Project Description

Ninth World Assassins

Game Design: Andreas Walters
Layout: Andreas Walters
Illustration: Johnson Ting
Editing: Andrew Montgomery-Hurrell, Ross Bundy, Lael Buchanan
Contributions From: Ross Bundy, Andrew Montgomery-Hurrell, Reece Ambrose, Andrew Bowman, Nicholas Guttenberg, James Waddell

Size: 6×9 in | 102 pages
Published: 2014
Recognition: Gold Medal seller on DTRPG

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Background

The goal of the project was to further develop and expand poison options for the newly released Numenera Tabletop RPG. We decided to position the book to be about assassins and relate to how they would fit in the weird post-apocalyptic-future world of Numenera. This was my first published projects well as the first product that I had printed using a print-on-demand service. From this project, I learned a lot about marketing, layout, writing, as well as coordinating contributors and editors for the book.

Project Challenges

  • Optimizing the layout in InDesign for both print and digital distribution, given this was one of my first projects, I was still learning a lot about InDesign.
  • Working within the Nuemera ruleset to build something that works mechanically that stands out on its own.
  • Working with existing art was a bit tricky, being our first out-of-pocket project. We partnered with an artist and got permission to use their portfolio. This solved our art lack-of-art problem, however, we needed to put everything together in a way that was consistent and thematic.

Content Contained

  • (10 pages) Narrative and setting exploration about what it means to be an assassin in the world, and how an assassin does their work.
  • (19 pages) New Character Options, featuring (10) backgrounds and (5) foci that exemplify the assassin’s power fantasy including.
  • (6 pages) Equipment Expansion including (12), artifacts (10), and oddities (34), that would be used by assassins.
  • (18 pages) Mechanical exploration of poisons, including mundane (20), Cypher (14), and random effects (33), as well as systems to create and improve poisons.
  • (12 pages) Mechanical expansion of traps, in the corebook there was little exploration of traps as a tool to be used by players or by the GM, so this section standardized and provided options to build and use traps in-game.
  • (5 pages) Mechanical Expansion of XP options (which is a usable resource to invoke in-game effects), and we expanded those options (14) to include, Joining a Guild, Establishing a Home Base, getting an informant, or allow a Player Intrusion (which was later added to the core game).
  • (9 pages) Mechanical Exploration of Guilds with a few examples (7).
  • (7 pages) New options for Characters and Creatures featuring (5) assassin-like beasts and assassin-based characters,
  • (3 pages) New Adventure Seeds featuring (14) hooks to start a new adventure in Numenera.