Because I can’t be at the School Club for the next two weeks, I asked the students tonight if they could help me try to learn a new game. They agreed and I introduced them to the Cypher System Rulebook. Of course, you can’t just play Cypher out of the book so we sat down and I asked, “What kind of World do you fancy playing in?”

Going around the table, I asked the five players to pitch in suggestions for what they’d like to see in the World of the game. We started with genre and ended up with a blend of near-modern, science-fiction, and post-apocalyptic ideas. Here’s the list I made as notes:

• Magic
• Planet Earth
• Future
• Plants that Attack People
• Mutations
• Psionics
• Robots
• Zombies

There were suggestions of a high-tech city where the rich people live, then a surrounding city “a bit like London” where most people live, and then the edges of the city and “the wilds where the poor live.” Someone suggested small scattered settlements in the wilds where people have to try and survive. There was talk of blasters and swords.

I asked them what they most enjoyed doing while roleplaying and jotted down this list from what was said at the table:

• Casting spells
• Exploration
• Fighting monsters
• Trying to survive
• Storytelling
• Social interaction
• Feeling like the world is alive and changing
• Teamwork
• Finding resources

Then we tried our hand at creating characters. That was a little tougher because you have to make choices about special abilities and neither me nor they had much of a clue. We read out a few bits from the rulebook to figure out what stuff was but mostly we grabbed what sounded cool.

At the end of the session, after 1.5 hours of discussion and character creation, we came up with five potential heroes:

• Lena Toshinoru, a clever adept who loves the void.
• Pippa Ocean, a graceful adept who would rather be reading.
• Charlie, an exiled explorer who murders.
• Nihlus, a mad warrior who pilots starcraft.
• As yet unnamed, a mysterious warrior who hunts.

I’m fairly sure I can figure out a way to pull all that together into a World that is coherent enough we can go adventure in. The biggest worry is that choice of the character “who pilots starcraft” given the otherwise grounded and post-apoc sense they gave me… but I am sure I will work it out.

This is what happens when you ask five 12-year-olds what they want to play and give them totally free rein with a toolkit system like Cypher. To be honest, I found it highly entertaining and am looking forward to seeing how it pans out. Wish us luck!

Game on!