Your Best Game Ever!

CSR Is Out Now; More Cool Stuff Is on the Way
over 6 years ago – Wed, Oct 02, 2019 at 02:51:21 AM

The Subtle Cypher Deck is coming, along with Cypher Shorts. And a new adventure. But first:

The Cypher System Rulebook is now out in the wild, and we couldn’t be happier with the reception. Check out just a taste of the reviews and feedback we’ve seen:

• “If you liked Cypher before, especially as a GM, you’ll love it now.” (Also: “The PDF is a fricken masterpiece!”)
• “A monumental and inspired effort to make what was brilliant, transcendent.”
• “Reading through the revised Cypher System Rulebook and the Abilities chapter is everything I ever wanted and more!”
• And here’s a really in-depth look from the fine folk at Cypher Unlimited.

If you didn’t get the CSR as one of your rewards, you should check out this award-winning, critically acclaimed game engine that makes it easy to run any campaign—in any genre—that you can imagine. You can download a big, FREE sample of the book here.

But of course, the Cypher System Rulebook isn’t everything we’ve been working on. Here’s a rundown on other bits and pieces coming your way:

• The Cypher System Character Portfolio launched with the new CSR. If this isn't part of your rewards, check it out. We all tend to focus on rulebooks and supplements when we think about RPG products, but items like the Character Portfolios are really handy and, for a small investment, add so much to your game!

• Our Gen Con adventure for the Cypher System, Castaway, will be available at the MCG Shop this week. This title isn’t a Kickstarter reward, but if you’re looking for something fun to play with your new Cypher System Rulebook, this is a gripping, fast-paced standalone adventure, or a great way to kick off an entire sci-fi campaign.
• Speaking of adventures, the Cypher Shorts PDF will launch next week. If you’re getting all the PDF rewards, this will be among them.
• The Subtle Cypher Deck is the next print reward. It has completed production, crossed the seas, and is now in North America—somewhere. We expect it to reach our warehouse within another week or so, and we’ll begin fulfillment at that time.
•  The Stars Are Fire goes to press tomorrow!
•  Stay Alive!, the massive horror sourcebook and campaign setting, has completed editing, and is headed into layout this week. It won’t be too long before it heads to press, too!

Finally, a note on the Your Best Game Ever audiobook. We’d hoped to get this to you very shortly after the launch of Your Best Game Ever—in fact, all the recording and editing work was done back in July. However, we’ve spent the last two months grappling with Amazon and Audible (owned by Amazon) to get the audiobook set up. To make a long story short: perhaps you’ve heard that Amazon has had problems recently with counterfeit vendors. We were victims of ISBN piracy, in which one of those unscrupulous vendors used our ISBN (the ten-digit number you see along with a bar code on the back of every book) for their product. That messes up our ability to set up products on Amazon (and hence Audible). It’s almost all straightened out now, and when it finally is, we’ll make the audiobook available immediately.

It’s been an exciting few months for this campaign, getting so many big rewards out the door (many of them well ahead of schedule!). There’s more reward goodness to come in the next few months, too!

Cypher System Rulebook Is Shipping! (Along with Character Portfolios)
over 6 years ago – Thu, Sep 12, 2019 at 11:14:40 PM

It took a week or two longer than we had hoped, but the Cypher System Rulebook and the Cypher System Character Portfolios are fulfilling now. More on that—and a free product that extends Your Best Game Ever, and news about The Stars Are Fire—in a second. But first, if it’s not too intrusive, we’d like to let you know about something else we have going on.

Numenera is our science-fantasy roleplaying game of exploration and discovery in Ninth World—earth a billion years in the future, where the ultra-tech remnants of prior-world civilizations are indistinguishable from magic to the earth’s current inhabitants. The Numenera: Liminal Shores Kickstarter is funding a bunch of really cool supplements. If you’re a Numenera fan—or even just Numenera-curious—you don’t want to miss it. If you haven’t gotten into Numenera, there are a couple of backer levels that make it easy to jump in! More on what a great deal the Kickstarter offers below, but for now let’s get back to the Cypher System.

The CSR and Character Portfolios Are Shipping Now!

If those titles are among your rewards, you should have received an email today letting you know that they’re now available for redemption. (Missed the email? No problem. Log into your account in the MCG Shop, go to your Account page, and click on Coupons. Click each coupon to add the item to your cart. Add them all before checking out.)

