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Stars Without Number ...

ExileInParadise

RPG Therapist
Staff member
Adamantium WoA
Wizard of Story
Elsewhere in the forum has been some mention of the Stars Without Number system/setting by Kevin Crawford.

I figured I'd open a discussion thread specific for it.

My first exposure to SWN was the module called Hard Light which I found packed with memorable setting pieces and adventure opportunities.

Several years ago now I bought a couple of Bundle of Holding deals of Stars Without Number books to see what the rest of the system/setting was like.

@JohnnFour has noticed from a couple of games in SWN that the system is very Old School Rules (OSR) and "not memorable."

I think that is very intentional - SWN is built to tap the way RPGs used to be long ago.

The other part is that Johnn said the adventures were nothing special.

That's unfortunate, but I think that's part of the risk of taking on a system like SWN.

What do I mean?

Stars Without Number is not a hugely hand-holding system.

What Kevin Crawford excels at is "sandboxing" - he writes up a lot of great tools and parts which a GM can use to build a sci-fi sandbox game from.

So, SWN is packed with systems and opportunities ... but not so much "go here, there and then there"

Even the modules like Hard Light are more like miniature applied sandboxes rather than more traditional adventures.

I think that balancing act / combination of Old School Rules and sandbox toolkit may be a struggle for more modern GMs to run, leading to less than amazing gameplay for a number of sessions.

I am wondering how a long-running campaign would go once the GM got their feet under them?

So, for the benefit of others:

Stars Without Number is set in ~3200 AD in the recovering wreckage of the Terran Mandate - a star-spanning empire shattered by a single event the rendered the core of star travel unusable.

Centuries later pockets of the Mandate are recovering and reconnecting.

So this is the setting - designed to be an exploration sandbox where the GM can pick and choose what kinds of sci-fi they want to include or leave out.

The GM picks how "ruined" the area still is, and how "recovered" it can be, which pulls huge levers on how the setting is played in.

An example might be the "Suns of Gold" supplement describing how to build a Traveller-style trading campaign in the SWN system.

The table of contents alone can give you a feel for SWN:
The Jewels of Foreign Suns: Trade Among The Fallen Worlds
Slaves to the Credit: The Business of Far Trading
An Honest Day's Trade: Cargo Sales and Business Holdings
Treasures In The Sky: World Creation Tags and Trade Profiles
An Offer You Can't Refuse: Creating and Running Trade Adventures
Lords of the New Suns: Founding Colony Worlds
Tools of the Trades: Equipment and Fittings for the Far Trade
GM Resources: Tables and Record Sheets for Quick Use

Slaves to the Credit, for example, covers what could be traded that backs various currencies on the various recovering worlds.

It also talks about setting up and running a basic merchant campaign, rather than providing a preset campaign.

One table is "Common goods and creating new ones"

Then there are sandbox tables for each type of world to help generate types of trade and types of troubles encountered when trading with that world.

This is very much in the style of all SWN books - a seed of ideas and systems designed around creating your own content to stock the sandbox.

What you don't find is tons of already rolled worlds.

Instead of "Here's your sector and the info about the worlds in it" you get "Preparing Your Sector for Colonization" and "Creating the Colony Worlds"

At the end of the section is a one page example of colonizing the world Bastiat to illustrate the use of the system.

So, in the end - much like this site - Stars Without Number is more "GM toolbox" than anything else, and the resulting game is highly variable based on the quality of the GM's investment in it.

I expect that a GM whose interest is captured by the setting could run a few solo games and build up an adventuring area with the tools provided that could get very interesting.

But, it would take the investment in the books, the time, and the hands on ... which I find very much like Old School GMing where you started with giant blank sheet, and the GM rite of passage was building your campaign world, THEN starting to run adventures in it.

I'd be very interested to know what anyone else with exposure to SWN thinks ...
 
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Stephan Hornick

Community Goblin & Master of the Archive
Platinum WoA
Wizard of Story
Wizard of Combat
Borderland Explorer
I've never heard anything about this system before exposure to it by this forum, but it seems it is just down my alley. Thank you for introducing the system to us!
 

knoppi

Well-known member
Platinum WoA
Gold WoA
Wizard of Story
Borderland Explorer
Hi, I'm currently running a SWN campaign. What can I add? I agree that the rules are okayish - in no sense remarkable. It's a mix of Dungeon World and D&D without really integrating the nice aspects of Dungeon World. That means: for skill roll you use 2d6 and add your attribute and skill modifier to overcome a goal, while for combat the rolls use a d20 to increase the randomness. But that's not the point of the books.

We play SWN in a West Marches Campaign style. I, currently, have 7 players, no real long-term experience yet, however. For this kind of play SWN seems very useful to me.

The starting point is the generation of the sector which is the first nice tool SWN gives the DMs. It's a matter of ~20 minutes to roll the key attributes of your systems. For each system you roll 2 tags and climate/biosphere/population traits. These attribute are meant as seeds for improvisation.
You can image Kevin Crawford having watched all the movies and read all the books that might seem relevant and condensed the tropes and topics into these random tables. In fact he did the same for Worlds without number again. With each tag come a quarter page with a short description and lists of:
* potential enemies
* friends
* typical conflicts
* treasures
* places

When I had rolled my 20ish systems in the "Marshall-sector" I, quite soon, had a feeling of the different factions that might fit there. For instance, I have two planets with the tag "Dying race". I decided that these races, lacking some vital resource, cannot stop their war, so they are two of the factions in the campaign. Then, there is a gate world through which the whole space travel has to go. For this planet I rolled the tag revolutionaries - an now I have a split sector.

As already mentioned SWN has a focus on factions. I started with a total of six factions. You create them like characters with traits and assets and an agenda. As with the planets these factions are characterized by some bullet points as seeds for your improvisation and between session they all have one turn in a random order. I dare to say that this faction-action-system is the greatest part of the system. While the tags are very useful seeds, these faction actions serve in two ways:
1. you have a system to really care for every faction
2. you, as a GM, can have some level of surprise.

With my sector set up I decided on six factions that might play a role and let them run 6 turns before session 0.
Six turns because I realized that the turns really show slow progress. That gave me some ground. I decided that the players should all be part of a science mission exploring the sector for one of the factions, called GNAO. This mission is a huge effort, so we need every type of expert. The players are currently still located at the home base but already discovered irregularities and found some old artifacts.
The mission is an asset for the faction, so only when the faction pays credits for this asset can they eventually start to explore other planets.
By then, I hope the characters have made some friends to influence the choice of the destination. They already have a favourite, I think: Recently, they got to know of a lost world which seems to belong to GNAO. Strange. But maybe even stranges is the alien artificial creature that told them about the lost world.

To summarize: I'm a big fan of SWN because of the DM tools it offers. I do not like the rules, but the nice thing is: you don't have to use them. Since there is also Worlds without number, that offers similar tools for Fantasy-like settings, I will probably sometime in the future combine it with either Dungeon World or AGE rules.
 
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Stephan Hornick

Community Goblin & Master of the Archive
Platinum WoA
Wizard of Story
Wizard of Combat
Borderland Explorer
Thank you, Jan! This was enlightening.
I guess, I would love to create my first system with some faction actions to have a better impression on how this works.
 
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