Translating The Strange to Numenera (Cypher System)

Types
All vector moves in The Strange Player's Guide and In Translation; Character Options become glaive fighting moves.

All paradox revisions in The Strange Player's Guide and In Translation; Character Options become nano esoteries with the following modifications;

• Exception The non-native effect can be added in place the benefits of a level of Effort or as a major effect.
• Gate Key Portions of this revision referring to recursion gates, translation gates, and inapposite gates are not applicable. However, if the character finds a teleporter, transporter, stargate, trans-dimensional entry point, or other object or location of similar description it is subject to this esotery
• Eye for the Strange  You can sense whether the numenera is active in situations where its presence is not obvious.  You see a “shimmer” around creatures and objects upon which the touch of the ancients is actively at work. Enabler.
• Recursion Viewing This ability allows you to target a location you have previously been to and can clearly remember. Further, the base cost is increased to 8 Intellect points. 
• Gate Exit As an esotery, this ability creates a teleportation gate which, when both sides are complete, allows instantaneous passage between two locations. An unconnected gate lasts for about a week, and an established gate lasts about a month. Imposing permanence requires maintenance every day for a year. 
• Draw from Fiction: Rename to Summon from Beyond. You summon a type of creature you have encountered from a distant location or cause it to be replicated by the Numenera.
• Exile Banishes ultraterrestrials.
• Force Focus Does not translate into Numenera.
• Drag Through Hell Rather than a recursion they are simply teleported to a hellish world or extra/transdimensional space.
• Index Recursion Does not translate into Numenera.
• Master Translation Does not translate into Numenera.
• Down the Rabbit Hole Works as described, creating a physical portal through which the character can enter a pocket dimension. Numenera does not use normal translation, so the pocket dimension traps any occupants still inside after 12 hours. If the Nano is inside they can use this ability again to create a portal back to location from which the pocket dimension was originally created. Each time this ability is used it normally accesses a new "fresh" pocket dimension. If a Nano wishes to be able to reconnect with a given pocket dimension from the outside, they must spend a level of effort when using this power initially to "lock in" that pocket dimension. When they later wish to reconnect with a pocket dimension prepared in this manner they must again spend a level of Effort to open the gate in the same location it was previously opened. The pocket dimension can be accessed from the same location without being locked in, but instead requires three levels of Effort.
• Sift the Worlds  You can reach out into the Numenera to summon or create an unliving, untended, and mundane object to wherever you are. You describe the general parameters of the object you are looking for, and the GM determines what appears if you are successful. The object you produce from the aether is (usually) level 5, and could be a weapon, a small vehicle, a piece of art, a chest of gold, and so on (though nothing larger than could fit in a 10-foot [3 m] cube). Successfully summoning the object requires a difficulty 5 roll. This action requires four hours to perform. If other characters assist you one of them, rather than providing a bonus to your roll, may reduce the required time to only two hours to perform this action.
• Translation Ward You can ward an area against teleportation. Individuals attempting to enter the area through means such as the esoteries Teleportation or Transverse the Worlds must overcome a difficulty 5 Intellect based challenge. Extra effort increases the difficulty normally. The separate redirection use functions normally.
• Recursion Walk Does not translate into Numenera.

All spinner twists in The Strange Player's Guide and In Translation; Character Options become jack tricks of the trade with the following modifications;

• Word of Command All targets require an Intellect attack.

Descriptors
All of the Descriptors in The Strange Player's Guide and In Translation; Character Options that do not already appear in the Numenera books become Descriptors for Numenera with the following modifications:

• Strange While the name does not match, this is effectively the equivalent of the Weird descriptor.
• Materialistic The Midas Presence benefit activates any time the character discovers Shins.

