Celebrate with Us!
over 9 years ago – Wed, Sep 14, 2016 at 11:37:45 PM

Today we here at Monte Cook Games are celebrating an awesome milestone. Our Kickstarter campaign for Invisible Sun has just surpassed the original Numenera to become the most-funded MCG Kickstarter campaign to date. This evening we passed the $517,256 mark—and we still have two days to go!

To celebrate the $517K milestone, we’re offering our fans a special deal: Get any of the print books originally funded by the Numenera Kickstarter campaign for an amazing 51.7% off at the MCG Shop. If you have any holes in your collection—or if you were part of the original campaign but only got these titles in PDF—this is a great time to get your hands on these great books.

But hurry—this offer is only good for the next 24 hours.

 

And Check Out Invisible Sun—We’re Making Gaming History!

Invisible Sun is an RPG unlike anything that's ever been done—a masterwork game with an amazing, surreal vision, a whole new approach to RPG play, and an incredible production.

This is a game—and a Kickstarter campaign—people will talk about for years. But it's all over in just a few days. Don't miss your chance to be part of gaming history!

 

    

The Invisible Sun Kickstarter ends Friday. We've achieved some amazing stretch goals, and are closing in on even more. Be a part of it. Help make Invisible Sun a reality, and be a part of gaming history!

 

 

 

Character Options 2 goes to Press, and Other Great News!
over 9 years ago – Thu, Aug 18, 2016 at 11:45:26 PM

Hello, Ninth World Kickstarter backers—

Numenera Character Options 2, which you helped fund this time last summer, is at press now. And boy howdy is this a great book!

NCO2, as we call it around here, is full of all kinds of great new options for your Numenera characters—new general, racial, and location-based descriptors, new foci, and for the first time since the Numenera corebook, two new types! The Glint is a master of interaction—making friends, persuading strangers, and even delivering the occasional untruth. Seekers spend their time looking for discoveries. They are resourceful explorers steeped in numenera lore. We think these new types will really add a new dimension to you Numenera campaign, and give you some really cool new ideas.

As we generally do, we’ll have a free preview of Numenera Character Options 2 available well ahead of release—probably the middle of next week. Street date for this title is very late September, but if you’re getting it as a Kickstarter reward, expect your fulfillment email earlier in the month.

Torment: Tides of Numenera—The Explorer’s Guide

Speaking of Numenera titles, this week we launched Torment: Tides of Numenera—The Explorer’s Guide. This 160-page hardcover explores a piece of the Ninth World that isn’t covered in the Numenera corebook or the Ninth World Guidebook—a new area southeast of the Clock of Kala that will be the setting for the forthcoming Torment: Tides of Numenera computer game. Check out the Sagus Cliffs, Garravia, the Forge of the Night Sky, the Eye of the Ocean, the Iridian Expanse, and more. The book includes new creatures, character options, and details about NPCs and other cool elements of the computer game. You can get Torment: Tides of Numenera—The Explorer’s Guide now!

 

Invisible Sun

It’s been a year since the Into the Ninth World campaign, and we have a new Kickstarter going on right now. Whereas Into the Ninth World focused on growing the Numenera universe, this one is something very different.

 

Lorcan made a gun out of demon which fires bullets that only harm possessed people. On his quest to discover the long-forgotten (and perhaps forbidden) number between 12 and 13, the weapon is proving useful as the Enemies of Sleep appear determined to stop him.

Duri’s face is normally a blur of swirling spiritforms, but occasionally she can make one of them manifest, and she gains its appearance and memories. If she risks keeping the new face too long, however, she can lose her identity.

Thom is dead, but he doesn’t let that deter him. While he knows how to restore his life, he chooses not to, because the advantages of being a wraith are many. Of course, he occasionally has issues with not existing.

Rodir has connections all over the city, and she holds a collection of wicked keys that allow her to solve any problem by just creating a keyhole to insert a key, turn it, and see what happens. People don’t appreciate it when she does this to them, but that’s what they get for being in her way.

 

Monte and the rest of us here at Monte Cook Games are super-excited to unveil our next roleplaying game: Invisible Sun. We launched our Kickstarter campaign on Monday, and are really pleased by the enthusiastic response. If you haven’t already, we hope you’ll check it out.

Invisible Sun is a unique game, and not just because of its cool setting, or the depths of mysteries and secrets that surround its magical world. It also introduces and incorporates a whole new mode of play, one that expands the game beyond the game table while at the same time making it easier to incorporate RPG play into the challenging schedules of modern life.

