Gamemastering any roleplaying game is an art, honed over time. Don’t expect to be awesome your first time, but rather expect to learn and grow the more you practice it. Obviously, in this book we focus on Cypher, but many of the things you read here apply to all games.
It’s not really your job to teach the players the rules, yet it often falls upon the GM to do just that. Before beginning a game, encourage the players to read How to Play to get an overview of the game. It won’t take them long.
You’ll probably also want to give them an overview of the setting you’ve created and the genre expectations that exist. Focus primarily on the kinds of characters a player can create and what they might do in the game. Once players understand who they are and what they’ll do, the rest of the setting is just details they can discover as they go along.
The key to teaching someone the game is to start with the idea of die rolls and how they use the same mechanic no matter what a character tries to do. Then explain using Effort, which involves an introduction to the three stats. After that, a player is ready to start making a character. Taking a new player through the character-creation process gets them ready to play. Focus on creating a character creation sentence. Don’t overload them with a lot of details beyond that. All of those can be picked up as needed in the course of play.
With any game, GMs should consider running it a little differently the first few times, and Cypher is no exception. There are a few things you can expect with a table full of new players. First of all, they won’t get the terminology and the jargon right—they’ll use the terminology and jargon of the last game they played. And that’s fine. But you should try to get it right because the players will follow your lead, and after a session or two, they’ll start getting it right. If you always call things by the wrong name, the players will too. However, don’t just spout jargon. Each time you use a new term for the first time, such as “moderate wound,” “GM intrusion,” or even “difficulty,” explain what it means. Make sure everyone’s on the same page, even with the basic stuff.
The players won’t know what’s easy and what’s hard. Part of good Cypher play is knowing when to use Effort and when to conserve, but beginning players will have no frame of reference. In this case, the best way to give them solid ground to stand on is to be fairly transparent. Tell them the target number for each task before they attempt an action. Guide them through the process. Remind them that they can use Effort if need be, although they probably won’t forget. On the contrary, beginning players tend to use Effort on every roll. You can almost count on it. This means you can expect beginning characters to do very well in whatever they set out to do, but they’ll have to rest more often because they’ll deplete their stat Pools more quickly.
Cypher combats should be about something. There should be something interesting at stake. “Trying not to die” is an interesting stake, but it’s not the only one. Combat can be fun and hopefully exciting in its own right, but it’s not necessarily the focus. In other words, fighting through a long combat isn’t the point, and finding a way to win a combat quickly through creative thought isn’t cheating. In fact, it should be encouraged. Defeating the big boss monster easily should not be a letdown; it should be the result of smart, creative play. And Cypher adventures shouldn’t always have a climax involving a big boss monster, anyway. The exciting end to the story could involve surviving a massive landslide, finding a way to shut down a dangerous machine, or convincing a tyrannical warlord to let the hostages go.
A big part of stories told using Cypher center around discovery. Can you have discovery through combat?
Sure. Say the PCs are exploring an ancient complex and encounter a strange life form. The creature attacks, but during the fight, it telepathically says “Curious” and “Creature unknown” and “Protect the sanctum.” It’s telepathically talking to someone else, but the PCs “overhear.” Although the combat is fairly standard, the PCs have discovered a new creature, and they know it’s something that’s never encountered a human before. There are more of them, somewhere, and there’s some kind of sanctum. It’s not just a fight. The PCs have learned something.
In a more standard setup, the combat is the obstacle that the PCs must overcome to reach the discovery, which again reinforces the idea that there is no right or wrong way to overcome the obstacle. Sneak past the foes or convince them to let the PCs pass—both are entirely valid.
Combat offers players interesting choices, not just in what actions they take to defeat their foes, but in how they defend against incoming attacks. Players can choose to dodge or block. Dodge might seem to be the superior choice because it negates an entire attack, but when dodging characters are hit, they take more damage than blocking characters do, who take some damage with every attack but reduce that damage.
