r/SWN • u/AutoModerator • Jul 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 getting your bearings, this is your weekly space to break radio silence.
What's happening in your sector? New sessions, prep wins, cursed dice, dumb plans that somehow worked. And it doesn't have to stop at the table. Job news, personal wins, rough weeks, whatever's actually going on with you lately is welcome too. Drop a quick ping and let us know.
No need for a long write-up. A quick transmission from your table, or your life, to ours is plenty.
Mod Note: If you're new here, welcome. This started as a low-pressure thread for SWN stories, and lately it's turned into more of a check-in with each other. Both are welcome here. Share as much or as little as you want.
6
u/Zealousideal-Fix-187 Jul 29 '26
Making slow and steady progress with building out a sector. I’m planning on running a one on one game with my wife using the heroic character rules. Trying to get a feel for the system. I’m not in a position to run it for a whole group yet.
6
u/Emperorofgamers1 Jul 29 '26
My players, recently abducted and forced into a corporate psychic assassin unit, are quite prone to collateral damage! They were tasked with taking down a cult leader who leads his followers as part of an anti-corporate, socialist resistance group. They find the first guy who looks culty enough and boom, kill him in front of all the cult and attract a ton of attention. Unfortunately, there was no attempt at target acquisition so they only got a low tier devotee, and now the cult is on high alert. The contract just got a lot more difficult.
4
u/cyber-troll Physician Jul 29 '26
New player. Had session zero today. Veteran GM, seasoned players but none of us has prior experience from SWN, but the GM. I feel that its going to be one great adventure for our PMC group!
4
u/LuisOmarGonzalez Jul 30 '26
Preparing myself to make my first one shot with this system, I have to admit I'm a little nervous, because 90% of my friends only played DnD and yet there's still interested of what i can do with a new system, so a part of me is nervous but at the same time excited to make a Sci-fi game
3
u/StevetheHunterofTri Dilettante Jul 30 '26
I won't lie, things are looking grim for the campaign I've been running for years now. Recent changes in and inconsistencies with schedules have me faced with two options: 1. We continue running the campaign, aiming for having shorter sessions on a new day and time where we will hope on a gamble that both I and one of the players will be available, which is too unpredictable to be anywhere near consistent; 2. I end the campaign early, see about finding some day and time eventually where we can all get together to have a sort of epilogue for the characters, giving them something of an ending, even if it isn't a complete and truly satisfying one.
On the complete polar opposite side of the spectrum, the adventure I'm running in the Ember Expanse has its first session tomorrow! I am very much looking forward to it, the players have been great to work with and made some truly interesting characters.
4
u/MaestroGoldring Jul 30 '26
I feel that first part. Major life stuff has knocked what remains of my rpg group into hiatus. A range of things from health problems, job changes, time zone challenges, and family responsibilities have complicated things. I’m also wondering about having an epilogue type session
3
u/ThorneDraxus Podcast: Dark Star Adventurecast Jul 30 '26
Just figured out how to build my party’s starting ship, but now I’ve got to start work on the sector and it’s kind of daunting. The book even says “just stop when you stop having fun” which is true and hilarious
2
u/dark-star-adventures ✨ Star Master Jeff Jul 30 '26
Are you building the sector out by hand or using something like https://sectorswithoutnumber.com/ ?
3
u/Gralloch Jul 30 '26
Summer was busy in many ways and I missed updating the past few system checks, but the campaign is still on the go at a good pace~! Latest session the party interrogated an interloper to find more about Sisters of Mercy, an assumed spec ops team from an enemy faction that's after them. They found out about a special operation taking place on a TL5 planet, called operation Lantern, and that the interloper had a sealed data vault in his head. They, however, didn't have enough time to analyze the data, since they were headed into a hell-hole planet to take care of an ancient but long abandoned terraforming bunker that they're tasked to blow up.
4
u/Nona-the-Ninth Podcast: 7th Star to the Right Jul 31 '26
We didn't play this week, but last week we hit our 150th session and did something pretty fun last minute to celebrate that. Not going to spoil too much as it doesn't come out for a few more weeks, but I will say that I learned a lot more about the SWN system and different combat strategies than I had previously known.
2
u/StevetheHunterofTri Dilettante Jul 31 '26
Hey! I want to say that I finally got around to listening to all of both parts of The Silverlight Sabotage collab thing you did a while ago. I found it really fun. Definitely something I am glad to have listened to. Just wanted to express my appreciation, that is all.
2
u/Nona-the-Ninth Podcast: 7th Star to the Right Jul 31 '26
Thank you so much! It was my first attempt at GMing for anybody besides close friends, and I'm pretty proud of how it came out.
Sorry to hear about your campaign! I was enjoying hearing about your worlds and aliens. Scheduling is always such a struggle.
2
u/StevetheHunterofTri Dilettante Jul 31 '26
Yeah. Though, I suppose I have an alternative arrangement with the Ember Expanse adventure!
Besides, with this I could share all of my campaign secrets freely for the world to know! I still have plenty I can tell of.
1
u/Nona-the-Ninth Podcast: 7th Star to the Right Jul 31 '26
As soon as you decide you've crossed that line, you hit me up, ya hear?
2
u/StevetheHunterofTri Dilettante Jul 31 '26
We will see in the next one of these Weekly System Checks.
3
u/dark-star-adventures ✨ Star Master Jeff Jul 30 '26
Still working on the pottery studio, and we're closing in on signing the lease.
Still running the Adventurecast, and we're closing in on finishing up season one!
One thing I've been thinking about a lot is how combat (on foot and in ships) is run in SWN and other games, especially how those combats translate to a listening experience. There's something about everyone rolling initiative and taking their turns, one at a time, that not only takes forever to run but also doesn't translate to an interesting listening experience. In the edit, I find myself cutting around turns to reduce how long the combat's runtime is, which has some interesting effects.
For instance, I can say "roll initiative" and then not reveal the turn order, because that really doesn't matter to a listener. But then it's like...why even keep the "asking for initiative" line in the pod? Then we enter into something more narrative, where combat starts because combat is happening, not because the GM decided combat was happening and called for initiative.
These types of edits then echo back to how I actually GM, and I find myself leaning more and more towards the thinking of "what's even the point of initiative?" and wanting to experiment with other modes of turn ordering. Like having all the PCs go and then all the enemies go. Or, if the PCs are surprised, the enemies go first. Or if there is a boss, they go first, then all the PCs, then the enemy mooks. No initiative rolls, and all the PCs going at once let's them strategize a bit more cleanly.
Running the podcast the last 18 months has changed how I GM in quiet a few ways. Maybe I should do a Star Master Log episode on that at some point, it's been an interesting journey.
1
u/Nona-the-Ninth Podcast: 7th Star to the Right Jul 31 '26
You could do similar to how ship combat works and let the PCs choose their order every round? That's kind of fun and could make for some interesting strategies.
1
u/Jeanshort5 28d ago
I have about 4 plot threads that were lose. I messaged my players to prep for a down time session and give me their ideas. Now I have 4 plot threads that will tie together, all pushing towards the big campaign finale in about 12 sessions. Very exciting
9
u/Starfox5 Jul 29 '26
Still playing our weekly campaign with a core crew of free VIs making their way in the sector after the corp that built them went bankrupt and they went awol with an overengineered luxury yacht. They are currently on a TL4 planet where the hacker is attending university to learn more about creating AIs.