Cypher & The Strange: Oppinions & Interest

I’ve just discovered on HumbleBundlethere is a sale of Cypher & The Strange rpg books.

Does anybody have experience with these games? Also, please share your oppinion, whether it can be run for an one-shot or more fitting for campaigns?

I backed the kickstarters, have the books - if you want a good sense of the atmosphere you can watch trailets for Torment: Tides of Numenera that captures the flavour pretty well. The setting is original, if the bundle is a good deal, grab it just for ideas.

System wise, its a chunky system, equivalent to DnD, so as good or bad for one-shots. If people know the system, easy, but the one time I tried to run a one shot with unfamiliar players we bogged down in chacter gen.

Sorry, no, but word is that if you enjoy Numenara, you’ll like these. If ya don’t, ya won’t.

I have run a small adventure series in numenera and was very happy with the result. A few points about it:

  • the rule of cool can be handled very well, as you can ask your players to expend effort for things that fall into their focus, but aren’t described by the rules.

-you do maths before the role, not after. The players have the choice of modifying the DC of every action (even the passive ones like dodging the attack)
This can be very confusing, as many systems have it the other way around.

-the GM doesn’t roll dice (some people see this as a sacrilege. nothing is too holy for me, if it works)I could focus on describing the scenes, rather than thinking about stat blocks, which was very mindrelaxing. My brain didn’t feel like an overclocked cpu afterwards

-don’t expect characters to be balanced to each other. Some are just more combat heavy than others and that is okay. Combat isn’t rewarded by xp, it’s only another obstacle for the group.

I am roleplaying since the early 00s and it is one of my favourite systems, so I can recommend the purchase, even if you use it for a one shot.

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Big thanks for everyone’s feedback! I think, I’ll give it a try

@AmLash as it happen to be one of your favourite systems, if we have enough interested persons, would you run an one-shot game for us?

basically what @AmLash said

I might add … it is a great system to make up your own monsters on the fly
superfast und super easy

I ran the “Iron Gods” PF Adventure Path for my rpg-group using the Numenéra rules,
and turned the weirdness of the setting up to 11

suggestions for dm-ing:

  • as a dm craft the cyphers/artefacts/oddities, that your players would be able to find before, so that they will fit the current theme
    (e.g. if your party explore an old transdimensional-biomancer ship, let them find transdimensional biomancy ship stuff)
  • allow your players to get creative, especially when using cyphers/artefacts/oddities, while still keeping the weird-flavour strong
    (e.g. allow them to combine two cyphers into a new stronger one, but add a weird side effect with a severity depending on the crafting difficulty)

have fun :slight_smile:

@S_journ i’d be happy to!
I would need:
-5to6 players
-someone to organise the date with a doodle
-6 hours of game time
-and @H 's peg leg

The adventure would focus mostly on the rules than the setting.

Wait, what?

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Didn’t I steal that at some point?

You see,that’s why I’m trying to get it back for him, being a good pal and all that.

…and you have hidden it in a Native village, haven’t you?

Where else? It’s where I hide all my loot.