Monte Cook Games prepares to update its Cypher System RPG with a newly announced ‘Evolved Edition’ coming out sometime in 2026!
Monte Cook Games announced a new edition of its Cypher System rpg today. With a stated goal of 2026, and a crowdfunding campaign on the way before too long, the Cypher System Evolved Edition will update and upgrade the multigenre RPG in a big way. With flexible characters, expansive settings, and deep GM tools, the Cypher System has a lot to offer. And a new Edition, twelve years after it first debuted with Numenera, will shake things up even more with a new set of core books.
Cypher System Evolved Edition
At the heart of the Kickstarter are two corebooks. A Cypher Character Rulebook, which will have all the rules players need to make their own characters across a variety of genres, including: dungeon fantasy, epic fantasy, swords and sorcery (and I challenge you to define each of those genres), hard sci-fi, space opera, cyberpunk, and gritty postapocalyptic fantasy.
And then there’s the Cypher GM’s Guide—a bunch of different tools for GMs. Advice on genres, different tools for making your own adventures and campaigns. All the resources you need to make your own specific vision come to life.
The Cypher System Evolved Edition is set to launch into crowdfunding in “late summer.”
“This evolution builds on the strengths of the existing version—its fast pace, ease of GMing, flexibility, narrative focus, and just plain fun—and makes it even easier to use and faster to jump into.
Fans of the Cypher System are going to love this how new edition makes their favorite game even more accessible. And the power, flexibility, and customization they love isn’t going anywhere—in fact, it’s getting even better.
Players new to Cypher will find it even easier to get into, with vivid, memorable characters that are easy to build, fun to play, and never bogged down in needlessly complex mechanics. GMs will find themselves running fun, fast-paced adventures and campaigns that are easy to GM and which bring their worlds to life without having to kludge the rules to make them fit.”
If you want a taste of what’s going on, there’s a link to a signup at the end of the article. But here are some changes you can look at:
- Genre-specific character generation, speeding character creation for 90% of games and making it even easier for new players to jump into Cypher. (The same high level of customization remains for GMs crafting games with a unique vision.)
- Player character damage, freeing up pools to support greater use of character abilities.
- Player character armor, making defensive actions more interesting.
- A greater emphasis on character abilities that are unique and enable interesting play.
- A greater emphasis on subtle cyphers, the default form of cypher for a greater number of genres, along with a streamlining of how cyphers
Look for the Cypher System Evolved Edition in 2026!
