Monte Cook has been a roleplaying game designer for over 20 years and is best known for working on the Planescape setting for Dungeons and Dragons, being one of the designers of Dungeons and Dragons third edition, and a variety of games such as Arcana Unearthed and Ptolus that he self-published through his company Malhovac.
After a hiatus for several years, he has returned to game design. Numenera is an original game and unique setting with the tendency toward the strange. The game will be released as a PDF on August 1, with the printed book to follow on August 14. Here we discuss the creation of Numenera, the feel of the game, and the power of ideas.
MTV Geek: How would you describe Numenera?
Monte Cook: Numenera is a very far future science fantasy game. It has a really simple, story-based, narrative-heavy rule set. It is designed to allow people to play games kind of the way I like to run games, which is very story focused, very character focused. There’s still plenty of room for fun combat and crazy encounters, because I like that too, but it really empowers people to create a game around their own table that allows them to tell really cool stories and focus on the really imaginative stuff. It is what draws me to RPGs in the first place.