Wanna Listen To Something Strange?

As of today (Feb 22, 2018), Myth of the Maker is available as an audiobook on Audible.com

(UPDATE: Are you outside the USA? Go to this Amazon link and click on Audible link there, which I hear is more likely to get you to the audiobook: http://amzn.to/2F33bnl)

Let me just say, this is just what I needed to make me feel better after that LAST blog article.

Carter Morrison, gazing out over Ardeyn

So if you're curious about the reason Carter Morrison killed his friends and himself—it was them or the end of all life on the planet—head over here give the sample a listen. If you like what you hear, well, having the whole thing is of course only a click away ;).

Myth of the Maker audiobook (inside US): https://www.audible.com/pd/Sci-Fi-Fantasy/Myth-of-the-Maker-Audiobook/B079K92F1Z
Myth of the Maker audiobook (outside US, click on Audible): http://amzn.to/2F33bnl

Want to know more about Myth of the Maker? Here's a good place to start: http://brucecordell.blogspot.com/2017/04/myth-of-maker-is-now-available.html

Myth of the Maker is now available!

I wanted to write a science fiction novel that treated Fermi's Paradox. Why in this vast universe filled with billions of other galaxies is there is no evidence for any other intelligent alien life?

Myth of the Maker has an answer. It's related to what scientists call dark energy, a medium that my protagonists learn to call the Strange.

In Myth of the Maker, computer programmer Carter Morrison sacrifices himself and his friends, killing them and locking them in a virtual world—all to save the rest of the planet from certain destruction. Morrison’s friends have no idea what he’s done—but as the “planetvores” approach, they must come to terms with the fictional worlds they now inhabit, which serve to insulate the real world from the horrors without. Not all of them are satisfied with their forced martyrdom, either, and a man named Jason Cole—known as The Betrayer—seeks a way out of the fiction and back to reality, no matter the cost.

(If you're curious about how I came to write this novel, check out this article Long Road To the Myth of the Maker.)

Amazon
http://amzn.to/2n7H4Uw

Audible (audiobook)
https://www.audible.com/pd/Sci-Fi-Fantasy/Myth-of-the-Maker-Audiobook/B079K92F1Z

Barnes & Noble
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-strange-myth-of-the-maker-bruce-r-cordell/1125686165

Powell's Books
http://www.powells.com/book/myth-of-the-maker-9780857666505/62-0

Deluxe hardcover at MCG
https://www.montecookgames.com/myth-of-the-maker/

A Long, Strange Trip to Myth of the Maker

I started writing the novel Myth of the Maker a long time ago. It's been at least 4 years of actual writing, slow though that writing was, beginning in 2013. But the initial, flailing stages of conception probably go even further back. Maybe even to right around the time I decided to walk away from the third book in the Sword of the Gods series after the publisher decided to print the second in the series (Spinner of Lies) in e-book only, which wasn't part of my contract. ("Walk away" means I asked the publisher for a stay on writing the third book in my contract, and they agreed.)

Don't get me wrong; what happened wasn't personal. The same thing happened to most of the Forgotten Realms novels coming out at the time (unless your name rhymed with "are aye suave-a-boar*"). It was a business decision. I remain grateful and honored to have been part of the author bullpen writing books set in FR during that period. I wouldn't do anything different if I had it to do over.

But we can't get around the fact that publishing almost every novel previously slated for print as e-book-only effectively put paid to the Forgotten Realms novel line as it existed at that time, and signaled and end to my nine-book career as an FR author.

So I started working on something different, thanks in part to encouragement from editor and writer Torah Cottrill. I decided to write a science fiction novel. But well before finishing, the ideas underlying it spawned a game line called The Strange that Monte Cook and I co-wrote. Maybe you've heard of it? (If not, check out the video here.)

And now, at long last, Myth of the Maker is finished!

In a universe as vast as ours, with tens of billions of planets potentially supporting life, Enrico Fermi’s famous question—"Where is everyone?”—has never been more relevant. That’s what Katherine Manners learned when she discovered, in a secure server room, the melted form of an unknown man clutching a message of doom from another world. 

A world, it turns out, in orbit of our own. Hidden in the dark recesses of a nether dimension called The Strange. A dimension that hosts countless other micro-worlds, many copies—or recursions—of Earth itself. 

Worlds home to beings sometimes jealous of our own. Worlds filled with dangers and riches, mysteries—and answers. 

But the opening of these worlds also draws the attention of creatures capable of devouring the Earth. Creatures that may have been the doom of every civilization that advanced enough to discover The Strange. Creatures that hunger—and now know we exist.

