What's next?

The frequencies are open. Whether you're a veteran pilot or just getting your bearings, this is your weekly space to break radio silence.

What's happening in your sector? New sessions, prep wins, cursed dice, dumb plans that somehow worked. And it doesn't have to stop at the table. Job news, personal wins, rough weeks, whatever's actually going on with you lately is welcome too. Drop a quick ping and let us know.

No need for a long write-up. A quick transmission from your table, or your life, to ours is plenty.

Mod Note: If you're new here, welcome. This started as a low-pressure thread for SWN stories, and lately it's turned into more of a check-in with each other. Both are welcome here. Share as much or as little as you want.

Apologies if this is a common question I wasn't able to find posts about by searching, if there's an FAQ to this sub I somehow haven't found it yet

To elaborate on the title, if one has already made a sector of ~25ish stars but wishes to add another, what is the advice for that? Based on the flavour text it seems like in the default setting sectors are separated by spans of meta dimensional space that would be dangerous if not impossible to cross without some kind of pretech and even then probably difficult

But assuming a GM wants to add a new sector, is there any recommended methods of connecting the maps? I can think of a couple methods:

1. Just make a bigger map. Find a 16 by 10 hex map or something, copy the existing sector onto half of it and maybe mark a boarder where you need a pretech spike drive and a bunch of time to crosd

2. Add a kind of gateway hex. Either someone managed to rebuild a jump gate or it's just a point where the meta dimensional currets flow out and can lead you to another sector

But I'm interested if there are other answers I haven't thought of

To be clear I've not gotten myself into any sort of trouble or anything, I'm actually asking before I've run a game at all just it does seem like a potential blind spot in the rules, though I wouldn't be too surprised if there are supplements that address it

If it matters for giving advice, I'm planning on running a stargate inspired game. I say inspired because I'm planning on changing various things and not changing myself to that setting's material, so I may still use the meta dimensional stuff of SWN rather than stargate's seemingly very user friendly hyperdrive systems, but I'd like to have the option of creating a sector that's controlled entirely by a single faction and advice on how to connect sectors would be very helpful for that

We finished our Space Truckers campaign that used the Stars Without Number game system and the Star*Drive setting. 8 or 9 out of 10.

I've previously reflected on the rules. I'm going to give them an A-. Well above average, but I still found some flaws. Mostly directed at the details of book organization. Everything was in the book somewhere, but sometimes it wasn't where you'd expect.

For example, there's a mech section. However, how much tonnage it takes to transport a mech as starship cargo is in the vehicles section more than 100 pages away where they talk about transporting vehicles as cargo. Mechs are mentioned in a spare sentence.

I used some of the optional rules and I was glad for the options presented. I used the concept of Stars being a meta currency that allowed a reroll or minor story edit similar to D&D’s Inspiration. It refreshed everytime you leveled up or was awarded for good roleplay or smart, clever ideas.

We house ruled some stuff, such as the Help mechanic. We used D&D’s Movement, Action, Bonus Action, Reaction, Object Interaction rules instead of RAW since it was close enough to how SWN combat is written (Movement, Action Instant Action, React).

I give my storyline a B+. The overarching plot was time traveller's from the past arriving in the present to prevent a disaster they couldn't prevent in their own time.

Along the way to the finale of the overarching plot we explored: transhumanism, mech combat, personal combat, starship combat, trading (lots of trading), piracy, gun running, terrorists, ship upgrades, capital (money) management, True AI insanity, nanites, alien precursors\ruins, swarms of aliens (razor monkeys), solo xenomorphs (scorpatoddlers), terraforming, helping colonists (poor B Bart never knew what hit him), interfactional struggles between the 12 stellar nations plus the Galactic Concord, cyberware, emerging consciousness from a VR internet, alien life forms made of pure energy and thought, time loops (finale), amnesia (my Hangover episode), and probably more. It was a sci-fi buffet of concepts from reading\watching 50 years of the stuff.

I'm proudest of my Hangover session and the finale.

For Hangover, with the cooperation of the players, they explored and accepted permanent changes to their characters plus consequences of actions I said they did. It created an interesting story that introduced some key NPCs.

My time loop finale included starship combat, personal combat, psi power usage, use of a mech they owned, tangling with ancient aliens, NPC interaction, and creative thinking. I didn't have a definite ending to the campaign in mind when I started it, just a vague hope that the PCs would want to get involved and take it upon themselves to solve it. Thankfully, they did. They crafted a satisfying happy ending that made sense within the fiction.

Thanks to my players who made it happen.

