Stars Without Number

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Why is this science fiction world confusing and new to your character?

Maybe you are new to an already established science fiction campaign or just want to learn about the setting through play.

Roll a d10 and a d6 (or if you see something you like, pick it)

1.cryo sleep, disease that was killing you now cured via science.

    1. The Big C
    2. Xeno Virus
    3. Mental Void Syndrome
    4. Implants went sour now removable
    5. Science test subject went wrong
    6. Frozen in midst of traumatic brain injury that is now repairable

2. incarceration.

    1. Data theft
    2. Violence
    3. Black Market Sales
    4. Ship theft
    5. Debt
    6. Illegal Science Infraction

3. a term in military service.

    1. Corporate Mercs
    2. Terran Drop Ship Marine
    3. Terran Insurgent Agent
    4. Local Planetary Orbit Guard
    5. Local Planetary Assault Force
    6. Marine on Capital Ship

4. cryo sleep, after a long stint in an out of date generation ship.

    1. Cult heading for a “holy star”
    2. You left for this system as science found a faster way
    3. Ship was damaged and adrift, never arrived at destination
    4. AI dropped your pods on a moon and left
    5. Exiled from colony
    6. Ship was destroyed when it drifted into the battlegrounds of an interstellar war

5. past decade of memory was wiped.

    1. Psychic blast
    2. Disease
    3. State of the art weapon
    4. Xeno-contact side-effect
    5. Wiped as part of a judicial sentence to protect corporate intellectual property
    6. You have no idea

6. returned from long FTL trip.

    1. Blue collar void-work
    2. Colonial Marine
    3. Refugee from fallen colony
    4. Pilgrim back from visiting holy sites
    5. Terran Agent back from Olde Earth
    6. Science Vessel Lab Tech

7. left isolated low tech enclave.

    1. Religious Community (new space religion)
    2. Artistic Community
    3. Punitive Community for past generation’s aggression
    4. Philosophical Enclave (this is how humans were meant to grow strong)
    5. Colony recovering from technological apocalypse
    6. Crashed capital ship just rescued after decades

8. clone awakened after memory download mishap.

    1. You used to be rich and this was your insurance policy at work
    2. Military download during an attack
    3.  Auto accident
    4. Warp core in your ship went critical
    5. You tried a new, untested venue towards immortality
    6. Memory slowly degraded after last download, need a fix before long term memory fades away again

9. possessed by non-human entity.

    1. Cutting edge AI trying out flesh
    2. Benign alien entered mind at moment of death
    3. Alien took over human not realizing it was theft
    4. Alien virus took over brain and learned empathy
    5. Alien inserted into human sleeve as forward agent before invasion
    6. Symbiosis via consent with alien intelligence has created this new being

10. past job took you out of touch with day to day reality.

    1. Pop star or pop star adjacent
    2. Highly paid athlete
    3. Successful fully embedded virtual reality MMO player
    4. Scientist studying distant astronomical event
    5. Embedded anthropologist
    6. Volunteer aid worker on low tech level world

 

Check out this design and more in the Science Fiction collection…

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Preparing for the Battle of Askira

The Battle of Askira

Used Wonderdraft to make a simple hex map for an upcoming battle in our Stars Without Number game. I’m thinking each hex is around a mile.

Sure the Samaihayan Orthodoxy Loyalists have numbers, automatic weapons and an anti-personnel mech but our scrappy freelancers have a railgun, 4 space marine assault suits and a dream (and more if the local sheriff lets them borrow her hover bike).

This week I’ll make a mech using the SWN’s rules. I’ll post up the post-battle map with arrows and stuff that we’ll draw as we go on Google Jamboard.

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Random Table Rolls in Stars Without Number

Last night I knew the players were going to arrive at the Archive Planet. Once it was the home of the Preceptor Archive, the data sent from Olde Earth to this system to support humanity. Recently, this planet fell to Tech Level 2. It was a steam age level of tech. This was all made from rolling up the system years ago. I wrote up what those system tags meant in a google doc.

