Cypher is kind of like a d20/Fate hybridĭoes any genre, does super heroes and CoC really well. GM intrusions are fun, you pay the PCs XP in exchange for them accepting something fun/challening/mean the GM interjects. Giant monster? He is level 6, level 5 for speed defense because he is huge, etc.Ī number of awesome settings, like Numenara and the Strange. Sneaking up on the PCs? Just a Lv 3 bandit, Lv 5 for stealth. GM sets a level, meaning it is super easy to do things without prep. Players do all the rolls! Great for staying focused on story My group and I got tired of things like fighting like you are fresh at 1hp, wack a mole on unconsciousness, all he Tasha sillyness. Switched my gaming group to Cypher, we used to play 5E.

It does make them a little more 'meta' and less part of the world, so Cypher is probably not best for super-gritty, realistic worlds where you wouldn't want players to be able to inject a sudden cinematic power boost. non-physical examples of the Cypher mechanic for more grounded settings) work and make sense. It takes a good GM to make 'Subtle Cyphers' (i.e. Some players struggle to accept Pools as energy/health, and, relatedly, spending Effort ('why should I spend health to avoid getting hit?') If you do force your players to fight every group of enemies to the death, it will become a boring slog very quickly. Instead it's about finding ways (through Assets, Cyphers, etc.) to make the encounter unbalanced in your favor, or else escape/negate the threat some other way. The system is not designed around 'balanced encounters' of equally-tough sides slogging it out and may the better/smarter side win. We've done your standard long-form wandering adventure campaign, outer space adventures on a salvaged ship, a homebrew Mecha campaign, and have just started a hexcrawl with the new Community rules. Very easy to modify or homebrew, can fit a wide variety of campaigns and styles. Simple rules with just enough to sink your teeth into but without a lot of munchkinism.Ĭyphers spread the fun around and let your characters gain (one-time use) abilities outside their normal wheelhouse. Do the awesome thing, but get more tired doing it.Ĭharacter creation so fun and evocative that any time I'm making pre-gens, I end up doing extras just because it's a blast. Intrusions let you continually spice things up any time things fall flat or players get bored from ignoring your 'subtle' hooks.Įffort is a fantastic mechanic that I immediately find myself missing anytime I'm playing a game without it (or something like it.) You can spend Pool points (which are both ability fuel and health) to improve your rolls or boost damage. Incredibly easy to ad-lib an entire encounter and make it feel like a scripted scenario. Recoveries are pretty generous but it makes for a much more realistic-feeling case of needing to manage your time and activities to ensure you are in shape to do things, with increasingly nasty conditions if you exhaust your pools.īest GM experience by far. I love it.Īdventuring as a game of attrition - using your Stat Pools as global resources for attacks, defense, non-combat tasks, saves, and damage soak means that you get TIRED. Our next 'season', probably starting in March, will be a different game with different themes.I haven't run a game in the generic system, but I've been running Numenera for six or seven years now. Our ongoing actual play uses Cypher System, but we do one-shots with other systems at least once a month (we're doing a 1600s, medieval Japan, Usagi Yojimbo/mutant animals one-shot on Friday, January 22nd using Powered By The Apocalypse) and we rotate actual play 'seasons' so we never play any game longer than 20 episodes. If you like my stuff, please check out the Manufactured Myth & Legerdemain YouTube channel. I plan to strip off the Robotech elements at some point and make it a more generic, malleable ruleset as flexible, fast and fun as Cypher - but with lots of those wonderful Kevin Siembieda touches! I hope to eventually create a kind of Rosetta Stone so that, using this ruleset (and whatever I expand it to), anyone can take their favorite elements of Rifts and convert it themselves (because there is WAY too much for me to convert except for my favorite stuff). This document was basically an experiment to see if I could do it - and after having looked at it, I think it's very possible for 'Siembieda Mode' to sit on top of Cypher. I LOVE Cypher, but miss some of the silly complexity of Palladium stuff.

What I was eventually hoping to do was basically 'marry' the Palladium System to the Cypher System, so that those that wish to play in the Palladium Megaverse could do so.

I have quite a few tweaks planned, so assuming this gains some traction (and I get some time in the next few months), I will be modifying, adding and improving.

Cypher system rpg pdf reddit