The Cypher System from Monte Cook Games is one of the most versatile tabletop role-playing game rulesets. The Cypher System Rulebook, first released in 2015, provides guidelines for games focused on superheroes, fantasy adventurers, post-apocalyptic survivors, and even world-hoppers who can move between genres. But that level of choice can also feel intimidating.
“The Cypher System Rulebook is for GMs,” Monte Cook Games senior designer Bruce Cordell told Polygon in a Zoom interview. “It doesn’t let players just jump in and say ‘I want to play this type [of character].’ You have to do a lot of finagling, a lot of work. Which is fine for our players, and it’s been fine for over 10 years, but we decided […] it would be nicer if we could just get players started playing more quickly.”
Monte Cook Games is running a Backerkit campaign through Sept. 27 for a new version of Cypher divided into a character rulebook and a GM guide. The new setup will offer players pregenerated character builds suited for specific genres and settings like space operas, crime thrillers, and gritty post-apocalyptic landscapes. Breaking down the rules that way has also made it easier for the designers to drill down on individual subgenres.
“It gives you more leeway to write a specific power for that specific type of world,” Cordell says.
Veteran players can still build characters in the old modular way, and the number of subgenres presented provides flexibility even for the pre-gen characters. That means that, say, an occult investigator will be just as compatible with the rules of a game focused on cosmic horror as one set in a world of superheroes.
Players won’t even need the whole character rulebook to make and play their characters. Monte Cook Games is also developing a series of zines focused on fantasy, science fiction, and “real world” settings — that last one could encompass horror stories, or anything else set in a world much like our own. Each zine will cover that genre’s section of the rulebook. Priced at $10 each — which includes a PDF — the zines are meant to make it easy and affordable for everyone in a given game to have their own rulebook on hand. There isn’t currently a way to just buy the digital version of the zines, but a PDF of the full Cypher Character Rulebook is $19.
The base mechanics for the Cypher System originated with the 2013 publication of Monte Cook’s Numenera, a game set in a fantastical far future where players seek out lost lore in the form of cyphers, expendable items with strange powers. Cyphers remain a core part of the system in the new edition, but now, they’re mostly abstract boons that can represent a bit of luck or a moment of inspiration that players can earn over the course of a session.
“The farther we went from Numenera to other settings, the harder it became to jam that idea in,” Cordell says. “It works out great for a magic world where you’re finding potions and scrolls all the time, but when you get into more real-world or science-fiction-type settings where I can just build a laser gun or a communicator or whatever, what does a cypher really mean in that context?”
Cyphers were always meant to be add-on short-term options for players — tools that kept the gaming experience dynamic, but didn’t need to be balanced for continual use. In Numenera, players needed to scavenge for new cyphers, and might miss them if they didn’t succeed on an ability check. Turning cyphers into boons that characters automatically earn when they rest further encourages players to use those resources regularly, since they can count on getting them back. Activating cyphers is also a free action now, so players don’t have to balance their cypher effects against their regular powers in a fight, a rules update first introduced in the 2024 Magnus Archives Roleplaying Game.
GMs looking for inspiration for player loot can add a 100-card Cypher Deck to their Backerkit purchase, and draw from that deck and hand the card to a player instead of rolling on one of the corebook’s random tables of cyphers. The decks serve the same purpose as cards used in Daggerheart and the new Dungeons & Dragons starter set Heroes of the Borderlands, providing players with an easy reminder of what their temporary power does, instead of requiring them to write it on their sheet, then erase the information soon after. Monte Cook Games is also making a Tarot-sized Divination Deck that GMs can use for inspiration on anything from a session’s plot to an NPC’s personality.
“We have a lot of fun when we play our in-person games, passing out cards,” Cordell says. “It resonates with a lot of the game designers at our company, and we’re hoping it will resonate with folks out there.”
The new rule set tweaks the way damage works so that it doesn’t automatically reduce characters’ physical attributes, since Cordell said that mechanic frustrated many players. Beyond that change, the new books will be compatible with the 2015 rules. Monte Cook Games is welcoming new players to the fold by giving all backers a collection of nearly 30 PDFs, including the original Cypher System Rulebook and supplements focused on scenarios ranging from Weird Western to fairy tales to cyberpunk to a time-travel trip to the Cretaceous era. (There’s a full list on the Backerkit page.)
Cypher’s popularity exploded in 2023, as the fallout in gaming circles over the proposed changes to the D&D Open Gaming License led to a spike in interest in other TTRPG systems: Monte Cook chief operating officer Charles Ryan told Polygon in 2023 that the company experienced three years’ worth of sales in just a few weeks. Cordell says he hopes the new edition will help build on that momentum, even as a new wave of tariffs continues to cause uncertainty. Monte Cook Games’ crowdfunding campaign has already raised more than $600,000.
“I would say that the general uncertainty that came into this world at the beginning of this year just ran through the whole RPG community in a weird sort of way, and it’s something that we have to keep an eye on. But kind of like how the stock market is still going up even in the face of inflation, I guess hope wins out. We had the best Gen Con ever, the best presence, the best sales,” he says. “Unless something even more horrible happens, there’s every reason to have continued optimism, because things are going well.”
The Backerkit campaign for the next edition of the Cypher System runs through Sept. 27.
