All in One, Part 1
I drifted away from Advanced Dungeons & Dragons in 1989, just before TSR released D&D’s second edition. I was lured away by Shadowrun, FASA’s “punk elves” science fiction–fantasy mashup.
Part of the appeal lay in certain aspects of D&D that I was starting to get frustrated with, most notably the absurd number of hit points that higher-level player characters had (an issue with D&D that’s gotten even more absurd as the game has lustily embraced power fantasy). The running joke was that a dwarf fighter could battle two dozen orcs, drink a glass of poison, jump off a cliff, land at the bottom, dust himself off and battle another two dozen orcs without ever breaking a sweat. In contrast, every Shadowrun PC had exactly 10 hit points. Those hit points might be easier or harder to take away from you, but regardless, you never had more than 10—and when you lost them, you were dead. I liked that. It felt true. It added stakes.
But I think the greater appeal was that I simply love mashups. Jazz rap, chicken tikka tacos, the culturally appropriative space Western from the abusive man-baby creator (the bloom’s come off that last rose a bit, but I was over the moons for it at the time). There’s no genre so high and holy that it doesn’t benefit from a dash of another one … or two.
I played Shadowrun for several years, enjoying both the game’s first and second editions; then I graduated from college and hit a roleplaying gaming dry spell. When I returned to gaming—it might be more correct to say, when an old friend brought me back to it—I was introduced to GURPS.
If Shadowrun was tantalizingly attractive to me, GURPS was downright irresistible. Shadowrun mashed up cyberpunk and fantasy, but that was all. With GURPS, one could mash up anything. While we played our D&D-styled GURPS fantasy campaign, I was working on my adventure in which PCs in 1903 Saint Petersburg, Russia, thwarted an agent sent to assassinate Tsar Nicholas II, then stumbled upon a Chinese time machine from the future and went on an international and intertemporal romp.
These days, GURPS feels outdated: overly fiddly, with too much tax prep involved in character creation and some baked-in assumptions that don’t meet contemporary expectations of sensitivity, especially around disabilities. It’s not a game I’d try to convince people to play today. But I’m still enamored with what it aspires to do, and I’m always on the lookout for “the next GURPS”—a truly genreless RPG that can accommodate any character concept you throw at it. Which is why I devote so much attention to the Cypher System.
Cypher works extremely well for my purpose, but it’s not without its flaws. The main one is that it can feel overly abstracted, turning every task into an exercise in resource allocation and risk calculation. The flavoring of abilities is much more in their names, and in the imaginations of the players and the gamemaster, than in the mechanics of those abilities. Also, the placing of die rolling exclusively in the players’ hands results in situations that feel incongruous, such as when they have to roll to see whether an enemy trying to escape their Grasping Foliage ability manages to succeed. And the fact that PCs’ Might, Speed and Intellect Pools are not measures of ability but measures of resources to draw on is a hard one for beginning players to wrap their brains around. So while I enjoy Cypher overall and appreciate the remarkable breadth of ideas it can incorporate (with varying degrees of labor involved), I don’t feel like my search for the next GURPS has come to a definitive end.
To “audition” a genreless RPG system for this role, I have a few stock characters I try to create in order to see how well the system handles them:
- Coill, a half–high elf, half-drow wandering fortune teller. (Whether the system permits him to tell true fortunes is an important consideration. The 2014 rules of fifth edition D&D, for instance, don’t allow this, because augury and divination aren’t on the wizard spell list—they’re on the cleric spell list. The Additional Wizard Spells optional class feature in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything patches this issue, as do the 2024 rules, but they’re still not available until he reaches level 3 and level 7, respectively.)
- Joseph Chapman, a gunslinger with an uncanny “luckbending” ability—the power to manipulate probability.
- The PCs from my Saint Petersburg game: an inventor, a police inspector and a young occultist.
All of these PCs can be adapted to Cypher, but for both Coill and Chapman, doing so involves the extra work of creating custom foci. In fact, in Coill’s case, it involves creating brand-new abilities as well. His Tells Fortunes focus is largely support, with an emphasis on information and social abilities. Ideally, tiers 3 and 6 should offer a split in emphasis between using these powers for good (helping allies achieve their goals) and for not-so-good (manipulating strangers). But it’s actually hard to find existing abilities that allow him to help his allies on a time delay, properly modeling the story of doing readings for them that they’ll act on later.
Here’s my friend Julian’s police inspector, Cypherized:
Inspector Anatoly Nikolayevich Golovko
Honorable Explorer who Solves Mysteries
Tier 1
Effort 1
Might 14 (1 Edge) Speed 11 Intellect 11
Skills
Light weapons
Medium weapons
Heavy weapons (inability)
Perception (trained)
Discerning true motives, seeing through lies (trained)
Pleasant social interactions (trained)
Special Abilities
Danger Sense (1 Speed point)
Endurance
Fleet of Foot (1+ Speed point)
Improved Edge (Speed)
Investigator
Sleuth
Attacks
Revolver (medium ranged, 4 damage)
Saber (medium bladed melee, 4 damage)
Punch (light, 2 damage)
Anatoly is another example of a Cypher System character who doesn’t fully come through in three dimensions, although he’s very well drawn in two. There’s room for only one descriptor in a historical/science fiction campaign, and the most suitable one in this case is Honorable. But Anatoly is also canonically an alcoholic. If that’s not captured in his descriptor, it’s not reflected anywhere—except, perhaps, if there’s an agreement between player and GM to build it into his story as a character arc. As in the light bulb joke, though, he’ll have to want to change.