I mean, are there any games playable via a web browser (like on itch.io), on PC (such as via the Epic Games Store or Steam), or on mobile (e.g., iOS)—as opposed to tabletop games?

Hello everyone!

Some of you may have seen me post the recaps of my Ember Expanse adventure I have been running every other week, and perhaps some of you may remember my post looking for players to join it three months ago. It has been quite a good time in the sector and putting Characters Without Number to use, but we have run into the unfortunate obstacle of two players having to step away from the group due to separate scheduling issues with each of them. As unfortunate as it is and as much as they will be missed, there is a silver lining in this: We are now looking for up to two new players to join the crew of the Beholden to None!

I do wish to reiterate some important points from my original post about gathering players.

• Game sessions are on Thursdays starting at 5:30PM Pacific Time, or 8:30PM Eastern Time.
• I recognize that there is a two-to-three-hour gap between me and the players, so game sessions will be starting later for me and anyone on the East Coast. I am fine with this, but I recognize it may not be for everyone.
• As mentioned before, we are using Characters Without Number (which is marvelous by the way) for managing the campaign and player characters. It is still a work in progress, but it is more than enough in its present state and the creator responds to feedback usually within 24 hours.
• We are using Discord to speak to each other during the game sessions.

My offer goes out to the people here as it did in the past, no experience playing Stars Without Number necessary! I welcome virtually anyone, as long as they are not a reprehensible person, which I assume would be difficult to find here based on my experience. If anyone is interested, please comment or send me a direct message here.

Hello everyone, I was just curious how other people handle using artwork in your campaign? Because in the past my players have run into so many strange locations, horrible monsters, and fascinating races, we often send artwork mid session to help imagination. It has also saved some time on explaining something that everyone otherwise imagines differently. Sometimes we find an existing picture online, sometimes we whip up something using AI. I’m just curious what others do? Do you even utilize art or is it pure theater of the mind? If you use artwork, what’s your preferred method?

Hello again.

Last week I said I would be sharing one of the strange or spooky creatures I have made for the Ember Expanse every week for this month, so here I am with the second one. Last week was one on the stranger side, the blinkeel, but thing time I'm going with something on the spookier side. Or rather, some things, as this is a trio of closely connected creatures.

Without further delay, here are the sporeborne of Lemuria!

Each of the fungal forests found in Lemuria's depths contains several nexuses of vitality that preserve their ecosystems. These mycelial organisms give life to the surrounding fungi manipulate the surrounding and protect it when under threat. Sporehearts, as they are called, use their vast fungal network to detect interlopers, animating surrounding fungi into bestial defenders and infecting the trespassers to become parts of its defenses. Many Lemurian creatures have built an immunity to this infection. Unfortunately, that does not include humans. Humans hit by an attack from a sporeborne creature must make a Physical save or be infected by the malignant fungus.

While a sporebeast has the shape of a large mammal, like a bear or cervid, they are wholly fungal lifeforms. They spend most of the time dormant, becoming indistinguishable from the scenery in Lemuria's fungal forests. The moment the forest is threatened, however, the sporebeasts become active, single-mindedly attacking any trespassers with all manner hardened limbs and mycelial tendrils.

Those infected by a sporeheart or sporebeast and succumb to the fungal infection become slaves to the parasitical fungus within a week without psionic healing or TL5 medical care. These sporeborne lose their mental faculties as fungi take over their bodies, becoming shambling thralls for the sporeheart until their bodies rot and are absorbed by the surrounding forest.

Sporeborne: HD 1 AC 12 Atk. +1 Dmg. 1d2 Shock None Move 10m ML 12 Skills +1 Save 15

Sporebeast: HD 3 AC 12 Atk. +4 Dmg. 1d6 Shock None Move 10m ML 12 Skills +1 Save 15

Sporeheart: HD 6 AC 12 Atk. +4 Dmg. 1d4 Shock None Move None ML 12 Skills +2 Save 12

Heart of the Colony: When a sporeheart dies, the surrounding fungal forest gradually dies over the course of a week unless another sporeheart is in the area.

Summon Sporebeasts: At the start of its first turn after taking damage or sensing a destructive creature in its area, 2d4 sporebeasts rise from the ground within 1 kilometer and immediately move to the triggering creature's location.

The frequencies are open. Whether you're a veteran pilot or just getting your bearings, this is your weekly space to break radio silence.

What's happening in your sector? New sessions, prep wins, cursed dice, dumb plans that somehow worked. And it doesn't have to stop at the table. Job news, personal wins, rough weeks, whatever's actually going on with you lately is welcome too. Drop a quick ping and let us know.

