Reflections on Numenera Night, 4th time GMing

Me and a few friends.  I rand a module from the core book, rather than trying to craft something myself.  I also didn't use much wording to set the stage, instead mostly focusing on the "You did this, this happened, what do you want to do?" routine.  I also gave the team nudges when they didn't have a good idea in which way to go.  And I was a bit more deliberate in how I set the stage.  I really didn't give much wiggle room for them to make decisions which didn't fit the story. 

It was interesting that they did as questions that were outside the published adventure.  I had to make some things up on the spot (like that the south side of town is where the criminal element rules). 

I didn't enjoy letting them play in the world I was creating as much as I'd thought.  I wanted them to know more and do more, and they really only explored ~25% of the content because they didn't know about it.  What can you expect when you've prepared for every scenario and they just choose only one option. 

Short Adventure 1 - Find me a tentacle!

A Numenera dungeon.  Can be entered by anyone who finds a "Mirror Ball." Wants to bring back a a tentacle from a hoarding jungle dweller. 

As you move around the dungeon, a thin red line, originating from your body, floats in the air behind you, slowly fading.  (Oldest line takes 1 hour to fade to nothing)

Encounters

• Chirog Family (4), Climbs as 7. p. 235 Core Book.
• Gazer (1) Perception at 5, Speed Defense 2.  p56 Bestiary
• Chance Moth (1).  p30, Bestiary
• Llaric Scropion (5), Climb as 6, Perception as 7.  p76 Bestiary
• Quotien (7), p103 Bestiary
• (Boss) Golu (5) with baby golu spawn (1).  Swarm join can attack for 3 total.  Floating mushroom top, with tentacles dangling.  Tentacles generate different energies - heat, electricity, light,  radiation, inert.  Those in its presence take 1 each turn in combat, or 1 step on the damage track each hour it is carried, due to radiation poisoning.  Golu will float away, at slow speed, upwards. 

Weird Room Descriptions:

• (Entrance) Behind you, a reflective sphere that ripples as things enter/leave its surface.  The room's walls have the shape on the outside of stacked bubbles.  There is one square portal on the floor (to room __) and two that are several meters off the floor.
• A pool of milky-white liquid that, if drunk, will turn the drinker red for 1 hour.  
• V-shaped room, with the point at the bottom, where you can walk.  Toward the top are posts sticking horizontally out of the wall.  
• An octagonal hallway with treads on the floor and each wall.  
• A dead wooden "tree" that emits gentle chimes when a breeze floats past.  
• A vast room - the far walls can't be seen - with a ceiling that barely tops 2 meters.  What can only be described as a gash opens one wall to darkness, and jungle growth has long pushed its way inside.   
• "The passage ends in a ‘T’. The right looks well-travelled and the corridor is unremarkable. The left looks untouched, smells faintly of cinnamon, and there’s a mysterious orange glow that can barely be seen at the end. Which way to do you go?" The left passage leads to the red herring.
• Piles of blinking, clicking, whirring machinery, being constantly rearranged by tiny flying squid-like tentacle monsters.
• A haunting, fluting sound drifts from a distance.  Intellect defense roll.  (5)

Story Hook: I need a tentacle from a jungle monster (Golu) to power my newest device.  I've heard you can find one through a Mirror Ball.  They appear randomly, but are generally too small. Rumor has it that Miliar has cobbled together a machine to draw them together and fuse them into a workable gateway. 

1. Entrance/Guardian: Find and convince Miliar (4, 5 with Numenera) to activate a numenera that attracts spheres and coalesces at the point of an antenna. 
2. Puzzle/Roleplay Challenge: "Control" (3).  Incorporeal Voice that can control the environment.  Can be reasoned with. Wants to be free.  Provides access to the rest of the facility and long distance transport options. 
3. Red Herring: Quotien (7), who will answer one question in exchange for a children's tale. Can provide you with a device that clicks the closer it gets to the Golu lair. 
4. Climax/Big Battle or Conflict: Kill/Capture Golu parent.
5. Plot Twist: Damage track begins to harm the PCs as they begin to make their way out. 

Story Hook - Numenra Expert wants Cord

1. Numenera Expert (Bopuwan,Lvl 3, 4 for Numenera) needs you to get a specific piece of numenra - a long snakelike piece of synth that lights and transmits.... something... when the two ends are attached to pieces of wood.  The whole contraption will revolutionize how we build furniture by instigating the wood to blow up like a puffball mushroom, creating a single sphere of wood that can be shaped using special musical techniques.  Backfires -

1. Buy it from a shop.
1. Find the shop.
2. Haggle.
2. Happen across a Nano's estate sale.  
1. Buy it. 
2. Steal it.  
3. Sweet talk the owner into giving it to you.  
3. Trade for it from a wealthy collector (Quov, Level 3, 5 for manners/speaking)
1. Favor - 
2. Object Wanted - Something to improve my collection of ____.  
4. Steal it from wealthy collector.  
1. 2 Guards (lvl 2,3)
2. 2 Guards (lvl 4,5), with cypher that can freeze a target for 1 minute.

Description Practice - Miflark (Town)

A conglomeration of mud huts, each barely tall enough for a person to stand in.  Inside each you can glimpse a bowl in the center of a each main room.  At night, each building had glowing light spilling out of cracks in the door jams. 

Rumor: The people keep narjed (1), a grub-like reptile which, when fed, provide a bright glow and warmth.  They only feed on the discarded chitin of scutimorphs (3). 

