#cypher system

[cyanomys]

I picked up Cypher recently for my dimension hopping magical girls campaign idea. Boy have I never encountered an RPG so perfectly suited to a genre that the creator definitely didn’t have in mind when they made it lmao

✅ endless super powers

✅ rules for human/hero forms

✅ dimension hopping

✅ MAGICAL ACCESSORIES!!!

Also this system seems so fun. It took me a bit to get past Monte cooks extremely….thorough writing that makes these books so much chunkier than you would expect for such a simple and intuitive system.

But it’s actually perfect because I like a game with a low skill floor (for my sanity) and a high skill ceiling (for my nerdy players fun.) It works better for this table for that reason than something like Girl By Moonlight or Glitter Hearts.

I think I’m gonna have to magical-girl-ify the character sheet though. Needs more glitter

[mooreaux]

Top four are discarded concepts and the bottom is the final design of my new dnd character, Gloria Wilde! It took forever to get her to look how I wanted but we finally got there lol.

[rage-n-anxiety]

hey hey—any TMA fans or TTRPG nerds out there?

if you've ever sunk way too many hours into D&D, Vampire: the Masquerade, Call of Cthulhu, etc... you might wanna check out this The Magnus Archives-inspired RPG! it's spooky, collaborative, and runs on the Cypher System (don’t stress if that’s new to you—we got you).

right now we’ve got DMs actively looking for players, and the server owner is planning some intro one-shots for folks who just wanna dip their toes in. super low-pressure, very story-focused, lots of weird little horrors to uncover.

we’re building a chill lil discord community and would love to have you—whether you're ready to run a game or just wanna vibe as a player.

[a-wa-c]

If you include a "go random bullshit" character builder, I will eat that shit up.

Not in the sense of like a Wild Magic character that has random effects when they cast spells, but more in the Numenera sense of:

"Here is a table full of mutations. Figure out how many you get with your GM, and then go rolling."

[that-1-rando]

Guys, I'm listening to the voices. I'm making my own Secret Histories TTRPG system. (I know that one already exists for "The Lady Afterwards", but I wasn't satisfied with it. It feels too "Call of Cthulu" and not Cultist Simulator or Book of Hours.)

I'm basing it somewhat on the Cypher system, because I like the use of cyphers to represent the influence of the hours, as well as the way that leveling up and ability scores work.

I will update occasionally with progress.

[teawitchgremlin]

So I’m planning on running a Magnus Archives TTRPG game based in the Usher Foundation (American Magnus Institute). And instead of actually writing the game I’m instead making assets for the game. So enjoy Magnolia Usher, director of the Usher Foundation.

Speed draw and her isolated portrait below the cut!

[undergroundoracle]

New Occult and Paranormal Adventures For Your Superhero Games!

Cypher Shorts: Dark Supers Shorts Vol. 1 is live! 

I'm not going to lie, this is the volume I've been waiting to get out in front of you for more than a hot minute. We're big, big fans of the supers genre in general here at UO headquarters, but the occult/paranormal corners of comics are flush with storytelling potential. Plus, it's full-on fall and we're getting in that appropriately spooky mood. 

If you were a reader of 90s Vertigo comics, you'll undoubtedly see a lot of their influence in this volume, although Kayla went with a more modern/Zach Snyder approach to 'Doom is the Cost of Power' that you're also going to love. 

This was an incredibly fun and refreshing volume to write and I would love to hear how these scenarios play out at your tables in the comments below or on the socials. 

If you're a member of the Sage or higher tier, use promo code 'SAVIOUR_MACHINE' to grab your free copy from the UO store below. (This code will expire when the next volume of shorts drops.)

Read more about what's inside below and then head over and grab your copy at the links.

UO Store | Drivethru

Enjoy and happy gaming!

~ Jess

This Volume of Cypher Shorts Includes:

A Darkening Light: The characters are each a part of the occult and supernatural underworld who have been brought together to stop a fallen angel from opening a gate to a dark dimension. Can they outmaneuver the sinister powereds protecting her before she cracks the door to the end of days?

Doom is the Cost of Power: Years ago, the characters each made a deal that made them the most powerful heroes on Earth. All that was required in exchange for their power was a favor that would be called due sometime in the future. Now, it's time to pay their tab, and it could spell the end of the world they traded their souls to protect.

The Far Side Of Town:  The characters are a team of outsiders who have been called in to deal with Reverie, a powered who has trapped a psychiatric hospital in her dreamscape. Can they get her to release her psychic hold or will they find themselves lost in the psychedelic recesses of her subconscious?

