As the game master (GM), you are vital to turning a halfway-decent game into an amazing game. In uninformed hands, even the greatest rules and the greatest setting will make, at best, a mediocre game. You are the key in this process.
The GM is the architect of the game (but not the sole builder). You’re the facilitator as well as the arbiter. You’re all of these things and more. It’s a challenging role that’s not quite like anything else. People try to equate the GM with a playwright, a referee, a judge, or a guide. And those are not terrible analogies, but none of them is quite right, either.
Cypher has been designed to make the challenging tasks of gamemastering as simple as possible and allow you as the GM to focus on what’s important. Rather than dealing with a lot of die rolls, modifiers, and rules minutiae, you can focus mainly on the flow of the story. This is not to say that you are the sole storyteller. The group is the storyteller. But it’s the GM’s job to pull together the actions, reactions, and desires of all the people sitting around the table, mesh them with the setting and background created before the session began, and turn it all into a cohesive story—on the fly. Sometimes this means using a heavy hand. Sometimes it means stepping back. Sometimes it means being open-minded. It always means giving the other players as much of the spotlight as you have as the GM, and attempting to give it to each of them in turn so that no one person dominates the narrative or the gameplay—not even you.
I will say this now, up front, and I will say it often: the rules are your tools to tell a story, to portray a character, and to simulate your world. The rules are not the final word—you are. You are not subservient to the rules. But you do have a master. That master is fun gameplay mixed with exciting story.
Cypher has also been designed to make gamemastering work the way that many experienced GMs run games anyway. The GMs who recognize that they are not subservient to the rules are often forced to work against the rules, to work in spite of the rules, or to use the rules as smoke and mirrors to cover up what they’re really doing (which is providing everyone with an exciting, compelling, and interesting narrative in which to participate). Hopefully, as a Cypher GM, you will not find that to be the case. On the contrary, most of the rules were designed specifically to make it easier to run the game—or rather, to allow the GM to focus on helping to shepherd a great story.
In this chapter, we’re going to talk about the rules and how to use them as your tools, as well as interacting with players, running games, and crafting great stories.
On first glance, it might seem that for a story-based game, there isn’t a lot of “story” in the rules. A wall, a bear, a pit to leap, and a gun can be more or less summed up as a single number—their level. The thing is, Cypher is a story-based game because the rules at their core are devoid of story. A wall, a bear, a pit to leap, and a gun can be summed up as levels because they’re all just parts of the story. They’re all just obstacles or tools.
There aren’t a lot of specifics in the rules—no guidelines for particular judo moves or the differences between repairing an electrically powered force screen projector and fixing a biomechanical aircraft. That’s not because those kinds of things are to be ignored, but because those kinds of things are flavor—they are story, description, and elaboration for the GM and the players to provide. A player running a character in a fistfight can and should describe one attack as an uppercut and another as a roundhouse punch, even though there’s no mechanical difference. In fact, because there’s no mechanical difference. That’s what a narrative game is all about. It’s interesting and entertaining, and that’s why you’re all sitting at the table in the first place.
If different aspects of the game—walls, bears, pits, and so on—have distinctions, they come through as story elements, which are special exceptions to the rules. Having so few general rules makes adding special conditions and situations easier, because there is less rules tinkering to deal with. Fewer special circumstances to worry about. Less chance of contradictions and rules incompatibilities. For example, you can easily have a wall that can be destroyed only by mental attacks. A giant constrictor snake has its unique grapple attack. A pit could have frictionless walls. A cold energy blast cypher could freeze foes solid. These are story elements that mechanically build on the very simple base mechanics, and they all make things more interesting.
The GM’s most important overall tasks are setting the stage and guiding the story created by the group (not the one created by the GM ahead of time). But setting difficulty is the most important mechanical task the GM has in the game. Although there are suggestions throughout this chapter for various difficulty ratings for certain actions, there is no master list of the difficulty for every action a PC can take. Instead, Cypher is designed with the “teach a person to fish” style of good gamemastering in mind. (If you don’t know what that means, it comes from the old adage “Give a person a fish and they’ll eat for a day. Teach a person to fish and they’ll eat for a lifetime.” The idea is not to give GMs a ton of rules to memorize or reference, but to teach them how to make their own logical judgment calls.) Of course, most of the time, it’s not a matter of exact precision. If you say the difficulty is 3 and it “should” have been 4, the world’s not over.
For the most part, it really is as simple as rating something on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being incredibly easy and 10 being basically impossible. The guidelines in the Task Difficulty table should help put you in the right frame of mind for assigning difficulty to a task.
For example, we make the distinction between something that most normal people can do and something that trained people can do. In this case, “normal” means someone with absolutely no training, talent, or experience—imagine your ne’er-do-well, slightly overweight uncle trying a task he’s never tried before. “Trained” means the person has some level of instruction or experience but is not necessarily a professional.
With that in mind, think about the act of balancing. With enough focus, most people can walk across a narrow bridge (like a fallen tree trunk). That suggests it is difficulty 2. However, walking across a narrow plank that’s only 3 inches (8 cm) wide? That’s probably more like difficulty 3. Now consider walking across a tightrope. That’s probably difficulty 5—a normal person who’s never done that before can manage it only with a great deal of luck. Someone with some training can give it a go, but it’s still hard. Of course, a professional acrobat can do it easily. Consider, however, that the professional acrobat is specialized in the task, making it difficulty 3 for them. They probably are using Effort as well during their performance.
Let’s try another task. This time, consider how hard it might be to remember the name of the previous leader of the village where the character lives. The difficulty might be 0 or 1, depending on how long ago they were the leader and how well known they were. Let’s say it was thirty years ago and they were only mildly memorable, so it’s difficulty 1. Most people remember them, and with a little bit of effort, anyone can come up with their name. Now let’s consider the name of the leader’s daughter. That’s much harder. Assuming the daughter wasn’t famous in her own right, it’s probably difficulty 4. Even people who know a little about local history (that is to say, people who are trained in the subject) might not be able to remember it. But what about the name of the pet dog owned by the daughter’s spouse? That’s probably impossible. Who’s going to remember the name of an obscure person’s pet from thirty years ago? Basically no one. However, it’s not forbidden knowledge or a well-guarded secret, so it sounds like difficulty 7. Difficulty 7 is the rating that means “No one can do this, yet some people still do.” It’s not the stuff of legend, but it’s something you would assume people can’t do. When you think there’s no way you can get tickets for a sold-out concert, but somehow your friend manages to score a couple anyway, that’s difficulty 7. (See the next section for more on difficulties 7, 8, 9, and 10.)
If you’re talking about a task, ideally the difficulty shouldn’t be based on the character performing the task. Things don’t get inherently easier or harder depending on who is doing them. However, the truth is, the character does play into it as a judgment call. If the task is breaking down a wooden door, an 8-foot-tall (2 m) automaton made of metal with nuclear-driven motors should be better at breaking it down than an average human would be, but the task rating should be the same for both. Let’s say that the automaton’s nature effectively gives it two levels of training in such tasks. Thus, if the door has a difficulty rating of 4, but the automaton is specialized and reduces the difficulty to 2, it has a target number of 6. The human has no such specialization, so the difficulty remains 4, and the person has a target number of 12. However, when you set the difficulty of breaking down the door, don’t try to take all those differences into account. The GM should consider only the human because the Task Difficulty table is based on the ideal of a “normal” person, a “trained” person, and so on. It’s humanocentric.
Most characters probably are willing to use one or two levels of Effort on a task, and they might have an appropriate skill or asset to decrease the difficulty by a step. That means that a difficulty 4 task will often be treated as difficulty 2 or even 1, and those are easy rolls to make. Don’t hesitate, then, to pull out higher-level difficulties. The PCs can rise to the challenge, especially if they are experienced.
Difficulties 7, 8, 9, and 10 are all technically impossible. Their target numbers are 21, 24, 27, and 30, and you can’t roll those numbers on a d20 no matter how many times you try. Consider, however, all the ways that a character can reduce difficulty. If someone spends a little Effort or has some skill or help, it brings difficulty 7 (target number 21) into the range of possibility—difficulty 6 (target number 18). Now consider that they have specialization, use a lot of Effort, and have help. That might bring the difficulty down to 1 or even 0 (reducing it by two steps from training and specialization, three or four steps from Effort, and one step from the asset of assistance). That practically impossible task just became routine. A fourth-tier character can and will do this—not every time, due to the cost, but perhaps once per game session. You have to be ready for that. A well-prepared, motivated sixth-tier character can do that even with a difficulty 10 task. Again, they won’t do it often (they’d have to apply six levels of Effort, and even with an Edge of 6 that would cost 7 points from their Pool, and that’s assuming they’re specialized and have two levels of assets), but it can happen if they’re really prepared for the task (being specialized and maxed out in asset opportunities reduces the difficulty by four more steps). That’s why sixth-tier characters are near or at the top of their field, so to speak.
One way to look at difficulty is that each step of difficulty is worth 3 on the die. That is to say, hinder the task by one step, and the target number rises by 3. Ease the task by one step, and the target number is lowered by 3. Those kinds of changes are big, meaty chunks. Difficulty, as a game mechanic, is not terribly precise. It’s measured in large portions. You never have a target number of 13 or 14, for example—it’s always 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, and so on.
Imprecision is good in this case. It would be false precision to say that one lock has a target number of 14 and another has a target number of 15. What false precision means in this context is that it would be a delusion to think we can be that exact. Can you really say that one lock is 5% easier to pick than another? And more important, even if you could, is the difference worth noting? Is it worth your time to think in such tiny increments? It’s better to interact with the world in larger, more meaningful chunks than to try to parse things so carefully. If we tried to rate everything on a scale of 1 to 30 (using target numbers and not difficulty), we’d start to get lost in the proverbial weeds coming up with a meaningful distinction between something rated as an 8 and something rated as a 9 on that scale.
Far more important than that level of precision is consistency. If the PCs need to activate a device that opens a spatial displacement portal, and the GM rules that it is a difficulty 6 task to get the antimatter rods spinning at the proper rates to achieve a specific harmonic frequency, then it needs to be a difficulty 6 task when they come back the next day to do it again (or there needs to be an understandable reason why it’s not). The same is true for simpler tasks like walking across a narrow ledge or jumping up onto a platform. Consistency is key. The reason is that players need to be able to make informed decisions. If they remember how hard it was to open that portal yesterday, but it’s inexplicably harder to open it today, they’ll get frustrated because they tried to apply their experience to their decision-making process, and it failed them. If there’s no way to make an informed decision, then all decisions are arbitrary.
Think about it in terms of real life. You need to cross the street, but a car is approaching. You’ve crossed the street thousands of times before, so you can look at the car and pretty easily judge whether you can cross safely or whether you have to wait for it to pass first. If the real world had no consistency, you couldn’t make that decision. Every time you stepped into the street, you might get hit by a car. You’d never cross the street.
Players need that kind of consistency, too. So when you assign a difficulty to a task, note that number and try to keep it consistent the next time the PCs try the same task. “Same” is the key word. Deciphering one code isn’t necessarily like deciphering another. Climbing one wall isn’t the same as climbing another.
You’ll make mistakes while doing this, so just accept that fact now. Excuse any mistakes with quick explanations about “a quirk of fate” or something along the lines of a surprisingly strong wind that wasn’t blowing the last time.
Sometimes the PCs will break down a door, and you’ll realize that you rated it too low. Or the PCs will try to paddle a raft down a fast-moving river, and you (and probably they) will quickly discover that the difficulty you gave the task was ridiculously high.
Don’t fret.
That door was already weakened by an earthquake, a structural flaw, or the fact that a while back some other explorers pounded on it all day. That river was actually moving far faster than the PCs thought at first, or their raft was faulty.
The point is, mistakes are easy to cover up. And sometimes, you can even tell your players it was just a mistake. They might even help provide an explanation if you do. It’s not the end of the world.
More important, most of the time, no one will even know. Should have rated a task as difficulty 3 and instead you said it was 4? Oh well. Unless the player rolls a 9, 10, or 11—which would have succeeded for difficulty 3 but not difficulty 4—it won’t matter. And even if they do roll one of those numbers, who cares? Maybe the rain was really coming down that day, and it hindered their task.
The thing to take away is this: don’t let the fear of making a mistake keep you from freely and quickly assessing the difficulty of a task and moving on with the game. Don’t agonize over it. Give it a difficulty, call for a roll, and keep the game moving. Hesitating over a rating will be far more detrimental to the game than giving something the wrong rating.
Players should roll when it’s interesting or exciting. Otherwise, they should just do what they do.
Don’t hesitate to make actions routine. Don’t call for die rolls when they’re not really needed. Sometimes GMs fall into the trap illustrated by this dialogue:
GM: What do you do?
Player: I _________.
GM: Okay, give me a roll.
