The Sage's Library: Stars Without Number

Рет қаралды 15,023

6 ай бұрын

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Пікірлер: 86

@TheDiazDarkness 6 ай бұрын

The creator of this game has other games that are worth looking at. Scarlet Heroes is one as it has an Old School D&D system for solo gameplay

@PhilipDudley3 6 ай бұрын

Scarlet Heroes, Godbound, Silent Legions, Worlds and Cities Without Number.

@Yablon925 6 ай бұрын

An Echo Resounding is good too but that's more of an expansion to Labyrinth Lord than its own thing

@chriscotgrove9674 6 ай бұрын

Wolves of God and Spears of the Dawn are great too.

@kerascene5982 6 ай бұрын

Scarlet Heroes is awesome! Still one of the best solo systems for structured gameplay and introducing the possibility of failure.

@synthastro 6 ай бұрын

Great overview! Don't forget much of his stuff is available in very generous free versions! Kevin is a godsend, no, a god, for solo rpgers too. Only Tana Pigeon competes with his genius! Scarlet Heroes is incredibly fun, Worlds Without Number and Godbound (high fantasy and high powered fantasy), Silent Legions (Lovecraftian horror) and the new Cities Without Number (cyberpunk) are all so much fun and come with such incredibly fun and useful tools for any GM. I have the Stars Without Number Omnibus, its so hefty its a lethal weapon! I love the factions mechanic in all these games, and the tag system is so cool for sandboxes. I thing tags are my favourite thing.

@DahVoozel 6 ай бұрын

I generated a subsector in SWN once and there were a suspicious number of worlds over run by zombie plagues.

@hyhena-gaming9986 6 ай бұрын

Lol well some maltech scientist had fun after the scream

@HedgehogBC 6 ай бұрын

Haven't even clicked on the video yet, but I love that the comments are filled with praise for Kevin Crawford already,

@goadfang 6 ай бұрын

I love SWN and WWN, both are excellent games and incredible resources to use in any ttrpg system. Kevin Crawford is not only a genius at writing such incredibly useful tools, he is also the hardest working man in the business, capable of delivering on huge kickstarters with nary a hitch, delivering amazing, lovingly crafted, books in far less time than many other indy creators are able to produce a simple pamphlet game.

@JohnPowell6 6 ай бұрын

Its also fun to give each player a faction and do the faction turns as a group. In fact have the players help create the factions in session 0 before they do their ship and characters.

@MeMyselfandDieRPG 6 ай бұрын

Yeah, as I said in the video that was always the plan in my campaign, to ultimately have them control their faction assets.

@drillerdev4624 6 ай бұрын

When I heard this book had some of the best GM tools I expected "lots of cool tables", but this living universe system sounds great, and, specially, FUN. I think it's fundamental (and, luckily, a trend that keeps getting more commonplace) to gamify the GM tools so wirkdbuilding feels more like an interesting solo game and less like homework.

@ARKavli 6 ай бұрын

I have the free version, and all of the "Without Number" books are on my wish list... which is already impossibly long!

@ForestGreen-gd9fc 6 ай бұрын

Really nice to see how you ran the game as part of your review. Cheers Trevor 🍻

@errantadventurespod 6 ай бұрын

I used the Worlds Without Number faction turn rules for the second season of my show and I really enjoyed how they changed the landscape of the campaign and created context for my characters in the world.

@DragonBoi3789 6 ай бұрын

You forgot the most important part (or if you did mention this I didn't catch it and I'm sorry)! WWN is free, at least the lion's share of it. The premium verison only adds maybe 20-30 pages of extra tables and details. The rest of the book is completely free to download.

@Jimmy.1979 6 ай бұрын

I can never get over how much I love the smoking jacket and pipe!

