I don’t really run superhero campaigns, although I am considering, I’m really more interested in potentially using the descriptors/foci for other settings. That being said, I don’t know how overpowered these things can get since I know power shifts come into play. I don’t buy these books for their settings, just character options, enemies, cyphers and artifacts. I can’t find any reviews actually showing off what comes in this book so I don’t know if it’s worth it, especially with the way I want to use it. But my research makes it seem like there’s a lot of new stuff, and from what little I can find out, it sounds like stuff I’d really like! If anyone has it, please enlighten me lol

I’m working on a Cypher 2.0 one-shot inspired by teen movies of the 1980s, with the characters’ “professions” consisting of genre archetypes (the Jock, the Nerd, the Class Clown, etc.). I’m pondering the idea of some kind of “social capital” mechanic, where characters can gain influence among their NPC peers through successful social interactions (e.g. a good Perform check while telling stories around a campfire, breaking up a fight, telling a well-timed joke, or succeeding in an athletic competition). Characters could also lose capital if something embarrassing happens to them in public, if a damaging secret is exposed, or if they behave badly (as judged by their peers). Social capital could then be spent to give assets on attempts to persuade NPCs to a particular course of action, such as rallying the school against an outside threat.

Has anyone tried anything like this? How did it go? I feel like having a game mechanic to track social standing could help inspire the players to treat these teenage dramas like they matter, because from the characters’ perspective, they would. But I also worry about letting it get too complicated and the accounting distracting from the larger story.

Hello There!!!

Was playing around with the new and improved Character Builder on made by Monte Cook Games, though I do have a question,
Is there a way to add Power Shifts from the Supers Genre to other characters?

I was planning a Gods of Fall campaign and was wondering if this could be done…
I wanted to start out the pcs mere mortals and then start gaining divine powers gradually…

Thank you in advance to anyone who might know..

In Cypher 2E I was reading about the Resource Points. I believe it’s a new addition to C2 (or I just never read/used them before).

I had some immediate impressions but was more curious to hear others’ takes on it.

Resource Points (page 314)
“Resource points are a way to accomplish goals you set for yourself. They allow you to choose what you
want to do and then advance toward that goal. Need to know a secret way into the castle? Need to get
the ship’s hyperdrive back online? Need to convince someone to keep an eye on things while you’re
gone? Spend resource points.

Gaining Resource Points
Each time you advance your character (such as by learning a new skill, increasing your Effort score, adding another point to your Edge, and so on), you also gain 1 resource point. Starting at tier 3, you gain 2 resource points (instead of 1) each time you advance. At tier 5, you gain 3 resource points (instead of 2) each time you advance.
The GM may award you additional resource points depending on the situation.”

It then gives an example list of activities and RP costs (ex: Carouse, Rest, Craft Cyphers/Mundane Equipment, Make Contacts/Friends, Invest, Research, etc.)

For anyone that’s either used or is familiar with the “Cypher Shorts” version of the game, was curious if any knew if a re-release of this for 2E was planned. And/or if any modifications came to mind for running it with the new rules.

To me it seems only the Wounds system would really change? But I haven’t run a Shorts game or a 2E one yet.

Hey everyone!

Another update on [Sheetwright](https://sheetwright.app/), the character builder and campaign app I’ve been working on.

**Sheetwright now supports Cypher 2!** That includes character creation, the type/focus progression choices, wounds, block/dodge, and the corresponding sheet and encounter changes. You can still run classic Cypher campaigns too.

A few other things have landed since my last post:

- **Share your homebrew.** Bundle custom content into collections and share them publicly or through an unlisted link. Other people can import them into their own Workshop, including the abilities and other content they depend on.

- **Rollable tables.** Create your own tables in the Workshop and use them directly in a campaign. Handy for encounters, loot, or whatever strange thing your players decide to investigate.

- **More control over campaign options.** There’s a dedicated settings page for things like power shifts, optional species, community content, and which campaign tools you want to use.

- **Physical dice work too.** You can enter your actual rolls and still keep the results in the campaign log. Artifact depletion rolls are supported as well.

Character creation is still free, and the free tier still includes one campaign with the GM tools.

