The Origin Upgraded!—Let’s Talk XP
over 3 years ago – Fri, Dec 11, 2020 at 12:29:55 PM

Greetings, heroes—

We’ve hit another stretch goal, and upgraded The Origin. We’re adding more pages, more art, more crunchy bits, and most importantly, more fantastic ideas and inspiration. Every backer who has The Origin among their rewards just got more of it, for free!

For our next goal, let’s talk about XP.

In the Cypher System, you earn experience points for making discoveries and facing unexpected challenges. You might rack up your XP between sessions, but most commonly you receive experience points during play, when you’re hit with a GM intrusion or you make a remarkable discovery. XP are useful both during play and long-term: You can spend 1 XP to reroll for yourself (or a friend), to introduce a player intrusion, to negate a GM intrusion, or for other benefits during play. Or you can save them up for character advancement.

Because XP are granted, used, and even handed to other players during play, it’s really useful to have some sort of token to represent them. The Cypher System XP Deck gives you just that. XP cards are great for granting, tracking, and trading XP, and the card format makes tokens easy to slip into your character portfolio, or alongside your character sheet between the covers of your Cypher System Rulebook.

We want you to have an XP Deck. And not just that: an all-new XP Deck that makes the most of the vast array of stunning Cypher System artwork.

The 30 cards in this deck will be double-sided, showcasing a total of 60 beautiful Cypher System illustrations. Heroes (both super and mundane) will be a prominent theme, but the deck will feature art from the full range of genres, making it a great fit not just for your Claim the Sky game, but also for a science-fiction, horror, post-apocalyptic, fantasy, or modern game—or anything else you play with the Cypher System!

At $185,000, we’ll make this new Cypher System XP Deck and include it, in print and PDF, in the rewards of all backers at the Superteam reward level and up. (Backers at PDF Mega Event will get it in PDF.)

We’re in the final 48 hours of this campaign—traditionally a pretty exciting period. We can hit this stretch goal, and, if the past is any guide, more, if we spread the word! Please take just a moment to:

•  Share this Facebook post. (It’ll also help the post spread if you comment on and like it, too.)
•  Retweet this tweet. (Replying and liking it also helps its spread.)
• Or better yet, grab a piece or two of your favorite art from this campaign—you can download from a great selection here. Share it in your own post or tweet, perhaps with a few words about why you’re excited. Don’t forget to link to the campaign!

Thanks for you support—you’re a hero of the Cypher System!

—Charles and the MCG team

Some Good News for EU Backers
over 3 years ago – Wed, Dec 09, 2020 at 01:16:42 AM

Greetings, heroes—

If you’re in the EU, we have some good news that we’re making official today. (I say “making official, because this has been in the works for months—since well before the Kickstarter launched—but we didn’t want to make an announcement until all the details were completely finalized.)

We ship our products, including Kickstarter rewards, to EU customers from our fulfillment site in the UK. With Brexit on the way, there’s been some uncertainty about how that will be handled. We may at some point open an EU shipping site, but for now we’ve been able to ensure that you will not pay any duties or import fees on your rewards that ship from the UK.

If you’ve been concerned about the shipping costs of physical rewards, you do not need to worry about duties or import fees. As always, your cost will be based only on the actual cost of shipping itself.

Like many people and businesses that operate in the UK and the EU, we’re really looking forward to a resolution to the Brexit process. In a perfect world, we’d be able to tell you exactly what will happen as we reach the fulfillment point for your rewards—but for now, at least, you can rest assured that you will not face duties or import fees.

We’ve updated the shipping information on the Kickstarter page with this news!

Don’t Forget Your Chance to Win Autographed Books (and Help Spread the Word)!

Claim the Sky, First Responders, and The Origin are going to be beautiful books, but here’s something that might make them even more special: autographs from the entire MCG design team! The chance to win them is yours—if you help spread the word about this campaign.

Check out the raffle. By taking easy steps to help us reach new backers, you’re entered to win one of two sets of autographed books. The more you do, the greater your chances of winning!

Thanks for you support—you’re a hero of the Cypher System!

—Charles and the MCG team

GM Intrusion Deck Unlocked! What’s Next?
over 3 years ago – Tue, Dec 08, 2020 at 04:39:59 PM

Greetings, heroes—

You did it! You unlocked the GM Intrusion Deck! If you are backing at the Superteam level or higher, the GM Intrusion Deck is now one of your rewards in both print and PDF. (It’s also a reward in PDF only at the PDF Mega Event level.)

GM intrusions are part of what makes the Cypher System so fluid, fast-paced, and narrative-focused—and a real joy to GM! A good GM intrusion introduces an unexpected factor that spices up a scene, creates a turning point in an adventure, or throws a little wrench into the PCs’ best-laid plans. Sometimes GMs prepare them in advance, but often they occur spontaneously, where the GM sees a cool opportunity or a 1 comes up on a d20 roll.

Unfortunately, just like a snappy comeback, sometimes you think of the most awesome GM intrusion about five minutes after you needed it. At the table, or in prep, it helps to have a little inspiration!

The GM Intrusion Deck will give you 100 cards with ideas for GM intrusions. They’re broken into three categories: combat intrusions, social intrusions, and miscellaneous intrusions. (It will be based on an existing deck for Numenera, but will have loads of new ideas.) Need an intrusion on the fly, or some inspiration when planning your game? Just draw a card. Or draw two or three, and pick the one you like. Or just use them to inspire some other great idea.

