One of the main reasons we prefer the Cypher System, and indeed one of the reasons we discovered it in the first place, is how much easier it is to GM than it is to run 5e. But one of the tragic and frustrating truths of the tabletop RPG hobby is how hard it is to get people to break away from 5e-dominated gameplay. Chronic GM burnout in the 5e community is real, as is the GM shortage. One big contributor is the weak support given by Wizards of the Coast to its GMs. So what is a 5e GM to do, who wants to run their game more like the easy-to-run Cypher System? Here are some thoughts about what makes the Cypher System unique, and how to gain similar features in your 5e game!

Cyphers and Artifacts

Treating magic items in 5e more like Cyphers can actually derail one of the most common GM pitfalls – giving out magic items that are too powerful. By putting one-time use limits on minor (or major) magic items, or by adding a depletion die to artifacts, GMs can limit the effect of a potential game-breaker.

For a quick example, let’s say you give out a Ring of Evasion. Normally, this is a 1d3/day use, and with attunement can be used indefinitely. To make this more of a “cypher artifact” we’d change this to be 1/day use, and we’d add a depletion roll. Remember, the bigger the die, the longer the artifact is likely to last. At once a day, this isn’t likely to be too game breaking, so we’d simply put the depletion roll at 1 on a d20, or even 1 on a d100. Every time it’s used, the player rolls. Rolling a 1 means the magic leaves the artifact, forever.

Quick Difficulty Ratings

A common impulse for 5e GMs is to try to scale the world to the player levels. But this is simply unnecessary – easy tasks don’t become harder just because the PC is a higher level. Cypher System specifically calls this out in its difficulty settings – they are meant to be set agnostic of the player characters. The 2014 DMG advises on this on page 238, with a section on Difficulty Class – we’d recommend putting that chart front and center on your GM setup and referencing it consistently and frequently. Keeping your DC choices consistent over time will give your game a logical sense of verisimilitude. We also highly recommend implementing the optional rule in this section for Automatic Success. This rule emulates the ability of advanced Cypher System characters to use Edge and Effort to automatically succeed at moderately difficult tasks. Don’t forget to also put some automatic successes behind a proficiency barrier – characters with the proficiency succeed, those without must roll. This will come into play in our discussion on Intrusions.

For some more granularity than provided by the DMG, we found this chart on Twitter, long ago posted by Moonshine DM.

Instant NPCs/Monsters

Having nearly instant NPC/Monster stat block generation is definitely one of the strengths of the Cypher System. The GM can easily build stat blocks based on the level template chosen. But a 5e GM does not have this ease and luxury – their main choices are:

• Choose an existing monster
• Reskin an existing monster
• Build a monster from scratch

Choosing a monster is the easiest and fastest to do on the fly – but usually this leads to the same adversaries popping up over and over. As GMs build larger banks of monsters, finding the right one on the fly is harder and harder, not to mention remembering where to look! Reskinning an existing monster is often suggested, but this might even be slower than choosing an existing monster – it’s hard to find a stat block that’s “just right” for the situation at hand. Tweaking it can take time. And of course, building from scratch is usually reserved for prep work – and makes prep work very lengthy at times. So what’s a GM to do? How can they build a monster instantly?

Thankfully, this problem is one Mike Shea of Sly Flourish spent a lot of time and effort to solve. The 5e DMG does try to do this a little bit on p274, but it’s lacking in a number of ways we won’t go into here. Clearly influenced by his time running the Cypher System, he (and a team of designers) built the Forge of Foes product. He even offers a free preview pdf outlining the core of the system – standardized stat blocks at every challenge rating. Then just add special abilities as needed. The free preview is an incredible resource on its own, and the further discussions, techniques and advice in the book distill 5e monster and encounter design into quickly digestible and actionable steps. This is the fastest way to get your monsters built in 5e, and the closest to the technique used in Cypher System.

Intrusions

Emulating intrusions, especially from the player side, is the most difficult part of injecting Cypher System philosophies into 5e. However, once you put in the work, it will make your 5e game immeasurably better.