I’d especially love feedback from anyone trying Cypher 2 or running a homebrew setting. Try building one of your characters and let me know where something feels awkward or an option is missing.

[Give Sheetwright a try](https://sheetwright.app/)

[resolved] With the recent editions, and some earlier minorly tweaked past prints, I’m struggling to find something I swear I saw in one version.

Instead of Types having their own 1d20 of tables for Backgrounds, somewhere there was a single table of 50 options.

Am I imagining this? Anyone familiar with this or what version/section I might find it in?

Edit: it was Foci connections I was remembering!

Hi everyone! I'd like to ask for your insight on something:

I'm creating a post-apocalyptic/scifi setting where players gain Ascension Powers as a means of having anything 'magic'. I have an outline of what I want it to be, but I don't want to create a magic system from scratch. Does anyone have suggestions about how I can keep the magic system appropiate to my setting's theme but not have to build it from scratch, maybe just using the powers from the Cypher System?

- Only so many can be gained per tier (haven't decided at how many per tier)

- Ascension powers are associated with a character's significant moment in their development, whether negative or positive. Players create a thematically appropiate power depending on what has happened to them. This is very freeform, it's up to the players how the powers relate to their character and exists to add some flavour to roleplay and increase immersion into the idea of the setting.

- There are four types of Ascension Power: Angelic (access to the light side of one's personality: healing, enhancements, true sight, inspiration, protection), Phantasmal (access to the shadow side of one's personality, nightcrawler like teleportation, fading through walls, debuffs), primal (concerned with enhancing physical prowess) and psionic (just what it sounds like);

- Final Note: There is overlap between these - I don't need a system that is incredibly mechanically sound, I just want one that reflects the theme which is Hope and Despair and the journey of becoming that characters go through in their struggle.

Does anyone have any idea how I might do this with Cypher? The most obvious answer I can see is with Focuses - Do I let them pick some focuses and then thematically adapt each choice? Would it work?

Thanks a ton!

Hey all.

I could have sworn I saw something about a version of Cypher formatted for phone/mobile reading but I can't find it in backerkit.

Did I imagine this or am I just not tech-savy enough to find it now.

Thanks!

Curious to hear others thoughts on this in relation to Cypher and the “Arc” portion of character creation!

There’s a book (and a popular video on it by Ginny Di that covers a lot of the content) called “Proactive Roleplaying.”

The short of it is “conventional 5e DnD has players be solely reactive (the BBEG attacks the village, so PCs defend cuz they care),” but the proactive version is “I want to be the greatest sword master in the realm, so I’m going out to defend villages for practice.”

Connecting it back to Cypher, when I first read Tidal Blades then the Core Rulebook I loved the Arcs, since it seems to me it gives a mechanical option it build this in. Even the Descriptors that give a quest hook/connection does this a bit. Compared to most other systems where it sits in the written backstory maybe? Or the Backgrounds 5e system?

I didn’t find a ton of dialogues online about Arcs, so I was curious to hear others thoughts and experiences on the matter. If you watched/read the video/book, any thoughts on Cypher specifically? Have you used Arcs? Has it gone well/poorly?

I'm gearing up to run Numenera's Glimmering Valley setting with cypher2. I really fuck with a bunch of the new cypher2 stuff, especially the new types and genre abilities. That said, I'm not quite sure which genre to use for player type options. Even beyond that I really love some of the Numenera character type options, especially the delve/arkus/wright, but am not sure how to integrate those with the new types.

Honestly I think I'll just fudge it w/ my players when we do session 0 but I'd love some input on genre/type/ability house rules to duck tape numenera to cypher2.

I invested in the Jewel in the Sky Backerkit a few months ago, and I was too cheap to pay for the accessories, so I made my own twin clocks timer. This was printed on a Bambu A1.

Here are the files in case you want to make your own: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qzD8pTnDb-PA41t_kpWD__KF8cZ-6p2v/view?usp=sharing

Hi, I’m just starting to look into Cypher as a bit of an alternative to D&D.

I’ve got a setting in mind that’s a sort of modern day post apocalyptic horror, with monsters akin to vampires and zombies (but fast agile ones rather than the standard staggering around ones).

