if you mean a cvar from a server setting, you can't alter those. if you mean something to use in scripts, you can declare a float,string and a vector using declare i think, and simply use set to set it to whatever value you want
Thanks guys. Apparently it's not possible in retail JKA, but in OpenJK we've had a coding feature implemented into ICARUS that lets you set a CVAR for the SP game from a script. I'm testing it now...