The GM Intrusion system in the Cypher System is perhaps the most important part of how the system plays at the table. Greater skill at this from the GM will elevate the game from a standard, fun RPG experience into something dramatic, cinematic and memorable. The concept is how the game puts story first in a way 5e typically does not.

In most 5e games, and in most examples of play you’ll find, the GM sets the scene, the players make a decision, and the GM calls for a roll to determine the outcome. For example:

GM: You come to a rickety bridge. It doesn’t look very safe to cross, but you need to get to the other side. What do you do?

PC1: I’m Dexterous, I’ll try and cross it.

GM: Roll an Acrobatics check.

PC1: Yes, an 18!

GM: You barely make it without the bridge disintegrating!

PC2: Oh no, I’m not very good at this….a 4….

GM: The bridge crumbles and you fall to your doom!

In the case above, the dice are driving the story. The GM is simply setting the scene and reacting to the dice. Again, a very common way to play 5e. It’s a very natural way. The GM has a lot to think about in general, and so being passive and “neutral” is a comfortable role to slip into.

The problem is that this leads to boring adventures, especially as characters enter the mid-levels. They will constantly pass challenges. The drama in the game is dependent on the dice – and they can fail you. You describe the dungeon as being dangerous, but the party passes every challenge on the way to the treasure room. Was it really that dangerous then? Was there any real drama? Would you remember a story that was constant success, would it excite you? Would it be epic? Most likely, the answer is no. Drama isn’t about flirting with hardship, its about actually overcoming hardship!

This is the lesson that GM intrusions teach people running the Cypher System. Adventures are interesting and fun when interesting and fun things happen. To translate this into 5e, you have to invert how ability checks are called for. It takes a lot of practice to unlearn the passive GM style, but an active GM will push drama onto the characters instead of waiting for drama to (maybe) find them. Let’s revisit the bridge crossing above:

GM: You come to a rickety bridge. It doesn’t look very safe to cross, but you need to get to the other side. What do you do?

GM: You come to a rickety bridge. It doesn’t look very safe to cross, but you need to get to the other side. What do you do?

PC1: I’m Dexterous, I’ll try and cross it.

GM: Well you’re proficient in Acrobatics, so you automatically succeed and reach the other side.

PC2: I’m not proficient in Acrobatics, what do I do?

GM: If you want to cross, you’ll have to find a way to make it easier, or simply brave the crossing.

PC2: Alright, I’m brave – I start to cross.

GM: The bridge creaks and groans, but holds….until you reach the center. At that point, with a rattle and snap – the bridge crumbles and you fall. What do you do? PC1, what do you do?

Now the players have a chance to actually do something that matters, something that’s interesting, and allows for their creativity. They’re going to do things that require ability checks – and those checks will be extremely tense and drama-filled. This is a scene that is driven by the story first – the bridge was always going to crumble. That’s the scene you’re setting as a GM – not a rickety bridge, but a bridge that is going to crumble. How the characters react now is up to them. As a GM, don’t wait for the interesting thing to happen – make it happen. Every scene should have a moment where you ask yourself, “What’s the most interesting thing that could happen here?” – and then you keep that event in your back pocket as needed. The game should be interesting, dramatic and fun!

In the Cypher System, the GM is required to give out XP when triggering an intrusion. Emulating this in 5e also takes a little bit of work, and we see 2 ways to do it. First, XP is a little bit like Inspiration in 5e. Allow players to earn more than 1 inspiration point at at time. Let them spend it as normal, but also let them use it to affect the story a little bit. Maybe they use a point to distract a foe, succeed at something they’re proficient at (but would normally have to roll), or even lower the DC a step, as you might in Cypher System. The second method would be to rip out the Inspiration system entirely, and replace it with the Luck system from Black Flag/Tales of the Valiant. This alone improves a 5e game by quite a bit.

Conclusion

Implementing these changes to running your 5e game can help it run more quickly and more smoothly – it will never be quite as easy as running a Cypher System game, but the lessons of that system can improve your 5e experience. The benefits are less burnout, less prep time needed, more flexible gameplay at the table and – hopefully – more fun overall. These techniques can greatly reduce the anxiety of the players going wildly “off-script” of whatever you had planned.