Thursday at Gen Con we announced the forthcoming Numenera 2 set of core rulebooks: Numenera Discovery and Numenera Destiny.
Numenera is a game in which the player characters explore the ruins of aeons past to gather amazing treasures and help build a new future for a world struggling in darkness. Since the launch of Numenera in 2013, we have delivered well on the first part, but we’ve always wanted to explore that second part more than we have.
This has led us to create something we’re calling… Numenera 2.
Numenera 2 is a major product divided into two books. The first is called Numenera Discovery and the second Numenera Destiny.
Numenera Discovery
Discovery is going to be a book that covers familiar territory for many of you. In fact, it can basically be considered a revision of the original Numenera corebook. Next summer, we will allow the original corebook to go out of print, and Numenera Discovery will take its place. In Numenera Discovery you’ll get some revisions to make things clearer and more fun, and to increase the options available to players. Nanos, Jacks, and Glaives will get an overhaul. Many foci and some of the descriptors might see some reworking. You’ll have more options, clearer rules, and perhaps a bit of expansion to the regions of the Steadfast and the Beyond that are covered in the existing corebook.
But this isn’t a new edition. We will make virtually no changes to the way the game plays mechanically—and none of those changes affect the way NPCs, creatures, or items like cyphers or artifacts work. We also won’t be making changes to the setting. This means your bestiaries, adventures, card decks, character portfolios, and books like Into the Night, Technology Compendium, and Jade Colossus will not be affected by these changes. We will not issue any “second editions” of the existing supporting titles—and if you choose not to get Numenera Discovery, future Numenera supplements will work fine with your existing Numenera corebook. Your existing campaign will flow smoothly through the change in corebooks, with no need to plan changes or to in any way reset your campaign.
(Speaking of which: You will even be able to mix existing characters with those from Numenera Discovery into your game. There’s no reason to retire existing characters, or send your existing Numenera corebook out to pasture. The game can be played with both the existing corebook and Numenera Discovery in use at the same game table!)
Numenera Destiny
As excited as we are about Numenera Discovery, we may be even more excited about Numenera Destiny. This title will enable characters to truly become a part of the setting—to help shape the future of the Ninth World. The people of the Ninth World are locked in a medieval-like state, a world of struggle and danger and often suffering in the shadow of the prior worlds’ wonders. Numenera Destiny allows you to build adventures and campaigns in which players don’t just explore the wonders of the past—they utilize them to help lift the Ninth World out of darkness. You can make the world a better place. Help a community defend itself from abhumans or the Iron Wind. Create centers of learning or trade. Innovate, build, and protect. Manage an entire community and help it prosper and grow—or simply create a cool base or vehicle for your adventuring group. Numenera Destiny will allow you to take what you discover and make your mark on history as someone who took the Ninth World and elevated it into the future.
Adventuring—exploring the weird and wondrous remnants of the prior worlds—remains, of course, at the core of Numenera play. Numenera Destiny will give you new things to do with your discoveries, and entirely new and epic ways to structure your campaigns. You’ll discover materials, power sources, and treasures that you can utilize in a entirely new, robust crafting and building system. And perhaps best of all, Numenera Destiny will offer three new character types and a number of new descriptors and foci geared toward this innovative style of play.
The two books will integrate nicely, and they will be available individually or as a gorgeous set in a slipcase.
The Kickstarter for Numenera 2 launches in September of this year. Numenera Discovery and Numenera Destiny will release in the summer of 2018.
