Cypher System by Monte Cook Games: what do you think about it?

[Ruin Explorer]

I love the setting, I like the idea of using stat pools as both health and effort resources, but find the combat, encounter and exploration rules really lacking.

This sums up my feelings about Cypher very well. Liked all the ideas, liked most of the settings it's been applied to, hated the actual rules and how they actually worked. The concept is sound, with the stat pools as resources, but it just doesn't work in a fun or interesting way for us. And it's quite clunky/fiddly/limited in a strange way.

 

[Ghost2020]

Having not played this system, but having read the source material for The Strange, my opinion matches most answers here - I love the setting, I like the idea of using stat pools as both health and effort resources, but find the combat, encounter and exploration rules really lacking. The fact that any monster of the same threat level has the same AC, damage, and HP seems way too flat. And given the wildly open description of the setting, I found the sample adventure clunky and lacking in sense or inspiration.

All that said, I like the setting so much that I'm seriously considering running it as a 5E game, and just reskinning D&D monsters to Strange critters, cyphers become single-use magic that the players collect on a regular basis, and making characters for different worlds feels like it would go faster if I just say, "D&D classes, these are the ones available, give me an expertise and we'll call it your sub-class". All my players are very familiar with 5E, so character building this way makes sense to me. I'd really like to use the stat pools, but haven't figured that out yet.

Anyone want to talk me out of this? Does this sound workable?

This has already been done.
MCG has done the Artifacts of the Ancients, Beneath the Monolith, and Where the Machines Wait. All 5e compatible.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Well, over and above my not liking D&D5 (but then, I'm not a massive D&D fan in general and haven't been for nearly 40 years now), I don't think that's going to entirely do the job with covering the ground in some of the Strange worlds. I'd want to be starting with a superhero game at least.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Having not played this system, but having read the source material for The Strange, my opinion matches most answers here - I love the setting, I like the idea of using stat pools as both health and effort resources, but find the combat, encounter and exploration rules really lacking. The fact that any monster of the same threat level has the same AC, damage, and HP seems way too flat. And given the wildly open description of the setting, I found the sample adventure clunky and lacking in sense or inspiration.

All that said, I like the setting so much that I'm seriously considering running it as a 5E game, and just reskinning D&D monsters to Strange critters, cyphers become single-use magic that the players collect on a regular basis, and making characters for different worlds feels like it would go faster if I just say, "D&D classes, these are the ones available, give me an expertise and we'll call it your sub-class". All my players are very familiar with 5E, so character building this way makes sense to me. I'd really like to use the stat pools, but haven't figured that out yet.

Anyone want to talk me out of this? Does this sound workable?

Eh, well, I mean I have the same basic objections to 5e as I do to Cypher, they are both very 'trad' systems. I don't know enough about actual play of Cypher System to say how it stacks up against 5e in terms of danger, character progression, and general feel TBH. The Strange sounds like a sort of 'mythos adjacent' kind of setup, but I honestly don't know if the feel is supposed to be "we're in over heads, this is bad stuff, we're not going to get out of this alive." or if it is more 'Stranger Things' where the badder the monsters are, the harder they fall; and while you may lose some things along the way, you'll come out OK in the end (at least until The Demogorgon comes back in whatever its latest form is). The former sort of game is hard to do with a D&D-like, as character progression is not really a thing that works well in "we're all doomed in the end." OTOH it seems like it would work pretty well for something akin to Stranger Things, the PCs keep winning and each win makes them stronger.

 

[Faolyn]

Eh, well, I mean I have the same basic objections to 5e as I do to Cypher, they are both very 'trad' systems. I don't know enough about actual play of Cypher System to say how it stacks up against 5e in terms of danger, character progression, and general feel TBH. The Strange sounds like a sort of 'mythos adjacent' kind of setup, but I honestly don't know if the feel is supposed to be "we're in over heads, this is bad stuff, we're not going to get out of this alive." or if it is more 'Stranger Things' where the badder the monsters are, the harder they fall; and while you may lose some things along the way, you'll come out OK in the end (at least until The Demogorgon comes back in whatever its latest form is). The former sort of game is hard to do with a D&D-like, as character progression is not really a thing that works well in "we're all doomed in the end." OTOH it seems like it would work pretty well for something akin to Stranger Things, the PCs keep winning and each win makes them stronger.

The Strange is alternate reality/dimension hopping, with the Strange itself being the term (IIRC) for the weird semi-reality between dimensions. It has a dimension that is sorta medieval fantasy-but-weird, a dimension that are kinda evil biotech, a dimension of anthro crow mafia in a giant floating tree, dimensions based on various novels, etc. It's been a while since I've read the books, but I think any Mythos-type stuff is kind of just background stuff. There's not much of an overarching plot to the setting. Just... you can travel between dimensions and go forth to kill monsters and take their stuff explore.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The Strange is alternate reality/dimension hopping, with the Strange itself being the term (IIRC) for the weird semi-reality between dimensions. It has a dimension that is sorta medieval fantasy-but-weird, a dimension that are kinda evil biotech, a dimension of anthro crow mafia in a giant floating tree, dimensions based on various novels, etc. It's been a while since I've read the books, but I think any Mythos-type stuff is kind of just background stuff. There's not much of an overarching plot to the setting. Just... you can travel between dimensions and go forth to kill monsters and take their stuff explore.

RIFTS meets D&D, or perhaps another iteration of the M:tG multiverse, basically. So, yeah, maybe a D&D-like will work, though it sounds like there's always the assumption that if you mess with things a bit too much, you can run into 'Yog-Sothoth' and then you're hosed, no matter what. lol.

 

[Ghost2020]

RIFTS meets D&D, or perhaps another iteration of the M:tG multiverse, basically. So, yeah, maybe a D&D-like will work, though it sounds like there's always the assumption that if you mess with things a bit too much, you can run into 'Yog-Sothoth' and then you're hosed, no matter what. lol.

One could always end up in a recursion based on Lovecraft's New England. That's the only way that would happen, as HPL is fiction. Now a world eating creature could show up, that's an option.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yeah, one of the important elements of The Strange is that there's what's called "fictional leakage" where the core Earth's fictional conceits can create limited worlds all their own; sometimes they also admix in odd ways.

 

[mrm1138]

The fact that any monster of the same threat level has the same AC, damage, and HP seems way too flat.

That's not entirely accurate. If you want to run monsters as basically as possible, then yes, their stats are virtually identical, but in practice, that's not always the case. For example, let's compare two different monsters from The Ninth World Bestiary for Numenera. Both are level 3.

Erulian
Health: 9
Damage Inflicted: 3 points
Modifications: Defends as level 4

Glacier Slime
Health: 12
Damage Inflicted: 4 points
Armor: 2
Modifications: Speed defense as level 2

That's not even counting the descriptions of what they can do in combat that makes them different from other monsters of the same level. In short, the monsters are as simple or complicated as you want them to be.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

One could always end up in a recursion based on Lovecraft's New England. That's the only way that would happen, as HPL is fiction. Now a world eating creature could show up, that's an option.

Well, that was why I put it in scare-quotes. I don't mean 'you end up dealing with Mythos beings', just that there are 'big bads' that are similar in nature. The concept exists in the series 'The Magicians' too, just in the form of weird stuff you do NOT want to actually meet. In fact, I would say that show fits the paradigm described pretty closely.