No need for a long write-up. A quick transmission from your table, or your life, to ours is plenty.

Mod Note: If you're new here, welcome. This started as a low-pressure thread for SWN stories, and lately it's turned into more of a check-in with each other. Both are welcome here. Share as much or as little as you want.

I started running this group in Stars Without Number back in November of 2024. Season one wrapped with episode 33 this week. The campaign's not over, we're just on a break before season two starts.

The same four players ran the whole thing. Same pilot, hacker, fighter, and captain from the first session to the last, and they're not done yet.

Right now I'm mostly just sitting with the fact that this is officially a two-year game, with more of it still to come.

If anyone else just wrapped a season or an arc in a long-running game, I'd like to hear how it went.

Full episode, if anyone's curious: https://www.darkstaradventures.com/adventurecast-episodes/an-acceptable-loss

Hi everyone, I’m Loroman, the creator of DICEwithoutNumber, a free Discord bot for Without Number games.

The latest update adds /d for quick rolls through a personal install. For example:

/d 20+2 — roll 1d20 and add 2

/d 4d20+4 — roll four d20s and add 4 to the total

/d 2d6+3 — roll two d6s and add 3 to the total

That last example is useful for a CWN skill check when your combined modifier is +3. Select DICE’s /d command and enter the expression in Discord’s expression field. Personal installs use slash commands; !roll requires the bot to be installed in the server.

We’ve also moved hosting to my own server to keep costs down and published Terms of Service and a Privacy Policy. The current focus is making the commands easier to use and fixing issues reported through the bot’s /ticket command.

You can find the bot install https://discord.com/oauth2/authorize?client_id=1478115953681367090 and website here: https://dicewithoutnumber.tail4411cd.ts.net/

I’d love feedback from SWN groups: what feels awkward during play, and what would make this more useful at your table? This is my project, and I’m happy to answer questions.

I was reading about the Ember Expanse sector recently and I noticed a detail. I didn't understand how this HP point calculation was done; apparently, all the faction HP points don't match the calculations in the book, or am I missing something?

I haven't GMed any SWN in years, and have started getting back into it. The last time I'd done anything with it, it was left where the characters were approaching a secret testing facility on a remote moon, and I hadn't really fleshed out any of it. I had a general idea, but no details.
I'm no lover of AI, but decided to try it, just to see what it could do for me. I used Gemini as a collaborator. In about two hours, it had fleshed out the entire station, airlock locations, medbay, workshop, lab, residences, common area, all the equipment in each room, and nine NPCs with personalities/motivations.
It was very useful in helping me organize my thoughts, and because its style is very chatbot/conversational, there was a good flow to the process. Sometimes it would make a mistake as if it had forgotten where we had placed something, so its spatial awareness was a bit off. It was very good at accepting constraints, and it would apply reasoning from earlier in the conversation to solve issues later in the conversation. All in all, it was very good, surprisingly good for a first attempt.
Has anybody tried using it for game content creation?

Did some light reading on drones in the Revised, and if I want it to actually carry much, I’ll need to heavily invest in it.

My DM and I have talked about it a bit, and I want it to be a quadrupedal version, like a dog. We’re using it as a solution to my Warrior’s encumbrance issues. I’m the only Warrior in a party of four, so I need to carry a lot of gear.

Thinking about mash-ups of the Sine Nomine games. The biggest determining factors I think are which system you use as the base and how thoroughly blended they are. You could for example run a Darkness Visible/Silent Legions/Ashes Without Number campaign that is neatly fit together. Or you could run a Codex of the Black Sun/Godbound campaign about multiversal exploration where every adventure is in a different cosmos.

So if you ran a game from three or more of K.C.'s books, what would you run?

Hi everyone, I've been thinking about running a SWN campaign using Edges from the two most recent systems instead of classes. Has anyone developed Edges for their own games that they'd like to share? What SWN mechanics could be fleshed out with Edges without going the "Voice of the People" route where two foci get bundled together?

I think ship roles are a fairly fertile design space.

Shipwright: You are a master of ship engineering. Gain Fix as a bonus skill. Your base Maintenance score increases by 5. Additionally, on any ship where you have successfully completed a spike drill, on subsequent drills, roll a 1d6. On a roll of 2 or higher, fuel will not be consumed for that drill. You receive a cumulative -1 penalty to this roll for each drill until the ship is refueled.

Astronavigator: Gain Pilot as a bonus skill. Spike drives of ships you navigate (above drive-0) are treated as one level higher. Additionally, should you encounter a spike drill mishap, you roll 4d6 on the mishap table and drop the lowest die.

