Daggerheart: Hope & Fear

Some say players accumulate hope much faster than the referee does fear, which could be a huge problem and destroy any challenge as players "pile on" with buckets of hope points. As a referee, going into a boss fight with a few fear points could mean the encounter would be a cakewalk for the players.

I feel part of this comes from not knowing the game, and referees feeling they need to "spend fear" to make a move, which the rules are clear on:

GMs also make moves. They should consider making a move when a player does one of the following things:

• Rolls with Fear on an action roll.
• Fails an action roll.
• Does something that would have consequences.
• Gives them a golden opportunity.
• Looks to them for what happens next.

After the GM's turn is done, the spotlight goes back to the PCs. 

- Daggerheart SRD, page 37 

Rolls with fear or ANY failure (RWF/F)? The GM gets the spotlight. The rules say, "consider making a move," which is bad advice. Make a move! Do not slack on taking enemy action when ANY player RWF or fails. If you are not forcing enemy attacks each and every time a player RWF/F, you are gimping your fights. If that purple die is ever higher than the yellow, someone in the party is getting whacked.

While RWF gets the referee a fear point, a failure does not, but both give the GM a chance to make a move. Take them. Don't be soft on this, since this will be the majority of the opposition's action budget.

How do you spend fear?

Spend a Fear to:

• Interrupt the players to steal the spotlight and make a move
• Make an additional GM move
• Use an adversary’s Fear Feature
• Use an environment’s Fear Feature
• Add an adversary’s Experience to a roll

- Daggerheart SRD, page 64

By spending fear, you can steal the spotlight, but you should be getting it on 50% of player rolls anyway, just due to chance. Also, remember, while resting, the referee accumulates fear. Spending fear to steal the spotlight should be a last resort, or saved for killing blows or other moments. The clever play is making a second move (or more) by spending a fear point, which means multiple enemies go on your spotlight turn.

Do not give the players any slack. Attack every chance you can get.

And don't burn your fear resource a few encounters ahead of the boss fight.

However, do not think that the only time the GM gets the spotlight is by spending fear. You are missing a massive part of the intended action economy. However, if people are correct and fear points are scarce, then using an adversary's special attacks and environmental features will not be feasible. The challenge will be negatively affected by a random factor.

I wonder if it was a great idea to narratively limit the referee's power using an artificial resource. The referee is busy enough running Daggerheart and keeping the puppet strings, making things work, and spending "referee points" to "make things happen," when in other games the referee can simply "just do it anyway," seems strange. It makes the game harder to run, and now the referee must balance encounters, run the narrative, communicate the environment, manage NPCs, reference rules, run combat, and manage a resource pool.

This is where the Cypher System excels. As a GM, I am not spending pool points to trip a boss's special attack; those are written into the monster. Monsters have their "boss attacks" used as GM Intrusions. I am not spending a limited resource to make a boss attack, as I can just call for a GM Intrusion for that monster, hand out XP to the players, and make it happen. Yes, I am handing out "free XP," but that XP can be handed back to refuse GM Intrusions, including boss monster attacks.

How many GM Intrusions do you have? They are infinite, but you are handing out XP with each one. With Player Intrusions, the players need to spend an XP to trigger them, and the referee has the final say (which protects the narrative and balance of the game).

Cypher's GM Intrusions are not "referee points." This is what being a referee is all about: rewarding players who take on extra adversity, while giving them more than enough XP to deal with it and push back.

Cypher System's narrative economy is easier, cleaner, and does not rely on tracking resources and generation by the players. It does not depend on random chance, and players do not make rolls to generate referee currency. Referees have no currency in Cypher; heck, they don't even have dice.

You call for a GM Intrusion when it is narratively correct, see if a player spends XP to refuse, and if they agree, you hand out the XP and tell them what happens next.

You keep playing.

The players are the only ones tracking pools, XP, health levels, and resources.

All a referee focuses on is the story.

Dragonbane is also great when it comes to boss monsters. They roll on a random chart every time they act. This can be solo-played very easily. You don't need narrative pools, just your imagination. This is a more traditional game than Cypher System or Daggerheart, but it also shows that you can use a random system to trigger boss attacks and have the game work correctly in the narrative.

I don't need a fear point to activate a dragon's breath weapon; all I need is the fear of not rolling it again.

Daggerheart remains a solid game, boasting numerous innovative mechanics. Other games excel in areas like narrative play. Others are more mechanical. One is not generally better than the other; each must be considered in light of a group's preferences, play style, and whether the game assembles enough interesting elements to make it compelling.

For mechanics, it is Dragonbane for me.

For narrative, it is Cypher System.

Daggerheart, I need to feel out whether this can be played solo at all, or if it's more of a group experience, like Pathfinder 2. Daggerheart is more of a collection of good things. If all these blend well and appeal to you, then great! This is your game. If other games do things better and would be a better fit for groups that like different styles, I will say so.

Be cautious about relying solely on limited reports of play and forming your opinion of the game based on them. Some groups could be playing the game wrong, report something wildly incorrect, and you will get a group of people online adopting false information as their opinion.

Play the game, and make up your own mind.

I return to the Daggerheart SRD, a free resource, and since it lacks art, it can serve as a more effective "quick resource" for rules. The page numbers in the index are significantly off in the current version, and I hope they will be corrected soon.

