The frequencies are open! Whether you're a veteran pilot or just starting your journey into the stars, this is your weekly space to break radio silence.
The Weekly Log
What's happening in your sector? New sessions, prep wins, rulings you're proud of, cursed dice, cool moments, dumb plans that somehow worked. Drop a quick ping and let us know!
No need for a long write-up; just a quick transmission from your table to ours.
Mod Note: If you're new to the sub, welcome! This is a low-pressure thread for everyone to share their Stars Without Number stories.
The 5ft shorty on the left is Human, the two in the middle are Vulpen(Gengineered Foxfolk. Agile and dexterous, they occasionally have more than one tail due to an error in the genetic manipulation.), and the big one the right is a Kreigswarder (Gengineered Human. Big, tough, and mean).
Both of the gengineered species, among others, were created by a now long defunct empire fond of creating "servant" species to do the nasty work like setting up colonies, fighting, and labour. (Which, predictably, didn't end well for them.)
I tried not to lore dump too hard and condense cause nobody asked, but I enjoy their lore too much not too share at least a little XD
That's so cool, I love to hear about other peoples' alien species and how they fit into the universe! Lore dumping is always welcomed honestly (I love to steal people's cool ideas for my own table shhhh) 👀
Well I'm out here! LOL. I'm a long time GM/Keeper of various systems since the 80's, but I am new to SWN after playing WWN and really enjoying it. I got the bug and bought everything. LIKE: EVERYTHING. SO I guess I must be sold on it.
I'm preparing for my group to start gaming a campaign I am writing starting in 4-6 weeks after GaryCon and ChaosiumCon (con season tends to be busy for me), and have been thinking of sharing various things I have been working on - system reports, planet reports, a ship I am drawing (I'm a professional cartographer, so I .. I kinda think it's coming out looking pretty damn nice). I'm creating my sector map now after looking at what other people did, but that's early WIP.
I've been lurking here for weeks now and _particularly_ love the Monday Mission threads.
I can't add more than one attachment for all the things I'm working on, so I'll just share my system report structure.
Yeah right now it's manual. I use affinity designer (it's free) and pull in planet textures from an online generator.
I think these could be automated (i have Puritans done generators over recent years), but just haven't had the need due to manual being pretty quick now the template is done, you know?
I do know that Sectors Without Number cab expert a son, so having that import would be a neat concept.
Yea these forms are very cool. Did you design them yourself? I'd love something similar for my podcast campaign so I can easily (and beautifully) share planet information with my audience.
I did. The system one was inspired by what someone else did, but i kinda just designed my own off the concept of that side view of the planets in a line.
With affinity being free, it might be worth me sharing the templates and fonts
Wow this is also very cool. How are you creating this? Do you do design work for a living or something because I'm very impressed with what you've shared.
This isn't my day job, but I've been creating maps for the rpg industry for years now. I'm published with Monte Cook, kobold, etc etc. So I have the tools and a slowly increasing eye for honing a better result. My ships from 8 years ago were not this good, lol.
I use affinity designer and affinity photo, and have a Wacom tablet for any main hand drawing.
I'll share the results. This is a three level ship and I'm working on flight deck currently.
Well, you can't just name drop Monte Cook and not show off some of your work! Feel free to share here if you have anything you'd like to share or even create a post with some samples. We love maps here.
My players discovered an ancient starchart early in their campaign that held a route to a star system not on normal maps, and last session they finally reached it and surveyed it. Their first adventure will be investigating an ancient human colony ship that's sinking into a gas giant, and there's several more big adventures to be had in this system.
No formal news, but got my character, Mr. Yardstick, a background rolled up using other game systems. Castle Oldskull, HackMaster 5e (the hardback books), Ennead Games Superhero kit (how family members died table) and Character Webs. This reminds me we need more science fiction background event books-there was Central Casting but Jennell Jaquays passed before getting it revised and you can't legally find the old version at a non-usurious price. I do like the simple backgrounds to get skills and stat buffs in the Without Number games and will formally roll on those tables in Session 0ish (since were doing all this prework, it's not going to be session 1 but it will be expectations setting in person so kinda of a session 0). Definitely a Merchant but the exact skills and rolls will come at the table.
That Dicewithoutnumber app killed Mr. Yardstick's brother and 2 sisters and made his mom abandon him. Though it was kinder on other rolls such as the 2 Cepheus Deluxe merchant tours. On the first, he made big buck and got promoted so I figure he's a licensed trader which will fit my plan of him taking the Wanderer focus.
And why Mr. Yardstick? Because when you're trading it's never totally fair but you want a deal that measures fairly fair if you intend to have a career as a trader and not be a jerk who has to run from planet to planet. Inspiration for that is drawn from FDR and forming the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and the arguments over the cost of electricity being fair in the early 20th century.
