Stars/Worlds Without Number (General Thread)

[kenada]

Do you feel that WWN combat is more fun than b/x combat?

My players bounced off OSE pretty hard, so our B/X combat experience is pretty limited. I think the way WWN does side-based combat, especially with actions like Make a Snap Attack, feels a bit more fair. The characters are also (individually) more powerful. For my players, that translates into feeling more fun. I’d put it somewhere between B/X and 3e in that things are still pretty simple, but it has a familiar action economy with special abilities.

And what makes WWN good out of combat?

Two things really stick out: XP and skill checks. WWN offers several options for handling XP, which I’ve combined together. Players each decide on several individual goals at the start of the session. If the complete one, they get 3 XP (they decide). If they help someone, they 1 XP (they decide). At the end of the session, the group decides on a group goal (keep or change the current one). They also get 3 XP if they completed the current group goal. Those two things allow for a reward loop that isn’t just killing monsters or finding treasure. The latter in particular didn’t feel good to my players because it turned the game into something different from what they wanted (more of a heist game than a fantasy adventure game where the characters might have other agendas).

The thing I like about the skill system is it’s pretty simple, but it’s not too simple. There’s a pretty nice variety of different skills, but you’re also encouraged to let the PCs succeed if it’s something their character should do. I text our thief the value of treasure throughout the session since I figure he’d just know what looks valuable. That makes for some fun interactions when he’s wants to take something weird, and no one has any idea why he would want to do that. While I’m not a fan of difficulty classes, I can use the default of 8, which I like. It makes skill checks go pretty quickly. (Except for social checks, which I have the PCs roll against the reaction table.)

It reminds me of games like Scum and Villainy where skills define what you do, but it’s not like you’re just rolling them procedurally. If you’re rolling, it’s usually (though admittedly not always) because it’s important. I’m not saying WWN is a Story Now game, but it gets out of my way and lets me improvise a lot as a GM, which lets me drift it that way without a lot friction. Our best sessions in other systems are when there’s a lot of chemistry between characters, and we’re just playing to see what happens, and WWN seems to do a good job of letting us do that while also providing the crunchy bits my players particularly like.

 

[Aldarc]

6) Half-class system is a lot better than multiclass systems of 3E/5E and offers great options.

I have been re-reading WWN and making a few sample characters to get my feet wet into this game, and this aspect of the game continues to impress me. There are so many viable archetypes made possible through the combination of partial classes. But this also makes the game easier to hack for new archetypes, as one really only needs to build a Partial Class that slots into the existing framework.

I'm personally impressed with how Kevin Crawford managed to create a Necromancer much closer to the popular conception of the archetype than D&D has managed in all its years. Moreover, the fact that one can hypothetically make a partial Necromancer that "multiclasses" with a Warrior for a "Death Knight" or an Expert is also a huge boon in the game's favor.

 

[gamerprinter]

While I actually picked up the basic rules (PDF), I've never actually played. I currently publish material for Starfinder RPG, but I post a lot in the Facebook Stars Without Numbers community, mostly illustrations, though I did plug a Starfinder product I made that isn't really Starfinder, so much as just third party rules, allowing you to create custom, entire star systems (stars, planets, moons, trojans, belts, etc.) and the stat block for them, as well as a point system to grow the technology in a given system overtime. That's my only connection to SWN/WWN.

 

[kenada]

Last session we finally got to do some actual exploration. The party headed back to town, then they returned back to their domain. Along the way, we used the exploration procedure I posted a few days ago. It worked really well. I had an event written out in my prep that came out of the story generation stuff that WWN provides. One of the NPCs in town was having a secret affair, and it turned out the shack on the back of the PCs’ property is a very popular place for illicit and illegal encounters.

So it’s a new month, and he caught up with them while they were traveling. The time-based approach made it very easy to see where everyone was in relationship to each other. He caught up with the PCs because they were traveling with a cart full of stuff back to their property. Their TC was about double of his, so he would move through two hexes in the time it took them to do one. They were out only a couple of days before he caught up. That should make for an entertaining next session when he goes into the shack to find it’s been taken over by the vampire princess.

The event system was also good, and I’ve extended it to working with dungeons. Having each day defined by “something happened, let’s find out” is much more interesting than just wandering around the wilderness with infrequent encounter checks. I expect the same should be true in dungeons. I posted the table I’m using as a starting point for dungeons over in the PF2 house rules thread.