Narratively, in our imaginations, this creates clear visuals of what’s happening. The nimble characters are dodging attacks (or not), and the characters that are more or less armored tanks get struck but keep going. It’s important to note that when describing a wound a character takes, the minor, moderate, and major category also significantly aids in visualization. A minor wound might be a bruise or a scrape. A moderate wound is more significant, probably with a fair bit of blood or a nasty sprain. A major wound could be a major broken bone, a punctured lung, a bleeding artery, or worse. You might say that a minor wound is one that will likely make you wince, and it will sting for the rest of the day. A moderate wound is going to hurt for a few days at least and probably needs some tending—bandages or a sling. A major wound is one that, if you suffered it in your real (modern) life, you’d need to go to a hospital.
Cypher is a game that places more importance on creativity than on understanding the rules. The players should succeed not because they’ve chosen all the “right” options when creating their characters but because they come up with the best ideas when facing challenges. This means that for every challenge, there should be a straightforward solution (destroy the lightning-emitting turret to get into the tower) and a not-so-straightforward one (sneak up to the tower, find the power conduit to the turret, and sever it). It’s not your responsibility as the GM to come up with both. The players will come up with the not-so-straightforward solutions. You just have to be willing to go with their ideas.
This doesn’t mean you have to let them succeed if they try something weird. On the contrary, the not-so-straightforward solution might end up being as hard or harder than the straightforward one. But you have to be ready to adjudicate the idea no matter what. It’s tempting to say that there’s no way to find or sever the power conduit and the PCs have to destroy the turret the old-fashioned way (a combat encounter). In some situations, that might be appropriate—perhaps the conduit is simply not accessible to the PCs on the outside of the tower. But a GM has to be willing to say that sometimes it is possible and to adjudicate the details on the fly. If you don’t, and you shut down the players’ outside-the-box ideas, they will learn that the only thing to do is charge into the fray every time. That the obvious solution is the only possible solution. Eventually, this will make for boring play because things will seem repetitive and too tightly structured.
The best method is not to develop preconceived notions of how the PCs might deal with the encounters in an adventure. If they’re going to break into a tower, you can note that the tower has a few guards, a pressure-sensitive intruder alert system around the perimeter, and a lightning-emitting turret on the top. But you don’t know if the PCs will fight the guards, bribe them, or sneak past them. You don’t know how they’ll deal with the alert system and the turret. That’s not the kind of thing you need to think about ahead of time, but you have to be ready when it comes up at the table. You should prepare for the most obvious situations—for example, predetermine the level of the turret and how much damage it does. But when a player states that their action is to look around for spots where the turret cannot strike because a wall blocks it or the angle prevents it, that’s when you take a second to consider and (particularly if they roll well on an Intellect action) maybe say, “Yes, as a matter of fact, there is a spot,” even if no such thing had occurred to you before that moment.
I keep saying over and over that Cypher is all about story—narrative. Your biggest job as the GM is to provide the impetus for stories in the game. The stories themselves arise out of gameplay, but they are started and guided by you. You provide the seed of the story and present the events as they unfold because of what the PCs and NPCs do.
Crafting a good story is a topic that could fill a book of this size. I highly recommend that interested GMs read books or articles aimed at fiction writers (many of which are available on the internet) that provide advice on plot. For that matter, similar sources about characterization can help in the creation of NPCs as well.
For now, remember these key concepts:
The key to running a great game as opposed to an adequate one is often the simple matter of pacing. Well, pacing is simple to describe, but it’s not so simple to understand or implement. It comes with practice and a sort of developed intuition.
Pacing can mean many things. Let’s briefly break them down.
Keep things moving. Don’t let the action get bogged down by indecisive players, arguments about the rules, or irrelevant minutiae. Don’t let the middle of an encounter get sidetracked by something that reminds a player (or worse, you) of a gaming story, a movie, or a funny thing on the internet. There’s time for all of that later, probably after the game session is over.
