Monte Cook's new RPG: Numenera [UPDATED]

Morrus said:

I have to admit, I'm not really getting the folks who don't like "a billion".

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Same here. As some of those same people point out, we've come this far in only a few tens of thousands. Who knows what will happen in an even greater, geometrically greater, amount of time? Maybe the human race will branch off and each branch develop or regress independently. Maybe some will evolve beyond the need for physical bodies, maybe some will choose to return to human form. I could see us engineering on a planetary scale in a century or two; a billion years may see galactic-scale engineering like in Carl Sagan's book, Contact. Maybe some branch of mankind's descendants preserved the home system for nostalgia's sake. It seems strange to me that people can see us go from animal power to nuclear fission in less then a century, but think it's too optimistic that humans or their descendants could be moving planets and rejuvenating stars in a billion years. Sure, the Sun may burn out or the Earth die or Saturn lose its rings in a billion years...if we let them. Maybe some Vorlon-like descendant of ours will make it his pet project to bring the old homestead back to life.

Upon further thinking , a billion or not, if you are setting it on "earth" in a billion years. You have thrown out a REAL place, and a REAL time frame. I understand there is fantasy in here, and he's going to use soft science/magic. The fact about it though is that I can't imagine any perceivable way that anything could even be remotely familiar to us. In a billion years, society would be so ridiculously advanced that there's no way we could even remotely understand how to play whatever "race" is there. Certainly there shouldn't be ANY kind of humans, we would have either evolved or been wiped out completely. Any sentient races would be completely alien to us in every way possible and therefore just about impossible to roleplay (and before anyone says it, elves and dwarves and such are probably not being roleplayed correctly AT ALL in fantasy games simply because we just can't understand them, so we define them by human standards) Just think how different we are from people who lived 2000 years ago! Now a BILLION years??

I think the thing that gets me is that he's throwing out huge time scales AND references to things that actually exist. This is a tricky subject because now you are getting into real life type of things. Just thinking about Warhammer 40k ,Dune, and Star Trek that reference earth it's completely changed or forgotten. I mean, if everything is going to be completely different anyway why set it on earth? Why not in a completely different universe ?

What exactly about earth is it that makes him want to center the game there? This is what I'm wary of. He's said continents will be completely different, which is true. There will be nothing of our day left at all. Completely wiped out, no ruins or anything.This is especially true since what... 7 or 8 civilizations have risen and fallen? Nothing that we will recognize as earth from our era will exist, so why earth? Why make that specification unless part of the earth's past will be included in some way. The only way this could happen is if we start time travelling. Which is fine if he's going soft science/magic...

Like I said, im interested, i'm just skeptical about the setup.

Evenglare said:

I can't imagine any perceivable way that anything could even be remotely familiar to us.

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Ok. So please tell me what about an Orc is more "familiar" to you than a fictional civilization set a billion years in the future?

Evenglare said:

In a billion years, society would be so ridiculously advanced that there's no way we could even remotely understand how to play whatever "race" is there.

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And making it up as you go along isn't fun anymore because......... Please keep in mind there's a reason its called Fiction.

Evenglare said:

Certainly there shouldn't be ANY kind of humans, we would have either evolved or been wiped out completely.

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Cook addresses this, the 8 civilizations got "rebooted" several times, so there is no continuous, unbroken billion year evolution of technology and science. Each civilization achieved what it could in it's allotted time, then they were either wiped out/ taken over/ or just simply left....their artifacts are the Numenera.

Evenglare said:

Any sentient races would be completely alien to us in every way possible and therefore just about impossible to roleplay (and before anyone says it, elves and dwarves and such are probably not being roleplayed correctly AT ALL in fantasy games simply because we just can't understand them, so we define them by human standards) Just think how different we are from people who lived 2000 years ago! Now a BILLION years??

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Again please explain to me how an elf, which is a completely fictional creation by the way, is in any way shape or form more "realistic" (lol) to role play than a human (assuming that some kind of Homo Sapiens is around in Numenara) a billion years from now?

