Friday Freebie: Stars Without Number

Image (cc) Phil Parker on Flickr

How could I not recommend the magnificent Stars Without Number as a top tier FREE GAME?

Stars Without Number is the game that changed how I DM.  It helped me prep just enough and forgot about "building encounters" and start enjoying the game so much more. It's the game I wish I'd run first, but more on that later.

But how does it play?

Mechanically, it's an odd mix of d20 (for combat and saves) and 2d6 (for skills) but the players didn't seem to mind.  Skills are distinct enough without being too granular and it all seems to work.  Being an OSR game there are hit dice and hit points, and my favourite method for rolling HP when you level I have seen so far: roll all your hit dice and get that if it's higher than your current total, or get +1 HP if you rolled lower.  It really helps to smooth the curve.

Character generation is somewhat random, in a similar vein to Mythras, but the players' non-random Focus (think Feat) choices and Skill pick mean anyone can still get the specialism they want, and they all work pretty well. Players can then choose a class: Warrior, Expert, Psychic, or a hybrid.  It's more like Alternity in that these are not "classes" in D&D terms. Warriors and Experts get decent mechanical advantages in the relevant areas, where Psychics are mechanically weak but narratively powerful due to the nature of psionics.  There was some disagreement around balance in my group but I think it works, but maybe players should be aware that psychics can affect the game in a different - but not necessarily more powerful way.

Being effectively class-less means you should really get your players to talk about who is going to do what role.  If you want to crew a ship you need people who can Pilot, Shoot, Fix and Program as well as a captain. I like the approach SWN takes to space combat, always a hard one to get right, which evokes Star Trek or similar with the captain giving orders to departments and PCs balancing resources and dealing with crises.  It works OK, and it's worth checking out the book just to see if it would fit your sci-fi game - or your pirate fantasy game for that matter.

But where this book shines I feel is in the running-the-game sections.  Starmap creation is like Traveller's but in broad strokes; there is a definite and intentional emphasis on planning only what you need.  Worlds have tags which suggest the components you can use for building adventures AND help you describe them without going too deep.  Add the details as you need them and it practically runs itself, I can let my ideas percolate all week then write what I need for that week's adventure in my lunch break on game day.  There's swathes of tables for generating all sorts of ideas and they're top notch, enough to recommend the book for any system for the tables alone.

I believe this game is a successful mashing together of the best bits of Traveller, OSR games, and the BRP-based percentile systems. It's not perfect but it's absolutely worth checking it out. The full version adds transhumanism, mechs, an extra AI class, and more tables for fleshing out societies in your sector.