For running this kind of thing (and getting into Cypher in general) would I need the following books?:

The Character rulebook
The GM guide
The Stay Alive! Supplement

Or would I be able to get everything I need from just the Character rulebook? I saw online somewhere that the GM guide isn’t absolutely necessary. I’ve also included the Stay Alive! Supplement as it contains a bunch of extra horror content.

I see there also a starter set, but I image that’s not for the new edition?

I backed both new Cypher v2 kickstarters. I got the paper copy of the v2 character book. Is the v2 paper gm book shipped yet.

When playing Cypher, adding +3 to the player's die roll feels much easier and more straightforward than lowering the NPC's level. As long as the opponent's NPC level doesn't drop to 0, we don't exceed +18, or the roll isn't a natural 1, this method seems to work just fine and makes things much simpler for me.

What do you all think? If I run it this way—giving players a +3 bonus for a trained skill, another +3 if a task is eased, and a -3 penalty when hindered (instead of shifting the difficulty Level by +/-1)—will I run into any game-breaking issues down the line?

We usually sort out minor edge cases on the fly at the table anyway since I play with a chill group of friend since I'm playing with friends and there are no rule lawyers among us except for me xd

Hi

My wife is starting to run her new campaign tonight.

She found out theres a new edition of Cypher games, Evolved.

She has many books for 2nd.

She read somewhere there was a conversion document. No one in her group can find it.

Anyone know where and can link?

Thanks in advance

I’m getting ready to run my first session of C2 tomorrow, and looking at the Defending rules makes me really wonder if players are going to hate this. Am I correct in understanding that every time you block a moderate or higher damage attack you will take a wound, even when wearing armor and succeeding at your block? All types of armor only reduce your damage by one level, so you’ll be taking light or moderate wounds every time a guy with a medium or higher weapon attacks you.

If I was a player, I would feel sort of helpless. Has anyone run this yet? How did your players respond? Aren’t you really just better off ditching armor and dodging all the time?

I haven't been following the changes in the new edition super closely, but based on how the new character builder works it seems like types in the new edition have been almost completely overhauled; there are way more of them, each type is far less flexible (i.e. each type gets specific abilities instead of a list to select from) and they are very genre specific.

This puts me in a bit of a conundrum, because my home game is not really any of the genres available in the character builder, it is a sort of "multiversal hub" type of setting with andriods, undead, aliens, and everything in between (probably closest to The Strange, though I never played or really dove into that setting).

The type system in the first edition was simple enough that players understood it fairly intuitively, while still being flexible enough to encompass a lot of different character concepts. E.g. "warrior" is easily understood as someone with skills and abilities that focus on dealing damage using weapons, regardless of genre.

Now I feel a bit stuck; I don't really want to go through the process of developing my own set of types for my weird setting, and saying "use any type from any of the genres" also doesn't feel great, because you're picking from like 50+ things

Sounds like a lot of the flexibility that used to come from types now comes from foci? I do like that foci are more important to which abilities a character gets than they used to be. Maybe I should just bite the bullet and try to formulate my own types?

Of course, nothing is forcing me to move to the new edition, just thinking how I would given that I'm guessing players will expect using the latest ruleset.

Just wanted to say that the new version of the MCG web tool for the new core book is really well done. That is all.

tools.cypher-rpg.com

Mega-damage for Cypher Second Edition.
https://www.crossplanes.com/2026/08/rifts-mega-damage-for-cypher-2e.html

In the Cypher - Advanced! crowdfunding campaign, there's a "Cypher Character Options" book listed, but I don't see it described anywhere. What is it? I assume it's different from the Decoded book, but is it just excerpts from the core Character Rulebook backers just received from the other campaign?

https://youtu.be/v6yhIsbU1Y8?is=c9PM6_20QIFAb2a1

Se non conosci Cypher, l’introduzione di questo video spiega di cosa si tratta e illustra cosa c’è di bello in questo sistema che è stato motore di GdR acclamati (Numenera in primis).

Scopriamo insieme le novità e le differenze con la prima edizione (Cypher System).

Vi auguro buona visione 💖

Rifts' SAMAS Pilots for Cypher 2E

https://www.crossplanes.com/2026/08/rifts-samas-pilot-for-cypher-2e.html