Cypher System Rulebook 2e

Long story short: BUY IT! This is the one book you should take to a desert island (plus a dice set, of course!), and you will be able to play RPGs for many, many years... any kind, any type!Short story long: I have been playing RPGs since the early 90s, and for many years, my favorite "desert island" book (the one book I would keep with me if I could only keep one) has been the D&D Rules Cyclopedia. Not anymore... The CSR has everything you would need to play whatever game you desire. Three things make the Cypher System the best RPG system out there: you use the same core mechanics for all three pillars of the game, it is player-facing, and it is extremely flexible.Core Mechanic: I use it for an OSR, dungeon-crawler style of game, and I love that I can use the same mechanics for the three pillars of the game: combat, exploration, and social interactions. Combat tends to be well covered by other systems, but the other two tend to be extremely lacking. With the Cypher System, explorations and social interactions can be as intriguing as combat, and that's why some have said that the Cypher System is not about combat. That's not the case; it can have as much combat as you want, but now you have great mechanics for the other two pillars of the game. And they are the same core mechanic! Brilliant!Player-facing: It is all about the PCs, period. They attack, they defend themselves, they persuade, they perceive. You, as GM, narrate their actions, set the stage, and create the conflict. In short, they roll the dice for everything, and that makes players way more involved in all aspects of the game. That one player that tends to roll his/her attack and then be absent from the game while eating chips until it is his/her turn to roll again... Well, not anymore! They will need to be ready to defend themselves.Extremely flexible: If you know Monte Cook, you know he was one of the masterminds behind D&D 3e, the game that had a rule for EVERYTHING. That did not work out as intended. This time around, he has created a game that, instead of having rules for everything, has a set of simple rules with the same core mechanic that can be used for any situation you can imagine. That flexibility allows for a game full of creativity. Awesome!

The picture for this item is wrong, but the ISBN is correct, so I took a chance. Happily, this is the full hardback book, in spite of the incorrect image.As for the Cypher system rules themselves: Those remain a joy. The main difference from 1E is organizational -- all of the abilities are pulled out of the foci section and into a separate chapter. While this can make building a character a bit less convenient, it is much better from a in-play reference point-of-view. There are also some expanded options character options, and a few additions from later works (GM intrusion, etc.), but if you have 1E, nothing has drastically changed. (Although the 2E book uses a smaller font!)

It is the book, not the character folder. Arrived in excellent condition on my order

Cypher System is amazing. Truly amazing.Most other RPGs have deep roots in the world of tabletop wargaming. Systems and mechanics have been refined and tinkered with over the years, but there’s still a lot of wargaming DNA in most RPG game systems.The Cypher System basically redesigns all of that from the ground up, asking ‘what makes sense?’ at every step. In most RPGs the GM has to do a lot of prep work planning the adventure and statting NPCs; in the Cypher System, the GM only has to pick a number from one to ten to determine the relative difficulty of any task, including defeating an opponent in combat. Easy peasy. Game prep in Cypher mostly consists of having a few good story ideas and then rolling with them in-game.Even in-game, the GM is mostly freed from having to deal with game mechanics. Once a difficulty number has been assigned, players are easily able to calculate the roll that they need to make on a D20 to succeed— and have a number of tools at their disposal to adjust that number through a combination of skills, effort, and equipment bonuses. The player does those calculations and makes the roll, freeing the GM of every responsibility other than controlling the game narrative.The GM doesn’t even roll dice in the Cypher System— ever. They’re doing story stuff during play. If an NPC attacks a player character, the GM simply tells the player what the one-to-ten value of that attack is; the player does the math and makes the die roll to avoid taking the hit. Again, easy peasy.The genius of this approach is that when everything is abstracted to a one-to-ten value, there aren’t any special rules or unique subsystems which are needed to emulate a particular genre or setting. A level three orc in a fantasy setting isn’t harder to defeat than a level three zombie in a post-apocalyptic horror setting or a level three intelligent acidic slime in a science fiction setting. The Cypher System is a universal RPG— a truly universal RPG— universal in a way that Grandfather’s Unbelievably Redundant Pile of Sourcebooks never could be.The simplicity and flexibility of the Cypher System doesn’t mean that it lacks crunch, though. This isn’t a storytelling game where everything gets hand-waived away “because the GM says so.” There are mechanics and rules for everything that happens in the game. I’d describe Cypher System as ‘medium crunch,’ on a par with 5e or Pathfinder but much easier to run or play.One more thing about the Cypher System— you can literally create just about any character that you can imagine using these rules. Characters are built using a simple formula: my character is an [ADJECTIVE] [NOUN] who [VERBs]. Want a tough barbarian berserker shaman character for a fantasy game? The could be a resilient explorer who rages, or it might be an exiled warrior who speaks with the dead, depending upon your exact character concept. Every possible adjective, noun, and verb combination gives the character abilities or training and modifies their stats, allowing a wild degree of customization not found in other games.Honestly, the Cypher System is likely to spoil a lot of your favorite games for you. Once you’ve played this game, everything else feels clunky and arbitrary. Don’t say I didn’t warn you— but buy it anyway! You’ll only regret having spent so much money on other games before playing Cypher.

I would have liked more protection in the box, the cover of the book got a bit damaged during transport. And you should really correct the picture for this product.