Yes, I can see how "going into a boss fight with limited fear" can be a problem, and the game tells GMs to spend "fast, often, and big." Also, don't let players make rolls for every little stupid thing. If the die roll has no meaning or impact, just "say they do it." Move the narrative along, and don't roll for every silly thing! This will freeze pool generation, but it will still reach the parts of the game where it matters when it is being generated.

If there is no consequence of failure, don't roll.

Also, think twice before setting a target number of 10 or lower. Do you really need to make this roll? Just give it to them! Most of your critical die rolls should be a target number of 15 or higher.

The action, "walk quickly across a narrow beam," is rated as a difficulty 10 agility roll. Most of the time, if the players were not under threat, had no arrows flying at them, and were not in a hurry, I would never roll for that. Yes, there is a "consequence" of "falling into the river," but I will ask you, "Is that really a consequence if nothing is going on around them?" 

What does it matter? Someone gets wet?

So what?

No real consequence, no die roll is needed, no hope and fear generation; move on, I do not care.

Do not get "die roll happy" with this game. Be stingy when you ask for dice rolls. Keep them essential and impactful.

Also, there is this rule in the SRD:

If there’s a rule you’d rather ignore or modify, feel free to implement any change with your table’s consent.

- Daggerheart SRD, page 3

If your bosses are getting rolled over, simply consider adding a rule where the referee receives a d4 of fear when a boss encounter starts. If the players agree, then the problem is solved. They don't want cakewalks any more than you.

Off the Shelf: Cypher System

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.

Off the Shelf: The Strange

This game, I never expected to pull from storage, but the Tales of the Valiant universe model of the Labyrinth is eerily similar to the infinite, connected worlds concept they present here. The Strange is a strange game, where you can play someone from Earth, an alien, or someone in a fictional universe who "wakes up" and realizes their whole life has been this strange simulation, and things are not really as they seem. You can visit or be any character from any game, movie, TV show, book, or any other product of imagination.

The game is truly "out there" in terms of its scope and the odd, between-the-cracks, strange universe of aliens that inhabit these realms and the forces present in the setting.

The Labyrinth is like that in structure, minus the aliens and between parts - this is just the connected spaces and pathways. But the concept of strange, interconnected, vastly different, and sometimes worlds from fiction are the same. Sometimes these are entire game worlds from other games, such as a D&D world or Pathfinder's Golarion. They will all follow the "home system" of Tales of the Valiant (or 5E), but the concept of interconnected settings through a strange and shifting system of pathways is the same.

Even the fact that worlds can be dreamed into existence is the same, though with the Strange, there is usually a world age involved where they get larger over time (or not). In the Labyrinth, worlds can be destroyed, appear, disappear at will, or stay around forever. They can be of any size. They can just contain a favorite adventure. The inhabitants of these places typically don't know they are in some sort of interconnected world.

Where the Strange comes in is that they have a fantastic system for designing interconnected worlds, worlds from fiction, and other worlds that follow all sorts of different rules. In some worlds, magic may not work normally, or at all. Some worlds have mad science. Some worlds have psionics. Some worlds exist with strange physics, or a set of rules that do not let modern devices work at all. 

Recursions (this is what they call worlds) can have special traits, or even grant foci (special powers) to everyone inside the world, such as a world that grants superpowers. You could have a world where reality gives everyone magic spells and powers.

If you get deep into the Labyrinth and its worlds, picking up a copy of The Strange as a companion book to use for creating worlds is a great idea.

The Strange uses the Cypher System as its resolution engine, and everything is abstracted and given one number as its "power level" - like you may say a monster is Power 5 (but it defends on a 6 and attacks on a 4), and the system figures the rest out. So the system can model longswords and laser rifles just as easily as it does orcs and walking sci-fi battle walkers. In 5E, you will need to create monsters with the ToV system, and then approximate strange weapons and technological items.

The Cypher System is truly an elegant and cool system that can do anything, but with a heavy layer of abstraction. 5E is 5E, very specific and with special case rules everywhere, and you're buying books to fill those gaps. In Cypher System, you can just wing everything and have it work out fine. A heavy laser cannon is a heavy weapon that knocks 2 points of defense off its target if it does not have a "heavy armor" trait. I made all that up, but it works just fine in the game.

The Cypher System is one of those "desert island games" that can entertain you endlessly.

In the Strange, you may step into a world or reality, and it alters your powers and appearance to match what the world is. Your party could be dressed as fantasy heroes in a Medieval world in one reality, step into another, and then become gangsters, private eyes, and gun molls in the 1920s. Your wizard's magic would be converted into powers that match reality, such as those of a mad scientist (if the world supports that).

I wish this game sold better and was more well-known; it is quite the mind-altering trip to play and very fun if your game master is deeply into pop culture.

But using The Strange as an assistant to create worlds and create ideas for the Labyrinth is a great idea. It gets you thinking about what special rules and laws of physics each world has, outside of the standard ToV and 5E rules, and a world based on a science fiction epic or sitcom will have different physics and rules, where some things can and cannot happen in those worlds.

Now, the concepts of creating "world attributes, traits, and foci" in Tales of the Valiant are outside the system, as the game's "reality model" is "everyone acts like a 5E character and the 5E rules are the rules of everywhere in the Labyrinth." If you are a level 14 rogue, you will be one in any world in the Labyrinth, and nothing will touch your powers that much. The base ToV rules will be the same everywhere, unless GM Fiat takes over.

