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Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Monte Cook Games and DriveThruRPG Announce the Cypher System Creator Program (Look Like Another DMs Guild to Anyone Else?)



Looks like the framework developed by WotC and OBS is going to be used by other publishers. DMs Guilds for everybody!

Below is the press release from March 25, 2016 by Monte Cook Games:
Monte Cook Games, LLC, and DriveThruRPG today announced an exciting new program for the licensing and publication of Cypher System-related products. The Cypher System Creator program will allow third-party publishers, including members of the gaming community, to create, publish, and distribute their own Cypher System content at DriveThruRPG and its family of sites. 
Through the Cypher System Creator program, publishers large and small—and even individual gamers—will be able to publish Cypher System related works of any size in PDF format and sell them (or offer them for free) on DriveThruRPG. Anyone who can generate a PDF can become a Cypher System publisher! 
Monte Cook Games will provide a variety of resources for publishers, including logos, templates, and artwork. Publishers will be free to use these resources, although their use isn’t required. 
Publishers may set any price they wish for their products (or make them free). Cypher System Creator products are subject to the standard DriveThruRPG commission, and a portion of the selling price will be paid as a royalty to Monte Cook Games. Terms and conditions, as well as the exact breakdown of commissions and royalties, will be released closer to the launch of the program. 
“This is a really exciting addition to the Cypher System universe,” commented Charles Ryan, COO of Monte Cook Games. “The Cypher System is modular, elegant, and designed for players to build out in any direction their gaming inspiration leads them. The Cypher System Creator will at once let gamers and publishers share the ideas and content they create for the game, while also providing a vast resource for players of rules, settings, adventures, creatures, character options—things we haven’t even thought of yet! When you unleash the creativity of gamers, you get a whole lot of awesome.” 
Matt McElroy of DriveThruRPG added, “Roleplaying games have always been about each participant being a creator of the story and the game experience. We’re excited to work with MCG to make it easier for anyone creating for the Cypher System to share their creations with other Cypher System fans.” 
The Cypher System Creator will go live in spring 2016.
I have a post brewing in my head about the DMs Guild and this Creator Program, but it will wait for now...

10 comments:

  1. That's interesting for a bunch of reasons. This is an ignorant question I'm sure, but is the Cypher System pretty popular? I'm not really familiar with much of the newer stuff outside the OSR. They must anticipate a lot of 3rd party support to go to this trouble.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Numenera, Monte's first Cypher System release raised over $500k on Kickstarter. The Strange raised over $400k. Worlds of the Cypher System, which is pretty much the rules from the previous games presented as a universal system of sorts, is just short of $200k with 3 days to go in funding.

      That's over $1.1 million in Kickstarter funding for the three titles using the system.

      Delete
    2. Wow! So in other words, yes, yes it is popular!

      Delete
  2. Replace "anticipate" with "hope for".

    ReplyDelete
  3. Sounds like some publishers want a piece of the action from the little guys.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. i suspect it is seen as free money...

      Delete
    2. It depends on whether the 3pp think the extra exposure is worth the percentage.

      Delete
  4. 7th Sea 2nd ed kickstarter has a similar stretch goal. Initial funding didn't make it, but I suspect the backer kit funding will probably get the extra $35k necessary!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Okay, I guess my comment earlier didn't take. I'm a backer for Worlds of Cypher and if you gimme a bit I'll dig through the updates to see if there might be a bit more info.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. And here is everything I could find, plus a coupel articles on Enworld:
      https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ossRobm3gET1hWVtJNULJiCJMPct1_FzJFL6LevSHkc/edit?usp=sharing

      Looks like their trying to do something a little less dickish than WOTC.

      Delete

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