5 out of 5 rating for Numenera Core Rulebook
I must admit I have always been a sucker for a good Sci-Fantasy book or game. I jumped on the Numenera band wagon with the pre-orders of the core book after the kick starter closed, I sort of missed the kick starter (D'oh) but since then I have scooped everything they put out. The system is simple and intuitive for fast paced game play, basically everything follows the same set of rules (attacks, climbing,hiding...). But There are few things in the rules that I find very interesting, gaining experience and the idea of throwing out challenge rating. The first interesting twist in the game is a break from tying experience to creatures, you gain experience for making discoveries and finding artifacts. While it sounds simple enough it changes the mindset, combat is not required ever. Plus combat can be pretty deadly so avoiding it is not a bad thing.The second is the idea that the world's challenge rating scales with your character, that does not happen in Numenera. So challenge rating to perform a task is not harder if you are high level, it is static. Seems so simple. The world and the creature around you do not level up with you, you are not forced to encounter creatures within your challenge rating This makes for a more consistent play no matter what level (or tier in Numenera terms). This does a few things, first the players can really see there growth, something that seemed difficult early on gets easier as they progress. Second it breaks the idea that every encounter should be conquerable through combat, some harder then others but still with in your means. Not true in Numenera....you see Dread Destroy..you better run, even high tiered characters will die horribly.Enough about the rules, in my eyes it is the setting that makes this book worth every penny. If Monte Cooke games would have just released the setting for another game system I would still be happy. You can see that there was a lot of time, effort and thought put into the setting. It is built as a framework, just enough detail to allow a GM to take hold and make it is own. You can see the years of experience Monte has a GM right here. It is an amazing world that is easy to play in and easy to customize. I read or heard some where, not sure if it was the blog or maybe a web cast, that Monte planned it out that way, he also stated that their intention is to never flush it out but to leave it the GM's.All in all it has been the best book I purchased in a long time. As you can tell I am sort of fan-boy of the setting and the system and I play it/demo it or run it as often as I can.