Stars/Worlds Without Number (General Thread)

[Yora]

I wrote it specifically for my campaign, not as a straight up summary. I'd actually have to check myself if everything matches the book. There's probably some things in WWN that made me immediately think "yeah, not gonna use that" and then never thought about it again. (I think I wrote my own takes on rolling stats and checking for wandering monsters.)
Probably best use it as a reference for which parts of the rules to look up because there might be something unexpected or intereating.

 

[kenada]

This looks like the initiative rules I have in my book. 1d8+highest Dex mod in the party, group initiative.

Initiative isn’t rerolled every round in WWN. Surprise is based on an opposed Dex/Stealth or Wis/Notice check, assuming it is possible (which the book notes is almost never in a Deep unless one side has set up an ambush).

 

[TwoSix]

Initiative isn’t rerolled every round in WWN. Surprise is based on an opposed Dex/Stealth or Wis/Notice check, assuming it is possible (which the book notes is almost never in a Deep unless one side has set up an ambush).

Ahh, I missed that line in the summary. Yea, initiative is only at the start of the fight in the core rules.

 

[Yora]

Rolling initiative on a d8 instead of a d6 is one of those things where I really don't see the point of relearning doing something marginally different than I'm used to for no apparent gain. Those are things that I throw out so quickly I don't even remember it later.

Though I think a general cheat sheet for "How WWN is different from B/X" without the specific classes, spells, foci, and backgrounds might really be a useful thing for new people. You can get the rules for free already, so it wouldn't give away any content shared only with paying customers.

 

[kenada]

This is the cheat sheet I put together. For my game. It’s a funky size because it’s designed to be printed out and pasted on a landscape GM screen. The last two pages are a bit haphazard because they don’t go on the screen. They’re just a backup reference. I tried to do it in the same style as OSE.

Off the top of my head, the only house rule is the end of session procedure on the last page. I did take a few liberties clarifying things. Action economy is omitted because the list of actions in the book is good enough and can be printed out.

• Group checks are defined. The rules mention this procedure in a few places but does not define it. I defined it.
• Attacks include automatic miss and failure. This is not described in the rules, but it is noted on the cheat sheet in the book.
• Shock damage is explained differently, but it should be functionally the same.
• Wandering encounter distance for site exploration. Loosely inspired by B/X and based on the wilderness encounter distance dice.
• Exploration procedures are described more like B/X. I outlined a wilderness procedure, but it should be functionally the same.
• Scouting for points of interest is specified in square miles because I do not use player-facing hexes.

 

[Aldarc]

Thanks to @Yora's threads, I may whip up a more S&S inspired setting for WWN.

 

[Yora]

Having just been introduced to Kenshi, I want my upcoming WWN S&S campaign to be like that.

I was just thinking about the logistic for a long-distance travel based campaign, and it seems clear that not a great deal of thought was put into this aspect.

Rations come in portions of "one week" when you buy them, which I assume is meant for "7 days". But their encumbrance is listed as 4. There are rules for penalties for not eating, which are based on days. So what happens to encumbrance when you eat one day's ration?

Travel speeds are given in miles per hour, but depending on terrain it might 1.5 or 0.5 miles per hour. The game also recommends using 6 mile hexes. It would be vastly more convenient if travel speeds would be given as hexes per day. Encumbrance doesn't impact travel speed at all. But I do notice with appreciation that mounts with faster movement rates don't make overland travel faster, since they can't be sprinting the entire day.

These issues are not new and go back 40 years. But for a tome of this size made specifically for sandbox games, I think this is something that really should have seen a major overhaul.

 

[kenada]

Rations come in portions of "one week" when you buy them, which I assume is meant for "7 days". But their encumbrance is listed as 4. There are rules for penalties for not eating, which are based on days. So what happens to encumbrance when you eat one day's ration?

Rations feels like it ought to be one of those bundled things, but it’s not. I think we’re going to treat them as either all there or not for simplicity’s sake. Otherwise, the easiest thing to do is reduce the encumbrance by 1 for every 2 rations consumed.

Travel speeds are given in miles per hour, but depending on terrain it might 1.5 or 0.5 miles per hour. The game also recommends using 6 mile hexes. It would be vastly more convenient if travel speeds would be given as hexes per day. Encumbrance doesn't impact travel speed at all. But I do notice with appreciation that mounts with faster movement rates don't make overland travel faster, since they can't be sprinting the entire day.

This feels like another place where WWN is too verbose for its own good. If it just did what OSE/BX does, it would be easy. PCs generally travel for ten hours per day, and the distance traveled is their movement rate in miles. If you want hexes, divide by five. The terrain type table should just be a list of modifiers.

Speaking of which, road travel seems a bit too good. 2× is almost (but not quite) taking the run action every round for ten hours straight. I’d expect PCs to be very fatigued jogging for ten hours straight. The Alexandrian’s method is too fiddly, but I think having separate on-/off-road speeds is the way to go. I may tweak it for my game.

WWN also has nothing to say about getting lost. I assume it’s a “don’t make the PCs look incompetent at their role in life” thing, but one should expect there to be situations (like arratu wastelands) where success isn’t a sure thing. It’s not difficult to devise a DC, but still.

 

[Yora]

From what I remember, Red Tide and Spears of the Dawn didn't really go into travel either. I think Crawford just doesn't consider what happens between sites relevant.

 

[Yora]

Turns out (as usual) that a paragraph in another chapter mentions the seven rations with an encumbrance of 4 is a packed bundle. Loose rations are 1 encumbrance for 1 day's food.
Though this once again makes me question how much of a good idea this whole bundle thing is. That it takes an additional round to unpack something that is bundled probably won't matter in play, but it makes the whole encumbrance system more complicated.