For this post, I have called them common and uncommon races – some settings might allow for more interesting descriptions (mortal/immortal races, humanoid/non-humanoid races, etc…).Ĭommon races have the following characteristics:ġ) They are common – Specifically, it would be perfectly normal for two or more players to be playing the same race.Ģ) Their racial characteristics are averages, rather than something every member of the race shares – The average dwarf may be tough and favour an axe, but not every single dwarf is like that.ģ) Compared to a human baseline, individual variance is more important than racial attributes – Elves may be generally more graceful than humans, but a specific elf might not be… and even if they are, a more prominent characteristic might be that character’s intelligence. This is certainly not the only way to work this… just the way that I am currently favouring.įirstly, divide all the races in a setting into two groups.

I have been pondering a slightly different approach, which I present below. This just cements all non-human races as being generic stereotypes. This is for a couple of reasons…ġ) In many systems, choosing a race is a very minor part of character creation in the Cypher System, the descriptor has a large effect on a starting character, so it’s a shame to heavily restrict that choice by race.Ģ) If two people want to play an elf, they both have to take the same descriptor this makes it harder to then separate their individual niches in the party, as they have a large overlap in skills.ģ) The implication, though this could be worked around, is that elves have the elf descriptor, dwarves have the dwarf descriptor and humans get to choose from all the standard descriptors in the book. The examples in the book are not bad – mechanically, they definitely evoke the feel of the typical D&D dwarf and elf – but I personally think that racial descriptors is a poor way to implement races in the system.

One of the standard staples of a fantasy setting, is having half a dozen races to choose from and the fantasy genre section of the cypher system core rules gives a couple of example race descriptors that could be used. I have recently been pondering the use of races in the Cypher System.

Cypher system pdf .uz