Stars/Worlds Without Number (General Thread)
- Thread starter Aldarc
- Start date
Fanaelialae
Legend
It's not all the system is about, but it is a significant part of what makes the warrior class good. The system is designed so that an experienced warrior with the right foci can kill weaker opponents even on a miss. Take that away, and you're taking away a major part of what makes the warrior good.
Fanaelialae
Legend
It's not just the warrior. I believe that the monk-equivalent mage partial class (I'm away from my book ATM and can't recall the name) also leverages the shock mechanic, as might others.
It's an important part of the combat system. It is threaded through classes, foci, weapons, etc.
It's there to represent that trained combatants are dangerous in melee. In a gun fight the wall you're hiding behind might take the brunt of the damage. In melee combat, even if you're blocking all attacks, YOU are taking the brunt.
Yora
Legend
On a different topic, anyone had had experience with system strain? Now that's a mechanic that I really like from the look of it.
With healing between fights being so easily accessible that it's basically unlimited, a well rested party heading out for their new adventure after a longer break can easily heal up everyone to full hit points after every fight for maybe a day or two. But once the system strain reaches its limit, you'll be down to one or two healings a day, regardless of how much healing resources you have.
I suspect that this makes one day adventures followed by a week or two of rest pretty easy as hit points are concerned, as you can heal back to full after every encounter. But having to deal with even minor injuries over many consecutive days could lead to quite interesting dynamics that I don't even want to speculate about without seeing it in action. And now that I think of it, this is where shock damage also might come into play. At least for characters who don't have heavier armor.
I also really like system strain as a mechanic for deprivation and exposure. It won't actively hurt you, but it still makes you more vulnerable in the long term. Having some small critters with minor poison attacks that don't cause damage but cause a point of system strain also seems like a fun option.
With healing between fights being so easily accessible that it's basically unlimited, a well rested party heading out for their new adventure after a longer break can easily heal up everyone to full hit points after every fight for maybe a day or two. But once the system strain reaches its limit, you'll be down to one or two healings a day, regardless of how much healing resources you have.
I suspect that this makes one day adventures followed by a week or two of rest pretty easy as hit points are concerned, as you can heal back to full after every encounter. But having to deal with even minor injuries over many consecutive days could lead to quite interesting dynamics that I don't even want to speculate about without seeing it in action. And now that I think of it, this is where shock damage also might come into play. At least for characters who don't have heavier armor.
I also really like system strain as a mechanic for deprivation and exposure. It won't actively hurt you, but it still makes you more vulnerable in the long term. Having some small critters with minor poison attacks that don't cause damage but cause a point of system strain also seems like a fun option.
Shock damage comes from Stars Without Number, which describes it as the danger melee weapons pose to ill-armored opponents. From what I’ve read, Kevin Crawford feels the common approach (of missing frequently) isn’t representative of melee fights. Shock damage is meant to represent the harm you receive in melee even if you don’t take a direct blow. For example, getting swarmed is nasty because the crowd will deal its shock damage regardless of the target’s AC.
Another thing to keep in mind is that shock is your minimum damage. You deal it on a hit or a miss provided the target’s defenses are below the threshold (or you are making a swarm attack). If you are wielding a long sword (2/AC 13 shock damage) and roll a 1 on 1d8+1, then you deal 3 damage to any target with AC 13 or less. If you get into melee with something, it’s going to mess you up. That’s the advantage of ranged weapons. They help prevent you from taking damage unnecessarily.
Regarding system strain, I agree in concept, but we haven’t had it come up yet (because our second session is this Saturday, and our first was abbreviated and very hard on the ghouls involved). Once we’ve gotten some experience with it, I’ll report back. I should also note that system strain serves as a check while exploring. If you push yourself too hard and take system strain from a negative effect (like trying to sleep outside without adequate heating or enough food), then it’s potentially lethal. If the party pushes too hard, they could end up vulnerable to the elements if they are not careful with their supplies.
Another thing to keep in mind is that shock is your minimum damage. You deal it on a hit or a miss provided the target’s defenses are below the threshold (or you are making a swarm attack). If you are wielding a long sword (2/AC 13 shock damage) and roll a 1 on 1d8+1, then you deal 3 damage to any target with AC 13 or less. If you get into melee with something, it’s going to mess you up. That’s the advantage of ranged weapons. They help prevent you from taking damage unnecessarily.
Regarding system strain, I agree in concept, but we haven’t had it come up yet (because our second session is this Saturday, and our first was abbreviated and very hard on the ghouls involved). Once we’ve gotten some experience with it, I’ll report back. I should also note that system strain serves as a check while exploring. If you push yourself too hard and take system strain from a negative effect (like trying to sleep outside without adequate heating or enough food), then it’s potentially lethal. If the party pushes too hard, they could end up vulnerable to the elements if they are not careful with their supplies.
