Cypher System RPG Gods of the Fall

Bruce Cordell is now probably my favorite designer. First, Monte Cook's Cypher System rules are excellent, as allowing great character creation and progression, and conflict resolution that is quick enough to not delay the actual story. What this book brings to the Cypher System (the C.S. Rule book is also needed to play) is a setting, character type, additional progression rules, some new focuses, etc. to play a divine being ascending to godhood after the fall of this world's version of Olympus where the whole pantheon was destroyed, and the world plunged into darkness and a dystopian rule. I seems to take some beats from the Exalted RPG (though grim dark, instead of anime inspired), B. Sanderson's Mistborn series, even some of Glenn Cook's "Black Company". It's a very exciting setting with rules that work well with it.

I was hoping to find some good demigod-like abilities like what is found in the Godbound rpg. It has a fair selection of powers, but they are not tied to any specific Domain like the powers in Godbound are tied with a specific Word of Power. So I give it four stars, good game but lacking in specific powers for the various domains your budding god is tied to. Setting wise, there is a lot of info, as for new rules, not so much.

I read Bruce's short story "Breath of God" about a young man who has discovered his spark and is trying to make up for his mistakes as a child and the tale interested me enough to get the setting book.I'm a big fan of the genre having run and played in Amber Diceless games set in Roger Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber setting 30 years ago and even started a blog about my house rules for the Scion RPG.Gods of the Fall reminds me a bit of Krynn with the Cataclysm which also leads to the "death" or at least absence of the Gods for centuries leaving tyrants, charlatans, and wizards to enter the vacuum of power they left and the sense of misery a people can have after a fall from grace. I liked to have PC's have problems if they slept near the Blood Sea of Istar back in the days of AD&D when I had to figure out what the hell ThAC0 was!It also has a bit of the Time of Troubles trilogy from the old Forgotten Realms AD&D setting when the Avatars walked Faerun.You will need the main Cypher book if you're going to run the game as a straight game in the setting though you can get by if you have Numenera or the Strange as the basic game isn't that different and I can think of a lot of uses you can make with this book in those settings.The Cypher system is now one of my favorite game systems with a focus on story over mechanics and while it isn't crunchy it has enough of a core to hang a good story on and is newbie friendly with a low barrier to entry in order to grok it enough to be comfortable with it before you finish your first session unlike some systems like Shadowrun, GURPS, or Hero where an inexperienced gamer can be a bit overwhelmed by all the options and opportunities for min/maxing. In other words, this isn't a game where you need to read forums and hit reddit or EN World in order to avoid making a character that is useless.I think it would be super fun to take a page from the ST:NG episode "The Inner Light" and have Numenera character live an entire life in the Gods of the Fall setting and find out when they come out that it was once "real" as one of the previous worlds either on earth or out in the cosmos during the billion years from now to then. Maybe once the artifact runs its course the PC's find themselves expelled back into the Numenera setting finding that they have a bit of "Elanehtar sickness" and maybe there might be a way to use the knowledge from the simulation to discover secrets hidden for aeons or on other worlds or dimensions (like the Strange Network.)It would also be neat to have the Night Beast start to wake up starting with the Nightfall wolves which are infecting like a virus animals and people near it's resting place. The party then needs to get some short Wrights together to make an impossible leash of data to keep his code from escaping and maybe a glaive to risk his own flesh harboring the altered code while Delvers seek the material components..Or find the disks of Misha.. I mean an artifact/s that embodies the Seven Prophecies or maybe just one of them allowing the characters to see how to redeem the world of Numenera and once again rise up to become another "World" or civilization from the ashes of the previous worlds. Kind of like in Cliff Simak's the City when the "kaleidoscope" changes the fate of mankind.