Star Without Number Revised Campaign - Mixing Trey Causey's Strange Stars & Terra Arisen rpg - Space Trucking Session Two

 We picking right up from two weeks ago's last session available right here.  In this game campaign we're using a combination of Stars Without Number revised Trey Causey's Strange Stars and Terra Arisen. I kept Trey Causey's Strange Stars. And his OSR Strange Stars rulebook handy. 

We were escorting Terran Alliance local authorities into the Reticulan space around the former military bases that had been converted into Human bases. There was a smaller Human military presence with far more alien & Reticulan traders. The player's PC's dropped off their passengers and got paid. 
The PC's were contacted about moving  Gnomes genetic material for helping a post apocalyptic world stabilize it's genetic base. They met the Gnome transporter and courier who took possession of the material. There were no real words exchanged. Our telepathic link helped with the transaction and the party were really weirded out by the Gnomes. 
 The players wanted to get out of the area as soon as possible! The Gnome's ship departed and the crew of the Lakota left Gnome's space.

 We then got a message from a set of Kosmoniks traders who were interested in some of the trade goods that we've got in stock. The Lakota has a number of small high yield luxury cargoes for the colonies we've been visiting. Chocolate, pornography, etc are some of the smaller items that yield big to the humans that are acting as client colony for other aliens. We got the genetic material to the post apocalyptic world and were almost blasted out of the sky by a nuke! 

Deeper Readings Into The Cities Without Number rpg & Trey Causey's Strange Stars OSR Setting

  "The world is neon and dust.

There is nothing more than the flesh. There is nothing greater than the wires. There is nothing to dream that is not sold and nothing to worship that is not made. It is a mirrorshade world of human reflections, every red hunger and every black passion worshiped in cathedrals of glass and greed. The great love their sins like children and the least want only to be great. Who could hope for more?"

Cities Without Number is a cyberpunk role-playing game built for sandbox adventures in a dystopia of polished chrome and bitter misery. It's both a full-fledged Sine Nomine toolkit for building a cyberpunk world of your own and an Old School Renaissance-inspired game system for playing out the reckless adventures of the desperate men and women who live in it. Whether polished metal or flesh and blood, your operators will risk their lives and more to seize those precious things a merciless world would keep from them.

Alright it's been a New York City minute since I've cracked open the  Cities Without Number rpg. Readin deeper into Cities has been interesting tonight after getting together with my players over dinner & rereading the rules. Anyone whose been reading this blog knows we've been running Trey Causey's Strange Star campaign setting books. Cities is a perfect supplement to use with Strange Stars because of the transhumanistic elements of this OSR campaign. 

What Cities Without Numbers brings to the table is a long and storied rpg of Cyberpunk goodness. Coupling it with Stars Without Numbers over the last couple of months has been interesting because it brings some perspective to our own cybered version of campaign Earth. This version of our own campaign Earth is well aware of the fact of the aliens & intergalatic scene of Strange Stars. 
Earth however is struggling under the wait of knowing that it's no longer the center of the universe. Earthlings are in demand because of the intergalatic space trucking driver shortage. The holo vids are awash with colony adds and space piloting school adds. 
Our own own party wants to hire two new drivers and aquire two brand new 'used' space haulers. Already our own operators are looking through thousands and thousands of adds for new talent and trucks. 
There are tons of adventuring opportunities in the belt for our own adventurers and operators. Our own party operates on both sides of the law lately and there's been some push back from the more wiley of the alien races. 
Our own party has been pushing hard since a run in with several of the cults of B4 The Lost City. More coming up as our operators work to get the party saved from the vicious locals. 

Businesses As Usual - TRey Causey's Strange Stars & Citybook VI: Up Town From Flying Buffalo

 If you've been following our Strange Stars sessions then you know that at sometime everything is  going to go back to Circus. Circus.  With Circus I had to get a series of higher class up town sections. Fortunately, I had the answer already on my book shelf! 

Coming out in '92 Citybook VI: Up Town this is part of the iconic Cataylist series. Citybook VI: Up Town  is going to be an old part of Circus. 'The Lost Inn' is going to get a work out coming up! The idea of an inn that takes on the lost and the desparate harkens back to the 'Bygone Age' of Strange Stars. The Greenhargon's Museum is also going to be featured with the owner not knowing anything about the alien nature of the place. The museum is going to be a patron for the PC's coming up. 
Another business that's going to be making an appearance for obvius reasons is Iron Shield Financial Services. For adventurers Iron Shield is a must! And this includes space based adventures. The Age of Ravens blog has a complete review of Citybook VI: Up Town right over here. 

