Announcing Numenera!
I’m very proud to announce that next summer, I will be releasing a brand new roleplaying game called Numenera. The game system behind Numenera, called the Cypher System, is designed to be very simple to play and in particular to run as a GM, allowing the focus to be on role-playing, action, stories, and ideas. Numenera will be released under the Monte Cook Games banner.
Numenera’s setting is Earth, a billion years in the future, after eight great civilizations have risen and fallen. Thus, the setting is also called the Ninth World. The PCs are part of a new civilization rising in the Ninth World, hoping to forge its own destiny. But they must do so amid the remnants of a remarkable and in many ways unknowable past. The ancient peoples of prior eras mastered nanotechnology, interstellar travel, cosmic engineering, genetic engineering, and far stranger things. If the people of the Ninth World think of such things as magic, who are we to blame them?
To learn more, please check out the new Numenera site we’ve created. Also, come to my panel at GenCon, Thursday the 16th from 2 PM to 4 PM. I’ll be talking all about Numenera (and other things) and probably divulging all too much info. I’ll be doing similar panels at FanExpo Canada in Toronto and at DragonCon in Atlanta.
Numenera will be released as a full-color rulebook/setting book as well as an ebook. There will also be a very short ebook of just the rules. Numenera will be supported with a character generator tool as an app for phones and tablets, and an app that will contain all of the rules for easy reference.
To raise money needed for art, development, editing, and printing, I will be launching a Kickstarter in the next week or so. Contributors will get access to some very special rewards that won’t be available elsewhere. If the Kickstarter goes well, it will hopefully allow me to not only create Numenera, but to follow it up with a line of support products.
This is an exciting new journey for me. I hope you’ll come along for the ride.
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Great news! I wish you all the best luck with this project, Mr. Cook! Sounds great!
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Which civilization is our era? 3rd? 1st?
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That’s actually left a bit of an intentional mystery in the setting.
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At 1 Billion years in the future I can imagine our world being the -9542nd great Civilization. Hell, we haven’t even colonized Mars yet.
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Hi Monte, wish you the best luck with thid new game, I´m already looking forward to have a copy of it in my shelve, and one more book for to sign when you come back!
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This sounds awesome Monte. Can’t wait to play some sessions of Numenera.
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Awesome! Can’t wait to see it and good luck with your Kickstarter!
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Awesome! I definitely plan to be a part of your Kickstarter campaign:)
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Thanks, everyone, for your time and interest. I hope you’ll really like the game.
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I love the logo design, and I’m getting very interested on the game mechanics.I really really hope that I have the chance to help out with the crowd funding. I want to play this game.
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I can’t wait for next summer…how long have you had this idea brewing?
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Hey Monte this looks extremely appealing. Have you given any thought to if you will release it under any sort of OGL?
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Oh Monte! The art previews are really nice! And i’m nodding to every aspect of the game system so far. Easy to GM? Count me in! Eager to kickstart it!
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Very very excited Monte. I own every Malhavoc Press product you ever put out (and a copy of Ptolus signed by you!) and I can’t wait to see another independent release by you.
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Wow! It’s amazing. Another RPG to take my attention and as Caco says looking for a space in my shelve.
Sucess Monte and I have one question, did you have some inspiration on Jack Vance’s Dying Earth novels to write Numenéra?
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Is there a meaning behind this name? I find it a bit odd. Is it related to numeral?
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I’d assume it is related to the concept of Numen: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numen
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It is.
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The name is oddly similar to Numeria, the country on Golarion where there’s a crashed spaceship – and therefore also a mix of sci-fi and fantasy genres – was that intentional?
And when can we get to playtest this? Will you have any sort of open playtest and/or beta? If not, do you need any local Seattle playtesters who aren’t industry professionals? I read you ran a playtest at Mox Cafe, and I’m in Ballard if you need any playtesters.
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No. I don’t know where the Golorian name originated from, but I’ll be writing about where “Numenera” came from and why–although people right here in the comments section are already on some of the right tracks.
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I love the art, good luck with the Kickstarter Monte.
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I love the idea, and it’s a campaign setting I’ve been dying for. Once you start your Kickstarter, I’m going to be all over it.
One small suggestion though? Don’t say “a billion years in the future”. Specific numbers like that can cause problems (with astro-physics and geology, especially, not to mention biology). Far better to make the actual date “a bit of an intentional mystery in the setting” to avoid those kinds of nit-picks.-
Obviously a “billion years” isn’t a precise number, but I’ve had a lot of fun doing research about what the planet and the solar system will possibly look like in a billion years, and what it would take to make the planet even still habitable in that timeframe, let alone what would happen regarding evolution (and of course, what would happen if science allowed us–or someone long after us–to take control of evolution entirely). I’ll be writing about this extensively in coming months.
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The fact that that billion years will have had real effects, not just being an excuse for making changes to the world geography, is very encouraging! Mind you, it’s what I would expect from Monte.
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Pingback: Monte Cook’s Next thing: Numenera | The RPG Informer
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Sounds great, looking forward to seeing the kickstarter
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New Men Era -> Numenera
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Yes! That’s actually a part of the name thought-process too. I’ll be writing an article about where the name came from and posting it soon.
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That’ll be great.
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As with all the other comments, eagerly awaiting the chance to be a part of the Crowdfunding, seeing your work come to fruition, and having a blast with science-fantasy. Also, I have to say, excellent idea on offering a rules-only version of the material. I love flavour text and the small nuances of a tried-and-true sourcebook, but there’s something to be said, after 12 years of third edition, for a pocket rulebook heh.
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I hope you put a nice world sized sunscreen on Numenera, since in a billon years from now the sun will have a larger output of energy and all the water in the world will evaporate. A bit of star-scale engineering to dim a little the sun could also work.
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Interestingly enough, not only could an advanced civilization modify the sun to save the earth from this fate, but the excesss stellar mass could be put toward other interesting uses.
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Eagerly awaiting this, you’ve just reminded me to take a trip to the used book store to rummage through more classic sci-fantasy. Good luck and have at it sir!
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Awesome. Looking forward to this – already getting a feel of the most engrossing JRPG computer games, the kind that you just can’t put down despite having been playing it for 12 hours straight. The art already is lush, the brief info so far on the setting has me wanting more and it all means my own setting I was creating is going to be dropped so I can await this.
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Count me in. This really resonates with what I’ve been thinking about recently in terms of gaming.
As a side question, you wouldn’t happen to be a fan of Dan Simmon’s Ilium/Olympos books?
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I am! Dan Simmons is one of my all-time favorites!
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Hello Monte and congratulations because the project is going so well.
I know you are still playtesting a few things but some of my players have a couple of questions about the game system, nothing to complex, we already saw that there is somethign akin to classes (templates/archetypes/whatever) but they have a question… does the characters fuction like in D&D with levels that bring new things or as in games like alternity or Mutants & masterminds that experience point and new elvels allow you to buy new things or increase old atributes. I know ou posted a little teaser of it, but they are very adamant on this question.
Thanks
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I’ll be discussing this a lot more in the near future, but for now I’d say… something in between those two options.
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This is blowing my mind in so many ways that it’s like pop rocks have been poured into the top of my head…..Thank you for invigorating the creative juices in ways I hadn’t expected…it teleports me back to a time when I was a kid browsing through Coliseum Books on 57th street (New York) and just feeling my mind expand and tingle while coming upon luscious Frank Frazetta book covers!
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