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[Review] Tales from the Ninth World


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Tales from the Ninth World

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Vitals: Published By Monte Cook Games • 83 pages • $2.99 • B&W PDF (full color cover and preview pages only)

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Tales from the Ninth World is a mini-anthology of three stories set in the world of Numenera, the Ninth World. The product is about 75 pages of content (discounting covers, intros, ToC, etc., and the Numenera preview) and the stories run about 20, 28, and 25 pages each. For $3 this seems pretty reasonable but I backed the Numenera Kickstarter campaign, and as a result this anthology was "free" (depending on how you look at it I suppose). Either way the $2.99 price tag was never a thought in my mind. Instead I was eager to dive into the Ninth World and get a bit more cohesive view of the upcoming game I've been awaiting.
The Smell of Lightning tells the story of a boy living within one of the artifacts of a prior world - a castle that seems almost alive, and is capable of it's own growth. The central theme of the piece seems to be the lost knowledge of the prior worlds, and the lack of understanding on the part of the current world's inhabitants.
The Taste of Memory tells the tale of a thief returning home. We learn that the protagonist is an addict, and her "drug" of choice is called ink. Where the first story's main character was the castle itself (even if the tale was told through the eyes of the boy), this story is much more about the people, the thief and those who enter her life as she scores her next fix, and the repercussions that come. This story gives a good idea of the culture of part of the Ninth World, where the prior had been a more focused study of an piece of ancient technology.
The final story is called The Sound of a Beast. It is easily the most "traditional" piece of RPG fiction, telling the story of a group of adventurers hired to escort a prisoner of sorts. The scale of this part is the grandest of the three, covering four characters in some detail, and dealing with the Ninth World in terms of weather, beasts, and numenera (the term used for all items from prior Worlds). We get the most insight into what an adventuring party of player characters could look like from this story and what kinds of special abilities they could bring to the table.
The three page preview of the core book that is included gives us a very high level introduction (it being the first few pages of the book's first chapter). Most interesting to me was to see the layout, with sidebars on every page to allow for quick definitions or cross-references without gumming up the main text. Likewise it demonstrated that we can expect a clean layout with a variety of artwork styles.
Overall the quality of the stories was high, and each gave some nice insight into the Numenera world in different ways. As an appetizer for the upcoming RPG Core book (due in August) this has done its job to whet the appetite well. The preview gave us only a teasing glimpse into the forthcoming book, but what it showed is promising.
Rating: 85% - An excellent first taste of the Numenera setting.
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Sounds very interesting! I missed this kickstart, but the product seems like it has potential. Monte Cook is one of those polarizing names in the RPG industry...I am rather looking forward to seeing what he does now that he's leaving D&D behind.

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Thanks for the review!

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I should have the PDF of the core book in early August, and unless I find myself too busy to get into it I would imagine I will be reviewing it later that month or in September. It's going to be huge (400+ pages IIRC) so it will likely take some serious time to digest so I might even consider doing a chapter-by-chapter review as I go if people think that might be useful.

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