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Tell Me About the Cypher System
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<blockquote data-quote="Aldarc" data-source="post: 9116391" data-attributes="member: 5142"><p>In my experience, it's a love it or hate it sort of system. I think that it's less clever of a system than some of its fans believe it to be. IMHO, it's kind of like an inexperienced traditional gamer's idea of a narrative game,* but it's really just another traditional game that gives the GM a lot of latitude to curate a story. </p><p></p><p>* Usually the talking point that you hear is that the Cypher System lets the GM focus on the story. This is because the GM side of the game is incredibly light and fluid. I do agree that it's probably one of the EASIEST experiences that I've had GMing a game as the basic mechanic of a Number from 0 to 10 and then times three to determine the Target Number for a task, NPC, or monster is super easy. A lot of the mechanics are shifted to the player side of the table. But I don't think that any of this makes the Cypher System a "story game" or "narrative game." It's just another traditional game system with good marketing. </p><p></p><p>As I have said before elsewhere, I've been disappointed by its lack of evolution as a system or anything that addressed some of the common issues that people have with it. I feel like it's been mostly treading the water and just expanding into different genres or IPs while reprinting a lot of the same stuff over and over again. (It reminds me of Savage Worlds in this regard.) Invisible Sun looked like it would evolve the system, especially if they simplified it and removed the sort of byzantine setting material, but alas that hasn't come to be. </p><p></p><p></p><p>I have run it as a more OSR style dungeon-delve in Numenera. It was basically the premise of Diablo 1 except it involved a demonic A.I. deep within a crashed space ship instead of Diablo levels under the cathedral. There are some things that you have to adjust to make it more OSR-esque. For example, I would get rid of GM and Player Intrusions. One could also create Random Tables associated with a character Type or Focus for when a player rolls a 1 instead of using GM Intrusions.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Aldarc, post: 9116391, member: 5142"] In my experience, it's a love it or hate it sort of system. I think that it's less clever of a system than some of its fans believe it to be. IMHO, it's kind of like an inexperienced traditional gamer's idea of a narrative game,* but it's really just another traditional game that gives the GM a lot of latitude to curate a story. * Usually the talking point that you hear is that the Cypher System lets the GM focus on the story. This is because the GM side of the game is incredibly light and fluid. I do agree that it's probably one of the EASIEST experiences that I've had GMing a game as the basic mechanic of a Number from 0 to 10 and then times three to determine the Target Number for a task, NPC, or monster is super easy. A lot of the mechanics are shifted to the player side of the table. But I don't think that any of this makes the Cypher System a "story game" or "narrative game." It's just another traditional game system with good marketing. As I have said before elsewhere, I've been disappointed by its lack of evolution as a system or anything that addressed some of the common issues that people have with it. I feel like it's been mostly treading the water and just expanding into different genres or IPs while reprinting a lot of the same stuff over and over again. (It reminds me of Savage Worlds in this regard.) Invisible Sun looked like it would evolve the system, especially if they simplified it and removed the sort of byzantine setting material, but alas that hasn't come to be. I have run it as a more OSR style dungeon-delve in Numenera. It was basically the premise of Diablo 1 except it involved a demonic A.I. deep within a crashed space ship instead of Diablo levels under the cathedral. There are some things that you have to adjust to make it more OSR-esque. For example, I would get rid of GM and Player Intrusions. One could also create Random Tables associated with a character Type or Focus for when a player rolls a 1 instead of using GM Intrusions. [/QUOTE]
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