Noumenon: First Look

Originally published at mysticages.com. You can comment here or there.

I received my comp copy in the mail last week, and it’s been fun looking over it. I think I will try a more expansive review on RPG.Net once I have a little time, but for now, here are my first thoughts:

• The game mechanic uses a domino system. This is very sweet. Not only do I like it, I think I could it use for other games. This is really sweet. Basically, there is a difficulty number, and to beat that difficulty number, you have to get that many matches from the dominoes that you and your fellow players draw. It’s just like playing dominoes.
• The world of Noumenon is frickin’ weird. A gigantic building with 78 rooms, although those rooms are sort of a sustained reality in themselves. Some are fairly open to tinkering, while others are built solidly to convey a theme and maddening message. Exits are not always clearly defined.
• Rooms were written by other authors, without collaboration. So, some rooms read like a standard dungeon crawl description, while others are written in first person with references to strange beings. I wrote three - Sophia, Spider Mountain, and Scorpio.
• Players play the weird bug creatures on the front of the book. There are questions as to the nature of this whole game - what is this world? Who are these creatures? What is their purpose? I like the idea that each bug-man is a soul with a chitinous shell. Just weird, but cool.
• The game has some horror mixed in, as well as bizarre fantasy. There is definitely Lovecraft influence poured in, though I have to admit - I’m not quite sure what to do with it on first glance. I’m still reading, so I’ll see what develops.
• Overall, I hope you pick it up, just because it’s a very unusual entry into the roleplaying game hobby. It certainly can be used as a resource in horror or occult rpgs (plenty of weird source material here to play with), but it can be played on its own. The biggest mark against it is the wide varying tone of the various rooms… some frankly read very amateur, like bad game fiction that makes my soul cringe. Some also tend toward the dungeon crawl tone (at least one of my rooms reads like it), which may or may not put you off. With that said, the domino mechanic is nifty (and simple), and it’s very off the beaten path for mainstream sort of games. I recommend that you check it out.

P.S. I’ll be out of town on July 23rd…. well, out of the country. My fiancee and I are going to visit her parents in Incheon, South Korea. I’m hoping it doesn’t turn into a Korean version of Meet the Parents. Other than that, it should be a very cool trip.