Monte Cook's Blog, page 56

Cypher Chronicles, vol. 23-2018

Ooh! I Know! What If We Called Our Trucking Company T Rex???

Numenera Salvaging and Crafting

Which came first, the Wright—a type begging for an interlocking crafting subsystem to support their play—or a salvaging and crafting system crying out for a character type custom designed to use it? It might seem like the former, but it’s actually the latter. The truth is, any character can craft numenera devices if they have a plan and the right components.

Cypher Chronicles, vol. 22-2018

Playing with your dinosaur companion in the hot summertime–is there anything more Chicagoan? All that’s missing is the deep dish. Today Darcy reveals her embarrassing dragon collection, we play No Thank You, Evil!

Numenera Callouts and Compatibility

When we first starting talking about creating Numenera Destiny and Numenera Discovery, we agreed that we wouldn’t make these new corebooks unless we could find a way to make them backwards compatible with Numenera supplements. We didn’t want players to have to buy new versions of books that they already owned. Mostly, making the new corebooks work smoothly with the existing supplements was easy.

Cypher Chronicles, vol. 21-2018

You can get Cypher Chronicles, and other MCG news, delivered right to your inbox! Enter your email address and click the Subscribe button in the right-hand column, and you’ll never miss a post. You can also suggest topics for Cypher Chronicles by emailing us at cychron (at) montecookgames (dot) com.

The Pros of Cons: Making the Most of Conventions with Your Family

One of my favorite parts of attending gaming conventions is interacting with families—kids are so enthusiastic about the games that they love, and it’s heartwarming to watch parents and kids sharing their passions with each other. If you haven’t yet taken the con plunge with your family, it might be time! Conventions are becoming more family-friendly every year—and more and more families are enjoying the adventure of a convention together.

Giving Players More Choices

Numenera Discovery was an opportunity for the designers to take a hard look at Numenera player characters with a more experienced eye. We had observed the Numenera types in play for years, had designed new types for The Strange, Predation, Gods of the Fall, and the Cypher System Rulebook, and knew that we wanted to take all we’d learned and apply it to Numenera. In particular, we wanted to give players more choices for their characters.

Cypher Chronicles, vol. 20-2018

You can get Cypher Chronicles, and other MCG news, delivered right to your inbox! Enter your email address and click the Subscribe button in the right-hand column, and you’ll never miss a post. You can also suggest topics for Cypher Chronicles by emailing us at cychron@montecookgames.

You’ve Got Bee Mail: No Thank You, Evil! Is Live On Kickstarter

Buckle up in your beemobile, friends–we’re going back to Storia and we’re taking lots of new folks with us! Our Kickstarter to reprint No Thank You, Evil! is now live and ready for both new folks and existing Storia adventurers to enjoy.

Player Intrusions

From the earliest days of Numenera, people asked, “Why are there GM intrusions and not player intrusions?” I felt, at the time, that GM intrusions were a story tool, and in Numenera, the GM was responsible for things like that. But the players are as much a part of the crafting of the story as the GM, and if a GM intrusion can make a floorboard beneath the PC’s foot snap, then sometimes a floorboard should break beneath the foot of an NPC.