That’s not a good instinct—at least, not for Cypher. Players should roll when it’s interesting or exciting. Otherwise, they should just do what they do. If the PCs tie a rope around something and use it to climb down into a pit, you could ask for tying rolls, climbing rolls, and so on, but why? Just to see if they roll terribly? So the rope can come undone at the wrong time, or a character’s hand can slip? Most of the time, that makes players feel inadequate and isn’t a lot of fun. A rope coming undone in the middle of an exciting chase scene or a battle can be a great complication (and that’s what GM intrusions are for). A rope coming undone in the middle of a simple “getting from point A to point B” scene only slows down gameplay. The real fun—the real story—is down in the pit. So get the PCs down there.
There are a million exceptions to this guideline, of course. If creatures are throwing poisoned darts at the PCs while they climb, that might make things more interesting and require a roll. If the pit is filled with acid and the PCs must climb halfway down, pull a lever, and come back up, that’s a situation where you should set difficulty and perhaps have a roll. If a PC is near death, carrying a fragile item of great importance, or something similar, climbing down the rope is tense, and a roll might add to the excitement. The important difference is that these kinds of complications have real consequences.
On the flip side, don’t be afraid to use GM intrusion on routine actions if it makes things more interesting. Walking up to the king in his audience chamber in the middle of a ceremony only to trip on a rug? That could have huge ramifications for the character and the story.
As far as the rules are concerned, “creature” and “NPC” mean the same thing, and the game uses these terms interchangeably.]
Rating things on a scale of 1 to 10 is something that most people are very familiar with. You can also look at it as rating an object or creature on a similar scale, if that’s easier. In other words, if you don’t know how hard it would be to climb a particular cliff face, think of it as a creature the PCs have to fight. What level would the creature be? You could look in chapter 12 and say, “I think this wall should be about as difficult to deal with as a demon. A demon is level 5, so the task of climbing the wall will be difficulty 5.” That’s a weird way to do it, perhaps, but it’s fairly straightforward. And if you’re the kind of GM who thinks in terms of “How tough will this fight be?” then maybe rating tasks as creatures or NPCs to fight isn’t so strange after all. It’s just another way to relate to them. The important thing is that they’re on the same scale. Similarly, if the PCs have to tackle a knowledge task—say, trying to determine if they know where a caravan is headed based on its tracks—you could rate the task in terms of an object. If you’re used to rating doors or other objects that the PCs have broken through recently, the knowledge task is just a different kind of barrier to bust through.
Everything in Cypher—characters, creatures, objects, tasks, and so on—has a level. It might be called a tier or a difficulty instead of a level, but ultimately it’s a numerical rating system used to compare things. Although you have to be careful about drawing too many correlations—a first-tier character isn’t easily compared to a difficulty 1 wall or a level 1 animal—the principle is the same. Everything can be rated and roughly compared to everything else in the world. (It works best to take PCs out of this equation. For example, you shouldn’t try to compare a PC’s tier to a wall’s level. Character tiers are mentioned here only for completeness.)
Last, if your mind leans toward statistics, you can look at difficulty as a percentage chance. Every number on the d20 is a 5% increment. For example, you have a 5% chance of rolling a 1. You have a 10% chance of rolling a 1 or a 2. Thus, if you need to roll a 12 or higher, you have a 45% chance of success. (A d20 has nine numbers that are 12 or higher: 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, and 20. And 9 x 5 equals 45.)
For some people, it’s easier to think in terms of a percentage chance. A GM might think “She has about a 30% chance to know that fact about geography.” Each number on a d20 is a 5% increment, and it takes six increments to equal 30%, so there are six numbers that mean the PC succeeds: 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, and 20. Thus, since the player has to roll 15 or higher, the target number is 15. (And that means the task is level 5, but if you’ve already determined the target number, you likely don’t care about the level.)
Since it’s your job to judge how difficult a given action might be, a few examples may help. Usually, the level of a creature or object determines the difficulty, so we’ll focus primarily on situations where no level is involved.
| Difficulty | Task |
|---|---|
| 1 | Jump 5 feet (1.5 m) horizontally (a running start is an asset) |
| 2 | Jump 10 feet (3.5 m) horizontally (a running start is an asset) |
| 3 | Jump 1 foot (30 cm) vertically (a running start is an asset) |
| 4 | Jump 2 feet (60 cm) vertically (a running start is an asset) |
| 5 | Jump 5 feet (1.5 m) vertically (a running start is an asset) |
| 8 | Jump 8 feet (2.5 m) vertically (a running start is an asset) |
| 1 | Remain on a mount or vehicle in a dangerous or difficult situation |
| 4 | Mount a moving steed or get in a moving vehicle |
| 0 | Climb a ladder |
| 1 | Climb a rope |
| 2 | Climb a slope |
| 3 | Climb a rough wall (or cliff with many handholds) |
| 5 | Climb a smooth wall |
| 0 | Know something that is common knowledge |
| 3 | Know something only a scholar would know |
| 7 | Know something few people know |
| 3 | Research an uncommon topic |
| 7 | Research an extremely obscure topic |
GM intrusion is the main mechanic that the GM uses to inject drama and additional excitement into the game. It’s also a handy tool for resolving issues that affect the PCs but do not involve them. GM intrusion is a way to facilitate what goes on in the world outside the characters. Can the minotaur track the PCs’ movements through the maze? Will the fraying rope hold?
Since the players roll all the dice, GM intrusion is used to determine if and when something happens. For example, if the PCs are fighting a noble’s guards, and you (the GM) know that there are more guards nearby, you don’t need to roll dice to determine if the other guards hear the scuffle and intervene (unless you want to). You just decide when it would be best for the story—which is probably when it would be worst for the characters. In a way, GM intrusion replaces the GM’s die rolling.
The mechanic is also one of the main ways that GMs award experience points to the PCs. This means that you use experience points as a narrative tool. Whenever it seems appropriate, you can introduce complications into the game that affect a specific player, but when you do so, you give that player 2 XP (they keep one and give the other to another player; see below). The player can react to the intrusion, but doing so costs them 1 XP.
Here’s how a GM intrusion might work in play. Say the PCs find a hidden console with some buttons. They learn the right order in which to press the buttons, and a section of the floor slides open—a secret door in the floor. As the GM, you don’t ask the players specifically where their characters are standing. Instead, you give a player 1 XP and say, “Unfortunately, you’re standing directly over this opening in the floor.” If the player wanted, they could spend 1 XP to react to the intrusion and say, “As I start to fall, I catch the edge of the opening with my hands and stop myself from falling any farther.” Most likely, though, they’ll make the defense roll that you call for and let it play out.
There are two ways for the GM to handle this kind of intrusion. You could say, “You’re standing in the wrong place, so make a roll.” (It’s a dodge roll, of course.) Alternatively, you could say, “You’re standing in the wrong place. The floor opens under your feet, and you fall down into the darkness.” In the first example, the PC has a chance to save themselves. In the second example, they don’t. Both are viable options. The distinction is based on any number of factors, including the situation, the characters involved, and the needs of the story. This might seem arbitrary or even capricious, but you’re the master of what the intrusion can and can’t do. RPG mechanics need consistency so players can make intelligent decisions based on how they understand the world to work. But they’ll never base their decisions on GM intrusions. They don’t know when intrusions will happen or what form they will take. GM intrusions are the unpredictable and strange twists of fate that affect a person’s life every day.
The best GM intrusions end with you asking “What do you do?” An intrusion introduces something new to the story, and the most interesting part of that is how the characters react. You can use intrusions to give a foe an extra attack, or force the player to roll to avoid a sudden hazard (such as the door in the floor previously mentioned), but don’t do that every time. Rather, make the players sometimes have to come up with a solution to a new problem. A character slips and falls into a pool of water. The sleeve of their shirt catches fire because of a stray spark. The strap of their backpack breaks or the NPC they’ve just convinced to give them some information gets called away by an emergency elsewhere. Each of these things forces players to use their creativity. They also make the game world feel more dramatic and real and help engage the players with the story.
When player modifications (such as skill, Effort, and so on) determine that success is automatic, the GM can use GM intrusion to negate the automatic success. The player must roll for the action at its original difficulty level or target number 20, whichever is lower.]
The player who received a GM intrusion keeps 1 XP for themselves and gives the other 1 XP to another player for whatever reason they wish—maybe the other player had a good idea, told a funny joke, lent a helping hand, or whatever seems appropriate. The ability for a player to award XP to their friends is empowering and interactive. It helps the players regulate the flow of XP so that no one is left out. It rewards good play that pleases the group as a whole, ensuring that everyone contributes to everyone else’s enjoyment. It shouldn’t just be the GM who decides which players have done well. Some groups will want to decide the criteria for player-awarded points ahead of time. Some will just want to play it by ear.
A GM can use this narrative tool to steer things. That doesn’t mean railroad the players or direct the action of the game with a heavy hand. GM intrusion doesn’t enable you to say, “You’re all captured, so here’s your 1 XP.” Instead, the GM can direct things more subtly—gently, almost imperceptibly influencing events rather than forcing them. GM intrusion represents things going wrong. The bad guys planning well. Fortune not favoring the characters.
Consider this scenario: the GM plants an interesting adventure seed in a small village, but the PCs don’t stay there long enough to find it. So just outside the village, the PCs run afoul of a vicious viper that bites one of them. The GM uses intrusion to say that the poison from the snake will inflict a moderate wound every few minutes unless the character gets a large dose of a specific antitoxin, which the group doesn’t have. Of course, they aren’t required to go back to the village where the GM’s interesting adventure can start, but it’s likely that they will, looking for the antitoxin.
Some players might find intrusions hostile or heavy-handed, but the XP softens the blow. And remember, they can react to these narrative nudges. Intrusion is not meant to be a railroading tool—just a bit of a rudder. Not an inescapable track, but a nudge here and there.
What’s more, the GM doesn’t need to have a deliberate goal in mind. The complication you introduce could simply make things more interesting. You might not know where it will take the story, just that it will make the story better.
This is wonderfully empowering to the GM—not in a “Ha ha, now I’ll trounce the PCs” way, but in an “I can control the narrative a little bit, steering it more toward the story I want to create rather than relying on the dice” sort of way. Consider that old classic plot development in which the PCs get captured and must escape from the bad guys. In heroic fiction, this is such a staple that it would almost seem strange if it didn’t happen. But in many roleplaying games, it’s a nearly impossible turn of events—the PCs usually have too many ways to get out of the bad guy’s clutches before they’re captured. The dice have to be wildly against them. It virtually never happens. With GM intrusion, it could happen (again, in the context of the larger encounter, not as a single intrusion that results in the entire group of PCs being captured with little explanation or chance to react).
For example, let’s say the PCs are surrounded by orcs. One character is badly injured—they’ve taken two major wounds—and the rest are hurt. Some of the orcs produce a large weighted net. Rather than asking for a lot of rolls and figuring the mechanics for escape, you use intrusion and say that the net goes over the PCs who are still on their feet. The rest of the orcs point spears menacingly. This is a pretty strong cue to the players that surrender is a good (and possibly the only) option. Some players won’t take the hint, however, so another use of intrusion might allow the orcs to hit one of the trapped PCs on the head and render them unconscious while their friends struggle in the net. If the players still don’t surrender, it’s probably best to play out the rest of the encounter without more GM intrusions—using more would be heavy-handed by anyone’s measure—although it’s perfectly reasonable to rule that a character who takes all their wounds is just knocked unconscious, since the orcs are trying to take the PCs alive.
This mechanic offers a way for the GM to determine how things happen in the game without leaving it all to random chance. Bad guys trying to smash down the door to the room where the PCs are holed up? You could roll a bunch of dice, compare the NPCs’ stats to the door’s stats, and so on, or you could wait until the most interesting time, have the bad guys break in, and award an experience point to the PC who tried their best to bar the door. The latter way is Cypher way. Intrusion is a task resolution tool for the GM. In other words, you don’t base things on stats but on narrative choice. (Frankly, a lot of great GMs over the years—even in the very early days of the hobby—have run their games this way. Sometimes they rolled dice or pretended to roll dice, but they were really manipulating things.) This method frees the GM from worrying about mechanics and looking up stats and allows them to focus on the story.
This isn’t cheating—it’s the rules of the game. This rule simply replaces traditional dice rolling with good gamemastering, logic, and intelligent storytelling. When a PC is climbing a burning rope, and everyone knows that it will break at some point, the game has a mechanism to ensure that it breaks at just the right time.
Too much of a good thing will make the game seem utterly unpredictable—even capricious. The ideal is to use about four GM intrusions per game session, depending on the length of the session, or about one intrusion per hour of game play. This is in addition to any intrusions that are triggered by players rolling a 1, as noted below.
Further, the intrusions should be a nice mix of those that make an existing task harder (the evil alchemist quaffs a potion that heals their wounds) and those that introduce a whole new challenge (a guard on patrol comes by and, if the PCs don’t stop them, sets off an alarm).
