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

[Aldarc]

What would 'forwards' be? I assume that each new genre adds at least a few unique elements to those available to characters, right? If this is 'lateral' expansion, then what would 'forwards' really consist of? New subsystems? Newer forms of rules? I mean, basically, as was discussed up thread, its a trad system. Assuming that isn't going to change, the only other direction of expansion is into different genre/milieu/tone, so somehow producing a variant/expansion that, for example, let you run super powerful characters, etc.

Cleaning, tightening, and potentially streamlining the rules they have. There are some significant sore spots such as, for example, XP as both a leveling currency and a bennie currency. It's pretty noteable, IMHO, that Invisible Sun separated these two things out.

 

[mrm1138]

Cleaning, tightening, and potentially streamlining the rules they have. There are some significant sore spots such as, for example, XP as both a leveling currency and a bennie currency. It's pretty noteable, IMHO, that Invisible Sun separated these two things out.

I like the way XP is used for both, just as I like the way your stat pools are used for both health and as spendable resource. It becomes an interesting resource management system where you have to weigh whether the immediate benefit outweighs the long-term benefit.

 

[Aldarc]

I like the way XP is used for both, just as I like the way your stat pools are used for both health and as spendable resource. It becomes an interesting resource management system where you have to weigh whether the immediate benefit outweighs the long-term benefit.

IME, there is nothing "interesting" about it, since players (again IME) invariably save them for tier advancement rather than spend them as bennies.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I have relatively minimal experience with the system itself...but even what experience I have has shown me how much I dislike several of its core mechanical concepts. In particular I strongly oppose the use if XP as the bennie currency. It doesn't feel tactical, it feels like every option is bad, either fail and suffer because you didn't use it, or burn your future to save your present and thus setting yourself up to fail later on because you did. Neither of those feels good to play.

Yeah, this is one of mine. I get what they were trying to do with the five tiers of advancement, but making the bottom one (the pseudo-bennies) the way it is seems to me as bad an idea as it is every other time I've seen it. That and the glaive Strength expenditure were the two things that just seriously put me off (though I'm not in love with exception based design in general, so I don't really like how the powers were done either, but I know that's one where I'm off the mainstream).

 

[Thomas Shey]

IME, there is nothing "interesting" about it, since players (again IME) invariably save them for tier advancement rather than spend them as bennies.

Past experience is that they don't; that's the problem; some people do that and some people don't, and that ends up creating problems down the line that just get worse and worse. We saw this one all the way back with the original DC Heroes game, which did the same thing (it was kind of in vogue back then, as the Star Wars game and TORG also did it) and it was dramatic how much the rich got richer with it.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Past experience is that they don't; that's the problem; some people do that and some people don't, and that ends up creating problems down the line that just get worse and worse. We saw this one all the way back with the original DC Heroes game, which did the same thing (it was kind of in vogue back then, as the Star Wars game and TORG also did it) and it was dramatic how much the rich got richer with it.

This seems like the big issue, ultimately. You get Joe who spends his and does splashy stuff, but pretty soon he's falling behind Jim, who just saves his up for advancements (and can then, relatively speaking, do the splashy stuff better WITHOUT the expenditure). Now, if saving your XP ultimately COSTS you more XP (because of how it is earned) that might bring things back into balance. It would, however, seem to still fall to the core of @Aldarc's objection, which IIUC is that you are discouraged from doing cool stuff.

I don't really see the draw of forcing this sort of meta-game level resource dilemma on the players anyway. Wouldn't it be better to run the resource game at the fiction level?

 

[Thomas Shey]

This seems like the big issue, ultimately. You get Joe who spends his and does splashy stuff, but pretty soon he's falling behind Jim, who just saves his up for advancements (and can then, relatively speaking, do the splashy stuff better WITHOUT the expenditure). Now, if saving your XP ultimately COSTS you more XP (because of how it is earned) that might bring things back into balance. It would, however, seem to still fall to the core of @Aldarc's objection, which IIUC is that you are discouraged from doing cool stuff.

I don't really see the draw of forcing this sort of meta-game level resource dilemma on the players anyway. Wouldn't it be better to run the resource game at the fiction level?

