Numenera 2: The Kickstarter Is Live!

It's always an event when Monte Cook Games launches a Kickstarter. As a company, they have mastered the art of crowdfunding, with several well-executed, extremely successful Kickstarters under their belt - the original Numenera in 2012 raised over half a million dollars, and in total the company has run 11 high-profile, slick campaigns. The latest promises to be more of the same - Numenera 2: Discovery & Destiny has launched!

It's always an event when Monte Cook Games launches a Kickstarter. As a company, they have mastered the art of crowdfunding, with several well-executed, extremely successful Kickstarters under their belt - the original Numenera in 2012 raised over half a million dollars, and in total the company has run 11 high-profile, slick campaigns. The latest promises to be more of the same - Numenera 2: Discovery & Destiny has launched!

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This Kickstarter, five years after the original Numenera, is for two books entitled Discovery and Destiny. The first, Numenera Discovery, is, in their own words "a revision of the original Numenera corebook. Next summer, we will allow the original corebook to go out of print, and Numenera Discovery will take its place." However, MCG does go out of its way to point out that "Numenera Discovery is not a new edition".

The second book, Numenera Destiny, encompasses empire and community building. "You can make the world a better place. Help a community defend itself from abhumans or the iron wind. Create centers of learning or trade. Innovate, build, and protect. Manage an entire community and help it prosper and grow—or simply create a cool base or vehicle for your adventuring group."

The Kickstarter is certain to do well. I predict it funds in under an hour, and breaks the half-million barrier again. It's not a cheap one, though - it's for two books, and they cost $60 each in print; and if you want the full PDF set plus all the PDF stretch goals, it'll set you back a cool $100. MCG experimented - successfully! with it's Invisible Sun Kickstarter last year ($197 was the lowest pledge) and showed that expensive Kickstarters can work perfectly well.

As I said above, MCG Kickstarters are always an event. They're one of the companies to watch when they run a Kickstarter, because they invariably do it spectacularly. I think it's fair to say that these guys are experts at this!

Find the Kickstarter right here!

MCG's previous Kickstarters, which started annually and then become twice/year in 2015, include:

That's a total of $2,943,243. Not counting the current one, of course!
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Morrus

Well, that was fun
Staff member
Current comparison with 7th Sea, which did $1.3M and is the current record-holder for tabletop RPG Kickstarter's. 7th Sea ran for 34 days, while Numenera 2 is running for 39 days.

7th Sea -- Day -- Numenera 2

$286,290 -- 1 -- $239,025

$121,628 -- 2 -- $38,841

$59,193 -- 3 -- still ongoing

$32,239 -- 4 -- that's tomorrow
 

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TrickyUK

Explorer
Latest update reveals Deluxe Core Books. There were 2x $5,000 pledges (limited) and (so far) over 50 pledges for the deluxe option ($500 or $240 as an add-on). However, the number of backers hasn't increased by many and my guess is that people have increased their pledge level.

I know this hobby can be expensive, but this is starting to feel a little exclusive. Again, I wonder how that will affect overall funding. With the current pricing, you don't need as many backers to reach high funding levels. This sort of works for me as I am not really interested in exclusive items, but more value for money. I like kickstarters that reward the upfront investment with better than retail value for money (just my view). So seeing the overall funding rise, which will lead to more books being produced, means that I will have the opportunity to buy more books next year when they are released or be tempted to pledge at a lower level knowing that I'm getting more than my money's worth.

Still wishing there was a Core Book Print + PDF option...
 

Desh-Rae-Halra

Explorer
I've been a Numenera fan and own most of their material.

The thing not working for me is I don't need the one corebook that is a rules update. The rules section of the Numenera Corebook is pretty smal and simple as it is, and I'm not going to pay for a 80-90% rehash of the setting ( which is MOST of the book and one trait that I really like).

And the Deluxe only comes as a package, so that's out.

I wrote this in another thread, but they did a "All the Books in Print" with The Strange and then never produced 2 that they had brainstormed about during the campaign, but did the next right thing and issued MCG Store Credit equal to what those books would have cost. I also somehow have a ton of shipping credit from that campaign that I'm not using.

So I am watching the campaign, but not convinced to pledge at all.
 

JohnnyZemo

Explorer
I've been a Numenera fan and own most of their material.

I have backed more than half of the MCG Kickstarters, but I'm passing on this one. I have a ton of Numenera books already, and I rarely play it. I like the setting and I like about 58% of the rules.

The really odd thing to me is that for as well as the Kickstarters do, I don't know many people who actually play the game. I'm sure the players are out there. It just doesn't seem like they are proportional to the success of the Kickstarters. Of course, that's purely anecdotal, so maybe meaningless.
 

Aldarc

Legend
I've been a Numenera fan and own most of their material.