In The Strange, these worlds can change you, introduce special rules, limit magic, give you powers, alter your powers into new forms, or mess with physics. Mitch Buchanan can meet Michael Knight. You can stumble into Alice in Wonderland, and things work in strange ways there. You can visit a world filled with robot life only on a dying world, and everyone in the party becomes robots that are seen to live in that world. You can stumble into GTA 5. You could be playing heroes in the Forgotten Realms. You could find yourself in Conan, Tarzan, or John Carter's Mars. You can care about the interconnected places and plots, or not.

These are cool concepts, worth exploring.

Again, we can do so much more when we abandon the "Wizards' IP" and not limit ourselves to their ideas being superior to yours. Gothic horror is a vast world, encompassing multiple places and being much more diverse, not just Ravenloft.

Break your mind free of the D&D dungeon, and there is so much more out there to do, and games that let you express your imagination much more vividly.

Mail Room: Cypher: Rust & Redemption (PDF)

They are shipping out the rewards for the Cypher System Rust & Redemption Kickstarter, and I have my PDF for the book. This is a nice 224-page, complete guide to post-apocalyptic adventures, and I am surprised at the level of detail they went into. This is really a high-quality idea and toolbox for post-apoc and survival games, and it lets you stay as grounded as you like, or go as wild as you like.

Using Cyphers as a one-time reward to restock different supply levels is genius.

The book has a sort of Fallout meets Gamma World vibe to it, but tries to keep grounded in the survival game. I sense a little bit of Numenera here, too, but not as magical and fantastical as that setting.

The best thing about Cypher System is its "make stuff up" factor. Since every threat in the game is rated on a difficulty class-like system, I could pull an idea out of my head, assign it a threat level and a few special abilities, tweak threat levels for offense and defense, and create a new monster or danger in about 10 seconds.

I can take any monster out of Gamma World and turn it into a Cypher System monster in about 30 seconds, it would take longer to read the stat block and description than it would to make the creature. One of the best things about Cypher System and Numenera is players do NOT know what they are in store for next, even more than Gamma World or any other game.

Cypher System is a better Gamma World than Gamma World, and I would say, mechanically, it would be an excellent system for Fallout, too.

Since "everything can be a challenge," you can rate a dangerous balancing act over a collapsed floor a number, and then, if you want to introduce another layer of threat, trip a GM intrusion on the party while they are midway across. The players can shift the narrative in their favor with XP spending.

A lot of these "on the fly" challenges in a game like Gamma World are typically tied to a module, and it takes a very creative game master to think of these on the fly. Cypher System lets me pull them out of thin air, assign them a difficulty, and then let the players deal with it using their skills, gear, and ability score pools.

I know; I could always say, "You see a collapsed area of a building, and it takes a DEX roll to cross it." In a B/X style game, what is the big deal? Make it up and assign a resolution mechanic. The difference is that the game master typically needs to know the game very well, as in, how does the game expect this sort of challenge to be resolved? Is it a saving throw? A roll-under check? How was this done in a module? Is there an acrobatics skill I need to go read? Athletics? What skill covers this? Is there a "balance" section of the rules in the movement chapter? Every game is different, and designers can handle the same simple things in a million different ways.

Aftermath is a good example. There are many special-case rules hidden everywhere in this game, and once you "program your brain" to know how everything is done, the game is easy and relatively simple. The books are short too, which helps you create that "mental index" you need when being a game master.

Cypher System is different. As a GM, I use no dice. I do my narrative thing and assign numbers to threats. I am sitting in pure "storytelling mode" and relaxing, with my "mental index" being a few cheat sheets and a passing knowledge of the rules. Since character creation is the meat of the game, all the heavy lifting was done then, and that is mostly making picks by players off lists.

You would think, since Cypher System's threats are "just numbers," they would feel "all the same," - but they aren't. You can say the same thing about an orc versus a goblin in B/X; the numbers are so close; how are they different? Is it the description text? The art?

It is what you do with those numbers, and rarely do the numbers matter since it is you bringing them to life.

I am looking forward to getting the physical book, this one has been a long time coming, and I will be digging into the PDF here soon.

Hard Cypher vs. Soft Cypher

The game is incredibly dull when I play Cypher System solo and go soft on the characters. And by 'soft' I mean my GM Intrusions have no consequences, the challenges have no chance of horrible consequences or crushing failure, and there is no such thing as the chance of dying or failing and terrible things happening. The whole game is this soft 'la de da' experience where nothing matters.

Things get amazing when I go hard, make GM intrusions serious business, and create real and threatening enemies in front of the characters. Does a character just take the damage and not spend the effort to avoid it? Trip a GM intrusion on the successful hit, knock the character off the top of the speeding truck, tangle their feet, drag them deep underwater, knock their weapon out of their hands, and make the consequences of taking the hit really hurt.

If they want to avoid it, spend the XP to avoid getting hit and something worse.

Or they can take the XP and layer on that extra difficulty level.

There is always a price to pay.

This also keeps players from complaining: why should I spend effort and "take damage" to "avoid damage" - getting hit should be worse and bring potential further consequences.

Hard Cypher is ten times more fun than Soft Cypher. Never sit there as a fanboy or fan girl of the characters and make things happen how you feel they should. No way. As a solo GM, your job is to throw as many obstacles and problems in front of your adventurers as possible, layer on problems and consequences, and go hard on them.

Make them burn those pools and spend those XP.

If they take XP from GM Intrusions, make them earn them the hard way.

