Monte Cook Talks About The Evolution Of Cypher System
The core three books of the next generation of Cypher System: Character Rulebook, GM’s Guide and Bestiary.
Monte Cook Games
In 2013, Monte Cook Games launched a Kickstarter for Numenera, a science fantasy role playing game set in a beautiful and deadly world billions of years in our future. It became one of the biggest successes of the early era of crowdfunding. Monte Cook Games would go on to create several fan favorite games such as the surreal magic and mystery of Invisible Sun to games based off of popular podcasts like Old Gods of Appalachia and The Magnus Archives.
The system that’s powered many of those games, Cypher System, has also been offered as a toolset for Game Masters to build their own worlds. Now the company is looking to sharpen up those tools with a new evolution and printing currently crowdfunding. I spoke with Monte Cook, Lead Designer and Creative Director of Monte Cook Games, about the process behind revamping his company’s signature game system,
“Hopefully it won’t come as a shock that we all play a lot of Cypher [System],” said Cook. “Game designers like to tinker with the games they’re playing–it can’t really be helped. So basically, over the years, we’ve just experimented with some changes, or encountered problems we wanted to solve, and finally realized it was time to do something with those ideas.”
Cypher System was built as a stepping stone between classic RPGS and ones with a more modern narrative style. Character are built using a single phrase and that phrase contains all the rules bits, abilities and story connections the players need to get started. One of the strengths of the game is the ease and quickness of making characters and the new editon looks to streamline the process even further.
“I like to think of Cypher as a bridge between rules-focused rpgs and more narrative, story-focused rpgs,” said Cook. “If you’re coming from a game like D&D, you’ll find a framework in Cypher that is familiar enough to be comfortable. However, as you play–and particularly as you GM–you’ll see the story-focused nature becomes more and more prominent. In my experience, focusing more on the story is appealing to a lot of players, and yet Cypher doesn’t go so far in that direction that we leave behind the folks who enjoy interacting with the mechanics.”
Whenever a game prints a new edition, there’s always a little friction between players who enjoy the changes and ones who are afraid that all the books they’ve invested in no longer work with the new rules. The rules light nature of Cypher System means not a lot is changing on that side of the game.
“Things remain mostly backward compatible with past supplements and adventures,” said Cook. “Mostly, that’s because the rules “footprint” in those products is very light. Cypher is designed to be very easy to run, so NPCs and creatures might just have a level, and that hasn’t changed. So a foe that is level 3 and can teleport a long distance is the same in either edition.”
One of the biggest changes is implimenting a wound system for characters. Earlier editions drained points from player pools which had the chance to lock players into a death spiral of having less resources to avoid getting hurt more. The new system aims for a more cinematic treatment of wounds that will offer danger but not cause players despair.
“As a visual, story-loving designer,” said Cook, “I like to start with an image or scene in my head and then figure out how to make that work at the table in an easy and fun way. For example, while working on the new wounds system for PCs, I imagined what taking a wound looks like and what the implications of it were, in various genres, and then shaped the rules to make them work so that in your game, that’s what you’d experience. So it would feel right in the story.”
The new rules are also built to make the Game Masters job easier. By expanding to three core books, this edition has more examples, advice and discussion for any aspiring world builder. Monte Cook Games has some great worlds to play in, but the best ones are built at the table.
This commitment to strange new worlds extends to one of the recently unlocked stretch goals. Backers have unlocked a new edition of The Strange, a genre hopping game where characters shift as they leap between worlds. One week they might be fantasy warriors, the next the players might be space monks.
The Cypher System has a series of genre books that offer deeper dives on everything from epic fantasy to superheroes. These books offer new rules, genre discussion and recommend media for players and Game Masters to watch for inspiration. For example, Rust and Redemption gave me some great ideas for an upcoming Car Wars campaign I want to run, while High Noon at Midnight has a lot of fascinating weird western inspiration.
“In the past, Cypher has been sort of a toolbox for creating characters, but you had to do a lot of the work yourself,” said Cook. “The tools were all there to make the character you wanted to play, but you had to understand how to build the right scaffolding to put all the elements together you wanted for the finished character. If think they’ll like the fact that we’ve done that work for you, and found a method to present the options in a genre-focused way. For example, it used to be that you had to take the warrior type and sort of mold it into a raging barbarian or a roguish starpilot, depending on what you needed. Now, we just present a barbarian and a starpilot (and dozens of others). But you still flesh get to it out in your own unique way by adding descriptors and foci, so you end up with a charming barbarian that wields two weapons or a sneaky starpilot that commands mental powers.”
Cypher System Evolved is on BackerKit through September 26th, 2025. Backer access is expected later this year with a full release aimed at Q2/Q3 of 2026.