When a PC rolls a 1, handle the GM intrusion the same way that you’d handle an intrusion you initiated. The intrusion could mean the PC fumbles or botches whatever they were trying to do, but it could mean something else. Consider these alternatives to simply making the PC clumsy or incompetent:
The core of the idea behind GM intrusion is that the player being adversely affected gains an experience point. But what if the intrusion affects the whole group equally? What if the GM uses it to have an unstable device overload and explode, harming all the characters? In this case, if no PC is involved more than the others (for example, no single PC was frantically attempting to repair the device), you should give 1 XP to each character but not give any of them an extra XP to hand out to someone else.
However, this kind of group intrusion should be an exception, not the rule. GM intrusions are much more effective if they are more personal.
You’ll find that you use more group intrusions when all the PCs are in the same vehicle or otherwise in a confined space.
A group intrusion doesn’t have to affect all the characters. For example, a steam pipe may burst near three of the PCs, with a fourth PC safely on the far side of the room. In these cases, award 1 XP to each affected character, and none of them get an extra XP to hand out to someone else.
It’s not a good idea to use the same events as GM intrusions over and over (“Dolmar dropped his sword again?”). Below are a number of different intrusions you can use.
Through no fault of the characters, something happens that is bad or at least complicating. For example:
The situation was more complex (and therefore more interesting) than the PCs knew—perhaps even more than the GM knew, at least at the start. For example:
GMs can use this type of intrusion as a resolution mechanic to determine NPC success or failure. Rather than rolling dice to see how long it takes an NPC to rewire a damaged force field generator, it happens at a time of the GM’s choosing—ideally when it would be most interesting. For example:
The PCs aren’t the only ones with surprising tricks up their sleeves. For example:
Although you might not want every player roll of 1 to be a fumble, sometimes it could be just that. Alternatively, the GM could simply declare that a fumble has occurred. In either case, consider the following examples:
GM intrusion doesn’t have to mean that a PC has failed. For example:
Player intrusions give the players a small bit of narrative control over the world. However, the world still remains in the GM’s purview. You can always overrule a player intrusion, or suggest a way to massage it so that it fits better into the setting. Still, because it is indeed narrative control, a player intrusion should always involve a small aspect of the world beyond the character. “I punch my foe really hard” is an expression of Effort or perhaps character ability. “My foe slips and falls backward off the ledge” is a player intrusion.
Player intrusions should typically be “smaller” than GM intrusions. They should not end an encounter, only (perhaps) provide the PC with the means to more easily end an encounter. They should not have a wide-reaching or even necessarily a long-term effect on the setting. A way to consider this might be that player intrusions can affect a single object (a floorboard snaps), feature (there’s a hidden shallow spot in the stream to ford), or NPC (the vendor is an old friend). But not more than that. A player intrusion can’t affect a whole village or even a whole tavern in that village. A rock can come loose, but a player intrusion can’t create a landslide.
Rarely, a player will use an intrusion to counter yours. For example, you intrude and say, “Your weapon just clicks. You’re out of ammo.” The player might then use an intrusion to say, “Ah, but I have a hidden compartment in my bag where I keep a spare clip.” This is not only fine, it’s great. Now you’ve both added to the story. The PC still has to spend their turn reloading the spare clip, so the player intrusion in question is still “smaller” than the GM intrusion.
Sometimes, you want to introduce something into the story, but it will help the PCs rather than grant a new complication. Consider saying to a player, “If you wanted to use a player intrusion, you could maybe say that _____ happens.” It’s still up to the player, but you’ve got knowledge they don’t have. For example, you know that the nearby goblin encampment is already on alert, and if the goblin scout signals the camp, the PCs are in a lot of trouble. When the PCs encounter the goblin in the woods, you might say, “You know, you could use a player intrusion to say that the goblin by the tree got bored and fell asleep.” This would allow the PCs to quietly slip past and avoid being swarmed by goblins.
I’ll say it again: the rules exist to be used as tools to shape the game, the story, and the experience. When you tell a player that the howling, bestial Cro-Magnon warriors at the top of the cliff throw down heavy stones and their character gets hurt, the rules give you a way to explain just how hurt.
One way to look at it is this: the GM is the sensory input for the players. They can’t know anything about what’s going on in the fictional reality of the game unless the GM tells them. The rules, then, are one way to convey information to the players in a manner that is meaningful to everyone at the table. The GM could say, “You’re quite hurt,” but the rules clarify how hurt they are. The GM could say, “You can hurl that spear pretty far,” but the rules provide a definition of “pretty far” that helps keep things consistent, moderately realistic, and understandable so the GM doesn’t have to repeat things over and over.
The rules do more than that, of course. They determine success or failure for PCs and NPCs. They help define what resources characters have to interact with the world (although the best resource is the players’ ingenuity, and that isn’t defined by the rules).
A lot of what I’m talking about here is what people sometimes call “adjudicating.” Adjudicating is basically the difference between a computer game and a game run by an actual, living human being. All a computer can do (as of yet) is follow the rules. But a human can use their sense of logic to determine whether the rules make sense for a given situation, and they can do it on a case-by-case basis. Because there’s a human GM using logic, the rules for how to play Cypher take up only a small part of the game (most is actually character creation). If the rules had to cover every imaginable situation, well, this would be a very different game.
For example, imagine that the PCs cross through an area where an enemy has tossed a bunch of caltrops on the ground. One of the PCs is heavily armored, so they say that surely their boots are armored too, and thus they should take no damage from the caltrops. You might agree with that logic. But that’s not an actual rule. The game doesn’t talk about how tough your boots are. Well, why not make it a rule? Because that level of detail in equipment isn’t appropriate for this game. Lots of little details like that slow down the game, and in Cypher we like to keep things moving quickly.
Another character isn’t wearing heavy armor but says that her boots would also be thick because that’s appropriate for her character. The final character has in the past made a point of saying he’s barefoot. Okay, now the whole group has officially spent too much time thinking about footwear. You make a ruling on the spot that the characters in armor take no damage from walking on caltrops, the character who favors heavy shoes takes a minor wound, and the barefoot dude takes a moderate wound. Done, and you didn’t have to look up the equipment listings, the armor rules, or the caltrop rules (of which there are none). You just handled it all and kept the game moving. (In the caltrops encounter, you could also use GM intrusion and say that a caltrop sticks into the boot of one of the armored characters and until they remove it, they move more slowly than normal. GM intrusion really does solve a lot of these issues.)
Likewise, sometimes a character who falls off a high ledge should be stunned and lose their next turn. That isn’t a rule, but it makes sense—sometimes. And the key word is sometimes. Because sometimes the situation or the context means you don’t want that to happen, so you adjudicate.
A character falling from a 100-foot (30 m) ledge might suffer a major wound. That’s significant, but a fresh character can take that and keep going. Sometimes that’s okay, but sometimes it stretches our suspension of disbelief. If a player reads the rules on how much damage is dealt by falling, they might even have their character jump off a high cliff deliberately, knowing that they can take it. So you adjudicate that they don’t just take the wound (and the subsequent penalty), but that they lose their next turn and every turn after that until they succeed at a Might defense roll with a difficulty of 5. That’s harsh, and the player will really feel it. But they should, and it will keep them from exploiting what might seem like a hole in the rules in a way that no real person would (and no one in a story would).
Remember, it’s your job to use the rules to simulate the world, even if the world is a fictional place with all kinds of strangeness. You’re not a slave to the rules—it’s the other way around. If you come across a hole in the rules or something that doesn’t make sense, don’t shrug your shoulders and say, “Well, that’s what the rules say (or don’t say).” Fix it.
When talking about rules, sometimes people toss around words like “game balance” or refer to rules as “broken.” These concepts belong in games where players build characters using extensive rules and make a lot of choices and then pit those characters against specific challenges to see how they fare. In such a game, a challenge rated or designed poorly, or a character option that grants too much or too little power, can throw everything completely out of whack. Advancing and improving characters is the point of that kind of game, and the way that characters “win” is by overcoming challenges (often, by fighting). Because Cypher is not a game about matching PC builds against specific challenges, nor a game about advancing characters (at least not solely, and in any event, characters do not advance due to fights or overcoming challenges), these concepts really don’t apply. If something seems broken, change it. If a PC ability is too powerful, make it less so. Do it either as part of the story, or—perhaps even better—just be upfront with the players. “Hey, guys, this new psychic power of Ray’s is just too good. It’s making every fight a pushover and that’s not fun. So I’m going to tone down its effect. Sound okay?” An honest discussion with the players is often the best way to handle, well, just about any problem that crops up in a game. And if a player can’t handle that kind of interaction, maybe you don’t want them at your table anyway.
Running a game requires a lot of logic rather than a careful reading of the rules. For example, some things give characters a resistance to fire (typically reducing wounds from fire). But there is no special rule for “fire damage” as opposed to “slicing damage” or “lightning damage.” Instead, you use logic to determine whether the damage inflicted counts as fire. In these situations, there are only two times when your answer is wrong.
The first is when the answer breaks the players’ suspension of disbelief. For example, something that makes a PC fire resistant should probably provide some protection against a heat-based weapon. If it doesn’t, your answer will spoil the moment for the group.
The second wrong answer is when you’re inconsistent. If you allow a PC’s fireproof armor to give them some protection against lava one time but not the next, that’s a problem—not only because it breaks the suspension of disbelief but also because it gives the players nothing to base their decisions on. Without predictable consistency, they can’t make intelligent decisions.
The Cypher rules are written with the assumption that the GM does not need to fall back on rules for everything, either for your own sake or as a defense against the players. “I’m going to run a long distance and jump on my big friend’s back. On their action, they will run a long distance. So I can move twice as far in one round. There’s no rule against that, right?” It’s true that there isn’t a rule against that, but it makes no sense. The GM’s logic rules the day here.
You shouldn’t need pedantic rules to defend against the players. You and the players should work together to create a logical, consistent, and believable world and story. Players who try to use the lack of pedantry in the rules to gain unrealistic and illogical advantages for their characters should revisit the basic concept of Cypher.
Further, the rules don’t say things like “The GM decides if the NPC knows the answer to the question, or if they will answer, or how they will answer.” Of course that’s the kind of thing you decide—that’s your role. The rules don’t state that you decide if something is logical and appropriate to the story or setting any more than they state that the player decides what actions their character will take. That’s just the way the game works.
Does this put more pressure on the GM? Yes and no. It means that you need to make more judgment calls—more of the adjudication described above—which can be challenging if you’re new at it. But being an arbiter of what seems appropriate and makes sense is something that we all do, all day long. Look at it this way: when you’re watching a television show or a movie, at some point you might say, “That seems wrong” or “That seems unrealistic.” There’s no difference between doing that and using logic as a GM.
In the long run, relying on logic frees the GM. No longer saddled with hundreds (or thousands) of individual rules, compatibility issues, loopholes, and the like, you are free to move ahead with the story being told by the group. You can focus more on the narrative elements of the game than on the mechanical ones. To look at it a different way, in other games GMs sometimes spend a lot of time preparing, which is almost always rules-related stuff: creating NPC stat blocks, memorizing rules subsystems that will come into play, carefully balancing encounters, and so on. A Cypher GM does very little of that. Prepping for the game means figuring out cool storylines, weird new devices or foes, and the best way to convey the atmosphere. The mechanical elements can be handled during the game, using logic at the table.
Using the rules involves rolling dice. If the dice don’t mean anything, then everything is predetermined, and it’s no longer a game by any definition—just a story being told. So the dice need to matter. But that means that sometimes a PC will fail when they would succeed if it were a story, and vice versa. That’s not a flaw; it’s a feature. It’s what makes roleplaying games so exciting. When we’re watching an action movie, we know that in the third act the hero will defeat the villain at just the right moment. But in an RPG, maybe not. It’s not so predictable. That’s one of the things that makes them so special.
On the other hand, things like GM intrusions sometimes trump the die rolls to help the story move along in a direction that is (hopefully) best for the game. How do you manage it all?
As you describe the action or as the PCs move about the world, the vast majority of things that happen shouldn’t involve dice. Walking around, buying things in a market, chatting with NPCs, crossing the wilderness, looking for an ancient ruin—these are not actions that normally require die rolls. However, it’s easy to think of exceptions where rolls might be needed. How do you decide? There are two rules of thumb.
First, don’t ask for a roll unless it seems like there should be a chance of failure and a chance of success. If a PC wants to shoot an arrow from their bow and hit the moon, there’s no need to roll, because there’s no chance for success. Likewise, if they want to shoot that same arrow at a large building from 10 feet (3.5 m) away, there’s no chance for failure. You and logic run the game, not the dice.
Second, if a creature (PC or NPC) or object is affected in a harmful way—or, in the case of a creature, in a way that it doesn’t want to be affected, harmful or not—you need to involve a die roll. Whether the action is slashing with a blade, using deception to trick someone, intrusively reading an NPC’s mind, breaking down a door, or applying poison, something is being harmed or affected in a way that it doesn’t want to be, so a die roll is needed.
Thus, someone using a power to become invisible likely doesn’t require a roll. It just works. There’s really no chance of failure (unless the power comes from a faulty device or some other extraneous force is at work), and it doesn’t directly affect anyone or anything other than the character becoming invisible. However, using a device to shape the emotions of another creature would require a die roll.
