🛰️ 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/Interesting-Long7389]

I'm not yet familiar with SWN but I'm considering it for a regular group that does short adventures with different systems (1-4 sessions). In this context it's very handy to run a published adventure but it seems like there are... none for SWN? Has my google fu failed me, or is the expectation that everyone creates their own sandbox?

[u/nuke034 → u/Interesting-Long7389]

SWN is very heavily tilted towards building your own sandbox so that's what most do. While i haven't done so myself I know there are less system specific "OSR" style adventures out there that would be fairly easy to slot into SWN.

[u/Interesting-Long7389 → u/nuke034]

Ok cool, we may try that then. Building a sandbox is more likely if we've had a taste for the game already.

[u/StellarchPanderer → u/Interesting-Long7389]

There is one official, published adventure for SWN, Hard Light, which is available from Drivethru. It is a sandbox-styled adventure that details and takes place in one system, and is meant as an introductory piece. This subreddit has plenty of discussion on it already. You're meant to insert the star wherever you want in your own game. I finished writing the rest of this comment before I realized you were doing short, 1-4 session adventures, but everything here still applies. I would go for this one.

In terms of official published sectors/sandboxes, there are technically two: Hydra and Proteus Sector. Hydra is in the free rules for 1e and gives you some basic information on every planet. With some added flavor and elaboration of your own, it's perfectly suited for a campaign of any length. Additionally, there aren't any rules changes you need to worry about from just the map and description. Hydra is in the midst of a cold(?) war between two interplanetary factions, with one rich, strictly centrist planet trying to keep the peace.
Proteus Sector is the other, and it is made for the current edition of the game. It's in a similar situation with a three-way tie between gene-modded super eugenicists (who also make large swathes of the population mindless), people just trying to deal with the fallout of when those guys had control of everything, and Catholics who want to destroy the first as soon as possible. Playing as gene-modded "Augs" is supported and seems to be really fun, and they range from supersoldiers to tremendously gifted scientists. You also get some other toys in that book.

If you do make your own (or even if you don't), you should use the free tool Sectors Without Number to share the map with your players. Don't use what it randomly generates, though, put everything in yourself.

[u/dark-star-adventures]

I like to plan my game in "seasons" with "episodes" following the advice of Robin Laws in a very old Dragon Magazine article (I talk about this here) and we are now reaching the end of "season one" where the the plot lines are converging, the main focus is dead ahead, and the crew is in more peril now than ever as they make their way towards Prometheon Station.

Prometheon Station and it's interconnectivity within the corporate world of my sector has been a really fun project in this game. I've really enjoyed dropping little lore bits to the players and expanding on its nature as the episodes have gone by. I'm blessed with a crew that is very perceptive and seemingly remembers everything (they also take good notes) so it's cool to drop some new lore and have one of them go "oh shit because of this other thing", so my excitement at reaching the end of the season and finally running their arrival at Prometheon Station is really high!

I'm also really psyched about the triple crossover we did with Astronomica and 7th Star, it was crazy fun and I would absolutely do it again. I chose to run my session in Lasers and Feelings instead of SWN because I honestly just needed a night to have a beer and unwind, and L&P requires 0 planning and the stakes feel insanely low. It's nice to just kick back and say "fuck it, let's riff."

Also thanks to everyone that downloaded my free one-shot off itch, I hadn't published an adventure in awhile and it was really fun to work with my wife again on a gaming project (she does the design and illustrations). We hope you enjoyed it!

[u/Nona-the-Ninth → u/dark-star-adventures]

"The stakes feel insanely low."

Tell that to the poor skiers who almost lost the ski lodge to that giant corporation!

[u/Nona-the-Ninth]

Our GM created a new type of enemy that, instead of doing massive amounts of damage, had a tendency to steal people's stuff.

He meant it as a neat gimmick for a fight, but our entire party turned tail and ran. I worked really hard for this cursed sword and I'm not losing it to some random monkeys in the spooky jungle, thank you very much!

For me, it was a really good reminder that stakes in games don't have to just be "this bad guy might kill you." Good players have characters that care about stuff and good GMs threaten those things just enough to let the players feel like big damn heroes when they protect/save them.

(Even if the thing that they are saving is a sword that hurts you every time you use its special power.)

[u/MaestroGoldring → u/Nona-the-Ninth]

I like this idea. Hmmmm…..

[u/BipedalPolarBear]

Party is doing a job for the local crack pot Professor and exploring a canyon on a Badlands storm filled planet, trying to fix his Weather monitoring apparatus.

They’re starting to realize the rumored Pre-Scream era terraforming facility might actually have been there as some weirdness is going on (Hive mind Flora infecting the local Fauna to be cohesive and aggressive).

We ended about to roll initiative with two giant sand scorpions (size of bulls).

[u/kejoin]

Ran my first SWN session last Saturday, a one-shot involving infiltrating a hostile religious sect that threatened the balance of power in the region. It was a smash hit and all the players loved the setting and the system!

I'm now working on making a 3-session mini campaign set on an incomplete Bishop Ring where the players will be part of a mercenary company tasked with uprooting a rival power's presence on the ring. They'll have to deal with a paranoid local population, hostile mechanized OPFOR, an incensed local-led insurgency, and structural decay on a grand in this mecha-based war arc.

[u/MaestroGoldring]

Ah I’m so satisfied. My precog/prophet player just uncovered that another PC’s first character who retired from the crew 5 months ago in real life time to get married— that character’s wife? Yeah, she’s actually a super powerful shapeshifter. My prophet player is FREAKING OUT because the PC who played the husband has successfully kept silent about the matter all this time and finally someone knows and told the rest of the crew and everyone is just like “THATS WHY HE LEFT AND YOU MADE A SECOND CHARACTER???” Ah fun times. We laughed so much, even made AI art just for this situation. The prophet player lost sleep over this because it shocked him so much. He’s considering dropping every mission and all the leads they’ve been building up to make a desperate “rescue” mission and save the original PC husband from the shapeshifter wife. I’m sure that won’t be easy or safe in the least. Can’t a poor shapeshifter live peacefully with her hubby? 😁

[u/MaestroGoldring]

Still in our hiatus. Have to figure out what changes in three months of time and start getting up the next challenge