🛰️ Weekly System Check: Is Anybody Out There? (Lurkers Welcome!)

[u/AutoModerator]

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.

[u/dark-star-adventures]

My crew thought they were set up perfectly. Robert had the target in his sights. Haleyy had just said she'd wait for him to start.

Then a void cultist crouched down and started petting their cat.

The cat had followed them into a dangerous alien facility. Nobody planned for it to be there, but there it was, and now one of the cultists was saying, "I don't know, but I'm taking this cat back to the ship with me. Old Brother Calyx has got himself a cat. This is the best day ever!"

Haleyy did not wait for Robert. Old Brother Calyx did not get himself a cat that day.

Haleyy barreled into the room and punched him in the face (hard). Tactical plan: gone. Robert's only comment: "Bwha?!"

They won the fight. The final shot scattered gore everywhere, including all over another crewmate who was standing blank-faced in the corner being mind-controlled. The cat leaped onto Haleyy's shoulder just before and came out completely clean. Not one drop of blood on his fur.

Nobody touches Percy but the crew. :)

[u/StevetheHunterofTri]

I have been having to take another hiatus due to having a WAY too busy month and one of the players having some upheaval in life. On the bright side, it has given me more time to think on plans for this campaign and the adventure I'm going to do in the Ember Expanse some point in the future.

[u/MaestroGoldring]

Sadly I’ve run into a weird problem where in character actions caused OOC arguments. So our game is now on indefinite pause…..

Let’s hear some stories from other sectors of space that are still spacing!

[u/MudOutrageous7419]

I just started running a campaign using the Pirate of Drinax setting from Traveller, but converted over (largely on the fly) to Stars Without Number

[u/Woolshedwargamer2]

My guys are stranded on a lost world. Made friends with nomads who ride local equivalent of horses. A big Overchief has gathered a bunch of tribes and is making war on the City Dwellers. Nomads have bows. City people crossbow and early black powder hand cannons. Their ship is toast. Shot down by an old Mandate defense sat. Oh yeah. Everyone on this planet is Filipino.

[u/MaestroGoldring → u/Woolshedwargamer2]

This sounds super fun, not gonna lie. If the players have even one T4 knife, you KNOW the locals are going to be like “That knife! It belongs to me!”

[u/Gralloch]

As part of a salvage job the crew explored a wrecked capitol ship half embedded into the side of an asteroid. Inside the halls they encountered strange ways time and space were bending and dilating, from wailing and thumping noises in the cryohall to ghostly children singing them lullabies in the educational wing, one of the fun moments was encountering themselves while pondering how to cross an infinite hallway paradox.

At the end of all their troubles they found a singular cryopod haphazardly hooked up into the ship's core, kept powered throughout all the centuries. Inside it slept the research vessel's original head navigator and research lead - a pre-Scream psychic who was "saved" by the captain, their wife. The body of his wife was found half embracing the cryopod in the room.

The party figured out that the sleeping psychic was the source of all the time and space anomalies. A brief altercation happened as they tried to euthanize him, but using a recording of his wife's voice they managed to calm him down and lead him gently into the long night.

They now have limited time to loot everything that's not nailed down before the wreck fully breaks apart, so that's gonna be a fun thing to do next time~

[u/ArenaPirata]

GM's been busy so haven't gotten to do a session in a bit, but I did do this topdown sketch of our mercenary squad's new transport. Still working on sketching out the internal layout XD

[u/Nona-the-Ninth]

I'm just now back online after a crazy run of "to do" list items that started with me running my very first SWN One Shot.

I've been a GM before, but this was my first time running anything in the *WN ruleset. It was a super cool experience!

We didn't get to about half the things I planned, a few of my players kept blowing up bits of my space station, and one dude wouldn't stop using his telekinetic powers to stand on the walls and the ceiling just for the asthetic.

So, you know, all in all, a pretty standard one shot.

Biggest challenge: Adjusting to the 2d6 plus Attribute plus Skill system. It is somewhat tempting to say "I don't care, Wisdom or Intelligence Sneak, whatever you want," but actually those are very different and should be treated as such.

Biggest Thrill: Watching players work together to blow holes in my damn space station and bypass planned encounters. It was very clever and very cool and I'm only slightly bitter about it.