Stars Without Number - Character Generation and Recruitment

Science Fiction, exploration & rediscovery of the lost wonders of the fallen human empire in the year 3200.
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Tribe of One
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Stars Without Number - Character Generation and Recruitment

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They say there are worse places in the galaxy than 'Dessa City -- alien planets where corrosive pollen can bore through a vac-suit and into your lungs in minutes; tomb worlds haunted by clouds of carnivorous nanotech; asteroids haunted by the meta-dimensional ghosts of feral psychics. That's all well and good, but it doesn't stop the itch from the acid rain dripping down your collar, or the scratching in your lungs when the filter on the window unit goes out and you suck down an extra helping of exhaust from the ferroplastics factory two levels down.

In the glory days of the Mandate, before the Scream threw humanity into a new dark age, they'd have had a pill or a patch for that. Six centuries later, what's left of human civilization in the Reach has only recently reconnected, crossing the vast darkness between stars in ships outfitted with postech spike drives, faster-than-light engines capable of "drilling" through the meta-dimensional currents beyond our own reality.

The spacers who crowd the bars near Dock 7T talk about all sorts of places: Mastika Baal, where nomads duel over mercury salt flats; Noricum, where the masked merchants of the Zendan Combine trade pretech artifacts under twin blue suns; New Eden, where every heart's desire is fulfilled; the spaceyards of Tion, where the datacores and ceramite shielding produced in 'Dessa's forges are incorporated into vast starships; Orsa Secundus, where the immortal rulers of the Eternal Dominion hold the secrets to unending youth.

Any of those sound better than a slow death choking on 'Dessa's fumes, or a swift one crushed by its corporate machinery. Scraping together the credits hasn't been easy, but you've been running with a like-minded crew, working the angles and taking jobs off-the-books. One more big score and you'll have enough for the orbital shuttle to Horizon Station, where you can sign on with a tramp freighter and get the hell out of this system. From there ... who knows. But it's got to be better than this.


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What am I getting into?
This is a new, sandbox-y sci-fi game I'm running using the Stars Without Number system. SWN is a relatively rules-light, d20-based game, which you can download free here.

Character generation is fairly straightforward, but I'm happy to help with questions (we've got a channel here on the SR.com Discord). There's also a very handy online character creator here.

I'm looking at putting together a group of 6-8 characters. Several of you have already expressed interest on Discord, so I'll wait to see how your characters come together before posting in recruitment. Feel free to start a thread in this forum with your character and we can work on details.

The game will be primarily PbP, using the Discord channel for OOC chatter. I may occasionally use Foundry VTT for combat maps if it's easier, and might look at running a session or two on Foundry for special occasions (a big combat or scene, for example) if there's interest. I'll be shooting for a minimum of one major post a week, but I expect we'll be able to keep a faster pace than that since there shouldn't be a ton of dice rolls to wrangle.

I'm not 100 percent sure yet on advancement. I may have you all level up at appropriate points in the story, but I expect we'll be advancing at least one level a quarter, similar to how we handle SWADE games, at least initially.

Character Generation and House Rules

I plan to run SWN rules-as-written for the most. Combat can be relatively deadly at low levels, but abilities that let your character alter the scene (with re-rolls, automatic hits or misses, etc.) are fairly common. I'll be liberal about what constitutes a "new scene" (which is when many of those abilities recharge) and if someone goes down, I'm a fan of letting a character survive, with some scars/missing body parts/other trauma.

I'll also be applying a "fail-forward" approach to skills. Bonuses generally are very small in SWN, but your characters are supposed to be professionals. In most cases, if you're using a skill you're trained in, a failed roll won't mean complete failure, it will just mean you succeeded at the task but there was a complication. So, say your character wants to use Fix to jury-rig some radiation shielding for your camp. Success might mean you finish it in a few hours, while a failed roll means it takes an extra day. A failed roll to hotwire a security door might set off an alarm or take out the power to an adjoining room, but it will still get you through the door, while a failed Talk roll when dealing with an off-worlder might mean you overlook a cultural taboo that causes offense. They still might provide the needed information in the short term, but might nurse a grudge that comes into play later.

Tweaks to Character Creation
There's a good character creation checklist on p. 4-5 of the SWN book, which you can follow as written, with the following changes:
  • If you're rolling attributes (rather than using the default array), you can re-roll the set if you end up with more single-digit scores (9 or less) than double-digit scores (10+). You can determine whether to re-roll before replacing one score of choice with a 14.
  • Most characters will be human (although what "human" looks like can vary widely) but robot or alien PCs are cool, too. For a robot -- a "VI" or virtual intelligence -- you'll spend your free starting Focus on either VI-Android or VI-Worker Bot to gain the benefits listed on p. 199. No VI-Vehicle Bots for now. The process is similar for an alien: you'll spend your free starting Focus to gain a few special abilities (see p. 209). If you have an idea for an alien species, let me know and we can work out their abilities and how they fit into the sector. So far, the planets I've generated include three non-human species: A race of human-animal hybrids (of many strains organized into competing clans) from a low-tech world who are sometimes recruited as mercenaries; primitive, bat-like alien humanoids; and a race of genetically-engineered, radiation-resistant laborers who look kind of like The Thing, but with more human proportions.
  • Your characters all start on the corporate-controlled, industrialized planet of Odessa, most often called 'Dessa, but you don't have to be from there originally. I'll post a list of commonly-known systems in a separate thread, most of which would make fine origins. The important thing is you've been stuck on 'Dessa for at least a year or two and have been working odd jobs and hustles with the other PCs in an effort to get off-planet.
  • When selecting starting equipment, Armor and General Equipment up to TL4 is available, but Ranged Weapons are limited to TL3 and below -- the corporate authorities on 'Dessa heavily restrict energy weapons and other TL4 projectiles, but TL3 slug-throwers are too easily fabricated for them to effectively ban. TL4 Melee Weapons are available, since things like monoblade knives and plasma-axes can be adapted from (or disguised as) industrial tools relatively easily.
  • When your character is complete -- Class, Foci, bonus non-psychic skill, etc. -- you may pick two bonus skills at Level 0 for your character to be trained, from the following list: Administer, Exert, Program, Work, Connect, Fix, Pilot, Punch, Trade. This is to represent some of the work you've been doing the past few years on 'Dessa. The bonus skills is only at Level 0, you can't use it to increase a skill you'd already selected during character generation. Alternatively, you can instead start with a single piece of cyberware worth no more than 20,000 credits.
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