#RPGaDAY2023 Day 7: “SMARTEST RPG you’ve played”

Not being sure whether we mean smart as in intelligent and clever, or smart as in best presented, I’ve opted to consider both aspects. Being asked to narrow that down to one RPG is, frankly, impossible: I have read and played too many RPGs.

The smartest games are the games which offer me the most of what I want in the neatest and most useful package. There are two stand-out games in this category: the Cypher System Rulebook (Revised) and GURPS Third Edition (Revised).

Cypher System

Cypher System has some of the smartest and most accessible ideas I have played with in recent years. While it markets very much towards the broadest of appeals, it is far more successful than its more popular counterpart because Cypher has some clear design goals.

Cypher is about telling exciting, high-octane cinematic adventure stories.

You create a character using a simple narratively-stated sentence and this cleverly selects a whole set of cool options that help define your hero. “You are an adjective noun who verbs” was a revelation.

The Cypher System is a d20-rolling game where everything is scaled from 1-10, simplifying the GM’s cognitive load, and the players handle the dice. What makes it fun to run as the GM is making Intrusions into the schemes of the player characters. The whole thing is fuelled by the trading back and forth of XP, wherein players can alter their fate in play or hold on to XP for improvement.

GURPS 3e

GURPS Third Edition is smart because it is the RPG that truly allows me to run cross-genre games with minimal friction. The best games I’ve played with GURPS have been those which embraced the flexibility that arises from having a grounded and realistic system wedded to any and every genre.

GURPS gives me the flexibility to play any genre without falling, “into the twin traps of watered-down combat (where a lightning bolt is just like a .45 pistol) or incompatibility (where players have to learn so many alternate rules… that they might as well be learning a new game).”

The first point is where GURPS rises above almost all generic games, Cypher included. But I would choose the Third Edition over the Fourth for just one added piece of smartness: it has a clearer, shorter, more defined Basic Set. This makes it easier to learn and thus the more sensible option when you’ve got the whole multiverse to choose from.

For me, smart games are those which provide us with innovation, yes, but also support us in getting our gaming dreams to the table. Cypher helps me when I want a higher-powered cinematic experience with lots of cool shticks; GURPS Third gives me what I want for everything else.

Game on!