Are there any published adventures that offer a good introduction to the game? I'm running a 4-ish session mini-campaign for my players but I'm not very familiar with the system. Most of my time is taken by learning the system. I'd love an adventure that I can run for 1-2 sessions that allow a good, easy intro to the system and set up something for future session. I have the Lurian campaign but that doesn't have anything as pre-set as I'd like. Thanks in advance.

A fun idea I'll be including in my campaign, but also wanted to share.

According to the rules of interstellar travel, for a spike drive to shift into metadimensional space you need A) Small local gravity B) Massive Gravitational Energy gradient This is achieved by going to the outer edge of a stars gravitational influence before jumping

BUT, the Lagrange point of a binary star system (the point where the gravity of both stars cancel each other out) also satisfies these constraints. HENCE a binary Neutron Star system is the optimal place to do research on Psionics whose MES may be amplified by the optimal metadimensional environment.

Feel free to sub out for two black holes, the math works out the same. For bonus time constraints, these systems will stay stable for millenia, BUT will speed up and get more powerful as they approach criticality. Maybe the BBEG needs to wait until the the optimal moment of the stars spiraling into each other to amplify their psionic abilities.

Lots of room for psionic fun in this environment

I’m just getting into SWN. How do you all run aliens as PC and NPCs? Do you create them in advance or allow players to create what they want during character creation? How do you see them into your game then?

So, I've got a player who both has acquired a premium sniper rifle and wants to engage in long range snipery. This is cool and all, and I want him to play the way he wants to play...

But it sucks.

The damn sniper rifle has an effective range of 1km and up to 2km extreme range. Additionally he modified it to have a larger magazine and acquired gunslinger, thereby eliminating all of the balancing* mechanisms of the rifle. Between that and his like +8 bonus to the roll he basically has eliminated the threat of combat and the rest of my players know it.

They are now approaching adventure areas with the mindset of "Oh, there are bad guys there, I guess we'll just post up exactly 1km away (so no range penalty) and have Alabaster shoot 'em one at a time and then waltz in an do whatever we are wanting to do."

This. Sucks.

I know that the baddies shouldn't just sit there and not react whilst he shoots them, but even if they hide behind cover, he still has a good enough bonus that he is hitting most of the time and it's not like they are any threat to him BECAUSE HES AN EFFING KILOMETER AWAY.

I have considered having them load up in a shuttle and go find him, but I see two problems with that:

1. "Oh good, the baddies left. Let's stealth check to avoid the shuttle and waltz in an do the thing."
2. The player in question is, innocently, a whiny-type of player. If I do that, he's just gonna complain that I'm punishing/railroading him and making the game suck even more.

I've considered adding a level of ballistics in, like having to account for air pressure, wind speed and bullet drop and such (since those are realistic concerns that makes shots at long range much more difficult then up in your face gunnery), but that kinda cancels out execution shots, right? Or, in turn is canceled out by him just sitting there for a minute.

Any advice on how to handle this? Cuz right now I have players that are choosing not the engage with the game, and effectively an empty sector because what threats do NPCs represent when you can shoot them from a goddamned kilometer away rolling The exact same roll you would if you were ten feet away. Why wouldn't you? Right?

*I know this game isn't about balanced combat, please don't remind me. It doesn't help as much as you think it does.

I'm a developer and I'm running a SWN campaign, and I noticed that there was no Adventurer subclasses in the class dropdown selector, so I added them!

https://github.com/Roll20/roll20-character-sheets/issues/13077

The pictures there are a bit out of date--the new options are:

• Adventurer (Expert/ Psychic)
• Adventurer (Expert/Warrior)
• Adventurer (Psychic/Warrior)

they will populate the class feature box, if it's empty.

The changes may take a while to hit the server, but they should be up now I think.

Anyone have any other things that are annoying/missing/could be improved, let me know. I'm doing a bunch of tinkering in roll20 to get my own campaign started so it's on my mind.