Don’t let the end of the encounter drag out. When it’s clear how things are going to turn out, and people might start to get bored, wrap it up. If the PCs were fighting two dozen giant rats and only three are left, there’s nothing wrong with saying that those last three run away or that the PCs handily dispatch them. Wrap things up and move along.
Have many different encounters in a session—some long, some short, some complex, some straightforward. One of the trickiest aspects of game session pacing is deciding what to play out and what to skip. For example, the PCs want to buy new gear with the money they were paid for a job. You could describe the town’s market and roleplay each interaction with various merchants. You could even call for occasional rolls to see if the characters get good deals or not. Alternatively, you could say, “Okay, you can buy whatever you want,” and then move on. There are good cases to be made for both approaches, depending on the context. Maybe one of the PCs contracted a disease on the last mission and doesn’t realize it until they’re interacting with people in the market. Maybe a pickpocket in the mall attempts to steal from the PCs, or they notice a thief stealing from a store. Maybe the players like interacting with NPCs and enjoy your portrayal of minor characters. All of these are good reasons to play out a shopping encounter. But if there’s no compelling reason, just advance through it.
Sometimes, you should do this even if one player wants to play out every moment of their character’s life and describe everything in excruciating detail. Although you want everyone to be happy, you’re in charge of pacing. If you must err, make the players struggle to keep up, rather than letting them be bored and wonder when you’re going to get on with it. Thus, if there’s no compelling reason against it, don’t hesitate to advance time, even in large chunks. If the PCs finish a big scenario and some downtime makes sense, there’s nothing wrong with announcing “So three weeks later, you hear that . . .” and starting the next storyline (as long as the players are content with it). Books and movies do this kind of thing all the time. Skip the boring bits.
In addition, feel free to intrude on player discussions for the purpose of moving things along. Sometimes players spin their wheels or plan and plan their next move, never accomplishing anything. You can intrude by throwing an encounter or a surprise their way (“A message arrives from the priests at the clave”), or you can simply say, “Let’s move things along.”
Keep a clock handy so you can see how much time is left in the session. Never lose track of time. You want to end a session at a good point—a place where everyone can catch their breath, at a good cliffhanger, or as everything in a story wraps up so you can start anew next time. These are all fine stopping points, but you want to control which one you use. Next session, you’ll have to start things up again, recap past events, and get everyone back into the swing of it.
Try to ensure that at the end of any session, the players can look back on what they did and feel like they accomplished something.
This aspect of pacing goes back to researching how fiction writers handle story creation, and it’s a huge subject, but consider the standard three-act structure as a good starting point. In act one, the problem is introduced. In act two, things get worse (or a new complication is introduced). In act three, things are resolved. There are many other ways to do it, but remember that the action needs to ebb and flow. You need downtime between the moments of action, horror, or high drama.
Mix short scenarios in with longer ones. Weave the plotlines together so that as one story ends, the PCs still have things to do. But don’t be afraid of downtime. Let the characters have a week, a month, or longer here or there to live their normal lives before throwing them once again into the heart of danger. If a campaign takes a year of play time in the real world, you don’t want it to take place in only three weeks of game time. That never feels right.
Although Cypher doesn’t usually bother with precision timekeeping, it’s handy to know how much time some real-world things take so you know how long your character would spend doing them. For example, if you have to walk 4 miles (6.5 km) from town to a specific farm, you should know that ought to take about an hour (fifteen minutes per mile [ts] 4 miles). Here are some examples of these time estimates.
