We’ve been hard at work moving The Strange through its design process. Here’s an update for you, along with a little art (some sketches and a couple of finals)!

Design Update: Design work on The Strange has been moving ahead at full speed. 416 pages is a lot of book, and August might seem like a long ways away, but when you take away shipping, printing, proofing, layout, and editing, those design and writing deadlines really loom. We met a major internal deadline in January and are ahead of schedule for the next internal deadline in mid-February. And it’s exciting, fun stuff!

We have first draft designs for the recursions of Ardeyn, land of sorcery, Ruk, a sci-fi realm of bioenhancment, and the Strange itself, the dark energy network that exists below the universe of normal matter. And we've established the rules for allowing players to create their own recursions--the “create” part of Explore, Defend, Create--and it involves something called a genesis quest.

We've also started creating other recursions—although Ardeyn and Ruk (and Earth) are the major settings of the game, there are many, many other recursions in Earth’s shadow. Examples include Cataclyst (in the aftermath of the apocalypse, mutants roam); Atom Nocturne (a city where everyone has Talent of the psychic variety, and looks good wielding it); and the Graveyard of a Machine God (sort of like it sounds), to name a few.

Here are a few of the new foci that have seen some use in our internal playtest: Conducts Weird Science, Channels Sinfire, Spawns, Embraces Qephilim Ancestry, and Awakens Dangerous Psychic Talent.

Playtesting is going well--we've released all 6 tiers of advancement for foci and types to the playtesters. In fact, you can hear how one group of playtesters responded (hint--they're loving it) on this podcast Translating The Strange, where Bruce appears as a guest to quiz the players.

The Ninth World Bestiary: Everyone who backed at a level that included The Ninth World Bestiary (for Numenera), or who added it to their pledge, should have received it by now. If you haven’t, contact us at support@montecookgames.com.

Pitch Room Access: Did you pledge for the Pitch Room? Expect to get your invitation in mid-March. We put a lot of thought into when to launch this, and ultimately decided that you would get short shrift if we opened it before the heavy lifting was done on The Strange design work. The creative staff simply don’t have any excess time or attention for it at this point, and it wouldn’t be fair to promise that you’ve got our ear, and then not actually listen.

The MCG Store: Last week Monte Cook Games celebrated the release of The Ninth World Bestiary—and Monte’s birthday!—with the launch of our new online store! Everything we make (including one or two things you can’t get elsewhere) is available at this one-stop shop, and as the store grows we’ll add all our new titles and our licensed products as well.

Because you helped make all of this possible through your generous support of The Strange, we’d like to invite you to check out the store and fill in the holes in your Numenera collection. Enter the code TheStrangeBacker at checkout, and you’ll get 20% off you entire order. But don’t dawdle—this offer is good this week only.

And Finally, Gen Con: We’re making our plans for Gen Con, and those plans include a lot of gaming! We’re putting together an aggressive game schedule at the show, and we have a substantial booth space lined up as well. If you have any interest in running The Strange or Numenera at Gen Con, or would like to don an official MCG shirt and help staff the booth, contact Tammie at info@montecookgames.com.

Updates: Today is the first Monday of February. Our plan, generally, is to provide you with an update on the first Monday of every month. Check your email each month for an in-depth look at how the game is coming, sneak peeks at game mechanics and the world(s) of The Strange as they are finalized, and new art!

The Strange. Explore. Defend. Create.