@Baulderstone1 6 ай бұрын

I really like the faction system. Old school D&D always had its domain management system, but the problem with it is that it doesn't enter play until the characters are high-level, and it essentially means you are switching from one game into playing an entirely different game. With the faction system, the domain management is there the entire time for the players to interact with, even if they don't control a faction. I also agree with about enjoying being surprised as a GM. It's why I have never really warmed up to later editions of D&D. Between the carefully balanced challenge ratings and adventure paths, it's like the game is calibrated to turn exactly the way you expect. Even if that is fun for the players, its boring for me as the GM.

@centralcommittee4458 6 ай бұрын

Bundle of Holding (NOT Humble Bundle) has a bunch of Kevin Crawford's games with all their tables available in a bundle for around $27. It's true that there are very playable and bountiful free versions of Stars Without Number, Worlds Without Number and Cities Without Number, but this also has Spears of the Dawn (West African fantasy), Scarlet Heroes (mostly east/southeast Asian fantasy, also has solo rules), Other Dust (post-apocalyptic), Wolves of God (8th century Anglo-Saxon England), and Silent Legions (Call of Cthulhu-esque modern horror). Another thing to note is that the copy of Cities Without Number in the bundle is the free one.

@marisakolver4640 6 ай бұрын

You're an awful horrible person for letting us know about Bundle of Holding's bundle... Evil, I tell you! Sinister! ;)

@larryg.6118 6 ай бұрын

That factions turn looks like something I would enjoy. Very interesting stuff. Thanks for another great Sage's Library, Trevor!

@FrostSpike 6 ай бұрын

In terms of "Faction Turn" notices, the old "Journal of the Traveller Aid Society" (JTAS) magazine, running between 1979 to 1985, did something similar. Each quarter the magazine would contain calendarised events covering what notable Imperium events had happened in the previous 90 days (the game clock ticked in step with the real-life calendar). These events could then be used for story-hooks and even presaged big in-game events, like the Fifth Frontier War in the Spinward Marches.

@ChrisBillows 6 ай бұрын

Did Traveller introduce Factions to RPGs?

@FrostSpike 6 ай бұрын

@@ChrisBillows I don't believe so. If you look at Greyhawk, for example, there were many factions active on that world. I'm guess that there have been "factions", in some way, shape, or form, involved for as long as there have been wargames being played. The JTAS magazine was just the first time I'd seen the idea of "faction notices" being published publically like that. The Third Imperium was the first "living world" shared campaign setting that I'm aware of... but I'm not omniscient.

@coolintruddle 6 ай бұрын

I've been a fan of domain style since Birthright. These days I have more of a scifi imagination and often use the faction rules for SwN when I'm worldbuilding.

@LoneDiceGuy 4 ай бұрын

Kevin Crawford is the GOAT of ttrpg’s in my opinion. I adore his stuff.

@Rich_H_1972 6 ай бұрын

The OSR base system of Kevin Crawford's games don't do anything for me but, like you say, its those tools for factions, empires, NPCs etc and his solo-friendly content that are totally invaluable. I use them lots in many of my games - not just SWN but his other ones too. Great RPG design is our Mr Crawford! 😁

@koltonkulis4763 6 ай бұрын

I'm playing Ironsworn - Starforged right now, and I plan on importing the SWN faction system into the game.

@stuartbramley 6 ай бұрын

Can’t get enough of this guy. Really informative, and just shows an absolute love of what he does. He got me into RPGs so thanks for that also!

@MrGunnar177 4 ай бұрын

The author is a really cool and humble guy. Love my offset version. Picked up worlds without number too along with a few others by him

@totalburnout5424 6 ай бұрын

Good as ever. I love this series. 😊 Have ".. without numbers" on my screen for a long time. It's avaiable at Bundle of Holding' at the moment.

@michaelmullenfiddler 6 ай бұрын

Listen to Trevor Devall for 5 minutes, and hear 6 different accents. Lol

@elnovato-8165 6 ай бұрын

Thank god i already have the book... I would have buy it after your presentation sir. Still half on the new season 4 video. No spoilers !. I should remember myself not to read the comments. You rock !