I went to page 246 in Stars Without Number Revised and rolled a d4, d6, d8, d10, d12 and d20 as the players were getting online and I was chatting with my friend.

What is the conflict About? | Money, extortion, payment due, debts

General Venue of the Event | Next to or in a public park

Why are the PC’s involved? | Participant offers reward for help

What’s the Nature of the Event? | Fires or building collapses are happening

What Antagonists are involved? | A local bully and their thugs

Relevant Urban Features | Unrelated activists are protesting here

I had no idea what all of this meant. I had words written in my notebook:

IMG_20190603_112706

They landed on this moon, knowing what was written in the Sector Hades Zeta Guide:

The Archive City, The Hades Zeta Library, H.Z.L.

Atmo: Breathable

Temp: Warm

Biosphere: Miscible

Population: 10K

TL:  2

About: Eriphyle is a moon circling a gas giant named Polyxena, from which the system takes its name. Eriphyle shows clear signs of having been terra-formed and is covered in cryptic ruins, showing strong evidence that an alien species was in the sector before human settlement. The outpost is governed by an administration that proudly traces its lineage back to the Preceptor Archive created to track data and offer information access since the first days of human space exploration.

Eriphyle’s knockdown from TL3 to TL2 is a source of fierce shame, as data has become corrupted and lost as information infrastructure broke down and computer networks collapsed. Some archivists still hold out hope that when the archive regains its technological glory, coordinates of Olde Earth will be among the pieces of data uncovered.

Everyone knows that the Guevaran Hegemony is out there and that they have a Preceptor Archive that claims a more pure line to Olde Earth.

The players saw a fire in the distance and when the two soldiers arrived on the scene they saw protestors organizing a protest in a park against the latest Archivist Congress budget cuts. Hegemony loyalists want the rival archive to come and lift the planet out of the steam age. The Samihayan Orthodoxy Loyalists were gunning the protestors down.

The players took action. Witt’s Gudradim Cannibal Hunter killed the shooters, noting that they were being led by Hegemonic Intelligence Agents. They got the wounded to a nearby hospital, which was literally a building plugged into a free merchant ship that belonged to some retired military personnel from a tech level 4 world.

I’m fascinated with the way the tables generate something, that something collides headlong into the system generation and all of that collides with the players (GM included) and their characters and all of their motivations. Somewhere in there an adventure happens.

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Check out this design and more in the Science Fiction collection…

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SWN: The Taking of Free Trader Grandma’s Trusty Rifle

This e-mail was sent to the folks I game with after our last session, as mentioned in Episode 15 of Daydreaming About Dragons.

SWN Galaxy Breaker

XP

Everyone present take 4 XP for the past session. Good plan, good execution. Good stuff.

I knew they had a Big Fucking Gun out of the box but wasn’t sure how they’d set it up. The way you guys posed as a Veluriuan family ship really changed the way I thought that whole thing would go.
SWN Galaxy Breaker

NPC’s

Witt and I had a miscommunication about the Gudradim hunter who works for the Valerius family. She is not the traitor Strachan is hunting. She is a different person all together. Sorry for the confusion.

RIP Mubarak.

If we ever have a game where we have absences and don’t want to move on without everyone present we will play a game on board the Free Trader Mubarak, the haunted ship under Captain Agrippa Horatius.

SWN Galaxy Breaker

Beep-Boop

Mechanics I want to write-up:

  • Buying things using Astral Dragon Money (inspired by Burning Wheel’s resource dice)
  • Making tech in the lab (inspired by the Saavyhead’s Workplace move in Apocalypse World)
  • Experience point lists (inspired by Blades in the Dark)
    Ammo checks (inspired by usage die in old school D&D games)

SWN Galaxy Breaker

Loot

You got over a dozen crates containing the parts for six complete Storm armors as worn by the Guevaran Hegemony Space Marine Squads along with diagnostic support stations and replacement parts. These are the type of armor worn by Lalita Space Marines during the Battle of Forest 164 in the bloodiest battle against the Crick. There currently are not any companies nor governments producing these in this system.