At least with the human, you can make some scientific assumptions about evolution taking into account what kind of atmosphere is predicted to exist in that future....excluding any creative intervention Cook would have used to justify certain assumptions he makes on his own.

Evenglare said:

I mean, if everything is going to be completely different anyway why set it on earth? Why not in a completely different universe ?

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Why not earth? Why not a familiar Galaxy? The man has free "real estate" to play with...one that we are familiar with. Why not use it? Aside from pragmatism, why are you so dead set against basing a campaign on the remotely familiar?

I personally like the fact that he intrudes upon my world. I would somehow feel more connected to it. When discussing the prehistoric era, i don't feel completely disconnected from that reality, its still my earth, and I still feel connected to it. So a billion years ahead, I'll still find some symbolic anchor to place familiarity to, even if its just the burning orb we used to call the Sun.

Evenglare said:

What exactly about earth is it that makes him want to center the game there?

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You got me there. Ask him.

Evenglare said:

This is what I'm wary of. He's said continents will be completely different, which is true. There will be nothing of our day left at all. Completely wiped out, no ruins or anything.This is especially true since what... 7 or 8 civilizations have risen and fallen? Nothing that we will recognize as earth from our era will exist, so why earth?

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Again why not? I am still trying to understand your skepticism as opposed to a completely fictional (dare I say cookie-cutter) setting.

Evenglare said:

Upon further thinking , a billion or not, if you are setting it on "earth" in a billion years.

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The solution to over-thinking something is not further over-thinking.

You have thrown out a REAL place, and a REAL time frame.

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Think of the time frame as metaphoric. "A long, long time from now in, well, here".

I understand there is fantasy in here, and he's going to use soft science/magic. The fact about it though is that I can't imagine any perceivable way that anything could even be remotely familiar to us.

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This is obviously not an attempt at rigorous, speculative science fiction. You said it yourself, "there's fantasy here".

(and before anyone says it, elves and dwarves and such are probably not being roleplayed correctly AT ALL in fantasy games simply because we just can't understand them, so we define them by human standards)

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This statement is interesting. By what standards are elves and dwarves not being played 'correctly'? They are works of fiction, and as such, they're meant to say something about us, not some nonexistent reality where they're objectively real and not metaphor/allegory/flights of human fancy.

We understand them fine, after all, we created them.

This is a tricky subject because now you are getting into real life type of things. Just thinking about Warhammer 40k ,Dune, and Star Trek that reference earth it's completely changed or forgotten.

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Also interesting. The various forms of science fantasy (and in the case of WH40K and Dune, big time scales) in those settings don't bother you -- what's different about them?

I mean, if everything is going to be completely different anyway why set it on earth?

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Because the prospective audience is from Earth.

Why not in a completely different universe ?

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Because "Earth" resonates more than "some world in the Lesser Magellenic Cloud" or "that place where Mr. Mxyzptlk comes from".

What exactly about earth is it that makes him want to center the game there?

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We live here. This one's not rocket science.

Nothing that we will recognize as earth from our era will exist, so why earth?

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It still has sentimental value.

The only way this could happen is if we start time travelling. Which is fine if he's going soft science/magic...

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If?

Could it be you simply don't like the Dying Earth subgenre? Though, even if you don't, I have to recommend Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun. Every SF/F fan should read it, IMNSHO.

Mallus said:

This statement is interesting. By what standards are elves and dwarves not being played 'correctly'? They are works of fiction, and as such, they're meant to say something about us, not some nonexistent reality where they're objectively real and not metaphor/allegory/flights of human fancy.

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If elves say something about us, then there could be a theme about how a long lifespan affects society and other interesting elven questions.

D&D generally doesn't ask questions like this, and plays elves like humans with pointy ears. Asking why elves aren't higher level, more powerful, more knowledgeable, etc. because of the sheer amount of time they have results in us putting our fingers in our ears and saying 'la la la la la la lal'. Or if you determine that elves waste their time and accomplish nothing in a year that a human accomplishes in a week, then following that through and asking how an elf PC is differentiated from human PCs in play will ALSO elicit the familiar 'la la la la la la lal'.

