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Arcana of the Ancients, a 5e science-fantasy sourcebook

Created by Monte Cook Games

Bring the wonders of Numenera, with its mysterious technology and weird science-fantasy elements, to your 5e campaign with Arcana of the Ancients.

Latest Updates from Our Project:

A Peek into the Design Process
over 4 years ago – Fri, Aug 09, 2019 at 11:54:39 PM

It’s August, and the entire MCG team has recently returned from Gen Con. It was a great show, but as exciting as The Best Four Days in Gaming are, we’ve been even more excited this summer to be delving into the design work on Arcana of the Ancients.

Arcana of the Ancients saw a bit of preliminary design several months ago, but with a few other projects cleared off the deck, the design team plunged into it full time at the beginning of the summer. We’re now designing at full speed.

For instance, in our last design team meeting, we kicked around the nature of cyphers, artifacts, and “cybernetics” as they would be presented in the book. We decided we had some leeway to make them more their own thing, rather than trying to narrowly define them within the pre-existing 5E magic item environment. We need them to work within that rules environment, yes, but we also want them to retain their unique and inscrutable “Ancients” character.

We also discussed the amazing array of art available for use in the book. The only issue, if you can call it that, is that we have so much great art that it’ll be hard to choose what to include. So we’ll put a little bit more art onto each spread. At 304 pages, this weighty tome promises to be not only incredibly useful, but also beautiful.

As you can imagine, the effort of conversion between two different game systems isn’t 100% straightforward. Some decisions have to be made about how a particular Cypher System/Numenera ability should be presented in a 5E context. And once they’re made, those decisions have to be remembered. That's why we also built a conversion style sheet, which is proving super useful not just for the main book, but also as we go forward to write the other books that follow Arcana of the Ancients. And it will prove vital, I think, to our editors, who’d otherwise be at sea without a guide star.

All of us on the design team agree: it’s fun to be back working on 5E-related material. We can’t wait for you to see what we create!

—Bruce R. Cordell

Numenera Reaches for Liminal Shores

Speaking of what we create, we have something new coming up. If you like what you see, click through!

BackerKit Closing Soon, Gen Con, and Other News
over 4 years ago – Tue, Jul 16, 2019 at 01:43:08 AM

It’s summer, and that’s always a busy time for us as we gear up for Gen Con. (There’s more on that below.) We have a bunch of new releases for Numenera, Invisible Sun, and even No Thank You, Evil! this month and next. And of course we’re also hard at work on the initial phases of Arcana of the Ancients

Speaking of which, BackerKit for Arcana of the Ancients closes next week. BackerKit is a critical part of getting your rewards to you—it’s how we get key information that Kickstarter doesn’t provide us. If you haven’t filled out BackerKit, please do so right away!

Check your email for your invitation—it was sent last month. If you can’t find it, go here and enter your Kickstarter email address to receive a new survey link via email.

While you’re there, if there’s anything we offered during the campaign that you didn’t back for, you can add it on or upgrade your pledge to include it. All the great Kickstarter deals and pricing are available in BackerKit, but once it closes they’re gone forever!

Numenera and Invisible Sun Are Up for Multiple Ennie Awards

Voting on the annual ENnie Awards is now open. If you like our work, you may be pleased to hear that the Numenera Discovery and Destiny Slipcase Set has been nominated for several awards, as has our other big release of last year, Invisible Sun. We’re really proud of both of these titles. (We're also gratified by nominations for Slaves of the Machine GodRuin DeckSecrets of Silent Streets, and even our organized play program, Cypher Play!) If you agree that they’re among some of the best RPG products of the past year, please make your voice heard and vote!

Going to Gen Con?

We’ll be there too! We’re running loads of great games (as we do every year) and exciting seminars (ditto). But did you know that this year, Monte and Shanna are both Industry Guests of Honor at Gen Con?

Stop by our booth and check out some of the rarities, new releases, and other items you might not be able to find elsewhere. Say Hi to the team, and maybe grab an autograph or two. And don’t miss An Evening with MCG! You can find all the details at the MCG website.

Preorders for Your Best Game Ever Close Soon!

