Cypher System Revised Edition Character Creator is Live!

Have at it. The new CS character generator for the revised edition (or second edition or whatever you want to call it) of the Cypher System is up now. Very likely there are some things I missed when entering the data. If you find something amiss, please let me know, if you would be so kind.

If you see a bug but don't want to post a comment on the blog for some reason, you can always email me any bugs you discover. My email address is my first and last name, including the Roman numeral, all one word and lowercase, no dots or anything like that, at Gmail. (It is the same username as for Blogger, which you can copy and paste from the URL above, simply adding the "at Gmail dot com" part to my name).

A few quick notes. First, some of the suggested foci by genre include a few extras not in the core book, e.g. Thunders has been added to the Superhero genre because come on, how is that not a superpower? For some reason, Emerged From the Obelisk does not appear in any of the genre focus lists, so I tossed it in to both Fantasy and Superhero. Drives Like a Maniac has been added to Sci-Fi and Modern because why not, and Runs Away and a few other mundane foci have been added to multiple genres. These are not the only ones, but I am too lazy to make a comprehensive list of differences. (In all cases, any differences should be foci I have added to genres-- I did not take any away.) Next quick note: as mentioned in a prior post, species descriptors are not limited by genre in this character creator. (We do not discriminate against an Elf gallivanting about in outer space or an Artificially Intelligent clockwork tin-man traipsing through the fantasy woods.) Last quick note: the Weird West/Steampunk genre which existed in the previous version has been carried over to this new version as well. If you are wondering where that came from, since it doesn't appear in the core book, well... I made it up. (Maybe some day I will make up a Weird West setting to go with it.)

Star Wars is Surprisingly Unterrible (No Spoilers)

I wasn't planning on seeing the new Star Wars movie since I didn't really care for episodes 7 and 8, but a friend of mine from church bought all the tickets for a 74-seat theater for the premiere of episode 9 and resold them at cost to people he knew, so I thought, why not jump in on this action. The chance to see a movie in a theater full of people I all knew was pretty neat.

I won't spoil anything about the movie. I just want to say, if you like true Star Wars movies, you'll like episode 9. Unlike some others I could name, this one is actually worthy of the Star Wars name, in my opinion.

Don't listen to the critics on Rotten Tomatoes (who give it, currently, a 57%). Note the audience rating, which is 87%. This is almost the exact inverse of episode 8, which had a 91% from the critics and a 43% from the audience. This basically shows that movie critics today have essentially no integrity or intellectual honesty. The movie is good, and the critics-- as usual-- are full of it.

(A side-rant. Ever since Roger Ebert passed away, there has not been a halfway decent movie critic/reviewer that I can find. I did not agree with everything Ebert said, or even most of what he said, but his opinions about movies were presented mostly logically, focused mostly on relevant things, and mostly without spoilers. I knew if I was thinking about watching a movie, I could read Ebert's review of it and know pretty reliably whether I would like the movie-- not that I liked the same sorts of movies he liked, which actually I mostly didn't-- but that his reviews were sufficiently honest that I could get a pretty good idea of whether I would like a movie based on what he said.)

Quick Note Regarding the Revised Cypher System Character Creator

The Character Generator for the revised edition of The Cypher System is almost ready. I am about two-thirds of the way through the foci, and have been updating the foci lists under the genres as I go. Once this is done, within a few days probably, after some final checking, it will be ready for launch. There may be will certainly be a few bugs and/or missing data at launch. There always is with these projects. Let me know if you see something that doesn't look right. If you don't want to post a comment on the blog for some reason, you can always email me any bugs you see. My email address is my first and last name, including the Roman numeral, all one word and lowercase, no dots or anything like that, at Gmail. (It is the same username as for Blogger, which you can copy and paste from the URL above, simply adding the @gmail.com part to my name).

Revised Cypher System Character Creator Update (Plus a Blog Update)

The new version of the Cypher System Character Creator (for TCS 2nd edition) is fairly close to being ready for launch. Done so far: descriptors and types. Still to do: new foci and genres. As noted in the previous post, once this is done, there will be two CS character creators: one for first edition and one for second edition.

The introduction of genre-specific species descriptors in the new book brought an interesting challenge since the generator's code was not originally designed with these in mind. After some thought, I decided not to add code that would dynamically take away or add in these descriptors based on genre selection, since it would require a major overhaul of the setGenre code for the sake of only a handful of descriptors. On top of that, many of the genre-specific descriptors could potentially work in other genres/settings. For example, space elves are a fairly common trope-- think Eldar from Warhammer 40k or Minbari from Babylon 5. Space dwarves are less common, but not unheard of. So, depending on setting (and GM approval, of course) Elf and/or Dwarf descriptors could potentially be used in a Science Fiction game. Similarly, the Half-Giant, Helborn, Morlock, and Roach descriptors could also be alien species with a little tweaking. On the other side of the coin, Artificially Intelligent could be used to represent a clockwork/automaton character in a Fantasy or Fairytale setting (think the Tin Woodsman from The Wizard of Oz or the clockwork soldier whose name escapes me at the moment from Return to Oz).

And moreover, not all fantasy settings have Elf or Dwarf characters; in fact probably most fictional fantasy worlds do not. To my mind, these species descriptors are not so much genre-specific as they are setting-specific (or perhaps one might prefer the term universe-specific).

So instead, the way it is set up now is that the species descriptors are available to all genres, but selecting one will display a brief note indicating that your descriptor choice is "genre-specific" and subject to GM approval. Obviously it goes without saying that everything is subject to GM approval, but these are definitely something you will want to run by your GM before becoming too attached to your Roach Adept Who Exists Partially Out of Phase or whatever.

Also of note, while updating descriptors I discovered that the Virtuous descriptor was missing from the existing first-edition Cypher System generator (and presumably has been MIA all this time). This has bee rectified; apologies to all frustrated would-be goodie-goodies out there.

Blog Update

The blog set another record this past November with 1701 views over the course of the month, a substantial increase over the previous monthly record of 1517, set back in August. In fact, the blog has not had fewer than 1200 views a month since last June. Most of the traffic is, as always, to the Numenera character generator, but an increasingly large slice goes to the Cypher System character generator now too. Those two pages together now account for well over half the site's total views.

Revised Edition Cypher System Character Creator: Coming Soon!

A few months ago the second edition of The Cypher System came out. I missed the Kickstarter (had just lost my job and decided to go back to school, so money was a bit of a concern), but the other day I went ahead and bought the PDF version of the revised CS core book. I am planning to post a revised version of the Cypher System Character Generator as soon as I can.

What I am planning to do this time-- and what I should have done when the second edition of Numenera came out-- is make separate generators for first edition and second edition. The Cypher System character creator that's out there now will remain as the first edition character creator, and the new one of course will be the revised edition. That's the plan, anyway. I have not gotten all the way through the new book yet, but it looks like changes to Tier One characters are fairly minor (e.g., for Warriors, Thrust has been removed and a couple of other Type abilities renamed). If I decide overall changes are minor enough, I may decide to just have the one (revised) character generator in order to reduce potential confusion. We shall see.

Things are still busy for me, but I do not expect the revised Cypher System generator to take long to set up.