Cypher With Friends

AI Art by @nightcafestudio

This week, I have had the rare chance to play Cypher with others, and it has been a blast.

The system was instantly learnable; we created live in-game characters during the first encounter, and I taught the rules as we played. I used my tried and true "tutorial character" system of having someone in-game explain things as the situation progressed. That character gradually became less of a tutorial character and more of an NPC when the group felt confident.

The best thing? The players did all the rolls, and I would ask them for a d6 or d100 roll when I needed one. I forbid myself from touching dice or having them on my table as GM. When they asked why I was doing a d100 roll, I told them why, and they followed along in the book with what I was trying to reference.

So they were all learning how to game master too.

I have no "GM screen" or "secret adventure notes" to reference, and I kept a pad of paper to make world notes. I used my tablet on a stand as my "book" and played music on it. I had nothing hidden from my players, nor did I need to.

AI Art by @nightcafestudio

Another great note is to make the XP flow like popcorn. Use a generous XP rate, and encourage rerolls, player intrusions, and spending XP to change the world. The world is just as much of my player's creation as mine. They wanted a base; they created a "desert castle" as a home base, spent 3 XP and created it, and then spent an XP creating character arcs to repair and fix the place up.

And just like that, they were invested.

They purchased NPC contacts, created player intrusions, changed the narrative creatively, and had much fun using the one-use cyphers to cause havoc and solve encounters in ways they never expected.

Cypher System is one of the best games I played in years, and it is even better when playing with others.