Stars Without Number, Worlds Without Number, Cities Without Number, Ashes Without Number. Have you played these? Are they fun? How did one guy raise a gorillion dollars on Kickstarter to publish multiple games that are just houseruled B/X?
>>97452608It is more like traveler lite than b/x to be honest. Ashes without number is the only one I have experience with, but it works well. All of them have pretty nice tables that can apply to other systems which is one of the strengths. Some are more superfluous than others, like the military and trader starts without numbers books, while something like twilight legion are a really good setup for any cult in general among any game.
>>97452608Great setting material in SWN, married to a truly dogshit core system. I've demoted the book to "setting prompt fodder" and kept on using D6.
>>97452608Games without Soul
>>97452608they're really good on the GM side but they're absolutely barren and boring on the player side
>>97452608I've used the GM facing sector generation/world building tools in SWN, Dead Names' alien civ and ruins generation tools and the mythos generation in Silent Legions. All great stuff. The faction setup for SWN is decent, haven't run it enough as is to advocate it but I like the mechanics. Run a decent amount of Scarlet Heroes and An Echo Resounding, largely like them and think they're easy to work with as a mix of abstract and easily mechanizable. Clever designs all around, focused on functional stuff. An Echo Resounding's mass combat did not look good so I haven't used it and went straight to wargames. >how dollars?Not sure, didn't see or participate in any of those but probably something along the lines of >make useful thing>see if people want to pay for useful thing + look good >don't be an asshole and avoid the drama >????>profit Haven't looked into the post apoc or cyberpunk ones yet though.
>>97452608>Stars Without NumberYes>Worlds Without NumberYes>Cities Without NumberNo>Ashes Without NumberNo>Have you played these?See above>Are they fun?Yes>How did one guy raise a gorillion dollars on Kickstarter to publish multiple games that are just houseruled B/X?World generation tables are fuckin kick-ass. And it's very-much NOT a houseruled B/X. One of the defining features of TSR-era D&D is attribute checks. Literally anything that isn't otherwise defined in the rules? Attribute check. Without Numbers completely does away with it. Massively changes the entire vibe.
>>97452956See, i have the opposite experience.We stripped it of the fairly generic setting and used it to replace the shitty non-mecha parts of Lancer.>>97454257>One of the defining features of TSR-era D&D is attribute checks. Literally anything that isn't otherwise defined in the rules? Attribute check. Without Numbers completely does away with it. Massively changes the entire vibe.It just replaces it with 3.0 and later style skills on a 2d6+stat scale though.
>>97454394Correct: it "just" changes the system that defines the difference between TSR and WotC. That's what I said, too.
>>97452608I wish the author would make a proper hyperlinked online free resource, like how there's a PFSRD, d20HeroSRD, or DWGazeteer or instead of just the PDFs. It would make the system a lot more well known I think.So instead I've been slowly making one.https://sites.google.com/view/splats-without-number/homecopying from PDF to website is kind of a massive pain though. I'm having to use a google sheets regex script to remove all the line spaces, line breaks, etc, then copy paste each split apart and recombined cell into the site.
>>97452608>How did one guy raise a gorillion dollars on Kickstarter to publish multiple games that are just houseruled B/X?He releases free versions with premium having a few extra things, he also has a 100% delivery on his kickstarters.
>>97454515so what's your take then, it's a simplified 3.0? That's just 5e.
>>97452608I've had very mixed results with both the WN systems i've run thus far (Worlds and Ashes). planning to run a Cities game somewhat soon to see how that one plays. like others have said, the setting / world generation tools are fantastic, but the systems themselves are just not very good and seem to kind of fall apart fairly quickly. they're in this weird awkward middle ground where they don't feel balanced enough for people who like newer systems, but lower level player characters often end up feeling way too powerful for me as someone who prefers the feeling of old school D&D's early to mid levels.all that said they aren't bad systems, they're pretty fun to run and play, they just have some jank
>>97454741>He releases free versions with premium having a few extra things,giving stuff out for free is ironically a good way to make a lot of money if your name isn't Epic Games.People like to try before they buy, and even the people that can't pay become good word of mouth. I don't think Pathfinder could have competed with 4e nearly as well if it wasn't for the PFsrd/archive of nethys. Hell, I think the pdf leakers and 5e.tools programmers did wotc a massive favor, everyone i know who bought a book started with their group using one of those two first. As much of a leg up as Crit Role and Stranger Things were.
