Mechanics

New Players Start Here

Numina is a live-action roleplaying game built on the Accelerant system, set in the world of Aeledd. Instead of describing what your character does, you do it: you dress as they dress, speak in their voice, and spend an event living alongside a few dozen other people doing the same. When the fighting starts you swing a padded weapon or throw a soft packet, and both sides call their effects out loud so everyone knows what just happened. The current campaign, Numina III, is set in the Age of Works and centers on Fortune’s Bend — a town that has stood in many places and under many names, always a crossing point between the worlds of the living and the dead, and always a place that draws heroes. If you have never LARPed before, that is fine: the Accelerant Core Rules are deliberately small, everything else is built on top of them, and everyone in town had a first event once.

Two things are worth knowing before anything else. Numina III is a heroic game: not every character is a paragon, but every character should be given the chance to make heroic choices, and player characters do not set out to make the world worse. It is also explicitly player-versus-environment. The antagonists are ours to provide; villainy, theft, and assassination aimed at other player characters are not part of this game. The out-of-game half of that is a community habit the staff call Play to Lift — keeping an eye on how your choices land on the other people at the event, and aiming for a positive impact on their weekend.

What an Event Is Like

An event runs over a weekend at a game site — somewhere full of buildings and props, dressed to stand in for the town and the country around it. You arrive, check in, get into costume, and then the game begins.

From that moment you are Always In Game. Accelerant has no out-of-game state, no white headbands, and nobody wandering the site who is not part of the story. If you have a question, try to ask it in character. If you need to step away, walk to the edge of the game area in character and leave the game for a while rather than breaking the scene where you stand. You stay in game even when your character is unconscious or dead — your spirit remains, and you are allowed to remember everything you heard, smelled, and felt.

Play is a mix of town life and modules — adventures led by an NPC or run through a gate, usually for a small group. Between them you will be in the main town area, which is the game’s Place of Peace: as long as no general combat is happening there, that is where you take the five-minute Long Rest that refreshes your attributes. If your character dies, you go to the Gate of Death, an in-game location on site, and staff will walk you through what happens next.

A handful of out-of-game calls exist to keep the weekend safe, and using them is never rude:

• Caution — something could hurt someone. People nearby pause for a few seconds so whoever is in trouble can get clear.
• Clarification — someone needs a quick repeat of a verbal or a result. This one exists specifically for new players who are overwhelmed or confused in their first game or two. Use it.
• Emergency — a real medical problem. Play stops and everyone who hears it drops to a knee.
• The Lookdown — shade your eyes with a flat hand, lower your gaze, and walk out of the scene. No explanation is owed and nobody should follow you.
• The OK Check-In — two fingers to your own opposite shoulder asks “are you okay?”; a thumbs up, a flat wavy hand, or a thumbs down answers it.

There is no physical contact between players — the game handles searching, carrying, and everything else through role play and verbals — and no alcohol or recreational drugs on site. The full set is on the Etiquette & Safety page, and it is the one page worth reading before your first event even if you read nothing else.

If something goes wrong during the weekend, Player Representatives are introduced at the start of the event and are there to listen, you can ask the Innkeeper to connect you with a Director or General Manager, and Monster Camp can put you in front of staff directly.

Afterwards, you can write a Post-Event Letter (PEL) telling staff what you did and what you enjoyed — it feeds the next event’s plot, and it is worth CP.

What to Bring, and What You Can Borrow

Costume. You need clothes that read as belonging to the world rather than to this century — no armor, no props, no budget required to start. Each of the sixteen nations has its own look, and the nation pages describe the fabrics, colors, and silhouettes that suit each one, so picking your character’s homeland first gives you a costuming brief to shop a thrift store against. Nobody expects a wardrobe: the books are explicit that a player would never be expected to provide several fancy outfits over one weekend. Some Aspects do carry a makeup requirement — horns, metallic coloring, animal features, and the like — because your Aspect is supposed to be visible on you; those are noted on the skill itself.

Armor, if you want it. Armor is optional and buys you points: light armor is worth 2, medium 3, heavy 4. Materials do not have to be authentic — shaped fiberglass or painted foam counts as plate. The rulebook is clear about the intent: armor should improve how your character looks, not become a physical burden you have to carry around all weekend.

Weapons. Combat uses boffer weapons — a rigid core wrapped in closed-cell foam — and thrown packets. Every adventurer starts able to use basic one-handed weapons (swords, maces, clubs, axes) and basic two-handed weapons (staves, spears, two-handed swords, shorter glaives); anything more exotic needs a skill. Padded weapons have strict construction rules and must pass a safety inspection at each and every event where you intend to use them, so Weapon Construction is worth reading before you build or buy anything — and staff would rather you asked them first than turned up with a weapon they have to turn away. If you would rather not sort a weapon out for your first event, ask on Discord.

Everything else — bedding, food arrangements, what the site provides, what the weather will do to you — depends on the specific event. Ask before you pack; see How to Join below.

NPCing: The Cheapest Way to Try It

If you are not ready to commit to a character, come as an NPC. NPCs play the roles the staff need that weekend — including the villains, which player characters are explicitly not allowed to be; the staff’s own answer to “can I play a villain?” is “no, but come NPC for us.” It lets you see an event from the inside without finishing a character first, and it earns the same 1 CP for attendance that playing does. NPCing counts at partner games too: the website keeps the current list of LARPs that share CP with Numina. Ask on Discord or through the official site what a given event needs and what to bring.

Making a Character

You do not need to have this finished before you reach out — but here is the shape of it.

Everyone starts as an adventurer, and adventurer skills are free. Out of the box your character can already wield basic weapons, wear light armor, perform First Aid to stabilize the dying or cure a maimed limb, Diagnose what is wrong with someone, repair their own armor, and improvise a replacement when a prop breaks.

On top of that you build the character in two halves. The past is who they were before Fortune’s Bend: one or two Aspects (what they look like and what they are connected to), one Foundation (what they did), and one Culture (where they are from). Those three choices are free; the skills they unlock cost points. The present is how they handle trouble — Domains, Excellencies, and Expressions — finished off with attributes and Vitality, which are the fuel your skills burn and the hits you can take. Building a Character walks the whole thing through step by step, and Characters covers writing a history, which is optional but is the single best way to give staff hooks to build stories around you.

Character Points

You start with 50 Character Points (CP). The CP cost of each skill is located next to the skill name. You can gain an additional 2 CP from submitting your character history, Playing Numina Events, acting as a non-player character (NPC) for Numina or other partner LARPs, and supporting Numina with prop creation and other volunteering.

A first character is meant to be an entry-level one. You are at the start of your adventures, not the middle or the end — leave your character room to grow, and leave loose ends for staff to pull on.

How to Join

Event dates, prices, the site, registration, and what to pack all live with the game itself rather than in the books, and they change from season to season. Go to the source:

• The official Numina site — the event schedule, registration, the character database, and the current list of LARPs that share CP with Numina.
• The Numina Discord — the fastest place to ask a question, arrange to borrow gear or a costume, find a ride, or tell staff you would like to come NPC.

Say it is your first event when you get in touch. That is the whole trick.

Where to Learn More

This site is a player reference for the two Numina books. The Mechanics section covers how to build and play a character; the Lore section covers the world of Numina, the people who live there, and the dangers they face. For everything the books don’t cover — what a weekend actually feels like, what to pack, and how to try NPCing — see New to Numina.

All Numina rules are based on the Accelerant Core rules.