Of course, sometimes a character can use Effort to reduce the difficulty so there’s no need to make a roll. But you, as the GM, can also waive the need for a roll. Consider a character who uses a fiery bomb cypher on a bunch of level 1 rodents. Each has 3 health, and the PC needs to roll only 3 or higher to affect each one, but there are twenty-four rodents. You can simply say, “With a discharge of sudden energy, you incinerate the swarm of rodents, leaving little behind but scorch marks and the smell of burnt hair.” This keeps things moving and prevents the game from coming to a dead stop while the player makes two dozen rolls. Frankly, most first-tier characters will find level 1 creatures merely a nuisance, so no drama is ruined when the PC takes them all out. Move on to another, greater challenge.
When you waive the need for a die roll, what you’re effectively doing is making the action routine, so no roll is needed. In the case of the PC who uses a bomb, you’re reducing the difficulty by one step due to circumstances: the rodents just aren’t that tough. That’s not breaking the rules—that’s using the rules. That’s the way the game is meant to be played.
As an aside, this doesn’t mean that the swarm of rodents is a bad encounter. It would be bad in a game where it takes an hour and a half to resolve a fight that was no real challenge. But in Cypher? Even if the character doesn’t blast every rodent, an encounter like that can be resolved in five minutes. Not every encounter needs to be life-or-death to be interesting. But we’ll talk about designing encounters (and the related issue of pacing) later.
Although the decision is open to your discretion, when a PC takes an action, it should be fairly obvious which stat is tied to that action. Physical actions that involve brute force or endurance use Might. Physical actions that involve quickness, coordination, or agility use Speed. Actions that involve intelligence, education, insight, willpower, or charm use Intellect.
In rare instances, you could allow a PC to use a different stat for a task. For example, a character might try to break down a door by examining it closely for flaws and thus use Intellect rather than Might. This kind of change is a good thing because it encourages player creativity. Just don’t let it be abused by an exuberant or too-clever player. It’s well within your purview to decide that the door has no flaws, or to rule that the character’s attempt will take half an hour rather than one round. In other words, using a stat that is not the obvious choice should be the exception, not the rule.
You are the eyes and ears of the players. They can’t know anything about the world unless you tell them. Make sure that the information you provide is both precise and concise. (We’ll discuss good description later in this chapter.) Be evocative, but not to the point that the players lose details in the language you use. Be open to answering their questions about the world around them.
Sometimes it’s easy: a PC looks over the top of the hill, and you tell them what they see. Other times things are hidden, or there’s a chance that they miss something important—secret panels, cloaked assassins, creatures with natural camouflage, details of significance in a crowded marketplace, and so on. In these cases, perhaps a roll is involved. But it’s odd to ask players to roll when they haven’t taken any actions. It’s within the bounds of the rules, but it can be jarring. There are different ways to handle the situation: you can call for a roll, compare levels, or use an intrusion.
GM Calls for Rolls: This is the most straightforward approach. It’s always the best choice if a PC’s action is to search, listen, or otherwise keep an eye out. If a PC is on watch while their comrades rest, call for an Intellect roll immediately and use the result if anything happens during the entire time they are guarding.
But what if the PC isn’t actively looking? Let’s say a pickpocket moves up behind them to lift a few coins, so you ask the player to make an Intellect roll with a difficulty equal to the pickpocket’s level. (Arguably, they could make a Speed roll to see if they are quick enough to catch a glimpse—it’s up to you.) Some PCs are skilled in perception, and that would come into play here. Success means that you tell the character what they see, and failure means that they notice nothing. However, the player knows that they had to make a roll, so they know that something was up. One way to keep players on their toes is to call for rolls when there is nothing to notice.
GM Compares Levels: You can take the player out of the equation (so as not to alert their suspicions) by comparing the PC’s tier to the difficulty of the perception task. Ties go to the PC. You can still figure in skills and assets as bonuses to the PC’s tier. So a third-tier character trained in perception will spot the level 4 predator cat stalking up behind them. This method is particularly good for determining simple results, such as whether the PC hears a river in the distance. That kind of thing isn’t worth a roll, but for some reason, you might not want to give out the information automatically. This method also rewards a perceptive character, who will hear the noise before anyone else. Don’t forget to increase the difficulty for distance in such a situation.
GM Intrudes: Rarely, you can keep things to yourself and spring the knowledge of what happened as a GM intrusion. If the PC discovers that their pocket is now empty of coins, that’s certainly a complication. Sometimes the “discovery” itself is a complication—for example, the character notices a mugging going on in the alley as they walk by.
In addition, the GM is the source of knowledge about the parts of the PCs’ lives that don’t take place in a game session. If a character used to be in the military and needs to know the name of their old unit commander, you need to give it to the player (or, better yet, let the player come up with the name).
There should always be multiple paths to success.
If PCs miss a sensory detail, you should consider very carefully what to do about that. If there’s a cool secret chamber in the ancient complex or an important clue under the table in the castle guardroom, maybe a perceptive PC should just find it (no roll required), particularly if they said they were looking. To do otherwise might mean submitting to the tyranny of the dice. Just because the PC rolled a 2, should the adventure come to a dead stop?
Well, in the first place, don’t design a scenario that can come to a dead stop if the PCs botch one roll.
In the second place, consider your other options. Maybe the PCs will learn about the secret chamber later and they’ll have to backtrack to find it. If the characters don’t find the clue under the table, an NPC might—and then lord it over them with a show of superiority. If all else fails, as noted above, sometimes discovery is a complication, and you can simply foist it upon a PC through GM intrusion. In such a case, however, you might want to include a challenge. For example, the PC finds the secret door accidentally by leaning against the hidden control pad, which lets out the flying insectoid hunter-seekers guarding the chamber before the characters are ready for them.
On the other hand, perhaps in such a situation, the PCs didn’t “earn” the discovery—if there was no roll, then no Effort was used and no risks were taken. That’s not good. Maybe the PCs just miss out this time. Maybe they should learn to be more observant.
In other words, the answer depends on the situation. Don’t hesitate to vary things. It keeps the players guessing.
Occasionally, you need to know the level of an inanimate object, probably because someone’s trying to break it. A typical object is approximately level 4—less if it’s of inferior quality or materials, more if it’s of superior quality or materials. A serf’s tool in the Dark Ages is level 3, while an average tool on a space station is level 6, made of advanced polymers.
Breaking objects is probably not a single roll, but a series of them. See the rules for attacking objects.
Picking, forcing, or jimmying a lock usually requires a tool of some kind. Actual lockpicks provide an asset.
Locks in a science fiction setting are probably electronic. For such locks, a character would want to use the hacking skill rather than lockpicking.]
Using an electronic system—a starship’s scanners, an office computer, the environmental systems of a building, an interstellar communicator—is usually routine if the character isn’t under any stress and is at least generally familiar with the task. Sometimes, though, it’s a non-routine task to operate a system while under stress or one that is entirely unfamiliar.
When a character tries to access someone else’s computer or make an electronic system do something it wasn’t designed to do, that’s hacking as opposed to systems operation. This includes everything from hotwiring a car to getting someone’s bank information to disabling the security system of a space station.
The kinds of attacks a PC can make—a punch, a knife stab, a gunshot, a specific magic spell, and so on—are detailed in the Cypher Character Rulebook, and attacks that creatures and NPCs might make are provided with the samples in chapter 12. However, throughout the game you’ll need to adjudicate what kind of damage (what severity of wound) a PC suffers from a wide variety of sources.
Generally speaking, if the injury is one that will fade by morning, if not sooner, it’s minor. If the injury’s effects will last multiple days, it’s moderate. If it probably needs serious medical care or the person is at real risk, it’s a major wound.
All of these are approximations. A shot from a handgun can kill, or a shot from a rifle can barely graze a target. Circumstances matter. PC actions matter as well. A character using a block action that reduces a stabbing attack from a foe with a big knife doesn’t take a moderate wound with profuse bleeding and tissue damage, instead suffering a small cut as the knife barely breaks the skin.
In Cypher, durations for helpful ongoing effects normally coincide with a PC’s use of a recovery—usually a ten-minute or longer recovery, though ability and cypher descriptions indicate which recovery use ends a given effect.
Unwanted ongoing effects are a different matter. PCs do everything in their power to end them immediately. But sometimes that isn’t possible, as indicated in the following section.
NPCs, on the other hand, don’t have recoveries or mechanics for attempting tasks or defense rolls. Often it’s not important. But in situations where you or the PCs need to know, it’s easy to determine ongoing effect durations for NPCs.
Published Cypher creatures (including the ones in this book), adventures, bestiaries, and other sourcebooks indicate how PCs end unwanted lingering effects in each case. If you design your own creatures and hazards, this section helps you decide how long their malignant effects last.
The immediate peril of a creature’s attack or any other dangerous effect is determined by its level. Obviously, the claw attack from a level 7 dragon or blast of wind from a level 7 tornado is a lot more concerning than the bite attack of a level 1 rat or breeze from a level 1 dust devil.
Yet some attacks confer secondary ongoing hostile effects on PCs. A dragon might breathe on a PC and set them on fire, a tornado could lift a PC into its spinning tumult, a rat bite could cause an infection, a giant might grab a PC and squeeze, a medusa might turn a PC to stone, and so on. All of these situations have effects that continue beyond the initial attack.
In some cases, how easily a PC can escape a lingering effect is a function of the effect’s level. But especially hazardous ongoing effects might require something more—an affected PC might have to use a non-rest recovery to shed the influence. As a reminder, a non-rest recovery is when a PC uses a recovery to escape (or attempt to escape) an ongoing effect without gaining any other benefits a recovery normally grants. A non-rest recovery takes the same amount of time that a regular recovery would take; a ten-minute non-rest recovery takes ten minutes.
Requiring PCs to use non-rest recoveries against some effects gives you another lever in your GM toolbox, allowing you to highlight situations and dangers in new and story-enriching ways.
The following classes of ongoing effects are defined by how long the effect is usually expected to continue or how serious it is on its face. Each includes examples and guidance on when to consider requiring PCs to use non-rest recoveries to break free. Of course, every situation is unique, so these are not hard-and-fast rules but instead rules of thumb.
Exceptions: Outside forces or a specific remedy (if allies have such aid available) could potentially break a PC free of a lingering effect without the PC needing to take any action all. For instance, someone who drinks from the Holy Grail escapes all sorts of unwanted ongoing effects.
On the other hand, some especially pernicious effects might be breakable only through a specific mechanism. For instance, an overpowering curse or geas might not be something a PC can break free from with additional defense rolls or non-rest recoveries. Instead, they might have to take a specified action to escape, such as gaining the forgiveness of the being that cursed them or finishing the tasks associated with the geas laid upon them.
Quick ongoing effects usually include anything that deals damage each round, such as being on fire, being squashed in a giant’s fist, being strangled by an animate vine, being frozen by a supernatural ice spell, being crushed under fallen rock or tumbled shelf, and so on.
Other lingering effects might be quick even if they don’t deal damage, such when something grabs or restrains a PC but doesn’t deal damage every round, minor mind control, minor hindering effects like being dazed, and even minor paralytic or stunning effects that are expected to hold a target immobile for just a few rounds.
Escaping a Quick Effect: Each round as their action, a PC can attempt a Might, Speed, or Intellect task as appropriate to the effect, or be allowed another defense roll each round if they’re not consciously able to use an action to escape. For example, you might decide that someone being crushed in the coils of a giant snake can attempt a Might task each round as their action to break free. Or if a PC is being mentally influenced by a faerie, you might determine that the PC can make an Intellect defense roll each round to escape.
Short-term effects typically last many tens of minutes, though usually no more than an hour or so. Examples include an immediately debilitating magical illness, poison, a minor curse, serious paralysis, mind control from a powerful psychic, and so on.
Escaping a Short-Term Effect: A PC cannot break free of a short-term effect by attempting a task or another defense roll. The only way they can escape the effect is by using a ten-minute or longer non-rest recovery (which takes at least ten minutes, or longer depending on the recovery used, to be effective). For example, a PC who walked into a mausoleum and was affected by a curse that forces them to shy away from light might be able to break free only if they use a non-rest recovery.
Long-term effects usually last many hours or even days. Examples include especially insidious mind control, lesser demonic possession, an especially intractable illness, imperfect stasis, a powerful but breakable curse, and so on.
Escaping a Long-Term Effect: As with short-term effects, a PC can’t escape a long-term effect with another attempted defense roll or a successful task. However, instead of requiring a single ten-minute or longer non-rest recovery, escaping a longer-term effect requires multiple one-hour or longer non-rest recoveries. For example, an especially pernicious illness might require the PC to expend five ten-hour non-rest recoveries. The disease will last at least five days, and unless the PC is not really using their Pools much, even after those five days, they still might not be at full Pools.
