[UPDATED] MCG Has A New Kickstarter Coming

That's Monte Cook Games, not McG the movie director. It looks like they're planning to expand in support for their core Cypher System rule set beyond the directly Numenera and The Strange product lines. What that entails exactly is yet to be seen, but the image below likely gives away a few clues. Monte Cook Games runs a blockbuster Kickstarter every year, and is pretty much near the top of the game when it comes to crowdfunding.

That's Monte Cook Games, not McG the movie director. It looks like they're planning to expand in support for their core Cypher System rule set beyond the directly Numenera and The Strange product lines. What that entails exactly is yet to be seen, but the image below likely gives away a few clues. Monte Cook Games runs a blockbuster Kickstarter every year, and is pretty much near the top of the game when it comes to crowdfunding.


image.jpeg


UPDATE! MCG has sent this email out. The Kickstarter begins on Monday, Feb 29th, and involves three new campaign settings:

We’ve been hinting at it all week, and there’s been a fair bit of speculation about it in social media and gaming sites such as ENworld. If you’re among those people who postulated we’re launching a new Kickstarter campaign, you’re right. Tomorrow we’re announcing the Worlds of the Cypher System campaign, which will launch on Monday, February 29.

Through this campaign we hope to fund a series of titles supporting the Cypher System Rulebook. And not just fund them—make them really awesome. Grow them and add stretch goals and new titles—the sort of things we’ve been fortunate enough to fund in previous Kickstarter campaigns.

Here’s an advance peek at the three campaign settings that make up the initial offering:

Gods of the Fall: Awaken your divine spark, claim a dominion, and become a god in a fantasy world in which the heavens smashed upon the Earth like a vengeful star.

Predation: First figure out how to survive t​he dark and dangerous world of the ​Cretaceous Period using the technology of the future—high-tech weapons, advanced science, and bioengineered dinosaurs—and then worry about the asteroid that history says wipes out all life on earth.

Masks: They say you're insane. Dangerous. That you suffer from Dissociative Mask Disorder. Your parents and the doctors and the press and the military. They can’t believe what’s happening. They can’t believe what you can do.

(There’s more too it, of course, but those three titles are the headliners.)

We at MCG have been playing and running Cypher System games ourselves for a year now, and we’ve come to realize how much cool support the Cypher System Rulebook deserves. That’s why we’re so excited about launching this campaign. We hope you’re excited too, and that you’ll help us spread the word over the week to come—and into the campaign itself.
 

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Desh-Rae-Halra

Explorer
I wonder how different it will really be from The Strange, particularly Worlds Numberless and Strange?
I thought the Superhero section of the Cypher System Corebook needed more, so I hope that kind of setting ( with a lot more Foci and better rules for Dual Foci or adding Genre paradigms are included:
For example: Flight. Many supers can fly, but if that is your only focus, I dont think you can actually fly until Tier 4.
 

Dahak

Explorer
I agree that a Supers book would be a great help. CSR does a decent job of giving you a launch pad for the genre, but it requires tinkering around to make most super settings fly. (Ha!) Also, if you have In Translation, the Soars Through the Air focus makes flight a tier 2 power. I really wish some more of the superhero-themed foci from that title had made it into the corebook. At least it's fully compatible without retooling.
 

Benji

First Post
Yeah, I'm hoping this is Strange Adaptable. Given how fun worlds numberless and strange was, I'd buy another book just like it.
 

JohnnyZemo

Explorer
It's no longer once a year that MCG runs a big Kickstarter. This will be their fourth in the past 16 months. I'm not faulting them for doing it; clearly this model has been very successful for them.

Here are the launch dates of their recent Kickstarters:

Numenera (8/9/2012)
The Strange (10/16/2013)
Numenera boxed set (11/21/2014)
No Thank You Evil (5/13/2015)
Numenera: Into the Ninth World (8/5/2015)
Worlds of the Cypher System (2/??/2016)

They run good Kickstarters. The products are high quality and people get their rewards on time.

I'm very curious to see where the whole crowdfunding world is five years from now. It's clearly working for some people, but I feel like it's going to eventually morph into a different form than what we have now. I don't have any insight or predictions, just a feeling.
 


Dahak

Explorer
It's interesting that the Cypher System Rulebook itself was MCG's only (afaik) physical book that was not kickstarted. But it is a business model that has so far worked well for them. It's probably the best way to reach a smaller fanbase who still demand a Paizo or Wizards level of physical appeal to RPG books.
 


Aldarc

Legend
It's no longer once a year that MCG runs a big Kickstarter. This will be their fourth in the past 16 months. I'm not faulting them for doing it; clearly this model has been very successful for them.

Here are the launch dates of their recent Kickstarters:

Numenera (8/9/2012)
The Strange (10/16/2013)
Numenera boxed set (11/21/2014)
No Thank You Evil (5/13/2015)
Numenera: Into the Ninth World (8/5/2015)
Worlds of the Cypher System (2/??/2016)

They run good Kickstarters. The products are high quality and people get their rewards on time.
As you say, MCG runs good Kickstarters. They do listen carefully to what their fans/market want. And it has been a good way to not only gauge the interest of their fans, but to also promote their company line of products. Whatever the case, I'm looking forward to this Kickstarter. I've been a fan of Numenera and MCG from the beginning, and they have yet to disappoint me. The Cypher System has a lot of potential, being something akin to an interesting mix of conventional d20 and the narrative-driven Fate.

I have felt that sometimes their projects can feel a little too redundant in terms of reduplication of content materials (e.g. descriptors, foci, etc.), but that may be the natural consequence of a moving from two particular settings to a more generic system. Depending on the shelf-life of MCG, I suspect that we may get a second edition of the CypherSystem, Numenera, and the Strange in the distant future that reduces that redundancy by building and expanding around a core set of Cypher rules first and foremost and then secondly provide settings. I don't expect that anytime soon, but I could see that happen given how the Cypher System Rulebook already tweaks the rules found in Numenera and the Strange.

I'm very curious to see where the whole crowdfunding world is five years from now. It's clearly working for some people, but I feel like it's going to eventually morph into a different form than what we have now. I don't have any insight or predictions, just a feeling.
Perhaps more specialized websites for types/genres of projects? As you say, the model works for some businesses (MCG and clearly 7th Seas), but not for all, and many get lost in the shuffle.
 

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