Thursday, June 28, 2012

Stars Without Number Character Clinic - Actual Play





 I spent most of this Thursday evening going over Character creation with my group. After going over rules, character generation, skills, & lots of smaller details. I'm firmly convinced that this game is a real departure from the traditional OD&D rules as we know them. 
  • Combat is very different & the skill rolls really shake things up. This is a step away from many of the other retroclones out there in the OSR 
  • 13 people can choose one of the three main classes but each & every one are going to be different from everyone else's. The secrets are in the backgrounds & skills. There is far more customization then I was first aware of. 
  • Having everyone doing the character generation together allows  a cohesiveness to the party even if the world hasn't even been described. After running the 10 player Flash Gordon games it makes things run very smoothly for smaller game campaigns. 
  • The rules for psychics are very well done. These make fare more sense then some of the other rules that are available in other OSR games. 



The roll call 
5th level beginning party
  1. Forrest - Playing an expert with a hot shot pilot's skill set with a bounty hunter past & a mysterious secret that haunts him. 
  2. Bob - Psychic Researcher with some shady deals & some very nasty characters hunting him. Forced to follow a mercenary life style this man is desperate & looking for his break. The life of a wandering adventurer among the stars allows him to play the part of the dashing hero 
  3. Russ - Combat Psychic a veteran of a thousand psychic wars wanders the stars with his fellow heroes.
    The Party has a Free Merchant star ship & has landed with little money in their pocket & their looking for the next big break.
    A star port awaits them among the largest planet of the Al Divine star system. A place of danger, intrigue, considered by many to be the cross roads of the universe.
     A stranger watches from the shadows of the star port sizing the fresh meat that just walked into his backyard.
  4. Mecha & Psychic powers are going to be playing a big part in this game & I'm already hard at work on a brand new sector. The fact that I can customize the setting is big plus in my book. 
  5. The  weapons & equipment sections are interesting enough to provide this campaign with some story hooks even while the players are buying stuff for their characters. 

Perhaps its time to dust off an old classic & do a few side conversions for  this old classic. From another perspective of course for Stars Without Number  



3 comments:

  1. So...how are you liking Stars Without Number?

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  2. I'm enjoying reading through it & designing a hex by hex sector campaign. Its thinking on a grander scale to be sure. There are all sorts of things that are going on behind the scenes. I'm hoping this Thursday to have my first game in the new campaign Bill. Lots of stuff happening though & some more ideas coming out of this. Most of the Nazi/Carcosa stuff lately that I've been churning out has connections to the Stars Without Numbers rpg stuff. The Mechs are a good example. There are no larger mecha in Stars only the hard suit or the smaller Battletech style stuff.

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  3. So did you ever convert The Black Hole stuff to SWN?

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