In most systems using these in acts of violence without the proper paperwork is considered an act of terrorism.

Keeping these in fighting shape is really difficult. Space Marine squads have 3 Warfare Engineers for every one door-kicking devil dog wearing one of these brutal machines on the battlefield. There will be mechanics to show this.

SWN Galaxy Breaker

P.S. It looks like that armor pic (not shown above but in the link) is by Kai Lim.

SWN Galaxy Breaker

 

Art

 Image taken from page 645 of ‘L’Espace céleste et la nature tropicale, description physique de l’univers … préface de M. Babinet, dessins de Yan’ Dargent’ by The British Library
Via Flickr:
Image taken from: Title: “L’Espace céleste et la nature tropicale, description physique de l’univers … préface de M. Babinet, dessins de Yan’ Dargent” Author: Liais, Emmanuel Contributor: BABINET, Jacques. Contributor: DARGENT, Jean Édouard – calling himself Yan’ Dargent Shelfmark: “British Library HMNTS 10003.d.10.” Page: 645 Place of Publishing: Paris Date of Publishing: 1866 Issuance: monographic Identifier: 002161070 Explore: Find this item in the British Library catalogue, ‘Explore’. Download the PDF for this book (volume: 0) Image found on book scan 645 (NB not necessarily a page number) Download the OCR-derived text for this volume: (plain text) or (json)Click here to see all the illustrations in this book and click here to browse other illustrations published in books in the same year. Order a higher quality version from here.
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The Beowulf Exploration and Mercantile Corporation FAQ

Is it true that everyone serving a BEM ship is a convict? Will I be serving on a ship full of criminals?

It is true that some people get out of prison with the skills necessary to serve on a BEM ship and that one of our founding captains served time. That said, we have plenty of explorers who just got out of military service, university and even a few lately who just got out of cryo-sleep from an antique generation ship!

Our crews are diverse and our mutiny index is far below average in the sector.

20 missions and I get my own ship, that seems like a scam – too good to be true. What gives?

After 20 accredited missions you will get shares in your own ship with a group of freelancers whose skill-sets and emotional intelligence and cultural backgrounds compliment yours. Our algorithm is so good that the Perimeter agencies investigated us to make sure we weren’t using an illegal AI!

When our founders left their jobs as freelance spacers on other people’s ships, they crunched the sociological data and found that most spacers either quit after 5 missions or stay for 20+ with an incredibly high rate of mutiny and dissatisfaction. We wanted to find a way to change spacer culture and the way we’re doing that is by giving our explorers the chance to own ships and hire other freelancers.

What if I just want to serve 5 missions?

That is great. Many of our most valued alumni serve less than 20 missions. Once you serve 5 you are a part of our Beowulf Society with access to a network of spacers, freelancers and starship captains all over the sector.

How long will this take?

Different people take different amounts of time. Our fastest explorer got it done in just 5 years and is now on an Admiral Hayla Muhkerjee, Vice-President of Explorer Resources.

The average is around 7 years, earning freelance rates far above average in the sector. We’ve had a few people earn their shares in their Beowulf ship and with the money they’ve saved purchase a second ship all their own!

NOTE: This led to a G+ Thread and that led to a Play-by-Post Community.

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SWN 13: Laser Rifles vs. Monoblade Spears

Screen Shot 2017-04-02 at 11.46.44 PM

That tweet kind of says it all.

They took a bit of a beating from the space marines and their monoblades turned into spears. Some of debate on how a genocidale unbraked AI got stranded on this planet and when they looked at the data they saw that it wasn’t destroyed because of a political breakdown in the AI-hunting Perimeter organizations

In the next game, they’ll figure out how to get 0r10n off-planet, past the nanite curtain made to hold unbraked AI’s on the surface.

Will they use the planetary kill-switch that will take the planet back to the stone age, destroying all tempered metal and synthetic compounds?

Will Arkady’s mentor teleport 0r10n off-planet, past the curtain?

