FYI: The somewhat recent Numenera splatbook "Enter the Jade Colossus" has a big section of tables for generating ruins (aka dungeons). Pretty good entry point for solo gaming.
Yeah, it's basically flavored tables, but about 35 pages worth. The basic procedure is to roll on a corridor table to see where it leads, as well as rolling on an exit table to see what branches off from the corridor. For each exit, you roll on a feature table, and then you roll on sub-tables depending on what you get from the feature table. There are also a bunch of "seed" ruins that are sketched out in the general, but need the ruin engine to fill them out.
Actual play example: Having made my way to a ruin, I find myself in a corridor slanting downward with two additional exits. I explored one, which revealed itself to be an abhuman colony in an interstitial cavity lined with dead tech. In it, I managed to grab a cypher before inadvertently animating one of the mummified chirogs, whose attack I was able to avert.
I'm just dipping in, so I can't speak to replayability. But I've really wanted to get a Numenera game going and this seems like a solid dungeon crawl launch-point if nothing else.
Gajus Miknaitis thanks, especially for the taste of actual play. I’ve really wanted to get into Numenera for the setting and this sounds like a decent entry point (I’ve played some using the official rules and... meh. Should be easy enough to reskin World of Dungeons).
Can you say more about it? I’ve been curious about it but the price tag is a bit steep if it basically just gives some flavored tables.
ReplyDeleteYeah, it's basically flavored tables, but about 35 pages worth. The basic procedure is to roll on a corridor table to see where it leads, as well as rolling on an exit table to see what branches off from the corridor. For each exit, you roll on a feature table, and then you roll on sub-tables depending on what you get from the feature table. There are also a bunch of "seed" ruins that are sketched out in the general, but need the ruin engine to fill them out.
ReplyDeleteActual play example: Having made my way to a ruin, I find myself in a corridor slanting downward with two additional exits. I explored one, which revealed itself to be an abhuman colony in an interstitial cavity lined with dead tech. In it, I managed to grab a cypher before inadvertently animating one of the mummified chirogs, whose attack I was able to avert.
I'm just dipping in, so I can't speak to replayability. But I've really wanted to get a Numenera game going and this seems like a solid dungeon crawl launch-point if nothing else.
Gajus Miknaitis please share more as you dip deeper, been interested myself.
ReplyDeleteGajus Miknaitis thanks, especially for the taste of actual play. I’ve really wanted to get into Numenera for the setting and this sounds like a decent entry point (I’ve played some using the official rules and... meh. Should be easy enough to reskin World of Dungeons).
ReplyDeleteJade Colossus also has 4 Foci, 3 of which are new: Delved Too Deeply, Has Three Hands (Bigby anyone?), Speaks in Exaltation, and Taps the Void.
ReplyDeleteHas a page on starting a new Numenera campaign, a chapter on campaign threads and character connections. Plus a few organisations.