Working on some stuff for a possible hack. What do folks think about the following?

Totem Focuses

You must possess either the Spellcaster or Summoner edge to access these focuses.

Bear

Level 1: While in a forest you enjoy a +1 bonus to overcasting rolls and banishing skill checks. You also gain 1 Totem Effort that can be used for the spells cleanse toxin, heal injury, or triage, as well as for summoning Forest spirits. When you suffer a traumatic hit, you must make a Mental save or go berserk attacking the closest living thing until it dies or you succeed at a Mental save at the end of your turn.

Level 2: The above bonuses and Totem Effort increase to 2. If you go berserk, you immediately roll your hit dice and recover that much hp.

System: Stars Without Number Revised Edition
Platforms: PbP on Discord
Language: English

The nomadic Reisende formed centuries ago when the human diaspora stretching across much of the Orion Arm 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, until now.

With resources harder than ever to find, the Reisende face the possibility of slow extinction or attempting the risky business of setting up a colony. However, possible salvation beckons in the form of an ancient logistics log in an abandoned outpost, whispering of the destination sector of one of the last, greatest vessels ever to come out of the God-Forges of Old Earth, and her attendant fleet.

As the Fleet enters the Kalmar sector in pursuit of its ultimate goal, you have volunteered to become a Pathfinder: the Fleet’s specialist division tasked with helping the Fleet gather supplies and intelligence, stay on good terms with the locals, and if necessary, take up arms to defend the Fleet.

About Us: Hello! We are a discord-based play-by-post TTRPG group campaign using the Stars Without Number system. This game is inspired by the Westmarch style, and is centered around the fleet’s travels and the missions the PCs are dispatched on in order to achieve its goals.

https://discord.gg/hzru7J9NeJ

With Ashes Without Number on the horizon it's time to dream about the next system that we will have after that. Of course it is completely in the hands of the creator. But me myself would be very happy to see a new take on the Godbound now that Other Dust is updated to the new standards. Gods Without Number or Pantheons Without Number, something like that. We already have Legate system in WWN that gives us rules for not-exactly-but-near-demigods and it would be great in my opinion to have full *WN-compatible rules for playing as Pantheon.

Greetings, cyborgs! New to CWN and tracking down some resources for a try-out game. I've got the (free) rules, blank character sheets, and a love of cyberpunk. I've been DMing D&D and a bunch of other TTRPGs for ever...

What I'd love is a few pre-generated character sheet PDFs just to run a quick trial game to see if my players are "into it" before we commit our table time to generating custom PCs. Your advice would be most welcome! Thank you.

PS: yeah, I can technically make 'em, but as with most GMs, I don't get anywhere near enough time as it is!

Title. Currently in the middle of running a faction turn, trying to figure out what asset a faction wants to buy.

A Party Machine is cheaper than Org Moles, has more health, has the same attack, has a counterattack at all, and on top of all that it provides a free FacCred every turn, all while being available at a lower cunning rating.

Am I missing something that makes org moles worth it? Is there something inherent to them being a tactic that gives them enough of an advantage to be ballanced a teir higher?

edit: clarity

Crew of The Lakota, do not read.

The campaign I am running for going on 4 years now is gearing up for its last chapter and I'm wanting to know what people think of giving the BBEG faction multiple actions.

Quick synopsis, the party has been galivanting through the sector doing as PCs do, befriending some factions and overthrowing others. Now, due to action they took earlier in the game, an ancient alien empire is waking up from its dormancy, eyeing up the whole sector as its prize. In stellaris terms, A Xenophobe Fallen Empire is awakening, and wants to turn the sector at large into its playground. I'm wanting this to be a big "all hands on deck" moment of unifying the sector against a common threat.

I have been using faction turns over the 5 in-game years the campaign has been going on, and its been a huge help in simulating background events and giving ideas for future questlines. Now, however, I struggle to imagine how the base rules for factions can handle multiple factions fighting 1 mega-faction that isn't a death by a thousand cuts. Would it be reasonable to give the BBEG faction multiple actions in a faction turn? That way they could be assaulting multiple worlds or building up armadas while the allied factions of the sector try to coordinate and take it down.

Any input would be appreciated!

should definitely be Crawford's next game.

OSR inspired, emergent play super heroes? I am IN.

Those of you who’ve run pure faction games, what house rules have you used?

I’m looking for rules suitable for a Dune-like campaign. I’m looking at SWN, Seeds of War, the 1999-ies pbp game WLTP. Any other suggestions appreciated.

The HMG is ENC 3

The LMG doesn't have encumbrance according to Starvation Cheap, where it makes its first appearance. But in CWN and AWN, it has ENC 4.

Is it time to exchange their encumbrance values? Or am I missing something here?

Long ago, I once join a discord for Play-by-Text SWN named Iron Star. They have a detail character sheet in excel, with Space Magic added. Anyone have a copy of them and willing to share?

