Holy cats, backers!

Fifteen hours after the scheduled end time, the Cypher: Faster. Easier. And Even Better! campaign is still going strong. A continuous stream of new backers overnight has kept the campaign going in Overtime Mode!

(Overtime Mode is a BackerKit crowdfunding feature: the campaign doesn’t end until there’s a gap of 10 minutes between new pledges. So as long as those pledges trickle in at least once every 10 minutes, the campaign remains alive.)

That’s the rallying cry of some backers online. They’re cheering on the campaign and helping spread the word in hopes of pushing Cypher over the $1,000,000 mark. We’ve promised that, as a special gift to all backers if we cross that amazing milestone, we’ll give you all of the stickers you’ve voted on over the course of the campaign—not just the winners, but the versions that lost their polls as well. That’s roughly two dozen stickers, including the cult favorite Admiral Snack Bar.

At this point we’re less than $9,000 from the mark. If you have a little free time this Saturday, can you give the campaign a little love online, and help push it over the top?

Thanks for your support!
—Team MCG

Hello, backers—

Overtime Mode pays off! Backers are still spreading the word, and new backers are finding the campaign. We’ve unlocked another stretch goal, and now all the books funded by this campaign are getting the premium treatment!

And of course that unlocks another sticker. This is the one you voted for:

We are flirtatiously close to $1,000,000! With the campaign well past the scheduled closing time, we aren’t going to announce any new stretch goals. But in an update earlier today, we mentioned that if we crossed the million dollar mark, as a special Thank You we’d give you ALL the stickers. Can we get there? We’re sooooo close!

You can right-click to download this image (or check our past couple of updates for more options), and help spread the word.

You can also find loads of sharable posts and images on MCG’s social media accounts:

Thanks so much for taking us over the top on this goal, and for your support of Cypher!
—Team MCG

Hello, backers—

We’ve reached the scheduled closing time for this campaign—but it’s not over yet!

BackerKit has a feature called Overtime Mode: as long as new pledges keep rolling in, the campaign remains open. It ends only when we hit a 10-minute stretch with no new pledges.

We’re barrelling toward the current stretch goal—you’ve taken us two-thirds of the way there in just a few hours. As long as we’re in Overtime Mode, we can still unlock this goal!

How long will Overtime Mode last? Sometimes it’s just ten or fifteen minutes, but often it’s several hours—or even well into the night. It depends on whether pledges keep rolling in—and that depends on you. So please go out there, share this campaign, and help spread the word, and we can still unlock this goal!

Here are TWO NEW images you can right-click to download, then share. Be sure to include the link mymcg.info/cypher.

You can also find loads of sharable posts and images on MCG’s social media accounts:

Thanks for this one last push, and for a great campaign!
—Team MCG

Hello, backers—

We’re in the final day of this campaign, and what a day it’s turning out to be! You’ve unlocked the Cypher Character Portfolios, which is now an add-on and a reward for every backer at the ALL-IN (print and PDF) pledge level (and in PDF for ALL-IN (PDF only) backers).

And you did it with plenty of time and momentum to hit even more goals!

As we do with every stretch goal, we’re throwing in a free bonus reward for every backer, in the form of a vinyl sticker. Here’s the design you voted for:

One of the benefits of backing this campaign is that your copy of the Cypher Character Rulebook, Cypher GM’s Guide, and Cypher Bestiary will be special: they’ll include premium upgrades like foil covers. In short, you’re getting a deluxe version at the standard price—and it’s an exclusive that won’t be available except through this campaign.

Why stop at the corebooks, though? We unlocked Cypher Character Options this week, and the previously unlocked Predationand The Strange setting books are going to be beautiful, inspiring, and quite hefty. So we’d like to reward the backers of this campaign by making them all as special and limited as the corebooks. We’ll unlock this upgrade when we get to 5250 backers.

In the last update, we talked about how close this campaign is getting to the $1,000,000 mark—a milestone that’s only been hit by a few non-licensed, non-5E RPG campaigns. We remain on track to land very close to that number; in fact, yesterday the campaign raised more than The Magnus Archives: Tangled in the Web did in its second-to-last day. (That campaign topped a million dollars, and Cypher’s trendline has been very similar to it.)

Over on the Cypher Unlimited discord, a few fans have asked if we would release ALL of the bonus stickers—even the designs that didn’t win their polls (many of which still got hundreds of votes). We half-jokingly responded that if the campaign hits a million dollars, we’d make it happen.

Well, why joke? It seems like a milestone worth celebrating! So let’s make it official: Take us over the one-million-dollar mark, and we’ll give every backer every single sticker you’ve seen in this campaign.

Like all of the stickers, this isn’t really a stretch goal per se—more of a little Thank-You treat for every backer for helping make this campaign so successful.