The thing not working for me is I don't need the one corebook that is a rules update. The rules section of the Numenera Corebook is pretty smal and simple as it is, and I'm not going to pay for a 80-90% rehash of the setting ( which is MOST of the book and one trait that I really like).
Maybe then the new Player's Guide and the Destiny book?

I have backed more than half of the MCG Kickstarters, but I'm passing on this one. I have a ton of Numenera books already, and I rarely play it. I like the setting and I like about 58% of the rules.

The really odd thing to me is that for as well as the Kickstarters do, I don't know many people who actually play the game. I'm sure the players are out there. It just doesn't seem like they are proportional to the success of the Kickstarters. Of course, that's purely anecdotal, so maybe meaningless.
In my case, it's not a lack of want or desire to run it, but I only have one gaming group. There is one, the current GM of a 5E game in fact, who tends to be stuck in their ways and resistant to games that they have not first discovered themselves or hyped themselves about. So although the other players would be willing to play some of the other systems we have (e.g., Numenera, Fantasy Age, Fate, etc.), it can sometimes be difficult to get other players on board. Three of us have run a few one-shots of Numenera, but we have not really had the opportunity to make a more robust campaign out of it. :erm:
 

JohnnyZemo

Explorer
Quarter of a million in under 24 hours.

Kicktraq is currently projecting $4M, but that estimate will go down after the first few days (Kickstarters typically make most of their funds in the first few days and the last few days, with the long middle period being much lower).

You are correct. Currently trending toward $2.7M. Which is still pretty good. ;)
 

I have backed more than half of the MCG Kickstarters, but I'm passing on this one. I have a ton of Numenera books already, and I rarely play it. I like the setting and I like about 58% of the rules.

The really odd thing to me is that for as well as the Kickstarters do, I don't know many people who actually play the game. I'm sure the players are out there. It just doesn't seem like they are proportional to the success of the Kickstarters. Of course, that's purely anecdotal, so maybe meaningless.

Around where I am Numenera is played as much as any non-D&D system, at least as far as online game day calls seem indicated. I've been running a couple of campaigns for a while; I have pretty much all the books but am not going to get into the latest kickstarter -- the rules I have work fine for me, and the price for "a bit better" seems too high. With the three Into the X books, I have too much material for me ever to get a round to, so honestly, it's pretty hard for MCG to pull more money out of me. If they wrote some good adventures, I might be tempted, but they seem bizarrely bad at doing so. So Janek Sielicki gets my cash for THE BRIDGES WE BURN (http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/203852/The-Bridges-we-Burn--a-Numenera-Adventure) instead -- currently running session 5 of likely 7 for this, so it comes out as under a dollar per game session, which is seriously great value; I'm way more interested in high-quality adventures rather than rules revisions.
 

TrickyUK

Explorer
Noticed that they had their first missed 'milestone' yesterday. They wanted to increase the number of backers and used the (I must admit) interesting concept of the ongoing fiction behind the KS to try and generate the increase.

I do wonder if this was a serious attempt to increase the number of backers or just some throwaway attempt - if it had worked, great; but if not, then it hadn't taken much effort to try.

The milestone has been extended and now (as I post this), they only need to find 1 more backer before the end of the day - should be achievable.

I have found this KS interesting to watch. I still don't think that it offers value for an upfront investment (some of the books are just slated for some time during 2019, which is fair amount of time for what is basically a pre-order) and seems to be relying on the fanbase to a great extent. I think this theory is also supported by the volume of fiction that people are contributing - which is really good to read in general.

It is now down to the last 10 days - feels like ages since it began - and so I now watching with even more interest to see how the projected KS funding rise towards the end plays out. Will we see Bestiary 3 unlocked? I hope so, even though I won't be helping.
 

Aldarc

Legend
This Kickstarter campaign exhausts me, so I have mostly stopped paying attention, though I am backing it. The whole premise of an ongoing fiction and fan-generated stories (that could be added to the fiction) sounds interesting at first, but it's nigh impossible to keep up with it all, much less contribute in a timely fashion. So it is difficult to engage the Kickstarter campaign's meta-narrative over such a prolonged period.
 

Aephix

Villager
This Kickstarter campaign exhausts me, so I have mostly stopped paying attention, though I am backing it. The whole premise of an ongoing fiction and fan-generated stories (that could be added to the fiction) sounds interesting at first, but it's nigh impossible to keep up with it all, much less contribute in a timely fashion. So it is difficult to engage the Kickstarter campaign's meta-narrative over such a prolonged period.

Yeah, the Kickstarter commenting system is not a good means to try to interface with the fiction (they really need something that allows message threads if they want to do that). I check in the comments periodically to see if there are any campaign announcements, but other than that I've disengaged from the discussion.
 

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