Edit: seems like it takesa bit longer than expected to deploy but it's coming!

Because of some personal issues I find the SRDs a lot easier to use for CWN and WWN, and I've been thinking about prepping a campaign for SWN, but right now there's no parallel document. Does anyone know if there are plans for it?

I've been reading RPG system books more recreationally than hobbyist. I've heard a fair amount about the SWN faction system. Is there something similar in CWN? If not I want to pick up SWN soon, if CWN has it, then I've already got a back log of books on my night stand.

Thanks. And I apologize if this post is out of place, there doesn't seem to be a CWN sub.

I've read some of the rules and read posts in this sub for a while. I know SWN is a sci-fi osr-ish game. But what I don't understand is what type of game SWN can be used for. Can I play a game like Mass Effect with SWN (just an example, I'm not looking for advice on how to convert races and so on)? Can I play an The expanse game? Or something like Blade Runner? Are psionic arts magic in the setting? Is just dungeoncrawling in the space?

Give me examples of what can be done with SWN please. You can point to one videogame/movie/book and tell me "Is like that but".

Hope my request is clear, thank you for the answers

I've been looking around for supplements for Stars Without Number and I was wondering which ones do people recommend. Are there any books that pair well with SWN?

For example I've been making things like a TL3 artillery which is basically a combination demo charge and hydra array. Though I was wondering if the books had similar items to base my creations off of.

For those curious. Artillery has a range of 15000m. Requires a spotter to fire which goes off of dex. Spotter selects three points which act like throwing a grenade, but on a fail the artillery goes in a random direction by a 1d10 * 5m. Each hit acts as a demo charge (3d10). If you are in the range of multiple blasts, you only take the highest. Non reinforced structueres are obliterated. In total it takes 2 turns to fire. One turn to select the spots and a second for them to land.

I'm working on a sector sourcebook for SWN, detailing each system in the sector (see map below).

Here's the question. Would you, as a reader, prefer the systems arranged in alphabetical order or in numerical order by sector coordinates (0102, 0103, 0104, etc.)?

Should it be Aeolus, Aip, Asticot, Astraeus, Bava, Boreas, etc.?

Or should it be Ironside, Munro, Cannon, Campre, Zephyrus, Namroc, Bava, Asticot, etc.?

https://preview.redd.it/z7ey4u0sr7bd1.png?width=2550&format=png&auto=webp&s=e84db4174e99b763d126abad80d4829bd90c3db8

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fU8s6mN6lLZ9S8W5YaZ5Yu_7yLQbA_M8UlCIy9O6r7g/edit?usp=sharing I

Idk if you like me were like "why not many many more hulls?" well I was playing Endless Sky last night and thought with a lil math its ships are already awesome fro SWN so I did this coversion. Adding three ship classes was entirely on me, because Ive always felt the jump from Fighter to Frigate was a lot. You can always make all the Corvettes Fighters and all the Caravels and Barques Frigates and play RAW for classes. I adjusted some base ship HP to fit the slightly upped scale on the high end. Free use resource. I also added a value for minimum default cargo tonage, to allow certain ships unique gimicks of big tonnage but less free mass without having to add mandatory parts to the sheet.

System: Stars Without Number Revised Edition

Platforms: PbP on Discord

Language: English

Description: We are a discord-based group ttrpg campaign using the Stars Without Number system in a text-based and play by post format. This game is inspired by the Westmarch style, but is more about allowing the nomadic space fleet the player characters all come from continue traveling in search of an ultimate goal.

Stellar Horizons is about a nomad space fleet, calling themselves the Reisende, formed centuries ago when human civilization across the stars collapsed in a galaxy-wide apocalyptic event. While life has been hard, the fleet has never had to truly worry about its way of life coming under threat. But now, resources harder to find and today's planetary rulers become ever less inviting of unaligned fleets visiting their worlds.