| Action | Time Usually Required |
|---|---|
| Walking 1 mile (1.6 km) over easy terrain | Fifteen minutes |
| Walking 1 mile (1.6 km) over rough terrain (forest, snow, hills) | Half an hour |
| Walking 1 mile (1.6 km) over difficult terrain (mountains, thick jungle) | Forty-five minutes |
| Moving from one significant location in a city to another | Fifteen minutes |
| Sneaking into a guarded location | Fifteen minutes |
| Observing a new location to get salient details | Fifteen minutes |
| Having an in-depth discussion | Ten minutes |
| Resting after a fight or other strenuous activity | Ten minutes |
| Resting and having a quick meal | Half an hour |
| Making or breaking camp | Half an hour |
| Shopping for supplies in a market or store | An hour |
| Walking 2 miles (3 km) over rough terrain (forest, snow, hills) | An hour |
| Meeting with an important contact | Half an hour |
| Referencing a book or website | Half an hour |
| Searching a room for hidden things | Half an hour to an hour |
| Searching for cyphers or other valuables amid a lot of stuff | An hour |
| Identifying and understanding a cypher | Fifteen minutes to half an hour |
| Identifying and understanding an artifact | Fifteen minutes to three hours |
| Repairing a device (assuming parts and tools available) | An hour to a day |
| Walking 20 miles (32 km) over easy terrain | A day |
| Walking 12 miles (19 km) over rough terrain | A day |
| Walking 6 miles (9.5 km) over difficult terrain (mountains, thick jungle) | A day |
| Building a device (assuming parts and tools available) | A day to a week |
Earlier, I recommended using description that was both precise and concise. Precision comes from avoiding relative terms like “big” or “small” or emotional words like “terrifying” because these words mean different things to different people. This doesn’t mean you have to specify the exact height of every structure the PCs find. But rather than describing a building as “a tall tower,” consider saying “a tower at least five times the height of the trees around it.”
Being concise is important, too. Go on too long with descriptions, and the players’ minds will drift. Sometimes, what works best are short, declarative, evocative descriptions with pauses in between for player comments or questions.
Great roleplaying game sessions often involve immersion. Immersion comes from a sense of being truly caught up in the action and the fictional world. Just as when you read a great book or watch a well-made movie, playing an RPG can get you caught up in your own imagination. And best of all, you’re sharing your imaginative escape with everyone else at the table. For immersion to work, you have to give great descriptions.
Cypher combat, for example, is very simple and open-ended rather than precise, giving you lots of room to describe how characters move, how they attack, and how they avoid attacks. A successful dodge roll might mean dodging, but it could also mean a parry or ducking behind cover. A successful block might mean that the character blocks the slicing axe but still gets a bruise beneath their armor, uses their arm to block to protect more vital spots, or blocks the attack but is so jarred by the force of the blow that they’re unsteady. A character who is struck in combat for a minor wound might have dodged the weapon attack but fallen backward onto a jagged and ruined control console.
The players should describe their actions too. Encourage them to be creative in what they do and how they perform a task, whether it involves the way they attack, what they do to give themselves the best chance to make a difficult leap over a pit, or how they slip into a noble’s study to steal the map they need.
Don’t take any of this as a requirement. Long descriptions can be tedious as easily as they can be interesting. Sometimes the best way to serve the pacing of a combat encounter is to state whether an attack hit and how much damage is dealt and keep things moving. Vivid description is great, but it’s not a valid excuse for you or a player to drag things out and destroy the pacing.
With so many different choices in the game, “the world” could mean a lot of different things. Below are a few thoughts about genres. See the individual genre chapters in this book for more details.
A fantasy setting can be a weird place, and describing it can be difficult. It’s all right to fall back on clichés—castles, knights, dragons, and so forth. Keep in mind, however, that these concepts are so well-worn that if you use them, either you need to be okay with the generic images that pop into the players’ heads, or you need to be very specific about what makes this dragon different. (And if you have the time and inclination, by all means make your dragon or knight different—the players will enjoy it and remember it.)
Don’t hesitate to make your fantasy world grand and striking. If magic is prevalent in the world, have the Emperor’s palace made of nothing but foes petrified by his pet basilisk. Have the cavalry mounted on six-winged birds rather than horses. Put the sorcerer’s home on the other side of a magical portal found only in a waterfall at midnight.