I read an excerpt of the first chapter of the novel here. Get prepared to be AMAZED at my reading-in-front-of-the-camera abilities ;).

You can read an excerpt of the novel here. I believe it's the entire first chapter!

Amazon
http://amzn.to/2n7H4Uw

Angry Robot (the publisher)
http://www.angryrobotbooks.com/shop/sf/the-strange-myth-of-the-maker/
Barnes & Noble
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-strange-myth-of-the-maker-bruce-r-cordell/1125686165

Powell's Books
http://www.powells.com/book/myth-of-the-maker-9780857666505/62-0

Deluxe hardcover pre-order at MCG
https://www.montecookgames.com/myth-of-the-maker/

*No disrespect intended to Bob Salvatore, of course! He's a mensch. It was his first FR books first few FR books that helped crystalize the realization that maybe I could try to do the same one day.

Get Your Strange Box on Kickstarter through March 17th!

One of the first questions we get asked at every convention is whether we're going to do a boxed set for The Strange like we did for Numenera. Because of that, we asked fans of The Strange to let us know how much they'd like to see this. They responded enthusiastically. Since we love The Strange and its fans, we decided to give them the most spectacular experience with The Strange that we can create with a deluxe boxed edition.

As you can probably imagine, we want to make it absolutely beautiful and crammed full of all the coolest extra content we can come up with: character sheets, XP cards with a brand new design, and maybe even a gorgeous cloth version of the Ardeyn poster map, if we hit some stretch goals. We did it once before, and with your help, we’re going to make that dream a reality again, this time to create a deluxe boxed edition of The Strange!

(Already own The Strange? Don't worry—we've got some things that will interest you as well as those new to the game.)

Check it out here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/montecookgames/a-strange-box

My Gen Con 2016

Gen Con 2016 was one of the better cons I've attended. I had a great time, and I'm energized.

Even though I was slightly busier this year— both MCG duties and Writer Symposium functions required my time—I was much more part of things. Actually, being so busy in multifarious activities was one of the contributing factors to my satisfaction with this con. For instance, the Writer's Symposium was a great way to re-connect with the kind of panels I used to do at Norwescon a few years ago. I also met several interesting fellow authors on those panels and at related functions.

I also spent a lot of fun time with the MCG crew, both while working and in grabbing a meal here and there, which I enjoyed a lot since I count everyone at MCG as a friend. I was proud of our Instant Adventure seminar where we played in front of a crowd [video link pending] and our announcement of the Invisible Sun roleplaying game, a secret we've long kept.

Of particular note, I was grateful for all the people who told me about their positive experience playing games of The Strange and Gods of the Fall. For whatever reason, it struck me that I was part of their happiness because of the work I'd done on those products. Yes, I know that's been true for years starting with my D&D writing going back two decades, but it's easy to lose sight of that when you're always working on the next thing. For me, Gen Con 2016 was a great touchstone. I met tons of people who are actually buying and enjoying material I'd helped create. It left me feeling validated that it's not only all worth it, but also made me realize that I'm actually achieving something actively positive in the world. 

Converting Gods of the Fall for Numenera and The Strange

Look, Ma, I did another thing!

Actually, this thing just connects the dots between a few other, bigger things I've done lately. This conversion guide (called Gods Beyond) walks you through a few strategies for taking stuff out of Gods of the Fall and using it for your ongoing games of Numenera or The Strange. (Assuming you don't just start a Gods of the Fall game—hint, hint!)

You can get Gods Beyond right here.

Wait, you haven't got Gods of The Fall yet? You can get Gods of the Fall over here.

Bodies In Translation – Gear and Foci vs. Stat Pools In The Strange

In The Strange, player characters travel into limited worlds called recursions; seeded from myths, novels, movies, and comics. Each time a PC steps into a new world, their body and mind adapt so that they become part of that world in a process called translation. For example, when Katherine Manners translates from Earth to the fantasy recursion of Ardeyn, she gains a general understanding of that world and its languages and arrives wearing appropriate clothing.

An oddity of translation is that—except for cyphers—travelers don’t take their gear with them. Instead, their gear goes into abeyance. It isn’t lost; the gear is returned to travelers the next time they come back to a previously visited recursion. Continuing the previous example, when Kate returns from Ardeyn to Earth, she doesn’t bring back the magic implements, spirit companions, or gold coins she found on Ardeyn. On the other hand, she regains all her gear from Earth: her trusty revolver, her fractal arm tattoo, her Earth clothing, as well as her expensive smart phone.