Image for example:

https://preview.redd.it/q35oobgn6n2e1.png?width=456&format=png&auto=webp&s=5d0b033159d620845b714324af3f55ee6044c248

Hello !
I'm new to mastering SWN.
What would be the cost and condition for a ship fitting to hold a mech ?
How much would it add to the fitting if it's able to deploy the mech from orbit, to board a ship ?

I was thinking 200k / 0 power / 2 mass / Fighter minimum.
And if it's able to deploy 350k / 1 power / 2 maybe 3 mass / Frigate minimum.

What do you think ?

Kevin Crawford has given us quite the number of varied starship weaponry, but the descriptions for some of them leave a lot to be questioned.

A multifocal laser for example is relatively straightforward, but a Spike Inversion Projector or a Reaper Battery does not involve a specific image for me.

With the Storm Armor giving a bonus to encumbrance and basically acting as an exoskeleton, would it be reasonable for a character in storm armor to wield heavy weapons without the need for an emplaced firing position?

I noticed heavy weapons can be mounted on mechs for a similar outcome.

Sorry if this is a stupid question. This is the first thing I've ever backed on kickstarter. I went with the $25 donation, which promised the pdf without any printed materials. Should I have the pdf by now or is there a release date? Will it just appear in my email account? Again, sorry if this is a silly question. Thanks

I know that Spike Drives essentially have "protection" from ever having to worry about colliding with an object because of the gravity effect from stars or other similarly massive objects when doing a spike drill, but traveling inside star systems is still incredibly fast. If regions are planets like suggested, then traveling to Mars from Earth in 48 hours, at Mars' closest position to Earth and with the lowest level drive speed, you are going about over a a Million Kilometers per hour. That is already a small fraction of the speed of light, and if your ship was about the size of the space shuttle and you crashed into something the amount of energy released would be over 500 times as much as the biggest nuke ever detonated. Am I missing something in the book that would explain how travel within a system would work? It seems like it would be extremely easy to just ram your ship into something and cause unprecedented destruction unless a planet had an insanely advanced defense system. Does it explain either why this isn't possible or why it is able to be prevented?

In February, I will be running one of my multipart con-campaigns using Stars Without Number (it is a generational space opera with a little bit of Expanse vibes). I have read the game and I love it, but have not actually run it yet. I plan to run some sessions over the winter break to get a handle on its specific flavor of OSR-ish-ness.

But I thought I would ask here and see what advice folks have, broadly speaking, for running SWN.

Thanks.

NOTE: I will be running 4 hour sessions with 5 players.

Me again, got more questions:

• AI can be built into vehicles and ships. Which of your Foci translate? E.g. lets say I got an AI with Ironhide I, does my ship/vehicle now have AC 15 + half level? I know Gunslinger is specifically called out as not working, for example, but I havent seen anything else.

• Per character level, AI can built two weapons or pieces into their armature. What benefit does that transfer, beyond being able to charge them from the core? Can you use Split Focus to attack multiple times with built-in weapons, or something?

Cheers!

I am looking at the most recent beta for AWN and it mentions that certain armor marked as "primitive" gives no benefits against gunfire, explosives, or TL4+ melee weaponry. Does that mean, in those cases, the AC would be reset to 10?

I also wonder if this means we will not see a return of the ranged/melee AC which I thought was an interesting innovation for CWN.

Is there an implied order for doing things?
Made a test character with mutant edge, feels like dealing with mutations happens parallel to edges. Theres is a lot of stuff that affects your stat mods, so picking Prodigy and making any bad stats go away is tempting, but feels a bit weird.

https://preview.redd.it/t4t5gcuy9h0e1.png?width=2450&format=png&auto=webp&s=54f1547ab2971433af85f4d15b266261f3a5983c

Made some assets in Dungeon Scrawl and then used gimp to arrange them, With assets and Gimp should be able to knock out a variety of open areas to use a simple battlemaps very quickly. I wasn't going to use them, but I think it will add an interesting visual element to the game. Hopefully it won't bog us down too much, but I've never really had an issue with that with KC's games.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Awn/comments/1goz1f4/a_simple_weather_system_i_am_using_in_my_awn_game/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

In SWN: Our campaign shifted to adopt some transhuman elements around level 7, so we're navigating some questions about character advancement and ability scores within shells.

When your original character inhabits a new Shell, what happens to their Improved Abilities gained through spent Skill Points (as per page 57) or Background bonuses rolled during their initial build (page 10-15)? Do they simply lose those bonuses with the shell's new base abilities? Do they port over those Ability bonuses to the new form? If their affinity abilities then increase that stat to 18, would their previous ability bonus increase it to 19+? What impact would that have?

Alternately, if they lose those bonuses, do they gain the Skill Points back to allocate elsewhere?

Hello Friends Without Number!

I've backed all the XWN games included AWN. I was skimming 0.7 and started thinking about how modular the games are. What modules were added or changed in AWN that could be considered for other games? Is Diseases new? Stress? Thanks!