Next: Let’s Make The Origin Bigger and Better

If you’ve backed our Kickstarters in the past (or just purchased our books, at the MCG Shop or your FLGS), you know that our titles are hefty products overstuffed with great ideas, adventures, and resources. That’s usually because backers like you have upgraded them substantially in our Kickstarter campaigns. We love that—it really helps us make the most out of each product. So let’s do that for The Origin!

If we make it to $165,000, we’ll do a substantial upgrade to The Origin. We’ll add 32 more pages: that’s more art, more inspiration, more ideas, and more character options, cyphers, and adventures. If The Origin is among your rewards (and it should be: Superteam is turning out to be a rockin’ deal, and the levels above it are even better!), the value of your pledge keeps going up!

We’re in the final week. If the past is any guide, we’ll probably unlock several additional stretch goals. Let’s knock this one out quickly, and keep moving forward toward more—including, perhaps, the Cypher System Bestiary!

Don’t Forget Your Chance to Win Autographed Books (and Help Spread the Word)!

Claim the Sky, First Responders, and The Origin are going to be beautiful books, but here’s something that might make them even more special: Autographs from the entire MCG design team. They can be yours—if you help spread the word about this campaign. But, hey, that’s a win-win, right?

Check out this raffle. By taking easy steps to help us reach new backers, you’re entered to win one of two sets of autographed books. The more you do, the greater your chances of winning!

Thanks for you support—you’re a hero of the Cypher System!

—Charles and the MCG team

Great Roll20 and VTT News!
over 3 years ago – Fri, Dec 04, 2020 at 11:37:28 PM

A variety of Cypher System products have been available on Roll20 for years. But as we’ve all seen more and more of our gaming move online, we here at MCG started thinking about how we might expand, improve, and even optimize the experience. So this fall we started working with our good friends at Roll20 to do just that, and the results are coming soon!

Here’s some of what you can expect:

• You can already get many of our supporting products, like our decks, on Roll20, and they’re fully integrated with the platform. We’ll be adding more in the near future. The new GM Intrusion Deck, which we are racing toward unlocking, is a prime candidate!
• We've published dozens of adventures for the Cypher System over the years. We’re going to start optimizing and releasing them for Roll20 in the months to come. Look for the first to start appearing there soon.
• And here’s the big news: All of the adventures included in Claim the Sky, First Responders, and The Origin will be built out for Roll20. We’ll work to release them on that platform when the books come out, or as close to release as possible.

What does all of that mean? It varies from product to product, but typically you can expect encounters, maps, handouts, tokens for PCs, NPCs, and creatures, and other elements, along with stats and key information, all set up and ready to run.

Roll20 is our preferred partner, but we’ll look at ways to make elements available for other online environments, as well. So if you’re playing on Astral, Foundry, Fantasy Grounds, or just Zoom or similar platform, you’ll have access to more resources for great game experiences.

Like our last few announcements, this isn’t a stretch goal—it’s just something we’ve been working on, and now seemed like a good time to let you know!

Win Autographed Books!

Claim the Sky, First Responders, and The Origin are going to be beautiful books, but here’s something that might make them even more special: Autographs from the entire MCG design team! They can be yours—if you help spread the word about this campaign. But, hey, that’s a win-win, right?

Check out this raffle we just launched today. By taking easy steps to help us reach new backers, you’re entered to win one of two sets of autographed books. The more you do, the greater your chances of winning!

Thanks for you support—you’re a hero of the Cypher System!

—Charles and the MCG team

Awesome Third-party Publisher News
over 3 years ago – Fri, Dec 04, 2020 at 09:08:46 PM

Did you know that Cypher System products aren’t just published by Monte Cook Games? In addition to several licensed standalone games powered by the Cypher System (such as Shotguns & Sorcery, VURT, and the forthcoming Diamond Throne and Tidal Blades games), the Cypher System Creator program at DriveThruRPG allows anyone—including you!—to create PDF adventures, settings, bestiaries, compendiums of character options, cyphers, or artifacts, and so on.

There are dozens and dozens of Cypher System products, big and small, available now through the Cypher System Creator program. And we’ve just made it better!

Today we unveiled big improvements to the program. We’ve opened up four new settings to the creators—and we’ve even made it forward-compatible with Claim the Sky’s Boundless setting, along with First Responders and The Origin! We’re offering advance access to the books for established CSC publishers. And on top of that we’ve added five new art packs, with nearly 100 art resources that can be used in CSC products.

This means that third-party creators can publish products that support Claim the Sky, First Responders, and The Origin immediately upon release of those titles. And that third-party support for the Cypher System in general is going to rapidly grow! The Cypher System is easy to design for, and many of the publishers are very talented designers. If you haven’t checked out the scores of Cypher System Creator products, it’s worth a look. And maybe you’d like to get involved too.

It just got easier!

Spread the Word—New Links!

What, you’ve already done it? Can’t hurt to do it again! New backers drive new stretch goals, and the only way to reach new backers is to spread the word. It’s easy—just tell people about it on social media or wherever you talk about games online.

• Here's a post on Facebook about First Responders to share
• And a push on Twitter toward our next stretch goal
• Share or tweet the link to the recent EN World interview with Monte (and comment in the thread!)
• Or write your own thoughts on why you’re excited about this campaign, and share those!

However you do it, please help spread the word. New backers are the only way we drive the campaign forward, and hit the stretch goals we all want to hit!