Disclaimer: This is not an attack on Kevin Crawford and Sine Nomine. In my online interactions with Mr. Crawford, he has impressed me as being intelligent and generally a nice guy. I can attest to his patience considering the fact that I was pretty much an asshole to him at least once. The following should not be seen as an indictment of the man or his company.

The short version of why I don't like SWN is that I view it as a horrible lovechild of True20, Traveller, and d6 WEG Star Wars. It is a mutant. It is D&D in Space.

Now, I have a strong dislike for using D&D/d20 style character creation and combat in a science fiction or space opera game. One of the problems with D&D/d20 rules is that when you try to apply them to Modern or Science Fiction genres, classes and levels do not make sense to me and combat is never able to adequately emulate the lethality of non-medieval weaponry. It is better genre emulation to have multiple prior careers with a range of skills showing experience and not classes with levels. Combat does not handle guns, explosives, or energy weapons well and instead of armor making someone harder to hit, it should make someone harder to damage.

( Now, I was involved with the d20 Traveller playtest and did some subsequent games using the system. I think that one came close, but suffered greatly from overcomplicating the character creation and combat system to properly emulate the genre. Although, it too was unsatisfying in the end.)

I keep hearing from fans about how great the world and sector creation system is, but there is nothing in it that I have not seen before in either Traveller or d6 WEG Star Wars (Hell, the SWN sector map is essentially the Traveller subsector map). So, not impressed.

The setting also does not impress me. It is post-apocalyptic points of light which was done in Traveller: The New Era, Thousand Suns, and Eclipse Phase. The big problem with star spanning empires in a post-apocalyptic setting is the misconception that high technology can exist without an adequate infrastructure - you still have to build, maintain, repair, and program that high technology. The psychic tech might as well be magic in all but name. The Scream which killed most of the psychers and trashed the SWN Golden Age sounds a lot like the Empress Wave that is moving through the Zhodani Comsulate in Traveller. The entire setting feels designed for dungeon crawling which brings us back to D&D in Space. Before you ask, the answer is no, I don't like what Traveller TNE did with the OTU and their Virus Era.

SWN, just does not scratch my gaming itch.

When I want space opera, I play WEG d6 Star Wars or LUG Star Trek. When I want hard science fiction, I have 2300AD. When I want medium-hard science fiction, I have Classic Traveller or Mongoose Traveller or Traveller 4. When I want anime with giant robots, I have Mekton II or Mekton Zeta. When I want Cyberpunk, I have Cyberpunk 2020 and Mongoose Traveller.

Quite frankly, I've become burnt out on D&D style gameplay. I know there are exceptions, but it usually devolves into killing things and taking their stuff. Anything that interferes with that in the game is the enemy. SWN looks geared the same way to me.

I like SWN.  A lot.  I also like killing things and taking their stuff.  In rpgs.

Quote from: jeff37923;849305
Now, I have a strong dislike for using D&D/d20 style character creation and combat in a science fiction or space opera game. One of the problems with D&D/d20 rules is that when you try to apply them to Modern or Science Fiction genres, classes and levels do not make sense to me and combat is never able to adequately emulate the lethality of non-medieval weaponry. [/QUOTEWell, for that matter, D&D doesn't adequately emulate medieval weaponry, because the game features combat as an abstraction rather than an emulation.

I think in a nutshell, that you don't like your SF/Space genre games at the same, or similar levels of abstraction as D&D, which is a perfectly valid opinion.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;849315Well, for that matter, D&D doesn't adequately emulate medieval weaponry, because the game features combat as an abstraction rather than an emulation.

I think in a nutshell, that you don't like your SF/Space genre games at the same, or similar levels of abstraction as D&D, which is a perfectly valid opinion.

To a degree, but the majority of D&D games I have been in or D&D adventures I have read center on combat. In the Mongoose Traveller game I am running right now, after a year of campaign play, there have only been four total combats involving the PCs. Most of the time has been spent leading up to those combats and justifying them in the setting plus the PCs making sure that they have the advantage in the combat through tactics (be they social or military).

It has ended up being a very cerebral game.

