Cypher: Starfinder

I love the Starfinder setting; the rules are one of the best 3.5-style science fiction games. I don't have the time to play it and manage all the characters I want to run. I tried, but when you struggle to run five characters with printouts of 4-5 pages each, you wonder if this much work is worth the trouble.

I have the same problem with Pathfinder 1 and 2. The games are far too in-depth for my time during the day, and the effort is not worth the fun I get from the system. I don't doubt the depth and detail are incredible for some players and groups; I played these and appreciate the incredible designs and options.

And I flip through the Starfinder adventures, and it is page after page of stat blocks for monsters. Yes, the challenge! But can we do better? Is roleplaying storytelling or World War II wargaming? If I want the ultimate tabletop experience, I will play Pathfinder 2.

My time with the Cypher System has really been an eye-opener. I plated rules-light narrative games such as FATE and Index Card RPG, and these are incredible games that keep character sheets simple while focusing on narrative flow. FATE is still a fantastic game, one of those classic pick-up-and-play gems.

Cypher is entirely different; it keeps play simple while providing a 5E level of depth in the character options. And it dispenses with monster stat blocks entirely. The characters aren't 4-5 page PDF printouts I feel endlessly waste paper. I can maintain sheets by hand.

With Cypher, I sit down, turn on some music, and play. Since the level of "GM prep" is near zero, I don't need to spend any time getting a dungeon laid out, encounters built, treasures stocked, monsters selected, and all sorts of flipping through GM books or adventures to begin. I use my solo-play oracle, generate some starting situations, and get playing as the Cypher System flow takes over, and "me as GM" is not rolling dice and just presenting the challenges. "Me as the player" is rolling the dice.

And if I want to rate challenges of anything from skill checks to monsters, it is all on the 1-10 scale.

What is that, those Starfinder space goblins? That would be a level 2 monster, and maybe the special ones with heavier weapons would do 4 damage on a hit. I do not need to look at stats, books, or special attacks and defenses. The low level of detail in the Starfinder game does not matter; only the general challenge level and the few special rules that may apply to a monster, such as special attacks and defenses or multiple attacks.

If I pick a monster token I know nothing about, I would guess the abilities or look it up in a book, but I keep the design fast and loose, using generalities to determine monster abilities. Weakness in an element would ease the elemental attack, whereas resistance would hinder the same. You could do elemental immunities. Armor. Special attacks. All of it is easily translated, and it is a more straightforward translation than games like GURPS or Savage Worlds.

I could use the Cypher System for the rules to play in the universe and tell stories. If I want the whole experience of the rules, I will use the rules. Right now, my playtime is minimal, and while I enjoy the whole experience of the Starfinder system, I just don't have the time to play it and maintain a collection of characters.

Is Starfinder compelling enough to play with another system? The big draw of Starfinder is the crunch and rules. The setting? It is good, but a part of me says if you want to play in that universe, use the Starfinder rules. You pay for the stat blocks and playtesting with the adventures, so you should use and appreciate them. So no, I won't convert.

I made this decision by reading the Dead Suns adventure path and realizing the structure of that module:

• 50% is combat with finely-tuned encounters
• 25% is exploration glue between combats (maps, etc.)
• 25% is guidance on the DC checks needed to progress the story for the first two

Throw out the rules, and you are mostly throwing out the adventure. So to be fair, this was made to play and show off how great Starfinder is, so it is unfair to replace rules and kinda-sorta play through a story that is the glue for the encounters. I also have a problem with many Paizo adventures; they tend to focus on combat more than discovery or problem-solving - but they play to their audience, of which I am a part, so I can't complain.

I could have 80-90% of the same science-fantasy experience with Numenera. What is missing? Starships? Add them in and do inter-system travel. Star elves or any of the fun races? Add them in. Again, I hit the quandary of conversions. How much of what you like or want about the system is there, really? I feel the same with settings like the Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk; very little I like about those settings is tied to the setting itself. Dark Sun? A generic "fantasy desert survival" world with "dragon emperors" and their "sorcerer kings" painted with a roughly savage Conan-style brush would work for me. I could play that with anything from GURPS to Cypher System.

This is also the problem of current-day Wizards of the Coast. All they see is what is problematic about a setting, and they are blind to what makes a setting excellent and engaging. You could rebuild a 5E Dark Sun along the thinking I laid out, and there would not be anything problematic about it, and the setting would be re-engineered towards the flavor and fun of the original game world. Put "what is fun" on one side of the whiteboard and "what we would like to update" on the other. Make everyone oppressed by the evil rulers, and make the game about overthrowing them.

It is elementary to update these worlds, yet they don't do it.

But I feel the same way about Starfinder. My starship captain and about 4 NPCs form the group's core. None of them are strongly tied to Starfinder. As long as I have "space science fantasy" with a few "classic fantasy in space" tropes, that is 80-90% of what I want anyways. Numenera fits them well.

I am falling out of the conversion game and more just doing what I want these days or playing settings how they were intended to be played.