives so jellyfish, the Forever Dream, and Divine Quests are just business as usual. The Sleeping Priests that run the town send them and other residents on Divine Quest, normally to gather Numenera, which they have to complete complete. One simply doesn't ignore the will of the Living God "Narcomedusae," the creator of The Forever Dream and giver of immortality. However, the player's next Divine Quest is something special. A mission of such vial importance that the fate of the entire town rest in their hands.

I have a full group of four players and our first game is on Friday, November 01 at 7:00PM. I'm planning on post session summaries on this blog.