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give us a chance to explore,

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discover, imagine, create, and face
challenges. Our games shine brightest when
they’re vivid, unique, and a little bit mind-bending.
So how do you make another room full of orcs,
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another space station full of aliens, or another dark cult really
special? How do you make every game session truly new and
memorable—a moment of real discovery and imagination?
You make it PCs
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BACK IT NOW ON BACKERKIT!

 Step into a fascinating and amazingly detailed region
of the Ninth World, filled with weird sites, mysteries,
creatures, NPCs, and plots. Plunder this book for scores
of great ideas you can pull into any game, or use it as a
launch point for a Numenera campaign. It’s part of The
Weird crowdfunding campaign!

BACK IT NOW ON BACKERKIT!

 WHY WEIRD ??
WHYWEIRD
If you’ve already got dragons and magic spells, alien planets and werewolves, and superheroes in your game, why
would you need it to be any weirder?
Because when we say “weird,” what we really mean is, “new and interesting.” No one, I think, is going to balk
at making the stories and characters around the game table more interesting. And the thing is, dragons and alien
planets and whatnot . . . we’ve seen them before. That isn’t to say your group can’t make them compelling and
create a gripping story using them as elements, but to do that? You’re probably going to add something new and
interesting.
You’re going to make them, in some respect, weird.
Weird doesn’t have to be dark, or unsettling, or difficult to understand. But it can be those things. Weird doesn’t
have to be gross or off-putting. But it can be—if you want it to be.
This preview gives a very brief glimpse into a book we’re creating called The Weird. In this sneak peek, you’ll
find snippets from long lists brimming with weirdness that you’ll find in the complete book. The Weird contains
literally thousands and thousands of specific suggestions you can pull straight from the book and inject into your
adventures, encounters, and campaigns. We’ve just provided a smattering here—a few entries from a handful
of various lists—to give you an idea of the content you’ll find in the book. You’ll find ideas for NPCs, adventures,
objects, places, creatures, and so much more. The ideas are categorized by genre where necessary (because this
book is for any roleplaying game you want to play), and perhaps more importantly by the “type” of weirdness. You
see, we’ve broken weird into four categories: interesting, surprising, gonzo, and whimsical. While we’re going to
discuss the particulars of those categories in a bit, they can easily be summed up with an appropriate character
reaction to the type of weird, and a nice example involving a nice, unassuming cat.

INTERESTING gonzo
Reaction: “You don’t see that every day.” Reaction: “WTF?”
Cat Example: The cat is bright red. Cat Example: The cat doesn’t cough up hairballs, but
rather tiny robot versions of itself.
SURPRISING
Reaction: “Wait. That’s impossible.” WHIMSICAL
Cat Example: The cat can speak all human languages. Reaction: “Is this a dream?”
Cat Example: The cat’s songs create a bridge to the moon.

Weird can fit into any game, at any table. It brings mystery, interest, and curiosity to
For preview purposes only; design subje

places where perhaps things have started to feel stale or repetitive. Think of it this way:
when you first started playing RPGs, it was exciting, new, and utterly captivating, right?
The Weird is just a way to continue to introduce those feelings into your gaming
experience, even after you’ve been playing for a very long time.

Keeping it weird,
ct to
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Monte Cook
ng
e.

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 PEERING I N TO T H
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EIR
DIFFERENT
DIFFERENT KINDS
KINDS OF
OF WEIRD
WEIRD

D
The different kinds of weird aren’t just a hierarchy or a Interesting things make you want to investigate further.
matter of degree. They have different moods, different They pose a question. “Why is that book’s cover made out
tones, and different uses in a game. As mentioned of wood? How did today’s newspaper end up under a stack
earlier, there are four kinds of weird you can add to your of newspapers in my uncle’s basement?” They’re mysteries,
games: interesting, surprising, gonzo, and whimsical. but it seems like they might have conventional solutions.
Interesting things don’t make you run out of the room
INTERESTING screaming or suggest you question your own sanity.
Interesting is just what it says there on the label. It They’re probably quite possible based on what we
piques your interest. But of course, perhaps more understand of physics (although again—there’s context
than any of the other types, it has some interesting raising its head). But they’re not the norm.
limitations and caveats, usually based on context. This means that a person appearing to make a tiny
Interesting is not the opposite of boring. It’s ball hover in twenty-first century Chicago is interesting,
the opposite of commonplace. The difference but in a fantasy setting full of magic? Probably not
is important—in a high fantasy game, a pegasus all that interesting. That’s context. Sci-fi interesting is
swooping out of the sky certainly isn’t boring. But is it different from fantasy interesting and neither are likely
interesting? Probably not. People there have probably superhero interesting.
all seen a winged horse.