Preorders for Your Best Game Ever are still open—but only for a few more days. This is a really fantastic book, penned by Monte with contributions from dozens of other designers from across the RPG industry. Check it out—there’s a rockin’ deal on preorders, but once they close next week, that deal is gone forever!

BackerKit for Arcana of the Ancients Is Open!
almost 5 years ago – Wed, Jun 19, 2019 at 09:11:39 PM

We’ve opened BackerKit for the Arcana of the Ancients campaign! You should have received an email with your BackerKit link; if you haven’t done so already, simply click through to complete your survey! (If you missed the email with the link to the survey, you can go to Arcana of the Ancients on BackerKit, enter the exact email address you used to back the project on Kickstarter, and BackerKit will resend the survey email to you.)

BackerKit is a super-important way for us to get information critical to fulfilling your rewards—information that Kickstarter doesn’t provide us. Even if you make no changes to your pledge, it’s important that you fill out BackerKit.

Here are some other tidbits you might be interested in:

That’s a first-off-the-presses copy of Your Best Game Ever, a book that helps you unlock consistently awesome RPG experiences, whether you’re a GM or a player. You can find out more about Your Best Game Ever here.

Awesome Deals at the MCG Shop—Today Only!

Every physical product on the MCG Shop, excluding preorders, is on sale now—and you even get free shipping on domestic US orders! This is a great time to check out NumeneraThe Strange, the Cypher System, Invisible Sun, our family game No Thank You, Evil!, and everything else we make. All on sale, but it ends TODAY!

Your Best Game Ever Videos

Join Monte and other members of the MCG team as we take a deeper dive into some of the key sections from the forthcoming Your Best Game Ever. The Your Best Game Ever video series also lets you discuss your experiences, tips, and questions with the broader community in the Twitch and YouTube comments.

The series runs on Twitch on Tuesdays at 8:00 p.m. EDT (5:00 p.m. PDT). Come join us in chat, or watch the video and Twitch chat later on. The series continues weekly through July, with topics like worldbuilding, being a great player, character creation, adventure design, and more.

Arcana of the Ancients Has Been Unearthed. What’s Next?
almost 5 years ago – Fri, Apr 12, 2019 at 11:42:39 PM

Thank you so much for your all of your support for Arcana of the Ancients. All of us here at MCG are thrilled to be making this book, along with Beasts of Flesh and Steel, Beneath the Monolith, and Where the Machines Wait. We’re really looking forward to working on them, and we think you’re going to love what we bring to your campaign!

I’ve got some critical info for you, but first I’d like to thank everyone on the MCG team who helped make this campaign a success:

Monte, Shanna, Sean, and Bruce, our fantastic creative team, came up with the vision for Arcana of the Ancients and all the other titles we funded. Bear (and the many great illustrators he works with) comes up with the fantastic imagery of the Ninth World, and did the new art for this campaign, bringing the fantastic elements of science-fantasy to life. (He also created the beautiful graphics for this campaign.) Tammie kept the company going while this campaign raged around her, and Darcy interfaced with you, our wonderful community, here and everywhere gamers congregate online.

And, of course, thanks to the many backers who embraced Arcana of the Ancients. We are so happy to bring our science-fantasy vision to thousands of new gamers in the 5E community, and you made that possible.

Here’s what to expect as we move forward from here.

This Evening and the Next Few Days

Running Kickstarter campaigns is rewarding in many ways, and we have greatly enjoyed interacting with you through these updates, the comments, social media, and so on. But it’s also a brutally hectic challenge to administer it all. And most of the MCG staff has been keeping up with our regular duties throughout—launching Priests of the Aeons for Numenera during this campaign, for example, and preparing to release Book M, Teratology, and The Ninth World Bestiary 3 in the weeks to come. Not to mention getting MCG Shop orders out the door, attending the GAMA Trade Show, and so on. So I don’t think you’ll be surprised when I say that we’re taking a short break.

Don’t expect to hear much from us this weekend, or in the week or two ahead of us. If you have questions, feel free to send a Kickstarter message, but don’t be concerned if you don’t get a response right away. Production of Arcana of the Ancients will take months, and stretch goal titles like Beasts of Flesh and Steel will take longer. There isn’t anything that can’t wait for a few days. But don’t worry—we WILL get back to you.

