FATE Numenera/Introduction

It's a billion years in the future, and humanity is once again spreading across the Earth.

In the intervening years, eight great civilizations (some human; some not) have risen, accomplished amazing things, and spread across time and space before each eventually died, scattered, disappeared, or transcended.

You live in the remnants of their world, as you struggle to make it your own. This is the Ninth World: the world of Numenera.

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In the world of Numenera, what some call 'magic' is actually poorly-understood ancient technology, unearthed and cobbled together by people who are trying to survive and thrive. Unseen nanites blanket everything, and those who have found ways to harness them are known as Nanos--the techno-mages of the Ninth World.

Beside them stand those who have learned to fight--to defend their peoples; to attack their enemies. Some take up arms left them by those who have gone before, and others prefer less-flashy but more reliable basic human technologies like swords and armor. Collectively, they are known as Glaives.

In between are those who forge their own way in the world, deciding for themselves how to best deal with the threats that assail them and their communities, and accomplish the tasks that stand between them and their dreams. They are jack-of-all-trades, or, more generally, Jacks.

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When we start our game, we'll create our immediate setting and our characters in the first session. If you already have an idea for a character, great! If not, you should get an idea of the possibilities during our setting creation. Don't worry--you can always modify your character (or even develop a new one) if your first attempt doesn't end up working the way you had hoped. The basic 'classes' are listed above: Nano (specialist techno-mage), Glaive (specialist fighter), and Jack (generalist). Your choice will influence the suite of skills you end up with, as well as the class-related special abilities you can choose.

(I should also mention: our setting is Numenera, which comes with a world and its own set of rules. However, we'll be using the core mechanics of the FATE system, since I have a pretty good handle on how to make that work, and the veterans in our group do as well. So if you're reading the Numenera book, mostly pay attention to the style and setting, and don't worry about the rules so much--we'll be importing a lot of the concepts and abilities, but the mechanics will be translated to FATE's system of Skills and Stunts.)

We'll go over this in our first session, but the basic outline is:

• Decide on the scope of the adventure
• Pick a couple broad 'issues' that you and the world is dealing with
• Create a few 'faces and places'--people you'll be interacting with, and places you'll travel to.

From there, we move to character creation.