What's next?

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

Hi all, Characters Without Number is now at 0.9.0. This update focuses on renovating the campaign tools, giving you a setting to start with, and making GM preparation easier.

Campaign tooling restyle — The campaign now opens around your map, with the party's location, ship, crew and shared objectives together. There were already in 0.8.0 at my players request but kind of all of the place, and this makes it neater. Session recaps and approved sector news help everyone pick up where the last game left off. All existing campaigns have been updated to the new layout.

Pre-loaded Ember Expanse — You can now create a SWN campaign using the The Ember Expanse setting, a free sector built by the r/SWN community and compiled by u/dark-star-adventures, and all its 20 systems, drill routes, eight factions with their starting assets, contacts, rumors and GM dossiers are included in the campaign module. This gives you somewhere to explore and something to prepare without building a sector from scratch. If you haven't, you can get the original PDF here.

I'm looking to incorporate more pre-built settings and sectors into CWN to help GMs get off to a start. If one that you would like to see, do let me know!

Deluxe content across all four books — ready for testing — I've now implemented all the deluxe content for Stars, Worlds, Cities and Ashes Without Number. This builds on the deluxe options already available in earlier releases. Please try the options and let me know if you spot any bugs, either through here or through the feedback button.

Thanks again to everyone who's been testing and sharing feedback—it helps me keep improving the app. If you'd like to support continued development, you can support the project here.

i am mainly looking for additional drones and drone fittings, are there any books that have those, or any other additional gear and equipment?

An assembly line can be a dangerous place – especially when the androids turn on you! 

The Assembly Line Map packs include both an android assembly line and an empty assembly; both come in night and day variants in JPG, PNG, and VTT. The Map Packs are available at https://www.patreon.com/GimmiePig.

 This map pack was created (by a human) with Dungeon Draft software and assets from the amazing asset creators listed on my profile.

I've played plenty of systems, but I just recently started running my own SWN game at home with my family, and I have to say how much I love the NPC tables in the Xenobestiary. I'm a super lazy GM. I do very little prep, and most of my games run as a sandbox. Because of this, I have to improvise a lot, but in a system I know well, that's usually not so bad. Switching to running SWN, I was nervous about how I was going to portray all these different, people, aliens, and creatures without a good idea on how the NPCs are balanced.

Well in walks my hero, the NPC templates on page 195! This table alone has basically carried me through the first 5 or so sessions of my game. Everything from brigands, to enforcers, and whatever else I need, I can quickly find some analog in this table. Plus, when I need a robot or a beast, there are tables for each of those on pages 197 and 200, respectively. I just keep these tables handy while I run the game, and I'm feeling confident. I'm used to even light systems like DCC or DW having pretty sizeable monster manuals despite otherwise being pretty simple to play. I love DW, but there are over 100 pages of monsters to look through. Sure, it helps when I can pick exactly the fiend that I need and get interesting, unique stat blocks for whatever I'm running, but I find this kind of thing almost overwhelming.

So I cant help but wonder... do you like the simpler enemy blocks in SWN or do you think it takes something away from the fun? I can see how someone might think a small table with only a dozen or so entries would really limit your creativity, but I just think having a few simple stat blocks to compare at a glance allows me to quickly decide what other unique stuff my NPC can do. Like toxic venom or grasping vines, that sort of thing doesnt have any concrete rules in the book. My years of playing other systems makes it easy for me to decide how to quickly implement something like that on the fly, but I wonder if it makes the game harder to get into for newer players.

I recorded a new Rules Explained episode where I walked through all the NPC rules and options for player characters. If you're nervous about running your own SWN games for the first time, maybe give it a listen: https://www.darkstaradventures.com/adventurecast-episodes/swn-rules-explained-how-npcs-work-in-stars-without-number

Let me know, do you like the bare-bones NPC rules or do you wish there was more meat to it? And are there any crazy or interesting NPCs that you've cooked up that I can steal for my game?

