TEXT: BEYOND THE MASK: 
  CONVERTING UNMASKED FOR  
  NUMENERA AND THE STRANGE
  TM
  TM
  
  2
  Unmasked
  TM
  TM
  BEYOND THE MASK: 
  CONVERTING UNMASKED FOR  
  NUMENERA AND THE STRANGE
  In Unmasked, the player characters are 
  teenagers that are somehow different. One 
  day in 1986, they can see the secret meaning 
  hidden in everyday things. They are driven to 
  fashion a mask and wear it. When the mask 
  is worn, the PC becomes a powerful being 
  with amazing abilities normally only seen 
  in the pages of comic books, and this being 
  has a personality, drive, and goals all its own. 
  Unmasked uses the same Cypher System 
  that underlies The Strange and Numenera. 
  Although all three settings have mechanical 
  differences, they share an identical, core 
  resolution mechanic: all game difficulties are 
  rated from 1 to 10; characters use Effort, skills, 
  and assets to reduce that difficulty; and a d20 
  is rolled to determine success or failure.
  As with other Cypher System games, 
  each character is composed of three parts: 
  a descriptor, a type, and a focus. Those 
  three parts can be assembled into a simple 
  sentence describing them. Unmasked is 
  unique in that it offers two base forms for 
  each player character—the teen-form and the 
  mask-form. 
  The teen-form is a normal, average 
  teenager from 1986, but when they wear 
  a special mask, they transform into their 
  mask-form, which is anything the player can 
  imagine. As such, almost all descriptors and 
  foci from other Cypher System games can 
  work for Unmasked mask-forms. Mask-forms 
  can appear to be aliens, wizards escaped 
  from the pages of a fantasy novel, or even 
  impossible creatures like two-dimensional, 
  intelligent versions of the color red. 
  This means that only the settings 
  themselves are different. The rules—
  including cyphers, creatures, and artifacts—
  all work in other settings. But the amazing, 
  open-ended possibilities of Numenera, The 
  Strange, and Unmasked allow them to be 
  freely mixed together without much difficulty.
  WHAT IS NUMENERA?
  Numenera is a science-fantasy game set a 
  billion years in the future, where technology 
  is so advanced that it seems like magic. 
  Eight great civilizations have come and gone, 
  leaving their bizarre relics scattered about 
  the planet. Now, somehow, humans have 
  returned. They’re making a new world for 
  themselves amid the ruins of what’s come 
  before; they’re creating the Ninth World. 
  Credits
  Writer/Designer 
  Dennis Detwiller
  Creative Director 
  Monte Cook
  Editor 
  Adam Heine
  Proofreader 
  Adam Heine
  Graphic Designer 
  Zoa Smalley
  Cover Artist 
  Kurt Komoda
  Artists 
  Jacob Atienza, Kurt Komoda, 
  Lie Setiawan,  Raph Lomotan
  Monte Cook Games  
  Editorial Team 
  Scott C. Bourgeois, 
  David Wilson Brown, 
  Eric Coates, Gareth Hodges, 
  Mila Irek, Jeremy Land, 
  Laura Wilkinson, 
  Marina Wold, George Ziets
  © 2017 Monte Cook Games, LLC
  Cypher System and its logo, 
  Numenera and its logo, and 
  The Strange and its logo are 
  trademarks of Monte Cook 
  Games, LLC in the U.S.A. and 
  other countries. All Monte 
  Cook Games characters 
  and character names, and 
  the distinctive likenesses 
  thereof, are trademarks of 
  Monte Cook Games, LLC.
  Throughout this supplement, you’ll 
  see page references to various items 
  accompanied by one of four symbols. 
  In each, you can find additional 
  details about the item, place, creature, 
  or concept. It isn’t necessary to look 
  up the referenced items; they are 
  merely provided for those who want 
  additional information on the topic.
  These are page references to:
   
  Cypher System Rulebook 
   
  Numenera corebook 
   
  The Strange corebook 
   
  Unmasked
  Teen-form, page 24
  Mask-form, page 32
  
  3
  BEYOND THE MASK: CONVERTING UNMASKED 
  FOR NUMENERA AND THE STRANGE
  WHAT IS THE STRANGE? 
  The Strange is a science-fiction game that 
  postulates the existence of otherworldly 
  realms where many Earth fictions—novels, 
  comics, movies, myths, and even RPGs— 
  become real. So you can travel to Sherlock 
  Holmes’ London, then to a place where rebels 
  try to save the galaxy from an evil empire, or 
  to a place where Lovecraftian horrors lurk at 
  your doorstep. As your characters adapt to 
  each new world each time, their equipment 
  and abilities change to keep up with their new 
  world, which keeps things interesting! 
  UNMASKED AND NUMENERA
  How does the world of Unmasked intersect 
  with Numenera? There are as many ways to 
  make this intersection interesting as there are 
  stars in the sky. Some ideas are outlined below.
  THE MASK-FORMS OF NUMENERA
  It’s easy to imagine a mask-form that claims 
  to be a clever Jack from the Ninth World, 
  hailing from the wilds of a billion years 
  in the future. That this mask-form might 
  have access to foci, powers, cyphers, and 
  technology from that time period works just 
  fine (so much so that it seems like a really fun 
  idea to play). Of course, these mask-forms 
  would be limited just like normal mask-forms, 
  and their powers, forms, and cyphers would 
  vanish when the teen’s mask is not worn. 
  But are they really from the future? A central 
  question in Unmasked is “what are the mask-
  forms, really?” Are they what they say they 
  are, or are they the power of the human mind 
  reshaping reality? Are they demons or spirits? 
  Powers from beyond? The answer to this 
  mystery, of course, remains up to the GM to 
  decide (and for the PCs to explore!).  
  Cyphers, page 310
  Jack, page 40
  