First, make sure you’re following us on the social media platforms of your choice. You can find loads of posts, images, and more to share on our accounts.

Second, go to places where people talk about RPGs, and mention this campaign. Say a word or two about why you like it, and include the link mymcg.info/cypher Or if someone’s already started a conversation, join in and support the campaign. Here are a few places to check out:

Third, share some of this art—cool images catch eyes!

Fourth, like and comment on any posts you see your friends share. This tells the algorithm to keep showing those posts to more people.

We’re already barreling toward this next stretch goal, with new backers jumping in almost by the minute! So when we unlock it, which sticker should we give you as your bonus reward. (Of course, as we said above, if we get all the way to $1,000,000, you’ll get both!)

Vote now. And keep spreading the word!

Thanks for your support!
—Team MCG

Hello, backers—

The final few days of this campaign have really heated up! Thanks to all the buzz backers like you have created for this campaign, Cypher Character Options has been unlocked!

Over the years, several dozen crowdfunding campaigns have topped a million dollars. But if you strip away games based on powerful pre-existing brands—games like MCG’s Old Gods of Appalachia Roleplaying Game, or anything for 5E—and the list gets a lot shorter. Only three or four standalone (non-licensed, non-5E) RPGs have ever crowdfunded more than $1M. Doesn’t Cypher deserve to be on that list?

It's not a pipe dream. The track of this campaign almost exactly matches The Magnus Archives: Tangled in the Web, which we crowdfunded early this year for $1,015,475. If our final hours follow Tangled’s pace, we’ll end up very close to that mark.

So, it’s totally doable, but it requires our backers—YOU—to help. Won’t you take just a moment to spread the word about this campaign on social media, on reddit, on ENworld, on RPG.net, in your gaming Discord servers, or wherever you talk about games?

You can give Cypher its rightful place in gaming history!

Unlocking Cypher Character Options also unlocks a free bonus reward for every backer:

A great campaign fosters great characters and great stories. You’ve just unlocked an entire book of additional options for your characters. Now let’s do those characters—and their stories—justice! 

A Cypher character is more than a collection of numbers—they’re the heart of a wondrous tale, driven by compelling motives and interesting backstory. They have friends, adversaries, and character arcs. They go to cool places, face dangerous challenges, and commit amazing feats.

Do you really want to cram all that onto a ratty old laser-printed character sheet?

The Cypher Character Portfolio does everything a standard character sheet does, and more. At 24 pages, it will record not just your character’s pools, abilities, skills, cyphers, wounds, gear, and everything else you find on a regular character sheet. It’ll also give you room for notes, sketches, character arcs, and details about those abilities. You can jot down thoughts about your character’s appearance and mannerisms. There’s plenty of room for details about connections to the other PCs in your party along with people, creatures, objects, and locations you meet in your adventures. You can keep a campaign journal, or make maps and sketches of places you’ve been.

It gets even better. The portfolio will be perfectly sized to give you plenty of space within, but without taking up too much space on the gaming table. It’ll be printed in full color on heavy matte paper that takes pencil and eraser easily. Even the cover will be easy to write and draw on, making every player’s Character Portfolio unique from the outside in.

Or maybe you manage your character digitally? The PDF version will be as thoughtfully designed as the print portfolio: we’ll give you two versions, one optimized for printing and the other in a form-fillable format perfect for using on a tablet, phone, or laptop. No promises (there are some technical hurdles), but we’re also looking at making it possible to import a character created in Cypher Tools directly into the form-fillable PDF portfolio.

In print, the Cypher Character Portfolio will come in a pack of five—enough for the whole party. We’ll add that bundle of five, and the PDF version, to the rewards of all backers at the ALL-IN (print and PDF) pledge level (and the PDF for backers at the ALL-IN (PDF only) level)—and, of course, make it available as an add-on. We’ll unlock the Cypher Character Portfolio if we get to 4850 backers!

The final day is usually one of a campaign’s best, and we’ve sometimes unlocked two, three, or even more stretch goals as the campaign closes. If we follow past trends, we may well have more stretch goals to go.

But only with your help spreading the word!

Post! Tweet! Shout! Tell the world why you're backing this campaign! If you aren't feeling creative, go to MCG's social media and pick a post you like to share—see the links below. Or grab any of these graphics (right-click to download) and share it, along with a link to mymcg.info/cypher.

As always, we’ll give every backer a free bonus reward if we unlock the Cypher Character Portfolios. Which sticker should we make next?

Vote now. And keep helping us reach the thousands of gamers who have not yet discovered Cypher!

Thanks for your support!
—Team MCG

Our friends over at Vault comics are up to something preeetttty cool, and we’re really looking forward to it!