The closer they are to achieving the session goal, the harder you must press down. The alternative is boredom, a danger of a rules-light game. You will fall into that soft, fluffy layer of 'nothing matters' and 'what is going on?' With a rules-heavy game like GURPS, there is always a chance a goblin will randomly put an arrow through your character's eye. With a rules-light game, there is zero chance of that happening since why would I do that to myself? I still play GURPS for that level of challenge, but there is no reason you can't go that hard with a GM Intrusion in Cypher System - especially in a dark fantasy genre game.

Use GM Intrusions to push their goal farther away, make the odds turn against them, introduce a dangerous threat in combat, make random NPCs or guards find the stealthy player, set off a trap, activate an unknown extraordinary enemy power, send in reinforcements, make the character's vehicle crash, and turn up the heat for the entire situation. Introduce a new long-term story complication, ruin their reputation, toss them in jail, give them an injury that won't heal quickly, turn a faction against them, break equipment, destroy vehicles and bases, kill NPCs, and make life difficult.

Do not worry about the players! They have Player Intrusions to negate and mitigate all this. Are the players stuck in jail? The authorities found the 'real' culprit and let them go. The injury? A quick trip to a healer or clinic makes the injury heal quickly and not be a hindrance. They can repair their car. The faction approaches them with an offer to return to good graces.

Make them spend the XP.

This is why you are giving them XP in the first place.

In this system, players 'win' by taking XP from GM Intrusions, dealing with those situations with smarts and skill, and not spending XP to negate them. They take the hard road, walk it, use their powers and skills to get through the weeds, and come out battered and bruised. But they bank those points and lick their wounds - saving their XP for a terrible day. This is the pool game, where ability pools are short-term, and XP pools are medium-term. Spending and replenishing those are the fun of the game.

Turning up the heat in situations and encounters makes Hard Cypher fun.

Cypher: Still One of the Best Games

This was one of those games I could not figure out. I put this on a shelf, boxed it up twice, and gave up on it as too obscure and abstract.

For one, I could not get character creation through my brain. It was a descriptive sentence, but none of the translations between the words and the numbers made any sense.

Pools? Effort? Edge? Hindering? Assets? And the difficulty and target number system?

What?

There are no hit dice? Any challenge is the same? Intrusions? Where are all the combat rules? What can this do that B/X can't do with an AC and a bag of hit points?

Then, I played a post-apocalyptic 'Road Warrior' style game with the system. Car combat rules? There is no need for Car Wars and counters; I made them up on the spot. And they worked. And they worked incredibly well. Cars had levels. Size and level differences were assets or hindrances on attacks and defenses. The size was not everything, as a junky, large delivery van with lousy weapons may be an attack at level 2, defend on level 3, and have level 5 (15) hits. Weapons? Light, medium, and heavy, just like characters. That isn't in the official rules, but it worked for me - otherwise, enemy cars, damage equals level.

The car fights - in the narrative - were better than anything I had ever 'theater of the mind played' in 30 years of knowing Car Wars, Twilight: 2000, or Aftermath.

Traffic in a packed border outpost town? Give it a level. Try to get delivery missions done while your junk delivery van breaks down, overheats, and nearly gets hit by idiot drivers. Need more narrative spice? Don't 'say something happens - offer a GM intrusion. Are you bored playing solo? That is your fault; trip a GM intrusion and make something happen - this is your game! Want to push back as the character? Spend an XP for a player intrusion. Tell the GM what happens as the character. Create an NPC, or put a dungeon on the map and say you are going there.

Done.

You are not reading through 40-year-old D&D modules missing critical parts of the room descriptions and giving up because they are too wordy. You are not a bag of hit points with an AC and daily spell slots. I realized that the Cypher system was born out of decades of frustration with D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder 1e.

This is when it all clicked.

The entire game is the d20 DC system built into a game, with narrative pools and spent effort controlling player agency. Every other part of 3.5e is tossed out, but that DC system remains and is the game's core. There is a crunchy framework for characters and powers, so you get more than a typical rules-light game. This isn't the FATE system. It is not so abstract; the world becomes a blur of conditional words and sentences, and relative difficulties are adjusted by rolls.

There are numbers here. These root the game in math. There is a crunch to the characters. The game rewards balancing your abilities, and one-trick pony characters will be boring and one note in parts of the game. A made a bard who could not fight, and it showed. I rebuilt the bard into a stealth fighter with a few bard abilities, and the character could contribute in many situations.

Rules-light games suffer from characters being too abstract, where you could justify using a vague 'panache' bard ability as an attack roll. I have seen games like that become one note, with players only using one ability score to do everything - from forcing open doors to attacking targets at range.

One of the worst parts of Cypher is realizing you want to play another game and realizing the other game is missing huge parts of the rules - or those parts suck in the other game - and realizing the Cypher System could just do it in a roll plus difficulty. Shadowrun, with its mixed magic and hacking, is perfect for the Cypher System, and I can't imagine playing it with any version of the official Shadowrun rules without my brain melting.

First, answer the question: What are you trying to do?

Hacking? Set a difficulty.

Magic? Set a difficulty.

Exploring cyberspace? What are you doing there? Set a difficulty (if you even need to).

Using a heavy weapon to attack a flying car? Set a difficulty.

Car combat? Do what I did in Road War. It is easy. It works.

Down the line, click, click, click - it all works.

Do I want drow and tieflings in Shadowrun? Uh-oh, I need to hack them in or buy a book with them! Cypher System? I have them; I can build them in a second. What are you talking about? Why spend more money or hop between games with different feature sets?

