Make the Most Comfortable Choice

We have been playing side-graded Cypher for years. Numenera and The Strange were already the same engine with a setting’s physics turned on, different type names, and a few other changes. You can run The Strange with core Cypher rules and never feel like you changed games.

So if Evolved does not excite you, keep the books you have. The adventures still work. The monsters still work. The gameplay is the same game. You are just saying, “I feel more comfortable here.”

Evolved is the friendlier on-ramp. When I sit with new players, I can use that. At my own table, I am staying with the library I already know.

For my table, Evolved is like BX D&D, and the CSR is AD&D. Mostly compatible, but with different focuses and goals.

Practically, I have a shelf full of Numenera books and The Strange on the same shelf. If that is what I pull down that day, there is no reason to change editions. The choice between Evolved and the Revised CSR only appears when I am not using a setting book’s types and I am building from the system core.

I like the CSR types better than the new pattern of a generic character plus a genre job. I understand why the new version is easier for a first-time player. I still prefer the four original types sitting in that front-loaded spot.

That CSR warrior is a warrior in any setting, which is the easy chair for a combat-focused player. The speaker is the easy pick for someone who wants to talk. The adept is for the player who wants special powers. The explorer is for the player who wants to poke the world - ranger, rogue, or anyone who lives on the map.

Yes, there are structural changes. Wounds are the obvious one. If both tables handle injury clearly, wounds are a personal choice, not something you owe the new book. If the new wounding system matches how you think the game should feel, use it.

For those of us who loved the red book, we already learned the difference between spending two points to dodge a light weapon and standing there and taking the stab. That distinction has been in the pools the whole time, and at the table it gives the GM a clean hook for an Intrusion when the character actually got hurt. Dropping to zero in every pool also does not have to mean death if you never took a physical injury. In play, that can simply mean falling unconscious from exhaustion.

So I am not waiting for the library to be replaced. I am picking the mode that already fits how I see the four types, and how I already tell a spent pool from a wound. The adventurers do not care which cover I used to build the sheet.

Type Used to Be a Seat at the Table

Both editions of the Cypher System still build a character from the same sentence: I am a [descriptor] [type] who [focus]. That line is doing the same job it always did, and a new reader could be forgiven for thinking character creation barely moved. Sit down with the Revised rulebook and the Character Rulebook side by side, though, and the first real choice is not the same kind of choice. In Revised, type is a seat at the table — Warrior, Adept, Explorer, Speaker — a way of saying which problem you are here to lean on. In the newer book, everyone begins as the same core character, and type arrives later as a job the setting recognizes. Same three words. Different idea of what the noun is for.

What I love about Revised is that those four types describe the players at the table, and how they like to play. I love combat. I love social. I love poking the environment — the ranger-and-rogue instinct, the person who wants the next room, the lock, the map, the weird machine. I love special powers. The play style is built into the “character class,” if we can even call it that. The game just says Type. It is a character type and a player type at the same time. It hands you a seat you are built to occupy, a place where the rules already want you to win in the way you like to play, and then it lets you customize from there.

That is the promise I still hear in Warrior, Adept, Explorer, and Speaker. Type defines the character’s role in the party and elevates a favored play style to the forefront.

The Character Rulebook keeps the same three-part sentence, and it is still a good sentence. What changes is who you become. Before descriptor, type, or focus, every character is a core character: the same Pools, the same Edge, the same Effort, two skills from the genre list, a shared wound track. The book even calls that starting point playable if slightly uninteresting. Type comes after, and it comes as a job the setting already has a name for — Starpilot, Paladin, Medic, Witch, Operative, Tech. You still customize. You start with four copies of the same body, and the noun you add is more a vocation than a seat at the table.