For Trey Causey's Strange Stars the businesses from Citybook VI: Uptown fit in very nicely. Given the weird and alien natures of the businesses there's some really solid businesses and NPC's to mine for games. Stars Without Number fits the Citybook VI: Up Town asthetic quite nicely. 

Stars Without Number Game Session Four - Phaseworld & Trey Causey's Strange Stars Campaign - You Can't Go Gnome Again

 The job from last session from the Engineer and his mafia bosses is a seemingly simple one. Take this genetic material to a Gnome asteroid colony for transport. In return we upgrade your ship, sell you weapons, and provisions. The players are not stupid so thier cybersneaks started checking for a 'gene guy' to check out the material. PC's were looking for viruses and bioweapons snuck into the sample of the material they received. 

This whole part of the session became a cat and mouse deal between the Lakota crew and the house mafia of Circus,Circus. The player's PC's hired Mr.Ling a Kosmonik who looked over his intergalatic tarot and saw that the signs were favorable for him to work with the PC's. 
The genetic material checked out. So where the catch?! The catch is that the material belongs to a rival faction of  Gnomes who have lost the 'right' to reproduce and are at war with another rival faction. 
The PC's could end up within the sights of a Gnome rail gun and seemimgly on the outs with powerful mining concern. 
And of course the PC's took the job!

Yup oversaw the upgrades, provisions, and even the weapons ammo for this job. There was never any unathorized drones, droids, or personel from Circus,Circus, near the Lakota. 
I kept  Trey Causey's Strange Stars. And his OSR Strange Stars  rulebook handy and the Lakota departed Circus, Circus, & gate jumped into System 76/6 which is Gnome controlled space. Seven very large gas giants dominated the system. They headed for the largest past debris and several wrecks of ships. They transmitted thier codes and waited. A small transport came from the largest asteroid to meet them. And they had a weapons lock on them the whole time. They met the Gnome transporter and courier who took posession of the material. There were no real words exchanged. The players wanted to get out of the area as soon as possible! The Gnome's ship departed and the crew of the Lakota left Gnome's space. And that's when they spotted some sorta of small ship tailing them. As soon as they got within sight of the system gate they activated thier ace up thier sleeve thier Drivebox. The catch?! They have no idea where she'll take them! 

Stars Without Number Game Session Three - Phaseworld & Trey Causey's Strange Stars Campaign - The Circus, Circus isn't What It Used To Be Session Five

 The crew of the Lakota ditched Mr.Hight from last session, but this is hardly the end of the meddling proto humanoid. The crew docked at Circus, Circus and mingled with the crowds to re equip. The last round with Mr.Hight had put a damper on thier ammo as the bastard had drained all of thier weaponry's energy cells. As you'll recall last game session here. 

The PC's got involved in a 'Quickling' gambling game which is one part race & two parts sport. The Quicklings wanted to get the party involved but fortunately the party's resident problem solver 'Yup stepped in. This 'game' would have involved the party living in the Quick's acellerated time contnum & this involved pre mature aging on the PC's part. 
The PC's were actually on Circus Circus to meet with an Erato party & purveyor of pleasures to help set up and deliver the holo & sensory equipment for tonight's festivals. Also getting paid was an added bonus. The party met with Mrs and Mr. Anderson two cloned bioroids. Again Yup stepped in a made sure that the pheoro chemical clouds that surrounded the Andersens didn't affect the party in an adverse way. This was so the Andersen's didn't wiggle out of contract.

Acroyear by Pat Broderick

And then the Alliance agents showed up to 'interview' the PC's about a new contract. The hyehoon agents were getting a bit too nosey for the PC's taste and were turned away. The party also left messages with another Alliance representive about thier agents.  The party got rooms at Circus Circus and posted thier Cybersneaks inside the Lakota. All of the while the party kept in constant contact awaiting thier Engineer gun & weapon smith. He made his way to the PC's table and they spent a small fortune on new equipment and saw the floor show. But now the PC's have been summoned to the room of Mr. #@#!@% whose got a new job for them according to the mafia boss's agents/brain cells. 
Once again  Trey Causey's Strange Stars. And his OSR Strange Stars  rulebook have  been getting quite the workout! 

