RPGPundit Reviews: Stars Without Number
This is a review of a print version of the RPG "Stars Without Number", by Kevin Crawford, the version by Sine Nomine Publishing. I understand that there's now more than one version of this book, and so I can't take responsibility for any changes there might be from one to the other.
To clarify, this is the one with the cover depicting a vast starfield with some kind of Nebula. The Wench said to me "The first thing to do in a review is to judge the book by its cover", and I certainly agree. This cover is evocative and beautiful, and its just the start of a truly fantastic game.
There are a few games or RPG products for review that I feel are really awful, a few that I think are alright or even clever. Then there are those rare few that the moment I see them I'm convinced I'll be running them sooner or later: Majestic Wilderlands, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, Starblazer Adventures, Aces & Eights, Two-Fisted Tales, ICONS, and now certainly I will be adding Stars Without Number to the short list of high honours. They're not the only reviewed game products I end up using, but they're the ones that even from the first read I have no doubt will end up being used, because every inch of them oozes awesomeness.
SWN is technically an OSR game. Unlike most of these games, it is not a "clone", in the sense of being a recreation of an old RPG from the 70s or early 80s. Its not a direct copy of D&D, or of Gamma World, or Traveller, or anything else. Instead, its a game that certainly could have existed back in that time, possibly the game that some could say SHOULD have been the game done by TSR as the sci-fi companion to D&D. In brief, most of its rules are directly inspired by OD&D, with a strong dose of the mechanical, technological, and setting-design also coming from Traveller. And yet it doesn't feel any need to limit itself to the strict "OSR" box, its mechanics are extremely well-designed and incorporate some modern concessions, its layout is top-notch, and easy to read and learn. It is, in other words, a game that an OSR-fanatic would read and think of as a totally OSR-type game (unless he was part of the "OSR Taliban" who only accept games and game material that are actually old, or direct unfaltering clones thereof), while at the same time someone who's a totally modern gamer that has no experience with old school could read, play, and enjoy without ever suspecting the design source of the game. This is rather a brilliant accomplishment, when you think about it, because it reaches out to the mainstream without alienating the gaming subculture it came from.
The default setting of SWN is mostly implied rather than explicit, but not entirely. You are told in the setting material that the setting is a far-future reality where humanity spread out among the stars, with remarkable success, only to have the entire human civilization collapse due to a terrible disaster. The default starting point is hundreds of years after that fact, when most of the galaxy is still in a dark age but there are areas that have recovered and begun expanding again.
The PCs are assumed to be adventurers, reaching out to the stars to explore vast reaches of space going from planet to planet, searching for treasures among the ruins of ancient colonies, and discovering what has become of worlds with whom contact has been long cut off.
The game is explicitly set up for "Sandbox" play, with the author attempting to lay down guidelines for both Players and GMs about how to handle the "sandbox" style. Players are advised that in a sandbox they are the ones who need to set up goals for their characters and take the lead in terms of what they want to do in this vast emulated world, and warned that unlike other games, the setting is not one that is "scaled to their abilities", unsurmountable odds are entirely possible and players need to proceed with caution. GMs are advised not to try to direct the "plot" of the game, to provide a variety of adventure opportunities but be ready to put them aside when the players choose to do things that are not within the GM's original expectations. All basically good advice.
The mechanical core of SWN is Old-school D&D. That is to say, player characters have the standard six D&D attributes, and they have a class, of which there are only three to choose from: Expert, Psychic and Warrior (roughly equivalent to Thief/rogue, Magic-user, and Fighter). Experts get a reroll on a single check once an hour, psychics get psionic powers, and warriors get to ignore a single hit against them once per fight. Character have D&D style hit points, xp requirements for going up in level, attack bonuses, and saving throws (the saving throws being divided into "physical effect", "mental effect", "evasion", "Tech" and "luck").