Sudden catastrophic effects are terrifying because they happen unexpectedly and rapidly, and could potentially be permanent—the PC is just one step away from immediate death. Examples include petrification, banishment to another realm, perfect stasis, a nigh-unbreakable curse, demonic possession by a greater infernal power, and so on.
Escaping a Sudden Catastrophic Effect: As with short- and long-term effects, a PC can’t try to escape a sudden catastrophic effect with another attempted defense roll or a successful task. Nor can they simply use non-rest recoveries to shed the lingering effect. To escape a sudden catastrophic effect, you might decide that each time a PC uses a ten-minute or longer recovery, they gain another defense roll against the effect. Some effects might require three successful defense rolls, and perhaps each attempt can be made only after a PC uses a ten-minute or longer recovery. For example, suppose Karol’s character is turned to stone by a powerful medusa queen. In that case, she might have to succeed on three Might defense rolls, each attempt unlocked after she uses a ten-hour non-rest recovery. Karol’s character remains petrified for at least three days, and probably longer.
A lot of people might think that Cypher is a class-and-level game because it has things that are enough like classes (types) and levels (tiers) that it’s easy to see the misconception. And that’s fine. But here’s the real secret, just between you and me: it’s not tiers, types, or any of that stuff that is the key to really understanding the system.
It’s the cyphers.
The cyphers are the key to making the game work differently than other games. Cypher isn’t about playing for years before a character is allowed to teleport, travel to other dimensions, lay waste to a dozen enemies at once, or create a mechanical automaton to do their bidding. They can do it right out of the gate if they have the right cypher.
This system works because both the GM and the player have a say over what cyphers a character has. It’s not limiting—it’s freeing.
The easiest way to design a good game is to limit—and strictly define—PC power. Characters of such-and-such a level (or whatever) can do this kind of thing but not that kind of thing. The GM knows that the characters aren’t going to ruin everything by seeing into the past or creating a nuclear explosion.
But that’s not the only way to design a good game. What if you—the GM—decide that while it would not be so great if the PCs could see into the past (which would ruin the mystery of your scenario), it would be okay if they could blow up half the city? Cypher allows you to permit anything you feel is appropriate or interesting.
To put it another way (and to continue the ever-more-absurd examples), PCs who can solve every mystery and blow up every city probably end up making the game a pushover (and thus dull), but PCs who can solve one mystery or blow up one city won’t ruin the campaign. Cyphers allow the characters to do amazing, cool, and fun things—just not reliably or consistently. Thus, although they potentially have access to great power from time to time, they have to use it wisely.
As the GM, it’s important to remember the distinction between a character ability gained through type or focus, an ability or advantage gained through an artifact, and an ability gained through a cypher. The first two kinds of abilities will shape the way you expect the characters to behave, but the cyphers won’t. If a PC has the Walks Through Walls focus, they’re going to be walking through walls all the time—it’s what they do—so it shouldn’t catch you off guard. In a way, you should “prepare” for it. I put that word in quotes because I don’t mean that you nullify it. Don’t put in a bunch of walls that they can’t get through. That’s no fun. Walking through walls is what they do, and if you take that away, they don’t get to do anything. (Foiling their power every once in a while is fine because it might add to the challenge, but it should be the exception, not the rule.) By “preparing” for their ability, I mean don’t expect a locked door to keep them out. Be ready when they sneak into places most people can’t go, and be ready to tell them what they find.
But with cyphers, no preparation is necessary. First of all, most of them don’t throw a wrench into anything—they just help the character deal with a situation in a faster way, giving them some healing, a temporary boost, or a one-use offensive power. Second, the PCs never end up with a cypher that you didn’t give them, so you can have as much say over their cyphers as you want. And third (and perhaps most important), when a PC says they have a cypher that blows up the lead wagon in the caravan, completely changing the situation, that’s part of the fun. You’ll have to figure out on the fly what happens next, and so will the players. That’s not ruining things—that’s what is supposed to happen. Players surprising the GM is part of the game. Cyphers just make those surprises more frequent, and in ways as interesting as you’re willing to allow.
We’ll look at designing encounters later, but for now, remember this point: no single encounter is so important that you ever have to worry about the players “ruining” it. You hear those kinds of complaints all the time. “Her telepathic power totally ruined that interaction” or “The players came up with a great ambush and killed the main villain in one round, ruining the final encounter.”
No. No, no, no. See the forest for the trees. Don’t think about the game in terms of encounters. Think about it in terms of the adventure or the campaign. If a PC used a potent cypher to easily kill a powerful and important opponent, remember these three things:
1. They don’t have that cypher anymore.
2. There will be more bad guys.
3. Combat’s not the point of the game—it’s merely an obstacle. If the players discover a way to overcome an obstacle more quickly than you expected, there’s nothing wrong with that. They’re not cheating, and the game’s not broken. Just keep the story going. What happens next? What are the implications of what just happened?
Let’s say the PCs want to learn more about a missing man, so they talk to his best friend. You and the players roleplay the conversation. The players are friendly and helpful and ask their questions with respect. Do you call for an Intellect roll (using the friend’s level to determine the difficulty) to see if he will talk to them, or do you simply decide that he reacts to them well and gives them the information?
As another example, an old woman has watched over the entrance to an ancient ruin for years. She considers it a duty given to her by the gods and has never told anyone the secrets she knows. The PCs come along with some training in interactions, roll dice, and expect the woman to spill her guts. Does she tell them everything?
The answer to both questions is: it depends. In either situation, you’re justified in ignoring the dice and mechanics and simply handling things through table conversation. That’s what makes interaction encounters so interesting and so distinctive from, say, combat. You can’t put aside the dice and act out the fight between the PCs and a giant, but you can roleplay a conversation. In such cases, you can portray the NPCs precisely as you want, in ways that seem fitting to their personalities, without worrying about die rolls. The best friend probably wants to help the PCs find his missing comrade. The old woman would never give her secrets to a band of smooth talkers that shows up on her doorstep one day. You can also ensure that the players get the information you want them to get—and don’t get the information you don’t want them to get.
On the other hand, sometimes using game mechanics is a better option. For example, a person who isn’t particularly eloquent might want to play a character who’s a smooth talker. You wouldn’t require a player who’s never held a sword in real life to prove that they’re an adept combatant to win a fight in the game, so you should not force the player of a charming character to be, well, charming. The game mechanics can simulate those qualities.
And sometimes, you can use both approaches. You can let the conversation with the NPC play out around the table, and then call for rolls—not to determine whether the PCs succeed or fail at the interaction, but to get an idea of the degree of success. For example, if the characters have a good cover story for why the guards at the gate should let them pass, the roll might determine not whether the guards say yes (you can use logic for that) but whether the guards accompany the PCs beyond the gate. In a way, the die roll shapes an NPC’s reaction. It’s not an on/off switch but a general degree of the overall trust that the PCs earn.
Careful readers will have noticed that there are no intricate rules for languages in Cypher, just a brief mention that you can become fluent in a new language rather than gain a skill. That’s because for most people, language is more of a background or roleplaying feature than a mechanical one. You don’t want to have to make a roll to speak, for example. Characters should begin the game knowing the language(s) that make the most sense for them.
Languages are a special case, however, because some people won’t want to deal with it. And that’s fine. Some players and GMs will find it an interesting challenge to communicate with people or creatures who don’t share a common language. Others will think it’s an impediment to interaction with no real upside. You can handle the issue however you want.
Because the players usually roll all the dice, NPCs who are not opponents raise unique issues in the system. If a character gains an NPC ally who accompanies the group, how are the ally’s actions resolved?
Most of the time, the GM should decide what makes the most sense in the context of the situation and the NPC. If the characters climb up a steep slope and must make rolls to ascend, the NPC doesn’t make a roll. Instead, the GM quickly considers whether they could climb it and goes from there. A fit, able ally should simply climb the slope. A feeble or clumsy NPC will need assistance. In other words, the NPC doesn’t face the challenge (that’s what the PCs do)—they remain a part of the unfolding story. The old man the PCs must escort through dangerous mountains needs help climbing because that’s part of the story of the adventure. His able-bodied daughter who also travels with the group does not need help because that wouldn’t make much sense.
If the entire group is caught in a landslide later in that same adventure, the GM can do one of two things in regard to the NPCs. Either decide what happens to them as seems most logical or fitting (perhaps using GM intrusion, since what befalls the NPCs also affects the PCs), or have the players roll on behalf of the NPCs and treat them just like the player characters in every way possible.
You should think of cyphers as character abilities, whether they’re normal cyphers or manifest ones. This means that it is incumbent upon you to make sure that players always have plenty of cyphers to use. If the genre and setting call for manifest cyphers, in the course of their travels, the PCs should find that cyphers are extremely common. In other settings, any significant break—sleeping overnight, a leisurely lunch, or a purposeful hour spent in meditation—might replace used cyphers. Either way, since the PCs are limited in the number of cyphers they can carry, they will use them liberally.
Manifest cyphers can be found by scavenging through old ruins. They can be found in the corpses of magical or technological foes. They can be found among the possessions of intelligent fallen opponents or the lairs of unintelligent creatures, either amid the bones of former meals or as shiny decorations in a nest. They can be found in villages, in the back of a merchant’s cart that sells junk and scavenged parts. They are offered as rewards by people who are grateful for the PCs’ help.
In any given session, a PC should have the opportunity to use at least as many cyphers as they can carry. This means they should gain or find that number of cyphers in that same amount of time (give or take).
If your players are typical, they will use combat-related cyphers liberally but hold on to their utility cyphers. A fiery bomb or energy blast will be used, but a motion sensor or reality spike will linger longer on their character sheets. There’s nothing wrong with that.
As with everything else in the game, it’s intentionally very easy for the GM to create new cyphers. Just think of the effect and how to express it as a game advantage. Two kinds of cyphers exist when it comes to effect: those that allow the user to do something better, and those that allow the user to do something they couldn’t do otherwise.
The first group includes everything that reduces the difficulty of a task. The second group includes things that grant new abilities, such as flight, a new means of attack, the ability to see into the past, or any number of other powers.
A few more important notes about devising new cyphers:
In terms of the narrative, artifacts are a lot like cyphers, except that most are not one-use items. Mechanically, they serve a very different purpose. It’s assumed that characters are exploring with some cyphers at their disposal. Artifacts, however, are added abilities that make characters broader, deeper, and often more powerful. They aren’t assumed—they’re extra.
The powers granted by artifacts are more like the abilities gained from a character’s type or focus in that they change the way the PC is played overall. The difference between an artifact and a type or focus ability is that almost all artifacts are temporary. They last longer than cyphers do, but because they have a depletion roll, any use could be their last.
Like cyphers, then, artifacts are a way for the GM to play a role in the development of the characters. Although armor, weapons, and the like are fine, special capabilities—such as long-range communication or travel—can really change the way the PCs interact with the world and how they deal with challenges. Some of these abilities enable the actions you want the PCs to take. For example, if you want them to have an underwater adventure, provide them with artifacts (or cyphers) that allow them to breathe underwater.
Also like cyphers, artifacts are simple for the GMs to create. The only difference with artifacts is that you give them a depletion roll, using any numbers on 1d6, 1d10, 1d20, or 1d00. If you want the artifact to be used only a few times, give it a depletion roll of 1 in 1d6, 1 or 2 in 1d10, or even 1 or 2 in 1d6. If you want the PCs to use it over and over, a depletion roll of 1 in 1d00 more or less means that they can use it freely without worrying too much.
Character arcs encourage players to be proactive and create their own goals, with their own definitions of success and failure. It’s the spirit of character arcs that’s important, not the specific rules. Because the arcs consist of broad sets of guidelines for handling a potentially limitless number of stories, you’ll want to play fast and loose. Sometimes steps will be skipped. Sometimes they’ll be repeated. Sometimes you’ll go straight to the climax after the opening (this should be rare, however).
Other times, no character arc in the Character Guide will fit what a player wants to do. In that case, it behooves you to work with the player to make an arc that fits. The player’s intention is what’s important. Players should think of a goal for their character first and then look through the sample arcs, rather than browse the list and feel that those are the only options. When in doubt, find an arc or arc idea that most closely fits what the player wants and then massage it in a few places where needed.
One thing to keep in mind: if the arc doesn’t involve at least a few steps and at least some time, it’s not really a character arc. If a PC gets picked on in a bar one evening by a jerk NPC and says “My character arc is to punch that guy in the face,” that’s not really a character arc. That’s just an action. Character arcs require depth, thought, and, most likely, change on the PC’s part.
Think of them in terms of the arcs of characters in your favorite novels or movies. When a PC takes on and eventually completes a character arc, that should feel like a novel or a movie’s worth of story (or at least the story of one character in the novel or movie). There should be a real feeling of accomplishment and closure at the end of an arc, but at the same time—assuming the narrative is going to continue—a sense that there’s more to come. One arc often leads right into the next.
Character arcs aren’t meant to be entirely solo affairs. PCs working as a group should help each other with their respective arcs from time to time. The Aid a Friend arc helps to encourage this. If one or two PCs use this arc to help another character, suddenly it’s a group arc, and cohesion and cooperation will come naturally.
