Building your own cypher chest

Building your own cypher chest or the power of index cards

You may remember these handy things, when you desperately tried to remember new vocabulary back in school. But fear not. We will not these things to get you to learn something. We use them so the players can see on one glance, what there items, artifacts or cyphers are capable of doing.
Monte Cook Games offers a lot of great cards for your gaming experience, but if you have a specific setting in mind, a lot of numenera cyphers just don't fit in quiet well.
My native language is German, so i can just translate the cyphers i want to use, or adapt them for my setting. Players can write the rolled level on them so the actually remember when they use it.
Players don't write cyphers down, they get a card and toss it like UNO game if they activate it.  When it's used, it goes back to the stash for future games! Don't wanna roll lists for loot? Shuffle the cards and let them pick some. Need inspiration for a Combat Intrusion? Pick a cypher card and see if you can use it as inspiration.
They are also handy for things players keep forgetting, like other player character names, special rules, Effort Rules etc. Write it down on a card, and give it to the player.

So how do i make my own Cypherchest?

First get some Index Cards from a paper supply store or amazon (mine cost about 2€ for 100 pieces, because i like the stronger paper). As you are planing a role playing game, you should have some pens, if not you should get some of these too. Index cards come in different sizes, pick a size that will work for you. I use A7 (a bit bigger than a poker card) which gives me enough space to write down things like the appearance of the cypher or side effects etc. You can get them squared, lined and blank. I use squared ones for my artifacts and lined ones for my cyphers.
If you want to have your cyphers and artifacts in a different color, get different colored index cards. I use white cards for cyphers and yellow ones for my artifacts. If you got all of this its time to start writing!

Coming up with your own cyphers!

Grab your rulebook and read through the cypher or item section. Anything you like gets written on a card. Adapt the things to your setting, or add extra effects for higher levels on the cypher. Use the abilities of the different foci to give you ideas for cyphers. For realistic setting it can be quit difficult to come up with cyphers that fit in the settings. Don't think about cyphers as items here. They can be a sudden moment of insight, something that changes up an encounter or just plain luck. Think of things that would be useful to the players during the campaign. Maybe something that helps the player with a certain challenge you planned for them.

I use the headline of my index cards as color code for sorting my cyphers. I use different categories:

• Subtle (blue): Cyphers that fit in every setting, a lot of them were inspired by the cypher asset deck 
• Combat (black): Grenades, Bombs one time combat abilities.
• Heals/Buffs (green): Med-Kits, healing salves, poisons, drugs and other buffs. One of my players plays a Suk doctor so it was important for my to give him the ability to pick cyphers that fit his playstyle.
• Setting Specific (red): Everything that is mostly suitable only for one setting.

Keep some index cards near you while planning you session, if you come up with something new, or have an idea for an artifact the players should get as loot, write it down, and keep it with your notes until you need it.

I got into the habit of reading new numenera or cypher books with cards next to me, and i ended up with a lot more cyphers than my players could use.

Tell your players to think up with cyphers they would want to use, if you like it, add it to your deck.

My handwriting is terrible or i don't wanna write!

Not everybody likes to write by hand. If you are one of those people you probably like to type. You can do great things with photoshop or word-processing templates. You can spice things up with pictures or your own backside design. If you own the pdf's of you system you can often copy and paste out the descriptions of items, cyphers, cyphers and artifacts. Print them, cut them and use them as you would normal index cards. Or get the cypher chest from the Monte Cook Games Store if you are playing numenera!

I finished my cyphers but got left over cards

Fear not, you can use your cards for a lot of other things. The other card decks from numenera and the cypher system are a good inspiration. I made XP cards for my group, cards of status effects (blinded, paralysed etc.) which i hand to the player who receives it. I told the players to draw on the XP cards, so every XP gets his own personality. If it lasts longer than a round, i put check boxes according to the duration of the effect next to it and my own enemy cards, that are very helpful if you need to reuse enemies multiple times.

Before every session i think about stuff that would happen to PC's without the group (like dreams, or other things that need to be kept secret from the rest of the group). These can also be rumors or quest hooks to give a player the opportunity to talk about it to the group without me telling it to everybody. It also has the advantage that the player can decide how much of the information he shares with the group. This is also very handy for perception checks. Write your description down on a card, hand it to the successful player and let him describe it.

You get tired of explaining how effort works and how much it works? Write it down, toss a table next to it with the cost according to levels of effort and the questions will stop. Works as well for complex NPC's names as rules.

Make your own intrusion cards and use them during play or while planing. 

You always forget the ridiculous names your players come up with for there characters? Write them down and use it as a bookmark in your notes. 

I started out with only a few cyphers in my deck, but i always aimed for cyphers that would fit into any setting, so i could reuse them in most of the games i run. I also told my group that they could use them if they are running a game. Since then they have been used in Numenera, Firefly and a Star Wars Game! 

So what are waiting for, get some cards and make your own cypher deck!