Next, my gunslinger, with the custom focus Manipulates Probability:
Joseph Chapman
Lucky Warrior who Manipulates Probability
Tier 1
Effort 1
Might 10 Speed 14 (1 Edge) Intellect 10 (1 Edge) Luck 3
Skills
Light weapons (trained)
Medium weapons (trained)
Heavy weapons (trained)
Special Abilities
Advantage
Combat Prowess (ranged)
Control the Field
Improved Edge (Intellect)
Overwatch (1 Intellect point)
Predictive Equation
Attacks
Colt Peacemaker .45 (heavy ranged, long, 6 damage)
Winchester 1873 (heavy ranged, very long, 6 damage)
Knife (light bladed melee, 2 damage)
Punch (light, 2 damage)
The remaining abilities in the Manipulates Probability focus are Wrest From Chance at tier 2, Cognizant Offense or Uncanny Luck at tier 3, Dodge and Resist at tier 4, See the Future at tier 5, and Extreme Mastery or Thief’s Luck at tier 6. Uncanny Luck, Dodge and Resist and Extreme Mastery can be tweaked to cost Intellect points rather than Speed points.
And finally, my fortune teller:
Coill Amaezhiad
Intuitive Adept who Tells Fortunes
Tier 1
Effort 1
Might 7 Speed 12 Intellect 17 (1 Edge)
Skills
Light weapons
Medium weapons (inability)
Heavy weapons (inability)
Perception (trained)
Persuading (trained)
Seeing through deception (trained)
Special Abilities
Hedge Magic
Interaction skills (persuading, seeing through deception)
Know What to Do
Onslaught
Premonition (2 Intellect points)
Scan
Ward
Attacks
Onslaught (ability, short, 4 damage or 2 Intellect damage ignoring Armor)
Punch (light, 2 damage)
Premonition plus Interaction Skills is solid for tier 1, but to finish building out the Tells Fortunes focus, I’d have to create a series of abilities that modify existing ones such as Good Advice, Confidence Artist, Draw Conclusion, Anticipate Attack, See the Future, Deep Consideration, Undo, As Foretold in Prophecy and Change the Paradigm to produce a series of increasingly powerful, bankable effects from 1-minute readings of oracle cards or other divination devices. Another time, perhaps I’ll do that. In the meantime, I’ll rest with the conclusion that I almost certainly can create Coill in the Cypher System, but not without an awful lot of effort.
As “the next GURPS,” Cypher is best rated as a modest success. If I were grading it, I’d give it a B.
When I first started looking into universal RPG systems, the name cited most commonly alongside Cypher was Savage Worlds. Like GURPS, Savage Worlds allows players to give their characters flaws (called Disadvantages in GURPS and Hindrances in Savage Worlds) in exchange for additional benefits. Aside from these, the main elements in a Savage Worlds character are ancestry, Traits (attributes, skills and derived statistics) and Edges (akin to feats in D&D and Pathfinder). There’s also gear, but that’s inherently dependent on aspects of setting such as technology level.
The police inspector character is fairly straightforward and easy to create in Savage Worlds:
Inspector Anatoly Nikolayevich Golovko
Human
Abilities
d6 Agility
d4 Smarts
d6 Spirit
d6 Strength
d8 Vigor
Skills
d4 Athletics
d4 Common Knowledge
d4 Notice
d4 Persuasion
d6 Stealth
d8 Fighting
d6 Intimidation
d4 Performance (he sings!)
d8 Shooting
Hindrances
Code of Honor (Major)
Habit (Major)
Edges
Iron Jaw
Streetwise
Trademark Weapon (Saber)
The luckbending gunslinger is trickier to adapt. It seems at first as though he should have Arcane Background: Gifted as a representation of his probability-altering power. But there’s no Power in Savage Worlds that matches up with this ability. It’s represented better by two Edges: Calculating and Great Luck. Since he has only one major Hindrance and therefore gets only two Edges at character creation, he’ll have to settle for ordinary Luck for the time being, and improve that to Great Luck when he gains another Edge through advancement.
Joseph Chapman
Human
Abilities
d8 Agility
d8 Smarts
d4 Spirit
d4 Strength
d6 Vigor
Skills
d4 Athletics
d4 Common Knowledge
d6 Notice
d4 Persuasion
d4 Stealth
d4 Battle
d6 Fighting
d6 Gambling
d10 Shooting
Hindrances
Secret (Major) (he’s a Civil War deserter)
Edges
Calculating
Luck
Unfortunately, Savage Worlds just doesn’t know what to do with my wandering fortune-teller. For starters, it doesn’t treat what it still refers to as “races” with a particularly deft hand, assigning each one at least two advantages and one disadvantage. Elves’ disadvantage is the bizarre All Thumbs, “an inherent dislike of mechanical objects.” Also, Savage Worlds’ list of Powers is short and chiefly concerned with things that can be done to other people, making it overwhelmingly combat-oriented and ill-suited to a non-healer support character. The one Power that seems to fall within a fortune-teller’s wheelhouse, Divination, is unavailable to starting characters and also assumes communication with a spirit. Coill would have to advance four times before he could do the thing that’s central to his character, and it would be more like holding a séance than doing a tarot card reading.
The Savage Worlds system has always struck me as strange and incoherent, and it doesn’t achieve its stated goal of “accommodating not just every era, genre, and setting, but most every play style as well.” Part of that failure comes in having too few options, too strongly flavored and focused, without offering any guidance on how to create custom character options in order to patch the holes. As “the next GURPS,” it falls short.
Next: Fate and the Hero System.
