About to run pic related...

Stars without number also doesn't really belong there, it's based on old school D&D but it isn't actually that old a system.

>it's based on old school D&D but it isn't actually that old a system.
That's what OSR is. New games based on old school D&D.

SWN is Moldvay Basic in space, it's as OSR as it gets.

Okay, I was confused as when I skimmed it I saw a lot of straight D&D and not much else.

Yeah, SWN doesn't get talked about much there, but the trove in the OP pastebin has like every book for it.

That's because it IS mostly dnd. This guy is just being an idiot. Because no fun allowed, don't ya know. Ignore him and carry on your conversation.

That's why it's better to make separate threads in certain cases, in my opinion. Sort of like the worldbuilding general is actually all fantasy and pretty much all scifi worldbuilding happens in individual brainstorming threads, and how it's pretty much always better to start a new boardgame thread instead of posting in the board game general.

>That's because it IS mostly dnd.
Yeah, like I pointed out here >This guy (You) is just being an idiot. Because no fun allowed, don't ya know.
Hey faggot, I'm saying SWN is an OSR game, but I also fucking said So, kill yourself.

>Ignore him and carry on your conversation.
Or don't ignore me, because, again, I said and still carry on with the conversation because I never fucking ONCE said otherwise AND was defending the right to.

So, fuck you and the horse you rode in on.

Yep! Too much circlejerking in established threads....
See? He was just itching to blow up on somebody.

I started it as a dungeon crawl with the spaceship at the bottom.

They're scavenging for parts and repairs now.

depends on the group. Usually start with 'so, you've bought your first ship', or otherwise in media res.

>See? He was just itching to blow up on somebody.

No.

This is actually kind of the standard SWN campaign starter.

Run the PCs through a short adventure of some kind and make the reward access to a ship.

le sigh
>Hey faggot
>So, kill yourself
> fuck you and the horse you rode in on
I'm sorry: you were confused about something? You sayin' you didn't blow up?

The cardinal sin of GMing is wasting playtime.

Your players likely didn't sign up for Space Car Salesman Adventures. The central idea of SwoN is that the PC have a spaceship - so start them off having just acquired their spaceship. If they want to develop how it was acquired, work with them to figure out the ship's history. Maybe do flashbacks later if they seem keen.

But for God's sake, don't start a game about a spaceship crew having space adventures, without a spaceship in which to have space adventures.

>The cardinal sin of RPGing is wasting playtime
ftfy

...

Another good thread derailed by a sperglord who is bored now that quest threads are gone. What's wrong with having another sci-fi discussion? There aren't enough as it is, imho

Thanks for reminding me of this, been needing some ideas for planet generation tables

So I looked at the tags I got generating factions and just developed some fluff about them based on that but nothing super detailed. Is that how I'm supposed to prep for this game?

For example, I got "Holy Family Confucianists" as a religion and decided that they worship an AI that might have been programed in a pretech military outpost.

>So I looked at the tags I got generating factions and just developed some fluff about them based on that but nothing super detailed. Is that how I'm supposed to prep for this game?
Basically, yeah. Since it's meant to be a sandbox gaming system a lot of the idea is for details to be fleshed out in play, you mostly only generate the basics in advance.

To expand on this, you can do as little or as much world(s) development as you wish just make sure you leave room for the players in your world, that or having the world be too empty are the things I see most often as issues with sandboxes.

What immediatelly came to my mind was the direct agnatic male line descending from Confucius that used to be nobility (the Holy Dukes of Yen) but is now a civil appointment in Taiwan. The current Sacrificial Official to Confucius is a 79th generation descendant of the philosopher. The Taiwanese actually have a similar office for all the families of the Four Sages.

>when you can't tell if it's sci-fi worldbuilding or real life anymore

That's when you know you're doing it right.

Both those things are very easy to fuck up, too. It's really hard to gauge if you've done too much or too little detailing prep work for a sandbox.
It's something you've really got to just get the feeling of over time, you're not going to acquire a good gauge of how much detail you need until you've fucked it up a few times.

Under the hood, SWN is Moldvay D&D cleaned up and slightly tweaked for sci-fi. Where SWN shines is in it's setting mechanisms.