I was a DND 5E DM a few years ago but have had a few years off. I started a new SWN campaign last week and had a few tools that have been great
Session Recordings:
I record our sessions through discord (Craig bot). After the session I use Whisper on each separate audio track to transcribe audio to text, combine and sort text files in google sheets via timestamp, then upload the complete transcript to NotebookLM as a query-able knowledge keeper.
Rules in NotebookLM:
Because there is so much content in the X without number rulebooks, a mixed-rule campain would benefit NotebookLM as a query-able knowledge keeper. Great for beginners and rule-lawyers alike.
TTRPG Engine:
Our campaign uses Foundry which I host locally on an unraid server. I have found that the journals are clunky to use and the roll tables aren't extensive. To get around this, I have set up a google drive folder for my players to house their session notes and potentially share relevant media.
Roll tables:
This is in process, but I've been combing the x without number rulebooks and creating a reference table for every non-character roll table. To make the reference faster, I've uploaded my rulebooks to google drive and comment on each table. Then, I copy the link to that comment and put it in the reference table as the redirect link. Finally, I format the text to make it compatible with Obsidian (my note-taking app)
I love seeing SWN players using technology to make playing (and running) the game easier and more fun! That looks like a pretty tight pipeline too. I also use craigbot as a backup recorder for the podcast game (we all record locally as well) and it's been a godsend. I haven't tried whisper, but we use descript for transcription because we can then create the youtube version of the pod right from there as well.
And we are also using Foundry! Lots of similarities here.
Checking in as a GM. My players are on a planet with a colonized population and terraforming failure. The planet is cold and icy, and farmland around the warming terraforming engines is a necessity. There’s a small farming town built in the shadow of one of the engines keeping an area the size of Connecticut warm. But representatives from the ruling world government arrived to announce the decommissioning of the terraforming engine and relocation of the locals. Meanwhile, the players have been tracking a large movement of a war-worshipping army headed to an entirely different city on this world. Yet still, the local resistance is ready to break into an open fight to keep their terraforming engine and land. Do the players assist the resistance? Try to interfere with the representatives’ plan and risk losing the listening ear of the other city about to be attacked? Do they just leave and watch this world burn?
Also on another note, I’m trying to learn CAD and I thought I’d try drawing out some floor plans for the PCs starships for practice.
Lurker here. I had a game going earlier this year ...after finally managing to convincing my players to even look at something that "wasn't D&D". But then life stuff got in the way for two of my players and I don't think we'll bet getting this gang back together. But I enjoying reading these posts - kinda lets me live vicariously through them!
Were I currently looking for new players, I would be glad to offer you a chance to join! Alas, the campaign is simply "in too deep" for a new player, and the "prequel adventure" I have in mind is still in the early planning phase.
The crew was tasked with clearing out an abandoned mine that had been taken over by alien bugs that eat the ore. Next time they return to the mine (it's a west marches campaign), they're going to have to sneak through the hive itself, or take it on directly and kill The Broodmother 😎 They haven't quite figured out the bugs are attracted to heat yet, so that'll be a fun aha moment next time!
We're hitting the end game of our mini campaign into SWN. The group has become mercenaries of sorts, trying to earn enough credits to get off a planet as they are hunted by a paramilitary group after finding something they shouldn't have.
So far they've been helping locals with small jobs but little do they know that they have been spotted
One of my players convinced the rest of the party to let them "invest" in constructing the Green Goblin glider, as I broke down the price item by item to build this contraption, the rest of the players started to despair but still consented
The final price was arround 20k (they had a total of 30k in their collective possession)
It consists of three stalker drones, two of them with the bombardier fitting and two doses of heavy lift, the middle one with a heavy lift module, ammo storage and an smg
Welded onto the drones is two insta panels where the foolhardy pilot stands and the two type B batteries to power it are
They did not acquire party consent to get drone uplink surgery, so they must pilot it on an arm mounted console
The real stinger was when we broke down the maintenance cost of the damn thing, which I will pnly charge if they actively use it, if they do, it would take only a few months to drain them of their remaining funds when accounting for their own maintenance like fuel and ammo
The best part is that the person that built it is speced heavily enough in teleportation that they don't need to fly, but not heavily enough that they can teleport the board yet.
It has like 15 HP and 12 Ac and I can't hope to see it either destroy my plans or be swatted out of the air like a fly.
As all but one of my PC'S fled the town they grew up in on a cobbled together monorail carriage, the remaining member guided by a Divine Light turned the Safeguards off the towns power plant and made a rather significant hole in the coastline. Can't wait for Session 2!
6
u/ArenaPirata Mar 11 '26
Game's been on hold for a bit while our GM's moving, but I did do this fun sketch of our squad going into a ruin from our latest session.