Three thematically linked hardcover sourcebooks with all new material for the award-winning phenomenon of the Numenera tabletop RPG.
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Break the Horizon Brings This Campaign to Completion!
about 2 years ago
– Wed, Feb 23, 2022 at 10:05:00 PM
Thank you for a fantastic Kickstarter campaign!
Last night we began the fulfillment process for Breakthe Horizon. Hundreds of backers have already downloaded the PDF, and our warehouse is busy right now shipping out Breakthe Horizon in print. If this title is among your rewards, and you haven’t already, check your email for instructions on redeeming your copy. (Didn’t get the email? You can also find instructions here.)
In addition to the Break the Horizon, we're also fulfilling bookplates for those whose rewards include autographs.
This Brings the Numenera: Liminal Shores Campaign to a Close
Long before anything human roamed the Earth, the Appalachians towered tall and menacing. The mountains' might was made a prison and tomb for beings of immeasurable malice and incomprehensible madness. A place to hold them; to keep them, perhaps forever, from dimming the light above.
But time marches inexorably on, and even mountains do not retain their grandeur forever. These hills now lie rounded, the walls of the prison grown thin. Things that slumbered soundlessly for millennia begin to stir and become restless. . .
We’ve really enjoyed bringing you Breakthe Horizon and the other titles you funded through this campaign. Thanks again for supporting it and helping make these books a reality!
The Truth of Names Novella Is Ready for You!
about 2 years ago
– Thu, Feb 17, 2022 at 12:15:50 AM
Iadace explorers of the Ninth World!
It's time to redeem The Truth of Names novella eBook, one of your rewards for backing the Numenera: Liminal Shores Kickstarter!
To redeem your reward, please go to the MCG Shop and log in to your account. From the account page, click Coupons (in the left hand menu) and you will see all of your available redemption coupons (you won't see coupons for any rewards that are still in production). We guarantee a Kickstarter reward will be available for you to redeem for up to a year beyond its release date.
Since we fulfill Kickstarters differently from some creators, we've written an explanatory article complete with screenshots for your reference: How to Claim Your Kickstarter Reward. Please check out the article and bookmark it for your reference.
Break the Horizon (as well as the autographed bookplates for backers at the Autographs and Playtest reward tiers) is shipping to our warehouses now and will be fulfilling very soon (as long as all goes well, watch your inbox next week for a fulfillment notice).
If you have any difficulty with the reward redemption process, or questions about your rewards, please email [email protected] or use the MCG Contact Us page. We respond to messages Monday - Friday from 8 AM - 4 PM ET, except for holidays. We are a small team and your patience when contacting us is greatly appreciated.
This Campaign’s Final Rewards Are Almost Ready!
over 2 years ago
– Tue, Jan 18, 2022 at 08:40:09 PM
Break the Horizon is on press, and we expect it back from the printer in just a couple of weeks or so.
Monte’s novella, The Truth of Names, is in the final editing stages, and we’ll be generating the ebook files in the next few weeks, too. (During the Kickstarter, this book was tentatively titled Yesterday’s Whispers, but it underwent a name change as Monte worked on it.)
We expect to deliver both of these titles to backers in February (as well as the autographed bookplates for all the print books to backers at the Autographs and Playtest reward tiers). And that will bring the Numenera: Liminal Shores campaign to a wonderful conclusion!
Look for your redemption emails for these rewards in a few weeks. In the meantime, here’s a quick peek at the goodness that awaits you inside the covers of Break the Horizon:
Long before anything human roamed the Earth, the Appalachians towered tall and menacing. The mountains' might was made a prison and tomb for beings of immeasurable malice and incomprehensible madness. A place to hold them; to keep them, perhaps forever, from dimming the light above.
But time marches inexorably on, and even mountains do not retain their grandeur forever. These hills now lie rounded, the walls of the prison grown thin. Things that slumbered soundlessly for millennia begin to stir and become restless. . .
