"Can You Survive the Horror?" RP System Website
Welcome to the "Can You Survive the Horror?" Website. This page and section explains the basics of how CYStH works and why. The links up at the top will direct you to the most important areas of the website with a simple click. Each Section has a drop-down menu or two that will allow more precise navigation to each Page. If you're interested in the latest news, please check out our Message Board.
"Can You Survive the Horror" (CYStH) is a free-based, self-contained Roleplaying System based on the Survival Horror genre. By "free-based" we mean that CYStH is not based on any other type of Roleplaying System (i.e. GURPS, AD&D/d20 Modern, etc.), and therefore is free of the limitations (and copyrights) of those Systems. CYStH was created on 15 June 2000, borne out of a much more simplistic system (with no actual name) created by someone else. When they abandoned that System the creator of CYStH (who had been a high-ranking official of that group), took that loose skeletal framework, tore it down, and started building anew using the basic ideas that had been put forth and rebuilt the System entirely. Today, CYStH bears absolutely no resemblance to the creation that spawned it.
CYStH has always struggled to maintain a balance between ease-of-use and interaction - balancing out how easy CYStH is to pick up and learn with what each Character is able to do, and how much they can do. Before the CYStH Website went offline in November 2004, we were in the middle of upgrading the System itself to its latest incarnation - Version 6.66 - from its previous version - Version 5.56 - which we had been operating under for nearly a year.
CYStH is designed as a full-fledged RPG inspired by the Survival Horror genre, with levels, character stats, and that sort of thing. We DO NOT have complicated character sheets that list such details as "Will" and "Intelligence" and such. Instead, more simple statistics such as Health (HP), Stamina (SP), Item Capacity (IC), and Ammunition Capacity (AC) take their place. CYStH doesn't have stats like Intelligence, Will and so forth, because they simply aren't needed to play the game the way it was built. This takes preassure off of people who have little or no Gaming experience and feel they are surrounded by some unseen elite, and for those hard-core table top RP'ers to relax some and not have to obsessively worry about Stat Points, yet still allow everyone who wants to give it a try to understand the System quite easily once they read about how it works.
With CYStH, once a character learns a Personal Skill or a Training Discipline, they are assumed to know those talents well enough to perform their jobs. If they ever need to repair, decode, or unlock something without a key, they never need to roll dice to determine if they succeed. Instead, they may need to complete a puzzle, making the players themselves think carefully about how to progress instead of determining something they ought to know "by chance." CYStH only uses dice to determine the outcome of truly random events, such as Attacking or Searching for supplies. This makes the game itself more involving, like the console games that have inspired its creation.
Most of all, though, CYStH is about having fun with friends and enjoying the Survival Horror Roleplaying experience. We do not engage in petty squabbles, "drama" or other such distractions, though Members often do engage each other in RP's outside of CYStH events. We invite you to come in and enjoy our Website. If you're interested in joining, check out the "Leagues" button up at the top.
