Entirely Social

AI Art by @nightcafestudio

So I did an entirely social game of Cypher System last night, a sort of 'running around town' session that would be a stretch to call 'an adventure.' Any game would struggle to make this enjoyable, but I had a few things going for me outside of the typical "town session" I was beta-testing.

I created a list of locations and gave them "levels" to represent the venue's general difficulty in challenges. Let's say you have a bar where you can find a seat 90% of the time. I rate that bar a 1 since that is a 90% success level. How about a club that always has a line, and is how to some rough customers? That may warrant a 3; you fail the roll, are stuck in the line, and miss the fun. Maybe you still get in, but it is probably late, you missed the cool thing that happened, and the entire visit was meh.

This is the wonderful shortcut Cypher System gives you, throw a level on it and be done. The level can be used for everything from drinking games, games of darts, the level of people in a bar fight, the difficulty of finding a person of information in there, finding a romantic interest, and many other things. The more popular club generally attracts higher skilled people, since it is popular, then it is the place to be seen.

The OSR doesn't do this type of mechanic or relies heavily on 3rd party random charts. Many OSR referees will just "invent what happens" and not need anything in the way of a base challenge-level concept for anything unless you are playing the Cypher System adjacent Index Card RPG, which uses a similar "scene challenge level" mechanic. I would do the same thing there, give a bar a target number and some hearts, and whatever the players did, drink the bar under the table, start a fight, play darts or cards, arm wrestle - target number is the difficulty, hearts are what you knock down, and the special dice are used to gain progress. Reduce the scene to zero and move on to the next story part.

Some like the extreme GM fiat of the OSR, and I appreciate that when running games for others. When I play solo I like a few more mechanics to guide me in these situations. Being able to zero-to-ten anything in Cypher and whittle away with hits with effort is a nice way of resolving actions that may have back and forth. Otherwise, I use pass-fail atomic rolls and let the chips fall where they may.

You can do that with Cypher System, too, since you can derive hits by multiplying the challenge by three and find creative ways to do "damage" to the scene's "hits." Count most levels of effort as medium 4-point attacks unless you're doing something cool or special, then rate it a heavy, 6-point level of effort. Easy things that mirror light weapon attacks ease the difficulty but only apply 2 effort points.

Also, depending on the character's skills, being able to do a medium or heavy "attack" to a scene's hits may have an inability. Going for the bullseye would net a 6-point heavy attack in a game of darts, but I would increase the difficulty by one for most characters. Lose, and that 6-points goes to your "hits" (likely SPD pool here) since you took a big chance and blew it. Use whatever pool as a temporary "hit value" but don't deal actual damage (unless effort is used and points spent).

So if you are in a drinking game, play out the rounds as a defense, and if you win, knock effort of the scene's hits. Drinking that level one bar under the table will be easier than the level three one.

The one thing my setting lacked was any sort of conflict, so it was all very plain and boring. I had lists of GM Intrusions for each location, but all the game became was "visit and intrusion" which felt sort of silly. What my social town setting needs are factions and conflicts to take this to the next level. I need to be giving the characters missions and providing the opposition in their daily activities.

It is too easy to see fail in a playtest and then declare, "The whole game system sucks and I suck!" You need to step back analyze, figure out where you went wrong, and make adjustments. A list of locations with levels and GM intrusions is a great resource, but it isn't a game or a compelling setting. And it certainly isn't a story. After the session, I stepped back and asked myself, "Why did this feel lacking?" My characters were not burning their pools, no combat happened, and nothing felt particularly dangerous or risky.

I realized, no story to drive conflict, and no conflict to define factions. yes, I came at this setting from a low-level and defined a great collection of interesting places in a town setting, but the next step is to "do the homework" and approach this same setting from a high level and write the story, define the conflict, and craft the factions to give the players something to work against. Then I would need NPCs and goals so the players can go on "missions" and feel like they are progressing the story.

A setting is not a story, and it isn't fun by itself.