Type becomes a setting-specific choice. In the older game, Explorer (Tech) was enough. In the Character Rulebook, I pick a genre first, open that chapter, and take a Type the chapter has already named. That is easier for a new player who wants to be a Starpilot and does not want the extra step of noticing that Explorer (Tech) was already that character. I do not blame the book for making that door obvious. I only notice what gets smaller. Explorer (Tech) can be a Starpilot. It can also be a steampunk blimp captain, a submarine skipper, a mech scout, a ruin technician, a cyberpunk netrunner. Starpilot is very good at being one of those things. Explorer (Tech) was a method for all of them.

Try the same person in both books. Clever Explorer (Tech) who Commands Mental Powers. Clever Starpilot who Commands Mental Powers. Both sentences say quick-witted space pilot with a dangerous mind. Revised builds that character on the Explorer chassis, borrows a couple of Technology flavor abilities so the cockpit makes sense, and lets the focus handle the telepathy. The Character Rulebook starts with the core character, then Starpilot, then the same focus. One of those people is a generalist who learned to fly and to listen. The other is a pilot who also happens to listen. If the ship is in the adventure, both sheets work. If the ship is gone by session three, only one of them is still the character you made.

The blimp test is the same point with the serial numbers filed off. I want a steampunk captain: wrench, leaking envelope, city of chimneys under the keel. In Revised, I still write Explorer (Tech) who talks to Machines. I change the fiction. I do not open another chapter. In the Character Rulebook, the nearest printed Type is Starpilot or Tech. One assumes a starcraft. The other assumes you build the gadget. Both can be reskinned. The book even tells you how to adapt a Type from a different genre if your GM allows it. That sidebar is doing work Revised never needed. Flexibility moved from the page to a conversation about which chapter we are allowed to leave.

Revised felt like generic templates you could carry into any setting. My Explorer (Tech) could be a cave person tinkering with fire and bows, or a space-opera star pilot. The new book gives us defined chapters for settings and lists the Types allowed inside them. I feel steered into a setting first, and what is narrowly listed there is what I get. We always picked a setting anyway. It just never limited the choices.

I am not making a play-experience argument. Underneath the character sentence, both books are still Cypher: difficulty, ease and hinder, Effort, cyphers, the same three Pools. What changed is the front door. Revised hands you a seat at the table and lets the setting be costume. The Character Rulebook hands you a shared body, then a job from the chapter you are in. I like the first door. I like a Type that is a player role and a party role before it is a vocation. The newer book makes the vocation easy to find, and that is a real kindness. I still want the method that could be a Starpilot on Tuesday and a blimp captain on Thursday without asking another chapter for permission.

We're Back

I did some soul-searching about Cypher System. I love the original game, but I am a little cooler on the revised second edition. For me, my heart will always be with the first edition and its strongly typed characters. It does not sing to me, and my original collection will be decades of gaming.

I may give the new version a chance, but not right now. I bounced off the new version like I did Cypher when I started, and I am comfortable with the revised first edition and not looking to upgrade.

I don't want wound tracks either; I know the difference between 4 points lost from a pool due to injury versus 4 points lost from effort, and I don't need that spelled out for me. The character who exhausted themselves by dodging blows won't die when they reach zero, whereas the character who "ignored it all and took the hits" will likely die from wounds.

That difference makes the original a stronger narrative game for me. I can pull GM Intrusions off those wounds, where exertion is something different entirely.

I can see the need for wound tracks, but the system I fell in love with doesn't have them or need them, and the power is in my hands as the referee. Again, I may try them to see, but I am not hot on them. Just as we are supposed to know how a difficulty number works, we are supposed to know how pool losses work.

I know the difference between spending 2 points to dodge a dagger blow and standing there getting stabbed. Those aren't the same thing. The discussion around it has been muddled and confused, and sometimes thrown out as a bad-faith critique. If you know narrative systems, you know how this works. In FATE, that is like getting a "stabbed in the stomach" aspect, and then we move on.

But my books are coming out of storage, and I will have more to say soon.

Revised? I will need more time with the books, but it will be a challenge.