 

Stars Without Number Game Session Three - Phaseworld & Trey Causey's Strange Stars Campaign - Radiant Polity Problems

 Let's pick up from our sessions where we left off here with the player's PC's getting into the groove of Phaseworld. The PC's picked the warrior Yub Gorkin a rather excentric Thrax warrior that they literally bought from the Slavers along with his equipment.

Acroyear by Pat Broderick 

The crew of Lakota were able to get Yub under contract as hired muscle & 'problem solving' after awakening him from Cryo. The parameters of the contract included meals, medical, combat training, and violence qoutes!  The Lakota delivered colony supplies & habits to a local 250 million light year location. And they successfully got paid. 

Then it was off to another drop zone on the outskirts of the former  Radiant Polity worlds. Here they were to pick up a very special cargo. A cryo pod in the green awaited the faithful crew. 
And this didn't sit well with the crew of the Lakota. After a few tense minutes, Yub defused the situation by stating that live cargos violated the letter of the cargo contract of the Lakota.

The crew came face to face with one of the former  Radiant Polity super humanoids. And were able to wiggle out of contract with some very fancy foot work. Jack Kirby's Lightray was the image I used for Beta Tora Radiant representive. 

Mr.Hight was more then happy to hear the PC's points and was quick to shutdown any attempts at the party trying to find out when he & the others had awakened. 
What the party didn't want to do is engage in combat with Mr. Hight nor any of his superiors. The players have had dealings with these jerks ! And so left as soon as possible. When safely out in space they checked over the Lakota top to bottom for any tracers or tracking devices. 
The party is making it's way to Circus,Circus a gambling world just to be sure they ditched Mr.Hight. 

 So  Trey Causey's Strange Stars. And his OSR Strange Stars  rulebook came out of retirement at the table top. And it's been getting quite the workout! 

First Impressions & Review of Cities Without Number Rpg by Kevin Crawford

 "The world is neon and dust.

There is nothing more than the flesh. There is nothing greater than the wires. There is nothing to dream that is not sold and nothing to worship that is not made. It is a mirrorshade world of human reflections, every red hunger and every black passion worshiped in cathedrals of glass and greed. The great love their sins like children and the least want only to be great. Who could hope for more?"

Cities Without Number is a cyberpunk role-playing game built for sandbox adventures in a dystopia of polished chrome and bitter misery. It's both a full-fledged Sine Nomine toolkit for building a cyberpunk world of your own and an Old School Renaissance-inspired game system for playing out the reckless adventures of the desperate men and women who live in it. Whether polished metal or flesh and blood, your operators will risk their lives and more to seize those precious things a merciless world would keep from them.

Cities without Number rpg has finally been released to the public but the backers of the Kickstarter have been watching this rpg's evolution for sometime now. And it's a beast of a pdf clocking in at two hundred & fifty six pages of pure Cyberpunk rpg. Cities without Number  pretty much does it all, Cities has great layout, excellent fonts, and a solid B/X OSR  tool box approach to it's material. 
Cities is completely cross compatible with Worlds Without Number, Stars Without Number, and Godbound as well as other Sine Nomine publishing rpg product. And Cities has been in development for months now. As a Kickstarter backer for this project we've been at ground zero for development. Take note other OSR publishers this is how you run a kickstarter. You get your gamer's feed back, take on board opinions, and more then turnout a great product. 
There's already a Cities Without Number: Free Version rpg which has the following in it by Kevin Crawford: 

• An old-school inspired game system that's fully compatible with the sci-fi Stars Without Number game and its fantasy sister-game Worlds Without Number
• Cyberware and sophisticated high-tech gear suitable for chroming the most discriminating cyborg and equipping the most refined of street operators
• Playability-focused hacking rules designed to give hacking-focused PCs useful and important things to do without forcing an entire separate mini-game on the GM
• Gear rules for drones and vehicles, to better equip PCs who want to bring a little extra iron on their next mission
• System-neutral Sine Nomine worldbuilding tools for helping a GM create their own custom cyberpunk world or elaborate the details of existing worlds and settings
• Gang, corp, and city district creation tools for fleshing out your world with people and places that fit
• Fifty Mission Tags for adventure creation, plus guidelines and step-by-step procedures for handling facility infiltrations, managing local heat, selling loot, and other activities beloved of corp-hating street scum everywhere
• The default campaign setting of the City, a premade backdrop to help you get into the game as quickly as possible

And Cities does exactly what it says on the package able to deliver the goods in no time. And does it in style. And Cities can easily be combined with Worlds Without Number to bring you a Shadowrun style Cyberpunk fantasy with little issue. 
And the paid version is even better with more tools and cybernetic goodness;"

In the deluxe edition of Cities Without Number, you'll also be getting...