I have been re-reading WWN and making a few sample characters to get my feet wet into this game, and this aspect of the game continues to impress me. There are so many viable archetypes made possible through the combination of partial classes. But this also makes the game easier to hack for new archetypes, as one really only needs to build a Partial Class that slots into the existing framework.

I'm personally impressed with how Kevin Crawford managed to create a Necromancer much closer to the popular conception of the archetype than D&D has managed in all its years. Moreover, the fact that one can hypothetically make a partial Necromancer that "multiclasses" with a Warrior for a "Death Knight" or an Expert is also a huge boon in the game's favor.

Someone posted this over on r/WWN recently. That’s a lot of combinations not even counting classes from other sources. It’s really impressive how so few mechanics make for such diverse characters. The priest in my game is a necromancer/healer. I didn’t quite want to do the blood priest for a cleric-like class. The player seems to really enjoy being good both at healing and blowing up undead.

 

[kenada]

Kevin Crawford shared an update to the SWN offset print Kickstarter. Books are going out (got my shipping notice today), and the Kickstarter for the Atlas of the Latter Earth is expected this summer. Kevin put a preview up on his Google Drive. There’s a bunch of stuff for low magic and no magic campaigns. The Wise is interesting. I wonder if we should expect to see more partial classes for the basic archetypes (like how there are a bunch of mage ones in the “Arts of the Gyre” chapter of the deluxe edition of Worlds Without Number).

 

[Aldarc]

Someone posted this over on r/WWN recently. That’s a lot of combinations not even counting classes from other sources. It’s really impressive how so few mechanics make for such diverse characters. The priest in my game is a necromancer/healer. I didn’t quite want to do the blood priest for a cleric-like class. The player seems to really enjoy being good both at healing and blowing up undead.

IMHO, that's the magic of the system. I appreciate the lack of a clear arcane/divine magic split. There is only "the mage," which itself may have a number of partial classes and traditions. For example, the fact that one can easily make a High Mage/Healer - the wizard healer that has elluded finding success in D&D - while being pretty balanced within the framework is impressive.

Furthermore, consider how the partial class features are often not locked in; they are more like True 20 talents/feats or warlock invocations that the player can choose from to build their character. That also opens up a lot of additional build and play possibilities.

Kevin Crawford shared an update to the SWN offset print Kickstarter. Books are going out (got my shipping notice today), and the Kickstarter for the Atlas of the Latter Earth is expected this summer. Kevin put a preview up on his Google Drive. There’s a bunch of stuff for low magic and no magic campaigns. The Wise is interesting. I wonder if we should expect to see more partial classes for the basic archetypes (like how there are a bunch of mage ones in the “Arts of the Gyre” chapter of the deluxe edition of Worlds Without Number).

I'm a fan of the Wise since it also covers the more subtle magic of witches, seers, or even a village priest.

I wonder if he will design any partial warrior classes as well. I almost would not be surprised if a Bard partial mage shows up. I may have seen a fan version of the Bard for WWN somewhere on Reddit.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Feels like WWN is the system Numenera should have had all along
Now I can use all my Numenera non-core books and play with a system that I like...

 

[Fenris-77]

I just realized I only have the free version of WWN (although I own everything for SWN). I'm going to go remedy that right now...

 

[Aldarc]

Feels like WWN is the system Numenera should have had all along
Now I can use all my Numenera non-core books and play with a system that I like...

I’m not sure about that. The player archetypes in Numenera fit its setting incredibly well. While there is a lot of fantasy in Numenera, the game also leans more into some of the science-fiction with its foci: e.g., Talks With Machines, Fuses Flesh and Steel, Dances with Dark Matter, etc. WWN has a lot of science-fantasy, but Numenera is more overt with its “sciency” aspects.

Also, IME, I have seen so many different opinions - from my players and online - about what would have been a “better” system for Numenera than its native Cypher System: e.g., Fate, Cortex, WWN, PbtA, etc. I think that what one considers the “best” system for Numenera often says more about one’s expectations for what the Ninth World should be or what one wants it to be rather than what it is.

That said, one could definitely run the Ninth World using WWN, but that would also move the game closer to D&D style fantasy than it already is.

 

[kenada]

Anyone do anything with projects in WWN? My players have taken on a couple (first one is to rebuild the manor they acquired, and the second is to get people to come settle the area around it). There is some sort of help for costing this out, but the advice feels really hand-wavey when it comes to actually running the projects at the table.