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 SURPRISING gonzo
Surprising might sound like interesting in name, but As the name implies, all the fetters are gone when it
when it comes to the weird, the surprising label could comes to gonzo. The only rules governing gonzo is
just as easily be “shocking.” If interesting raises questions, that there really shouldn’t be any rules. Gonzo has no
surprising does so, but without easy answers. Such weird logical explanation. Maybe not even a satisfying one.
things can’t be explained by a conventional understanding You just go with it.
of the world. A bear that can turn itself invisible, a man Gonzo mixes genres. Within this category is an
with a functional pair of eyes in his stomach, or a hat android in a fantasy world, magical spaceships
that can make you fly when you speak nicely to it are all fighting pirates on the high seas, and giant mutated
surprising. insects secretly funding the mafia.
Surprising might be the most common type of weird, if
such a thing can be said. When you picked up this book for WHIMSICAL
the first time, it’s probably the sort of things that you thought Whimsical is dreamlike. It’s something you might
about due to the title. find in a fairy tale, or experience in a hallucination.
Surprising isn’t surreal or dreamlike. It’s the sort of thing that To some, the weirdness might seem more childlike,
For preview purposes only; design subje

makes you think, “Oh, reality doesn’t work as I believed,” but but be wary—whimsy can be dangerous at times, as
it still seems like there is some underlying order to it all. High almost any fairy tale demonstrates. That witch may
levels of radiation after the nuclear war has apparently given a live in a house of sweets, but she’s still a cannibal.
group of children the ability to operate as a gestalt hive-mind, Whimsy has its own sort of logic, sometimes
but maybe that’s just a property of radiation, mutation, and depending on feeling and emotion. Whimsy is simpler
science that we didn’t previously understand. and more straightforward—like the reasons behind
Surprising things very likely obey the rules of the genre in events in dreams, it’s probably a waste of time to
question. Aliens in a science fiction game might have strange question it too closely. Whimsy is a drink that makes
abilities or bizarre technology, but they probably don’t have you laugh that is made from banana peels and cream
actual, working magic. pies. It can include puns or wordplay, such as a
ct to

magical horse can make your voice hoarse.

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 PEERING I N TO T H
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SOME
SOME SAMPLE
SAMPLEWEIRDNESS
WEIRDNESS

D
The following are just some random selections from the lists and suggestions that
make up a lot of The Weird. The full lists will all be set up so you can choose or roll
randomly—lists that will typically have more than a hundred entries each.

SURPRISING
Some INTERESTING and
ce Alterations
Creature Appearan Some SURPRISING Scien
red in barbs
1. Their flesh is cove ce
, large eye Fiction Characters
2. They have a single d
is the size of a swor 1. A woman who can psychi
3. One of their claws cally project
lks desired images onto any
4. Their eyes are on sta viewscreen
w wi th greenish light 2. A shapeshifting alien whose
5. Their teeth glo appearance is
l rather than a face dictated by the thoughts
6. They have a symbo of those nearby
to be smoldering 3. An independent android mis
7. Their flesh seems erable since
not their own they developed emotions
8. They cast a shadow
4. A humanoid alien with ma
ssive antlers, the
tips of which burn blue
5. A pilot on their own starsh
ip, but its
currently infested with alie
n bugs
6. An alien that appears hum
Some gonzo Fantasy a shell filled with a colony
an but is actually
Adventure Seeds of fungus

1. Biomechanical insects steal a child,

proclaiming her to be the queen of their
new carbon nanotube nest.
2. An ancient subway tunnel provides a
secret way into the enemy kingdom.
3. Insects plague the area, eating specific
words out of books and documents.
4. A portal to a parallel world offers the ability
to go and explore what might have been.
5. The treasure needed lies in the ghostly
hoard of a dragon’s ghost. But even if you nge.
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can get to it, how can you pick it up?
6. The Vizier’s assassin fled into the land
beyond the mirrors.
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 G Objects
Some INTERESTIN
round
in the Backg n helmet
…..And Some SU
RPRISING Object
an iro
quin wearing s
1. A manne om soap
in the Backgrou
nd
nny carved fr 1. A snail shell
2. A small bu two feet across
scope 2. A mounted
3. A stetho nted in a fram
e. animal head that
A co lle ct io n of coins mou quite familiar
doesn’t seem
4. izable
are not recogn 3. The corpse
Some of them rthd ay present of a recently slain
to rn w ra pp ings of a bi 4. A nonfunctio bear
5. The ped around tw
o ning refrigerator
handcuffs clas door removed, us w ith the
6. A pair of ed as a bookcase
nds
fake rubber ha 5. A closed woo
den box emittin
buttons g some
d w various
ith strange, random
7. A jar fille 3 feet to a side noises
ac k of ce m ent squares, 6. Two handpr
8. A st tiger ints pressed into
d taxidermized 7. A pyramid m the wall
9. A full-size meone the PC
s ade of toilet pape
. A w an te d poster for so 8. An oversized
pencil two feet lo
r rolls
10 st
tered in the pa 9. A clock runn ng
have encoun ing backward
10. A stuffed rave
n—wait. Did it ju
st move?

