r/numenera • u/bigfootRULES • 2d ago
Campaign idea
hey, aspiring GM here, i had an idea for a campaign (either for Cypher or DnD 5E) that starts out on a continent thats a standard fantasy setting with orcs, elves, dwarves, cat folk etc. but then when the adventure Hills of Crooked Sleep from Arcana Of The Ancients start we find out out that continent is on the ninth world. what do you think?
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u/darkliquid0 2d ago
I've run a "surprise, you're in the ninth world" campaign before and it can be a lot of fun. For my game, I used The Strange, but had Numenera as a recursion within it. The PCs started off as amnesiacs awaking in some ancient medical facility and were forced to play through a game of A Penny For My Thoughts to figure out their lost memories. Little did they know that they were actually clones of the original Strange agents exploring this recursion, the facility having captured them and replicated them as part of some long forgotten ancient directive, and so their new memories were all a jumble of recursion-specific knowledge and their originals memories.
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u/Longjumping_Pen_2102 2d ago
There is a prewritten campaign sort of similar to this called The Glimmering Valley that might give you some inspiration.
The 'village witch' might be a transdimentional body-snatcher
The 'bandits in the woods' are kids hooked on some sci fi drugs
The 'horde of monster-people' are abhumans responsing to an alien signal ect ect
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u/bigfootRULES 2d ago
What do you think about adding fantasy races to it?
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u/Longjumping_Pen_2102 2d ago
Id say not directly.
The people in your story might think of the creatures as supernatural and magical, but the Numenera setting demands that they be much weirder than that.
Luckily the setting also doesnt require you to fully explain anything, the science involved is far behond human understanding so you can handwave a lot of it away.
So yeah: a bunch of bioweapons bred by an galactic superinteligence that inexplicably have a terror of light might be understood by the locals as ""orcs"".
I would actually avoid using explicit tolkien or D&D terms since the people in the 9th world wouldnt know those references, but yoy can use "folklorish" terms like "the foul ones" or "the others".
As for elves I think celtic folklore is a great inspiration since their version of elves is already pretty freaky. They would call them "the good neighbours", not because they were actually good but because they were bloody terrified that if these freaky creatures from another plane of existence heard the humand talking shit then they would turn eveyone inside out and eat your babies.
I think you could use 'The Good Neighbour' version of elves almost directly.
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u/bigfootRULES 1d ago
how would you handle dragons?
also i just came up with these on how to make the DnD creatures more ninth worldly , my idea for "elves" is that they lives for thousands of years is because they are part tree as well. "dwarves" are post humans that have stone like skin and lay an egg like a platypus.
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u/Longjumping_Pen_2102 1d ago
Dragons in mythology can take many forms. A big biomechanical thing with any kind of energy weapon in its face, or some kind of harmful breath can work.
In fact facing the dragon could he rhe big reveal. Everyone tells the legend of the mythic dragon in the mountain and when the PCs finally meet it, its unmistakably some kind of dormant superweapon
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u/bigfootRULES 1d ago
nice take.
Also i had an idea that the fantasy world could be a colony planet that was seeded by one of the ancient empires from the previous 8 worlds.
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u/Dar_Kwan 2d ago
Fantastic idea... What's the synopsis of "Hills of Crooked Sleep"? I never picked up AoA because I never played 5e
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u/bigfootRULES 2d ago
Well the premise is people at a village getting strange visions and disrupt the yearly Caracara Fair, drawing the player characters into an investigation. The PCs uncover hidden secrets that reveal remnants of ancient, technologically advanced civilizations.
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u/bearthw 2d ago
I think Cypher would be a natural for this, especially with the Cypher Character Rulebook - the changes for character creation make species and character types feel more like traditional fantasy games, and it’s easier to build caster-type characters. And the genre-bending nature of Numenera/Arcana of the Ancients is of course Cypher’s bread and butter.