As I wrote a bit ago, our own experiences as designers alongside what we’ve heard from others who have played the game have prompted some changes to the Cypher System.
Death Spiral mechanics are always difficult. They make it tough to simulate the action-movie trope of the hero getting the living crap kicked out of him before going Beast Mode and turning the tables. But, if the game is supposed to be dangerous and deadly...
Invisible Sun damage track and way to negate Wounds/Anguish is elegant for how it handles damage. I'd have liked to see this type of tracker implemented instead.
It's not just D&D players who are miserly with points. It's people who have had to struggle financially and socially with resources. If you have a finite amount to spend in a day, you are going to spend it on things that matter, such as staying alive.
Most ttrpg players will try to time their spends to ensure they have used their resources to the max before time comes to refresh. It's a little meta gaming, but it's also practical in real life.
Sure, you could use all your energy parkouring through a city, but if you know there's a marathon at the end of the day, you will conserve enough energy to make it past that finishing line.
You assume that people know their limits. That is not true. People fall apart all the time without thinking about how they are spending energy. I can look on the streets of any bar alley and see people drunk and passed out because they did not know their limit. I see people passing out in races and rallies in the park because they did not know their limit.
But, they should not know that the game is once again, "boss fight at the end", to hold all the resources at once. This should not be a D&D game - but Monte Cool is totally bending the knee to sell goods to the largest audience.
Your metaphor doesn't support your argument. Paramount capitulated, not to a large audience (Colbert's ratings are the highest in late night), but to one person with hurt feelings. Your argument is the opposite: that we are making a mistake by attempting to make more people happy with our game... which, is an argument, I suppose.
You've resorted to personal attacks, which made me hesitant to respond, but in case others might have similar concerns, I will say that in playtests these new mechanics have not encouraged people to hoard their resources, but exactly the opposite. They spend their points more freely.
But because suffering wounds imposes penalties as you suffer them and the main way to restore wounds is to spend your Might points, the effects on the game that you seem to fear just aren't there.
I noted that it was MAGA, not one person. That was extracted without proof.
You are bowing to the largest group that does not understand anything outside of D&D, as you said yourself. And it is the same reason anyone and anything else has - Money $$$. To sell more, the industry must cater to D&D over and over and over again.
Sadly, so many companies have to bend to the whim of D&D instead, losing a game because people have to make money. Let's call a spade a spade - you're focusing on D&D players because of money.
This hobby had many math, science, and literature enthusiasts. It's all Critical Roll and TV people now, with bad gamers flooding in left and right who cannot think outside the box and cannot change or envision new concepts. All I hear anymore is "math is hard", "I don't wanna read", and other horrible, lazy player garbage that was not present in Cypher, because these players could use vision. Now, you're saying "Too bad - I have to change the game so other D&D players buy in".
The wound system was the great, if not greatest, thing about the Cypher System. To see it be thrown out because players are so hooked on D&D and cannot get past HP - - as you noted in your own post --- is bending to them. It is saying, "These D&D players cannot think outside their box; therefore, we cannot channel them. We have to sell to them!"
It is settling $16M to make $8B. This is not personal - it's about money. And I am using the exact same allegory to illustrate that it's about money.
The thing I LOVE about Cypher is that players do have to spend "HP" to accomplish something. It is not reasonable that some character runs through a maze, making amazing leaps, and then has the same energy ("HP") to fight a giant.
The fact that Cypher System has to change because ***D&D players*** cannot think beyond Hit Points just shows how f'''king weak and stupid D&D players are.
God- where are the decent role-players? Too many crappy players who see Critical Roll and cannot do math. D&D is ruining this hobby - and the games I like to play. Can these kids not get TFO of this hobby?
I really, really hate this change and idea to the point that I am ready to throw everything Cypher away because I will never play with these crappy D&D-only thinkers. If a GM cannot think outside of combat, they are not a good GM.
Yeah - D&D players can go away. There are too many people who now play that can't do math or read. These games, in the 80s and 90s, were for those of us who could, who knew algebra and negative numbers with THACO. We cannot just kowtow to D&D entertainment; not everything has to be the same - not everything has to be soda.