On the other hand, your character's stat pools remain constant between alternate worlds. How does that work? (Answer: Check out the full blog at the MCG site where it just went live.)

Meet the main characters in Myth of the Maker

Thanks to the magic of Kickstarter, my novel Myth of the Maker is a reality. Publication date is pending, but I'm working on the 2nd draft even as we speak. Want to know a little more about my novel set in universe of The Strange? Alright: Meet the novel's four main characters. Rather than write up a bio for each of them, I've provided a short excerpt from the first chapter in which each character appears:

Carter Morrison

The planetovores breached the starting grid. Jason had attacked me, trying to select himself as the one to return home. He’d panicked. Only one of us could print back to Earth. He hadn’t understood all the implications. There’d been no time to explain. He said I was a selfish prick, and worse.

Was I? Maybe.

But the whole fucking planet was on the line.

Katherine Manners

The port scanner failed to turn up a single open connection. The spoofing attack hadn’t fooled anyone. And the packet sniffer was a complete bust because there just wasn’t any data. Kate’s usual techniques, plus a few of Raul’s paranoid schemes, had been for nothing. BDR’s servers were locked down.

So Kate resorted to social engineering. It was a cliché, but only because it worked. Success just required a bit of play-acting. Picking up the phone and pretending to be an angry supervisor threatening the job of a confused customer service rep had gotten her results before.

Not this time.

Jason Cole

The Lord of Megeddon had many names. To some, he was War. To others, Legion. To most, he was simply the Betrayer. But among himselves, he was Jason.

Homunculi peered at Jason from their stations on either side of the exit. Each was a copy, but their bright scarlet coloration denoted their status as inferior clones of the original.

Of him.

Elandine, Queen of Hazurrium

Sword in hand, Elandine walked the borders of the Strange under a red sun. So close to the edge, the light seemed old and used up. Beneath her boots, the land was convulsed. Long ruts dragged scars down to the west as if made by the monstrous talons of a colossal Stranger unable to retain its grip on Ardeyn. The occasional cactus and thorny tree drooped, wilted with pestilence.

The splintered landscape was Ardeyn’s edge, where only the insane or suicidal trespassed. Beyond it drifted a sporadic scatter of free-floating skerries like barnacles on reality’s border. And beyond them lay the Strange. She rarely glanced that way.

Elandine traveled a path parallel to the chaos that spurned all rules, not into it. The Strange would not try her strength, not today.

The Maker willing, it never would.

Gods Of The Fall. Unmasked. Predation.

Awaken your divine spark, claim a dominion, and become a god in a fantasy world in which the heavens smashed upon the Earth like a vengeful star.

Or find yourself trapped in the dark and dangerous world of the Cretaceous Period. First you'll have to figure out how to survive using the tech you brought from the future—modern weapons, advanced science, and bioengineered dinosaurs. Then you can worry about the asteroid that history says wipes out most life on earth.

Or drift to the edge of insanity. They'll say you're dangerous. Insane. That you suffer from Dissociative Mask Disorder. Your parents and the doctors and the press and the military—they can’t believe what’s happening. They can’t believe what you can do. And they wouldn't believe the price you pay.

What does it all mean? On this improbable day (at least, improbably 3 out of every 4 years), we launched a freaking crowdfunding campaign. Check it out! 

Worlds of the Cypher System Kickstarter: Explore all new worlds and play in any genre with the award-winning roleplaying game system behind Numenera and The Strange.

Time Loops or Evolution Over Time in Recursions

Figuring out if time flows--or loops--in Strange worlds seeded by fiction can be tricky.

How does time flow in recursions seeded by specific fictions—does a recursion evolve and generate history, like on Earth, or does it remain static, like a novel on a shelf?

The answer is both. Some recursions remain static—true to the narrative that seeded them into the Strange. No matter how often a recursor visits, they never seem to change or vary from the fiction they’re based on.

Others evolve, deviate from their original fictional basis, and generate history of their own.

Want some examples? Check out the full blog entry here: Beyond the Book: Recursions—Static or Evolving?

Strange Revelations: Ten Instant Adventures for The Strange

(This blog was originally posted here by Charles Ryan.)

What’s the hardest part of running a roleplaying game? It has to be the preparation. You can’t just spontaneously say, “Let’s play a roleplaying game” unless someone’s already spent hours preparing an adventure for the group. But what if running a great game didn’t require any more effort for the game master than it does for the players? What if you could get up and running in—literally—just five minutes? Strange Revelations: Ten Instant Adventures for The Strange makes prepping for an RPG no more difficult or time consuming than setting up a board game, while showcasing the wonder and weirdness of the many recursions lying in the Shoals of Earth. This is a must-have for beginning and veteran GMs of The Strange.