The Next Few Weeks

Kickstarter began collecting pledges the moment the campaign closed. But it takes Kickstarter a full two weeks to release those funds, along with the data on our backers.

In the meantime, we will get BackerKit fully set up so we can open it when we have that data. BackerKit is a third-party platform that lets you confirm all the information we need to fulfill your pledge. If there are add-ons you’ve missed, or if you decide to increase your reward level, you can do that through BackerKit as well. You’ll be notified when we open BackerKit.

NOTE: Signing into BackerKit is vital to getting your rewards. Kickstarter does NOT provide us with the information we need to fulfill your rewards; we MUST gather it from you after the campaign. If you don’t respond to your BackerKit survey, we can’t send you any rewards!

The Next Few Months

Once you’ve done your BackerKit survey, we won’t need anything else from you until it’s time to start fulfilling rewards. We’ll be busy crafting the products and rewards you will be receiving in the months to come.

At times during this period, you won't hear from us, maybe for a couple of months. Don’t worry if that happens—we've delivered hundreds of rewards on time in the past, and we'll be working diligently on yours.

But at the same time, please pay attention when you do get communications from us. Our emails and Kickstarter updates include critical information about your rewards.

When Your Rewards Ship

Every time a reward is ready for you, we’ll contact you again by email to begin the fulfillment process. Generally, we’ll direct you to the MCG Shop, where you’ll log in, “buy” the product (for free with a coupon, because you’ve already paid for it through Kickstarter), and check out. This is an important part of the process because it ensures we have accurate delivery information for every item we send out. (With more than 5,500 backers getting rewards, it's amazing how many people will change their address over the fulfillment period.) You'll pay for shipping at that time. Make sure you're paying attention to communications from us—don't let our updates or emails go to your spam folder, or otherwise ignore them, because if you do you could miss out on some of your rewards.

This was a grand endeavor, and we are very happy you chose to be a part of it. Thank you all for your support, and for helping us bring the wonders of science-fantasy to the world of 5E.

~Charles (and the whole MCG team)

Bigger Book Stretch Goal Unlocked. Thank you.
almost 5 years ago – Fri, Apr 12, 2019 at 11:01:54 PM

We thought it would be a stretch—that's why we call them stretch goals—but you crushed the $500,000 goal like the dungeon-destroying, dragon-slaying champions that you are. Seriously, we appreciate the support you've given us over the last few weeks. With your help, we not only are making Arcana of the Ancients, but a deluxe version, three support products, and more. It's amazing. Can't wait to pull it all together and inject some science fantasy weirdness into everyone's campaign. 

To recap, Arcana of the Ancients will now be a 304-page book filled with adventures, items, monsters, GM advice, and player options for science-fantasy 5e games.

Beasts of Flesh and Steel will be a bestiary with well over 150 new science-fantasy themed monsters for your campaign (we loooove weird creatures here at MCG, so expect some strangeness, all beautifully illustrated).

Beneath the Monolith will be a complete campaign setting for the Ninth World in 5e, and will include new PC races and options, and probably even more new monsters as well as all the NPCs, organizations, and high strangeness unique to that setting. You'll even have stats for the dreaded iron wind, which blows across the lands changing and mutating everyone unfortunate to get in its path.

Where the Machines Wait is a mega-adventure suitable for the Ninth World or your own campaign setting, involving the wonders of the ancient world and finding and making use of them today.

If you're backing at the EXPERT OF THE ANCIENT PAST level or above, you're getting them all.

Plus, all backer levels are getting a PDF of our 144-page sourcebook, Jade Colossus, and a conversion guide to use it in 5e games. Jade Colossus contains not only a bunch of directly usable locations and creatures but a really cool system for generating your own science-fantasy ruins and dungeons.

In a little while, I'll post another update that explains what you should do before the campaign closes, and after closing, I'll share another update about what you can expect from the days ahead regarding your rewards, shipping, and so on.

For now though, I just wanted to say thank you again. All of us at Monte Cook Games truly appreciate the support you've shown us, and we're so excited to make these new books for all of you.