One area where you get more sophistication than is typically found in Old-school D&D is with the skill choices. Players each choose, in addition to class, a background package that reflects their origins (packages include things like "astrogator's mate", "engine crew", "priest", "worker", etc), the choice of which will determine certain starting skills. Then they will additionally choose a "training package" based on class that will grant them additional skills related to the particular type of "Expert", "Psychic" or "warrior" they are. Sample Expert packages include things "bounty hunter", "pilot" or "xenoarcheologist"; sample psychic packages include things like "academy graduate", "military psychic" or "tribal shaman"; sample warrior packages include things like "assassin", "ground forces" or "Templar".
Skills function in the game in ways somewhat reminiscent of the Traveller RPG, where they are ranked between 0 and 6, each level giving the same bonus to a roll of 2d6, modified by attribute. These are applied against a difficulty number, usually 8 for moderately difficult tasks, but that can vary from 6-13. No checks are needed for very simple tasks. Checks can be modified by circumstances. If you attempt to check a skill you have no rank at all in (not even 0) you get a -1 to the roll; I personally think this maybe should be higher. Rules are provided for opposed or extended skill checks.
Psionic powers are fairly well designed. They are divided into a series of "disciplines", which each provide progressive levels of power; so a psychic who takes the Telepathy discipline must first purchase "telepathy 1" before he can purchase and use "Telepathy 2". Psychics must usually spend "psi points" to activate a psychic power, the cost of which goes up with the level of each discipline; but they can also choose to permanently reduce their psi point total in order to "master" a power, after which they can use that power without expending psi points. They can also try to use a power when they have no psi points left to them, but this involves the risk of "torching", where each use carries a serious risk of ability score damage. Psychic powers include Biopsionics, Metapsionics, Precognition, Telekinesis, Telepathy and Teleportation, each of which has 9 different "Levels", and each level acts as a completely different ability. Psychic characters all have one primary discipline, which goes up every time they go up in level, and they can also additionally raise any other discipline of their choice one rank as they go up in level. Essentially, the powers are mostly quite similar to a variety of spells from D&D without being just a copy-paste job, and the game does an excellent job of making psychic powers worthwhile without being too complicated or just thinly-veiled magic.
The Equipment section is a marvellous 25-pages in length, full of a spectacular list of low, medium and ultra-high tech weapons, armor, gadgets and vehicles; just about everything you'd ever want for running a sci-fi game. Some of these items, especially the "ancient" tech devices that are no longer within the current civilization's normal level of production are quite inspiring as adventure ideas in and of themselves. Weapons do damage to hit points, most of the time; and armour provides a (descending) Armor Class. Primitive armor has no special protection against modern or high-tech weaponry. Equipment of all kind is divided by "Tech level", which ranges from 0 to 6, where 0 is stone age, 3 is about our modern tech level, 4 is the standard post-fall level of technology, 5 was the standard before the fall, and 6 is totally out there super-high tech.
Just as exciting as the weapons and armour are the very well-thought-out lists of tools, medicine, exploration gear, personal accessories, and of course cyberware and vehicles. You also get basic values for lifestyle costs, employees and the cost of contracting various services. Starships are designed through a series of modular choices: you pick a hull, fitting and drive, choose weaponry and defense, and then add up the costs. I'm not usually the biggest fan of "starship design" rules, but these seem easy enough to follow, and at the same time varied enough in the options provided to be worth the bother. The game mechanics provide rules for starship travel, maintenance, repair, and combat, of course. I should mention that a simple and straightforward encumbrance system, based on the PC's STR stat, is provided.
Speaking of which, combat in the game is handled in a fashion again very similar to D&D, specifically the old-school variety. Combat happens in rounds, and players can move up to 20m and still act in a round (or can move another 20m if they don't do anything else). Initiative is rolled on a D8+dex mod. Attacks are done by rolling a d20, adding the PC's base attack bonus, combat skill bonus, attribute mod, AND the opponent's AC, as well as applying any other situational modifiers; a result of 20 or higher is a hit. A natural 20 is always a hit, and a natural 1 always misses.