It’s worth noting, however, that some players will want one of their character arcs to be a solitary venture. They won’t want help. They might not even want the other PCs to know about it. That’s okay too, but it might require that you spend some time with them playing outside of regular sessions, even if it’s just through text or email.
While we’re talking about using the rules, let’s look at some aspects of the game system and discover why they work the way they do. Understanding the “why” for some of the rules might make it easier or more intuitive to run the game in a way that the players also understand.
In Cypher, the GM sets a difficulty rather than a target number. There are a few advantages to the difficulty mechanic.
1. The GM makes measured adjustments in large, uniform steps. That makes things faster than if players had to do arithmetic using a range of all numbers from 1 to 20.
2. You calculate a target number only once no matter how many times the PCs attempt the action. If you establish that the target number is 12, it’s 12 every time a PC tries that action. (On the other hand, if you had to add numbers to your die roll, you’d have to do it for every attempt.) Consider this fact in light of combat. Once a player knows that they need to roll a 12 or higher to hit a foe, combat moves very quickly.
3. If a PC can reduce the difficulty of an action to 0, no roll is needed. This means that an Olympic gymnast doesn’t roll a die to walk across a balance beam, but the average person does. The task is initially rated the same for both, but the difficulty is reduced for the gymnast. There’s no chance of failure.
4. This is how everything in the game works, whether it’s climbing a wall, sweet-talking a guard, or fighting a bioengineered horror.
5. Perhaps most important, the system gives GMs the freedom to focus entirely on the flow of the game. The GM doesn’t use dice to determine what happens (unless they want to)—the players do. There aren’t a lot of different rules for different actions, so there is little to remember and very little to reference. The difficulty can be used as a narrative tool, with the challenges always meeting the expected logic of the game. All the GM’s mental space can be devoted to guiding the story.
For the most part, PC attacks have “flat” damage without variables. A small knife inflicts 2 damage. A grenade’s shrapnel inflicts 4 damage. To introduce some variability, the damage can increase not from an additional damage roll as in some games, but from a good roll on the attack—a 17 or higher.
This reduces the time at the table spent determining the results of an attack and speeds up combat surprisingly significantly.
Most effects with durations created by a PC (from abilities, cyphers, or artifacts) are based not on a set passage of time, but on when the PC next takes a specific recovery. This might seem odd at first, but it is a way the game measures time without a clock and without anyone needing to count the number of rounds that have passed.
Perhaps more important, it puts the decision of when an effect ends on the player rather than on the GM (or a timer tracking rounds, minutes, or hours). The player decides whether to take a recovery, which will cause the effect to end, or to push on without the recovery to get more from the effect in question. It’s often at least a somewhat difficult choice, and difficult choices are meaningful.
Characters suffer wounds, but NPCs track their damage via points of health. This makes it simpler for the GM. It’s easier to track damage for NPCs rather than three different kinds of wounds. And it goes from pleasantly convenient to absolutely vital if the PCs are fighting sixteen ninjas that leap from every rooftop and window ledge in a dark alley.
Similarly, NPCs and creatures don’t make rolls to block (they don’t make rolls at all), so NPC Armor is just a reduction of the points of damage they sustain.
It’s interesting for players to have to choose how to deal with an incoming attack. Do they duck or dodge, or do they grit their teeth and take it, hoping to minimize the damage? Much of this depends on what the character’s Speed Pool is versus their Might Pool, and how much armor they’re wearing. But even a fully armored knight might try to dodge a magical beam that transforms them into a mouse (as opposed to blocking it and therefore being struck automatically). Similarly, a nimble dodger might try to throw up their arms and block the incoming wave of shrapnel from an exploding bomb rather than dodging it all, which is nearly impossible.
In earlier versions of the game, PCs took damage like NPCs, using their Might Pool the way an NPC uses their health score. This was interesting because taking physical damaged reduced the physical prowess of the character, at least in terms of the kinds of actions they could take and how much Effort they could use.
Even though we now track PC damage with wounds, the measurement of the toll said wounds have on a character’s physical prowess is still there, but with more player agency. A player can choose to have their character rally and make a wound go away (narratively saying that it wasn’t as bad as it looked, or something similar) by using Might points. Thus, a character who rallies away a wound or two has less Might to spend, and the original goal of equating physical damage and physical ability remains—now with input from the player.
Most of the ways in which a character gains helpful allies (such as followers from the Leads or automatons from the Builds Allies ) simply state that the NPCs don’t take actions, but rather help the PC with their actions, reducing the difficulty. This is for the GM’s benefit. Rather than determining the actions of allied NPCs and figuring out if a roll is needed, where they are in the environment, what knowledge they have of the situation, and so on, it’s just a modification to the PC’s action. The player is happy to get the help and you’re happy that you don’t have another character to run.
Of course, most followers and allies are independent, thinking creatures and can operate separately from the PC, but that’s up to you. (They might also take their own well-being into account and not aid the PC in some dangerous action out of self-preservation.)
Encounters are to a game session what scenes are to a movie or a book. They’re a way to break up the session, and the adventure at large, into smaller, more manageable chunks.
Sometimes it’s more difficult to know where one encounter ends and another begins. For that reason, “encounter” is not always a useful or meaningful game term. It’s only useful for you when you think about the scenes of your adventure. When the PCs talk to the temple priests, that’s one encounter. After they do so, hopefully getting the information they need, they head off into the wilderness, where they have to cross a deep chasm—another encounter. When a dragon appears and attacks, that’s another encounter. And so on.
Thus, not everything that happens is an encounter. Heading off into the wilderness, for example, probably involves gathering supplies, deciding on a route, and so on, but it isn’t really an encounter. An encounter is when you, the GM, provide a lot of detail. You and the players interact a lot in an encounter. You might decide to subdivide everyone’s actions into rounds to help keep track of who’s doing what, when.
Encounters aren’t just about combat. As mentioned above, talking to NPCs is an encounter. Dealing with a physical obstacle is an encounter. Figuring out how to use a complex machine is an encounter. The best encounters—the really memorable ones, in fact—involve multiple things happening at once. A fight on a boat racing down the rapids, for example, is an interesting encounter. An encounter where a couple of PCs must disable a bomb before it blows up the space station while the others fend off attacking star troopers is interesting too.
Sometimes an encounter can be intentionally designed with that goal. At least occasionally, you should take an idea you have for an encounter and add something else that will make it even more interesting, exciting, or challenging. The possibilities are endless. Perhaps gravity functions differently than expected. A weird fungus gives off spores that alter perception. The encounter takes place inside a sentient machine that must be reasoned with and appeased while everything else is going on. An interdimensional effect makes all metal in the encounter temporarily cease to exist. And that’s just for starters. Make things crazy and fun. Design encounters that are like nothing the players have ever experienced.
Sometimes encounters with multiple levels of action or weird complications arise out of the game itself. The PCs have to leap onto a moving platform to get down into the giant machine’s interior conduit system, which is interesting, but the robots that they ran from earlier suddenly show up. You didn’t plan for that ahead of time; it just happened because that’s the way things went. And that’s great.
Finally, GM intrusions can bring about these kinds of encounters on the fly. The PCs have to repair a huge device at the heart of an ancient complex that is venting poisonous gas before they are all overcome. With a GM intrusion that occurs to you at the last minute, you let them know that the gas also weakens the structural integrity of metal, which means the supports under the floor the PCs are standing on are buckling and will collapse at any moment.
In Cypher, there is no concept of a “balanced encounter.” There is no system for matching creatures of a particular level or tasks of a particular difficulty to characters of a particular tier. To some people, that might seem like a bad thing. But as I’ve written earlier, matching character builds to exacting challenges is not part of this game. It’s about story. So whatever you want to happen next in the story is a fine encounter as long as it’s fun. You’re not denying the characters XP if you make things too easy or too difficult, because that’s not how XP are earned. If things are too difficult for the PCs, they’ll have to flee, come up with a new strategy, or try something else entirely. The only thing you have to do to maintain “balance” is set difficulty within that encounter accurately and consistently.
In a game like this, if everyone’s having fun, the game is balanced. Two things can possibly unbalance the game in this context.
1. One or more PCs are far more interesting than the others. Note that I said “more interesting,” not “more powerful.” If my character can do all kinds of cool things but can’t destroy robots as efficiently as yours does, I still might have a whole lot of fun.
2. The challenges the PCs face are routinely too easy or too difficult.
The first issue should be handled by the character creation rules. If there’s a problem, it might be that poor choices were made or a player isn’t taking full advantage of their options. If someone really doesn’t enjoy playing their character, allow them to alter the PC or—perhaps better—create a new one. Also, see Asymmetrical Play.
The second issue is trickier. As previously noted, there is no formula that states that N number of level X NPCs are a good match for tier Y characters. However, when the game has four or five beginning characters, the following guidelines are generally true.
But let me caution you, and I can’t stress this enough: it depends on the situation at hand. If the PCs are already worn down from prior encounters, or if they have the right cyphers, any of the expectations listed above can change. That’s why there is no system for balancing encounters. Just keep in mind that beginning characters are pretty hardy and probably have some interesting resources, so you aren’t likely to wipe out the group by accident. Character death is unlikely unless the PCs have already been through a number of other encounters and are worn down.
Don’t plan for how an encounter will end. Let the game play determine that. This ensures that players have the proper level of input. You can decide, for example, that if the PCs go into the tower, a gang of mutants inside will attack. However, you can’t decide how that encounter will end. Maybe the PCs will be victorious. Maybe they won’t. Maybe they’ll flee, or maybe they’ll bargain for their lives.
If you try to decide such things ahead of time, that’s called railroading the game, and it puts the players in the role of observers rather than actors. Even if you try to plan the results of an encounter ahead of time but then let the game play dictate them, you still might end up planning for a lot of outcomes that don’t happen. In other words, if you base a whole plotline on the PCs fleeing the tower to get away from the mutants, but instead they manage to drive the mutants out, all your plans are wasted.
Plan for various possible outcomes, but don’t predetermine them. Think of your story as having many potential plotlines, not just one.
If the game has a balance problem, it’s more likely due to players finding things too easy rather than too hard. If things are too hard, they should run away and find something else to do (or you should lighten up a bit). But if the characters in the group need a greater challenge, try one or more of the following options.
Ongoing Damage: Poisons that inflict even a small amount of damage (a minor wound, or 1 or 2 points to a Pool) every round until an antidote is found can be extremely worrisome. Or consider this: one of the reasons that napalm is so terrible is that it clings to surfaces, including flesh. Imagine a weapon or effect that inflicts a moderate wound from fire damage every round and persists for eight rounds unless the characters can figure out a way to douse it.
Lasting Damage: For a slightly more realistic simulation of damage, you can use a GM intrusion to indicate that damage suffered by a player character is “lasting.” Most of the time, this damage is described as being a concussion, a broken bone, a torn ligament, or severe muscle or tissue damage. This damage does not heal normally, so it cannot be rallied, tended, or removed with a recovery. Instead, a moderate wound requires a full day of actual rest or three days of light activity to heal. A major wound requires full rest and takes three days to recover. Using lasting damage is particularly appropriate in cases where it would be an obvious consequence, such as when a character falls a long distance.
Permanent Damage: Similar to lasting damage, permanent damage is a special situation adjudicated by the GM. Permanent damage never heals normally, although extraordinary technologies and magic can potentially repair damage or replace lost body parts. This kind of damage should be used sparingly and only in special situations.
Effects Other Than Damage: Attacks can blind, stun, grapple, paralyze, infect, hobble, or otherwise hinder a character without dealing any wounds at all. Or they can do both.
Effects That Harm Equipment: A PC’s gear is often the source of their abilities. Destroying or nullifying cyphers or artifacts damages them just as surely as breaking their leg would—it limits a player’s options, which really hurts.
Enemies Working in Concert: Although a group effectively acting as one is a special ability of some creatures, you could apply it to any creature you like. As a general rule, for every four creatures working together, treat them as one creature with a level equal to the highest of them plus 1, dealing a wound with a severity that is one step higher than the wound severity of the highest-level creature in the bunch. So a level 4 bandit (who inflicts a moderate wound) who has three level 3 allies (who each inflict a minor wound) could team up and attack one foe as a level 5 NPC who inflicts a major wound. That means their attack deals more damage and is harder to defend against. It also means less die rolling, so the combat moves along faster.
Beef Up the Foes: You’re in charge of the NPC stats. If they need more Armor, more health, or higher levels to be a challenge, simply make it so. It’s easy and straightforward to give an NPC a “boost package” of four things:
That should do the trick, but if necessary, give the boost package to the same NPC again.
Beef Up the Obstacles: Include more exotic materials in doors and other barriers, which increase their level. Make physical challenges more difficult—the surfaces that need to be climbed are slippery, the waters that need to be swum are roiling, and other actions are hampered by strong winds. Don’t beef up obstacles in this way too often, but remember that circumstances such as weather are your tools for adjusting the difficulty of any action.