Some WHIMSICAL Fantasy Characters

1. A cursed man that spits roses
2. A cat that spins webs like a spider
3. A man whose tears spread misery like
a disease
4. A roguish rake who wields a blade that
harms only royalty
5. A lion that can summon and control the
ghosts of creatures it has eaten
For preview purposes only; design subje
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 PEERING I N TO T H
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Some INTERESTING Treasures
1. A solid gold statuette of a frog with a clock in

D
its mouth (clock doesn’t work)
2. A crude painting of a cat, painted over a
valuable masterpiece
3.
Some SURPRISING
A puzzle game with jewels as some of the
Fantasy Locations
pieces
4. A silver goblet set, each bearing the image of a 1. A castle in the heart of an eternal storm
different mythological beast 2. An underwater market that sells wishes,
both major and minor
5. A golden dragon head clearly removed from a
much larger statue 3. A sea made of swirling letters,
originating from the explosion of a
6. A huge, rare book bound in solid silver covers
magical book
with a golden lock
7. A wind-up priest figurine with emeralds for 4. A house where each room is a different
facet of a lustrous jewel
eyes
8. A simple jacket, with a valuable treasure map 5. A wizard’s home inside a living
megalodon shark
sewn into the lining
9. A binder of stolen documents of great 6. A safehouse hidden within the
imagination of an eagle
importance to the local government
10. The rules to a long-lost card game

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 Some gonzo and WHIMSICAL Materials
o Companio
ns
Some gonz e for a head, 1. Solidified time
with a beehiv
an
1. A tiny m 2. Metal that reacts explosively to the touch
com pl ete with bees arby plant of wood
an w ho ca n cause any ne
2. A wom 3. Wood haunted by the ghost of the
vely music
to produce lo sionally useful lumberjack that felled it as a tree
do g th at co ughs up occa
3. A 4. Liquified hate
things tches stored 5. Stone that burns flesh it touches like acid
au to m at on /robot that fe
4. A tiny command
ecific pack on
gear from a sp ds are written
in
A po et w ho se spoken wor
5.
their head
the air above t religion
sn ai l al w ay s talking abou
6. A gian t thic, and full
th at is in te lligent, telepa
7. A tattoo Some SUR
ous lore PRISING M
of miscellane ute any time agical
ca t th at va ni shes for 1 min Requireme
8. A en” 1. A loaf nt s
the word “sev of bread
someone says never know
baked by so
meone wh
n envy o has
2. Idol of
a powerful
god, groun
powder d to fine
3. A tooth
, freshly self
-extracted
performer by the
4. Seven
human sku
lls, from th
no more th ose dead fo
an a week r
5. A goat
’s eye, ferm
ented in w
and a day ine for a ye
ar
Some gonzo Alien Artifa 6. The la
st gasp of a
cts 7. Five te ghost
1. A gun that fires burrowing ars from a
worms rather star
than bullets
2. An energy field projec
tor that transforms
incoming projectiles into
biomechanical
creatures under the device
user’s control
3. An orb that opens ver
y brief time portals
through which a hungry and
angry dinosaur
normally emerges
4. An antenna that receiv
es transmissions from
an entity that seems to kno
w everything,
but shares that informatio
n randomly
For preview purposes only; design subje

5. A series of cubes that,

when arranged
correctly, create an invisib
le craft that can
travel between worlds far
faster than any
known ship
6. A small token that sho
ws what the probable
outcomes of a given choice
will be (but it’s
not 100% accurate)
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 PEERING I N TO T H
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D
..…and Some gonzo PC
Some INTERESTING PC Backgr Backgrounds
ounds alien s actually an
1. You were found unscathed
as a child in a 1. Your imaginary friend wa
on e day return for you.
burned down building. entity that promised to
mad genius who
2. Your parents were act
ually undercover 2. You were built by a
life in a lab, and
agents for the government
(and you just thought she could create
found out). she was right. d
us wound on your han
3. You caused the accide
ntal death of your 3. You have a mysterio
etimes a creature
town’s mayor and were exi
led alone in the that never heals, but som
you.
wilderness. emerges from it to help
ent s wa s a sorcerer that
4. You had a successful
military career, but 4. One of your par
cast unknown spells
are now wracked with trau repeatedly and routinely
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things you witnessed. on you throughout you ly; design subject to cha
a demon at night, but
5. Your best friend as a
teenager is now the 5. You’re possessed by
during the day.
ruler of a small kingdom,
but you didn’t possessed by an angel
ly one twin can exist in
part on good terms. 6. You’re twins, but on
the universe at a time.
raised in a secret city on
7. You were born and
the moon.
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Artists
prev

Biagio D’Alessandro, Giuseppe De iure, Gaia Degl’Innocenti,

Silas Goewey, Aldo Katayanagi, Russell Marks, Mirco Paganessi,
For

Roberto Pitturru, Martin de Diego Sádaba, Dan Watson

TM and ©2022 Monte Cook Games, LLC

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