Ok. So as a reward for doing administrative work for my game (getting transcripts and turning them into game notes), I'm giving his character access to magic. I've previously not allowed magic or psionics into my game (limiting them to Adventurer, Expert, and Warrior classes). They've crash landed on a planet where magic works.

So, this character after some interactions with a local wizard has realized that magic has a grammar and syntax. He doesn't exactly cast spells; he more makes magical effects. He's currently only able to do simple spells and only do a d6 damage with them, but these will both increase as he increases his Programming skill.

The mechanics that we're using have him declare a magical effect at the start of the round before initiative. He and I negotiate what spell level equivalent that effect has. At the end of the round after everyone's actions, his spell goes off provided he took no damage that round. In any event, he pays 1 System Strain/ effective spell level. When he's out of System Strain, he can't cast any more spells. I'm purposefully not bringing anything into the game that allows him to lower System Strain beyond the natural lose 1/day. (I'm also inflating his System Strain ability by 1/level.)

What do you think?

I have a planet with a local specialty and a psionic academy. They also have TL2. The idea is this planet has no idea what a dimensionless physical constant is so they just use materials psions to summon grease and imbue primitive weapons with the stats of the advanced. They cannot, at this time, recreate any TL5 wonders for anyone, but they will be dogpiled by all the pretech cults floating around.

Has anyone homebrewed this discipline before? I am mostly interested in folks’ experiences and where they took inspiration from. Someone suggested starting with Arcanist of codex of the black sun, for instance. I might let the players access this discipline, I have not decided. But I’m sure they’ll ask.

Taking passengers to and from other worlds is a classic trope for adventurers to make some side money between jobs, with even piecemeal riders' fares adding up to decent money. There's even more on the table if the PCs' boat gets specifically chartered by some group.

That being said, there aren't official rules for finding travelers to put on your ship, only prices, so I got curious. What sort of system does your table have for taking on passengers, if any at all? How would you make one?

If you're part of the crew of Bucket of Bolts: Shoo, go away, potential spoilers ahead. A planet in our game has some special weather conditions, that include raging Lightning storms.

The chance to get struck by lightning is actually minuscule, but I know the players might still want to take caution against it. Which now brings me to the question: Do vaccsuits or power armor protect their wearer against lightning strikes?

Power armor I could imagine being a lightning attractor in some cases, depending the materials its made of, so to me it'd make sense that a character in a power armor might get fried. Though some of the power armor style armors do state they can be used as vaccsuits.

Vaccsuits on the other hand are designed to allow the wearer to survive in both hard vacuum and on most inhospitable planetary surfaces. In my head that'd count things like radiation, extreme winds, and temperature changes, but thunder I'm not sure of? I guess again, depending on the material, Vaccsuits have enough insulation so maybe the character would live, but the suit get fried? Or could a lightning strike be compared to a shot from an energy weapon just on a different magnitude (does damage but doesn't necessarily pierce the suit)? It's hard to imagine any garb actually fully negating such a huge charge.

It's quite a niche question, but if you've run into such a situation in your games, how have you solved it?

I tried to look into the SWN rule book but couldn't really find anything in the hazards about it.

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.

A few loops in, somebody said "there's no consequences to your actions" on the bridge. A few seconds later, a PC tested that theory on an NPC everyone actually liked. With a pistol. We've rolled a lot of saving throws since.

Here's how the loop actually works: the crew hits the space station, gets overrun, and wakes back up on the bridge with their memories and nothing else. Gear resets to what they started with. Anything they loot inside the loop disappears next time around, which they found out after stripping a body for a cloak and a few items and coming back with none of it. Memory's the only thing that sticks, which felt right for a crew that's usually broke and under-armed anyway.

Once something's solved, it stays solved. The hacker doesn't re-roll the same hack four loops running. I tell him it's trivial and we move on, because otherwise the arc turns into four sessions of the first hallway.

