Hacking/Converting Numenera to ICRPG

#1

I know there are a few of you who have experience in Numenera. Anyone worked on any conversions? I am considering a hack but wanted to see what was out there before reinventing the wheel…

#2

Nobody, eh? snicker

Well… here we go then. First lemme say that I haven’t actually played Numenera. Its one of those systems that I grabbed just because I am so enamored with the setting. There are a lot of cool things mechanically going on as well, but I have read some folks decry certain aspects as well. So I thought, why not port it over?

Some parts are pretty easy to snap out and bolt onto ICRPG. But there are just a enough nuances that make a straight up translation difficult.

Stats for example - Numenera uses 3 Stat pools-- Might, Speed, & Intellect, which you spend to accomplish your efforts (among other things). These are not exactly binary translation between the typical stats (Str, Int, Dex, Con, etc) that ICRPG uses. In most cases, they do not even combine, say STR and CON = Might, as you would think. This poses a dilemma for a direct translation.

So my first thinking is this: We keep our ICRPG stats as is, and approximate a translation. But how do you translate a pool to a static bonus? I am thinking this: No more Hearts/HP.

GASP!

Ok, no more Hearts/HP as you understand them. HP becomes a resource pool. This represents not your health perse, but your potential as a PC. Yes, your potential of staying alive, but also your potential to accomplish your efforts. You could spend from this pool to shift the dice in your favor, for example.

EXAMPLE: Target is 13, Hard so you need a 16 to succeed. Maybe it requires a STR check and you have a +1. You can spend from your pool to get over that target number in order to turn a failure into a success. It is risky. Remember, this is your potential life as well. Is that check worth it?

EXAMPLE: You roll a 13. Not enough, even with your +1. You use 2 from your pool to get to 16 (13+1+2=16). You started the session with 1 heart/10 HP so now you have 8 remaining. We all know that ICRPG can be lethal. Magic effort is a d8. Are you worried about that Ogre Mage you just pissed off?

This is all just first pass thinking really. Looking through the Descriptors and Foci, I would expect ICRPG PCs to be a bit more resilient for this. Couple that with the easy way healing works in this game, and pool recovery shouldn’t be too difficult.

The Doors of Eden : Warp Shell-adjacent story
#3

Here is an example of a Descriptor and the reason I started going down this path (because of the Tags discussion here: ICRPG is a Classless system. Change my mind. (sips coffee))

ADAPTABLE

You flex and sway with changes both physical and mental. When something bad happens to you, you feel the pain and the loss, but soon, you’re back on your feet and in the action. When you have to learn a new skill, you don’t back away, but instead, you jump in and try your best. Being adaptable means that you’re often cooperative, because you know that, by working together, a group can overcome things that might be impossible for an individual. Some seek you out because of your adaptability, but others don’t see it as a positive trait and instead see you as someone who always changes their mind-- someone without a foundation. You laugh at those accusations. That’s just the sort of thing someone would say if they had never changed their mind about anything in their life—a way for that person to feel good about their lack of growth.

You gain the following benefits:

  • Versatile: +2 to any one Pool, which you can reassign after each ten-hour recovery roll.
  • Skill: You’re trained in pleasant social interactions.
  • Resilient: You’re trained in all actions that involve overcoming or ignoring the effects of deprivation, sorrow, or pain. This includes tasks related to ending an ongoing condition such as being dazed, blinded, stunned, and so on. (However, you are not trained in tasks to resist effects that confer those conditions in the first place.)

Initial Link to the Starting Adventure: From the following list of options, choose how you became involved in the first adventure.

  1. The other PCs were impressed by how quickly you adapted to a bad situation and invited you to join them.
  2. The other PCs were looking for someone else, but you convinced them that you were the perfect person to join them instead.
  3. The other PCs were in a bind, but you were able to convince a third party to let the PCs go about their business—and you with them.
  4. One of the other PCs used to remark on your adaptability when you were younger, and now they’ve asked you to come along on a new outing where your skills are likely to be useful.

Note the bonus to a Pool. As I would translate this to ICRPG, that +2 goes into the “HP” pool (lets just call it a resource pool for now)

  • Versatile: +2 to Resource Pool
  • Skill: You’re trained in pleasant social interactions**, (perhaps a +1 CHA, or a full advantage on difficulty i.e. Hard becomes normal)**
  • Resilient: You’re trained in all actions that involve overcoming or ignoring the effects of deprivation, sorrow, or pain. This includes tasks related to ending an ongoing condition such as being dazed, blinded, stunned, and so on. (However, you are not trained in tasks to resist effects that confer those conditions in the first place.) - Self explanatory, no straight up stat change, but it does impact how status effects work against you.

The initial link stuff is fluff, and I consider it optional for now.