Bouncing off Cypher System

Yet Another Broken Promise from an Awesome Product!

For my fiftieth birthday, I stumbled onto the TTRPG (Table Top Role Playing Game) Cypher System. And I found this gem of a system while looking for a game that would allow me to recreate the epic spell-slinging magical battles found within the realm of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha— an anime that features two preadolescent girls duking it out in the skies over Uminari City (aka, Tokyo) with abilities that could easily rival modern-day nuclear bombs. Both girls are on a mission to collect the Jewel Seeds, but that isn’t the point of this post. It was during this time period that I massively increased my TTRPG library. I found classic gems like Teenagers From Outerspace and Mekton, as well as Freeform Universal and Cortex Prime. However, none of the games that I’d found quite let me have the magical experience I was looking for. Cypher System held promise though.

And when I say Cypher System looked promising, this was through the lens of an AI synopsis. I’ll admit that I was using DeepSeek to help me sift through the vastness of the Internet at a much quicker rate than I could ever scour on my own. Cypher System seemed to check a number of boxes that allowed me to cast Onslaught after Onslaught. But as I’ve attempted to actually create characters with this system is where I’m bouncing away from it. Don’t get me wrong here. Cypher System is actually genius. I admire the passion and work that Monty Cook and his crew have created. Cypher System is a very powerful system— if you break it apart and tinker with it.

The Art of Character Creation:

To create a character, you state the very basic core concept of the character as a sentence. I’ll use my current fixation, a character of my own imagination, Hikari Amaterasu to help illustrate the process. The sentence form is as follows: (Name) is a (Adjective) (Noun) who (Verbs). In game syntax, this translates to “I am a Descriptor Type who Focus”. The Descriptor is defines the personality of the character, defines a limited set of skills, background options, as well as the development history of your character, and there’s a list of like 50 to choose from. The Type is one of four primary concrete Classes, and this is what defines your Stat Block and primary abilities. And the Focus is what the character specializes in and grants special abilities. There’s over 90 to chose from. Each Focus has the “leveling up” pathway defined.

I understand that much of the information presented in this game are just ideas to get you started. The true powerhouse of the game are the hundreds of Special Abilities that can mixed and match to create new Foci (plural of Focus). There are at least 20 supplemental books featuring different genres and settings too. This game offers nearly unparalleled flexibility with a simple dice mechanic, Intrusions, and an innovative way to use the Experience Points (XP) earned. Cypher System has been designed to ease the role of the Game Master so that he/she can focus on the story, rather than the mechanics of the game. Basically, what I was looking for was something that was highly narrative-focused, but had lots of options to build characters and worlds with. I had found it! Or so I thought.

The problem I’m having is actually creating the characters that I want to play. I’m not creating simplistic characters. I’m creating characters that are complex, they have access to multiple abilities, and even though I’ve spent months pouring through the guidelines, I just can’t seem to make my concepts work within the framework of Cypher System. The game is simply too restrictive. Now let me show you what I mean, by analyzing Hikari through the lens of Cypher System.

Hikari is a Solar Mage. This means that she has the ability to create, manipulate, and control both the elements of Light and Fire— basically if the sun can do it, so can she. Here in lies the first problem. She has two special abilities. Cypher is designed to sport a single ability for each character. Initially, I thought, well, there’s no rule that states that I can’t just add a secondary Focus. That’s the easiest solution. And since none of the provided Foci seem to match what I need, I’ll build my own! Let’s take a look at what a Focus actually is.

Big Trouble in Little— what?

