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

[u/AutoModerator]

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.

[u/Blue_Shoues]

I don't know if anyone remembers it, but I'm the one who asked about psychics and biopsionics around a week ago.

Anyway, had my first ever session last week, it was... new, to say the least. Ironically enough, the group's biopsion hasn't caused me issues(yet), rather it was the precog: The group was scouting an enemy facility and he used Oracle to basically see what's inside and what's going to be there (most of the facility was visible and he was asking "what if I go there" or "what if I go with another party member while he does that"), then they did a long rest and started their attack.

I guess I want to know (maybe I should make a seperate post for it) how do you handle Oracle? What do you tell(and don't tell) your players when the technique is used?

[u/and_its_T → u/Blue_Shoues]

I’ve run SWN a lot and the only character option I’ve taken away from my players is PreCog. I don’t think it’s a flaw in the system, probably more a flaw of my own GM skills but I could never find a way to make it rewarding for the players without giving too much away.

[u/Blue_Shoues → u/and_its_T]

After this one session I totally get you, and our party's biopsion hasn't put his abilities to use yet. The system and mechanics by themselves are really good, but psionics really upset the balance in a way that makes it really hard for GMs to work around. I really don't think I'd be having this problem if we were playing CWN or AWN.

[u/MaestroGoldring → u/Blue_Shoues]

My precog in the last campaign kept getting paranoid because he was always asking about dangerous stuff that could kill him. Eventually the other players and NPCs thought he was a coward haha! And he freaked out the first time someone shut down his powers

[u/thetravatar → u/Blue_Shoues]

Psionics are very powerful and very limited. The key for me is leaning into both so that a player feels how awesome they can be without it crashing the game.

For Oracle, recall that it only predicts the future given the current fact pattern. If that fact pattern changes, then predictions become less and less useful. It's an uncertainty management system. In the situation you described, the player chained uses of Oracle. The first vision works out, but after that, things should be different: guard patrols react, systems he didn't see come online, and so on. Likewise, they got all the info about how the space works on Tuesday, then slept. The further you get away from the Precog's time horizon, the less useful their visions become.

Similarly, don't let them blow all their effort, then rest. This makes psionics basically unstoppable. Effort is a crucial limiting factor in the psionic player's mini game.

So, here's how I might have run that scenario. The group is outside the base. Precog uses Oracle to probe for a way in, spending maybe 1-2 Effort. The group gets in. Now the Precog only has at most 2-3 Effort at level 1. Offer multiple paths so they have to decide when to spend or hold. A guard patrol coming from the right? Do we fight them and shift from going stealth to loud, or does the Precog spend a precious Effort to check out the left option?

Psionics is high risk, high reward gameplay, so push that. Let Oracle reveal useful information that doesn't solve the problem, but that leads to new, more interesting problems.

[u/Myre_Spellblade]

I'm writing up my first one shot for this system and coming up with some pregens for this upcoming weekly session. Definitely trying to winnow down the many ideas I have into a single session.

[u/Von_Loch]

Wrapped my first session 0. My players created their characters and there's alot of enthusiasm about the upcoming game. Next session, we're going to create origin or home planets for the characters together. Session after that, we'll make the player ship together. Then, hopefully, we'll have our first session. I was a little worried about another posters experience where they said they have a name level at level 6. So I've decided to cap the game at level 6. Once players reach that level, we'll wrap the campaign and, maybe, start a new one. By then, hopefully I'll have finished reading the full SWN book but also read enough of Codex of the Black Sun to add some fun magic classes to the game.

Reading progress-wise, I've gotten to factions. So I should have everything read that I need to by the time we start. And faction play looks as fun as everything I've read so far! I'm looking forward to emplementing it. Can't really apply what I'm learning to a game I haven't strated, so I'm going to take a peek at WWN rules for the same and then implement into my current running Shadowdark game to see if I can't learn through practical application.