That was exactly how I saw it work out back in the DCH days before we split out hero points and experience. I know its an approach some people are really attached to, but I never saw anything good come from it. The best defense of it I've even seen is the people defending MSH karma on the idea that superheroes are pretty static anyway, so it was good to pressure them to stay that way (and where the cost of advancement was such that spending it tactically could seem a bit attractive) but I'm not sure I buy it.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

This seems like the big issue, ultimately. You get Joe who spends his and does splashy stuff, but pretty soon he's falling behind Jim, who just saves his up for advancements (and can then, relatively speaking, do the splashy stuff better WITHOUT the expenditure). Now, if saving your XP ultimately COSTS you more XP (because of how it is earned) that might bring things back into balance. It would, however, seem to still fall to the core of @Aldarc's objection, which IIUC is that you are discouraged from doing cool stuff.

I don't really see the draw of forcing this sort of meta-game level resource dilemma on the players anyway. Wouldn't it be better to run the resource game at the fiction level?

Yeah that's pretty much the horns of the dilemma. If the cost of saving XP is too low, the incentive is to hold onto them until you no longer desire to advance. If the cost of saving them is too high, then spending them doesn't feel like doing cool stuff, it feels like a mandatory payment to be permitted to succeed. Yet the only reason not to hoard (within the rules, that js) is if hoarding entails losing...which means being punished unless you spend.

Given the difficulty of evading the Scylla of "I'm losing out on permanent rewards by spending XP to boost success" and the Charybdis of "welp, time to pay the XP toll so I'm allowed to potentially succeed," I can see why a lot of games just don't go there.

It also doesn't help that natural player psychology gets in the way. RPGs as a whole are notorious for inducing hoarding behavior in players. The fact that (for example) T:TON had to punish players for hoarding (of cyphers) was pretty much proof that they knew this was a problem and couldn't find a way to make not-hoarding enjoyable on its own merits. (I don't know if that rule exists in the actual Cypher system.) Trying to design systems that defy general trends of player psychology is a fool's errand IMO.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

That was exactly how I saw it work out back in the DCH days before we split out hero points and experience. I know its an approach some people are really attached to, but I never saw anything good come from it. The best defense of it I've even seen is the people defending MSH karma on the idea that superheroes are pretty static anyway, so it was good to pressure them to stay that way (and where the cost of advancement was such that spending it tactically could seem a bit attractive) but I'm not sure I buy it.

Well, if the choice is between some highly tactical and situational buff, and a more general but less useful one, or some minor situational enhancement, it does have a bit different character. I still agree there's no real point in pushing this on the players. I'd MUCH rather see a more organic, or more particular, implementation of the 'horns of the dilemma' sort of situation. "Do I save my brother or my girlfriend?" has a lot more resonance than "do I finish this guy off, or do I add a build option", which IMHO just don't really relate at all. I mean the later COULD be cast in the same terms as the former, but that's a whole additional jump and it won't often come off IME.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah that's pretty much the horns of the dilemma. If the cost of saving XP is too low, the incentive is to hold onto them until you no longer desire to advance. If the cost of saving them is too high, then spending them doesn't feel like doing cool stuff, it feels like a mandatory payment to be permitted to succeed. Yet the only reason not to hoard (within the rules, that js) is if hoarding entails losing...which means being punished unless you spend.

Given the difficulty of evading the Scylla of "I'm losing out on permanent rewards by spending XP to boost success" and the Charybdis of "welp, time to pay the XP toll so I'm allowed to potentially succeed," I can see why a lot of games just don't go there.

It also doesn't help that natural player psychology gets in the way. RPGs as a whole are notorious for inducing hoarding behavior in players. The fact that (for example) T:TON had to punish players for hoarding (of cyphers) was pretty much proof that they knew this was a problem and couldn't find a way to make not-hoarding enjoyable on its own merits. (I don't know if that rule exists in the actual Cypher system.) Trying to design systems that defy general trends of player psychology is a fool's errand IMO.

Yeah, I would have thought the lesson of 4e Consumables and Rituals was stark enough. Getting players to spend even 1 gold piece on that stuff was like pulling teeth. What did they want that gold for? Who knows? It was valueless by itself, but sure enough the players were always determined to pile it up (I mean, you could build a weak magic item once in a while if you wanted, or you could have potions and rituals in practically every encounter, and many of them KICKED ASS). Anyway, its the same basic choice, and it is a design that is always doomed not to go in a fun direction.