Page 77 onward in the 200 page book is dedicated to the GM's domain. Considerably more advice is given on sandbox play, which I could have summarized for the author in "don't try to "create story", don't force the players in certain directions, don't try to be balanced, don't be scared of killing off the player characters". Of more use is the extensive guide to "creating your interstellar sector". A system is provided wherein a GM can randomly create a sector of space using a hexmap. A world creation system on-par with Traveller's is provided, where the GM can randomly generate or determine the atmosphere, temperature, biosphere, population, and tech level of the world, as well as provide "tags" which are details that make the world notable for adventurers. Sample tags (of the 60 provided in the book) include such things as "altered humanity", "flying cities", "local specialty", "preceptor archive", "seagoing cities", or "xenophiles". Each tag is also described in context of what this might imply for potential friends, enemies, complications, things or places that can be found on this world.
You can also choose the local cultural flavour, the basic language (the "common tongue" of the distant future apparently being a "modified English", fairly unrealistically), government, and the spaceport.
There is also a set of mechanics for the GM to create "factions". These are defined as any kind of group that may be used as an important actor in the sector; for example planetary governments, businesses, religions, clubs, etc.
Factions are created as a kind of character of their own, with hit points (reflecting the faction's resistance to outside attack), force (their ability to inflict physical violence), cunning (their skill at espionage and manipulation), wealth (their resources), "FacCreds" (their actual wealth), and experience points, which can grow when the faction completes its current "goal", to allow them to improve ratings.
Factions can operate based on "faction turns" which take place about once a month or once after each adventure. The factions involved in the region can roll initiative, gain FacCreds based on their wealth, pick goals (among a list of things like "military conquest", "commercial expansion", "expand influence", "peaceable kingdom", "wealth of worlds"), launch attacks, change homeworlds, buy assets, expand their general influence, or other such things.
Factions can also have a "tag", describing them and giving them a particular set of special effects. Tags for factions would be things like "eugenics cult", "mercenary group", "pirates", etc.
It is suggested that a high-level (9th and up) player character should be able to create a faction of his own if he wishes to.
Factions are, to be honest, one detail of the game I feel somewhat uncertain about. I think it might be one step too far into adding mechanical complexity into something that might be best off just being roleplayed, but I'm not sure. I think it'd have to be tested in play to see how well it works as a system, and whether it would be more worthwhile than just winging it. I suspect the answer to that will be different for different GMs. Fortunately, this is an entirely modular set of rules, that is, you can remove it from the game and it has no real effect on the rest of play, if you so desire.
The GM section also provides some guidelines for giving out XP (roughly based on the value of rewards obtained by the PCs), and has a random table with 100 potential adventure seeds.
There's also a set of rules for alien creation. These include a random determination for body type (human-like, reptilian, avian, etc), alien psychology and social structure, though no rules for actually statting up aliens per se. We're provided with a few descriptions of sample aliens: the Orc-like Hochog, another race that take on indescribable shapes, and a third that are metamorphs.
Fortunately, there's also a "xenobestiary" chapter, which is of significantly more value; it provides a baseline for creating alien creatures (ranging in threat level from "nuisance vermin" to "party-butchering hell-beast"), with tables for traits and variations that modify the creature's basic qualities. There's also a monster manual of sorts in the chapter, that provides a dozen sample alien monsters, plus a set of basic NPC stats for things like a combat psychic, gang boss, common or elite guard, primitive guards, low-tech tribesmen, normal humans, pirates, rogue warlords, ultra-high tech soldiers, standard soldiers, primitive soldiers, or a standard specialist.
The last two chapters are the designer notes (where the author gives his reasoning for some of the concepts in the game), and a whole sample sector: the "hydra sector"; it has 26 worlds, and four important factions in the sector. The chapter also cleverly provides a mirror set of PC-readable notes, the sort of things that they would have as "travel information" or common knowledge.