Some of the rules I have are missing entire parts of these rules. Or the spells boil down into the overused B/X magic. I want to be a fantastic street mage! Magic missile! What? Can we wait for my fireball spell to be in a couple of levels? Give me a few weeks of play here to be excellent. Let's start at a higher level! Please? D&D progression is becoming a joke; the spells are a half-century old, and it isn't the be-all and end-all of roleplaying.

But to enjoy Cypher, you need to be more on the narrative side of the game than the rules. If you enjoy the rules of a system - fine - that is your thing. Me? I pick up classic Traveller, get excited, and then realize it is missing vehicle combat rules. Are we having an air raft chase? Um, some skill rolls? Is the referee's hand waving damage?

Cypher? Level 3 vehicle, hand weapon attacks against it are hindered by 2 levels to a difficulty 5. Vehicle weapons target it on a 3. Asset and hinder as usual. How many hits? Level 3 times 3 is nine.

Done. Now play. It will work. If not, adjust a little. Want the character's air raft to crash land somewhere interesting? Use a GM Intrusion. I am way further in this adventure than I would be simulating this with the classic Traveller rules. I would not even be on the planet yet.

If you like the Traveller rules and enjoy rolling 2d6, play that!

For me, especially playing solo, I don't care about the rules that much. The story interests me a lot more. The crunch is in the characters, not the setting rules. I am not looking up rules. Do I need hacking rules in my Traveller game? The same way I handled hacking in my Shadowrun game still works. In Shadowrun, you use a 3d avatar to fly around a virtual network. In Traveller, you search a text prompt for the library, volume, and index of a magnetic data tape the size of a loaf of bread you need to find in a storage room and insert it into a data reading terminal.

It is all flavor, as the Cypher System people love to say.

But flavor matters! That flavor will influence Player and GM Intrusions. GM Intrusion? The magnetic tape may be damaged, and the data needs to be recovered. The 3d virtual environment may have a glitch. Player Intrusion? The magnetic tape has extra deleted data on it, and when recovered, it is also very useful. You meet someone beneficial in the virtual environment.

Flavor matters for narrative, not mechanics. A key point here.

Keep the original book near you for inspiration, but ignore the rules. The Cypher System puts you in "the story of" faster than any of these games. Some people can't handle that, and that is okay too. I can abstract things down to the narrative pieces and ignore the rest. I can crunch in Cypher System if I want details, like tracking ammo down to the bullet. Or not. Some games don't even give you the choice.

One of the best parts about the Cypher System is that it plays solo amazingly well, and I don't need to buy shelves full of books to tell stories in infinite worlds - or read thousands of pages of rules for 90% of situations, spells, and options I will never use.

Urban Fantasy: The Gonzo Game

I look at all the 5E implementations of sci-fi and cyberpunk, and every time, it is a 300+ page book with too many rules, too many complicated subsystems, and half of the rules you will need to interact, and adventure in a near-modern cyberpunk city environment are nowhere to be found.

3.5E, 4E, or 5E can never have enough rules for everything. It was like this back in Pathfinder 1. I have thousands of pages of rules for everything, and I still have large gaping holes for relatively common fantasy tropes. I sit here and wonder if they can ever write enough 5E rules or if it will ever stop.

Some games are rules sponges, and they are built to sell you more rules. They lack generic mechanics where a simple, universal, and coherent rule could handle one thing.

5E was built to sell you the next book, and it will never stop. Even the classes are designed to be very book-dependent; you get one new subclass with this book, nickel-and-dime the design over a few hundred (or thousand) dollars of expansion books.

This is how the game was designed.

Everything from 3.5E on is like this.

It is a mobile game with stamina mechanics and particular currencies needed to complete basic actions. Only here, the rules are just generic enough to cover basic actions. Still, for anything exciting or radically different, the game needs an entirely new subsystem for things like monster training, car chases, vehicle combat, hacking, magical research, city building, hirelings, coffee shops, universities - and you need a sixty to eighty dollar book for each of those activities.

Play the game long enough, and you will need a book for something else.

Urban Fantasy? Taking elves, orcs, tieflings, magic, and monsters and mixing them with magic and cyberpunk? The closest thing I have to that is Starfinder, dozens of books I am not rebuying, and the story is the same. The core book covers 30% of what you must do as an adventurer but lacks many subsystems for specific circumstances. I bought books and books, and while I may get good coverage of most of the things I need - it will be a  few thousand pages of rules.

I am done with games like that.

I hit the 5E wall with a desire to run a d20-based Cyberpunk or Shadowrun game, and I realized how difficult this would be to pull off without a few thousand pages of rules. If a game were relatively complete in one book, learning how vehicle combat, hacking, magic, monsters, and everything else work in a heavily structured game would not be worth the time and effort. The 5E design makes it even harder since a good representation of a few classes would take over 100 pages of rules, powers, and options - if you include magic and tech powers.

The time it would take to learn and apply these rules for a typically unsatisfying and overly complex result would not be worth the time and effort. I experienced that in GURPS: Traveller, where my starfighter combat turned out to be something between a mix of a physics simulator and a submarine warfare game, and the two fighters searched for each other in a vast void of space, never finding each other, and never being close enough after they made a guess where the other ship would be.

They were lost in space and could only fire when they were 2-3 hexes apart, with zero chance of detecting each other to get that close.

Many systems written in these d20 games for starship or vehicle combat aren't worth playing, and the hacking and other systems are the same. They are created for map combat, and everything else is an afterthought. NPCs do the vehicle combat and hacking, and the GM handwaves it. For urban fantasy magic meets cyberpunk game, I don't want 5E 'in-room combat' with a leather jacket, sunglasses, and attitude.

