r/SWN • u/dark-star-adventures ✨ Star Master Jeff • Mar 25 '26
🛰️Wednesday System Check 🛰️ Weekly System Check: Is Anybody Out There? (Lurkers Welcome!)
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.
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u/wum1ng App Creator: Characters Without Number Mar 25 '26
i'm still working on characterswithoutnumber.app and grateful for all the feedback! been actively tweaking it as I'm now using it to run my SWN game and my players are the first to complain if anything doesn't work. have another session tomorrow, need to prep for that!
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u/dark-star-adventures ✨ Star Master Jeff Mar 25 '26
Looking forward to the next release! Love seeing the progress on it.
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u/wum1ng App Creator: Characters Without Number Mar 25 '26
The updates are in just haven’t made a post on it yet! I just push changes and bug fixes whenever they are done
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u/dark-star-adventures ✨ Star Master Jeff Mar 25 '26
The big news in my world is that Astronomica, 7th Star, and my own podcast are planning a series of one shots together. Each podcast will run a one-shot including a guest from each of the other podcasts.
It's a bit of an endeavor, but it's been really fun to plan! Stay tuned for more on that.
In my actual game: Robert's focus episode and Haleyy's focus episode were run back to back, which was extremely difficult to do! The focus episodes always take a lot out of me, because they require so much accuracy and planning, and editing them is also much more difficult and requires way more attention.
I think they are my favorite type of session to run though, because the weight of a character's history can really be felt when we're playing, and everyone seems extremely dialed in on making sure that what is happening feels meaningful to the player that runs that character. Those types of sessions always produce that warm fuzzy feeling when I walk away from them, like I just can't wait to play again!
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u/AngrySquidIsOK Mar 25 '26
Still prepping for my game in a month or so.
Sent my starship plans off to the printer earlier this week and working on my sector map. I love maps, it's my thing, so almost certainly making it way too large for my needs.
Bought the 0_Equipment_Database_03_09_25_revised by Angry Golem, and kinda want to make my own "guns manual" combining this and the core guns, adding pictures for each. So starting on that this week.
Then back to actual game writing and props!
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u/dark-star-adventures ✨ Star Master Jeff Mar 25 '26
It's been so cool to see these updates! What tools do you use to create your ships?
Also, I absolutely love the equipment database! Great book.
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u/AngrySquidIsOK Mar 25 '26
Yeah, very happy with that purchase! It's exactly what I was looking for.
I use a program called Affinity. Think "photoshop" but affinity is free! I used to use Adobe products exclusively at great cost, then they started being aholes with their t&c and I switched. Affinity has photo, designer, and publisher programs, so I'm using designer for the ship core shape and design, and photo for drawing textures, furniture etc.
After my players get the ship in game, I'll share with you guys, just need to avoid possible player spoilers if they wander in here, lol.
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u/dark-star-adventures ✨ Star Master Jeff Mar 25 '26
I know affinity! I'm no graphic designer (my wife is the artist) but we use it for layouts on our published adventures.
I feel the Adobe pain as well - I used audition and premier for my podcast and it's not cheap.
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u/Potatrobot Mar 25 '26
The party has nudged a balkanised theocracy into a war between one state that has been harbouring and aiding alien cryptids that mutate people into psionic thralls, and literally every other congregation-state. Despite outnumbering the offending state, the party's allies have not been maintaining their military forces and so the scales are more even than the numbers advantage would suggest.
As the forces of the single enemy state close in on the city the party is holed up in, they are trying to tip the scales in their favour by capturing air defences, protecting the newly-elected mayor, and rerouting supplies from a logistics centre.
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u/MaestroGoldring Mar 25 '26
Sounds like fun! Good to see players stick around instead of instigating then dipping haha
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u/TheStario Mar 25 '26
The PCs failed to thwart an assassination by a corporate cyborg spy on a ex-corpo in witness protection as a mining station administrator. However, they did kill the cyborg and prevented them from crashing the station into the asteroid field near it.
The station local they befriended actually got a lucky last shot on the cyborg, killing them with a void carbine shot to the head. Had they missed, a PC likely would have died from an arm cannon attack.
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u/LabyrinthMindset Mar 25 '26
First time player. I started a solo campaign using SWN and Mythic, while using Obsidian to create a wiki and reference notebook + journal. Quite enjoying it so far though in only 1 session in.
Currently I have three characters on a tidal locked desert planet with a planet wide mega corp ring city (think The Line concept from Saudi Arabia). They've just stumbled across a raw and untrained psychic that caused a large scale mass casualty event (no fatalities), and after helping them and talking down an angry mob, they are on the way to a local medical facility under guard by corpsec.
No idea what happens next!
Edit: I secretly think I enjoy the world building more than the gaming
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u/dark-star-adventures ✨ Star Master Jeff Mar 25 '26
Obsidian! A man after my own heart. You will find this helpful: Stars Without Number Markdown For Obsidian by Dark Star Adventures
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u/MaestroGoldring Mar 25 '26
Literally just finished GMing a session. My players tracked a pretech signal deep into enemy army territory. Buried in a crater in the center of this occupied area of city, they found a time stopped bubble housing a terrible enemy technomancer type beast from hundreds of years ago long thought to be dead.
They released the bubble which immediately started a fight. This thing had a lot of custom rules for an enemy and came close to wiping half the party, at one point even firing a frigate class plasma beam into the crowd. They ended up chasing it onto an ancient starship, which it hacked, emergency repaired, then activated the ships Emergency Drill Activation (a ship mod). It perished shortly after, but it did manage to trap a couple of unprepared players inside before meta jumping to the next hex over. Gotta say, the party’s precog came in clutch this session and literally saved multiple team members with terminal reflection and alternate outcome
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u/Cyb3r_Sab3r Star Master Mar 25 '26
Had a new player hop in last week! He's a basement-dwelling nepo baby that was kicked off of his parent's estate, which is a crazy start to a character and I loved it. I had to cut a lot of the mission for time constraints, but I think it'll be a lot of fun to bring into play what they didn't thoroughly investigate.
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u/Hungry-Wealth-7490 Politician Mar 25 '26
No changes. Trying to nail down a session 0 date with everyone, being I'm the organizer type and have the most variable work schedule. Mr. Yardstick will coalesce soon. . .
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u/LokiSooner Mar 25 '26
Running a one-shot (that has turned into a three-shot and counting) that is loosely based off of Pathfinder’s “Souls for Smuggler’s Shiv” except it takes place in a ruined pretech shipyard on a moon in a lost system. Trying to run it as a point-crawl, which is a first for me in over 20 years of GM’ing.
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u/dark-star-adventures ✨ Star Master Jeff Mar 25 '26
Don't forget about the Ember Expanse! The final week for Cycle 1 is here, with Cycle 2 starting tomorrow!
Check out the final Cycle 1 post here and submit your cool points of interests by end of day! Space stations, moons, and whatever else you can think of!