Although characters start out quite capable, by the time they reach the fifth or sixth tier, they will be truly legendary. Both you and the players might find reaching the upper tiers more rewarding and satisfying if the journey unfolds more gradually, so you can slow down this progress if desired. To do this, starting at third or fourth tier, you can use the Splitting XP optional rule (even if you haven’t been using it before this). This will slow down the progression through the upper tiers. But it won’t take anything away from the play experience because spending XP on those advantages is fun and rewarding too.
Similarly, at that point, you could also encourage PCs to take resource points in lieu of XP (again, up to half the XP earned) to encourage those sorts of story-focused activities.
Most of the time, it’s assumed that all the PCs are about the same power level in terms of tier, equipment (including artifacts), and so on. This is symmetrical play, where the characters are different but more or less equal. Obviously, the situation determines which character in a given moment is superior to another. If fantasy PCs face off against a dragon immune to magic, the characters not reliant on spells and the like will be at an advantage. If sci-fi characters are mis-teleported to a world with no technology, the tech character’s type abilities will be of little use. These kinds of circumstances change from adventure to adventure or even encounter to encounter, and likely even out over time.
But what if the characters are not the same tier?
For example, if a PC dies, the easiest and most straightforward response is to have the player create a new character. Ideally, they will make a beginning character (which is the easiest to create), but if the other PCs are third tier or higher, it will be more satisfying to let the player create their new character at an advanced tier.
However, keep in mind that a lower-tier PC can operate effectively in the company of higher-tier characters. The differences are not so striking. If a player brings a new beginning PC into a group of advanced characters, simply be particularly generous with XP to help the new character catch up to the others a bit. Regardless of how you feel about inequality among PCs, arrange the circumstances of the story so that you can bring in the new character in a logical fashion and as quickly as possible.
Narratively, you can deal with asymmetrical play by creating situations that specifically give lower-power characters important things to do. The classic example comes from The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien. In this story, you’ve basically got a beginning halfling burglar, a number of dwarf warriors of probably tier 2 to tier 4 at best, and a tier 6+ wizard with quasi-deity abilities from his descriptor (Maiar) and some really potent artifacts. If that was the group of characters playing at your table, you could design encounters in which the wizard has to cast a few powerful spells, but because so many swarming goblins show up once he’s started, the other characters have to fend them off to give him time. And perhaps as the enemies swarm, the characters realize that pulling a lever will lower the gates and prevent some of the goblins from reaching them. But the lever can only be reached by going down a very small hole, and only the halfling burglar can accomplish this.
Asymmetrical play often requires more work on your part, and it also requires you to have a frank conversation with the players—particularly the players of the more powerful characters. You need to tell them not to step on the proverbial toes of the other players. Sure, the powerful wizard could perhaps take care of every situation, but that’s not fun for the others, and it’s not a good group experience. Remember that the players, as much as the GM, are responsible for ensuring that everyone has a good time.
Remember that the players, as much as the GM, are responsible for ensuring that everyone has a good time.
Rules are meant to be broken, as the saying goes. Well, it’s really not a bad saying in regard to running games. Sometimes you have to break the rules—or perhaps we should say “bend the rules”—to provide the most fun for everyone at the table.
This section presents a rather random selection of ways you can bend the rules to make things more fun, more to the group’s liking, or better for the joint story.
As the campaign goes along, it’s possible that a player might want to switch the descriptor or focus that they chose when creating their character. It’s best if these changes occur organically rather than being forced. In other words, a character’s descriptor changes because something happened in the game to change them, or their focus changes because a new opportunity arose in the course of play. (Don’t do it if a player wants to change just for the sake of variety or to become more powerful in the current situation. In those cases, they should make a new character instead.)
Changing a descriptor is both easy and appropriate. For example, in the course of play, a Strong Fighter’s father is killed by a terrible villain. The Fighter is fueled now by revenge. If the Fighter became despondent because of it, they might change to the Gloomy descriptor. Likewise, an Intelligent Druid who escaped the mind control of a vampire might become Cautious or Guarded.
Of course, these characters lose their old descriptor and any benefits it conveyed, but that can be part of the story too. The Strong Fighter who is now a Calm Fighter stopped exercising and physically pushing their body. They might still be strong, but it’s not their defining characteristic—they’re not as strong as they were. They’re calmer instead. Likewise, the Learned Druid forgets some of their schooling and loses their focus on such pursuits due to the accident that made them Hideous.
There’s no limitation on the number of times a character can change their descriptor. For example, if the aforementioned Fighter achieves their vengeance, maybe they go back to being strong—as long as it fits the story.
Switching a focus is a bit trickier, and the story reason is probably more awkward. How does a Tech who Builds Allies become a Tech who Rides the Lightning? The change likely involves time to train and a story reason. Perhaps the Tech trained at a monastery on a backwater planet where they specialize in “storm magic,” or maybe they discovered an experimental electricity-related device. Perhaps they were kidnapped by strange forces and bathed in weird energies. Almost anything is possible. You just have to work at it a bit.
A focus change should occur only when a character attains a new tier, and it probably shouldn’t be allowed more than once per character.
Mechanically, the new focus does not overwrite the old focus the way a new descriptor replaces an old descriptor. Instead, the old focus abilities remain and, at the new tier, the character gains an ability from the new focus, but the ability must come from a tier lower than the one just attained. For example, if our Tech who Builds Allies begins to Ride the Lightning at tier 3, they keep their tier 1 and tier 2 abilities from Builds Allies and, for their tier 3 ability, they choose either a tier 1 or tier 2 ability from Rides the Lightning. When they reach tier 4, they choose from the tier 1, 2, or 3 abilities of Rides the Lightning (although obviously they can’t choose the one they already selected). The character always chooses new abilities from tiers lower than the one they attain in their new focus.
A character can’t choose abilities from their former focus. Once the change is made, it’s made.
As with everything, switching descriptors and foci should be worked out between the player and the GM. The best play experiences come from good communication.
Sometimes, you’ll feel the need to create new descriptors, types, and foci. Maybe to define your setting you need to offer the players new options. Maybe a player has a concept for their character that can’t be covered by the existing options. Maybe you want to shape a genre in a new way. Regardless of the reason, you might want to add a new element to character creation.
Descriptors: Descriptors are pretty easy. They basically add to an ability score (usually +2) and add training in a skill. Conceivably, if you wanted, you could create a new descriptor that added +4 to a score but no training, or one that offered training in two skills. Since descriptors are so basic mechanically, you can rename an existing descriptor and use its mechanics. For example, if you wanted a descriptor called Quick, you could use the mechanics for Brash and give it your own new name and description.
Type: For a new type, you need background options and abilities. Background options simply add to the flavor. They’re really there just to inspire a player’s own ideas. Abilities for a type amount to the following:
Focus: A focus is a collection of abilities. You can borrow abilities from other foci to populate your own, or you can create new ones entirely (see below). You probably should sketch a flowchart that shows progression through your new focus and, when in doubt, allow for as many choices as possible so a player has options when they gain a new tier.
Sooner or later, you may want to create new PC abilities for new types and foci you design for your game.
An easy way to do that is to look at an already-written PC ability from a given tier range and iterate from that, using it as a template for the base power level, but reskinning the overall effect. Try to find something as close as possible to the effect you want, then reskin it according to your needs.
For example, maybe you want to create an ability that allows a character with a strange mutation to desiccate foes at a distance in a damaging way. You decide to use Blast as your template, which—at its mechanical base—inflicts 4 damage on a target within short range for a cost of 1 Intellect. Keeping that foundation, you rewrite the rest of the ability to describe how the water first beads on the target’s skin, then runs in red rivulets down their body. And voila, you’ve just written a new ability, maybe for your desert-themed campaign.
Another option is to refer to the Effects by Tier table, which provides, in very broad strokes, benchmarks for what base effects are appropriate for various tiers in Cypher.
Dressing Up the Effects: As presented, the effects are fairly boring. That’s because they’re purely foundational and meant as a design aid. If you want to use the “inflicts 4 damage” effect for your NPC, item, or new character ability, dress it up in the context of what you’re creating. Maybe 4 damage is dealt by an ice blast, from a flurry of deconstructor nanobots, as part of the take-off or landing ability a character with a newly written jetpack focus has, or as shown in the previous example.
New Ability Cost: Deciding how much an ability should cost when it comes to a character’s Pool is one of the most important aspects of getting an ability right. You may notice that higher-tier abilities are more expensive. This is partly because they do more, but it’s also because higher-tier characters have more Edge than lower-tier characters, which means they pay fewer points from their relevant Pools. A third-tier character with 3 Edge in a relevant Pool pays no cost for abilities that cost 3 or fewer points. That’s great for lower-tier abilities, but you’ll usually want a character to think a little bit about how often to use their most powerful abilities. That means they should cost at least 1 point more than the Edge the character is likely to have at that tier. (Often, a character will have an Edge in their relevant Pool equal to their tier.)
As a good rule of thumb, a typical ability should cost points equal to its tier.
Range, Duration, and Judgment: With a few exceptions, the Effects by Tier table makes no mention of range or duration. However, you can consider them when judging an effect, especially if you’re looking to dial it up or down. For example, an effect that inflicts 4 damage is low tier (tier 1 and tier 2). If this damage is dealt at short range, that’s usually better than if it is a touch effect. So an effect that inflicts 4 damage with a touch might have an additional minor effect (for example, the target is also hindered on their next turn). Or maybe the effect deals only 3 damage but causes a minor ongoing effect. Or if the effect is at long range and has that same additional minor effect, it’s probably enough to push the whole thing up one tier (or to a mid-tier ability).
Which means that even within a single tier band, not all effects are created equal. Often, you’ll have to use your best judgment. Don’t worry. Being off by a tier in your assessment isn’t the end of the world (or game).
Abilities in a published Cypher book can vary in specific effect, being better, worse, or, usually, more complex than the benchmarks on the table. That’s because those abilities have been designed in the context of a particular type, focus, or list of genre abilities.
Finally, just because you’re creating a higher-tier ability doesn’t mean you can’t choose and modify an effect from a lower tier, if it’s appropriate to the focus.
Any effect from an ability that would affect another creature or pry information or other resources from the environment usually requires a successful attack or related task.
The Effects by Tier table doesn’t capture every possible ability, but rather seeks to demonstrate the foundational benefits of a given tier range.
| Low-Tier Effects (Tier 1 and Tier 2) |
|---|
| Attempt a task even if circumstances would normally disallow it |
| Bear an additional cypher |
| Cause a creature to flee |
| Confer one asset to an ally for an ongoing specific task, attack, or defense |
| Confer two assets to an ally for a single specific task, attack, or defense action |
| Create a cypher with an effect from the Low-Power Manifest Cyphers table |
| Create a minor illusion |
| Defensively inflict 2 damage (enabler) |
| Gain a level 2 follower or contact |
| Gain an asset for a specific task, attack, or defense |
| Gain a temporary ability from the low-power manifest cypher list that costs 3 Pool points (2 if this ability is especially appropriate for the type) |
| Gain an extra action for a specific, limited range of tasks after succeeding on a related task |
| Gain training in an attack or defense (at tier 1, if this ability is especially appropriate for the type) |
| Gain specialization for one task (at tier 2+) |
| Hover an immediate distance each round |
| Inflict 1 extra damage with a chosen attack |
| Inflict 2 extra damage with a light weapon or by accepting increased intrusion range |
| Inflict 4 damage at short range without a weapon |
| Influence a creature’s next action |
| Learn minor information, detect a presence, or find a minor object |
| Prevent a foe from attacking or negate another damaging effect next turn |
| Reduce a wound’s severity by one step |
| Remove a minor wound or a relatively minor ill effect or disease |
| Speak telepathically to one ally or nonhostile target |
| Telekinetically move and manipulate an object no larger than what normally could be easily carried |
| Treat rolls for a specific task as at least 9 or higher (thus, ignoring effects of rolling a 1) |
| While wounded, gain the benefit of another low-tier effect |
| Wield two light weapons or one light and one medium weapon simultaneously and attack with both |
| Mid-Tier Effects (Tier 4 and Tier 5) |
| Attack up to three foes simultaneously |
| Automatically reduce the severity of a wound delivered by a specific source (enabler) |
| Cancel a foe’s temporary defenses, or reduce their Armor by 2, or hinder their defense tasks |
| Create a complex illusion |
| Create a cypher with an effect from the Medium-Power Manifest Cyphers table |
| Fly up to a long distance each round |
| Gain a level 3 follower |
| Gain a temporary ability from the Medium-Power Manifest Cyphers table as an ability that costs 5 Pool points (4 if this ability is especially appropriate for the type) |
| Gain a temporary level 3 ally |
| Gain a third extra attack per turn in a specific, limited circumstance |
| Increase the level of a follower by 1 |
| Inflict 6 damage at short range without a weapon |
| Inflict 2 additional damage with a chosen attack |
| Inflict 4 additional damage in certain specific, limited circumstances |
| Learn useful, actionable information about a topic |
| Move up to 1,000 feet (300 m) as a Last action |
| Read the surface thoughts of a target |
| Remove a moderate wound |
| Teleport up to a short distance to a visible location |
| Withstand an extra moderate wound |
| High-Tier Effects (Tier 5 and Tier 6) |
| Attack up to five foes simultaneously |
| Become an expert in a skill, attack, or defense (easing a task by three steps) |
| Become invisible |
| Create a complex illusion in a wide area or a permanent illusion |
| Create a cypher with an effect from the Advanced-Power Manifest Cyphers table |
| End (or suppress) another ongoing effect created by an ability, cypher, or other device or agency |
| Gain a level 5 follower |
| Gain a temporary ability from the Advanced-Power Manifest Cyphers table as an ability that costs 7 Pool points (6 if this ability is especially appropriate for the type) |
| Give an ally an immediate extra action |
| Ignore incoming ranged physical attacks |
| Immunity to disease |
| Increase the level of a follower by 1 |
| Inflict 5 additional damage with a chosen attack |
| Inflict 6 additional damage in certain specific, limited circumstances |
| Inflict 10 damage at short range without a weapon |
| Learn an important secret about a topic |
| Mind control |
| Move up to 2,000 feet (600 m) per round |
| Remove a major wound |
| Reshape an object |
| Telekinetically move (or throw as an attack) an object up to twice as large as the ability user |
| Teleport to a known location anywhere |
| Transform shape completely |
| Withstand an extra major wound |
Challenging characters is important. If there is no threat of failure—or at least the perceived threat of failure—it’s hard for players to feel compelled by the story. Very often, the ultimate failure a PC might face is death. An adventurer’s life is a dangerous one. But death is serious because it means the player can no longer play their character.
