Cypher System

Posted 15 Aug 2023 to Fantasy

A generic system for playing heroic games in many genres. Descended from Numenera.

XP Card

Sessions GM'd: 21
Sessions as Player: 1

I Used

Foundry and Discord. We used the core book, but I also purchased some PDFs from DriveThruRPG to help convert D&D magic items and monsters into Cypher. This was handy to help the system click in my mind when starting out as GM. I looked at the Godforsaken splat book, which is supposed to help you run the fantasy genre, but I didn't find it very useful.

Overview

We set our game in the country of Skyrim from the Elder Scrolls universe, one year before the events of the video game. Our players were able to create characters that fit the setting well; an Imperial warrior (Foolish Warrior who Metes Out Justice), a sneaky Breton spy (Doomed Explorer who Absorbs Energy), and a devious khajiit mage (Dishonourable Adept who Takes Animal Shape).

The Good

Easy to run, easy to improv. The GM does not need complicated stats for enemies, and any challenging scene can be easily created on the spot. The GM merely decides what Level the enemy is, or assigns a Level difficulty to the task at hand, and then all target numbers and hit points are ready to go. Even the damage of weapons and gear is standardised. I was able to easily improv a cool fight with a nature mage, by describing the mage using plant-themed magic, and then asking the players to roll to avoid. It was freeing and fast.

Players do all dice rolling. I like this. It gives the players more activities to do, and shares the load of running a combat around the table. It also means that the GM does not fudge dice rolls. Players know, before they roll the dice, what number they are hoping will come up. This makes the physical act of dice rolling exciting. I always played this way anyway; I don't like games where the player rolls and announces their result and then asks the GM if it was good enough. Then the GM, who holds all authority, pronounces success or failure. No. Better to announce the difficulty and then watch the dice bounce around with anticipation and then cheer when it lands.

Versatile. This is a generic rule system that can run Modern, Superhero, Fantasy or Scifi. This is what was interesting for me. Could this be one system that I am able to adapt to any setting? Yes it is. The wide range of character creation options cater for a variety of genres and the power scale can be set to allow even superhero stories.

Cool art. I really enjoy the clean art style. The images understandably cover a wide range of genres.

Underrepresented genres are catered for. The core book has guidelines for running Romance stories, Historical stories and Fairy Tale stories. This is great! Of course it also covers the usual suspects of Fantasy, Scifi, Horror, and Modern. I don't think I am likely to run a Romance campaign soon, but some people might want to, and the author made room for it. Good.

GM Intrusions. A core mechanic of the game is that the GM is allowed to introduce complications to a scene to make it more dangerous or exciting. This is called a GM Intrusion. The players are allowed to refuse, if they pay 1XP; but they get 2XP if they agree. Now GMs have always been free to do this anyway, but by incorporating this as a mechanic, and rewarding players for accepting it, it means that players are more accepting of it. I found I needed to remind myself to do it regularly, and it was a good mechanic. I could suddenly offer an Intrusion, offer the player XP, and then not feel like a dick when a guard walked around the corner at an inconvenient time.

The Not-So-Good

Power level is higher than I prefer. I created a new mage character, and convincingly defeated a bear solo using only my quarterstaff. The suggested stats for monsters and bandits are calibrated for a very heroic experience. For example, in a fight with a bandit, a starting character needs to merely roll a 6 on a d20 to hit. I upscaled all enemies in order to get closer to a grittier experience where bandits are a threat to starting characters.

Cyphers. A cypher is a single use special ability. It could be a potion. Or a single use wand. Or even a blessing from the gods. Each PC is allowed to carry a few of them. The idea of a cypher is originally from the Numenera setting, where they make sense as mysterious artefacts from an earlier age. In any other setting, they feel weird. You are supposed to discover them frequently so that players do not feel the need to hoard them. I believe you can easily set aside cyphers, and just not use them. I think that is a better choice than trying to force them into a setting where they are awkward. I found them tricky at the start of our campaign but got used to them by the end. The players said the cyphers were the most fun part of the game for them.

All complexity is front loaded at character creation. The first 200 pages of the core book contain all the Types, Descriptors and Foci that you can use to create a character. There are a dizzying number of possible combinations, each one described with a paragraph. The first character you create may feel a bit overwhelming. But after you have done it once, it goes much faster. It took my group of experienced players 2.5 hours to create characters, using only options from the core book.

A toolkit with too many tools. I purchased the Cypher core rule book, which claims to be able to run any genre. This means it contains the rules and abilities to emulate everything from superhero games to vampires in space to sword and sorcery fantasy. This is a toolkit. You cannot simply open the book and begin play, unless you want to have a mixed party with spiderman, Conan the Barbarian and an ace starship pilot. The GM is required to scour the hundreds of options in the book and nix the ones that are not suitable to the setting they have in mind. There are separate genre books for sci-fi, fantasy, horror, superhero, etc. Each of these is an additional 400 pages of material. I wanted to run a fantasy campaign, so I bought Godforsaken (the fantasy one). The content didn't really help me bring the game to a playable state quicker. It gave broad sweeping advice and a sample setting. If your players are sensible and mature and understand the setting you are trying to represent, you can probably trust them to pick good options and to ignore the ones that don't gel with the setting. Otherwise, you will need to cherry pick the options that are available to them (and there are hundreds) to produce a setting guide for your table.

Gear system didn't work for us. The game wants to de-emphasize equipment and money. By default this is not a game that focuses on counting gold coins. It's heroic in tone. Items are categorized with labels such as "Very Expensive" or "Moderately Expensive". At character creation, players are told they can have 2 Very Expensive and 3 Moderately Expensive items, for example. We found this unworkable. A player wanted to trade a Very Expensive item for several Moderately Expensive items (to get "change"), and I found it actually more complicated that just using gold coins. So that's what we did.

Verdict

I really enjoyed this campaign and found the system very easy to GM. It encourages you to improv and gives you easy tools to do it. The tone is very well suited to pulpy adventure, and I reckon this would be great for a Star Wars campaign. The GM is expected to put in some work at the start of a campaign to ringfence the abilities and powers that are not a good match for the setting you want. There are splat books that help you do this.