Tell Me About the Cypher System

[The Soloist]

We played Numenera for about 6 sessions when it came out. I had read Vance's Dying Earth books and Gene Wolf's Sun books. I enjoyed the setting more than the system.

I don't see myself playing Cypher System.

 

[teitan]

Looks like ENWorld is giving the Cypher System an overall grade of "C-plus" (GPA 2.33).

I'm not all that surprised; it's one of the newer systems. But it's got at least two things going for itself: it's the engine that drives a handful of successful games and Kickstarters, and it enjoys at least some association with the flagship D&D brand (it was written and developed by Monte Cook, who was one of the developers of 3rd Edition D&D).

OSR games are hot right now; I bet if Monte Cook Games were to develop and promote an OSR game that uses this system, and included some conversion notes for adapting SRD5.1 material to it, their GPA would improve by a full letter grade.

They released a 5e conversion of Numenera, it's a two book set, a sourcebook for injecting science fantasy into your D&D game, Arcana of the Ancients and then the Numenera setting book, Beneath the Amber Monolith. There was also a creature book if I recall.

 

[Ogre Mage]

The best thing about Cypher/Numenera for me was it was easy to learn and run. It requires very little preparation and the GM is basically just deciding difficulty numbers from 1-10. It requires the least prep of any system I've encountered. This is a big plus.

My short-term experiences with the system have been good. Long campaigns were where the flaws in the system became more problematic. It's a simple system but the downside to that is a lack of options. Because there are only six tiers (levels) of play there isn't much room for your character to grow. The clunkier aspects of the system grate over the long term.

I think one reason for 5E's popularity was it hit the Goldilocks spot in terms of complexity. There are more options for an experienced gamer to dig into when building a character. But it doesn't go as far as Pathfinder 2 -- a system which could easily overwhelm novice gamers.

 

[Swanosaurus]

I ran a year-long campaign with it and actually had tons of fun, but I'd never run it again - for one thing, my players really learned to hate all the fiddling with the pools und difficulties.
Also, when I bought the Cypher System core book, I realized how anti-modular the whole descriptor-type-focus system actually is. It hides all kinds of powers away in types and focuses, and if you don't study all that stuff very carefully in advance, levelling up you might run into a power that plays havor with your character concept and/or setting. In Numenera, it was more or loss okay (though even there, a totally mundane archer suddenly gained the power to have explosive missiles through his focus - and his player wasn't delighted at all, because he felt that it simply made no sense), in less gonzo settings, it can give you a lot of headaches. I'd say for Numenera, the system is okay, but if you want to adapt it to virtually anything that has a concept behind it, you're pulling against the core design elements (don't get me started on cyphers ...).

I can see me giving it another try for superheroes, or maybe for urban fantasy of the weirder kind, but beyond that, nope ...

 

[prabe]

I ran a year-long campaign with it and actually had tons of fun, but I'd never run it again - for one thing, my players really learned to hate all the fiddling with the pools und difficulties.
Also, when I bought the Cypher System core book, I realized how anti-modular the whole descriptor-type-focus system actually is. It hides all kinds of powers away in types and focuses, and if you don't study all that stuff very carefully in advance, levelling up you might run into a power that plays havor with your character concept and/or setting. In Numenera, it was more or loss okay (though even there, a totally mundane archer suddenly gained the power to have explosive missiles through his focus - and his player wasn't delighted at all, because he felt that it simply made no sense), in less gonzo settings, it can give you a lot of headaches. I'd say for Numenera, the system is okay, but if you want to adapt it to virtually anything that has a concept behind it, you're pulling against the core design elements (don't get me started on cyphers ...).

I can see me giving it another try for superheroes, or maybe for urban fantasy of the weirder kind, but beyond that, nope ...

I wouldn't run it in a setting where weirdness wasn't supposed to happen, as a setting premise. I think there's a lot to like about it, but it needs more player-side engagement than it looks like (or than it really got at my table).

