In December 2023 we presented two offers – one revived, one new – featuring Numenera, the Monte Cook Games science-fantasy RPG of discovery and destiny in the Ninth World a billion years away. The revived September 2021 Numenera Discovery Bundle had the 2018 Discovery and Destiny rulebooks and essential supplements. Its new companion, Numenera Horizons, added recent supplements and adventures that push the boundaries of the Ninth World.
Numenera is about exploration in the far future. There have been eight worlds before ours. Eight times, the people of Earth built civilizations, reaching heights we cannot imagine. They built cities and machines that have since crumbled. The empty landscape is dotted with devices, creatures, and items of wondrous power and inexplicable purpose. Islands of crystal float in the sky. Inverted mountains rise above plains of broken glass. Mysterious abandoned structures stretch across distances so great they affect the weather. Amid the ruins prowl monstrous predators, ancient death machines, stranded extraterrestrial or transdimensional beings, and tribes of vicious abhumans. The Iron Wind scours the wilderness, altering everything it touches. The people of the Ninth World suffered through a dark age, an era of isolation and struggle in the shadow of civilizations millennia gone.
But a new age dawns. Brave explorers who discover and master the works of the past worlds – the numenera – can unlock new powers and abilities, defend the weak, bolster the sick and starving, build a community, and perhaps bring a greater destiny to a struggling world.
Launched in a half-million-dollar 2012 Kickstarter campaign that shattered every tabletop RPG record up to that time, Numenera introduced Monte Cook’s Cypher System, later used in The Strange and many other settings. The 2013 Numenera corebook spawned 60 supplements and accessories, board games, novels, the Torment: Tides of Numenera computer game, and many foreign translations.
Numenera Discovery isn’t a new edition as such – there are no important rules changes, and all later books still work fine with the original rules. Discovery does expand and overhaul the original corebook, incorporating the Character Options expansions, reworking foci and descriptors, and elaborating on the starting regions of the Steadfast and the Beyond.
Destiny, a new companion corebook, lets characters help shape the future of the Ninth World. Player characters don’t just explore the wonders of the past; they use them to help lift the Ninth World out of darkness. Uncover materials, power sources, and treasures for use in a new, robust crafting and building system. Help a community defend itself – create centers of learning or trade – manage an entire community and help it prosper – or simply create a cool base or vehicle for your group. Make your mark on a billion-year history.
NUMENERA DISCOVERY [from Sept 2021]
This revived September 2021 Numenera Discovery Bundle had the core Discovery and Destiny rulebooks and key supplements. There were nine titles in this revived offer’s Discovery Collection (retail value $93) as DRM-free .PDF ebooks, including the complete full-color, 418-page Numenera Discovery corebook, plus the Player’s Guide,Character Portfolio, and many freebies; the Priests of the Aeons character book; the Ninth World Guidebook; Technology Compendium: Sir Arthour’s Guide to the Numenera; Maps of the Ninth World 1 and Maps 2; and the full-color Character and Creature Standups.
Those who paid more than this offer’s threshold also got this offer’s entire Destiny Collection with eleven more titles worth an additional $146, including the 418-page Numenera Destiny corebook; the Building Tomorrow campaign expansion; The Ninth World Bestiary, Bestiary 2, and Bestiary 3; the location sourcebook (uhh? sorta?) Voices of the Datasphere; the massive two-part campaign Slaves of the Machine God; an anthology of instant adventures, Explorer’s Keys; and three Ninth World adventures: Forgetting Doomsday; The Thief, the Clave, and the Ultimatum; and Shadewalker.
NUMENERA HORIZONS [new]
This new Numenera Horizons companion offer explored the oceanic depths of the Sea of Secrets, the limitless worlds of the Beyond, the transdimensional multiverse, and the incomparable living world called the Liminal Shore.
There were eight supplements and adventures in this offer’s Starter Collection (retail value $67), including Into the Outside (explore the multiverse), Into the Deep (the oceans), Into the Night and its companion supplement The Nightcraft (outer space), plus four one-shot Ninth Word adventures: The Hideous Game, Skein of the Blackbone Bride, and Shards of the Looking Glass; and Beyond All Worlds.
This offer’s Bonus Collection added four more titles worth an additional $66, including Liminal Shore, Edge of the Sun (the Engine of the Gods space habitat), Vertices (eight dangerous locations), and the travel rules expansion Break the Horizon.
Four of the 12 supplements in this Numenera Horizons bundle, with a combined retail price of $36, had previously appeared in our July 2017 Numenera Ninth World Bundle: Into the Deep, Into the Night, The Nightcraft, and Beyond All Worlds.
Ten percent of each payment (after gateway fees) went to these two Numenera offers’ designated charity, Direct Relief. Direct Relief sends protective gear and critical care medications to health workers, with emergency deliveries to medical facilities across the US and to regional response agencies across the world.
