Ravendesk_Lee said: TheFool1972: The disposable item (cypher) mechanic actually works brilliantly for a cyberpunk setting. The reason being that cyberpunk is, in part, a disposable future, where technology is cheap and streets are littered with discarded junk. The Vurt setting is a bit more unique and strange, so the cyphers include mathemagical items that work kind of like magic in other games, lots of drug cyphers and then cheaply made, disposable tech.

Other than the cypher mechanic, the system is ideal for Vurt because the game takes place in two worlds: the Vurt dreamworld and the real world. The system is designed with a focus on narrative so when you go into a dream and *poof* you're a different entity entirely, it's easy to determine the difficulty of tasks and the effect of items. Not all the Vurt dreams (discovered through feathers!) change your character, but the Cypher System allows you to go nuts describing dream logic and doesn't bog you down with loads of maths. Click to expand...

I can speak to this a little if Lee doesn't mind… previously I've played The Strange, Numenera and for the past two years had the pleasure of being in two of Ravendesk's Gen Con sessions. The first year, it was just me and my wife and this past August we dragged a whole group into the Saturday session. Between the group, we had about 3 or 4 games together in various numbers and after our Vurt session, we all agreed it was the high point of our Con.I mention The Strange as there are some simularities (real world/Vurt could, with some effort, be seen as similar to The Strange's recursions, if you want). Cypher feels very fitting for Vurt's setting and I think it's actually feel like a more clean system than The Strange (sorry, MCG!). The 'modes' (e.g. Human, Dog, Cyberdog, Shadow, etc) extend the base Cypher concept with more vertatility but they really make character creation any harder. My character, Oedipus Jones a Robodogman Speaker who Tops Gears, was a new character that i put together in 15-30 minutes the night before our Vurt game.Jeff Noon's Vurt world feels somewhat light on actually 'science', but it makes up for it with tons of crazy fiction. the Vurt Cypher implementation feels the same way—it's not crunchy, it doesn't get in the way.Our group had a good pull from a big list of random cyphers. There's a lot of 'fun drugs' in the cypher list, that helped us with rolls or allowed us to do some crazy stuff during the Gen Con scenario.Example: My driver character ended up with an unlabeled blue Vurt feather. It turned out to be a 'lucid blue' Vurt feather called Baby Driver (Baby Driver is featured in the first Vurt book). A lucid blue feather keeps you in the real world, but at the same time, plugs you into the Vurt—think lucid dreaming.We were in a bind with several Manchester police cars coming our way, and I hopped in our car with our entire crew (including a shadowman holding on to the roof and a dogman undercover cop in the trunk), activated Baby Driver, and started imagining the world as a super simple, almost Roger Rabbit Toontown-esque world where I was the best driver in the world. I drove the car right inbetween the tiny space between two Manchester Police vehicles (Lancelots, I think— think Hummer-on-crack), rolled great, and blasted out of the area we were in at top speed while completely ignoring danger and, I guess, physics (and only losing our side mirrors). Once we were safe, we jumped out the car, I gave a salute to the car (obviously looking to me, to my simplistic lucid blue Baby Driver world view & skills as a anthropomorphized car with headlight-eyes and smiling grill) before the entire car fell apart in a final cartoon-esque scene.I've used Cyphers in MCG games before, andwill compare to using the feather to save our entire gang while high on life.Another of our crew randomly ended up with three drug-related cyphers (which is good, since she was a tweaker low on highs). She was able to stack two of the cyphers, one cancelled out the side effects of the other, to save our bacon in one of the scenes.Random, but, I wanted to mention the super smart implementation of guns in Vurt—Guns are rare. Setting off a gun (if you have one) will have the Manchester police at your location in 60 seconds). This pushes your group to be a little more creative (melee weapons are still available. Brass knuckles for everyone!) and you end up being more strategy and less brute force should you find yourself in a scrap.