That’s not the only innovation. We’re also introducing the Directed Campaign. What if Monte himself provided you with unique ideas for your campaign? And those ideas came with new artwork, maps, and handouts for your players, and even a few new clues to mysteries in the game besides? And what if, month after month, he kept sending them to you, and occasionally sent physical packages with even more deluxe props and cool stuff for your game? This is an option with Invisible Sun.

And if that’s not enough, check this out:

 

The Invisible Sun Kickstarter campaign itself is different. Like the game, the campaign is full of secrets and revelations. Taking part in the Kickstarter campaign is an experience of its own. Information linked to the campaign reveals mysteries, while our updates shed new light on the different realms of the Invisible Sun cosmology, and contain secrets. There’s an active group on G+ devoted to seeking answers to the mysteries posed by the campaign.

Check out the Invisible Sun Kickstarter for loads more information. We hope you’ll support and enjoy

Iadace!
—Charles

Torment, Gen Con, and Shipping News
over 9 years ago – Wed, Jul 27, 2016 at 06:35:48 PM

Hello, Ninth World Kickstarter backers—

Torment: Tides of Numenera, the highly awaited CRPG, is only months from launch—but it might be a bit closer to your gaming table. We’ve been planning a Numenera sourcebook to cover the new setting and game elements introduced in Torment, well, almost since the original Numenera Kickstarter campaign. That book is Torment: Tides of Numenera—the Explorer’s Guide, and it’s now on press. It will be out in mid-August.

But you don’t have to wait that long to take a peek at it: You can download the free, 22-page preview today. If you like what you see, we’re currently taking pre-orders. Why pre-order? Glad you asked! We have some pre-order only exclusives:

• Pre-order the hardcover, and get the PDF for free.
• Since this book wasn’t crowdfunded, we’re offering some “stretch goals” as part of the pre-order program. As of this writing, we’re closing in on a high-res PDF poster map—and there will be more to come if we hit that goal. (Keep your eye on the MCG Facebook page for updates on this drive.)
• Get it early! The book will be out in mid-August, but we’ll start shipping pre-orders as soon as we’re back from Gen Con.
• Or, if you’re going to Gen Con, pre-order before Thursday (28 July) and you can pick up your copy there. (Just choose Gen Con Pickup as your delivery method when you check out.)

 

So what’s this book all about? Torment: Tides of Numenera is set in a whole new region of the Ninth World. This book details and expands upon the weird and fascinating places, people, and creatures first glimpsed in Torment. Discover secrets of the computer game, and explore its world in greater depth and detail. Incorporate the region and its inhabitants and conflicts, in whole or in part, into your campaign. Maybe even become a castoff or explore the Tides, mysterious forces that can shape human interactions.

 

Ordering Our Stuff from Europe?

We are in the process of setting up a distribution center in the UK to service that country and most of Europe. We expect to be up and running sometime in August. We’ll be able to ship orders from the MCG Shop, as well as most Kickstarter fulfillment items, from this center, significantly reducing the cost of shipping to those customers.

A Quick Note about Maps

We’re getting some questions on this topic, so a quick note: If you added on the rolled poster map set and were saddened to receive a folded map with Into the Night and/or Into the Deep, be not heavy of heart: You get the maps both ways. The folded maps ship with the books, and you’ll also get the rolled maps in a set of all three when they’re all finished.

Gen Con

If you’re heading to Gen Con, be sure to stop by and see us. The MCG booth is number 1935 in the exhibit hall, and we have literally scores of events running in rooms 243 and 244 of the convention center. Don’t miss the MCG Seminar on Saturday at 1:00PM. We have a bunch of other interesting seminars—you can find all the details here.

And as mentioned above, for orders placed on the MCG Shop by Thursday, 28 June, you can choose to pick them up from the MCG booth at Gen Con. But don’t dawdle—that option closes in just a couple of days.

Hope to see you there!

Iadace!
—Charles

Important Shipping News!
almost 10 years ago – Fri, Apr 01, 2016 at 12:39:12 AM

Hello, Ninth World Kickstarter backers—

Today we announced some interesting news on shipping. You can now pick up your rewards at Gen Con, and for European and UK backers, your shipping costs are going down!

Gen Con Pickup

If you are going to Gen Con and would like to pick up your reward there, we are now making that possible. There are a few reasons you might want to do this:

• You live overseas and you’re happy to carry your reward home on a plane, so why pay for shipping? (But UK and EU backers, see below for other great news!)
• You want to get your product autographed, so you’d rather pick it up there than carry it to Gen Con.
• Eh. You’re going to Gen Con. Why not?

Now here are some key caveats: First, we can only deliver books that are out at that point. Good news: that’ll include Into the Deep.