This is just one part of a big batch of fulfillments happening this week, so if you find the website a bit slow, that’s why. We also anticipate that shipping will back up a bit, so we appreciate your patience if your shipment gets out the door a little more slowly than usual.

Some Bonus Content We’ve Made Available for Free

This week we released a new PDF product that you, backers of Your Best Game Ever, helped bring to life even if it wasn’t a part of the Kickstarter plan.

Sean Reynolds was recently working on Stay Alive!, the horror-themed sourcebook you funded during this Kickstarter campaign. He was delving into the many subgenres of horror, some of which can get a little squicky. And that can pose a challenge, because what’s enjoyable to some players may be actually horrific (not in the good way) to others. Some people might love a horror game that involves tracking down creepy cultists, but find a game that involves body horror repulsive. My own gaming group includes a player who’d love an adventure that pitted the players against a traditional vampire, finds zombies boring, and is a literal arachnophobe—spiders, real or imagined, are simply Not Fun for them, ever. Horror often delves into psychological or even physical results of abuse, which might not seem much like a game to someone who has suffered actual abuse.

Sean started writing a section on how the gaming group can figure out ahead of time what sorts of topics will be fun for all, and which might ruin game night for some of the players. But there was a lot to discuss, extending even beyond horror games. The section became a chapter, and the chapter became too big for the book. So instead of including it in Stay Alive!, we pulled it into its own product and released it this week, for free!

Consent in Gaming builds on the sort of good advice you find in Your Best Game Ever, and gives your group the tools to tackle challenging or awkward content with confidence, knowing that everyone in the group feels good about where the game is going. You can get it for free right now!

The Stars Are Fire is Headed for Press!

The next title from this Kickstarter is The Stars Are Fire, the science-fiction sourcebook for the Cypher System. It’s in final proofing now, and goes to the printer within the next week or so. We should be fulfilling it to you next month. Here’s a sneak peek at a bit of art, including one side of the poster map that you added to the book as part of a stretch goal.

How Good a Deal is Numenera: Liminal Shores?

We Have the Cypher System Rulebook and Character Portfolios!
over 6 years ago – Fri, Aug 30, 2019 at 02:46:00 AM

Look what has reached our warehouse!

The new Cypher System Rulebook is in, and boy howdy, is it magnificent! At 448 pages, this is the biggest single book we’ve ever produced, and you can tell just by hefting it. We’re really pleased with how this book is organized, and all the new content and ideas it introduces to the Cypher System—without making substantive changes to the game that would require you to alter your campaign or characters. You are going to love it!

Speaking of loving it . . .

This is the Cypher System Character Portfolio, which also hit our warehouse in recent days. We love them so much that we’ve already started copying our characters over into them. They’re made with heavy matte paper that takes both pencil and eraser easily, and they have loads of room to track everything you do with a regular character sheet, plus take notes, draw maps, keep a campaign journal, and so on. Our Art Director Bear, working with Monte, did a fantastic job on these, with lots of clever ideas to make them user-friendly and convenient.

We’ll start fulfilling these very soon. If the Cypher System Character Portfolio and the new Cypher System Rulebook are among your rewards, look for them to be ready to head your way within the next week or so!

Look at This Deck Box

Why talk about a Numenera Deck Box in an update for this campaign? Well, I (Charles) happen to run a Cypher System campaign, and I absolutely love the Numenera Deck Box. Watch the video and you’ll see why.

The Numenera Deck Box won’t be available until October, but you can win a copy. (And not just that: the prize also includes a copy of the deluxe version of the Numenera corebook set, and enough decks to fill the Deck Box!) Entering to win is easy—there are ten ways to do it, and the more you do, the better your chances! You can enter here.

An AMA with Monte and the Design Team

Got questions about the Ninth World? Is there anything you’ve ever wanted to ask Monte (or anyone on the MCG design team) about Numenera—or anything else? We’re holding an AMA live by video next week, and you’re invited! Join us on the MCG Twitch channel Thursday, September 5th, at 7 p.m. EDT to talk to Monte and the design team live!

An Advance Look at the Cypher System Rulebook
over 6 years ago – Wed, Aug 14, 2019 at 11:55:14 PM

Your Best Game Ever reached game stores everywhere—and made its Gen Con debut—recently, and the reception has been fantastic. More on that in a moment, but first, here’s some great Cypher System Rulebook (CSR) news.