SWN is a SANDBOX CONSTRUCTION KIT and perhaps the best I've ever seen. Trade, factions, world building, all of it is modular and can be easily applied to whatever rules you may be using. Crawford, SWN's creater, freely admits designing those systems so they could be used that way.

Equally importantly, those systems operate in such a way that they constantly produced what Traveller calls "adventure seeds" for your players. For example, trade isn't just a couple of die rolls, some table look ups, and a spreadsheet. Instead, the consequences of roleplaying actions are easily applied to various parts of the trade process and, in some facets, are required.

You simply cannot go wrong by looking over SWN. There's almost too much to use, borrow, and plunder.

>t. someone whose never played a game involving ships and their spacefaring kind.

Half the fun as a player is stealing the fucker, gives a great story to tell. If you leave it to just flashbacks and background stuff, it doesn't have as much buy-in for more people.

Our GM started us out on a planet, we did a few small missions for a session or two to get used to the session and then the group signed up with a ship captain as crew for a scavenging mission a few sectors away.

In the campaign we had multiple chances to get a ship, it was pretty good overall I think. Made it feel like we really started from nothing and was working our way up.

The reason I first got SWN was so I could hack the Faction Turn stuff for one of my games, and it definitely helped the world feel more alive. It was later on when I actually played it that I actually fell in love with the system.

---

If you want some good sound advice for running/playing SWN I highly recommend RollPlay's Swan Song and the GM Prep turns the GM has up on personal Youtube Channel. The game was Space Mastered by Adam Kobel (the guy who made the Dungeon World PbtA game), so take that as you will

Swan Song is pretty good until the last 3 or so episodes. What the fuck was happening, why couldn't they just end the show normally since stephen was leaving?

Like any of the rollplay shows it takes a while to get going but once everybody gets into character it's really good.

>spoiler
What even happened to Piani? Did she turn into crystals?

stephen's character died to save her and he left the show (sob). a live show for episode 50 is coming out soon with Matt Mercer as a guest.

Something like that, then the universe reset to just before Higgs shot randy and stole his ship in episode one.

>Matt Mercer
Oh god why. Bring back Neal, whatever happened to him?

I did the second by giving them a few mission which they could handle and at the end a very hard one for enough money for a ship or for a ship itself.

Neal does his own thing now, you can check out his stuff.

Dicing with death is good, I couldn't get into his other series though since it's just regular d&d stuff

He didn't die so much as take her place as THE Odin, which then reset the universe.

As someone who started watching RollPlayer post-Neal and only hearing a few passing references to him from a few of the players; who exactly was he, and why would he be preferable to Mercer?

You're right, user; since your opinion is objective truth, I must have no first-hand experience with SwoN or Traveller or any similar games on which to base mine. It's the only plausible explanation.

You stated your opinion as if it was an objective truth.

Question about making factions, do I start them all of as minor factions, or do you guys typically have one major faction and a few minor ones?

My GM started off with us having a busted-ass old ship, then over time we upgraded it. Now it's a serious badass.

>Do you guys typically give your players a basic ship from the start or have the first adventure revolve around acquiring a ship
kinda

1 you can let them get a shity ship to start and let them upgrade or trade for a better one

2 give them just what they need to build a ship and have them "build / make" the first ship to there liking but within a material / time budget

3 give them a budget for ship and weapons and supplies and all the things they need and offer a selection that makes it so they cant have everything they need in one go
cheap ship but good weapons and equipment
expensive ship but few to no weapons and equipment

4 offer a choice of ships that are wildly different
like one is a luxury passenger ship one is a battle ship one is a long range explorer science ship
each comes with its good and bad points and they don't share pros and cons

5 give them a ship that is multi role to start with (little bit of everything) and let them pick/acquire a specialty ship later if they want it

6 find ship. have players in an adventure where they are in a place and FIND a space ship that is not completely operational "crashed or old space junk or whatever" and they have to fix it to get it flying once more

7 combo. of two or more of the above
kinda like battleship yamato anime story start find old water battleship and fix it to become a space battleship

8 players pick. have them decide to buy a ship, steal a ship, build a ship, or find and fix a ship

last is one im running now that has them pick a ship and equipment and stuff from a selection with a big budget but you can only have one ship and so much room on choice of ship for equipment and the like
after choosing ship, weapons, equipment, supplies, and whatever else they think they will need. then they go to a world that is not technologically advanced and what they brought is all the advanced tec they will get for the whole campaign
chose wisely

Tips about factions:
1) Not everything needs a faction. That religion or local planetary government? Probably doesn't need a faction of its' own.

