https://www.montecookgames.com/store/product/cypher-system-rules-primer/
This never got taken off the shelf, but it sat there for a while while I sorted through my games and started reducing the number I keep out. Monte Cook helped develop the modern version of the "d20 system," and this is his answer and ultimate version of the concept:
- Everything boils down to a d20 test.
- Players rely on pool resources.
- Difficulty can be bid down based on resources, skills, and pool expenditures.
- There is a meta-currency of XP exchanged between players and the referee to advance the narrative.
- Resting is tightly controlled to prevent exploitation.
- The referee (GM) is a narrative-focused participant only and does not roll the dice.
The entire system is as if people who have been playing these d20 games their whole lives decided to throw most everything out and boil down the interactions to the most basic and engaging parts. Everything was on the table, and most of it got thrown out, while keeping the best and most interesting parts of character design.
What is my character archetype?
What makes a character different and special?
What does my character do?
A Cypher System character is described in one sentence, "He is a tough soldier who works for a living," and all of the character's statistics and scores are created from that description. It is the most elegant and intuitive character creation system in roleplaying today, and it even beats out the card system of Daggerheart. You don't even need cards, just a few words, and then everything flows from there.
With fantasy kin, you do need to add another descriptive tag in there. "He is a tough elven soldier who works for a living." Or, replace "tough" with "elven;" the system works either way as long as you are consistent. Elven, dwarven, and so on will add a few special abilities and modifications. This is really the only system hack you need to do, if you want.
Daggerheart uses the typical D&D "rules framework" scaffolding, and it still has many crunchy combat and interaction rules. Daggerheart is a rules-medium game, and if you care more about narrative than system crunch, you will be happier with Cypher System than Daggerheart.
And Cypher System's narrative tools are a generation beyond the "shared story structure" of Daggerheart. Where Daggerheart relies on players becoming "temporary referees" in describing the narrative, such as when a player opens a chest and the referee asks, "What do you find in it?" The player can pull a magic sword out if they want, with no cost or price to pay; they just say so, and it happens.
In Cypher System, the referee is in charge of "what is in the chest," but the player is always free to pay 1 XP and trigger a "Player Intrusion" and find that magic sword, and the GM has the final say. The GM is free to give the players 2 XP (1 to the player, and the player decides who the other goes to) and trigger a "GM Intrusion" that complicates the narrative, such as the chest being a mimic or a trap being triggered. Or perhaps the magic sword has a curse that the players must go on a quest to break.
With the Cypher System, there is a currency linked to the narrative, based on an experience point (XP) economy. You pay XP to push things in your favor, or get XP for taking a setback. A critical failure (a d20 roll of 1) triggers an automatic GM Intrusion, with no XP awarded.
Daggerheart is considerably softer than Cypher System on narrative control. There is no narrative currency other than fate and hope points. There are no prices to pay to give yourself "free stuff." The game relies too heavily on goodwill, trust, and people not exploiting narrative powers. Once the referee begins amassing "fear tokens," then tension ramps up as the player's resources are reduced, but resting is far softer in this game.
In Daggerheart, resting generates fear, which seems strange. They limit resting like Cypher System, and you can only do a few things each rest, and must decide what you do. In the Cypher System, you rest, recover pool points, and time passes. The GM does not receive "fear points" or gain resources when players rest; they do not need it. Time is always the enemy; that is a given in both games, but Cypher System handles resting far more elegantly with far more narrative consequences.
Come to think of it, the referee has no tracked resources in the Cypher System. You don't need dice or special trackers. Those are for the players to play with. You focus on the story and the world. Daggerheart caps referee fear at 12, which feels like a lot, and I can see a situation where a GM piles up so much fear it becomes hard to use without piling on the players and having the monsters hog the spotlight.
In the Cypher System, I don't need a bag of "fear tokens" to beat my players over the head with to raise tension. Their characters are constantly spending resources, draining their pools, and burning rests. If you don't allow the players a chance to rest in the Cypher System, or they burn all their narrative resting options, and the ones they have left will consume too much time, then you begin to squeeze your players and raise tension.