@allluckyseven 6 ай бұрын

Very interesting. And it also seems quite easily adaptable to a fantasy setting if that's more your thing. Planets would become nations, factions would become, well, factions, but also houses, guilds, etc. EDIT: Oh? Maybe Worlds Without Number does this? Love this series, Trevor. I'm always looking forward for the next video!

@koltonkulis4763 6 ай бұрын

Yep, check out Worlds without Number. It's the fantasy version of the game.

@TonyLS9A 6 ай бұрын

Had so much fun playing this solo. It was one of my first forays into the world of solo TRRPGaming.

@animatorFan74 6 ай бұрын

Yeh I've played a psychic character as part of a Stars without Number campaign before. It was very fun :) It's a good system.... I actually thought, while we played, that it even seemed more "Rifts" than the actual Rifts game was... very imaginative and intense. If it were real, it would be such an intense and dangerous world to live in. But yeh, good fun :)

@Morta1337y 3 ай бұрын

Thanks for the intro to faction turns from Kevin Crawford. I'm working on a hack to use similar rules for my Savage Worlds campaign :D

@Ulitemyfyre 5 күн бұрын

6:46 What you are describing is Dune of course in a way

@FireallyXTheories 6 ай бұрын

I found the faction system to be really good on a fundamental level. Assets, bases, goals, leaders. But I didn't like how the mechanics played out for the "macro game" the GM is doing. It felt very contrived and hard to follow, but with the fundamentals listed out, I can get great mileage out of it with a bit of imagination. I'd love to hear your thoughts on Farsight in a future Sage's Library if you think it's worth looking at. It's a new sci-fi TTRPG that you could say is the Starfinder for DnD 5e, but it does change a lot of core mechanics and does the SWN archetype thing which I find to be pretty interesting. I think it's built for theatre of the mind play predominantly, but I also can't deny weapon ranges being standardized sounds like it'd help the GM out a lot. And as for the SWN itself, I have a love/hate relationship with the Without Numbers games. It has a lot of cool things and simple, yet deep customization that I love, and a lot of things I don't like too. Sadly the negatives overcame the positives and I stopped running this system series (though Worlds is a mess imo). I love the faction ideas, I love that foci are the progression system, I think 2d6 is cool, shock damage is fantastic (though I always forget the AC rules with it), the frail and death system is a good way to be more volotile but not too volotile, and I love how psionics is attached to the skill system. It's interesting and psionics are universal to sci-fi which lets you use any setting you can imagine really. Things I didn't like (feel free to ignore this): Dex is a god-tier stat. Everything uses it. AC, damage, accuracy, piloting, numerous skill checks, etc. The attributes are wonky where only 3,4,8,14,and 18 matter except for strength and con where the number itself matters, Saves are just bad where they become meaningless after a certain point and your character's skill in psionics or anything else that uses a save literally doesn't matter at all; a level 1 and level 10 character have the same chance of effecting the same mob. The game doesn't help the GM on the micro level much at all. You have to make all the statblocks from scratch or tweak stats that are pretty mundane without many abilities beyond hitting things; boss fights you have to make up too; there's no guidance on how to call skill checks or what to advise players to build into for certain builds despite being theoretically limitless options; and there are mechanics that are important like reaction rolls that are not explained in core sections of the book that come out of nowhere that you have to suddenly play with because someone chose the Well Met focus that requires you to roll anytime they talk to any NPC, biopsionics is broken beyond all reason; if a single player has it the way the entire game changes because the death mechanics suddenly don't exist anymore unless you target fire down someone's character on the enemy turn after they've fallen over, Adventurer class is always the best non-psion class because you get the HP and SP of the other two classes by default as well as two starting foci instead of 1 or 0 Foci get weird when they give you skills because the rules on it are different from character creation and progression and it doesn't tell you that and you get like "half" of a skill in later levels if you've invested 2 levels into something already? Or do you lose it? idk, it's not explained. Skills top off at level 4, but you can only buy them at level 9 for some reason even though the cost of getting that skill is literally half the skill points you will ever earn in the entire game without assistance (encouraging you to bank skill points for several levels if you want to be really good at something), and even with it, you probably save 3sp, maybe 6 if you got 2 foci for it, but even then you spend 9/30 skill points and 2/5 foci. Or 9/40sp if you're an expert. the ship mechanics tend to fall into "discuss the most optimal strategy" (which involves everyone but the gunner giving up their turn for the gunner to have more actions) and then do that every single turn until something bad happens (when it does though, you just go back to the optimal strategy until you fix the problem)