Break the Horizon Is on the Horizon!
over 2 years ago
– Sat, Nov 13, 2021 at 01:30:44 PM
Have a look at this:
That’s art for Break the Horizon, the last major reward from this Kickstarter campaign. A hardcover sourcebook focused on vehicles and travel in Numenera, Break the Horizon adds mobility to your campaign and unlocks ever-greater portions of the Ninth World for your campaign to explore.
Break the Horizon is in layout now and goes to press in about a month or so. The book looks spectacular, and we’re really excited about getting it into your hands! In the meantime, here’s more amazing art from this title.
Venture into the Planes for Cypher System or 5e—or The Strange!
A cursed moon hurtles through the multiverse, crashing from one plane to the next, never at rest, forever fleeing a catastrophe that predates existence itself. Behold the Planebreaker!
The Planebreaker visits all planes, all demiworlds, and all dimensions. Gods and demons, angels and mortals, undead and outsiders alike—all eventually see it streak across their realm. Some worlds visited by the moon are known to sages and planar travelers. But in a multiverse stretching across epochs, the number of previously uncatalogued planes is vast. The Planebreaker races through all of them, in time.
Path of the Planebreaker, along with the Planar Bestiary and Planebreaker Player’s Guide, is on Kickstarter now. Explore dozens of new planes, or the enigmatic Planebreaker itself (along with the city of Timeborne, and the Sea of Uncertainty, upon its surface). It’s perfect for high-fantasy campaigns of all levels. And if you happen to play The Strange, it’s a treasure trove of new planes that serve super well as recursions for your campaign—all described in detail, with creatures, cyphers, artifacts, and other elements ready for use in your game. Just back for the Cypher System version!
Making the Most of Vertices—for Any Game!
almost 3 years ago
– Sat, Jul 24, 2021 at 11:30:07 AM
We fulfilled Vertices a few weeks ago, and it goes on sale to the general public late this month. Sean K Reynolds, the lead designer of Vertices, put together some thoughts on using this book not just in your Numenera campaign, but in almost any game you might run. Here’s Sean:
Converting Vertices
One of the things I really like about the Cypher System is that all of the game mechanics work across all settings and genres. I can pick up an adventure for The Strange (which uses the Cypher System), make some tweaks to the story elements, and plug it into a Numenera campaign. Or take a horror one-shot from Stay Alive!, fiddle with it, and use it in a fantasy campaign with Godforsaken. Or take a fantasy one-shot from Godforsaken, change the setting, and use it in The Strange, or Numenera, or a superhero campaign with Claim the Sky.
Of course, the key trick is knowing what story/theme aspects to change in the source material to make it fit in the genre you’re playing.
A trick I use for converting stuff between genres is to think about how to summarize it for the players in a setting-appropriate way. Once I have that summary (whether or not I literally present it to the players), I can use it like a “filter” on the source material, filling in other details or making changes on the fly.
To demonstrate, let’s take an encounter site in Vertices, and re-flavor it for a bunch of different genres. (Spoilers for Vertices ahead!)
The first encounter site in Vertices is called Tando’s Ribs, and in the book, it’s described as:
A ruin resembling the weathered bones of an enormous (possibly humanoid) creature. Portions of the interior create an organic-seeming substance that is nutritious and augments size and physical prowess, with long-term side effects. All creatures in the ecosystem near the structure are affected by it, creating larger, stronger animals of all types, including a large number of yovoki [vicious little humanoids] that live in and near the ruin.
Now here’s what Tando’s Ribs might look like in other genres:
Fantasy or Fairy Tale: A decade ago, the mighty giant hero Tando died in battle against an army of goblins. The goblins ate his flesh and marrow and grew strong, and they built a castle out of his bones. Now in the dark of night, the goblin king makes ready for war, training large beasts to serve his warriors in battle.
Modern: “Diane, 11:15 a.m. I have just finished observing the site the locals call ‘Tando’s Ribs.’ It is a large structure, appearing to be the chest portion of a giant skeleton, but most likely carved out of local stone. I have witnessed small humanoid creatures entering and exiting the structure. Their species is unknown to me and they do not resemble any sort of hominid in our records. I also noticed a deer carcass left behind by a large predator, most likely a bear.”