Cypher System handles the entire Urban Fantasy genre better, with more flair and ease of use. Motorcycle chase through traffic? The system does it easy; the enemy has difficulty, uses the traffic on the freeway as a hindrance, uses your skill (and possibly bike) as an asset, and you roll a d20. Apply effort as needed. I don't need to learn 20 pages of unworkable vehicle combat rules that will require battle maps, road sections, and for me to place down every car to move around.

Roll a 1? GM Intrusion, and you wreck your bike. Roll a 20? The one you are chasing does. Major and minor effects are covered in the same roll, along with extra damage.

GM intrusion? Chase complication. Player intrusion? Force the issue and push the story forward.

Hacking? Same. You have your skills and tools as assets, set the difficulty rating, apply hindrances to the situation, and roll a d20. Apply effort as needed. Done. I don't need to learn 20 pages of hacking rules that nobody will use.

Magic? Same. Summoning a trash golem? Same. Making a deal with the mega-corps? Same. Helicopter combat? Same. Disabling high-tech security systems with a remote drone? Same. Casting an illusion? Same. Creating a combat robot? Same. Retrieving deleted data from a secure system? Same. Understanding ancient magical rites in an unearthed temple? Same. Climbing buildings? Same. Starship combat? Same. Training cyber combat pets? Same. Being a race driver or rock musician? Same.

Thousands of pages of rules I don't need to remember or keep on a shelf and never use.

Dozens of books I don't need to waste money on or flip through, taking away play time.

Yes, having a detailed subsystem for chases, vehicle combat, hacking, magic, and every other thing is a 'nice to have' - but given most games get this sort of game design utterly wrong on the first design, and they are never fixed. The Starfinder ship combat rules were horrible in the first book, and they changed many of the numbers in later printings. Most 5E books don't get a second printing, and some - like Spelljammer - don't even include the rules for what they are promising.

90% of the time, for a narrative experience, the Cypher System rules do the job faster with more flair and flavor than anything I have seen designed in almost every 3E to 5E game ever printed.

For a setting that demands so many unique interactions and situations - having a system that simplifies everything under the sun will make the game a faster and more enjoyable experience. This worked wonderfully for my Cypher System 'Road War' campaign, and I could run a day's action in 30 minutes and be happy with how it played and the results. There was tension in the pool management and a real fear of failure when I played solo. I don't get that from many other games.

If one of my three pools drops to zero due to effort or injury, everything gets more complicated, and I wonder if my character will make it through the day. And I can't fudge the rolls or the rules, and it is pretty clear when I lose points in a pool and from what.

The roll stands, and my character's life gets more complicated.

But I can fight back by spending those precious XP. These pools have an abstract narrative nature, but they simulate hundreds of pages of complex subsystems in one roll with one number.

The system works, covers anything I can imagine, and saves me hundreds of dollars in books and days of time learning exploitative and broken systems. If I want to watch complex subsystems break and fiddle with numbers, I will play 5E. If I wish for an incredible story with a system that handles anything, I will play Cypher System and forget about those other games.

You need to ask yourself, what is the most important?

What gives me the most fun?

For me, the story wins.

Cypher: The Better 5E

If 5E existed for a million years, I am betting Cypher System is what it would end up as.

This is a game I never thought I would understand since the layers of abstraction felt so utterly alien to me that I would not figure out how to create a character. I packed the book away and felt like the purchase was a waste of money. Then, I pulled it out and made an honest effort to determine what was happening.

People hyping this game up as a game they could not live without was what made me put the work in. Best thing since sliced bread! I never understood what they were talking about. Character creation was a mystery. The system seemed far too abstract to have meaning at the table. Everything from monsters, weapons, and powers seemed overly abstract.

And then it clicked.

Cypher simulates the 5E table-play loop perfectly. People sit around the table, managing resource pools, improving characters at milestones, trying to keep their player characters alive, finding treasures, solving puzzles, dealing with challenges, and rolling a d20.

Everything superfluous or distracts from that loop was tossed out. All the d20 scaffolding and cruft are gone, and many of the 'fake invented terms' were tossed out to keep the core gameplay loop streamlined and focused on the fun parts only.

Challenge Rating? Hit dice? Hit points? Difficulty Class? Saving throws? Proficiency bonus? Advantage? Modifiers? Lists of dozens of chained conditions? Action economies? The d4, d8, and d12? Multiclassing? One-level dips? Spell level? Inspiration? Bastions? Average party level? Flat-footed? Attack of opportunity?

Blah. Blah. Blah.

Fake, invented lingo meant to distract you. Most of it is worthless transitory values meant for exposed system math. It is like you asking me what the price of a cereal box is and me answering, "X equals 5.99!" Many of these terms were invented for 10% edge cases and then enshrined as the game's language - and then, they decided to load more rules onto the term. By default, games should be written in natural language, and special terms should be saved for things without easy replacement.

Forget the false lingo of D&D and Pathfinder and free your mind. Of course, you are replacing that lingo with Cypher's lingo, but the lingo on this side is more logically consistent and less rooted in a wargame-y, arbitrary past. You are also not dealing with 50 years of cruft and trying to keep things familiar yet modern.

You want to sit around a table and roll a d20 with friends.

Cypher gets you there in a single book with a core mechanic. The character creation and customization are on par or better than 5E. With one of the genre books supplying focused options and a few more customizations, you have a better and more complete game than a shelf full of 5E books draining your wallet dry. And Cypher is a generic game, so it really does everything.