@stuartbramley8471 4 ай бұрын

Really helpful, thanks. I’m debating whether to learn the RPG element or just look at it for world building

@GodOfMoxie 6 ай бұрын

Worlds without number is being used by me locally to convert so many modern players into a more old school style.

@ZeroPhoenixTheLastBladeTheory 6 ай бұрын

Adam Koebel had a cool thing going on (before he got cancelled) where his discord/patron community divided into factions and had a hand in running the faction turns. I wish someone would take up the mantle and continue that idea.

@MeMyselfandDieRPG 6 ай бұрын

That’s what I had considered doing for Season 3: having my Patrons control the factions. It didn’t materialize, as I didn’t want to front-load too much world information before Edbert’s journey.

@GeezerGeek0 6 ай бұрын

I've been running an SWN game for my table for the past couple of months. This is my first time running a sandbox-style game, and I've been really happy with the tools that this book provides. It's really been a lot of fun rolling the dice and seeing what kind of sector results. Thanks for doing this video, Trevor!

@stuartbramley8471 4 ай бұрын

How are you recording all the worlds /assets etc? Is this a solo thing or part of a group?

@b.k.8515 6 ай бұрын

Fantastic video. ❤

@StatsScott 6 ай бұрын

Very cool. I’ve been wanting to play a solo campaign based on the D&D Saltmarsh book but dial up the different factions so they aren’t just a background detail. But have not found any kind of system to operationalize that. I definitely need to look into this to see how much of their system I can use without having to reinvent the wheel.

@TopazRage 6 ай бұрын

Yes! The Faction system! I love it so much!

@messenger3478 2 ай бұрын

Wow! I love this sooo much! I want this game! So many ideas in this book!

@michaelmullenfiddler 6 ай бұрын

Really cool

@teavo3808 6 ай бұрын

Never clicked on a video so fast. SWN is probably my favorite system lol

@alternativezen 6 ай бұрын

I use this system in my own solo RPG KZbin/Podcast series. I was between this and Traveller and I preferred SWN's mechanics better. Unfortunately I haven't utilized a lot of the book outside the base mechanics for skill checks and combat. To create locations such as space ports/stations, moons, or planets I've used the Mythic GME 2nd up until episode 29 and got to really experience that creation system. It's so good! Definitely haven't used the faction system yet but that seems fun! PS Thank you for inspiring me to start my own thing, Trevor!

@DaveThaumavore 6 ай бұрын

Fascinating. Thanks for this rundown, Trev. Excellent video.

@ahtech1990 6 ай бұрын

Love your content Trevor, been subbed for maybe a little over a year. Happy to see your subscriber count grow! Can't wait for the next main campaign!

@NefariousKoel 6 ай бұрын

It has some great GM tools/tables. I'd still use them with something like Mongoose Traveller 2e, however, as the old school D&D core doesn't quite hit the mark for my sci-fi tastes.

@MelRiffe 6 ай бұрын

Color coding the assets! Capital idea. I'm prepping a WWN Sandbox and wasn't sure how I was going to manage the Faction Turn. Separate map with color coded assets is how. 😅

@TervonenToni 4 ай бұрын

I would love to hear your take on RuneQuest. I noticed a few classics during the intro.

@emilibsen3423 6 ай бұрын

To me, the best part of the system is the ship combat system.

@chrisstokoe3169 6 ай бұрын

Dude your fpfh was awesome u are plenty good at sci-fi trust me

@barnyfraggles 6 ай бұрын

Must give it another look. The 4 archetype class system didn't grab me.