I really like this approach, especially for games with a darker tone. We have something like this in the 2dX Engine. Wounds have a numerical rank along with a descriptor (light, moderate, serious, critical, deadly). Wounds of rank 3+ trigger potential injuries which can be long lasting disadvantages. This opens up a lot of interesting design space for characters abilities that interact with wounds and injuries along with the healing of the individual wounds themselves. I look forward to seeing what this looks like for the Cypher System!
One of the problems I find with death spiral or disadvantage mechanics is that there is usually no benefit from them. They area flat negative for both character and player. This creates the feeling/narrative that if you are good at "the game" then you should never experience them, and leads to players disengaging (or worse - feeling like they *should* disengage) when they do. It would be great if the player got a benefit if their character continued to engage in these situations.
The best I've seen of this done is in Mothership. In that game, bad things give you Stress, and Stress runs the risk of making things very bad BUT, if you survive, all remaining Stress turns into sweet, sweet experience points. It's a great example of how a death spiral system can encourage engagement rather than punish it.
I built a set of mechanics for combat which emulates these overall outcomes... high lethality, strategic options (dodge vs defense) and injuries which lowers main stats (which in the next turn will result in a lower chance to hit). If you have some spare time, I have these rules online in some pages here on Substack! Happy to send you the link!
That's great stuff! Really looking forward to seeing it in play. We have damage thresholds in A Lenda do Dragão de Fogo and it makes play very dynamic.
This reminds me a bit of Call of Cthulhu, a Chaosium game that used a Sanity system. It's been far more years than I want to talk about since I played it last, but if I remember the Sanity system correctly, it was designed as another vehicle to stop you getting too attached to your PCs - but also to drive better storytelling. Your heroes had hit points, fine, but if they saw an Eldritch Horror™ they might just go insane. This put a level of risk into encounters: you knew that if you dug too deep, you might bump into a Balrog, and was saving the town really worth it?
I like these kinds of approaches to gaming, as it can drive a better narrative rather than just player death or incapacitation. We had a PC that went barmy, so we locked 'em up in an asylum to become an oracle-style NPC for future adventures (and a major plot anchor for the forces of darkness wanting them silenced).
Death Spiral mechanics are always difficult. They make it tough to simulate the action-movie trope of the hero getting the living crap kicked out of him before going Beast Mode and turning the tables. But, if the game is supposed to be dangerous and deadly...
It's not. It's supposed to be about exploration. There is not just fighting in RPGs.
Invisible Sun damage track and way to negate Wounds/Anguish is elegant for how it handles damage. I'd have liked to see this type of tracker implemented instead.
It's not just D&D players who are miserly with points. It's people who have had to struggle financially and socially with resources. If you have a finite amount to spend in a day, you are going to spend it on things that matter, such as staying alive.
Most ttrpg players will try to time their spends to ensure they have used their resources to the max before time comes to refresh. It's a little meta gaming, but it's also practical in real life.
Sure, you could use all your energy parkouring through a city, but if you know there's a marathon at the end of the day, you will conserve enough energy to make it past that finishing line.
This is a GM-instigated problem.
You assume that people know their limits. That is not true. People fall apart all the time without thinking about how they are spending energy. I can look on the streets of any bar alley and see people drunk and passed out because they did not know their limit. I see people passing out in races and rallies in the park because they did not know their limit.
Players in TTRPGs do know their character's limits, however. They are written on their character sheets.
But, they should not know that the game is once again, "boss fight at the end", to hold all the resources at once. This should not be a D&D game - but Monte Cool is totally bending the knee to sell goods to the largest audience.
D&D players are MAGA - Monte Cook is Paramount.
Your metaphor doesn't support your argument. Paramount capitulated, not to a large audience (Colbert's ratings are the highest in late night), but to one person with hurt feelings. Your argument is the opposite: that we are making a mistake by attempting to make more people happy with our game... which, is an argument, I suppose.
You've resorted to personal attacks, which made me hesitant to respond, but in case others might have similar concerns, I will say that in playtests these new mechanics have not encouraged people to hoard their resources, but exactly the opposite. They spend their points more freely.
But because suffering wounds imposes penalties as you suffer them and the main way to restore wounds is to spend your Might points, the effects on the game that you seem to fear just aren't there.
I noted that it was MAGA, not one person. That was extracted without proof.
You are bowing to the largest group that does not understand anything outside of D&D, as you said yourself. And it is the same reason anyone and anything else has - Money $$$. To sell more, the industry must cater to D&D over and over and over again.