When possible, stress the most interesting aspect of your description. For example, don’t bother telling the PCs about the normal buildings in the city if the central tower is a hundred feet tall and topped with a huge red crystal.
If the setting is the modern real world, use specific references when you can. The bad guys aren’t in a car—they’re in a Ford Explorer. The agency boss is wearing a blue Armani suit and offers you a glass of eighteen-year-old Glenfiddich whiskey.
On the other hand, since it’s the real world, don’t bother with description that’s not needed. You don’t need to detail every building the characters drive by, obviously—just the one they’re going to. The rest is simply “downtown.”
As with fantasy, use clichés and tropes if they’re handy. Refer to scenes from television and movies that would be familiar to the players.
Be wary of shorthand description and inappropriate comparisons. If the PCs see an alien vehicle flying through the air toward them and you describe it as “sort of like a flying car,” they’re going to picture a flying twenty-first-century sedan with tires, a steering wheel, and bumpers, and that’s probably not the image you want in their heads. Instead, try to give them the gist of the vehicle. Saying something like “A large, dark vehicle—sharply angled and full of strange protrusions from all directions—suddenly rumbles toward you through the sky, blocking out the sun” puts a more evocative and weird image in the players’ minds. It’s better to be vague than incorrect or, worse, jarringly inappropriate.
If you must, use twenty-first-century terms or comparisons to describe things, but introduce them sparingly because they can break the mood very easily.
While the setting is ostensibly the modern world, everything in superhero games is usually bigger, bolder, and brighter. Strong characters are rippling with muscles. Important characters are usually good-looking or hideously ugly. When a supervillain creates a device that will destroy a city, the machine looks dangerous. Things in this setting are rarely vague or subtle.
Description is vital in horror, both in what you say and in what you don’t. Although precision is a good thing, pedantic, exhaustive detail is not. Even if that’s what is needed to fully describe the monster or phenomenon, don’t do it. Leave the players with an impression rather than an exact description. “A creature that looks like three black beetles, each the size of a mastiff, with too many legs and eyes” isn’t a full description, but it’s an impression. It gives the players something to picture, even if it’s not precisely what you’re picturing. It’s weird and evocative, and that’s important.
In a postapocalypse setting in the near future, use the same techniques as with a modern game, but stress the run-down nature of the objects or people, or the rarity of preserved objects or places that the PCs encounter. Tell the story of the apocalypse in what remains. Don’t just say there’s a “ruined building—describe a three-story structure, blackened by fire, with the top floor collapsed and a crashed emergency services helicopter protruding from the wreckage.
In a postapocalyptic world set far in the future, where the PCs don’t have knowledge of the time before the ruin, do the opposite. Don’t describe what they see using names and language that they would never use. Treat it like the sci-fi setting discussed above, but the pre-ruin world is the “alien” stuff. Don’t call it a smartphone—describe a small plastic artifact with a dead window revealing nothing inside.
You can add magic to any genre. While you can refer to the main genre for most descriptions, here you really want to stress the magical. Contrast the mundane with the mystical, erring perhaps on the side of making the nonmagical parts of the world drab and dull. The supernatural parts, on the other hand, should be brilliant, glittering, glowing, or seething with darkness (whichever is appropriate). It’s not just magic—it’s scintillating with power or dripping with liquid arcana. Last, don’t settle for cliche in this setting. It’s not a dragon in the modern world—it’s a dragon made of concrete, manhole covers, and light poles. It’s not a sorcerer in the science fiction world—it’s the dark priest of a neutron star, wielding gravity like a whip.
Cypher doesn’t require you to spend hours carefully designing stats for NPCs (unless you want to). There aren’t a lot of rules to memorize. It’s not worth writing out elaborate descriptions of each encounter because if you let things proceed organically, many planned encounters might not be used. The rules of Cypher allow you to come up with a lot of the details as you go along, since you don’t have to reference loads of books and stats during the game session.
To prepare for a session, you need to create only three things: a list of names, a brief outline, and a list of ideas.
