A cypher is a secret. It’s something that not everyone understands. It holds potential. Promise.

The Cypher System is the critically acclaimed game engine that powers any campaign in any genre. You may have heard of it as the system that drives the award-winning Numenera roleplaying game. Lauded for its elegance, ease of use, flexibility, and narrative focus, the Cypher System unleashes the creativity of GMs and players with intuitive character creation, fast-paced gameplay, and a uniquely GM-friendly design.

The Cypher System is easy for beginners to learn, but offers all the depth, nuance, and complexity you want. Some people call it a “rules-light” system, but it has the power and sophistication of games that are much more mechanically heavy—and yet it is substantially more flexible. GMs find the game easy to prep for and easy to run—it frees up the GM’s attention, in prep and at the game table, to focus on cool, creative ideas rather than numbers, mechanics, and “crunch.”

Cypher System characters are built from the concept up. A descriptive sentence provides not just an easily-understood overview of the character, but also the mechanical basis for skills, abilities, and stats. And the Cypher System gives players amazing narrative engagement, rewarding player-driven subplots and giving players resources to bear on the tasks and situations they most want to succeed at.

The Cypher System Rulebook

The Cypher System Rulebook gives you 448 pages of character options, equipment, game rules, and special coverage of key genres, creatures, NPCs, and cyphers. It has the complete game rules, along with genre-specific rules and advice for fantasy games, modern games, science-fiction games, horror, superheroes, post-apocalyptic, and more. And it provides highly customizable character options, loads of equipment and hundreds of cyphers and artifacts, and nearly 70 creatures and NPCs. It caps off with great GM advice on adapting the Cypher System to a variety of settings, and on running fun, engaging, fast-paced, easy-to-GM game sessions.

Start a new campaign set in a fantasy land of elves and fae creatures, a science fiction setting spanning the galaxy, or a modern slasher horror game. The Cypher System Rulebook gives you everything you need to run your game using the critically acclaimed, award-winning, and just plain fun-to-play Cypher System!