The appendix of the book is utterly awesome, providing a set of random tables for cultures, with a list of random names and place-names as well as information on culture, clothing and cuisine for "arabic", "chinese", "english", "indian", "japanese", "nigerian", "russian", and "spanish" cultures; a set of random NPC-creation tables, tables of quick NPC statistics for each class by level, a set of random tables for Corporations, for Religions, for Heretical sects, for Political Parties, for Architecture, and for "Quick Room Dressing", as well as templates for starships.
The very back end of the book contains a photocopiable blank sector hex map, planetary directory sheet, planet record sheet, faction file, adventure file, alien record file, starship record file, a planetary hex map for drawing areas of a planet's surface, and of course a detailed character sheet.
So, on the whole, absolutely awesome. I love the sandbox style, I love the old-school feel that isn't entirely bound to old-school thinking, I love the modular options to the rules. I also love that it has just the right balance of default setting; you can certainly get enough information in the book to use the game's setting as it is, while modifying to make it your own; but the game is not so bound to the setting's assumptions that you couldn't also use the system with your own or other settings without major modification being needed. It would be feasible to use SWN for a game set in an early era of interstellar travel if you so desired, or during the glorious peak of a galactic empire, or to run a setting similar to Dune, or to Fading Suns, or any number of other things. The last time I was this excited about a sci-fi RPG it was with Starblazer Adventures, and of course SWN has a style of play that makes it very different than that game, less space-opera and more gritty, without ever slipping into the stupidity of "grimdark". I have no doubt that sometime soon, when an opening appears for me to do so, I'm going to be running this game.
RPGPundit
Currently Smoking: Winslow Crown Canadian + Gawith's Perfection
SWN is an impressive RPG. It's so good that it can handle the pure awesome of grimdark as well. :)
Also, don't forget to download the load of free stuff for SWN on DriveThru!
What sort of Free stuff do they have?
RPGPundit
Here's the Free stuff
SWN Core Book
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=86467
Mandate Archive: Bannerjee Construction Solutions
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=87186
Mandate Archive: Red Sangha Mercenary Corps
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=88591
Mandate Archive: The Dust
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=89991
Mandate Archive: Martial Arts
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=87185
Mandate Archive: The Qotah
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=92128
Mandate Archive: Bruxelles-class Battlecruiser
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=94472
Mandate Archive: Cabals of Hydra Sector
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=96071
In addition to the freebies, there are several lengthy PDFs as well that have varying price tags.
Quote from: Spinachcat;509709Here's the Free stuff
(...)
In addition to the freebies, there are several lengthy PDFs as well that have varying price tags.
Great! I didn't know that. Thanks.
is this perhaps Star Frontiers for the 21st century? I could live with that.
Almost, I think SF is a bit simpler a game, but now I'm tempted to make SF core races in SWN. Darn you Ghostwhistler, I've got to get to writing H&S2E!
Quote from: Ghost Whistler;509792is this perhaps Star Frontiers for the 21st century? I could live with that.
I think its what SF should have been. Its fair to say that for various reasons, SF failed to be TSR's viable competitor to Traveller and other sci-fi RPGs. If they'd done something like SWN back in the day, they might have ended up actually dominating both genres to a much greater extent.
RPGPundit
I recently picked up a copy of the updated version. It includes two extra chapters. The first covers artificial intelligence and some very cool rules for robot PCs. Basically it's a point buy system that uses a variant on the tolerance rules used for personal cybernetic upgrades.
The second chapter adds rules for mechs. Can't really comment on this chapter as they are not my thing.
SWN immediately established itself as the next cab off the rank to game and we will running it later this year. I can't wait.
Had a look at the pdf from drivethru. I must say the writing, in constantly making reference to old school rpg's, is putting me off. That might not be fair, but I really don't like the way it does this. Put that stuff in the designers notes and get on with the rules and setting. Don't keep telling me 'in old school games players rolled for their pc's hit points' or whatever. I presume the hardback is more or less the same text.