Science fiction, at the least the really good science fiction, DOES ask pointed questions about how technology affects humans, what it means to be transhuman, etc.

One billion years is a long time. Anything can happen. I don't have a problem with it. But if numenera has elves, then asking hard interesting questions about what it means to be an elf is a perfectly compelling question in fantasy sci-fi. Maybe less so in sci-fi fantasy.

I was thinking about what exactly you could have in the past for a game happening 1 billion years in the future. For starters, the entire WH40k universe could have played out with mankind eventually losing. Maybe Tyranids ate us, maybe Chaos absorbed Earth into the warp, or whatever. That future plus recovering from its ending could easily take millions of years. In Numenera this civilization would explain all kinds of incredible weapons. Power armor and the general emphasis on melee combat would actually fit into a medieval setting pretty well.

And that's just one civilization. The second could be Dune, leaving behind mind-altering chemicals, extended life, and the ability to access your genetic memory. The third could be the Hyperion Cantos setting, which would have left behind strong AI and teleportation. For the fourth, why not Athas? Life bending, advanced beings, strange mutations, and other planes of existence. And that still leaves four more civilizations to provide whatever else Monte wants in his game.

The time between all those civilizations might just be boring. Maybe it's easy to get to our current level of technology but hard to get past it, so we spend millions of years at this level without reaching what the game considers a great civilization. Or maybe we're all really Moties and we just keep blowing ourselves up and starting over - the Great Sieve is still ahead in the real world.

So one billion years can work. It's enough time to put anything in you want, though it's also so much time that it takes work to fill it all in.

Maybe after a billiion years, the Earth isn't even the original Earth anymore. It was destroyed after the 4th era, inhabited by space dolphins in the 5th era, and completely rebuilt by hyperintelligent pan-dimensional beings (ie., mice) in the 6th era. And if you travel from Earth 2.0 to the sun, it turns out to be artificial operated by fire archons, and the moon is a remnant of Earth 1.0

Barf. More rules light systems with ridiculous settings.

OK, instead of complaining about the billiion years, let's come up with era-by-era ideas. I'll start:

* * *

1st era: Humans became transhuman and ascended to another dimension (ie became "gods")

2nd era: A new generation of humanity evolves from DNA seeds (part of a renewal process initiated just before the Ascension). Transhumans who hadn't ascended ('fallen angels') secretly co-exist with posthumans. Civilization eventually self-destructs with nuclear war.

3rd era: Nuclear winter and post-apocalyptic age (like Fallout)

4th era: Posthumans have evolved (devolved?) into something like subterranean Morlocks. Nature recovers and eventually flourishes. Posthumans reclaim and recolonize the earth.

5th era: Earth resembles the early 20th century. Lovecraftian Great Old Ones slither towards earth from space or awaken from the previous era (they were attracted to Earth by the nuclear war of the 2nd age). A century later, there is a short and brutal war, and the world's population is decimated.

6th era: Earth is a nightmare hell where Great Old Ones and Elder Gods vie for supremacy. The Ascended transhumans return to Earth for the 1st time after millions of years. They spawn a black hole that destroys the entire Earth and the Lovecraftian horrors along with it.

7th era: The transhumans completely rebuild Earth from scratch. Various politics ensue between different factions. Some want to rebuild an exact duplicate, some want to radically improve on the original, some want to rule the New Earth, some want to rebuild and split. The final product is not an exact duplicate, they take the liberty of making some changes. Life reboots with first dawn on New Earth while some transhumans continue to walk the earth and tinker with the final touches.

8th era: Insert your campaign-specific Second Age of New Earth

9th era: Numenera, Third Age of New Earth. Possible hostilities between "good" and "evil" transhumans/gods and secret war with vengeful Outer Gods and Great Old Ones who survived the 6th age.

* * *

What would be your Nine Eras?

For those who think there is completely unbelievable or that there is no possibility of humans or close-to-human creatures in 1 billion years, there are "living fossils" on Earth now. Some of which have changed very little 300-500 million years.