I had a situation where I had a character trapped in the badlands with only a 10-hour rest left, and there was no place to stop and rest without forcing an encounter. They were low on everything, barely hanging on, and had to spend an XP to trigger a Player Intrusion to find a relatively safe spot to stop in. I allowed it, and they recovered some, but not all of their pools, and limped back home the next day, even getting into another combat encounter.
Long rests aren't a "solve every problem" panacea like it is in Daggerheart or D&D.
Cypher System is much better defined in terms of the "cost" of changing the narrative, and the tension is ramped up considerably as your pool resources start depleting. Resting replenishes them, but once you start using those up, you begin to ramp up tension.
Cypher System also solo-plays exceptionally well. Your character exists as your playing piece, and you interact with a story, which you never have to context switch to a pretend referee and roll the dice as. If a GM Intrusion makes sense, it happens, or use an oracle die to see if one happens. You can always pay an XP to opt out.
Rolls of 17 through 20 trigger extra special positive effects for players. Also, only the players roll the dice, and monsters don't "make attacks." A player rolls to make an attack, and the player makes a roll to defend. Enemies never roll the dice.
- 1: GM Intrusion
- 17: +1 Damage Bonus
- 18: +2 Damage Bonus
- 19: +3 Damage Bonus or a Minor Effect
- 20: +4 Damage Bonus or a Major Effect. If points were spent on the roll, they are not expended.
The dicing system and results of the Cypher System are an all-time genius system. Every roll is a surprise. Even a difficulty 1 task can be failed, and it is worth knocking that down to zero to avoid a roll at all. Avoiding rolling at all is a great strategy.
The GM never rolls the dice in the Cypher System and does not even need to do so. Only the players need dice. I played Cypher extensively, and I purposely never had dice on my side of the GM screen. If I needed a 1d100 roll, I asked a player to make one for me. I did not always tell them what it was for, just to give me one. The GM only focuses on storytelling and adjudicating the results of actions, NPCs, and the environment.
Also, the meta-currency of hope and fear in Daggerheart is constantly generated whenever the dice are rolled, and each player tracks a hope total, along with hit points, armor, and stress pools. The referee needs to track a "fear pool." In Cypher System, each character has three ability score pools, XP, recovery rolls, a damage track, and XP is the master meta currency. The meta-currencies are far easier to track in the Cypher System; there are fewer of them, and they are not always constantly changing with every roll.
Which game you prefer will depend on what you like and your expectations.
If you like the D&D rules crunch and trust each other well enough that sharing narrative control will not lead to exploiting the situation, then Daggerheart will be your game. For every D&D rule that Daggerheart throws out, it brings in a new one that is just as fiddly and crunchy to replace it. While it is more narrative-focused than D&D, it is still as filled with "d20 style rules" as the game it seeks to replace. Also, the narrative tools the game gives you are soft, with no "back and forth" between players and the referee.
Daggerheart is still a unique and fun game! Don't get me wrong, I love to see innovation in the hobby. The card-based characters are "Cypher System Lite" and do a good job of getting people playing quickly. The rules have enough crunch to please 5E players. It balances the "D&D style" with the "live play style" nicely. The game is crunchy, with plenty of character optimization, combinations, and fun.
We can't put this game on top of the narrative gaming mountain, though. We have the best narrative tabletop game of all time already, designed by one of the legendary designers in the industry.
If you want a multi-genre game where the crunch is thrown out the window, and every tool in the game serves the narrative, and there is a cost to creating an advantage, then Cypher System will be a better game for you. The game can play any genre, in any world, and has far better tools for building worlds and establishing the parameters of your creations. The Cypher System encompasses a wide range of genres, from science fiction to fantasy, including horror, comedy, romance, action, realism, and any flavor you can imagine.
The character building is far more expressive and in-depth than Daggerheart. Where Daggerheart relies on cards (and selling you more), Cypher System will just give you a new book filled with dozens of new archetype selections, and you will be shocked at what you can build out of them. Even the base book of Cypher System contains infinitely more combinations of character pieces than Daggerheart, with add-on books containing hundreds more that are tailored to each genre.
If narrative is king and you don't want crunch, Cypher System is the clear winner.