Player Perspectives is a regular column penned by guest writers—players of Numenera, The Strange, and the Cypher System.
I have played a lot of games in my life. Tabletop, videogames, etc. When I first saw what was proposed for Monte Cook’s game Numenera, back in 2012, my breath was taken away. It seemed as if Monte, with the help of artist Kieran Yanner, had tapped directly into the missing sweet spot for my tastes. And after it was released and as the product lines have grown, my initial instinct was proven correct.
You may know me as one of the hosts of Transmissions from the Ninth World podcast (twice ENnie nominated). Or as the founder of the Ninth World Hub website, the first community site built around Numenera (now transformed into the CypherCast Hub). Or you may have heard me as one of the hosts of the Translating the Strange podcast (also ENnie nominated). Or maybe you’ve seen my name as publisher of the CypherCaster Magazine. Maybe we’ve even met in the Monte Cook Games booth at Gen Con during the past three years. My point is, I’ve sought many ways to support these games that I love and the people who produce them.
You see, through these projects I have had the fortune to meet the people of MCG and a great many of their other fans. The people behind Monte Cook Games are awesome. And they love their fans. I have seen on many occasions them going far above and beyond in order to support their fans. You can see that in the way they build their product lines (for example, player’s guides that have everything a player would need but nothing that a GM with a corebook doesn’t already have), run their Kickstarter campaigns, and host at conventions.
MCG has worked to cultivate their community too. They have built programs like their Asset Team to further the spread of the game and to elevate and encourage passionate people. They go farther than many game companies I’ve seen to reach out and make diversity and inclusion a real focal point. When called out for a portion of their work seeming to not reflect those values, they sorted through angry voices and instead found those speaking about how things could be done better. And they took it a step further and reached out to authors reflective of that community to build a better product.
The people that are drawn to this game seem to be the most extraordinary fans; Passionate, caring, supportive. I found that these are people I want to surround myself with as much as possible. It drew me further into wanting to do more. I would say that now, a large percentage of who I would immediately identify as my friends are folks I met through the Cypher System community. We chat online frequently, meet up for online games, and even collaborate on projects.
Those projects are a big part of how I continue to support the Cypher System community. Apart from friends who have produced their own licensed projects, there were many who were just posting things via their own blogs or various websites, like Michael Fienan’s TheNinthWorld.com.
That led to the inspiration for the creation of the CypherCast Network. With the number of podcasts and websites already in place, it made sense to create an umbrella organization, something that these and other creative outputs could be collected under. We formed the CypherCaster Magazine, the unofficial Cypher System digital magazine, to give a venue for people to share articles and adventures that they created. And we’ve already produced four issues packed with Cypher System goodness.
I hope to continue for many years to be involved with Monte Cook Games in whatever way they and you will have me. I consider supporting the games as fulfilling (if not sometimes more) than my real life job. If you have ideas on how to support or become further involved in the Cypher System fan community, let me know if there’s anything I can do to help you get started or maybe I can help you find a home for it. We’ve built a very open community of fans surrounding these games and you should know that if you care about them to you are very welcome to join us. There’s plenty of room for everyone who has an open heart and an open mind.
Iadace!
