The Cypher System Bestiary (Bruce R. Cordell, Monte Cook Games) is a 192-page, full-color hardcover and PDF bestiary released in April 2024. It assembles a broad, system-neutral compendium of monsters—statted for the Cypher System—that’s explicitly designed to be usable in any Cypher-powered campaign. The book promises over 125 distinct creatures, dozens of variants, and tools to build many more—plus lairs, hooks, and mechanical variants that let GMs drop these creatures into Numenera, The Strange, or original Cypher settings with minimal fuss.
⚙️ What’s inside (the essentials)
At a glance, the Bestiary contains:
- 125+ creature entries covering familiar fantasy staples and more unusual, genre-bending threats (beasts, aberrations, elementals, spirits, mechanical constructs, and planar oddities). Each creature entry includes stat blocks in Cypher format, role suggestions, lairs, and encounter seeds.
- Variants & template tools—dozens of alternate traits and modular add-ons that let a GM turn one baseline creature into a family of related threats (e.g., juvenile/elder variants, corrupted/elemental variants, and social/pack variants). The book stresses remixability: one monster can seed many distinct encounters.
- Design guidance—advice on customizing difficulty for different tiers, placing monsters into meaningful ecological or narrative roles, and using monsters as sources of treasure, mystery, or campaign escalation. The book is written with the Cypher System’s tiered approach to challenge in mind, so entries include suggestions for scaling.
The production is clean and modern: readable two-page spreads, evocative art to set tone, and sidebars with quick GM tips intended to reduce table-side flipping. The book is intentionally system-native (Cypher), but the creature writeups emphasize cinematic hooks over crunchy niche mechanics—making conversion to other rulesets reasonably straightforward.
🐾 At the table — how it performs in play
The Bestiary’s immediate strength is accessibility. A GM can scan a spread, pluck a creature, and run a compelling encounter in minutes. Each entry prioritizes the Cypher System’s move-forward philosophy: identify what a creature does in fiction, give a compact statline that supports that fiction, and offer a few tactile keys (lair tricks, minions, or environmental complications) so the encounter feels bigger than a single roll.
For GMs already running the Cypher System, the book shortens prep time drastically. The scaling notes simplify converting a creature to different player tiers; the variants let you re-use art and stats while keeping the surprise fresh across sessions. For groups using Numenera or The Strange, the Bestiary functions as an interchangeable parts rack—you’ll find many creatures that slot into ninth-world weirdness or planebreaker experiments with light re-skinning.
Two practical notes from play: first, the Bestiary favors encounter breadth over exhaustive ecology. If you want a multi-chapter ecological treatise on a monster species, you’ll adapt from the hooks provided. Second, the modular variants encourage improvisation—GMs who enjoy on-the-fly remixing will get the most mileage.
✨ Strengths — what the Bestiary does best
- Breadth and remixability. Over a hundred base entries plus dozens of variants is a big win for GMs who run different genres or who reuse dungeons. The template approach makes the book an engine for new encounters rather than a static catalog.
- Cypher-native, table-friendly design. Entries follow the system’s minimalist ethos—clear short writeups, quick mechanical cues, and immediate roleplay prompts—so a GM can run scenes fast without losing depth.
- Art and layout. Good, evocative art and two-page spreads make the book pleasant to flip during a session; the layout reduces lookup friction.
- Value for modular campaigns. The bestiary functions as more than a creature list—its scaling advice and variant tools are genuinely useful for long-running campaigns where enemies need to evolve along with PCs.
⚠ Caveats & considerations
- Not an ecology encyclopedia. If your table enjoys deep natural-history sections (full life cycles, migratory calendars, social anthropology of a species), this book provides seeds rather than encyclopedic depth. You’ll need to flesh out those edges yourself.
- Cypher-centric stats. The creatures are presented in Cypher format. Conversion to other systems is straightforward for experienced GMs but will require work if you want exact mechanical parity. The book emphasizes fiction first, which eases conversion, but expect mechanical translation work if you play D&D, Pathfinder, or another crunchy system.
- Familiar faces, fresh twists. Many entries are re-tunes of classic archetypes—excellent for immediate use, but GMs seeking wholly alien monster design as a primary goal may want supplemental third-party or setting-specific bestiaries alongside this one.
🗡 Final verdict
The Cypher System Bestiary is a practical, well-executed toolbox for GMs who want a ready supply of creatures that slot smoothly into Cypher campaigns. It’s strongest when used as a remix engine—grab a base creature, apply a variant or lair complication, and scale to your players’ tier. The book sacrifices exhaustive natural histories in favor of immediate utility and cinematic hooks, which aligns with the Cypher System’s play philosophy: emphasize storyable, flexible encounters over stultifying detail.
If you run Cypher, Numenera, or The Strange and value quick prep, flexible threats, and creatures that double as plot devices, this Bestiary will likely become a frequently used shelf reference. If you demand encyclopedic monster lore or want stat blocks in an alternate system out of the box, plan on supplementing it with conversion work or additional references.