I don't buy Sine Nomine games for their game mechanics. But they are more than worth the price for the setting creation options, and awesome ideas.

Jeff, I absolutely understand what you are saying. I do agree SWN is a mutant and its D&D in space. But I feel SWN makes great Traveller supplements for GMs.  

SWN has lots of bitz which are awesome for Traveller, most especially in Starvation Cheap which details options for running wars and military campaigns. The most interesting bits I have stolen from SWN for Traveller have been stuff in the GM sections for adventure creation.

I bought SWN's Silent Legions and I doubt I will ever run it RAW, but it has become my go-to adventure building guide for Call of Cthulhu. In CoC, such cults would have real magic, but Silent Legions will be awesome for adding cults into Traveller games too.

Though as a caveat, I must admit that my Traveller campaigns have always leaned toward Sci-Fi/Horror and Cyberpunk/Dystopian sensibilities and my Traveller games have always featured lots of combat so SWN's concepts mesh easily with my view of Traveller.

I found SWN to be the least inspired release from Sine Nomine - boring classes, and derivative material. SN, IMO, really hit their stride with Other Dust, which I think is a great fit for the mechanics and very useful for post-apoc play.

I had the opposite reaction to SWN. It was so heavily pitched as old school D&D in Space, I was expecting to not like it. It turns out I like it better than Traveller for doing Traveller. I was surprised to see it able to fill so many slots with a D&D chassis underneath; AI characters, Mecha, Trading, Spaceships, even Cybernetics, they all satisfied (counting all the supplements here).  The world generation, navy creation, factions and all of that seemed better tuned to producing GM useful material with all of the right things abstracted away. Sometimes there is a part of me that wants MegaTraveller Extended System Generation giving me the exact orbits of all of the bodies in a system, and planet temperatures and axial tilt, etc. Something about SWN shows me how much can be done with just a little, mechanically. I can understand thinking the D&D chassis is not a good fit, but for some reason it strikes me as... very effectively utilitarian over being concerned with innovation, but not boring for it.

Quote from: Spinachcat;849325Jeff, I absolutely understand what you are saying. I do agree SWN is a mutant and its D&D in space. But I feel SWN makes great Traveller supplements for GMs.  

SWN has lots of bitz which are awesome for Traveller, most especially in Starvation Cheap which details options for running wars and military campaigns. The most interesting bits I have stolen from SWN for Traveller have been stuff in the GM sections for adventure creation.

I bought SWN's Silent Legions and I doubt I will ever run it RAW, but it has become my go-to adventure building guide for Call of Cthulhu. In CoC, such cults would have real magic, but Silent Legions will be awesome for adding cults into Traveller games too.

Though as a caveat, I must admit that my Traveller campaigns have always leaned toward Sci-Fi/Horror and Cyberpunk/Dystopian sensibilities and my Traveller games have always featured lots of combat so SWN's concepts mesh easily with my view of Traveller.

I get what you are saying here, Spinichcat. It is just that where you have found some great options and innovations in SWN, I have access to the entire Traveller back catalog via CD-ROM to fill in the blank spaces. That is over 38 years worth of gaming material that is mostly backwards compatible with each version because they use the same format.

Tonight I am busy working on fulfilling a wish list for my Players. Just using Mongoose Traveller alone I have the tools to write up a Bloodhound (with Tracking skill), a bicycle, a modern herald of the nobility, rules for writing research papers and getting research funding, and a commercial walking mech retrofitted into a combat robot. I have everything that I need and then some. I could do anything from Doctor Who to Event Horizon to Planetes with just Mongoose Traveller.


Hell, if my Players figure it out they will go to the site where Grandfather began his Final War over the one thing that would scare him, time travel - and there are rules and background to cover that!

I get that Starvation Cheap is a fine product for SWN fans, but I've got a few veterans (including myself) in the group and we can come up with plenty of warfighter based material. I'd say that about 75% of the adventure material used has come from after game group bull sessions at Green's which is only a block away from the FLGS. I usually tailor campaigns and adventures to the group, except for some general stuff going on in the game world.

