Hackable: Simple Cypher (Sipher)

Two weeks ago, I ran a demo of The Strange and my middle daughter played it and had a blast.  She's 11 and sadly, doesn't get to play in my games much.

But this past weekend, her and three friends were hanging out and she told them about our game and asked if they wanted to play it.

I certainly didn't mind, but time was short and I didn't have pre-gens ready for them, but I'd been brainstorming a Cypher System/HeroQuest hack and decided to streamline the whole process.

I had each girl choose a Descriptor (adjective), Type (noun), and Focus (verb).

Then I had them assign a 2 to one of those (essentially become Specialized) and assign a 1 to the other two (essentially become Trained).

Warrior Types had 18 Hit Points.  Skilled Types had 15 Hit Points.  Mythical Types had 12 Hit Points.

Everyone had 6 Effort, which essentially replaced Pools and Edges, and added 1 to their d6 roll on a one for one basis.

Having read about No Thank You, Evil, I used a single d6 instead of a d20 and simply had the girls add the associated number, if any, to the d6 roll.

It all worked great.

I had:

A Charming Paranormal Researcher with a Sasquatch Companion.

A Beautiful Pop Singer with Hologram Powers.

A Tomboy Princess with a Magic Scepter.

A Smart Zombie who Controlled Fire.

It all went very, very well and we got started in under 20 minutes.

A couple of provisions:

1) I love the Cypher System and enjoy it more everytime I run it, this just worked for the nature of this game.

2) I can't say for sure, but I assume the modifications I've made could very well form a strong basis for No Thank You, Evil.  In short, I'm not taking credit for reinventing the wheel here.