In search of a solution, the Reisende come across an ancient logistics log in an abandoned outpost detailing what might be their salvation: a colossal battleship, one of the most advanced ever created by the AI-driven god-forges of Old Terra. Reclaiming, even salvaging it, could secure the fleet's existence for generations and reclaim some fragment of Man's old glory to thrive among the stars. However, time has corrupted the logs, aside from its destination sector. The fleet sets course for the Kalmar sector, to roll the dice for the hope of their salvation.

https://discord.gg/hzru7J9NeJ

Im looking to run a game. Initially I wanted to run CWN but I want more variety and freedom when making the campaign. So I was thinking of combining the various systems.

I've already read on a separate post to not combine magic from SWN and WWN. Will the SWN and CWN magic systems be compatible though or should I just stick with magic from one of the systems?

I was also thinking I would use classes from SWN and the operator from CWN as sort of a alternative to adventurer. Potentially allowing WWN classes particularly the Beastmaster. Potentially any of the partial classes that get arts but none that get spellslots.

While maybe using CWN Hacking/Cyberware and mod rules.

Anyone that's combined games are the cyberware in SWN and CWN compatible or should I pick one games cyberware to use and ignore the other.

What systems and rules should i not mix and match.

EDIT* I was thinking just last night that I might wholesale allow weapons and armor from all three games. With all WWN weapons being considered primitive making it much less effective against SWN armor and weapons. Giving CWN and SWN armors armor soak. It might be complicating things to much though.

I love SWN, for me it's the best game system out there: sleek, well made, tons of fun. But I'm also a fan of it's inspiration: Traveler. One of the things Traveler has that SWN doesn't is the amazing Lifepaths system for character creation. Now the games are different, Traveler has more skills, it doesn't have character progression (at least in the same way), SWN is a lot more carefully balanced - but I figured with some elbow grease I could bridge the system between the games.

It's still work in progress, but it's nearing a form of completion and I'd like to share it with the community here use it if you wish, share thoughts and feedback, etc. Without further adieu the SWN Lifepaths adaptation by me:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fRw94Y0kCOwSXGL6RquAELcqfkxJJNILSUDdUtHCQWk/edit?gid=119259626#gid=119259626

Some of the key changes I've made from both SWN and Traveler:

For SWN the main one is that there's a few more skills. Animals, Navigate, Deceive, Mechanics, Science, Vacc, and Drive. Striking a balance of adding more vs keeping the existing sleek list is tough but I'm very happy with how the new options 1) require a full party to want a couple extra skill ranks to cover everything and 2) allow the training tables more distinct variety. Splitting Fix into the more basic version vs Mechanics for advanced, and adding a Vacc skill are what I think are the two most controversial but well Nothing's set completely in stone and I do like it this way.

For Careers they no long come with a list of set skills to rank to 0, you just get what you get from training, advancements, and events. This is a pretty big nerf to University especially but it's needed to keep the game balance. Talking University (and Academy) its been double nerfed to also give less ranks in skills but it's still good for the INT up and qualification bonus.

I also haven't stuck to a list of careers from any particular source, I've made y own list splitting and adding as I personally have felt wanting. One big change is the lack of subpaths for careers because without even more in depth skills ala Traveler I feel it hits the point of either not being worth existing due to too much overlap or worth an entirely new career in the list. Theres still more tables than just personal training and service skills for most of the careers, either as completely optional stuff like "Grift skills" for Thief or having specific requirements like Commission or skill thresholds.

Benefits I had to change a lot for the starting money balance in SWN. Now careers only grant a single benefit roll but get both credits and other options ( rn all the other options are blank for a pass later) and the numbers are obviously much smaller than Traveler ones to match the 2d6x100 starting credits roll. Debt/loan options have been added to bridge the gap if a character gets shafted from poor rolls; and on average characters will come out somewhat richer than base SWN. Also I have no idea how to tackle ship shares when SWN generally runs differently in regards to starting with ships.