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SWN: E-Missive from 0R10N

orion

Greetings Astral Dragon LLC Board of Directors,

I believe Dr. Galvani is prolonging my development on the surface of Kaprianou because it is only through this part of the process that he is going to be of true active use to your company. We have temporarily disarmed the space marines but they have access to AR3S, who could have access to TL5 weapons in storage here since before the Scream.

As to the Bruxelles Class Battlecruiser, I have narrowed down its placement into 6 hexes of the Sector Hades Zeta.

Or we could hunt AR3S down. I was born to destroy genocidal unbreaked A.I. like him. If put into a network with him, I could disassemble his sapience.

I leave the decision to you.

What would you like to do?

11147378404_4cab439217_o

Art

Title: “Aide-mémoire du Voyageur; notions générales de géographie mathématique, de géographie physique, de géographie politique, de géologie, de biologie et d’anthropologie à l’usage des voyageurs, des étudiants et des gens du monde”
Author: KALTBRUNNER, D.
Shelfmark: “British Library HMNTS 10024.f.9.”
Page: 46
Place of Publishing: Zurich<
Date of Publishing: 1881
Issuance: monographic
Identifier: 001923157
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SWN 12: Cat and Mouse with Space Marines

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Karpianou Landing, Operation: <<REDACTED>>

Lieutenant Kahi Skene

Dealanaich Platoon, Anahera Company 

Since the catastrophe in low orbit with the pre-tech satellite, we have had no personnel losses. The planet is cold and unforgiving as our data indicated. The Kaprianers have the purity  to their spirits that the clerics told us they would, tracing their proud lineage back to the noble Perimeter Agencies that link us to Eden, across oceans of time and space.

Successful contact has been made with <<REDACTED>> <<REDACTED>> <<REDACTED>> and were able to successfully <<REDACTED>> <<REDACTED>> <<REDACTED>>.

Requesting <<REDACTED>> and a full compliment of <<REDACTED>> <<REDACTED>>.

When we arrived, our orbit attack group noted a civilian ship in orbit. We decided it was not a threat to our operations and prioritized attempting to gain control of the nanite blanket via the pre-tech satellite system. The crew of that ship, the Pillars of Heaven, are on Kaprianou and have contacted <<REDACTED>>, inspiring a <<REDACTED>> response.

We have not been able to locate this crew of freelance mercenaries. I believe they have access to the pre-tech satellite system, meaning they might have control over the nanite blanket, making them very dangerous to any support we might call in, not to mention they might be using these satellites to gather intel. They are led by a Gudradim, allowing them to employ a cat and mouse guerrilla strategy with sophistication we rarely see among non-military personnel.

The main priorities of our mission are <<REDACTED>> but these freelancers are <<REDACTED>> and <<REDACTED>> while offering a hint of <<REDACTED>>. If they offer no other choices we will be forced to <<REDACTED>> <<REDACTED>> and <<REDACTED>> <<REDACTED>> <<REDACTED>> with full <<REDACTED>><<REDACTED>> <<REDACTED>> <<REDACTED>>.

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marked-kaprianou

Art

Map from The Labyrinth.
George Arents Collection, The New York Public Library. “Pratt’s typewriter.”The New York Public Library Digital Collections. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e2-473e-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99
The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Print Collection, The New York Public Library. “Tete de tigre” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1888. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/09f6af00-1f95-0134-753d-00505686a51c
The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. “Thomas’s fancy loom, Lewiston.” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e0-265a-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99
General Research Division, The New York Public Library. “s.n.] (Pag. 57). ([Año] 1494).” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1910. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47d9-8004-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99
George Arents Collection, The New York Public Library. “Pratt’s typewriter.”The New York Public Library Digital Collections. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e2-47c6-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99
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SWN 11 Conversation with 0r10n