First, the CSR is on press now. In fact, it’s nearing the end of the production process, and we expect it to be headed our way from the printer within the next week or two. Fulfillment should begin around the end of August, if everything continues on course.

(The Cypher System Character Portfolios are on the exact same schedule, so they’ll fulfill soon, too!)

Second, you can get a sneak peek at the CSR now. We’ve just added a free preview to the preorder page on the MCG Shop. Jump on over and download it!

Your Best Game Ever at Gen Con

The street date for Your Best Game Ever was just before Gen Con, so we brought the book to the show where it had a terrific reception. We took a very generous quantity with us, and just about sold out—we returned home with only a few copies. Monte and the MCG creative team, along with many of the consulting experts and cartoonists, were at Gen Con and dropped by the MCG booth and our Evening with MCG event Thursday night to autograph copies and chat with fans.

Your Best Game Ever, GM Notebook, and Player Notebook on the MCG Shop and DriveThruRPG

Do you know anyone who missed the Kickstarter, but would enjoy Your Best Game Ever, the Player Notebook, or the GM Notebook? All three are now available on the MCG Shop and at DriveThruRPG, as well as at FLGSs everywhere.

Liminal Shores

We have something new in the works we bet you’ll enjoy. If you like what you see, click through!

Fulfillment is About to Get Started
over 6 years ago – Fri, Jul 12, 2019 at 12:56:26 AM

We have lots of great news about Your Best Game Ever. Fulfillment is about to get started. More on that just below, but first:

Tell Your Friends: Preorders Close Soon!

Preorders for Your Best Game Ever are still open—but only for a few more days. If you have friends who would enjoy or benefit from this book, please let them know. There’s a rockin’ deal on preorders, but once they close next week, that deal is over forever!

Going to Gen Con?

We’ll be there too! And Your Best Game Ever will be brand new (street date for the book is just before Gen Con), so lots of people will be seeing it for the first time. If you’re going to Gen Con, it’s a great chance to get your copy autographed not just by the MCG crew, but also by the many consulting experts and cartoonists who contributed!

And that’s not all: Did you know that Your Best Game Ever author Monte Cook, along with fellow MCG designer Shanna Germain, is a Gen Con Guest of Honor this year?

We have many really cool events, seminars, and games planned for Gen Con. (You really don’t want to miss An Evening with MCG!) You can find all the details at the MCG website.

Numenera and Invisible Sun Are Up for Multiple ENnie Awards!

Voting on the annual ENnie Awards is now open. If you like the work we do, you may be pleased to hear that MCG’s products have been nominated in nine categories! We’re particularly proud of the new Numenera corebooks, as well as Invisible Sun, which is really a watershed product in terms of RPG production and design. Please make your voice heard and vote!

Fulfillment Starts Soon

We have Your Best Game Ever, along with the Player Notebook and GM Notebook, in our warehouse now. Holy cats, they look great—we’re sure you’re going to really love them. We want to start fulfillment as soon as humanly possible, but unfortunately our fulfillment goddess, Tammie, is out sick. Like all of us, she’s super-eager to get the process rolling—it’s taken quite a whammy to keep her away from her desk. It will be the first thing that happens as soon as she can stagger back. Hopefully (for many reasons!) that’s just a matter of a day or two. In the mean time, we’ve been prepacking books in our warehouse, so that once fulfillment begins books can start rolling out the door immediately.

Some Bad News—and Some Good News

We have a problem to report: The essay by the excellent Matt Colville, one of the consulting experts for Your Best Game Ever, was left out of the book. (More accurately, the essay by the also-awesome Ajit George was included twice—once in its proper location, and again where Matt’s should have been.) If you’re a fan of our work, you know that we hold ourselves to a very high editorial standard, and this is not the sort of mistake you find in our products. Nonetheless, somehow this error made its way through our layout, editing, and proofing process, and wasn’t discovered until the print run was completed. It’s nobody’s fault but our own.

We’re going to make sure you have that essay. In the next couple of days we’ll post it to the MCG website for you (and the rest of the world) to read. We also, of course, corrected the PDF version of the book.

Now here’s some good news: You’re getting bonus content. Among the many, many topics we wanted to cover in Your Best Game Ever is writing for publication. Well, we couldn’t fit everything into the book, so that section was cut. Monte still wrote it, though, and we’ve laid it out, polished it up, and you’ll get it as a bonus PDF along with your PDF of Your Best Game Ever. We hope you love it!