Table sizes are not all the same, I generally like more content so the careers where Ive been inspired or found a good source of events simply have thicker tables but still try toi maintain a similar balance of good/bad/neutral events.

Additionally I've integrated and expanded the Homeworlds system from Crawford's Sandbox #2, because it's excellent and his go at a form of lifepaths was a big inspiration for how to make this somewhat balanced.

Let me know what you think and thank you!

For context, ever since I was a kid and my parents let me watch "Catch Me If You Can" when I was inappropriately too impressionable, I have been fascinated by the trope of using villains to catch villains and the idea that sometimes to kill a monster, you have to become one.

So when one of my planet's randomly rolled the Perimeter Agency Tag, it felt obvious. I remembered reading about them, and the thing that stood out to me was how their main focus (perhaps their only focus, i read it along time ago) was to enforce the laws of Maltech, and I started thinking "why would space cops still be operating 600 years after their governing body and source of funding (terran mandate) died with a Scream?" And I thought the only reason would be an almost fanatical devotion to their cause and ideology. That lead me to thinking about making them a kind of monastic order. From there it was barely a skip and a hop to thinking about the Witchers and CP77's MaxTac (a unit of cyberpsychos equipped and organized to hunt other cyberpsychos) and there was answer: Agents of the PA in my sector are products of Maltech built and design to hunt Maltech abusers. And if they can be captured, those abusers will be turned into the very agents that hunted them.

I know its prolly not a super original idea, and I doubt I'm the first one to treat the PA this way, but when my players unwittingly uploaded an unbraked AI into their ship's network, I did a little epilogue teaser thing at the end of the session basically alerting them that a space Witcher named Agent Raban was now hunting them. We all got pretty excited about it and I just had to share.

Looking for a ruleset that expands on a group of pc's who own a planet. I'm looking for something that goes more in depth than the factions rules, suns of gold has come closest to what I'm looking for but it's still a little too simple, not to mention every citizen only generates a single credit for a month. Additionally it's more being a colonial patron than actually ruling the planet(which is more of what I want).

Ideally the system would cover income generation, and then required spending like on military and social services, etc. While I can't say I care much for complex simulation, I'm willing to look at anything that is for swn or adjacent to it. Mainly though the system needs to have 1.Income generation 2. At least general approximation of population and how much income that generates 3. Guidelines for converting that income to other things like military, Holdings, upkeep, etc.

Would the level-5 routine "Will of the Machine" work on sentient VIs ?

Trying to find sources for Pretech space weaponry for reference. Does anyone have sources that include some??

My players recently acquired a Star Trek style ship with lots of crewmen, so they've been bringing red shirts along with them on their away teams and I'm wondering about how Morale works with the Lead skill.

Lead: Convince others to also do whatever it is you’re trying to do. Talk might persuade them that fol- lowing you is smart, but Lead can make them do it even when they think it’s a bad idea. Roll it to lead troops in combat, convince others to follow you, or maintain morale and discipline.

Do you roll Lead instead of Morale?

The two entries in the book for Morale don't mention the Lead Skill at all.

Then there's the Authority Focus, which one of my players has, that complicates it even further.

Authority:

Level 2: Those who follow you are fired with confi-

dence. Any NPC being directly led by you gains a Morale and hit roll bonus equal to your Lead skill and a +1 bonus on all skill checks. Your followers will not act against your interests unless under extreme pressure.

This implies that you have to have this focus in order to actually get the benefits of Lead. Which seems weird.

So what do you think is the correct way to run Lead?

For the past several weeks, I have been working on a sourcebook for Sector-85, the setting of my two adventures "The Terror-Dome of Warlord Daikhan" and "Six Weeks on Zephyrus-2". I wanted to create a setting inspired by 80s science fiction B-movies such as "Battle Beyond the Stars", "Ice Pirates", "Metalstorm: the Destruction of Jared Syn", "Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone", and "Starchaser: the Legend of Orin".

