A night of gaming that’s as easy to set up as a board game. Just add gamers! What’s the hardest part of running an RPG? It has to be the preparation. Unlike a board game, you can’t just spontaneously decide to play—because someone has to have spent hours preparing an adventure first. But what if running a great game didn’t require any more time for the game master than it does for the players? What if you could just say, “Let’s play an RPG,” pull a book off the shelf, and be playing five minutes later? With Weird Discoveries, legendary RPG designer Monte Cook turns his eye to the venerable adventure, a format that hasn’t seen much innovation in four decades, to create something new that makes this all possible. Weird Discoveries makes prepping for an RPG no more difficult or time consuming than setting up a board game, while showcasing the wonder, mystery, and awe of the Ninth World. These aren’t adventure seeds or sketchy ideas—they’re complete adventures in an innovative format that requires minimal prep. Run them as one-shots, or drop them into your ongoing campaign when you don’t have time to prep your own adventures. You can even string them together as a campaign for months of effortless play! Weird Discoveries includes: • Ten weird and wondrous adventures, with maps, NPCs, and all the details you expect. • A whole new format for adventures that addresses the needs of GMs who don’t have time to read the whole thing before sitting down to play. • A Ninth World serial killer hunt, technological ruins to explore, machines rewriting organic life, ancient mysteries, and much, much more. • Great advice on running adventures with little or no prep. • Twenty beautiful, full-color Show ’Em illustrations, to reveal to players during the adventures. • Six pregenerated, illustrated characters, ready to play. • A rules cheat sheet to make things run even more smoothly. Explore the ruins beneath the giant, hovering Black Pyramid. Face off against the Spider Knight. Discover the secret of the Mother Machine. Weird Discoveries is a must-have for beginning and veteran Numenera GMs, and anyone who’d like to play RPGs as easily and spontaneously as board games!
Author
The game designer Monte Cook started working professionally in the game industry in 1988. In the employ of Iron Crown Enterprises, he worked with the Rolemaster and Champions games as an editor, developer, and designer. In 1994, Monte came to TSR, Inc., as a game designer and wrote for the Planescape and core D&D lines. When that company was purchased by Wizards of the Coast, he moved to the Seattle area and eventually became a senior game designer. At Wizards, he wrote the 3rd Edition Dungeon Master's Guide and served as codesigner of the new edition of the Dungeons & Dragons game. In 2001, he left Wizards to start his own design studio, Malhavoc Press, with his wife Sue. Although in his career he has worked on over 100 game titles, some of his other credits include Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, The Book of Eldritch Might series, the d20 Call of Cthulhu Roleplaying Game, The Book of Vile Darkness, Monte Cook’s Arcana Evolved, Ptolus, Monte Cook's World of Darkness, and Dungeonaday.com. He was a longtime author of the Dungeoncraft column in Dungeon Magazine. In recent years, Monte has been recognized many times by game fans in the ENnies Awards, the Pen & Paper fan awards, the Nigel D. Findley Memorial Award, the Origins Awards, and more. The author A graduate of the 1999 Clarion West writer's workshop, Monte has published two novels, The Glass Prison and Of Aged Angels. Also, he has published the short stories "Born in Secrets" (in the magazine Amazing Stories), "The Rose Window" (in the anthology Realms of Mystery), and "A Narrowed Gaze" (in the anthology Realms of the Arcane). His stories have appeared in the Malhavoc Press anthologies Children of the Rune and The Dragons' Return, and his comic book writing can be found in the Ptolus: City by the Spire series from DBPro/Marvel. His fantasy fiction series, "Saga of the Blade," appeared in Game Trade Magazine from 2005–2006. The geek In his spare time, Monte runs games, plays with his dog, watches DVDs, builds vast dioramas out of LEGO building bricks, paints miniatures, and reads a lot of comics.