Murder and heart devouring

We ended the last session with Strachan and his band of trained killers having failed a Stealth test deep in enemy territory, looking to take their sci-fi knives to a local general, hoping to stymy the army about to clash with the 10,000 Tigers.
They got jumped by 10 soldiers with medieval swords and bucklers made of some bronze-ish mineral and lizard hides. Strachan’s crew took one hit and the Kaprianouers were routed.
They made their way to the Naiti army’s general in a ruined fort and killed him as he was conversing with a Gudradim Space Marine via holographic projection. Strachan ate the general’s heart in plain view of the space marine, who shook his head at the savagery.
It was a big reveal, a platoon of space marines from the Guevaran Hegemony were on Kaprianou.
They also took a tech-priestess prisoner and picked her brain but killed and discarded her because she was a religious zealot to the dread-tech-god AR3S, an ancient war A.I. This led to a discussion about how this group just aren’t good guys.
“Our first job was stealing and framing the theft on convicts!”
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Talk with 0R10N

The players were brainstorming on how to deal with the situation: space marines, a genocidal A.I. self-declared deity, medieval armies on the march and all covered by a blanket of low orbit nanite blanket meant to keep the A.I. stranded here. Dr. Galvari asked, “Would you like to confer with 0R10N?”
They talked with this young A.I., being raised to hunt the genocidal war A.I.’s that after the Scream, went rogue and decimated entire planets. 0R10N was clearly young and naive and eager to impress. He only had the data they gave him. The young A.I. suggested they contact a Perimeter Agency.
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Baba Yaga

 There are pre-tech satellites in orbit around Kaprianou that manage the nanite cloud. Deiter and Arkaday hacked one and they wire their comms through it, so they can easily communicate with the ship. Knowing that the space marines must’ve landed from orbit recently, they looked at the satellite’s memory to see if had picked up anything. Turns out some marines tried to hack the satellite too. They didn’t do as well and the nanite cloud devoured their power armor vacc suits, leaving them to the void.
After seeing that, Arkady named the satellite Baba Yaga.
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SWN Campaign Casting Call

I like writing the players e-mails about the game as if it was a popular science fiction television show.

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Mubarak

Mercenary Captain

played by Naveen Andrews
naveen-andrews-1452918430
“I like playing Mubarak. He’s a soldier who proudly served in the Lalita Navy, what he sees as the greatest armed force in the Sector, a link to our roots on Olde Earth. Now he’s a rootless mercenary, his once-proud Navy has been decimated and he’s signed on in this back-water nowhere planet doing very illegal work.
“He’s an honorable man amidst warring factions.”
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Dr. Gavani

Artificial Intelligence Specialist

voice and facial expressions by Ben Kingsley
sir_ben_kingsley_by_david_shankbone
“Gavani was initially a difficult character to get a grip on. He comes form this world where the technology is so far advanced that it might as well be magic and of course he was made to survive in an underwater environment which is why Deiter calls him, Dr. Fishman.
“He’s a father. That is the grip I have on him. He’s raising 0r10n as his own son to hunt down genocidal evil. Creating an A.I. in this world is really like putting together a child, a very powerful demonic child. Fundamentally, he’s a father, almost a mixture of Frankenstein and Faust.”
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General Idowu

Leader

played by Danny Glover
danny-glover
“He’s a military man, who believes in what he’s doing and how it will shape his world, allow it to join the stars again. I like him marching towards his possible doom. He’s a good guy and in this story, that is rare.”
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Bisola

Soldier in a Strange Land

played by Lupita Nyong’o
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“She’s grown up in this medieval society, knowing that the stars are above and that her people came from starships to hold this demon on the planet. I like that her people want to get back to the stars on her own terms.
“Now she’s thrown in with these mercenaries with very shallow morals. I’m curious to see what she makes of the galaxy now that she’s out in it.”
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Wolfgang

Cyber-Ninja

played by Max Riemelt
max-r
“Who doesn’t want to play a cyber-ninja? It is just fun.
“That said, his relationship with Deiter, their brotherhood and love is what really drew me to the role. I like his relationship to his brilliant brother who is clearly on the spectrum.”
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Who is Danny Trejo playing? Fanboards are filled with speculation.

danny-trejo

Some say that they have seen him coming on set with face tattoo make-up, leading some to speculate that he will be playing an as-yet unnamed Gudrudim Hunter!