Sadly, so many companies have to bend to the whim of D&D instead, losing a game because people have to make money. Let's call a spade a spade - you're focusing on D&D players because of money.
This hobby had many math, science, and literature enthusiasts. It's all Critical Roll and TV people now, with bad gamers flooding in left and right who cannot think outside the box and cannot change or envision new concepts. All I hear anymore is "math is hard", "I don't wanna read", and other horrible, lazy player garbage that was not present in Cypher, because these players could use vision. Now, you're saying "Too bad - I have to change the game so other D&D players buy in".
The wound system was the great, if not greatest, thing about the Cypher System. To see it be thrown out because players are so hooked on D&D and cannot get past HP - - as you noted in your own post --- is bending to them. It is saying, "These D&D players cannot think outside their box; therefore, we cannot channel them. We have to sell to them!"
It is settling $16M to make $8B. This is not personal - it's about money. And I am using the exact same allegory to illustrate that it's about money.
The thing I LOVE about Cypher is that players do have to spend "HP" to accomplish something. It is not reasonable that some character runs through a maze, making amazing leaps, and then has the same energy ("HP") to fight a giant.
The fact that Cypher System has to change because ***D&D players*** cannot think beyond Hit Points just shows how f'''king weak and stupid D&D players are.
God- where are the decent role-players? Too many crappy players who see Critical Roll and cannot do math. D&D is ruining this hobby - and the games I like to play. Can these kids not get TFO of this hobby?
I really, really hate this change and idea to the point that I am ready to throw everything Cypher away because I will never play with these crappy D&D-only thinkers. If a GM cannot think outside of combat, they are not a good GM.
And I've been on the Asset Team since 2013.
I can see that you have strong feelings about this.
Yeah - D&D players can go away. There are too many people who now play that can't do math or read. These games, in the 80s and 90s, were for those of us who could, who knew algebra and negative numbers with THACO. We cannot just kowtow to D&D entertainment; not everything has to be the same - not everything has to be soda.
I really like this approach, especially for games with a darker tone. We have something like this in the 2dX Engine. Wounds have a numerical rank along with a descriptor (light, moderate, serious, critical, deadly). Wounds of rank 3+ trigger potential injuries which can be long lasting disadvantages. This opens up a lot of interesting design space for characters abilities that interact with wounds and injuries along with the healing of the individual wounds themselves. I look forward to seeing what this looks like for the Cypher System!
This is just a sell-out because all these GMs can think of (if they do) is combat.
So many bad GMs and players.
One of the problems I find with death spiral or disadvantage mechanics is that there is usually no benefit from them. They area flat negative for both character and player. This creates the feeling/narrative that if you are good at "the game" then you should never experience them, and leads to players disengaging (or worse - feeling like they *should* disengage) when they do. It would be great if the player got a benefit if their character continued to engage in these situations.
The best I've seen of this done is in Mothership. In that game, bad things give you Stress, and Stress runs the risk of making things very bad BUT, if you survive, all remaining Stress turns into sweet, sweet experience points. It's a great example of how a death spiral system can encourage engagement rather than punish it.
I built a set of mechanics for combat which emulates these overall outcomes... high lethality, strategic options (dodge vs defense) and injuries which lowers main stats (which in the next turn will result in a lower chance to hit). If you have some spare time, I have these rules online in some pages here on Substack! Happy to send you the link!
May the fun be always at your table!
That's great stuff! Really looking forward to seeing it in play. We have damage thresholds in A Lenda do Dragão de Fogo and it makes play very dynamic.
This reminds me a bit of Call of Cthulhu, a Chaosium game that used a Sanity system. It's been far more years than I want to talk about since I played it last, but if I remember the Sanity system correctly, it was designed as another vehicle to stop you getting too attached to your PCs - but also to drive better storytelling. Your heroes had hit points, fine, but if they saw an Eldritch Horror™ they might just go insane. This put a level of risk into encounters: you knew that if you dug too deep, you might bump into a Balrog, and was saving the town really worth it?
I like these kinds of approaches to gaming, as it can drive a better narrative rather than just player death or incapacitation. We had a PC that went barmy, so we locked 'em up in an asylum to become an oracle-style NPC for future adventures (and a major plot anchor for the forces of darkness wanting them silenced).