There is an alternative for a player who really, really wants to keep playing the same character. Allow the PC to teeter on the brink of death but survive, saved by their companions or by sheer luck. They might recover but have serious injuries that result in lasting damage or permanent damage. The point is not to penalize the PC (although barely escaping death should have some repercussions) but to change the character in a memorable way.
Cypher’s primary die, the good old d20, is sometimes described as “swingy,” meaning that it can produce wildly unpredictable results. If you ease your difficulty because you’re skilled, the die roll, mathematically, can affect your result far more than your skill can.
If you don’t like the swing of the d20, below are two options you can try, although be aware that either will definitely change the gameplay at the table.
Roll a d10 rather than a d20. You’ll generate a number from 1 to 10 rather than 1 to 20, obviously, with an equal distribution of every result. Now, the target number is equal to the difficulty. This change will make all difficulty 1 tasks routine (because you can’t roll less than a 1) and, more dramatically, succeeding at the “impossible difficulties” of 7 to 10 becomes entirely possible even without easing the task.
To make up for this, you’ll want to increase the difficulty rating scale well beyond 10. Basically, in this new method, difficulty 11 is much like difficulty 7 in the normal method, because the task will need to be eased by at least one step to be possible. And difficulty 12 is like difficulty 8, difficulty 13 is like 9, and 14 is the new 10.
The die is still “swingy,” but with a smaller range of possible results, it will feel less so.
Roll 3d6 and add the results together. You’ll generate a number from 3 to 18, with the most common results being in the middle of that range rather than equally distributed along it. So you’ll most often get results in the middle and rarely at the top or bottom end. This will mean that difficulty 1 tasks are routine (because you can’t roll less than a 3), but difficulty 6 remains the highest you can achieve with a straight die roll, just like with a d20.
However, this method radically changes the way players will play the game. They’ll know that they will roll a 10 or 11 more often than much higher or lower numbers. Thus, they’ll want to reduce difficulties of higher than 3 down to 3 whenever possible, but reducing a difficulty of 2 probably isn’t usually worth it. Further, if they have to use Effort to get a task down to difficulty 6, it might not be worth spending points on because you still need to roll at least an 18. Certainly it’s better to spend points to reduce difficulty 5 tasks down to difficulty 3 than to spend them on reducing difficulty 7 tasks down to difficulty 5, for example. This “all task difficulties are no longer equal” approach will really change the game. Proceed with caution.
The default for PC gear with limited uses, such as a first aid kit or a quiver of arrows, is that the player keeps track of what they’ve used, but doing so can be tedious bookkeeping. What expendable resources like ammo offer, however, is wonderful fodder for GM intrusions. When a PC attempts to shoot a villain and hears an unexpected empty “click,” that’s dramatic and the kind of thing that happens in fiction all the time.
Similarly, don’t worry about ammo for NPCs. Tracking the mafia goons’ bullet count is not worth your time.
If a player wants to start with more skills or abilities than normal to achieve their character concept, you can allow this, but a balancing factor should be brought into play. Each of these drawbacks balances a certain type of additional ability.
Make sure a player who chooses a drawback fully understands all the implications of that drawback so they don’t regret their choice for the lifetime of the character. When in doubt, encourage the player not to take the drawback.
Inabilities are sort of negative skills. Within reason, allow a PC to have an additional skill, but give them an inability in a meaningful skill to balance this choice.
Weakness is, essentially, the opposite of Edge. If a PC has a weakness of 1 in Speed, all Speed actions that require them to spend points cost 1 additional point from their Pool. At any time during character creation, a player can choose to give a character a weakness and in exchange gain +1 to their Edge in one of the other two stats. So a PC can take a weakness of 1 in Speed to gain +1 to their Might Edge.
Normally, you can have a weakness only in a stat in which you have an Edge of 0. Further, you can’t have more than one weakness, and you can’t have a weakness greater than 1, unless the additional weakness comes from another source (such as a disease or disability arising from actions or conditions in the game).
A weakness could also balance the character having an additional tier 1 ability from their focus—or if you’re feeling particularly generous, one from another type or focus that fits the general vibe of the character’s existing type or focus.
A character with a disability to a body part they use for locomotion (a leg or foot, in most cases) suffers a penalty to their movement. Generally, this penalty is that they move half the normal distance. This is quite significant, but be aware that circumstances or a smart player can find ways to mitigate this. A character starting with hampered movement can start with an additional skill or tier 1 ability from their focus.
Hampered senses affect tasks, some more than others. A character with poor vision might find any task requiring sight (which is probably most of them) hindered. Likewise for a character with poor hearing, although fewer tasks are likely affected.
A permanent injury to or disability involving a limb hinders any action taken using that limb, so a disability affecting someone’s right arm might hinder most tasks requiring that arm. A disability involving their leg might count as hampered movement, as discussed above, and hinder most athletics-related tasks.
A character starting with hampered senses or a disability with a limb can start with two additional skills or one tier 1 ability from their focus.
A character with a disability that affects multiple limbs, or one that completely blinds or deafens them, may be a challenge to play. But if a player wants to take on that challenge, a way to compensate would be to allow them to begin with two additional skills and a tier 1 ability from their focus.
A character can permanently overcome (remove) a typical drawback by spending 4 XP. A particularly severe drawback (one that makes the character challenging to play) probably requires two or three expenditures like this. Spending XP this way does not count as an advancement unless the drawback is an inability.
Depending on the nature of the inability (such as poor eyesight or an afflicted limb), you may want to require the character to take a character arc such as Recover before they can remove the drawback. For example, repairing a limb might need corrective surgery, time spent in a cast or corrective brace, and physical therapy to heal and strengthen the joints and muscles. Depending on the genre, making any progress might require healing magic or advanced technology (such as cybernetics or stem cell therapy). At the end of the arc, the character can spend the XP to remove the drawback.
It’s fine if a player wants their character to have what we might call a narrative drawback. The character walks with a slight limp. They speak in an uncommon fashion. They have to wear glasses. They favor one arm over the other. These can be character-defining traits without imposing any mechanical effect.
You could even allow someone to take what might seem to be a serious drawback, like blindness or an inability to walk, but assign no mechanical effect and simply allow them to negate any detriments in a narrative way. Perhaps a blind PC has trained to move and fight using their hearing so they face no penalties. Such characters are common in heroic fiction and can be satisfying to play. There’s no need to put limitations on a character if a player doesn’t want them, and it can be fun to use creativity to explain how the PC navigates their circumstances in a slightly different way than other characters due to their unique traits.
It’s inevitable that at some point one NPC is going to fight another. A PC summons a creature to fight on their behalf. An NPC ally fights an incoming NPC foe. A PC’s follower or animal companion attacks on the PC’s behalf rather than just aiding their attack.
Whenever you have an NPC facing another (or for that matter, an NPC dealing with an object), you can just compare levels and have the higher-level creature or object come out on top.
If it’s a fight, sometimes you’ll want to play out the attack. This might happen if an NPC ally attacks an NPC foe that a PC is also attacking, because you probably want to know how much damage the ally adds to what the PC inflicts. In this case, simply treat the attack as if the NPC ally was a PC and ask one of the players to roll for the attack, using the defending NPC’s level as the difficulty (modified, as normal) and the attacking NPC’s modifiers that might ease or hinder the attack. If the attack is a success, the attacking NPC inflicts damage equal to their level (or perhaps more if the NPC normally inflicts more severe wounds than normal for their level).
Cypher is not really designed to handle one PC fighting another. But you can do it. Really, though, it’s best if one PC never acts violently against another. This is a group activity, and if a fight breaks out between PCs, something’s likely gone very wrong. Try to steer players away from creating characters with such dramatically different goals, outlooks, or backgrounds that it’s likely they will physically fight as a natural progression of the story.
The exception, of course, is if a PC is acting against their will. Mind control or deception can lead to one PC facing off against their friend. If this happens sparingly in the game, it can be a dramatic moment in the story.
Regardless, when one PC attacks another, rather than just the defender making a defense roll (as normal), both PCs make opposed rolls. This is because PCs always roll. The attacking character makes an attack roll, and the other character makes a defense roll. Since there is no difficulty rating at play here, you’re looking for the higher result. To determine this, if either PC has a skill, ability, asset, or other effect that would ease their action, the character adds 3 to the roll for each step reduction (+3 for one step, +6 for two steps, and so on). Defending PCs can choose to dodge or block, as normal. If the attacker’s final result is higher, the attack inflicts damage. If the defender’s result is higher, the attack either misses or is blocked. Damage is converted into wounds like this:
| Damage | Wound |
|---|---|
| 1–3 | Minor |
| 4–7 | Moderate |
| 8+ | Major |
The GM mediates all special effects.
Sometimes, a GM will break away from the traditional model of Cypher task resolution and allow for a graduated success. With this method, you set a difficulty as usual, but if the player succeeds at a difficulty at least one step higher, their success is better than normal. Likewise, if their roll indicates that they would have succeeded at one step (or more) lower, they might have a partial success.
For example, a PC tracking bandits that robbed a train looks for tracks in the woods to see if any of them came down a certain path recently. Given the terrain and the weather, the GM decides that the difficulty is 4, so the target number is 12. The player rolls a 10. This isn’t enough to accomplish the task that the PC set out to do, but since they would have succeeded if the difficulty had been 3, the GM decides that the character still learns that something came down the path recently—they just aren’t certain if it was bandits. The reason is that if the PC had simply been looking for tracks of any kind, the GM would have set a difficulty of 3. Similarly, if the player had rolled a 17—a success at least one step higher—the GM would have said that not only did they find bandit tracks, but there were five of them, and the tracks show that the bandits were burdened. In other words, the player would have received more information than they asked for.
In a situation where there are more results than simply success or failure, you can convey these results based on multiple difficulties. A player can state an action, and you can come up with not one difficulty but two, three, or more. For example, if the PCs try to charm a merchant into giving them information, the GM can predetermine that he gives them one minor bit of information if they succeed at a task with a difficulty of 2, a fair bit of information if they succeed at a task with a difficulty of 3, and everything he knows on the topic if they succeed at a task with a difficulty of 4. The players don’t make three different rolls. They make one roll with a scaled, graduated success.
As a rule of thumb, reverse-engineer the situation. If the player rolls considerably higher or lower than the target number (more than 3 away), consider what a success at the difficulty they did overcome would have gained them. If creating a makeshift electronic key to open a sealed door has a target number of 18, what does the PC create if the player rolls 16? Perhaps the answer is nothing, but perhaps it is a makeshift key that works intermittently.
This system is rarely (if ever) used in combat or situations where something either works or doesn’t. But when crafting an object, interacting with an NPC, or gaining information, it can be very useful. Of course, you are never required to use this model of task resolution—sometimes success or failure is all you need to know. Usually, graduated success involves going only one step higher or lower than the original difficulty, but you can be as flexible about that as you wish.
Finally, sometimes you can offer a consolation prize for trying. Say a PC fears that a door has been rigged with a trap. They search it but fail the roll. The GM might still reveal something about the door. “You don’t find anything special, but you do note that the door appears quite sturdy and is locked.” It’s the kind of information the GM might give automatically (think of it as difficulty 0), but it softens the blow of failure. Some information is better than none, and it makes sense that the PC will learn at least something if they study an object for a few minutes.