We had our third session session zero today. I set down a copy of the part of the map I developed while working through setting creation, and everything changed.
I had assumed I would go over the setting some, then we would start play. We did, but it ended up being much more in depth than I expected. We ended up spending a couple of hours on it. By the end, we’d charted a completely different course. I had already dropped some of the conceits from the previous iteration, but I tried to keep the idea of the PCs as explorers. It was meant to be a sandbox game, and they’d decide what to do next. Well, they did.
The basic premise of the region is that it’s a frontier. The kingdom that existed there was destroyed in an accident. A neighboring nation eventually came to push back the Outsiders who had come forth again (through a portal accidentally opened in the Donarhus, the megastructure serving as the capital located in 0509 on the map). I’m not sure why, but my players took a big interested in that. They want to get inside and loot it.
After working on setting prep, I struggled a bit with what to prep for my hex map’s key. The region map I generated ended up much larger than my previous one (~56k vs. ~17k square miles). My previous approach was to prep every hex. I thought I could use tags to make that easier to do here. I’d use the generators to create content the PCs could discover. The thing that changed was me. I finally understood how WWN goes about creating its sandbox.
The sandbox is not about having everything prepped for everywhere. It’s working at a higher level than that. That’s why points of interest are comparatively sparse. You’re not supposed to pixel-bitch your way across the landscape. The game is presenting you with a setting made out of adventure hooks, and you’re supposed to go see which ones are interesting.
Our next session is in about a month. Setting generation produced a ton of notes (about 12k words) that I want to organize into something both for myself and my players. I also want to finish up my hex map (I have the terrain done, but I need to finish up the settlements and ruins in a few other parts of the map) and create an in-setting variant for my players to reference.
Once I’m done with my prep, the game should be very easy to run going forward. It’s been a long time since I’ve run something without having to do a ton of work between sessions, and I’m really looking forward to it.
I had assumed I would go over the setting some, then we would start play. We did, but it ended up being much more in depth than I expected. We ended up spending a couple of hours on it. By the end, we’d charted a completely different course. I had already dropped some of the conceits from the previous iteration, but I tried to keep the idea of the PCs as explorers. It was meant to be a sandbox game, and they’d decide what to do next. Well, they did.
The basic premise of the region is that it’s a frontier. The kingdom that existed there was destroyed in an accident. A neighboring nation eventually came to push back the Outsiders who had come forth again (through a portal accidentally opened in the Donarhus, the megastructure serving as the capital located in 0509 on the map). I’m not sure why, but my players took a big interested in that. They want to get inside and loot it.
After working on setting prep, I struggled a bit with what to prep for my hex map’s key. The region map I generated ended up much larger than my previous one (~56k vs. ~17k square miles). My previous approach was to prep every hex. I thought I could use tags to make that easier to do here. I’d use the generators to create content the PCs could discover. The thing that changed was me. I finally understood how WWN goes about creating its sandbox.
The sandbox is not about having everything prepped for everywhere. It’s working at a higher level than that. That’s why points of interest are comparatively sparse. You’re not supposed to pixel-bitch your way across the landscape. The game is presenting you with a setting made out of adventure hooks, and you’re supposed to go see which ones are interesting.
Our next session is in about a month. Setting generation produced a ton of notes (about 12k words) that I want to organize into something both for myself and my players. I also want to finish up my hex map (I have the terrain done, but I need to finish up the settlements and ruins in a few other parts of the map) and create an in-setting variant for my players to reference.
Once I’m done with my prep, the game should be very easy to run going forward. It’s been a long time since I’ve run something without having to do a ton of work between sessions, and I’m really looking forward to it.
They’re similar but flatter (assuming basic rather than OD&D, since the latter didn’t really have consistent modifiers). I believe the argument for smaller modifiers usually goes that it reduces the importance of having the best ability scores. It also simplifies the monster math. Compare monster stat blocks from pre-3e to post-3e. The former are much simpler. WWN adds instinct to the mix, but it’s still pretty simple.
Thanks! I made it in Campaign Cartographer 3+ and was really pleased with how nicely it came out. Some of the other maps I’ve done in that program not been so nice.
Do you mean D&D (i.e., 3e–5e) or D&D (i.e., B/X, BECMI, etc)? Using the B/X modifiers might be okay, but modern ones are too big. Changing the modifiers that much would have knock-on effects across the system. The same goes for skills. It doesn’t seem worth the work. You’d be better off using the system-neutral parts with whatever system you’d rather use.
Last edited:
Similar Threads
Recent & Upcoming Releases
-
June 16 2026 -
June 16 2026 -
September 16 2026 
Arcana Unleashed(Dungeons & Dragons)
Rulebook featuring "high magic" options, including a host of new spells.
Replies (181) -
September 16 2026 -
October 1 2026 -
October 6 2026 -
January 1 2027