• Cyberware quirks and features for particular megacorp product lines
• Variant gengineered human types for PCs who don't fit the baseline mold
• Optional rules for the psychological strain of Cyber Alienation
• Optional rules for cheap street cyber, for those campaign settings where every goon with a knife has some wire beneath his skin" 
• Spellcasting, spirit summoning, and magical items for GMs who want to add a dash of magic into their cyberpunk world

This also means that Cities can be used to turn any of your favorite B/X 'World's Most Popular' Rpg adventures into cyberfantasy adventures. And this goes a long way towards getting incredible mile out of modules such as 'B4 The Lost City' where perhaps the other levels contain more then merely a lost race but city blocks of lost cybernetics and net running to thier favorite old school adventure modules! 
Anyone whose been reading this blog knows we've been running Trey Causey's Strange Star campaign setting books. Cities is a perfect supplement to use with Strange Stars because of the transhumanistic elements of this OSR campaign. 

So is Cities without Number rpg worth getting?! In a word, 'oh yes!' if your looking for a solid set of Cyberpunk rpg OSR tools that is capable of creating a campaign to call your own? In a word, yes. This book is worth every penny! 

 

Stars Without Number Game Session Two - Phaseworld & Trey Causey's Strange Stars Campaign

 

I had to pull a campaign out of moth balls  & so  Trey Causey's Strange Stars. And his OSR Strange Stars  rulebook came out of retirement at the table top. "It's the far future, Old Earth is lost and shrouded in legend, and the children of paleo-humanity have long ago populated the stars, branching into new forms and strange cultures. Adventure is measured in light-years!" 

The PC's were trying to find work doing trucking jobs with the Lokata. And the PC's then proceeded to try and get information on the background of the Lakota.
This let back to Phaseworld's Slaver's level & the PC's wanted to avoid that place if they could! They started looking around Phase world itself. Phaseworld  is an incredible transdimensional city that is also a space port located at the edge of three galaxies. 
And our little group of adventurers actually found themselves inside a rather nasty arena belonging to the slavers! They were facing down a full blown ancient dragon! The party were TPK'd! 
Or at least they would have been if they weren't in transhumanoid bodies! 
What they were actually facing down was the Zhmun  Cybergames arena champion. A champion named N'liu who had contacts deep within the Federation trucking union. N'liu was thier 'ancient dragon'. He was able to get them a garbage hauling job with the Lakota after they found themselves back in thier bodies! 
The crew have to haul bio brain drives to a Zhumn cyberworld these drives are 'used'. 

The crew of the Lakota have three days on Phaseworld to do a bit of upgrading to gear and whatnot. They know that Kotgo is leaning over thier shoulders but they've got a plan or two on several of the levels of Phaseworld. Now I've got a copy of Cities Without Number which I'm planning to flesh out several of the urbanscapes of Phaseworld. More on that to come! 

Stars Without Number Game Session One - Phaseworld & Trey Causey's Strange Stars Campaign

Tonight I had to pull a campaign out of moth balls on the fly and I don't think the game session went bad at all! 

 Tonight's game wasn't the usual gang of players but instead we had a few older players who came into  tonight's spur of the moment Stars Without Number game. Which meant that I literally had an hour to come up with a quick campaign off the cuff. Fortunately, earlier this evening I had been reading Rifts rpg Phaseworld. And a copy of Trey Causey's Strange Stars.  Phaseworld  is an incredible transdimensional city that is also a space port located at the edge of three galaxies. The premise is simple the PC's are there to buy a spacecraft for themselves & get a contract hauling cargo into the Vokun Empire . 

Immediately things star going South as the PC's make it through the interdimensional gate. The PC's are cleared for one of the smaller market levels and run smack into a large party of   s’ta zoku The PC's got swept up in with this party and before they knew it they found themselves in an telepathic mind meld. And then someone dropped the 'cosmic acid' and this where things got weird. 
The party awoke to have purchased a telepathic clone of 1960's era Jean Grey on ice in cryo instead of a starship from the Slavers.  There's no take backs or returns when it comes to the Slavers. Fortunately before the Repo soldiers were called in a rather impetious Vokun warlord named Kotgo purchased the clone with a rider for a used Harbinger ship called the Lakota. 