There is a large brick building in the center of town.  It is a gathering place for folks who want to vent their anger, and is the main draw of this town.  If you walk in, and scream in rage, you get a feeling of great relief.  Some have whispered that you can get accustomed to it, and begin to crave the rush of having your anger assuaged....

Description Practice 1 - Spider Forest to Crawling Waste

Seeds: Dessert, Triangular Pyramid

As you walk onward, the land begins to change.  Up until now, the horizon has been obscured by fairly dense vertical webbing covered in leaves that gives this place its name - the Spider Forest.  You're glad to leave behind the winding trails, and their occasional metallic spider webs with small piles of sliced animal corpses. 

The terrain transforms into a wide, rolling plain, covered by brown dust.  It just rained, and the humidity is intense.  You can't feel any additional heat, but the ground is drying before your eyes, evaporating in steamy clouds of fog.  In the distance, several 2-legged beasts with feathers (2) are standing on one leg (which, on closer examination, is made of Synth and not biological material) unmoving. 

The path you're following winds over the dust-covered plain.  (Perception) The ground is moving slowly and the impression is that you're on an extremely slow cart.  If you stand still for more than a few minutes, the dust begins to climb your shoes, but it falls off immediately if you move. 

About 2k away, you can see a small black, shiny, reflective pyramid in the dessert. It isn't covered in dust, and draws the eye.  Occasionally you notice a small rock jump from the ground, leap about 5 feet diagonally up, and land on the dust. 

You've arrived at the Crawling Waste.

General Ideas

(From P347 in core book)

• Metal chest with ornate decoration, including feet that look like twined serpents
•  
• Man with one side of his face horribly burned long ago by a numnera weapon.
• Device that looks like a hollow hemisphere, with circuitry on the inside
• Pests that look like tiny two-legged frogs with bat-like wings
• Door that won't open unless the correct flavor of smoke is wafted past the sensor. 

Mine

• Pink glowing potion made from Laak blood.  
• Smooth surface where flying images of a beautiful beach continually x-cross.  
• A humanoid, but with 4 mechanical spider-like legs.
• Small blob of putty that shapes itself based on the image held in the mind of the caster.  
• Hunched beggar with wrong-facing crystal-but-movable arm.  
• Priest fighting with a piece of vine (Spirril), with onlookers chuckling.  
• Regularly-used portal leads to another floor.  Only sign is imagery outside windows.  
• A box with many black orbs (eyes?) that track nearby movement.  
• A bracelet with tiny golden lights that only illuminate in the presence of a foul odor.
• A bone-only seskii following a nano around like it is alive.  
• A crystal pillar that glows to light the room.  
• A half-buried spherical room that opens when you touch living flesh to the outside.  
• A matte turquoise cube roughly 20 meters to a side, half-buried in desert sand. While appearing solid, the walls can be walked through easily, though there is some inertia. The inside is similarly buried in sand. 
• Disc that emits high pitched sound and can projects a 2D picture on the wall of the inside of a many objects.  
• Cylinder made of golden metal that can generate fresh water from any liquid poured into it.  
• "Tree" growing around synthetic walls, with purple "leaves."
• Tiny upturned cones on stalks that catch and drink water.
• 
  

"About City" from the Injecting the Weird.

• (36) Vendor sells people mysterious exact duplicates of things they already own. 
• (48) All the buildings are cones, wider at the top than the bottom. 
• (30) Sickness in town makes the eyes of those stricken turn black and fall out. 
• (78) People are healthy, despite a deeply jaundiced appearance. 
• (9) Merchant sells pills that allow you to forget one hour of of your choosing.

Lahuric Outline

Think in terms of places the PCs might go, people or
creatures they might interact with, and events that
might occur.

PCs are entering "big" city, on the edge of the Beyond. 

• City Name is Lahuric (P197).  City is known for the Million Gods of the Challifani (a gory religion), streets paved in small pieces of volcanic glass and grey stone buildings, and the Dirt Sifters
• City Guard (3) [name] is trying to keep out the Dirt Sifters.
• Places
• Market
• Place - Inn:
• Synth Goblet - (+++) Serves Boiled Pork and Wei Cheese (today)
• Dargon's Home - (++) A house, with the back room converted into a sitting area.  Serves Vegetable Stew (today).
• Twinning Spirril - (+) Rough and rowdy place where fishermen drink their cares away.  
• Rumors: Trade routes across the beyond getting more dangerous; Dancing lights in the northern sky; Disappearance of a fisherman in the night; Thalrimalles is possessed!
• People
• Priest-King Thalrimalles (6), (10) for intimidation
• Ghallifani adherrants (2)
• Food and Sundries Seller (2)
• Shopper (2)
• City Guard (3)
• Smooth Innkeeper (3)
• Grizzled Innkeeper (5)
• Trader (4) leading caravan of  Aneen (3) drivers toward Picalah (p189) to get Dust.
• Con Artist (2)
• Pick Pocket (1), stealth at (3)
• Hooks
• Advertisement for wealth and status for hard work.  Leads to FREAK trial. 
• Helpful stranger offering a place to stay.  
• Rumor of disappeared dockworker.  Leads to a apothecary who is murdering people to feed his Laak (2) nest.  
• Rumor of Thalrimalles posession; hidden doorway; Discover the giant brain-creature in the hidden cavern beneath the city, that control the Challifani. 
• Rumor of trade route danger - join caravan heading toward Picalah