Cypher

Brass Jester

Rune Priest
Thanks @Dom, @Sablemage , good to be here.



I'd like that, what's the best way to put my hand up?

Whereabouts are you based? We're getting into conversations on Delivery Service Plans and sustainable delivery here, along with discussions with the likes of ABP (cos we're in Southampton) and Meachers. It's an interesting time to be in the field. My day job is mostly around supporting behaviour change for business and commuter travel, but I'm always keen to learn more.



That's pretty much where I am at the moment, I found Fate 2.0 online somewhere god knows how long ago and it blew my mind. FAE is great, I recently used it as the basis of a freelance project for museums to use in school sessions, which was very cool.

Fria Ligan's Year Zero engine or Forged in the Dark are pretty much the upper end of my comfort zone.



I'm aware of it but, from what I've seen of it, the Cypher system is more complicated than my tastes and the setting isn't enough to get me over that hurdle.

I've very much come to the position that (for me) complexity in system has to justify its existence by bringing something to the table.

That probably coloured my reading of it.

Thanks again to everyone for the welcome.
I must say, I don't find Numenera as complex as Fate (and I like both systems.) Fate has all of the Invoking/ Compelling Aspects and also having to come up with them in chargen, plus combat is an opposed roll for the GM and the player. Then you have to account for Shifts and Spin.
Numenera is pick a Descriptor, Character Type and Focus: -this tells you everything about your character. All task resolution is- determine the level of the task, adjust for modifiers (up or down), multiply by three and roll that number or more on a d20 to get a success.
I'm not intending to start a war over this; but several people have said how complex Numenera is and I really don't see where they're coming from.
 
I must say, I don't find Numenera as complex as Fate (and I like both systems.) Fate has all of the Invoking/ Compelling Aspects and also having to come up with them in chargen, plus combat is an opposed roll for the GM and the player. Then you have to account for Shifts and Spin.
Numenera is pick a Descriptor, Character Type and Focus: -this tells you everything about your character. All task resolution is- determine the level of the task, adjust for modifiers (up or down), multiply by three and roll that number or more on a d20 to get a success.
I'm not intending to start a war over this; but several people have said how complex Numenera is and I really don't see where they're coming from.

I guess we all find complexity in different ways. Cypher was one of the most incredibly simple systems to play and run for me. A combination of the 'everything is a 1-10 difficulty' and the player facing mechanics meant I had almost nothing to do as GM except focus on the story and the action of PCs. Making up stuff on the fly was a breeze.

I've only run the game at conventions, and in that one shot experience all the players I have encountered got into the swing of the 'get the difficulty down as low as you can' vibe pretty quickly.

My only issue with the game are the Cyphers and their apparent centricity to the design. I can usually shoehorn them in, but haven't found them necessary.
 
I must say, I don't find Numenera as complex as Fate (and I like both systems.)

Cypher was one of the most incredibly simple systems to play and run for me.

I have to agree and disagree with you both. Cypher is very simple from the basics, but it can get absurdly complicated once you start bolting things on. By comparison, Fate Core can be a little fiddly, yes I agree, but if you strip it all away and use Fate Accelerated, in my opinion Fate is far simpler system to understand than Cypher. This why I never got along with Numenera. I feel it buckles under its own weight what with all the add ons to the Cypher system.
 
Did you not say to me once @Nathan that the Cypher experience you had was with a very heavily modded Star Wars variant?
 
I've popped this chat into a new area.

Yes, @Nathan I'm struggling to see Numenera as a buckling 'absurdly complicated' system. I might push to a medium crunch at most. Was there a specific set of rules that meant the game unravelled for you? What were they? Was it Numenera or some other unofficial adaptation? Interested to know what the tipping point was for you?
 
I ought to try a Cypher game again. My one experience, with Numenera, put me off, but a lot of that was down to the GM not being clear and confident with it; and glances at the rules made it look not-for-me (IIRC something about defining and not-defining skills at the same time). Yet streamers I follow love it. If a con game pops up with a more recent version of Cypher in a more straightforward setting I might jump in.
 
Did you not say to me once @Nathan that the Cypher experience you had was with a very heavily modded Star Wars variant?

Yes it was modified for Star Wars game. However, I'm not sure how heavily modified it was. I also played a game of Numenera after that and the setting did nothing for me and I felt the Cypher system was just as bad as I thought it was based on the Star Wars game. I felt it was too much bloat for such a simple system.
 
Yes it was modified for Star Wars game. However, I'm not sure how heavily modified it was. I also played a game of Numenera after that and the setting did nothing for me and I felt the Cypher system was just as bad as I thought it was based on the Star Wars game. I felt it was too much bloat for such a simple system.

That's fair enough and not every system is for eveyone. I wanted to understand what bits of Cypher, as there aren't that many of them, managed to get you to feel that way. But no problem, I was just curious.

I'm a big Fate fan too as it happens. :) I especially like something in the Condensed to Core range, but it's all good.
 
I haven't played Cypher but do think it looks quite elegant especially with the GM intrusions. I'm mucking about with it for a couple of homebrew setting ideas for it.

Numenera looked okay but I wanted to do something less "adventurers wandering about" and more based on a university expedition to investigate something specific. The Strange was a bit disappointing - I wanted something more in line with Charles Stross' Merchant Princes series of books rather than what the game was about.
 
My favourite, go-to, lightweight, easy to adapt role-playing game for stuff. Yes, you do have to wangle the cypher-thing a bit, but the construction of characters is incredibly flexible—I'm not sure you could take D&D, for example, and just swap a bunch of abilities around without messing up.

I've used it for generic fantasy and sci-fi stuff, but also for adapting specific themes and backgrounds. I used it for a game of A|State, for example, and I've run it several times for The A-Team. The archetypes and relative balance within the system mechanics between "classes" mean you can do a mix-and-match that is easier, to my mind, than multi-classing in other games.

_commission__a_team__by_timpu_d98ywxn-fullview.jpg
My personally commissioned character portraits for Cypher System The A-Team. Drawn by Timpu Socas.
 
My favourite, go-to, lightweight, easy to adapt role-playing game for stuff. Yes, you do have to wangle the cypher-thing a bit, but the construction of characters is incredibly flexible—I'm not sure you could take D&D, for example, and just swap a bunch of abilities around without messing up.

I've used it for generic fantasy and sci-fi stuff, but also for adapting specific themes and backgrounds. I used it for a game of A|State, for example, and I've run it several times for The A-Team. The archetypes and relative balance within the system mechanics between "classes" mean you can do a mix-and-match that is easier, to my mind, than multi-classing in other games.

View attachment 2130
My personally commissioned character portraits for Cypher System The A-Team. Drawn by Timpu Socas.
I played this at Furnace, though I think it was run by Pete, who runs a lot of Blades in the Dark too.
 
How easy would it be to do a Mythic Greece campaign with Cypher? I think the various character elements would be cool for suggesting the heroes are favoured by the Gods and such, but I'm not sure how easy it would be to create the rest of the setting, mechanically?
 
How easy would it be to do a Mythic Greece campaign with Cypher? I think the various character elements would be cool for suggesting the heroes are favoured by the Gods and such, but I'm not sure how easy it would be to create the rest of the setting, mechanically?

I think fairly easy. You also have 'Gods of the Fall' sourcebook that provides some nice ideas for demi-god play, but not necessary.
 
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