[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.

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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.

 

[Morrus]

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.

I think a couple of things will happen.

There will be more specialised things like Patreon, which crowdfunds subscriptions for smaller regular content. Patreon is the biggest player there (not as big as Kickstarter yet) but it'll become a broader collection of companies.

Specialised crowdfunding platforms integrated with production and even distribution systems. PoD companies which allow you to crowdfunding, print, and distribute your book all from one location. Integrates it all into a simple interface.

In in the long term I think it'll end up as a broad collection of specialised platforms which do certain things very well.

 

[Von Ether]

I was beginning to wonder if CSR customers were going to have to use the Strange for all their gaming needs.

They are great products, there's wasted pages and real estate related to the Strange that could be used for more monsters or setting info.

And since the CSR's monsters are reprints, there's sine duplication. And a GM screen from another game is not ideal.

 

[Von Ether]

I think a couple of things will happen.

There will be more specialised things like Patreon, which crowdfunds subscriptions for smaller regular content. Patreon is the biggest player there (not as big as Kickstarter yet) but it'll become a broader collection of companies.

Specialised crowdfunding platforms integrated with production and even distribution systems. PoD companies which allow you to crowdfunding, print, and distribute your book all from one location. Integrates it all into a simple interface.

In in the long term I think it'll end up as a broad collection of specialised platforms which do certain things very well.

I'd have a love/hate relationship with a crowdfunding POD company.

It's hypocritical, but while I'd love a more streamlined system for my projects, lowered entry point means a more crowded market by the less technically savvy who want to give it a try because "how hard could this be?"

 

[Morrus]

I'd have a love/hate relationship with a crowdfunding POD company.

It's hypocritical, but while I'd love a more streamlined system for my projects, lowered entry point means a more crowded market by the less technically savvy who want to give it a try because "how hard could this be?"

Lowering barriers to entry is pretty much a global trend right now; not just with RPG products. YouTube and podcasts and App stores, and DMs Guild, and RPGNow. For me, I don't think I'd have gotten into (though, to be fair, I've only paddled shallow waters) publishing without some lowering of the entry barriers 15 years ago.

 

[Umbran]

Specialised crowdfunding platforms integrated with production and even distribution systems. PoD companies which allow you to crowdfunding, print, and distribute your book all from one location. Integrates it all into a simple interface.

I am not sure that's going to be a big thing. It's major use would be for RPGs, but those really are still niche products, and I'm not sure there's a business case for supporting them on a separate platform that would have to try to compete with current platforms that have more broad appeal and trust.

Moreoever, I am not sure how many crowdfunding patrons are looking for PoD quality - I would suspect most want higher quality binding than is typically available from PoD services. And, of course, this would be limited to *books*, as opposed to other RPG-relevant gear (minis, terrain, dice, and so on).

I would certainly expect the current platforms to increase "discoverability" - make it easier for a customer to find a particular kind of kickstarter, but I don't expect "go to the *funding* app to discover" to be a major use case. I expect the majority of the marketing burden will still sit with the producer.

 

[Morrus]

I am not sure that's going to be a big thing. It's major use would be for RPGs, but those really are still niche products, and I'm not sure there's a business case for supporting them on a separate platform that would have to try to compete with current platforms that have more broad appeal and trust.

I said "specialised", not "big", deliberately. I wouldn't be surprised to see a whole sector growing, with lots of small, niche, specialised platforms. And, yep, many of them will fail, of course, as in any growing industry; a bunch will stick around.

Patreon is the first big example of a specialised crowdfunding platform. Basically it's Kickstarter for subscriptions. It seems to be doing well, though it's still a fraction of the size of Kickstarter.

 

[Von Ether]

I said "specialised", not "big", deliberately. I wouldn't be surprised to see a whole sector growing, with lots of small, niche, specialised platforms. And, yep, many of them will fail, of course, as in any growing industry; a bunch will stick around.

Patreon is the first big example of a specialised crowdfunding platform. Basically it's Kickstarter for subscriptions. It seems to be doing well, though it's still a fraction of the size of Kickstarter.

POD could be big ... for fiction. While a lot of aspiring writers would see it as their personal godsend to go around publishers who don't "share my vision," it would be a big help to mid-listers who have established franchises and webcomics.

I say that but InkShares isn't lighting the world on fire. Something is not clicking there yet.

 

[Morrus]

I say that but InkShares isn't lighting the world on fire. Something is not clicking there yet.

I hadn't heard of that. Looks interesting!

 

[Aldarc]

Minte?

Looks like they are moving into pulpy, savage worldy, territory.

The "exploration" themes of both Numenera and the Strange lend themselves well to that "pulpy, savage worldy, territory."

 

[Von Ether]

I hadn't heard of that. Looks interesting!

They've tried some partnerships, with organizations like Laser and Sword, to promote themselves. I don't think it's really made headway yet.

It seems that you might have better luck on Kickstarter and hope you've done your numbers right on the print run and postage.