These aren’t adventure seeds—they’re complete adventures in an innovative format that requires minimal prep. Run them as one-shots or drop them into your ongoing campaign when you don’t have time to prep your own adventures. You can even run them together as a campaign for months of effortless play!

Strange Revelations includes:

• Ten adventures on Earth and across numerous recursions, complete with maps, NPCs, and all the details you expect. 
• An innovative format for adventures: five minutes of prep gets you started, with no need to read pages and pages of text in advance. 
• An escape from a post-apocalyptic cannibal wasteland, a horror-themed board game that exerts bizarre powers over its players, a medieval wardrobe that opens into a hellish realm, and much, much more. 
• Great advice on running adventures with little or no prep. 
• Beautiful, full-color Show ’Em illustrations to reveal to players during the adventures. 
• Six pregenerated characters that get you playing in minutes. 
• A handy rules cheat sheet to make things run even more smoothly.

Protect Earth from a malefic Lovecraftian entity. Search for salvage on a derelict spacecraft. Set off into the dark energy of the Strange itself to defend the Orb of Worlds. Strange Revelations is a must-have for beginning and veteran GMs of The Strange, and anyone who’d like to play RPGs as easily and spontaneously as board games!

Watch, Drink, Eat, Play

Since Strange Revelations is coming out soon, we thought we’d provide some suggestions for prepping these Instant Adventures to play with your friends or family over the holidays, or whenever. Those of us here in the US have a four-day weekend coming up, usually spent with family and friends—what better time for an RPG adventure or two?

You’ve heard of wine pairings? Well, these are similar. We provide some entertainment pairings, including movie, food, and drink, for each of the adventures in Strange Revelations. (Note: Though we suggest a movie “pairing” with each Strange Revelations adventure, we actually suggest watching the movie ahead of the game or afterward, or, if you must, in the background with the sound completely off.)

Cannibal Wasteland

Movie Pairing: Mad Max: Fury Road
Drink Pairing: Rad on the Rocks
Snack Pairing: Twinkies (fresh even after the apocalypse)

A Shadow out of Innsmouth

Movie Pairing: In the Mouth of Madness
Drink Pairing: Fever Dream Punch
Snack Pairing: Gummy worms

Starfall in Ardeyn

Movie Pairing: Stardust
Drink Pairing: Fallen Angel
Snack Pairing: Angel Food Cake

To see the other pairing suggestions, head over to the main blog article, which this is a snippet of, here: http://www.montecookgames.com/your-game-strange-revelations-pairings/

Lucca Games in Italy

Ciao!

Batgirl and I are headed to Italy for Lucca Comics and Games Festival! I'll be a guest of Wyrd Edizioni, Italian partner who is launching The Strange— The Anomaly, the Italian edition of The Strange! I'll also be accepting the Best Italian RPG Game of 2015 for Numenera, which was translated into Italian and released last year. A virtuous circle, eh?

 I may update this post with pictures as they become available.

For now, though, I leave you with this wonderful boxed version of The Strange :)

PAX Prime 2015

MCG is going to PAX in Seattle! Come see us in room 209. We'll have two, 2-hour long demo games going all day, every day, so come by and sign up for some RPG fun! In addition, I'll be signing in room 209 with Monte Cook & Shanna Germain at the following times:

Friday 1-3

Saturday 12-2

Sunday 12-2

Finally, I'll be around at other times, too, along with Charles Ryan and Torah Cottrill to talk about cool, geeky things (including, of course, Numenera, The Strange, and the Cypher System). So come say hello! 

(If you see Torah, she might just be cosplaying a character from the Numenera Character Options book who Consorts with the Dead, or your favorite Estate Lead Operative, Katherine Manners.)

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Strange

Wanna know why I risked leaving my ~18 year gig writing Dungeons & Dragons to join Monte Cook Games, LLC and write The Strange?

Listen:

52: The Bruce Cordell Gambit, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Strange

Worlds Numberless and Strange

I put a lot into this book. I hope you like Worlds Numberless and Strange, available here!

Witch covens battle in the mammoth city of Halloween. Nazis struggle to master mythological relics in the Eleventh Reich. T. rexes hunt hominids on the tropical island of Mesozoica, while skyships fend off pirates and predators in the tempestuous cloud seas of Seishin Shore.

