Monte Cook's Blog, page 55

Announcing Your Best Game Ever

We have some exciting news to share with you. Even as we send Invisible Sun Black Cubes to Kickstarter backers, and get ready to do a massive fulfillment of our Numenera 2 Kickstarter this month, we’re also thinking about the future. Specifically, products that will come out next year.

Invisible Sun App

Your Invisible Sun narrative isn’t limited to the game table! Conventional RPG gameplay, with everyone gathering for a few hours every week or two, is what makes RPGs a great experience. It’s also one of the greatest obstacles to a successful campaign, for our modern life rarely makes it convenient.

Cypher Chronicles, vol. 27-2018

This abbreviated Cypher Chronicles comes to you from the MCG Summit! We’re scheming hard to rock the rest of 2018 and beyond for our games and our fans. Here are some pictures of that work (and play) in progress:

Discover Your Destiny

Step into the Ninth World—and brighten its future with the light of the past Discover Your Destiny immerses you in the Ninth World, while taking you on a tour of character creation and other key concepts introduced in the forthcoming Numenera Discovery and Numenera Destiny corebooks. This free fiction title focuses on the narrative concepts to help new and experienced Numenera players discover and explore the Ninth World and start thinking about characters, adventures, and campaigns. Prepa...

Making Levels Matter for Cyphers and Artifacts

One of the key features of Numenera Destiny is that PCs will have a robust and detailed set of rules for crafting cyphers and artifacts. Creating that involved figuring out the time and resources a PC needs to craft items at different levels—for example, a level 5 detonation cypher is better than a level 2 detonation cypher, so it should take longer to build and require more special components. But some cyphers have effects that don’t increase as the item’s level increases.

Cypher Chronicles, vol. 26-2018

We said good-bye to our Invisible Sun narrative, The Raven Wants What You Have, with our final live show last week, and it was the perfect send-off for me. The narrative packed a ton of honest emotion, and I felt myself grow as a roleplayer and storyteller as it went along. The Raven Wants What You Have was also the first project that had me working in person with the Seattle team and Bear Weiter!

Shaking Up Your Followers

Follower (noun): someone that a character has inspired (or asked) to come work with them or assist them for an extended period. The concept of followers has been part of Numenera since its inception.

Cypher Chronicles, vol. 25-2018

Black Cubes have been summoned in North America! Loads of North American Kickstarter backers have summoned and received their Black Cubes, and we are thrilled they are loving them! If you’d like to follow along as folks share their experiences unboxing their Black Cubes, join the Facebook fan group Invisible Sun Vislae Portal.

Cypher Chronicles, vol. 24-2018

Charles and Darcy are at Origins Game Fair, showing off the Black Cube of Invisible Sun and wonderful GMs are demoing our Numenera Free RPG Day adventure, Ashes of the Sea by Sean Reynolds. Lots of new people are meeting the Cypher System Worlds, Gods of the Fall, Unmasked, and Predation (up for an Origins award along with Expanded Worlds and Vurt by Ravendesk Games!).

Smoothing Out the Rules

One of the things we wanted to do while updating the Numenera corebook to Numenera Discovery and Numenera Destiny was to take a hard look at some of the rough spots in the game. We knew there were things that worked fine as they were but could work a little better, and things that were rarely-used corner cases that could be streamlined. Bruce and I did a read-through of the book looking for these rules and then spent some time thinking about how we could smooth them out, making them easier...