Quote from: NeonAce;849329I had the opposite reaction to SWN. It was so heavily pitched as old school D&D in Space, I was expecting to not like it. It turns out I like it better than Traveller for doing Traveller. I was surprised to see it able to fill so many slots with a D&D chassis underneath; AI characters, Mecha, Trading, Spaceships, even Cybernetics, they all satisfied (counting all the supplements here).  The world generation, navy creation, factions and all of that seemed better tuned to producing GM useful material with all of the right things abstracted away. Sometimes there is a part of me that wants MegaTraveller Extended System Generation giving me the exact orbits of all of the bodies in a system, and planet temperatures and axial tilt, etc. Something about SWN shows me how much can be done with just a little, mechanically. I can understand thinking the D&D chassis is not a good fit, but for some reason it strikes me as... very effectively utilitarian over being concerned with innovation, but not boring for it.

Bolding mine.

This is where we disagree. The D&D chassis is very utilitarian and functional, but only for medieval fantasy - and then only because it has been the RPG standard for so many years. Why I am bored with D&D style, isn't the system that has bored me, it is the amount of gameplay I have done with it - I'm burned out. I still am not burned out on Traveller, even though I have done about as much gameplay with it.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;849315Well, for that matter, D&D doesn't adequately emulate medieval weaponry, because the game features combat as an abstraction rather than an emulation.

I would have posted that if you hadn't. Sticking a giant lizard with a pointy stick 100 times until it dies for lack of Hit Points is pretty goofy, no matter which genre you're playing in.

But I will agree about the default setting. It's very bland. I don't knock it too hard because SWN is obviously about the sandboxing, and not the setting. (At least the main rulebook.) But when I GM SWN, the very first thing I do is chuck the setting and use one of my own.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;849340But I will agree about the default setting. It's very bland. I don't knock it too hard because SWN is obviously about the sandboxing, and not the setting. (At least the main rulebook.) But when I GM SWN, the very first thing I do is chuck the setting and use one of my own.

I jettison the Official Traveller Universe myself about half the time. The OTU is good, but its a big galaxy out there with plenty of room to do your own thing.

Good post, Jeff.

I actually share some of your reservations...

Quote from: Orphan81;849318I don't buy Sine Nomine games for their game mechanics. But they are more than worth the price for the setting creation options, and awesome ideas.

...but I still find use for Sine Nomine material thusly. It's great stuff. Kevin Crawford knows what makes a sandbox tick.

Quote from: jeff37923;849336I have access to the entire Traveller back catalog via CD-ROM to fill in the blank spaces.

100% agreement on the Traveller back catalog. My collection is mostly Classic Traveller and 3PP stuff for CT which alone is a great library. Using the full catalog, I can see you not needing (or wanting) to add SWN stuff.

Quote from: jeff37923;849336I'd say that about 75% of the adventure material used has come from after game group bull sessions at Green's which is only a block away from the FLGS. I usually tailor campaigns and adventures to the group, except for some general stuff going on in the game world.

What is this insanity??? Engaging with players to maximize your campaign so everyone has fun???

I declare Badwrongfun! Problematic!

Quote from: jeff37923;849336Why I am bored with D&D style, isn't the system that has bored me, it is the amount of gameplay I have done with it - I'm burned out.

Totally understandable. I've popped in and out of D&D over the decades. D&D (and related games) do have a certain playstyle fostered by class and level mechanics and D&D's approach to combat.

By my reading, it seems that a reasonable one-line summary of the OP would be "SWN may be very good at what it does, but what it does is something I'm not interested in."  That sound about right?

Quote from: Orphan81;849318I don't buy Sine Nomine games for their game mechanics. But they are more than worth the price for the setting creation options, and awesome ideas.

Agreed.  When Sine Nomine launches a new kickstarter, I pledge first and read the project description later because I know that it will be good-quality and highly-usable, even though I will most likely never use the core rules provided.  (I dislike D&D-style class/level systems, regardless of genre.)

Quote from: nDervish;849378By my reading, it seems that a reasonable one-line summary of the OP would be "SWN may be very good at what it does, but what it does is something I'm not interested in."  That sound about right?

Pretty much, but Shipyard Locked was interested in what I assumed was a fairly detailed response (I could be wrong), so I expounded on the subject a bit.