So, I'm getting into Cypher System.  Looks good so far.  In the reading phase; haven't run anything yet.

Has anyone run or played this system?

What were your experiences?

Are there any pitfalls that a new GM needs to look out for?

What houserules, if any, do you employ?

Also, Gods of the Fall...

Interesting so far.  Like sugar-free Godbound.  Demigod players, but I'm not seeing any system that allows player divinity to affect the setting the way Godbound's dominion system does.  Any comments from people who've played the setting?

Same questions as above for Gods of the Fall.

I've run and played Numenera, though it was a while ago. The only advice I can think of off the top of my head is, learn to love interrupts. They really are a quite marvelous way for the GM to keep things happening and make things interesting without making the players feel like you're screwing them over (well, technically, you're still screwing them over. But they get rewarded for letting you, which eases the sting a bit - and alternatively, they are allowed to veto their screwing-over for a price, if they're really dead set on everything going smoothly). But you really need to use them, or else the system is a bog-standard "roll to hit again" thing that gets really dull really fast.

This is of course assuming that the interrupt mechanic hasn't been changed from Numenera to the general Cypher system, because otherwise my advice might be out of date.

Numenera was actually the first game I ran after a nearly 10 year hiatus from RPGs.  I ran a campaign for about 6 months.

There are things I liked and things I did not like about it.  Character creation results in pretty interesting characters right away.  They're fairly powerful at level 1.  The GM never rolling makes the game very easy to run.  Pretty much any encounter can be thought of in quick difficulty levels.  I'd usually just have some basic notes on any creature or task, base difficulty X, with weaknesses giving difficulty X - 1 or 2, strengths giving difficulty X + 1 or 2.  That's about all you need to know to run any monster.  And that's the first thing that fell flat for me.  It starts getting very bland as a GM.  But I got a good 6 month campaign out of it, so that's alright.  No desire to return to the system now though.

For the player side, the biggest difficulty is getting used how edge and effort work and spending from pools that are also your hit points.  We never got really comfortable with that.  The game is also not well balanced, if you care about that sort of thing.  It's trivially easy to build characters that are able to just wreck shop.

One houserule I think I'd apply if I played again is to just get rid of the Cypher limit.  It's so arbitrary and Cyphers vary so much between being ridiculously situation to mini nukes that can destroy any encounter, so limiting players so much on Cyphers just makes them toss away the weirder ones that could potentially result in the most interesting play.  They're already consumables, so it's not like giving someone an overpowered weapon that then messes up your whole campaign.  I'd suggest increasing the overall power level of the game and let them carry however many Cyphers they want.

No experience with that setting however, so I'm not sure what it changes from Numenera.

Quote from: Baeraad;945405I've run and played Numenera, though it was a while ago. The only advice I can think of off the top of my head is, learn to love interrupts.

Seconding this. Check out The Art of Intrusions. They're an absolutely brilliant tool that, when employed properly, do a great job of breaking up routine interactions, spicing encounters, and switching up pace in ways that really help to make every session special.

The other thing I recommend when running this system is to be extremely liberal with making the target numbers for checks publicly known before rolling the dice (even if that isn't something you normally do). There are three reasons for this. First, the resource management aspects of the system are much more mechanically interesting when interacting with known target numbers. Second, adjusting the target number (using skills, effort, etc.) is much easier with known numbers. (I'll actually hold up my hand with the difficulty displayed and then adjust as people propose skills or spend effort. Particularly useful with new players, but also helps to keep things focused even with experienced players.) Third, the entire engine is built around building up the importance of a specific dice roll and then -- BAM! -- as soon as the die stops rolling you instantly know the outcome. It's a very satisfying moment of pay-off, but you only get it when the target number is known.

I actually completely dropped the intrusions stuff when I ran Numenera.  XP as a currency for players to avoid difficulties... why even play the game?  I don't get it at all.

I agree on letting the target number be known.  I typically don't like that, but this game really requires it with the weird way edge/effort/ability pools interact.

Thanks for the replies, guys.  They were very helpful.  

Quote from: under_score;945606I actually completely dropped the intrusions stuff when I ran Numenera.  XP as a currency for players to avoid difficulties... why even play the game?  I don't get it at all.

Well, you're not supposed to spend XP to avoid intrusions most of the time. It's better - for you and for the game - if you accept the intrusion and take the XP reward for it. It's just that if the GM throws something at you that you're really, really not in the mood for, you can veto it - for a price, to make sure that you don't do it too often.