Challenges are generic, as monsters can be just a level challenge, and that's it. The deeper you go here, the better it gets. Altering individual values for deviations from the norm is how you make monsters unique. A goblin may be a "level 1" challenge but does 2 points of damage. They may deal more surprise damage and set traps like a level 5 creature. Using the 'team up' (swarm) rules from Numenera/Strange, you can put them in four-goblin groups and have them attack as two levels higher (with a +2 damage bonus). With ingenuity and customization, monsters become deadly fast.

The resource pools are amazing. If you want depth, use a realistic wounds module and track that damage separately from the effort spent. When playing solo, watching those resource pools run dry and knowing what will happen when you lose one or two makes the tension rise. Finding a safe resting spot becomes critical for survival, and I am not talking about some closet in a dungeon somewhere.

You start cherishing and burning those XP to survive with player intrusions and rerolls.

And those start running low, and you get really worried.

Oh, and the players and referee share in narrative control. When those pools of resources run low, your characters are in danger of failing or dying. You are burning XP to shift the narrative in your favor, and you will feel the tension and excitement rising far more than listening to the door of room K23 and spending an hour fighting six goblins (and short-resting the consequences off). The more the referee awards XP, the more fluid the narrative becomes, and all sorts of amazing things can happen.

Cyphers themselves toss monkey wrenches in every situation. They are flat-out unique toys that encourage emergent behavior and roleplaying, often offering alternate solutions to problems other than 'blast them with a spell' or 'kill them all with weapons.' 5E is so limited in emergent gameplay, and the characters are almost internally focused on personal power that they become blind to alternate solutions to problems. We have murder hobos in 5E because that is what the game encourages and rewards.

Want a more fantasy-focused experience? Play the sister game Numenera; you have a world far better than anything 5E can dream of. Numenera does a science fantasy and extra-planar setting far better than the tired 5E 'great wheel' setting, and it does it with a sense of mystery and wonder - and is entirely unpredictable in terms of opponents and challenges. This setting is on par with Dungeon Crawl Classics in terms of 'I do not know what I am looking at' in terms of monsters and threats. Numenera beats the tar out of 5E's 'happy planes' and 'fantasy multiverse' offerings, where you must buy the earlier edition books to run the setting.

Numenera can be played on a wide range of flavors and feelings. You could play this as straight fantasy and have an almost Forgotten Realms feeling to the world, with ancient science making infrequent and mysterious appearances. You can play this as a better Gamma World than Gamma World. You can play this as a Heavy Metal science fantasy experience. You could play this as a sci-fi game and world. This can be played more like Rifts. This could be a horror world. A world with mechs. Thundarr the Barbarian works nicely here. A cyberpunk setting. There is a little bit of Minecraft in here. There is a space game hidden in here.

The range of flavors and ways this can be played boggles my mind. What GURPS is to universal rule sets, Numenera is to science fantasy settings - it does it all.

Combine this with The Strange? You can have characters from TV, movies, and fiction running around in your universe causing trouble - and those universes bleeding into others and taking them over to an infinite degree. These can be rebooted to be used again fresh. You can use the system to play characters inside one of those realities and have it break free from the limitations of that recursion.

You can even play characters from fiction, TV, anime, and movies. They can escape their world like something out of Last Action Hero and find themselves fighting for their lives in another movie or fictional universe. Want to have the characters from One Piece fighting Jason Vorhees at Camp Crystal Lake? Want to be a Mulder and Scully X Files agent stuck in the middle of that fight? The Strange does that.

I feel bad for the 5E players stuck in dungeons, railroad adventures, and those planes that reinforce stereotypes and Western religious paradigms. What would a place of ultimate evil look like if you were banned from using Hell, demons, and the Abyss? Who would live there? These players will never know how fantastic, frightening, unique, and alien the universe can be. They will be forever stuck worshipping the Keep on the Borderlands and thinking the Tomb of Horrors is the ultimate deathtrap dungeon.

I love those adventures but give them a rest.

Do something new.

Try something else.

If I sell all my 5E books, I would not miss them with this trio of games replacing that core gameplay experience. The character builds are better, the gameplay loop is better, the resource management is a revolution of thinking, and the shared control of the narrative allows the players to help shape the story.

Cypher is the ultimate sitting around a table and rolling a d20 with friends game.

Cypher: Still the Awesome

I keep returning to Cypher when other games make huge promises and fail to deliver.

I am at the point where playing fantasy campaigns in Cypher is more interesting than D&D 5E or Pathfinder 2. The characters I create in this game are similar to their 5E counterparts, and I build them from little building blocks, pick the abilities I want, and power them up as they adventure.

The resource management in the Cypher System game is an A+ game of risk, reward, and tension. Even in non-combat missions, burning those ability pools down to achieve goals, complete tasks, and get the job done is tense - add the risk of combat to that, and we have a winning combination that makes many play themes engaging. Your resting is limited. Damage could kill you if you burn pools down too hard.

Using XP to change the narrative and have the narrative reward you with XP is fantastic. The reward system in this game is pure magic and makes solo play fun. Your stories give you XP. You can use XP to help shape the story and the world as players.