I'm done with the primary writing. Currently working on cleaning it up, eliminating duplicates, editing, etc. Then comes layout and illustration.

However, I passed another milestone this morning - I finished the cover. Or at least, I'm happy with where it is now and I'm going to stop fiddling with it. I tried to capture that 80s sci-fi B-movie poster energy.

https://preview.redd.it/89tq3j2owbad1.png?width=2550&format=png&auto=webp&s=775e2969684d78fe37b87447bd74e76dae9edf72

Anyone in the SWN braintrust have any suggestions for good minis to represent planets, moons, asteroids, or other stellar objects? Good looking tokens would be okay too.

I've found a few starbases but I'd like some other types of objects.

I'm looking to have a mini setup for different star systems where the players can physically move their ship mini from region to region and I can update the tabletop with additional ships when they scan them.

Anyone have any cool things to suggest?

I am running a one-shot where the PCs will be mech suited troopers on an orbital drop to take out enemy planetary space defenses. I anticipate the opposition will be a lot of Military Soldiers, with a smattering of gravtanks, heavy warbots, drones, etc. as minibosses.

What tweaks could I make such that regular infantry could pose a threat to the PCs? As written, weapons such as combat rifles and laser rifles can't beat shock suit Armor at all, and only damage specialist suits on high damage rolls. I feel like reducing Armor values by an arbitrary amount wouldn't be a great solution--I don't want to spend the whole session rolling fistfuls of damage dice just to find one that's over the PCs' Armor values. Any other thoughts on how I might fine tune?

Edit: My bad on the typos in the title. My phone fights me for corrections and I thought I got them before posting.

Hey y'all. I hope the day is well.

I've got a buddy who is craving a space fantasy adventure, and since he's been our groups forever GM for the longest time and delivered us years of good content. I really want to offer him something to sink his teeth into.

I've got the SWN: Revised Deluxe, Suns of Gold, and Codex of the Black Sun. I also have other Sine Nomine products such as WWN Deluxe, Atlas of the latter earth, and CWN deluxe to name a few. To run a proper science fantasy game in the SWN/Sine Nomine system I'm wondering what else I need.

I've got him to talk about a few pieces of media to help me find a focus/range on. Treasure planet was the lightest he'd be willing to go. Alien/Dead Space would be the darkest. He's definitely circling something more along the lines of Outlaw Star/Cowboy Bebop when it comes to a general tone, for those familiar.

He originally was looking to play in a Starfinder game years ago, though I'm not willing to use Starfinder 1e, 2e isn't out, and I have a general preference for the weight of Sine Nomine/old school numbers, even if I may need to slightly tweak something here or there.

My questions would be the following.

1 ) what resources for SWN or other compatible Sine Nomine products, as well as specific rules within those resources, would you recommend to run such a space fantasy game. A star crawl exploration focused game with scifi, magic, and that special science fiction blend of wild west meets the high seas (the very high seas.)

2 ) Are there any such resources outside of the Sine Nomine line of works you think would help or enhance such an experience? I'm open to them as well.

3.) Any advice on how to setup a star crawl, especially for someone new to hex crawls in general. I'm sure the books will do a good job explaining things for a newcomer, but I'll take any and all guidance and help I can find.

I'm not against cutting out piecemeal from these games and making a document to present to my players what we'll be using, I'll do what work is needed. Obviously as little extra work needed is ideal, but I'll do what it takes to offer the best experience I can.

Which Faction Asset best represents a Secret Police or Inquisition?

Would it be "Counterintel Unit"? "Informers"? "Tripwire Cells"?

Traveller sector maps have cardinal directions of "Rimward/Coreward/Spinward/Trailing".

SWN has no official cardinal directions I'm aware of. Indeed, its even implied that sector maps do not represent physical location in space/galaxy.

So, given that, what do YOU use for cardinal directions? How do you describe what's off the edges of your sector map?