 

[Swanosaurus]

I wouldn't run it in a setting where weirdness wasn't supposed to happen, as a setting premise. I think there's a lot to like about it, but it needs more player-side engagement than it looks like (or than it really got at my table).

Especially the D&Dish-gain-some-random-power type of weirdness.
Still, I admit that there is a lot to love about the system; the monster design (a level and a couple of special abilities) is great, and it does get a lot of mileage out of its core resolution system. It's just that at the table, I've never seen it work for anything but Numenera (and even there, at some point, my players were just fed up with it).

 

[Gradine]

Cyphers are probably the best game mechanic Monte Cook has ever created, which, I know, but still, it's absolutely great in both concept and execution. Magic items as exclusively one-time use artifacts, with mechanical penalties for hoarding them? Absolutely genius.

Not a fan of most of the rest of the system, for the most part, but it works when paired down and in a goofy/gonzo setting (it's why my favorite version of the system is in No Thank You, Evil!)

 

[Swanosaurus]

Cyphers are probably the best game mechanic Monte Cook has ever created, which, I know, but still, it's absolutely great in both concept and execution. Magic items as exclusively one-time use artifacts, with mechanical penalties for hoarding them? Absolutely genius.

I kind of like the idea on a "gamist" level, and they did what they were supposed to do in play - quite regulary, the players came up with some smart and/or entertaining way to use them. But they also felt very rules-first, in the sense of: "We don't care where it came from or why it does what it does, it's just a fun effect!" Which is legitimate, but in the long run, I don't like it. If there's lots of weirdness in the setting, I kind of want to feel that it flows from somwhere, that there's still a kind of overarching idea behind it beyond "Dude, it's been 9 Billion years, there's all kinds of crazy stuff!" Otherwise, it just seizes to matter as something weird to explore and becomes a game effect.
(That's another beef I have with Numenera, but it's really not about the rules: It keeps stating that it is about "exploration", but - at least in the early books, I don't own anything beyond the Into the Deep/Night/Outside trilogy - there really was nothing to explore, no connections to be made; it was just all "look, another crazy monster/weird artifact/giant hovering structure", without any connective tissue, so I had to come up with all the background stuff myself).

 

[Wolfpack48]

It's possible that the Old Gods of Appalachia TRPG doesn't use them ... but it'd be a surprise if they didn't. Basically, the GM can just declare something bad happens, which can include negating a roll, and gives the affected player an XP (and another XP for that player to give someone else). That gives me hives in ways that Compels in Fate eventually did, so I hacked some stuff.

Why do we have to name these things? If the GM wants to have something happen, it just happens. I dislike all these phrases and mechanics for things that can just occur naturally in the scenario.

 

[Aldarc]

I kind of like the idea on a "gamist" level, and they did what they were supposed to do in play - quite regulary, the players came up with some smart and/or entertaining way to use them. But they also felt very rules-first, in the sense of: "We don't care where it came from or why it does what it does, it's just a fun effect!" Which is legitimate, but in the long run, I don't like it. If there's lots of weirdness in the setting, I kind of want to feel that it flows from somwhere, that there's still a kind of overarching idea behind it beyond "Dude, it's been 9 Billion years, there's all kinds of crazy stuff!" Otherwise, it just seizes to matter as something weird to explore and becomes a game effect.
(That's another beef I have with Numenera, but it's really not about the rules: It keeps stating that it is about "exploration", but - at least in the early books, I don't own anything beyond the Into the Deep/Night/Outside trilogy - there really was nothing to explore, no connections to be made; it was just all "look, another crazy monster/weird artifact/giant hovering structure", without any connective tissue, so I had to come up with all the background stuff myself).

To be fair, I think that Numenera is less interested as a setting in solving the mysteries of the past or providing you with answers. The game doesn't care about telling you who and when each of the prior great civilizations were. It really doesn't matter because that's not what the game is about. Instead, IMHO, it's interested in characters exploring and taking what is present in order to build a future. It doesn't matter who built this thingamajig, when they did, or for what original purpose. What matters is that the characters can use this thingamajig they found to purify their town's water supply.