Thanks for the review, Pundit. I'm glad you enjoyed the game and that it looks like it'll be useful to your play. I think that there are a lot of very valuable insights buried in old-school gaming, but it doesn't necessarily mean you have to haul the entire Appendix N on your back, or swear a blood oath to ignore every published RPG product since 1985 when designing something new.
I think that in the end, it all comes down to identifying what it is you want to accomplish, picking the right tools for the job, and then doing that thing. That's a lesson the indie RPG scene has embraced, and I think it's a good lesson. I think that it goes astray is in sometimes denigrating the goals of traditional gaming, but there's no reason not to take what's useful in the insight and leave the rest where it lies.
For SWN, the purpose was to make an easily-accessible sandbox game. What are the worst problems for running a sandbox? GM brain lock in play, player aimlessness, and GM burnout from content prep. Therefore, the design goals were to provide tools and mechanics for specifically combating these issues.
Easy accessibility and GM brain lock is handled by using an incredibly ubiquitous basic game system. Hit points/hit roll/3d6 attributes/classes/levels are practically engraved on the autonomic nervous systems of 90% of gamers. It's possible to make a simpler system, certainly, but simple does not equate to familiar. And familiarity is what gives a GM the sense of comfort necessary to make on-the-fly decisions and ad-hoc situations, because he instinctively recognizes how to translate his conception of a situation or challenge into mechanics that reflect that accurately.
Player aimlessness is countered by making it aggressively clear in the text that the players have to have goals and make commitments to their own ambitions. Ghost Whistler, if you check the text, you'll see that apart from the game's intro page it doesn't talk about "old-school gaming"- it talks about sandbox gaming. Sandbox gaming really does have dramatically different table dynamics from most modern storyline-based games, and players who go in thinking that SWN is going to play like a Pathfinder adventure path in space are going to crash and burn in the first session. Players need to be much more self-directed and much less concerned for "staying on the path" than is normal for a modern storyline game. This is not something that the rules can dictate if they're going to remain recognizably traditional; 2E D&D was notorious for these hard-rails storyline adventures, and mechanically it was fundamentally identical to its much more sandbox-influenced predecessors.
GM burnout from content prep kills a lot of sandboxes a-bornin'. Thus, another reason to pick an old-school mechanical baseline; virtually everything the OSR publishes can be imported into SWN with no more effort than occasionally flipping an armor class. Moreover, the game needed to guide the GM into how they should build their content, and how to brew up a sector full of worlds without finding themselves up at 3 AM drawing weather patterns on a spiky exploded world map projection. It needs to handhold GMs who may not be familiar with the whole sandbox concept and show them that some things need to be made, some things can be made if they're fun, and some things should be actively shunned as unworthy of their effort.
Really, I think that an old-school mechanical base is just enormously useful to a designer. The advantages of familiarity and proven functionality let a designer turn his attention to the topics he really wants to explore and keep the reader from being distracted by system wrestling. The system is practically born to have funky bits bolted onto it without breaking down.
Quote from: SineNomine;510166Really, I think that an old-school mechanical base is just enormously useful to a designer. The advantages of familiarity and proven functionality let a designer turn his attention to the topics he really wants to explore and keep the reader from being distracted by system wrestling. The system is practically born to have funky bits bolted onto it without breaking down.
God, I wish you could go tell that to the present "D&D Next" design team.
Yes, all very well put.
RPGPundit
So what's on the horizon in 2012 for SWN?
Do you have any plans for a SWN magazine?
Any plans to publish adventures?
It would be awesome if you had a marketing budget and could really get your game out into the public imagination. It's a rocking game. I think your AC system is a bit odd, but you include easy modifications to D20 ascending AC in the next paragraph.
It's an understanding and acknowledgement that not everyone games the same way and that's impressive as a designer. Kudos!