No matter how much you prepare, you’ll end up creating some NPCs on the fly, so have a list of names to use when this happens. Leave room to write a quick note next to each name you use in case that NPC shows up in the game again.
The outline is an idea of where you think the story could go. Of course, the key word is think. You can’t know for certain—the actions of the PCs will take things in unexpected directions. In truth, “outline” is probably not the right word. Think in terms of places the PCs might go, people or creatures they might interact with, and events that might occur. For example, let’s say that in a fantasy campaign, the PCs enter a small village. You plan to start the session by having them hear about a local man named Barlis who disappeared mysteriously. Your notes might say:
And so on.
Obviously, that’s just the beginning, but you’ve covered a lot of the contingencies, assuming the PCs investigate Barlis’s disappearance at all. Some of that material might not get used. The PCs might not go to his house—only to the mill and then to the priest. Maybe they won’t go to the priest at all, and you’ll need to have someone else direct them to the hermit. Or maybe the PCs will come up with a wholly unexpected path of investigation.
Just like with the list of names, jot down a bunch of random ideas. These are things you can throw into the game at a moment’s notice. They might be flavor, cool visuals, or important side plots. For example, in a horror game, your list might include:
These are all ideas that you can sprinkle into the game when appropriate. You haven’t tied them to a specific encounter, so you can insert them whenever you want. You might not use them all in the same adventure—they’re just ideas.
Part of being a GM is handling players. This means a lot of things. For example, it’s partially your job to make sure that everyone has a good time. You need to ensure that all the players get to do the kinds of things they like to do in games, and that no one is left out. If one player really likes combat and another enjoys NPC interaction, provide some of both. Before you can do that, you need to find out what the players want in the first place, so talk to them and learn their expectations.
Another big part of handling players is coping with disruptive players. Disruptive players can be the death of a game. They can hog all the attention, tell other players what to do, or challenge your rulings at every turn. A lot of GMs are tempted to deal with such players during the game by punishing them or giving them negative feedback. For example, they have the character get attacked more often, lose experience points, or suffer similar consequences. Resist this temptation. Instead, speak with the player person to person (not GM to player) outside of the game and explain that their behavior is causing problems. Be clear, direct, and firm, but also be friendly.
The bottom line, however, is don’t play games with jerks. One disruptive, rude, or offensive player can ruin the whole group’s fun.
A different problem player is one who just doesn’t get the narrative focus of Cypher. These kinds of players tend to see all games as competitive enterprises, and they might try to “win” by exploiting what they see as holes in the rules to create and play an unbeatable character. Although part of many people’s RPG experience is the fun of playing a powerful character, it shouldn’t be the ultimate goal in a Cypher game because such a player will get frustrated and bored.
For example, a player might try to use the Elemental Protection ability to protect against kinetic energy and then claim that he is immune to all attacks. He’ll see this as a hole that he was smart enough to exploit, and he’ll hold up the rules and say, “Show me where I’m wrong!”
When a player does that, point him here:
“You’re wrong.”
He’s wrong because Cypher isn’t a board game where the rules are like a puzzle to be solved or beaten. The rules exist to facilitate the story and portray the world. If there’s a “hole” in the rules or a rule that would produce an illogical or unenjoyable result if followed to the letter, change it, redefine it, or just overrule it. It’s that easy.
On the other hand, some players absolutely will get it. They’ll understand that it’s the spirit of the rules, not the letter, that’s important. They’ll get that the story being told is key. Rather than poring over the description of a power and trying to twist the words to an unintended meaning, they’ll use their intelligence and creativity to figure out the best way to use the power to portray a character who fits the setting and is fun to play.
People who try to exploit the rules don’t understand Cypher, but people who exploit the situations do. If a player is smart and creative enough to turn the tables on their foes in an unexpected way by using what’s around them, allow it (if it makes sense). If the PCs find a pool of caustic fluid and lure their foes into it rather than fighting them in a straightforward manner, that’s not cheating—that’s awesome.