Cypher System is essentially a Slot Build system. Each Focus has six slots. These are called Tiers, and they represent your character’s growth. You use your XP to increase how bad-ass your character is. This translates to your Character Level in other games, like Dungeon’s & Dragons. There’s only six Tiers. Six Special Abilities that your character will have access too, as he or she grows into them. Already, this feels restrictive. And while on the surface review of Cypher System and aligning it with an anime realm like Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, this may seem okay. After all, Nanoha only uses like five or six magical abilities throughout the show, right? She’s got her Divine Buster, Protection, Round Shield, Flash Move, Bind, and Starlight Breaker. But looking at the way a Focus is defined, the abilities types don’t match. Nanoha is a identified as a Bombardment Mage by Yuuno Scrya when she’s first activated with her magical abilities. Cypher System has a fairly equal distribution built within the Focus to feature offensive, defensive, and support types of abilities, and a major problem is that if I were to build Nanoha using Cypher System, she wouldn’t have access to all of her abilities initially. Remember, in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, near the end of the first season, Nanoha is able to cast her signature attack, Starlight Breaker. A Focus within Cypher System would reserve such an ultimate attack for Tier Six. Nanoha has that ability fairly early on, within the franchise of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. Character Progression would have to be insanely fast, and would feel rushed if I were to play such a character at a table.

Another problem I’ve identified is the way Resources are handled. In Cypher System, your Stats (Might, Speed, and Intellect) are actually Pools. Every time you want to cast an Onslaught, you’re draining your Intellect Pool. Every time you get hit by an enemy, you deduct from your Might Pool. This forces a player to think strategically during game play, and while I admit, is brilliant, this mechanic can not support the type of spell-slinging adventure I’m seeking. After a few short Rounds, the characters would already be exhausted, and nearing death. One possible remedy to alleviate this is to add another Pool. Say, Mana, but this only swaps draining from Intellect to Mana. I could insist that Mana is a World Pool, and that for every spell cast, a point adds to the Mana pool, but then I’m adding undue responsibilities to the Game Master to track this pool, and that weakens one of the core strengths of the game design that Game Masters can focus on story telling, rather than resource management.

And there are other issues with Cypher System. One attraction to games like GURPS, Big Eyes Small Mouth, even Shadow Run, are the Disadvantages, Defects, and Negative Qualities. Basically, a general term is Flaws. Cypher System has some of these bundled up with the Descriptor, and while that helps for speedy character creation, it also is quite limiting, because only a few Flaws are defined mechanically. Sure, the Game Master can always create more Descriptors, with more Flaws, but then has to define what they do in terms of Game Mechanics. There’s no defined list that a Player can scan through that can be identified as “Oh, that looks like an interesting quirk!”

There’s no defined Skills List either. This is both a great thing and a curse. It’s great because it allows for the ultimate in flexibility. As long as you as a Player can reason that a Skill that you possess can aide your efforts upon completing a task, you can reduce the threshold needed for a successful result. But this also means that the Player’s need to think ahead during Character Creation and dream up potential Skills that they’ll need during game play. For somebody like me, I feel this, who loves lists, is a determent.

So, I guess this is … Cya Later, maybe?

Maybe I’m just a lazy player / game master, but I’ve struggled with this system for six months now, and I can’t make it work for my needs. I’ll be glad to be a player around an established table, if I ever get the opportunity, but I think it’s time to shelve this game and resume my search. Or perhaps I’ll just finally break down, retire from my Day Job and create my own damn system. Yeah, right. Not in this economy.

So, my search resumes. What exactly do I need? Obviously, as I mentioned above, I adore lists, so a game system that offers plenty of options is a plus. I need a game that focuses on cinematic game play. So something that’s not uber crunchy. I don’t want to get bogged down doing a bunch of math at the Table, or really initially at character creation. (This eliminates games like GURPS and HERO System. I don’t want to have to complete the Quadratic Equation to define my character.) And, I want a game that is a breeze for a Game Master to run. One problem I have with many systems is that the basic roll mechanic is additive over a threshold that’s arbitrarily defined by the Game Master. Based on the four or five role mechanics, I think something that uses a Roll Under mechanic would be my preference. I want to just look at the dice and know whether or not I succeeded.

But I also have a problem with Rules Lite systems. I need guidance. Games like Fate, City of Mist, and Shift (newly released) offer abstract Tags that define your character, but I’ve looked at a number of systems and I just can’t wrap my head around them. Maybe there’s too much creativity that’s required initially, maybe I’m old.

Thinking about my wish list, I’m not sure this game exists yet. Or perhaps I’m just an impossible Player. 🙃