First, I love that one of the game's writers comes in here to speak intelligently and reasonably about the game. If I wasn't already a fan, I'd be on the website, giving the products a look, just for the responsiveness.
Thanks.
One question about your 60 second synopsis...
You leave off discussion of Edges. I assume it's deliberate because of the complexity. But one thing I've notice in explaining the game to people, is Edges make the difference for a lot of people.
Fair. I actually left it out of the 60-second summary because I really did mean this to be a 60-second summary—I recorded that text as a video (with screenshots of parts of a character sheet) back in 2017 with the idea of posting it to YouTube as a reference. As written, I have to speak slightly fast, and adding more text would mean having to cut some text or speak even faster (and risk becoming too hard to understand me clearly).
There are several important rules (like Edge) I didn't include in the summary, like rerolling with XP, GM intrusions, and minor and major effects for high rolls on the d20. Most of those things are rules that work in the player's favor. "Oh, you rolled a 17, that's +1 damage!" Or "Natural 20, that means you get back the points you spent on that ability!" Or "So you're a Nano with an Intellect Edge of 1, that means your 1-point Onslaught is actually 0 points!" IOW, you probably don't need to know about Edge until you've made a few rolls.
But mostly it was the 60-second limitation.
Regarding your kickstarters and the frustrations some people feel... I think back in the crazy, hazy days of 2013, updates were more frequent. As MCG has gotten busier (I think I am currently waiting on products from three different MCG Kickstarters), updates have gotten less frequent. Now, as far as I'm concerned, this is fine. MCG has proven over the last 7 years and... hold on... gonna count... 9 kickstarters I've backed, that products are gonna be delivered. More, MCG has always been responsive to my messages when there was a glitch (Thanks, Tammie!). BUT, I think the updates per project have become less frequent and that could be an issue for some people.
Hmm, interesting. I haven't looked at all the data for that (Kickstarter doesn't have a toll to keep track of such things, so I'd have to do it manually), but it's worth thinking about.
Regarding Fulfillment... Most KS I do, I goto backerkit or a similar service, enter my information, and then stuff just comes. So, having to go to MCG and "order" my books is an added step. I'm not arguing for or against that - there's pros and cons - but it IS an added step, which some people might find a bother.
Fair. This policy/practice predates my time at MCG, so I don't know why we started doing it that way, but I wouldn't be surprised if one reason was "It'll take us 18 months to create all of these backer rewards, and we'd certainly have some people change addresses between now and then, and they might forget to update their info with us, and that means we'd send out some rewards to the wrong address." Yes, we could use BackerKit to handle the addresses (and people could update their shipping address there), but that still means there's a chance we'd send something to an old address because the backer forgot to change their info. I know the MCG coupon system is a bit of a hassle, but it does help prevent mis-addressed shipments. And we've added some tools and user-interface things to make the overall experience easier for backers. For example, a couple of years ago we set up the Accounts page on our store to have a Coupons tab that shows all of your unredeemed items (before that, people often lost track of what rewards they hadn't claimed), and recently we added an "add all unredeemed coupons to my cart" button so people can get caught up with one click. So we're definitely trying to make sure our backers get what need, while still minimizing extra customer service time, warehouse time, and losing items in the mail. Phew!
If I were to make an MCG complaint, the only thing I'd complain about is the short cycle between Cypher Core 1e and 2e, as well as the way 2e was marketed as an add-on for an unrelated product instead if its own KS. I still don't own 2e, because nothing has shown it to be different enough to justify the expense (and because I'm not playing or running anything using the core right now, just "vanilla" Numenera). I'd have liked to see 1e not tossed aside so readily, and to have had the chance to KS it separately from Your Best Game Ever.
Ehhh, I mean, the revised CSR came out four years after the original CSR, and we were very, very clear that the two books were so compatible that you wouldn't have to stop using the old one for the new one. You could have two players at the table, one with the original CSR and one with the revised CSR, and they'd be playing the same game, and probably even the same character sentence, and the two characters would be functionally identical. We deliberately made the changes in such a way so that (as you've done) people could be happy to stick with their existing book and not switch over to the new one. We didn't want people to think they HAD to switch to the new version in order to keep playing the game or keep using our newer books. (And the same goes for the Numenera corebook and Numenera Discovery, you don't need to make the switch; we think the new book/books have improvements in language and organization based on years of play and design, but you don't need to change just for that). IOW, it's not a new edition of the game, it's just a revision to the corebook with clearer language, cleaned-up character abilities (some of there were very similar or a little redundant), and more options.
As for the YBGE Kickstarter and the CSR being a part of that, here's the thing: We're a small company, and we don't have as large of a player base as larger or older game companies. The YBGE Kickstarter is a system-agnostic book by Monte, with writing contributions by a lot of people who work on other RPGs, and we hoped that it would bring new people into our part of RPGville and get them thinking about trying our game. So that's why the revised CSR is in there, along with the four "genre books" for CSR (The Stars Are Fire, Stay Alive, We Are All Mad Here, and Godforsaken); having them as part of YBGE meant that people who didn't play the Cypher System would take a look at our game. (And of course, as a backer you could just do YBGE and ignore the rest, if you wanted to.) Given that the YBGE Kickstarter hit $581k, it was definitely a success; I'd like to think the combination of YBGE, rCSR, and the four genre books as one Kickstarter did better than they would have as two separate Kickstarters. And finally (on this topic), building, promoting, and running a Kickstarter is a lot of work. Combining the two concepts (YBGE + rCSR) meant we we able to save a lot of time and effort, as compared to doing two separate Kickstarters.
So anyway, there were several big reasons why we did it that way, and IMO it worked out well. You are of course allowed to have a different opinion based on your needs, your bookshelf, and your campaign.
), then I'll be in, however the project is managed.