[ttrpgcafe]

HOLY SHIT INVISIBLE SUN IS COMING BACK AND IT'S MY FAVORITE RPG OF ALL TIME PLEASE BACK IT SO I (or we, I guess) CAN GET THE WELLSPRING:

https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/monte-cook-games/invisible-sun-return-of-the-black-cube#top

For those of you unfamiliar with Invisible Sun, it's an rpg where every single player is a spell caster of some variety, each with their own unique way of interacting with magic.

The Vances are the most traditional spellcasters, but they eschew spell lists in favor of literally filling a grid with spell cards, representing their limited cognitive space being taken up by spells. They get more space, and literally bigger spells as you progress.

Weavers take two concepts and combine them to produce an effect, very much like Ars Magica or Mage: The Ascension, if you're familiar with those. They get the ability to combine more concepts together, and to have mastery over more concepts as they progress.

Makers are this game's artificer, and they have a robust system for making quirky magic items that have fun, interesting, unique side effects or downsides every time you use them. Their progression is the most straight forward by the numbers "the things you make are more powerful and you're better at making them" of the bunch, but the system lets you, for instance, make a gun out of the body of a dead(?) god, so I'll give this a pass.

Lastly, there are the Goetics, who summon and bind otherworldly creatures to their wills. This takes the form of a conversation and negotiation with your GM over what you have to do for your bound creature, and what exactly they do for you in exchange. If you've ever played a warlock and felt like patrons weren't a big enough deal, this is an entire "class" that lets those relationships (yes, plural) take center stage.

The entire system feels very much like Cypher system 2.0, with a d10 dice pool system with a straight forward level of difficulty to hit, very much like the levels of difficulty in base cypher system, just made easier to manage. It even uses the "I'm an Adjective Noun who Verbs" character structure from Cypher system, here made much more interesting by the addition of a funky little xp system.

Invisible Sun has one of the most interesting advancement systems I've ever seen: aside from normal, average, "you do a thing, you get xp" system, here called "Acumen" (used to increase your stats and skills) there is a separate xp system related to good and bad things happening to your character, called "Joy" and "Despair" respectively. You combine one Joy with one Despair to get a "Crux" which is the xp currency you need to advance your class and focus abilities. This incentivizes players to not only let bad things happen to them, but to SEEK THEM OUT, which is huge! Players often think they want to win all the time, but they don't actually want that, it makes for a boring narrative. This is one of the very few systems I've seen incentivize this story structure, and I'm absolutely in love with it.

Lastly, because the game focuses so heavily on Magic, it has the only system for simulating the ebbs and flows of magic I've seen done well! This involves "The Path of Suns" and the "Sooth deck" which is the in game name for a specific pattern of laying out what amounts to tarot cards that make magic dynamic, interesting, and unpredictable in a way I've never seen before, and rarely since. (Pathfinder's Secrets of Magic is the only other supplement I can think of, and that was almost 5 years after this game came out)

Anyway, I can't recommend this game enough, the systems are unique, the vibes are immaculate, and it's so fuckin WEIRD in the best way.

[cat-dragron-arts]

Sketch of Amalthea my beloved lion :]

[luhonii]

KASUMI HOSHINO MY BELOVED

(she's an OC for an upcoming TMA campaign)

[siryl]

An illustration by Matt Stawicki for Cypher System: Gods of the Fall by Bruce R. Cordell.

[mourningskvader]

I have the Session 0 of my TMA RPG campaign tomorrow afternoon and I am so excited to get this show on the road.

But also I feel ever so nervous and unprepared.

[glam-rock-space-wizard]

Look what came in the mail today!!

This is the first time I've ever backed something on Kickstarter, and I honestly couldn't be more excited.

Time to gear up and Experience Inner Space!

[judyiscariot]

Some glitch art I made in Audacity and then turned into a desktop background. It's meant for use in my ongoing Magnus Archives campaign. The subject is what will happen during The Last Broadcast, a ritual conducted by the primary antagonist of the campaign. Lexi Cole, Avatar of the Eye and the host of the late night call in paranormal radio show 'Out of Phase', intends to use the ritual to broadcast the horrors of the world to everyone, everywhere. I'll probably post more of the campaign details here as I get to them!

[cackled0g]

Okay real talk, are there any DMs here who run the Cypher System? I'm running a game for a party of five, and two of my players are getting way more XP than the others. I don't want to just toss the others XP for no reason, but their character arcs aren't really getting followed up on enough to get them consistent XP. Any advice? I can elaborate if needed.