KantCon convention sponsor Monte Cook Games to bring one ruleset to rule them all

By Brendan Howard

Folks who get into the tabletop role-playing game hobby, if they go deep enough and grow creative enough, often follow two paths.

One way is, creating a universe of fantasy or sci-fi or magic of their own—full of unique characters and creatures, places and politics—to play inside, instead of someone else’s created world. The other way is, creating a system of rules that match the style of play they most like.

For the rule-makers, sometimes that one great system for that one game is not enough. They continue in their quest for the holy grail: a ruleset so flexible that the same system can be used for Star Wars-like space opera, hard sci-fi, Hobbit-like fantasy, superheroes, postapocalyptic Earth—whatever.

At Monte Cook Games, created by the titular famous game designer, they’ve done both. The same company that created one of the most successful crowdfunding campaigns for Numenera—a deeply fleshed-out science-fantasy world set a billion years in the future—also created the Cypher System, a ruleset that let tabletop role-playing-game players and storytellers generate heroes, enemies, settings, and encounters for games in any kind of world.

Numenera is still going today, and Charles Ryan, partner and COO at Monte Cook Games—who, along with Cook himself, has experience designing and publishing games as well as work at the home of Dungeons & Dragons, Wizards of the Coast—said that the very latest version of Cypher System rulebook will be getting demo-ed before publication at KantCon July 16-19 at the Overland Park Convention Center.

That rulebook is “at the press right now,” Ryan said. In its latest version, the team spells out more clearly how to put to use the wide-ranging rule options (all built on a simple question of task difficulty from 1 to 10) in worlds as varied as fantasy, sci-fi, superhero, and modern-day settings.

“So, for example, if you want to ratchet up the tension in a horror game, [Cypher has] a mechanic to create worse consequences for people every time they try to do something and roll the dice,” Ryan said. “But we wanted to watch out for having a different subsystem of rules for every way you’d resolve something for every kind of game.”

That means there’s a balance between creating new rules for specific game settings and fitting every rule into the same pattern. This is the tension of any ruleset that promises to cover all the possible characters, settings, and experiences that tabletop RPGs can cover.

The appeal of repeated use and growing familiarity with a ruleset like Cypher is perfect for some people, and less perfect for others, Ryan said.

“There are game out there that use mechanics that are just perfect for what they do, and they do it really well,” Ryan said, calling out some horror-themed titles like Dread or Ten Candles. “But knowing a system inside and out allows you to take your vision and really make the most of it.”

Whether you’re new to tabletop RPGs, or curious about the Cypher System in particular, or an RPG veteran who wants to see under the hood of the company’s latest version of its most popular ruleset, you can find it all in Monte Cook Games-sponsored events (some with Ryan himself) at this year’s KantCon July 16-19 at the Overland Park Convention Center.

Brendan Howard is a freelance podcaster, writer, and editor based in Olathe, Kansas. He was recently ordained as a rabbi by the Jewish Spiritual Leaders Institute in New York City. His podcast is brendanhoward.podbean.com.