Cypher System: The Ultimate Narrative Generic System?

GURPS, Savage Worlds, and Champions are less narrative systems, in my feeling, and more traditional generic "toolbox" systems. They do not abstract as much, and they feel and play more like a conventional "dungeon crawler" than they do a narrative simulator.

Cypher System falls into an area where games like FATE and Genesys live. The other two games use special dice, and Cypher uses traditional d20, d6, and 1d100 dice - so the buy-in and accessibility are greater. Like these generic narrative systems, the flow of the story is closely tied to play.

With GURPS and Savage Worlds, I can play these like a traditional dungeon game, and the narrative flow is more tied to the concrete dice rolls made at the table. With a generic narrative game, the flow of the story is very much the game and built into the mechanics.

Cypher does things differently. The game uses a d20 and is loosely based on the 3-30 difficulty class system familiar to D&D 3.5E players. The game also uses an OG Traveller-like pool system for the three attributes, where damage reduces the attribute pool (and effort also comes from these pools). The role of skills and gear is to reduce task difficulty. The role of pools is for damage, stamina, and effort. Damages are fixed. And the xp and reward system is deeply tied into the narrative flow of the game, and XP serves as a currency that drives both story and advancement.

And the characters have this fantastic build system, much more interesting than 5E. I can't figure it out yet, but I feel that is one of the system's weak points - it is so conceptual that it feels challenging to approach from the standard "let's design a pen-and-paper character" mentality. I am sure this will be easy once I "get it," but I will need to watch a bunch more YouTube videos on getting started before I feel confident in this area.

People love this game, and it is taking over the "narrative play" space by storm. This is one I am looking forward to learning and playing since so many people are excited about this one.