@goadfang 6 ай бұрын

The thing about the 4 archetype system is that those are extremely broad archetypes, there is a vast amount of space and customization that can happen within them. Leaning into the random character generation really helps create very diverse characters, even though on the surface it seems a bit narrow.

@barnyfraggles 6 ай бұрын

Hmm interesting. Will definitely give it another look. Never ran it, just had a read through years ago and missed that. I’ve a regular 6-man group and thought lack of variety/archetype duplications would p*** them off.

@FrostSpike 6 ай бұрын

@@barnyfraggles Bear in mind that D&D only had 4 classes, yet characters drawn from a class could be very different in play, due to player's choices, even though the same mechanics would be involved under the covers.

@nicolejohntahup5901 6 ай бұрын

The next book in the Sage Library will it Fate Core Edition,

@Spark_Chaser 6 ай бұрын

Cities Without Number: Cyberpunk system.

@davelanciani-dimaensionx 5 ай бұрын

Did you ever play TSR's Knights of Camelot? That was a fantastic board game that could be played solo. Very well made, and really stuck close to the source material of the King Arthur legends.

@nutherefurlong 6 ай бұрын

This hit me kind of the same way, where I am not a big fan of classes (the assumption of a Force style class seems pretty fundamental and it's not how I tend to build my universes I guess. I wonder if just having the skill-based class would work) but it looked like there was a lot going on with the high level interplanetary events, makes me wonder if giving players a minor faction in a sense might be a good idea right off the bat, or after a few short sessions that are reserved sometimes for players getting their ship in other games. I've only see the free version, I guess the full does even more with this side of things?

@malchitos 6 ай бұрын

“Actions of the Factions” begs to be school house rock segment.

@jamesrizza2640 6 ай бұрын

I always love the enthusiasm you bring to your channel. I would like to know what class or level system you prefer over the traditional ones we know from D&D. I haven't seen all your videos so sorry if you have already spoken on this subject.

@MeMyselfandDieRPG 6 ай бұрын

Thanks! I prefer skill-based systems, mostly. Ones that don’t use either class or level. Runequest is a good example.

@jamesrizza2640 6 ай бұрын

I appreciate your fast response. I have to check that system and see what its like. Do you play skyrim is that similar to what your talking about. Thanks again for responding and I wish you well this coming new year.

@Jack-gs6sd 6 ай бұрын

As brilliant as the faction turn mechanics are, I once made a Reddit thread asking how many SWN die-hards actually used them completely rules-as-written, and it turns out... almost no one did! Instead, it appears that it's one of those highly detailed systems that is incredibly well known, but is usually just used for inspiration or initial worldbuilding and then sorta intuited or fudged according to how the GM feels. Which I think is a great way to be!

@hedkase1313 6 ай бұрын

I know some people were somehow mixing Stars Without Number and 5 Parsecs together, but I'm not familiar enough with SWN to know how...

@nagaenigma 6 ай бұрын

Oh, Trevor, I know what you're doing... You're warming us up for S4 where you're preparing an epic tale of armies and factions moving around like chess pieces on a world map, while you sprinkle political intrigue, natural disasters and diseases around as the timers run out. Ok, I know this is just wishful thinking, but it would be such a natural and awesome way to build upon the saga in my mind ❤

@1701pja 6 ай бұрын

Do the actions of the factions involve the chalice from the Palace and the flagon with the dragon? 🤔😉

@DahVoozel 6 ай бұрын

I bought Worlds Without Number and tried to adapt a 1st Edition DnD module to it aaaand... it kinda worked? My players didn't like the system.

@Naren25 6 ай бұрын

Yeah, the system is a bit of a hybrid. Not quite OSR, not quite modern/ neo-trad (skills, feats, lots of player customization etc...) I think the half way house might make it an amazing gateway drug for coverting D&D 5e players to the OSR, or it might make it a bit of a mess. Hard to say. The tools and generators are exceptional though.