Science Fiction: FTL DATA TRANSMISSION: Scientific research base, designation TAND-0, at an unusual stone structure located in a jungle biome on an Earthlike planet in the outer rim. Research team studying a colony of local fungi; early reports indicate strong regenerative and growth-augmenting properties. Hostile life forms in the vicinity, including aggressive protosimians, require defensive countermeasures. Last transmission was 146 hours ago, assumption is all hands lost. Send extraction team to recover samples and whatever data can be extracted.
Horror: You’re lost in the woods, hungry and cold. You’re pretty sure there’s some kind of big animal moving around in the dark. The only shelter you’ve found is a weird old abandoned mansion, stockpiled with canned goods and vintage camping gear. It seemed safe at first . . . but it’s starting to feel like you’re being watched.
Superheroes: A strange spacecraft has crash-landed in Central Park! Eyewitnesses report that birds and other animals that spend time near the ship grow to large sizes and become aggressive. Drones with night vision cameras have spotted alien creatures resembling squat mustard-colored humanoids creeping about. Is this a scientific mission from an unknown planet, or the start of an invasion?
Post-Apocalyptic: The village's mayor calls everyone together for an important meeting. “Fellow survivors of the mushroom war! Our scouts have located a ruin containing a huge cache of food. The site is guarded by vicious mutants and radioactive animals. It will be a challenge to secure these supplies, and we expect some casualties, but if successful, your actions will keep our camp alive and healthy for many months.”
Historical: The grizzled colonel chomped on his cigar as he stared at the tired, dirty faces of his soldiers. “Listen up, troops! We just got word from high command about a secret enemy base. They’ve been creating some sort of nutritional supplement to make their soldiers bigger and stronger—literally bigger and stronger. We need to get in there, capture their supplies and any scientists, and make sure that none of this ‘uberfleisch’ gets into their supply chain.”
Armed with this genre filter, you can easily adapt Tando’s Ribs for just about any kind of Cypher System game. The same principle applies if you want to adapt something from another game system, it’s just a bit more work (and requires a reasonable knowledge of both game systems). You could use White Plume Mountain as a supervillain’s base, a Call of Cthulhu adventure in a Numenera game, or a Star Wars planet as a recursion in The Strange.
Hopefully you’ve been inspired to get creative to revisit adventures and sourcebooks and look at them in a new way! If so, let us know what you’d love to adapt for your future games in the comments or on Twitter (@montecookgames and @seankreynolds)—we’d love to hear from you!
And Speaking of Different Game Systems…
The perfect heist.
Getting in, getting out. The disguises. The smooth-talking and careful bluffs. The stealth, the hacking, and—when the moment requires it—the quick action. And above all, the beautiful plan, so carefully researched and crafted.
Oh, you’re good at it. You and your friends, you do the impossible. It’s never as easy as it seems (not like it ever seems easy), but you pull it off—every time. And you look good doing it. Bond? Ocean? Neo? Yeah, they’re OK. You’re the real deal.
Because you’re not just master thieves. You’re master thieves from the future. And better yet: you’re Liars—a special kind of liar, a kind whose lies come true. When you lie to reality, you change it. A door where there wasn’t one before. A lock someone forgot to check. A guard who looks away at just the right moment, or a getaway car that somehow goes just a little bit faster than it can. If the mission isn’t going right, you fix it. You change the rules. You take control of reality itself. And your lies always work.
And that’s good. Because you aren’t the only liars out there.
Someone else is telling lies, and they’re big ones. Like, end-of-the-world lies. Punching-holes-in-the-universe lies. It’s not clear who they are, what they want, or how they’re doing it. What’s clear is that if you don’t do something, it’s all over. As in, all over.
Who’d have guessed you’d be the ones saving the universe? But hey, you always find a way to come out ahead, and this is no different. Because it turns out that each time you fix a little bit of reality, you get to take a touch of its essence for your own uses—and it’s powerful stuff. Grabbing that essence and making it your own? We call that…
Stealing Stories for the Devilis a fast-paced tabletop roleplaying game in which you save existence as we know it by bending reality to carry out the perfect heist.