Obviously, it would be wise to see what specific roles my players wish to fill and see if their concept requires an Edge at all.

As for psychics, I'm ambivalent to them. For my game, I might break with the sage wisdom provided in Ashes and Cities and make each psychic school their own Edge, if I include psychics at all.

What do you think? Are my Edges over/undertuned? What sci-fi character concepts are underserved by the Edges from Cities and Ashes?

The frequencies are open. Whether you're a veteran pilot or just getting your bearings, this is your weekly space to break radio silence.

What's happening in your sector? New sessions, prep wins, cursed dice, dumb plans that somehow worked. And it doesn't have to stop at the table. Job news, personal wins, rough weeks, whatever's actually going on with you lately is welcome too. Drop a quick ping and let us know.

No need for a long write-up. A quick transmission from your table, or your life, to ours is plenty.

Mod Note: If you're new here, welcome. This started as a low-pressure thread for SWN stories, and lately it's turned into more of a check-in with each other. Both are welcome here. Share as much or as little as you want.

Hello everyone!

For those who may not have spotted it mentioned here or there, I have been running an adventure in r/SWN's very own Ember Expanse with a number of people from here and one from elsewhere. While running this I have taken ample time to create stat blocks and descriptions for various creatures, NPCs, and groups to add into the sector. After making a fair number of them at this point, I have decided to share them with all the other people who helped create the sector and anyone else here who might want to run their own adventures in it! Every now and then I plan on coming here with one of these posts with one or more of my creations, both with their stats, abilities, and descriptions.

As we are in the best time of the year the month of October, I will be intending to share one of the truly strange or spooky creatures every week! After that, I'm not sure if it will be weekly.

With all of that being said, here is the first one for you all: The elusive Blinkeels!

These sightless eels are colored an alien red and no larger than a human's arm, yet they are among the most otherworldly animals found in the entirety of the Ember Expanse. Despite their small size and skittish behavior, they employ an elusiveness beyond even Lemuria's other wildlife. When startled or threatened, blinkeels have the innate psychic ability to teleport up to 10 meters away with a Main action. This is enough to befuddle most predators, affording them a quick escape. They subsist off of small fish and stray water locusts, but are intelligent enough to retreat the moment they sense a danger.

HD 1 AC 13 Atk. +1 Dmg. 1d4 Shock None Move 10m swim ML 6 Skills +1 Save 15

Red light, green light...There are four lights!!! This busy intersection doesn't see a lot of devil bargains, but it does see a lot of traffic. In the dead of night, of course, who knows what kind of shady traffics and shoot-outs might occur on these streets? Available in two additional variants, featuring a fiery collision between two trucks and cars, and the sudden appearance of a bottomless chasm in the middle of the street, hopefully this map doesn't give your players the Cross Road Blues! 

My maps are hooked up to work with Foundry VTT and Fantasy Grounds.
My maps are available on my patreon and my website.
Buy me a Ko-fi!

Hi everyone!

I have this idea for my campaign that, since subtle/obvious armor and weapon legality are factors in this setting, why not do the same thing with ship weapons and fitting? For example, do spaceport officials raise an eyebrow when a ship with boarding tubes shows up? Or torpedoes? What about Psytech? Or anything TL5?

My question being, do you restrict the legality of ship fittings or weaponry in your campaigns? If so, how and what exactly do you limit?

My modern setting Silent Legions campaign needs an abandoned and old alien structure deep under town, dating back at least to the previous ice age (lots of things got buried 'here' then).

I'll grab Hard Light this evening, in the hopes that the abandoned of the 3 dungeons will suit.

But I would love some suggestions (not Expedition to the Barrier Peaks). I'm up to adapting from other systems (Traveller, Mothership, etc) as needed. And converting a fantasy dungeon is also an option.

Needs:

3-4 hour adventure. loose ends ok, but would rather not go into a second session.

A structure or land base would be preferable. But I can probably work with a crashed ship or space station.

Abandoned. Who it's from isn't clear. How any of the tech works is unclear. No obvious buttons or levers or such. Most of the tech is isn't even understandable in human terms.

Dangerous and weird, which is a bit tricky abandoned.

EDIT: Good news, turns out I already owned 'Hardlight' and 'Dead Names....' from a bundle a while back. The abandoned Hardlight dungeon is pretty far from what I had in mind. But I might be able to do something with the bug one. Just looking now at Dead Names.

I remember it used to be a teeming community with lots of interesting homebrew and it's own lore. What happened to it?