Got to Play in My First Session of Stars Without Number Last Night

There are many good things about having a week of vacation, and one of them is squeezing in a little extra gaming, especially as a player. Last night I got to play in a session of +James Aulds semi-irregular Stars Without Numbers game. It was good. (Did I mention the rules are free in PDF?)

I came in to the second session of what basically was a two part story arc, so it took me a little bit to get my feet grounded, but once I did things went pretty well. My Expert couldn't shoot for shit (if I didn't know any better, I could have sworn I was doing my best +Joe D impression) but in truth, that didn't matter much. The game was about exploration and roleplay. Well, that and skill use.

It's strange. When I read through the SWN rules, I noticed the 2d6 skill use roll and the basic skills available and didn't think much of it. In actual use, it rocks. I'm damn tempted to take a closer look at my beta copy of Spears of the Dawn and see how I can convert stuff to AD&D - the bell curve and the simple skill use is an awesome way to handle the skills.

In any case, I had a blast. The game ran until midnight, which is a bit late for me on a work night (yay vacation!) but I'll find a way to make it work for the next irregular session.

Yeah, I really need to go back and work on the SWN / LL hack...

Martial Arts For Stars Without Numbers (Free Supplement)

Now that I am diving head first into Stars Without Number, I find myself pleasantly surprised by the number of free, short supplements for the game. Mandate Archive: Martial Arts is the one I just grabbed, and it's 6 pages of gaming goodness are golden. It's not just the different styles of martial arts that are ready to be plugged into your SWN campaign, but even the advice on designing your own MA styles resonates with what I want to do with my GAPs project.

Here's the piece in question:

GMs should feel free to create their own new armed and unarmed
styles to match the particular interests of their players and campaign,
but a few important guidelines should be kept in mind. 

The goal of a style is not to make unarmed or primitive combat
skill better than projectile or energy weapons, but only an equally
reasonable option. For damage comparisons, look at mag rifles and
shear rifles to see what sort of weaponry they’ll be compared against.
If the style does more damage than those weapons in the hands of
equivalent masters, then the style is doing too much damage.

Excellent yet simple advice. Balanced yet different.

Perfect.

Mini Review - Stars Without Number: Core Edition

I have to make a confession - When stars Without Numbers was first released, it didn't excite me. Not because it wasn't a good system, but because I really wasn't yearning for a good sci-fi game. So I gave it a quick look and it went back to sit on my virtual bookshelf.

Why then am I currently reading Stars Without Numbers: Core Edition when the free edition is sitting on my hard drive? It isn't just the cover (which is striking).

I'm interested in the society generation tables. (well, and the mech and robot stuff - with a little work SWN:Core and Labyrinth Lord would make for a coherent and balanced alternative to Rifts).

I was expecting something along the lines of the classic Traveller system generation. What I got was more like Microscope. I think I like the system in SWN: CE better than either of these choices. Given a few minutes, you could get some unique world backstory for just about any game system. Heck, I'd borrow this for my next fantasy campaign. Maybe the publishers could publish this section on its own - it is that good.

There really is enough here to cover all the world and government types your might want in your game, with tables that cover just about every aspect of the societies.  If you were to crib this for a fantasy campaign building session, each "world" would be a country, and you'd have to smooth out some of the inconsistencies between countries in the same geographical area, but with the world building tool you are given really could build a world.

As for SWN in general - I really like the class system. Comfortable enough for me as an AD&D grognard to feel right at home while still keeping the system fresh and effectively gear to sci-fi. I do so want to make a Rifts like mashup tho' ;)

If you haven't checked out Stars Without Numbers yet, you can grab the free version and give it a test drive.