In The Strange, recursions—limited pocket dimensions with their own laws of reality—are seeded from human fiction and mythology. A recursor might discover Atlantis, Oz, the Victorian London of Sherlock Holmes, or places even more bizarre and perilous. Worlds Numberless and Strange takes you to dozens of new recursions, where supervillains, dinosaurs, space troopers, killer robots, gods, and other dangers guard wonders and treasures few people on Earth have ever seen!

Worlds Numberless and Strange includes: Nearly 70 new recursions Expanded information on locations, plots, and NPCs of Ardeyn and Ruk Plenty of new artifacts, adventure hooks, and other intriguing details The Implausible Geographical Society, a new secret organization of explorers New creatures for game masters New character options for players, including foci like Inks Spells on Skin and Quells Undead Tips on incorporating your favorite fiction and game worlds into The Strange.

Worlds Numberless and Strange 

The Strange Character Generator Is Live

Hello, players of The Strange!

UPDATE 2024: Well, guess what! MCG launched a Cypher System character builder! It's not quite as recursive as the original character builder for The Strange, but it'll prove a fabulous start for creating your character, using different instances for when your character visits alternate recursions on the Dark Energy Network where planetovores roam. Check it out!

UPDATE 2019: Our online character sheet resource for The Strange has translated into a recursion we can't currently reach.

Why? This is probably not 100% accurate, so take it with a grain of salt. My understanding is that the code base was aging. Rather than keeping up a buggy and perhaps an insecure site, and one that wasn't getting enough use to justify the expense of a re-design, it was determined that the best option was to decommission it.

These days, I'd suggest just using a form-fillable Cypher System character sheet and the books you want to draw from, downloadable and free here: https://www.montecookgames.com/store/product/cypher-system-character-and-campaign-sheets/

You can also download a free version of The Strange character sheet specifically, though I'm afraid it's not form-fillable, though certainly easily printed: https://www.montecookgames.com/store/product/the-strange-character-sheet/

ORIGINAL POST:
As you may recall, one of the early stretch goals we reached during the Kickstarter campaign for The Strange was an online character generator. We’re super excited to announce that it’s now live! You can find it at:

http://chargen.thestrangerpg.com

You can now build, maintain, advance, translate, and print characters for The Strange quickly and easily. You can create and save as many characters as you like, and it’s completely free of charge for all fans of The Strange. Check it out!

The Strange Character Options (In Translation) for Numenera

I described how to use Numenera Character options for The Strange a few weeks ago to illustrate how major Cypher System elements are compatible between different games. Now, In Translation (The Strange Character Options) has gone on sale...

You know what’s next, right? Yep. Not only does the new book provide a bounty of new foci, descriptors, and abilities for use in The Strange; you can use the foci and descriptors in your Numenera game.

So when you describe your character in your Numenera game in the sentence, “I’m a blank blank who blanks,” your answer could become, “I’m a Slacker jack who Is Idolized by Millions,” “I’m a Paranoid glaive who Goes Berserk,” or “I’m an Introverted nano who Aspires to Be Posthuman.” You get the idea. 

So here's some specific, pointed advice on using In Translation in your Numenera game:
http://www.montecookgames.com/using-the-strange-character-options-for-numenera/

NUMENERA CHARACTER OPTIONS FOR THE STRANGE

Both The Strange and Numenera rely on the Cypher System, and that means that a lot of the stuff made for one game works perfectly in the other. (For instance, here's how Numenera character foci might be sorted to work under the various laws of The Strange):

Although the games are different, their core mechanics are the same. Both rate tasks and difficulties from 1 to 10, and both have characters who use Effort, skills, and assets to reduce that difficulty, and both rely on the roll a d20 to see if those tasks come off successfully. The characters in each are described by a single sentence: I’m a blank blank who blanks (I’m a Mad paradox who Separates Mind from Body). Even many elements of the games are similar in a general sense. So although the types, creatures, cyphers, and most of the descriptors and foci are different from game to game, the form in which they are presented, and the way they fit into the game as a whole, is the same.

Which is a long way of saying you can use most of the descriptors and foci presented in Numenera Character Options in your game of The Strange. In many cases, only a few easily-made tweaks is enough to offer your players a particular focus or descriptor when they translate to a new recursion, and in some cases, even while they remain on Earth.

Find out more here :

http://www.montecookgames.com/using-numenera-character-options-for-the-strange/

Video Interview (cut with clips from my lecture) at World RPG Fest in Brazil