  4
  Unmasked
  TM
  TM
  VISITORS FROM THE PAST
  If you want to use Unmasked characters in a 
  Numenera campaign, consider the supposed 
  origin of the mask-form. If the mask-form 
  is a cyborg, alien, or time-traveler, those 
  are perfectly valid characters who could 
  appear in a Numenera campaign. Even if 
  the mask-form is firmly grounded in Earth 
  1986—like an American secret agent or a 
  comic-book superhero—such a character 
  could have been in suspended animation, 
  on a spaceship caught in a time-dilation 
  effect, catapulted to the Ninth World in some 
  mad-science experiment, or trapped in an 
  extradimensional prison where time passes 
  at an infinitely slower pace.
  The teen-form of these characters might 
  be a contemporary teen of the Ninth World, 
  have a psychic connection to a teen from 
  the distant past (one who still lives in 
  Earth 1986), or might not have a teen-form 
  anymore (i.e. they exist permanently in their 
  mask-form). After all, weirder characters live 
  in the Ninth World, and nobody bats an eye 
  about it.
  THEY COME FROM A BILLION YEARS 
  FROM NOW
  Another tack is to say that the mask-forms 
  actually are from the world of Numenera, 
  a billion years distant from the year 1986. 
  The mask-forms and their powers actually 
  manifest through their eighties teen-forms 
  due to some power, machine, or technology 
  of the distant future. After all, time- and 
  dimension-travel in Numenera are certainly 
  possible (heck, it’s almost mundane in the 
  Ninth World), and manifesting one being in 
  place of another is not unheard of either.
  What, then, is the mission of these refugees 
  from a billion years in the future? Have they 
  come to this year by accident? To reshape 
  some distant future event? To cause some 
  great social change to occur? This is the 
  biggest question. Mechanically, it’s simple: 
  powers, foci, cyphers, and more can jump 
  across to Unmasked with little or no difficulty 
  (of course, such things are restricted to when 
  the teen wears their mask).
  
  5
  BEYOND THE MASK: CONVERTING UNMASKED 
  FOR NUMENERA AND THE STRANGE
  UNMASKED AND 
  THE STRANGE
  Unmasked fits easily into The Strange as a 
  recursion, but the possibilities only begin 
  there. Let’s look at some ideas.  
  THE STRANGE HAUNT THE EARTH
  Perhaps the world of Unmasked is the real 
  Earth of The Strange: the center of reality 
  from which a million shadows of fictional 
  worlds issue, expand, and change. Perhaps 
  only now are residents of these fictional 
  recursions folding back upon Earth and 
  entering our world through the mask-forms. 
  Realizing the world you were born in and 
  called your home is nothing but a comic-
  book, movie, or story from the real Earth 
  can be somewhat disheartening. What will 
  the mask-forms that enjoy momentary 
  reprieves into the “real world” do with 
  that information? Will they seek to escape 
  permanently into Earth 1986? Or will they 
  do their best to bring it all down, ruining the 
  multiverse out of spite?
  JUST ANOTHER MOVIE
  Or…the world of 1986 in Unmasked might 
  be just another recursion in the universe of 
  The Strange—a fictional world generated by 
  human imagination—and the mask-forms 
  that manifest there might be anything: 
  natives of that recursion, invaders from 
  another recursion, or even the minds of 
  humans from the real Earth poking through 
  when the teens wear their masks. Anything 
  is possible. On the real Earth, the Estate 
  might immediately classify mask-forms as 
  dangerous entities who should be carefully 
  monitored and not allowed to travel to other 
  recursions. Agents who translate to Earth 
  1986 might acquire mask-forms, but the 
  unknown source of a mask-form’s power 
  might get the agent put on a watch list, in 
  case their loyalty to the real Earth becomes 
  compromised.
  EARTH 1986  
  RECURSION ATTRIBUTES
  Level: 6
  Laws: Mad Science, Magic, Psionics
  Playable Races: Human
  Foci: As presented in Unmasked, the 
  Cypher System Rulebook, and, if 
  available, Expanded Worlds
  Skills: As presented in Unmasked and 
  the Cypher System Rulebook
  Connection to Strange: If someone 
  travels far enough outside the 
  home town of the Unmasked 
  setting, they’ll eventually find 
  themselves reentering the same 
  area from the other side, because 
  as a recursion, the town is 
  “closed.” Escaping via a train or 
  plane might deliver the characters 
  back to the town, or they might 
  end up in an unstable, generic 
  “big city” that persists for one 
  game session before forcing them 
  back to their home town. Some 
  weak spots in the recursion’s 
  borders, particularly where NPC 
  mask-forms live, may allow 
  creatures within to escape into the 
  dark energy network.
  Connection to Earth: Sometimes 
  translation or inapposite gates 
  appear in the form of arriving 
  buses, trains, or airplanes, 
  allowing creatures to enter the 
  recursion but not leave it. Some 
  NPC mask-forms might be able to 
  summon or create these portal-
  vehicles or actual gates, drawing 
  on allies or other resources from 
  another recursion.
  Size: 500 square miles (1,290 square km)
  Spark: 5%
  Trait: Heroic. Characters gain an asset 
  on rolls that involve tasks directly 
  protecting the safety of another 
  while endangering their own life. 
  Foci, page 90
  Skills, page 20
  The Estate, page 148 
  Translation, page 125
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Cypher System/Campaign Settings/Unmasked/Unmasked - Beyond the Mask - Converting Unmasked for Numenera and The Strange.pdf