The players didn't even want to know what happened to the prior crew of the Lakota. As they had to spend a few credits to get one of thier number cured of a rather nasty flesh eating STD caught from one of the  s’ta zoku. Don't ask. 

The party wanted to make some quick cash & there was an auction going on in shop right below where the Lakota was docked. The auction was for an A.I. intelligence that had merged with a human mind or soul naturally that was housed in a cybernetic body. The party won the auction but the Zizta auctioneer warned the PC's not to free the cybernetic organism as it has a malevolent cunning. The players were less then thrilled when they learned that they bid on Maximillan.  The party traded him for 20,000 credits to a group of 'the Programmers of Lom'. A race who studies A.I. entities for thier religion. 

The PC's wanted to check out the Lakota more and what they found aboard was a working Drive Box. The Drive box has upgraded the systems and answers to the name 'jenn'i'fer'. The A.I. artifact system is incredibly valuable. So why would Vokun warlord named Kotgo have sold such a valuable starship with this technology?! 

Well what's really going on here is the fact that my last Stars Without Numbers Strange Stars/Phaseworld game back in 2020 went nowhere. The players fell apart after one of them suddenly got married and had a child on the way. The Lakota went back to the last party's patron. Kotgo is taking a gamble on the new party. This was all from my Strange Stars campaign notes. 

'Strange Stars' & The 'Strange Stars OSR Rule Book' By Trey Causey From The Hydra Cooperative For Your Old School Space Opera & Stars Without Numbers Rpg First Edition

"It's the far future, Old Earth is lost and shrouded in legend, and the children of paleo-humanity have long ago populated the stars, branching into new forms and strange cultures. Adventure is measured in light-years!"

Lately we've been on a real roll of space based OSR games with Cepheus Engine, White Star, & now I'm starting to slide back into my Stars Without Numbers vibe again. Tonight its a series of two books by the same author that really feel like one book. 

Strange Stars by Trey Causey  is like a smoke ring from the 70's or 80's from the fevered mind of its author, and its a graphic as well as artistic slight of hand trick of a laser sword of retro science fantasy gaming goodness. The author presents a great overview of his space opera setting with great artwork and a wary eye towards the material being used in your games. This book is wall to wall system neutral artwork as good as your going to find. The races are really nicely designed and can fit into a wide variety of science fiction or fantasy settings. 

Strange Stars is a wily and so what lean beast, its part setting book, part alien races, and a whole lot of details designed around the fact that this beast wants to be your go to space opera campaign. Right and this is the system neutral first book of the series. The second book is  the 'Strange Stars OSR Rule Book' which presents essentially what is an alternative universe setting for the  Stars Without Numbers first edition rpg. 


The set of Strange Stars setting  books has been sitting on my hard drive now for years. But its only recently with the death of Alfred one of my players that its kinda forced me to look back at my SWN campaigns. 

Looking at Strange Stars as a setting set of books its great but as a OSR sandbox setting. This is a universe that has some stunning parts & pieces. The ideas here are 'big', 'wide', 'wild', & 'expansive' but some of it feels very much in keeping with the  Mandate Archive: Transhuman Tech. And before you even send me emails.. From what I've read through 99.9 percent of Strang Stars for SWN should work with second edtion with little issue. This is a really solid sand box setting for SWN with really nice alternative setting options for SWN. 

With these two books of strange stars you're really ready to run a whole cloth campaign from the ground up. Add into it a ton of side support from Trey Causey's blog entries specifically for Stange Stars as campaign setting it becomes highly obvious that this is a good OSR  campaign.

Over all both Strange Stars &  the 'Strange Stars OSR Rule Book'  both feel like one whole cloth book that should be considered as one. The rules clearly support both a campaign setting, universe, & jump off point for an OSR space opera. Which is exactly as these books were intended to be. 

Between all of the alien races, modified humanoids, A.I.'s and much more there is a ton of stuff to unpack here in Strange Stars &  the 'Strange Stars OSR Rule Book' . The sum is greater then the parts. The whole package feel like an interstellar sand box that can be used straight into itself tonight!