2)If a faction isn't active for three or more turns, take it off the turn list until something happens to make them need to become active again.

3) Base factions off their relative strength. Major shipyards and most pirate/criminal groups are minor. Something like a multi-system empire is probably Major.

4) Don't adhere to the faction turn rules 100%. If the group does something that removes an asset or faction from play, then remove it.

5) Just because something's on the faction turn doesn't mean it has to be hostile toward other factions.

6) Use common sense.

7) If you're unsure about something, chances are you're thinking about it wrong.

Also, how do you handle the cost of the ship and how do you generally scale rewards?

From what I understand, you pay 20 bucks per head per day for basic life support, and 200 bucks per drive rating to refuel, and 5 percent of the ship's total cost in maintenance per year.

What about the expense of the ship itself? Most of them are 500k+

I remeber one game were i rolled a xenologist
Had a high history score and knew there language, they ended up being mythical figures from which the majorfro of the settings technology came from

The character died when i tried to use genetic engineering to transform my character into the alien species

The humanist faction found out and killed me

OSR stands for Old School Renaissance.
The name doesn't fit anymore because the movement is like 10 years old.

But it's about making modules for old systems while dodging intellectual property (by making them 'for' new, almost identical systems).
It's also about slapping enough of your homebrew and house-rules into the old boosk, and then selling it as a new system.

It's all Moldvay or Menzter Basic (or occasionally AD&D) at the core, but those 3 are pretty much the same thing.
As are all the OSR 'retroclones', a category which includes Stars Without Numbers.

Any OSR module or splatbook can be used with any OSR system with minimal (but some) fuss.

Monthly payments equal to 1% of the ships final price.

The sample Free Merchant would run the group 7,750 credits a month. It'd take roughly 8 years and 4 months for the ship to be paid off, with just the minimum payments. However, the group can choose to overpay each payment to try to pay it off faster.

This is very accurate.

I am currently using Starvation Cheap, Skyward Steel, and the base Faction rules to run a fantasy-17th century game.

Players will be commanders in a distant NotScotland who must choose to enter the sudden civil war on the side for or against The Crown.

Clearly, they're going to choose the "Look at me, I am the Lord of the Land Now" option and try to fight them both.

Throw them right into action.....

"This is Free Trader Beowulf, calling anyone...Mayday, Mayday...we are under attack...main drive is gone...turret number one not responding...Mayday...losing cabin pressure fast...calling anyone...please help...This is Free Trader Beowulf...Mayday...."

I'm personally planning to open with "So, in your own words, how exactly did you lose your last ship?" from a two-bit corporate bureaucrat onboard the podunk aster
oid habitat the players have just been towed to.I find it's nice to start the RP with players blaming each other for fucking up.

Followed by said bureaucrat offering to cook the books and give them the old clunker in the hanger if they use it to get him away from the scary belters who want his head.

>The groups' ship exits drive space.
>The ship is just sitting there in space.
>no signs of an attack.
>scanning the ship shows no structural damage.
>When they board the vessel, there is enough dust to make it look like it hasn't been lived in for hundreds of years.
>The distress beacon shows no sign of having been activated.
>Sounds of whispering can be heard a few feet away by anyone who is on their own. Attempts to follow the noise just leads them back to where they started.

10/10.

I like making players fear insurance agents.

Look at it from our perspective.You freely admit to detonating the engines of, and thereby destroying, an M-Class star-freighter. A rather expensive piece of hardware...

I anticipate them waiting to do so until they've leveraged themselves as invaluable to one side or the other-- get themselves where they have just about won the war, then start stabbing backs.

When they do so, I'll kick the Faction rules into overdrive and they'll have to start thinking about more than just how to make sure the other guys die faster on the battlefield than their guys.