Second, there will be steps involved. For best results, you’ll want to reserve your rewards ahead of Gen Con. If you just show up at the booth without prior arrangements, we probably won’t be able to fulfill your rewards. But don’t worry. We’ll walk you through how to do that—reserving your rewards for Gen Con will be just as easy as getting your rewards shipped.

We’ll have more details before the release of Into the Deep—you don’t have to take any action now. But the bottom line is that if you’d like to pick it up at Gen Con, you’ll be able to.

EU and UK Shipping Is Getting Cheaper!

If you’re in the UK or Europe, we have some more exciting news.

We are in the process of establishing a shipping center in the UK, and we anticipate that it will be in operation within the next couple of months. If you’re in the UK or most of the EU, this could reduce your shipping costs by around half.

It’s possible this will be in time for fulfillment of Into the Deep, though we can’t guarantee it. Of course, if we don’t have it going by then, and you’d rather hold off on fulfilling Into the Deep for a few weeks (to take advantage of these lower rates), that’s fine.

Now, here are some caveats:

• To be super-clear, this news applies only to the UK and most of Europe. It does not affect shipping rates to other overseas destinations. Sorry!
• Unlike most Kickstarter campaigns, the Into the Ninth World campaign ships many rewards over the course of well over a year. This makes our fulfillment process much more complex than that of many campaigns.
• What will your shipping costs be? We’ve crunched a lot of numbers as we’ve prepared for this step, and for most of the hypothetical shipments the cost has been cut by a third to a half. But we can’t definitively guarantee that yet, and actual savings will vary depending on where you are.
• Will our UK center ship to your country? For Britain and the bulk of the EU, the answer is yes. If you’re in an Eastern European country or if you have any doubts, the answer is maybe.
• Because our fulfillment is so much more complex than that of most Kickstarters, there are bound to be some bugs, especially through the first couple of fulfilled products. Of course we’ll do everything we can to reduce them to zero (and we’re pretty good at this stuff).

There are a lot of moving parts to an arrangement like this—technical details behind our web store’s operations, deals for getting our product over the Atlantic, importation and taxation groundwork to lay, and processes to iron out. And most importantly, relationships to build with the partners who are going to be critical to a successful, long-term fulfillment system. By and large, all the big elements are now in place, but the devil often hides in the details. So we’re proceeding cautiously to get everything ironed out before we take this live.

(Oh, and by the way: This new system will extend to orders from the MCG shop. And if you’re backing, or thinking about backing, the Worlds of the Cypher System Kickstarter campaign (ending tomorrow!), we anticipate this will be in place before we ship the first reward.)

We think this is going to be really great, and we hope you do too!

Worlds of the Cypher System Is Great for Numenera!

The Worlds of the Cypher System Kickstarter campaign is centered around three new setting books for use with the Cypher System Rulebook. But it’s also loaded with great stuff you can use in your Numenera campaign. For example:

• The Asset Deck introduces a cool new mechanic that fits perfectly into your Numenera game.
• The NPC Deck helps the GM of any game generate detailed, interesting NPCs in seconds—great during prep and really awesome when you have to come up with an NPC on the fly!
• Every backer gets 10 free glimmers from our assortment of existing titles. That’s $30 or so of free Numenera products, on top of the pledge rewards.
• All three of our setting books have conversion glimmers that make it easy to adapt their content—in whole or part—to Ninth World campaigns.
• Expanded Worlds, a hardcover supplement we’ve added through stretch goals, will contain character options and other rules that will be great for Numenera characters.
• And just to sweeten the pot, every backer gets a $5 gift card for the MCG shop—use it for that Numenera title you’ve been thinking of!

That’s just the stuff that’s directly applicable to a Numenera campaign, but the Kickstarter is absolutely loaded with other great stuff. There’s just 24 hours to go, however, so don’t miss it!

Iadace!
—Charles

Let’s Look Inside Into the Deep !
almost 10 years ago – Tue, Mar 29, 2016 at 04:12:50 PM

Hello, Ninth World Kickstarter backers—

We’re just over a month away from heading Into the Deep! If you’d like a look inside the book, you can now download the free preview! Visit the Island of Undoing, have a look inside the Skelirroth Dredge, and check out the cleoid, a vastly intelligent but hate-consumed creature of the deep, fully statted and ready for use in your game right now!

Just a Few Days Left for Worlds of the Cypher System

Dinosaurs! Gods! Superheroes! The Worlds of the Cypher System Kickstarter is in its last few days! Just like the Into the Ninth World campaign, this one is chewing through the stretch goals. Check out the LOVER OF ALL BOOKS backer level! But don’t dawdle—this incredible deal on a bunch of great Monte Cook Games books ends soon!

Iadace!
—Charles