Be certain you don’t accidentally penalize players for not doing the obvious or straightforward thing. Be generous with people who take nonstandard actions or who do something realistic (such as using their action to take stock of the situation rather than attack—ease their next action). Don’t make “attack” always the right choice. It’s a creative game, so allow the players to be creative.
Don’t make “attack” always the right choice. It’s a creative game, so allow the players to be creative.]
Every character type is designed to excel in certain situations and likely be less useful in others. A Noble Warrior is great in a fight, particularly when defending. A Tech is great when the speeder bike’s motor goes on the fritz. A Diplomat is likely at their best when they are talking to NPCs.
Make sure you pay close attention to what situations will let the characters really shine. And then ensure that opportunities for those situations arise. If you’ve got a group of PCs that includes a Barbarian and an Archer, there should be an important fight now and again—or at least a challenge that can be solved through combat. And if that combat includes some enemies that are close by for the Barbarian and some that are far away for the Archer, both players will feel great. Because when a character shines, that player shines.
The goal is, from time to time, for everyone to say to the player with the Druid character, “Wow, I’m sure glad you were there to deal with that problem in the woods.” Or for someone to say to the Rogue, “If you hadn’t scouted ahead, we would have all been caught in that ambush.” That makes a player feel great, and you can set them up for that, although the actual follow-through is up to them. You’re not there to make sure everyone succeeds all the time, only to provide them with the opportunity to try.
Sometimes type or focus doesn’t matter. If you have a player who excels at solving puzzles and mysteries, try to include some in your adventures. If you have a player who is tactically minded and loves battles they can plan out and guide, give them the opportunity to do so.
The players are there to have fun, just like you. Don’t deny them.
Don’t hesitate to ask for feedback from your players. This can be as simple as “Are you having fun?” Or you can ask more specific questions if you’d rather, such as “Does my game slow down too much when we have an action encounter?” or “Are the NPCs in my game interesting to interact with?”
One of the things that can get tricky as characters get more powerful is that more modifiers enter the game. There are more ways to ease tasks and often plenty of ways to hinder them. If you see a player struggling to manage this, one option to help might be to use counters or markers of two different colors. Poker chips would work well, but you can use pieces from Risk, Lego bricks, or anything else where you can have ten or twelve objects divided into two colors.
Let’s focus on poker chips, red ones and white ones. When a PC’s task is eased by their skill, the player grabs one white chip. If they have an asset, that’s another white chip. But if their wounds hinder their task, that’s a red chip. The player decides to use Effort to ease the task by two steps—two more white chips. When all the modifications are tallied, you subtract the smaller pile of chips (in this case, the one red chip) from the larger (the four white chips). Three white chips means that the task is eased by three steps.
Most of the time, for most players, Cypher doesn’t really need this. But it helps in some complex situations. It also helps players who are unaccustomed to the agency the system grants them and the dynamism it offers to reflect the circumstances of a situation. Last, sometimes players just want to be sure they’re using all the mods affecting their character (particularly the positive ones!). Using markers makes it very clear.
Sometimes, it’s appropriate to involve mature themes in Cypher games. Sex, extreme violence, and other topics can certainly fit into the world. But each group must decide for themselves if such themes fit into their game. You should also prepare your stories with your specific players in mind. If one or more are very young or have issues with certain topics, avoid things that would be inappropriate. Also be aware that some topics, like overt sexuality, rape, and graphic violence might disturb players even when you aren’t expecting it. It’s always best to know for certain before allowing these topics into your game.
Think of it like the movie rating system. If you can tell the story that you want to tell in a G or PG (or even PG-13) way, you’re likely fine. If events unfold that will give your game an R rating or higher, it’s best to talk with your players ahead of time. It’s not a matter of good or bad, but a matter of appropriateness for the “audience” and giving people a heads-up ahead of time—just like movie ratings.