A couple of the guys from Spica Publishing (http://spicapublishing.co.uk/) put out an SWN fanzine called Infinite Stars (http://www.burrowwolf.com/infinitestars/page8/index.html). There's a Facebook Page (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Infinite-Stars-Cooperative/355007304511934) and a dedicated SWN forum (http://www.sfrpg-discussion.net/phpBB3/viewforum.php?f=58&sid=bf9164e6d0a99b187a86a50df249ce39) on the SFRPG boards.
Thank you Vile!
Quote from: Spinachcat;510312So what's on the horizon in 2012 for SWN?
Do you have any plans for a SWN magazine?
Any plans to publish adventures?
As Vile mentioned, some time-generous fans put together Infinite Stars as an excellent SWN fanzine, and the Facebook page is something I wouldn't have the time to manage myself. As a one-man operation with a day job, I'm more or less in the position of zero-sum scheduling; anything I want to do means giving up something else.
For 2012, late spring or early summer will see
Other Dust, a standalone companion game to SWN. It's going to cover Terra circa 200 years after the Scream, giving a setting and framework for post-apocalyptic sandbox gaming. It'll have all the customary trappings of the genre- nanomutations, scavenged tech, crazed raiders, hardscrabble survivor enclaves, and so forth, but what I really want to explore with it are some techniques for leveraging world creation. I want the least amount of GM creative effort to create the maximum amount of good table material. Some of this is already getting explored in
An Echo, Resounding, which is a campaign region creation/domain management/mass combat sourcebook for Labyrinth Lord that should be coming out as soon as the proofs come in mid-month.
As for adventures, Hard Light (http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=86468) is already available for folks who want to ease in with a an old-fashioned site-based exploration adventure with a developed home base. Polychrome (http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?manufacturers_id=3482&products_id=91490)is mostly tools for doing cyberpunk with SWN with the core book world of Polychrome as the worked example, but it's got a short adventure in there. I've been entertaining ideas for another adventure revolving around the world of Hutton and the not-so-straightforward rescue of a Gateway senator and his daughter in the clutches of the perfidious Everlasting, but that's on the back burner right now.
After
Other Dust, I'll likely be turning my attention to mercantile campaigns, doing them up the same way that
Skyward Steel did naval ones and
Darkness Visible did espionage. More free Mandate Archives can be expected, and I'll probably get five or six of those out over the course of the next year.
And way at the back of the back burners, I've got this niggling, goading little curiosity in my head about what the results would be like if you wrote an absolutely over-the-top, epic-heroes-dodging-sunshine-and-juggling-angry-ninjas game a la Exalted, but built it on an old-school framework. What would happen if you shoveled all the mechanical cruft overboard and just focused on the fact that PCs are ungodly scary people who can do almost anything they please up until they run into other ungodly scary people?
I think a situation like that is just crying out for a sandbox perspective in a game. Exalted tried something like that, but the global sandboxing didn't work; it had an uber-crunchy Charm framework that could shove around cities full of people and remake geography overnight, but all that uber-crunchiness went instantly fuzzy as soon as GMs and players tried to interface things. The Mandate of Heaven domain rules and the mass combat rules simply did not work as advertised, so you ended up with PCs who'd forged epic marvels and invincible legions in their hometowns but had no mechanical certainty in how they actually affected anything. There was no coherent continuum of mechanical effects from the individual to the global. Thus, the ultra-dense individual conflict systems turned into mark-1 eyeballing above the individual level, and I think the dissonance hurt.
But for now I've just got it in the mental cupboard as something to try after I'm tired of working on SWN. I've still got to get this cover finished for An Echo, Resounding, and then I'll send it and the bookblock off for proofing.
