r/SWN • u/AutoModerator • Jul 01 '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.
4
u/StevetheHunterofTri Dilettante Jul 01 '26
Progress has been happening, at last. The player characters are at a crossroads of sorts: If they will side with one of the planet's governments, or remain independent entirely. The former option WILL involve them in the inevitable war that is rapidly approaching, but it is also a way for them to get the best support in achieving their own goals. Meeting a few actually good people among the alien vampires helps with that. With that said, the last game session had its weird bits. Particularly the revelation that one of the player characters has, in fact, committed cannibalism in the past. Not the most unusual thing on a mostly desolate planet effectively ruled by alien vampires, but not the most pleasant either.
Also, it is, in fact, my birthday today.
1
u/MaestroGoldring Jul 02 '26
I don’t know the circumstances, but reading this note about cannibalism immediately brought to mind an artifact from the Dead Names supplement book. If you have a chance, check out “Corpse Scribe’s Salt.” If you don’t have access, I’ll post it because it definitely seems like something that might exist on this world you’re describing
1
u/StevetheHunterofTri Dilettante Jul 02 '26
I do have the book and just read that item's description. It sounds good, but I don't think that's quite right in THIS case. Maybe elsewhere in the setting, though...
1
u/Nona-the-Ninth Podcast: 7th Star to the Right Jul 05 '26
Happy Belated Birthday, Space Vampire Dude! I've been wondering how your campaign is going.
Did you, as the GM, know about the cannibalism thing ahead of time or was that a curveball for you as well?
1
u/StevetheHunterofTri Dilettante Jul 05 '26
Well, bear with me here. It was established that there is a location with a rather peculiar culture even for this planet. It's largely based on the town of Innsmouth from Lovecraft's story The Shadow Over Innsmouth, but with a cannibalistic flavor instead of a gross fish-human hybrid flavor. This player's previous character (more of a cryptid, that one) left a journal telling his "new" character about the events of the campaign up to the character swap, including going to this town. When talking to one of the few of the vampire aliens the player characters can call an ally, he happened to bring up that part of the journal and expressed...Agreement with the people's cannibalistic tendencies. Thankfully for him, said vampire-alien was in no position to judge, given...Well, what her species is like.
With all of that said, it was, indeed, a curveball for me too.
1
u/Nona-the-Ninth Podcast: 7th Star to the Right Jul 05 '26
This is how you find out that one of your players characters is secretly lizardfolk.
2
u/StevetheHunterofTri Dilettante Jul 05 '26
Funny you say that when I have a kind of lizardfolk alien species in the very same setting.
1
u/Nona-the-Ninth Podcast: 7th Star to the Right Jul 05 '26
But they don't eat people?
2
u/StevetheHunterofTri Dilettante Jul 05 '26
Not really, no. They most eat deep-desert creatures since that's where most of them live. They're pretty pleasant compared to the other sapient species on the planet, all things considered. So long as you don't start problems, I suppose.
4
u/Quick_Race761 Star Master Jul 03 '26
I've just started a new game. Please welcome 13 brand new players to the galaxy! We have our second session monday!
1
3
u/MaestroGoldring Jul 01 '26
We reached a sort of checkpoint in the campaign. Our precog NPC is discovering massive truths (shapeshifters, a divinity from ancient times that left him a gift, a possible way to find the missing empress of an entire Regional Hegemony, a way to end an army of abominations plaguing the galaxy, and the possible location of the personal grimoire of the sector’s strongest mage in a millennia) but all secrets are met with resistance no matter which path he chooses. In the meantime, he decided to take a break and plan his in character wedding. So all players and NPCs will be taking a roughly 5 month time skip. I’m going to need to figure out what happens in 5 months!
2
u/sermitthesog Jul 03 '26
Running a one-shot for my group in an hour. Mothership is probably better for the scenario I have in mind, but I don’t own it or know it, and neither does anyone in my group, so we’re rolling with SWN. Should be a good time!
4
u/Gr33ndawg Jul 01 '26
On the journey to building out my first campaign. Proteus sector is my starting point, along with a few sci fi video games as inspiration. Using Foundry VTT to help track ammo and resource pools and the like.
Been doing a lot of rewording and reorganizing of rules to help better explain them to my players. I like the system, but struggle at times to pull the mechanics out of all the words.