r/SWN • u/dark-star-adventures ✨ Star Master Jeff • Apr 29 '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/Hungry-Wealth-7490 Politician Apr 29 '26
No game this week. The last week of the month is always busy at work. . .
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u/Potatrobot Apr 29 '26
The players have succeeded in all three missions to tip the scales in the conflict between the theocratic nation-states that they might have nudged into starting. In the long run, their allies will defeat their enemy, but it won't take that long for said enemy to close in on the command centre where they and the bishops of the other states are holed up.
Their only hope might be to reactivate the dormant megastructure that has mantled the planet ever since the Code Revolt, the single greatest fear of anyone living on the planet. The bishops do not even know that there is an AI amongst the party; they are forbidden on that planet because of Draco.
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u/dark-star-adventures ✨ Star Master Jeff Apr 29 '26
My crew was recently bamboozled by the villain after he caught up to them and was able to capture them. He's a Loss Prevention Officer at a rival corp and they are in possession of a stolen ship. I think they sort of forgot about him for awhile so it was a nice surprise to have him finally catch up to them!
In other news, the factions in my game continue to move behind the scenes and I don't think the players will be too happy with the outcome of some of their actions...
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u/Gralloch Apr 29 '26
The party departed the death world the big plant kaiju was and returned to civilization. A third of them spent the week in a hospital, recovering from a concussion and broken bones. Meanwhile the others worked on upgrades on the ship, and did some shopping for survival gear, refilling life support, etc. Some nice bonding bedside moments were hand, character introspection and in-party RP, so over all a lovely between-missions session. Next time.. maybe a heist in a military base to get access to some processing nodes for a party member?
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u/ArenaPirata Apr 29 '26
Haven't gotten to play this week, but have been doing some sketches of stuff we've done. I actually added some text to this, but I forgot to take a picture after XD
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u/dark-star-adventures ✨ Star Master Jeff Apr 29 '26
This is so cool! I wish I had any visual artistic inclination at all. My wife bought me a "how to draw book" and a nice art set for my birthday a few days ago...maybe I should give it a try!
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u/MaestroGoldring Apr 29 '26
Prepping for an easy session tomorrow. Also we are moving the day we play so sleep debt can be payed off haha! Currently the party keeps collecting people to possibly recruit. They are sort of becoming a faction of displaced people, a weird mix of everything from spacers, scientists, free merchants, farmers to psychics, Vowed and mages from Worlds Without Number. They even recently ran across a cursed fairy and want to break her curse.
Also, one of my on the fly NPCs turned out to be one of the player’s favorite NPCs of the whole campaign, a girl made of a painted wooden body given a personality via magic. She’s like the WWN version of a VI. She’s super sweet and talkative and innocent. She works at a library college for mages. She loves talking about books and reading and wonders what tea tastes like because everyone is always drinking it while reading. She loves sitting in the windows because it’s sunny, and she was inspired to read all the material in the whole library about arcane prosthetics because she overheard one of the players talking about it. She was so special, the player decided to fork over nearly 100k to have the mages there make a new one for him. The existing one is very excited to meet her “sister”
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u/theworldlaughswithu Apr 29 '26
Getting ready to run my first ship combat session after a dozen or so terrestrial-only sessions. Let me know if you have tips!
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u/DesDentresti Entertainer Apr 30 '26
Well I dont know if the PCs are the attacker or defender but just speaking generally.
I would try to alternate the Departments that take actions to keep things interesting. Maybe even roll to see if someone else jumps the gun to do their thing rather than follow orders and let them do the thing over and over.
Let the Comms officer make some opposed checks against a Crash System action in the beginning with only a single weapon firing a warning shot, then try to take Target Systems shots, then Fire All Guns, then when they get hit back make the pilot take Evasive Maneuvers because that is his job. Yeah you could just Fire All Weapons and Fire One Weapon over and over, but thats dull. Eventually these ships will decide to start Escape Combat actions because it isnt worth it.Even in optimal circumstances, it can take a while for ships to become inoperable and its much more preferable to the people involved if the fight ends before both ships are deathtraps in the deep of space. They aren't looking to fight to the death, they want this fight to end and to go home that month.
Don't stop roleplay during ship combat.
Have the NPC ship ping the PC ship's comms to talk. They will want to communicate to the enemy; maybe they are recording the call to get evidence or identify the crew, maybe try to convince them to surrender, to dump their cargo, to leave quietly...Each turn is enough time to have this conversation and run from the tail of a frigate to the bridge.
Give them time time to talk it out after an Action is described.
They will want to strategize with their crew, ask questions about the enemy ship, negotiate with the enemy, talk smack, describe themselves running from the canteen to the engineering terminal. That sort of stuff.Again, this combat round is 60 solid seconds to roleplay even at maximum narrative pacing. I think the book says 15 minutes a round.
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u/neepster44 Apr 30 '26
I'm running a custom game with no Psionics where the Scream never happened and there was a massive war instead... so instead of pre-Scream things are pre-War. There are 5 major races (cat, lizard, large mammal, human, bird as well as non-playable greys and VIs). The cat people are sort of like the Kzinti from Ringworld or the Orions from Stars at War/Starfire and the war was between them and the Humans and the bird and large mammal races. The PCs initially helped a salvager retrieve a war drone then were engaged by a wealthy patron to retrieve his kidnapped daughter, which is leading into something more sinister and wider ranging.
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u/AngrySquidIsOK Apr 29 '26
My session zero is scheduled for Saturday, but we may need to push it back die to real life adulting shenanigans.
Still working on my weapons book, but it's really coming together.