Quote from: SineNomine;510384And way at the back of the back burners, I've got this niggling, goading little curiosity in my head about what the results would be like if you wrote an absolutely over-the-top, epic-heroes-dodging-sunshine-and-juggling-angry-ninjas game a la Exalted, but built it on an old-school framework. What would happen if you shoveled all the mechanical cruft overboard and just focused on the fact that PCs are ungodly scary people who can do almost anything they please up until they run into other ungodly scary people?
I think a situation like that is just crying out for a sandbox perspective in a game. Exalted tried something like that, but the global sandboxing didn't work; it had an uber-crunchy Charm framework that could shove around cities full of people and remake geography overnight, but all that uber-crunchiness went instantly fuzzy as soon as GMs and players tried to interface things. The Mandate of Heaven domain rules and the mass combat rules simply did not work as advertised, so you ended up with PCs who'd forged epic marvels and invincible legions in their hometowns but had no mechanical certainty in how they actually affected anything. There was no coherent continuum of mechanical effects from the individual to the global. Thus, the ultra-dense individual conflict systems turned into mark-1 eyeballing above the individual level, and I think the dissonance hurt.
All of your plans sound great, but this one would really interest me - really just now getting into
Exalted and I love the setting but the rules... eh, not so much. Not horrible, but could be done better I think.
Let me say that of all the things you could be doing, the Exalted type game would be the last thing I would buy.
What I'll send you pre-order money for today would be
Power Armor Rules
Mech Rules
anything else Sci-Fi you can think of.
Basically rounding out the stuff that would make SWN usable for all kinds of Sci-Fi goodness.
Quote from: CRKrueger;510805What I'll send you pre-order money for today would be
Power Armor Rules
Mech Rules
anything else Sci-Fi you can think of.
Basically rounding out the stuff that would make SWN usable for all kinds of Sci-Fi goodness.
No pre-ordering needed; the SWN Core Edition (http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=94621) has rules for using and designing mechs and mech-based powered armor. Mongoose is selling it in hardcopy if you like it better that way. The core edition also includes a chapter on generating societies for the worlds you create and a chapter covering robots and AIs as PCs and NPCs.
Other Dust's content will also all be completely cross-compatible with SWN, so you'll be able to loot that for your radioactive hell-worlds and ancient Mandate tech caches. And just for fun, I've been mulling over putting out a short transhumanism supplement, largely for the entertainment value of running transhuman sci-fi in a system directly compatible with Keep on the Borderlands.
Quote from: SineNomine;510909And just for fun, I've been mulling over putting out a short transhumanism supplement, largely for the entertainment value of running transhuman sci-fi in a system directly compatible with Keep on the Borderlands.
I like your style. Finally did download SWN and made a character for fun - very smooth system.
Quote from: SineNomine;510909No pre-ordering needed; the SWN Core Edition (http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=94621) has rules for using and designing mechs and mech-based powered armor. Mongoose is selling it in hardcopy if you like it better that way. The core edition also includes a chapter on generating societies for the worlds you create and a chapter covering robots and AIs as PCs and NPCs.
Other Dust's content will also all be completely cross-compatible with SWN, so you'll be able to loot that for your radioactive hell-worlds and ancient Mandate tech caches. And just for fun, I've been mulling over putting out a short transhumanism supplement, largely for the entertainment value of running transhuman sci-fi in a system directly compatible with Keep on the Borderlands.
Damnit, you bad man.
I'm trying to do game design over here and you go and link to another book I now want to read?
Bastard. ;)
Quote from: SineNomine;510909No pre-ordering needed; the SWN Core Edition (http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=94621) has rules for using and designing mechs and mech-based powered armor. Mongoose is selling it in hardcopy if you like it better that way. The core edition also includes a chapter on generating societies for the worlds you create and a chapter covering robots and AIs as PCs and NPCs.
SOLD!
Quote from: SineNomine;510909largely for the entertainment value of running transhuman sci-fi in a system directly compatible with Keep on the Borderlands.
That's a transhumanist game I'd play. :hatsoff:
The Pundit Bump continues to work for reviews!
RPGPundit