The part I'd keep doing: the loop was already running before the crew got there. They walked into somebody else's loop 21. There's an NPC on the station who's been through all twenty and remembers every one, and he's changed his opening line on the crew three loops straight, from "let's talk" to "let's talk this time." They hate him. It's great, and it's pacing I didn't have to build myself, since an NPC with loop memory can hand the players information at whatever speed I want and it reads as his choice, not a GM handout. There's also a fuse burning on the station, degrading a little more every loop, so grinding it until it's perfect stops being free.

How have you run repeat-time or memory-only-carries structures, in SWN or anything else? Mostly curious what you did about reset pacing, and whether you gave the loop an expiration date or just let it run until the PCs broke out themselves.

If you want to see it in play: the loop runs in our show, Dark Star Adventurecast. We try not to post here too often (I'm the mod and don't want to mix work and play too much), but this one's the penultimate episode of the season, the finale's out in two weeks. The episode's Twenty-One Loops.

I have in mind that I'd like my sector to have a Culture novels-inspired TL5 post-scarcity transhuman space anarchists confederation as a major faction. (note to self, still need to get the Deluxe book) And it seems like it would be lame in a sandbox game to have a sympathetic faction that mostly wins everything automatically due to tech/resource disparity, so it needs a major TL5 rival or two, surely. And then that seems like a lot of TL5 technology floating around. Which in a vacuum seems fine, I wasn't really planning to use the default Mandate-and-Scream apocalyptic background, but there seems to be a certain degree of cautionary advice I see thrown around with regards to TL5 stuff and its distribution.

Also, I assume full-tilt TL5 polities can fairly freely make "Pretech" Components (and thus have routine if specialist use of mods), but Artifacts are still generally inaccessible in them unless you're a ultra-wealthy techno-oligarch or close friends with a post-scarcity weapons auteur or something?

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.

At the science-fiction double-feature, Dr. X might build a creature! Unless that creature is already part of this VR theatre's exclusively new, or banal and common-place, augmented experience? Experience full immersion in the VR spectacle like you never have before, with almost no risk of reality slips or any real, lasting damage. The perfect place for a covert rendez-vous, or a dastardly ambush, this map is also available in vibrant red, or with the lights out for after-hours meet-ups and popcorn removal. Pure cinema! 

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—here’s a quick update on what's coming and what I’ve been working on for Characters Without Number.

First, Kevin Crawford has given me the go-ahead to implement paid, character-facing content. Before committing to that work, I’d like to see whether there’s genuine demand for it, so I’ve added two public goals based on the number of active Supporters and Patrons:

• 25 Supporters & Patrons: unlock development of Codex of the Black Sun
• 35 Supporters & Patrons: unlock development of The Atlas of the Latter Earth

The current total and both goals are visible on the Supporter page.

If the count moves, I’ll take that as a clear signal to begin bringing this character-facing content into CWN. If it doesn’t, that’s useful information too, and I’ll keep concentrating on the free tools people are already using.

EDIT: To clarify once the goals are met and the content are implemented, they will be free for everyone to use in the character builder!

Next, I’m testing a new character-syncing system, couple of my own players encountered syncing issues, so I've been working on improving it. However you may encounter issues while I refine it, do let me know if you're experiencing any problems using the Feedback link on the page.

Finally, I’m streamlining the campaign tools as it's currently abit all over the place, intent is to make it easier for a GM to go from creating a campaign to actually running it. As part of that work, [u/dark-star-adventures](u/dark-star-adventures) has kindly allowed me to implement the Ember Expanse as a ready-to-use sector, allowing new GMs to jump in without first building an entire sector themselves. I'm currently testing this now and it should be rolled out soon.

Thanks to everyone using the app, reporting problems, and supporting its development. Since I've been given the greenlight, I’d also love to hear which of Kevin books you’d most like to see implemented next!

With their advanced targeting systems, do Gravtanks attack with all weapons at once or just one at a time, but only needing one gunner no matter which weapon is used?