Foci
While When Worlds Collide provides suggestions for a number of Foci from the Weird Science and Standard Physics worlds in the core book, there is little about the Foci from Magic backgrounds that cannot be translated into Numenera.  For example:
Embraces Qephilim Ancestry The Qephilim are Visitants, their lineages the vestige of the strict caste system of their once mighty race. While the inhabitants of the Ninth World have fallen far from their ancient glory as part of the galaxy-spanning civilization that brought them to Earth, ancient Numenera created by their forbearers still effects them. Perhaps these benefits are generated by a transdimensional ship or they were biomechanically integrated into the race itself generations ago.
Practices Soul Sorcerery  and Shepherds the Dead are both similar to the Consorts with the Dead Numenera foci in concept and can be adapted to work in a similar manner. If nothing else, the Datasphere holds information of all sorts, including raging AIs from ancient ages and occasionally the uploaded or mirrored consciousnesses of those exposed to it.

The following Focus benefits should be revised to better mesh with Numenera:

Processes Information Connection to the Datasphere is a wireless proposition normally. Replace the tier 2 benefit Gliding Through the All Song with the following: Datasphere Tether: You have discovered methods of reliably finding and directly connecting to physical locations with a strong connection to the datasphere. Finding one of these junction points is a difficulty 5 Intellect based task for you anywhere in the Ninth World, and linking directly to one provides an asset to tasks related to the Datasphere. You are trained in Datasphere navigation. Enabler

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One of the reasons I love GURPS is the huge array of material that can be pulled from one sourcebook into another. While the granular nature of feats and powers in D&D 3.X ultimately created problems with balance through accreted overlap the availability of new options to let a player create exactly the character they want or help a GM find a rule that gives the feel they need is priceless to me. In Numenera, one of the key feelings is the unending wonder and strangeness of layers of weird and wonderful technology left behind by the previous worlds. The variety of radically different, almost contradictory, but still legitimate ways of dealing with that demi-magical technology gives rise not only to a need for the most broad set of options possible, but to the opportunity for options for characters that might not make sense in another game. However, the official translation supplement When Worlds Collide seemed incredibly broad brush, missing some key clarifications, Meanwhile, a few things just seemed off to me. For example, in it says "Spinner twists can be esoteries or tricks of the trade." and "Grand Deception is more of an esotery." I really don't understand this idea. From the Numenera core book " Jacks are crafters, entertainers, leaders, and thieves. They’re architects, engineers, con artists, salespeople, and teachers. This diversity doesn’t mean that the jack is the archetypal everyman—that kind of simple categorization would diminish the character type." Why is it less fitting to have a bio-mechanical alteration that, combined with the Jack's innate persuasiveness, produces the Grand Deception?


Specific design notes;

• Eyes of the Strange While the Numenera seems like a singular "thing," the origins, functions, and even sources of power are so diverse and divergent piling them together like this felt off to me. Moreover, there's a strong thread that everything in the world has been worked and reworked by Numenera until the very dirt (drit) itself is in many ways more a type of artifact than a "natural" thing. However, I kept circling back to the Mechanical/Mystical focus from the core Numenera book and its ability to 'sense "magic,"' which is what ultimately produced the version that I put here.
• Recursion Viewing Simply removing the cross-recursion nature of this power makes it a much more powerful, but same level, version of the Sensor esotery. It's even a more reliably powerful, cheaper, and lower level version of the Remote Viewing power from the Sees Beyond focus. Obviously, to balance that I felt it necessary to increase the cost of the power in addition to the reduction in sensor duration it comes with. I feel that, with this change, it produces more of a power floor for GMs to consider when setting activation times for Remote Viewing rather than strict competition for purchased powers.
• Gate Exit Much like Recursion Viewing, removing the cross-recursion nature of this power makes it a more powerful version of abilities already available (specifically the higher level Teleportation esoteries). However, unlike those esoteries this is not an instantaneous thing and requires substantial preparation. Even so, with the default durations that preparation would quickly create world-altering shortcuts and effectively shrinking the world dramatically. By restructuring the durations (shortening the time for unlinked exits and extending the maintenance time to create permanent gates) it makes these shortcuts much rarer, much harder to extend long distances, and much less likely to be permanent.