My old game was the incredible Road War, Mad-Max-inspired madness. My new game is a fantasy game in the classic Mystara setting. I could create the classic Aleena character and give her the "Kill Bargle" character arc, and an entire campaign would write itself. Every time she advanced her goal of getting to Bargle, taking down the evil soldiers of the Black Eagle Barony, crushing the evil wizard's evil allies, smashing his magical laboratories, and burning down his library towers of magic, she would get XP. She could invest in new character arcs along the way and start them, so her story would not end if she were to get her final revenge.

She is not some "off-tank heal bot."

She is a woman with righteous vengeance on her mind, and the game rewards her story arc progression.

Every action she takes will be justified and rewarded.

The powers she picks as she levels are tied into her story. I am not limited to the D&D standard character-build strategies. The Cypher books give me more options, and I am customizing characters like this was a "spend it on anything" GURPS game. With a different character arc, her character may come out in an entirely different way. Even in this one, she could go more "magic power" or "battle power" or more "leader of an army" - depending on how she wants to approach the problem of resolving this "Kill Bargle" character arc.

The story's needs and the player's direction will decide the build.

Many OSR, 5E, and even Pathfinder 2E character mentalities are built along a classic "passive" adventurer mindset. We will sit in this tavern until someone tells us where the adventure is happening. In Cypher, establishing one strong character arc can drag the entire party along for fun, leading to even more opportunities to light the fuse on other character arcs, driving the narrative like a 25-ton rolling stone ball. When you get great character arcs started, with a risk of actual loss and defeat involved, you do not want to stop playing this game.

I don't get that in 5E, One D&D, or Pathfinder 2. These systems feel like "last-generation" designs.

And the beauty about Cypher is I can play a complete adventuring day in about 30 minutes of play as I "check-in" on the party and see what they are up to today. I am not flipping through monster manuals, looking up spells, creating battle mats, managing complex combat rules, reading 300-page campaign books and adventures, reading 12 pages of class options and powers per class, or managing inventories by the pound. I do not need shelves full of books.

Yes, it is a rules-light game, but it has enough mechanics and power choices to make it feel equal to a 5E in character options, along with a compelling resource management game that gets more agonizing, deciding "how much longer do we go on?" I can run a four-character party in this, no problem. The math isn't as bad as 5E, with dozens of modifiers for skills and abilities to deal with.

Are things abstracted? Yes, weapon damage and armor are pretty abstract, but they make the game feel like the world is following "movie rules" where we are not worried that a Star Wars blaster is doing a d4, d6, or d8; it is just a blaster, and there are light, medium, and heavy ones. The character will make it more lethal. The movie does not care about fine detail, nor should the game. Magic is the same; you can flavor a power in the game to be "spell-like," and it is.

It is all flavor!

Could I play this with 5E? Yes, but I would fall into the "Where is the adventure?" rut. Cypher lets a character control the narrative, make the bad guys show up, tell the GM, "Bargle has a secret laboratory here," and spend XP to make that a truth. They could spend an XP for a player intrusion and have an informant slip them the location of an evil shaman summoning a terrible monster that Bargle wants to have delivered to his dungeon. She will be a pain in his side every step of the way.

A player with XPs will make things happen and shift the narrative to serve one of their character arcs. If the players have no XPs? Trip a GM intrusion on them, and they suddenly have XPs.

XP as narrative currency is a fantastic mechanic. Investing in your story and game world is as fruitful as saving XP to buy powers and "level up." Your spent XP create more opportunities to earn them. I am pretty generous on XP, and my players go crazy spending them on the story and world, which is fantastic. The world is mostly theirs after a while, and they are earning more XP than they would if they hoarded them for character improvement.

Cypher is primarily a player-driven game. The GM doesn't even roll dice, instead acting as a storyteller that interprets "what happens next" given the world and the character's actions. I avoid touching dice or having them near me when I referee this game. I don't even take them with me. If I need a d100 roll, I ask a player for one.

Cypher System: The Universal Task Mechanic

There are a lot of incredible rules in the Cypher System, but none more universal than how monsters are created.

You set the level.

You multiply the level by 3 for hits.

That is the average monster of anything in the game. Now, you can tweak the numbers so everything isn't so uniform, like making a goblin a level 2 creature with 6 hits but making the little guy vicious and force level 3 defense rolls (doing 3 damage) on the characters - now the goblin is weak to taking damage but can put out more damage than an average level 2 critter. Monsters can have many other special abilities and rules, including special attacks and defenses and anything else you could find in a d20 game.

Minus a heck of a lot of rules.

However, what if you wanted to rate a complicated, multipart task where progress is tracked?

Simply make it a monster.

Set the task level, and multiply by 3 to calculate the "hits" of the task. Make rolls against the task as usual, like standard combat. But how much "damage" do you do on a successful roll? That depends on the effort, and you can rate that as a light (2 points, eases), medium (4 points), or heavy weapon (6 points, inability). The player chooses the level of effort (2, 4, or 6) and modifies difficulty according to the situation, assets, skills, and rolls.

Reduce the task's hits (or total effort needed) on a success. On a failure, no effort is gained. On failed rolls, you could reduce a character's ability score pool by the task level if the task is physically or mentally exerting. You could even use that as damage (such as untangling a panicked animal from a thorny briar).

Bonus effects on the rolls (like bonus damage) can be used to reduce the task's hits/total effort.

The atomic pass/fail rolls are still the standard way of doing most everything in the game. Still, this system lets you use the combat mechanics for complex tasks, such as safecracking, where a series of rolls may be needed to open the safe, and the character could mentally exert themselves on a string of failures.

The rules of this game are so easy to hack, and this is one of the best d20 systems out there.

Entirely Social

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.