There's A New Edition Of The Cypher System Coming

Next year, 2026, Monte Cook Games will be releasing a new edition of its in-house Cypher System rules system.

Originally launched over a decade ago, the Cypher System powers games like Numenera, The Strange, and The Magnus Archives. It's a d20-based multi-genre game system known for its character generation method which has the player filling out the sentence "I am a [adjective] [noun] who [verb]" -- such as "I am a jovial Explorer who howls at the moon". The titular cyphers are one-time use abilities or items. Task resolution involves rolling a d20 against a 1-10 difficulty scale.

This new edition includes a bunch of changes, including genre-specific character creation, character damage and armour, and a greater emphasis on subtle cyphers.

Two new core rulebooks will be published. The Cypher Character Rulebook will delve into creating characters for a variety of different genres, while the Cypher GM's Guide will contain rules, GM advice and resources for creating and running games.

They'll be hitting a crowdfunding platform near you very soon, in late summer, with the books coming out mid-2026.

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[Ghost2020]

Learn to resist the lure of the shiny!

Also, learn to see through the sunk cost fallacy...

Arrgghh!!!

Ok I'll back just the PDFs then. Maybe. Or just the core.

 

[CleverNickName]

Monty Cook Games projects usually do pretty well with crowdfunding campaigns, and this one is no exception. They are currently at $559,146 with 3,133 backers, and five of their six stretch goals have been met. (They only need seventeen more backers to reach that sixth goal.)

It's probably not going to join the "Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarter Club," but still: half a mill in a week is a huge success.

Cypher: Faster. Easier. And Even Better!

The award-winning TTRPG perfect for forging the stories YOU want to play. Lightning-quick character generation. Super easy to GM. Unique and imaginative campaigns. And all the flexibility, story focus, and fast-paced play Cypher is famous for!

www.backerkit.com

 

[Aldarc]

I'm so terribly on the fence about this ...
I used to run a long Numenera campaign. Really loved it. A friend of mine is occassionally running Numenera for me now, and I also love it as a player. I own the old Cypher System core book and a few supplements. The supplements are good reads.

Still, I feel like Cypher is a bad fit for a generic system. Mostly because being a "class system" is so deeply ingrained in it. In the end, characters generation is about choosing a development tree to follow - or several, in the case of Cypher (type and focus). And development mainly is about gaining new abilities.

And the whole concept of "gaining new abilities" goes against my genre expectations for pretty much anything that's not some kind of High Fantasy or superhero story. Anything just a little more grounded just doesn't work with it, as far as I am concerned.

I mean, sure people gain new abilities in real life. But mostly, that's about incrementally learning to do stuff they already know the basics of better. That's what skills are for in many RPGs. But "From now on, I can catch arrows out of the air?" Yes, it works in certain types of stories, but mostly, these are superhero stories to a degree. It's not really something you'd find in The Lord of the Rings, or The Expanse, or Alien ... even in Star Wars, it made sense for Luke, but certainly not for Han.

The whole "Look, I reached a new Tier, now I can XY!" just takes me out of it in most genres.

With Numenera, I accept that it is kind of a weird sci-fantasy superhero RPG. But I don't want all of my RPGs to me superhero RPGs. To me, the applicability of Cypher is very narrow. As shiny as the new kickstarter looks, I should probably give it a pass, because even though I'd love to have these books, I suspect I'd never be using them ...

I will likewise skip this Kickstarter. I really only run Numenera anymore, and this update doesn't include Numenera. Moreover, and perhaps most importantly, I feel like I have bought this game already way too much over the past 12 years:

• 2013 Numenera
• 2015 Cypher System Rulebook
• 2017 Numenera: Discovery & Destiny
• 2019 Revised Cypher System Rulebook

I have most of the Numenera 1e and 1.5e materials, whether as hardcopy or PDFs. I backed a lot of their past Kickstarters: The Strange, Numenera Box Set, Numenera: Into the Ninth World, Worlds of the Cypher System, Old Gods of Appalachia. There was definitely a certain point after about five years where I felt like I was just buying the same repackaged content over and over again, because they would reuse the same descriptors and foci in other books while reprinting the same rules over and over again.

Being asked to buy another Cypher System rulebook again after all that? Yeah, I think that I'll pass.

 

[The Soloist]

• 2013 Numenera
• 2015 Cypher System Rulebook
• 2017 Numenera: Discovery & Destiny
• 2019 Revised Cypher System Rulebook

Being asked to buy another Cypher System rulebook again after all that? Yeah, I think that I'll pass.

I didn't realize Numenara 2e was eight years ago, and Cypher 2e was already six years ago. Didn't seem that long ago when I bought both last Winter. Time really does get faster when you grow older. Soon, I'll be barely able to get out of bed before the day is over!

I understand you, but in 2026, it will have been 7 years. Which is the usual gap between editions. I think we buy too many RPGs these days (order & forget KS syndrome) and because we are older we have less time to play, than when we were adolescents/young adults. The queue is full of barely or not played games.

 

[Aldarc]

I didn't realize Numenara 2e was eight years ago, and Cypher 2e was already six years ago. Didn't seem that long ago when I bought both last Winter. Time really does get faster when you grow older. Soon, I'll be barely able to get out of bed before the day is over!

I understand you, but in 2026, it will have been 7 years. Which is the usual gap between editions. I think we buy too many RPGs these days (order & forget KS syndrome) and because we are older we have less time to play, than when we were adolescents/young adults. The queue is full of barely or not played games.

There are only so many times that I am willing to buy the same game over and over again from the same company.

 

[The Soloist]

There are only so many times that I am willing to buy the same game over and over again from the same company.

Fair, I know I'm not eventually buying Dragonbane 2e or Fantasy AGE 3e when they inevitably come out.

 

[CleverNickName]

Another stretch goal unlocked, and sitting at $565,424 raised so far.

At this rate, it will reach about $615k by the time the campaign ends. Not too shabby.

 

[Von Ether]

I understand, it makes me wonder why

There are only so many times that I am willing to buy the same game over and over again from the same company.

I get that. When it come to 3pp 5e setting books they are always stand alone books with the core rules for combat reprinted from the SRD.

I always wondered why people thought having to reference between two books was so much more difficult compared to buying a separate stand-alone book that was 30% reprinted copy.

 

[chuckdee]

Learn to resist the lure of the shiny!

Also, learn to see through the sunk cost fallacy...

It's not sunk cost! All those books are very much worth it! At least, that's what I tell myself...

 

[Ghost2020]

It's not sunk cost! All those books are very much worth it! At least, that's what I tell myself...

Yup that's where I ultimately landed. I'm backing the PDFs just so I can see all the changes. If i really love them I'll hunt down the core books. My HUGE cypher collection needs to be used before I can justify a new rule set or even any more Cypher books at this point. (I mean, barring the white genre books because they're so damned good!!!)