>>97452608I actually like SWN, I just find it weird how non-intuitive the effort system is and how it's confined to just the adept's psychic powers.The powers themselves are another matter because the formatting and thematic choices kind of throw my autism a bit.
>>97455769I like that I feel like he went out of his way to make psychic powers feel like something other than just refluffed normal d&d fantasy magic.
>>97455769There are expert, warrior, and especially mage (half-)classes that also use Effort in Worlds, Cities, and Ashes.The rule of thumb is that Effort powers weird™ abilities. Not always inherently magical, but at the very least the kind of thing that would make a person in real life raise an eyebrow in disbelief and ask what the fuck they just saw. Like the scene in cowboy bebop where the dude's horse shows up in the elevator. That's almost literally the Cowboy power Trusty Steed.Though when mutant does something freaky, it just uses system strain since it doesn't have an effort pool.
>>97456196oh, also that Effort is NOT for High Magic, which is slightly more vancian in that it has spell level where your max access goes up as character level goes up and uses spells-per-day, separate resource from Effort, and doesn't jive with multiclassing any other kind of magical ability.
>>97455769It's written oddly because it's a power currency where stronger powers make you recover it slower rather than costing more
>>97454751Could it be that anon isn't trying to make an insanely reductive comparison for no reaaon? Truly food for thought there.
>>97454394>It just replaces it with 3.0 and later style skills on a 2d6+stat scale though.This is just traveller. The without number series are traveller lite meets oldschool dnd classes shitbrew + flavor
SWN was fun for a few months. As everyone says the GM materials are great. The faction system is the only thing I didn't adore but it worked pretty well RAW even if I ended up tweaking how it played out later in the campaign. The biggest issue we had is that psychic characters were incredibly OP compared to other characters and it didn't take long for that to happen. Teleportation especially is fucking broken and almost impossible to design an adventure around.
>>97452608I've enjoyed the couple games I've played (one of the other players even made a couple nice pieces of art for one of them), but I haven't been able to get my main group interested. The system takes a bit of getting used to if you're coming in from something like D&D 5e, but it's fairly straightforward once you get a feel for it.
>>97453458Please explain.
>>97454751That's it's a unique system built on the skeleton of D&D but isn't anywhere close to being "Houseruled B/X." It takes that as a starting point to draw you in w/ a surface-level familiarity and builds its own skills, damage, magic and vehicle combat on top of some wonderful location, npc and adventure creation rules.>>97456297Exactly.
>>97454257>And it's very-much NOT a houseruled B/X. One of the defining features of TSR-era D&D is attribute checks.Fucking kill yourself you retard
>>97457929It is though. If you actually play B/X, that's absolutely a core mechanic that those of us who stick to TSR D&D really hate the change from WotC versions over. Coming up w/ DCs and having "now add this and this and that and the other thing" is bullshit versus "roll a d20 against our attributes." Those of us who still play oldschool D&D love that mechanic.
>>97452608I've used the GM tools a lot. Not sure about the rules because they are presented in a annoying fashion.I'd buy a book but they cost a fortune and are never in print.
>>97457929(you)
Setting Sans Numeral is the only family of systems that I run these days.I like how skill checks workI like that every step of character creation is laid out in the very first chapterI like that player characters can actually die to gunfireI like that the focuses and classes are distilled down to a pure liquor that isn't tied to any particular canonI don't like the GM tools and never use them, which makes me a weirdo apparently
>>97452608really good sandboxing tools but i'm not playing anything that doesn't have a universal mechanic
>>97458273Do you ever mix and match the systems? How well does it work?
>>97452608AWn games I spectated always DMed by a gay americna. Like all the 6 games I saw on discord. why
>>97458298>games I spectatedDo they really...?
>>97457244i had a similar experience with the Ash Sorcerer optional class in Ashes, it's just incredibly unbalanced and feels like it wasn't playtested very thoroughly. basically breaks the entire game after like third level depending on the disciplines and arts taken. granted it is an optional class and i made the choice to allow it, so part of the blame is on me for that, but still.