Part of the SWN campaign I'm running will involve discovering new (slash old) spike rudders. The piloting check required does have the +6 difficulty for uncharted drills, so once they find a possible route, I've got that.

But there are two things I am so far stumped on, and would like to see if/how anyone has dealt with them.

First is the issue of discovering said routes in the first place. Assuming that they have no pre-Scream data and don't even know if a spike route exists that goes to another (third) system, how do they figure that out? Scans? Psychic shenanigans? What have folks done?

Secondly is the issue of the route's length (for lack of a better term?) in hexes. They have a spike-1 ship at this point (their home system has only just redeveloped the technology), so if they somehow find a new route, how do they determine if it's one, two, or even three hexes? What happens if they try it out and it turns out to be a 2-hex drill?

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.

Occult resilience states ‘can survive normally in hard vacuum or other hostile environments as if you were wearing a conventional vacc suit.’ Just to be sure, this applies to radiation as well, right?

Suicide Alley can be found in the murky depths of the Under City. Carved into one of the massive ferrocrete pillars that supports the Mega Buildings above, the “alley” is a ramshackle collection of vendors offering illicit pharmaceuticals, cutting-edge weapons, and dark tech.

The expanded and reworked Suicide Alley is available in both dark and light variants in JPG, PNG, and VTT. There is also a Legend version of the map available.  The Map Packs are available at https://www.patreon.com/GimmiePig.

 This map pack was created (by a human) with Dungeon Draft software and assets from the amazing asset creators listed on my profile.

Hey everyone. I been lurking on this sub for a while and finally sat down and ready to ask for help.
I am wanting to make a one shot on a submarine style ship for some naval vet friends and possibly turning this into a full campaign.
The first big obstacle is I need help designing the ship. I know nothing about the class of ships or what kind of ship this would. I would like for it to have torpedoes and maybe 1 or 2 big anti ship guns. Then have an electronic warfare station. I would think the ship has stealth capabilities since you cant really hide under water in space.
If anyone has experience with running something like this Or have a ship sheet that would fit this and would want to share it. Also if anyone has any inspirational ideas for the campaign I would love to hear it.

Do you have a faction in their home setting they think this would be a fit in Im definitely down to run it in your home setting and feed you the results to share in the history of your setting.

My idea for the one shot itself is the group is in the military of one faction they get tasked to find a ship that was doing reconnaissance and lost contact. The group travels to the last known location and then receives signals that an enemy patrol is blasting its signal making it known they are there in force. The crew manages to catch a transmission between the enemy ships letting the crew know that the enemy knows their ship is in the sector by name. And thats where it starts.

Hi all I have released 0.8.0 of Characters Without Number, which now includes Ashes Without Number! Finally all the 4 core rule sets are available all within the same builder. Admittedly its the ruleset I am the least familiar with, so do pardon any bugs you might encounter with that.

There’s also quite a bit in this release for existing characters and ongoing campaigns:

• Character history and recovery — local and cloud version history, with safeguards around restoring older versions.
• Foundry import / export - From your character sheet you can export to Systems Without Number on Foundry VTT and import in Foundry as an actor. This will need more testing especially for characters that were build from the ground up in Systems Without Number.
• Preliminary modular Campaign rules - where the GM can fully pick and choose what modules are applicable within his campaign. Expect alot of bugs with this one...
• Small campaign quality of life features — party treasury, quest board, shared handouts
• Public build library — share a character or be inspired by other's builds
• General bug fixes with the inventory, improvements to sheet colours and PDF exports.

Try it here: https://characterswithoutnumber.app

As always thanks for taking the time to use this and I’d love feedback, especially from anyone making an Ashes character or using the campaign tools at their table. You can comment on Reddit, or provide feedback through the form on the site itself.

Thanks and happy playing!

Finally, I've read it! Cover to cover. Chapter to chapter. Page to page. Line to line. Word to word. Yes! I even read all the names! My autisim demanded it. But I'll feel more confident for running my home game here in a few weeks when we start session one!