Fluffing an entire sector from the get go seems daunting, do you guys just flesh out a few worlds closest to where they will be starting and expand from there?

If I had a penny for every time a crew claimed it was a "type-X biohazard" and that they "really needed to blow the reactor, it was the only way" I'd have enough to pay for ten of your freighters

Yeah, honestly, just get the Tags down and pick out the Friends/Enemies etc. Once you flesh out the starting world and basic factions you'll have more than enough to fill in on the fly.

In SWN, the idea is to frontload DM work-- it is admittedly a lot of elbow grease to get all the information for a sector, but once you do most of your work is reactive rather than preparatory.

You can always just use this swn.emichron.com/ as a guide line and pick what intrest you the most

So, wow, we've gone from space opera to mundane garbage, and the players don't even have a ship yet....sounds real fun.......quality game experience.......

Pretty sure he was referencing Aliens you autist.

Woa - yer either functionally illiterate or you're itchin' for a fight - try reading the whole thread first, if you in fact are being genuine.
If you're just pretending to be stupid, kindly exit.

You do seem to be pretty autistic though.

>Your opinion is wrong because you've never played a spaceship game, which you must not have because your opinion is wrong

...

I read the whole thing, you're still an autist.

>wut is roleplay and worldbuilding?

Is there any reason at all to use this over Traveller or Machinations of the Space Princess?

>wut is playin' a space game without a space ship?

If you're a recovering DnD player, it could help methodone you, but the real value is in the world building tables, which can just as easily be used for any other system you like.

It's an introduction to the setting, in a manner that immediately draws in the players, with airs of stuffy office, nervous sweating, and soon, a fresh start. The whole point is getting a new ship shortly after the audit.

You fucking ignoramous.

Then what's the point? If they're just going to get the ship anyway, what, seriously, is the point of making them dance and jump through hoops? I mean, have you READ the game? It clearly states, multiple times, that you should dispense with unneccessary dice rolling and skill check garbage, and focus only on actions with some sort of consequence for failure. Give players choices and decisions to make, not dice to roll and arbitrary time wastage. You are making the players go thru the motions, but is there really any chance that they will FAIL to acquire the ship? If there's no chance to fail, if they're going to get the ship regardless, then why waste time and energy on needless, non-space opera shit?

You butthurt sperg.

Because it's a roelplaying game. The point is to roleplay. The best way to get into character is to be in situations in which to get into character. Go play Halo or something if you don't like roleplaying. Or god forbid, DnD or something.

Seriously. Roleplaying. Fucking nerd.

We're talking about one introductory session. You're acting like these people are playing dozens of hours without a ship.

Setting up how they aquire the ship gives them a reason to care about it beyond "you already had it" and connects them to the world.

go to bed kyle

Do you also chimp out when you play a high fantasy game and there are no dragons involved in the adventure?

>Hey everyone, in our scifi campaign do you want to start out with a spaceship or earn/steal one? I'm down for gming either. Or something else if we want.
>reasonable consensus from players
>okay cool, let's do that

easy

The butthurt is strong in this thread, I see.

Giving intelligent and perfectly reasonable answers isn't allowed here, friendo

Who suggested doing a bunch of dice rolls? Most of what everyone described above is just some basic setup.

I imagine a lot of players would appreciate some backstory instead of just being dumped into the sandbox, they're both valid ways of playing.

samefagging, friendo?

KYS

>two responses
>lol samefag
neck yourself, my man

...

>If the party is on the arctic world of Gelida with its iron towers full of zealous fire-cultists, it’s something of a waste to run an adventure about a double-dealing psychic charlatan-thief and his sapient alien “monkey” henchman
Quoted from corebook p. 127. As you can infer, the author doesn't want players wasting their time on nonsense: he is keen on cutting to the dramatic, and cutting out the superfluous. Thisand thisand thisand, finally, thiswhile fine and good conceptually, are not exactly within the definition of 'space opera'. It's possible that such mundane bureaucratic wheel-spinning will appeal to some; but, not the type who are generally attracted to space opera games.
I know the concept of other people having different thoughts from you is scary, but, user: you gotta grow up.

oh noes! samefagged again....

>If the party is on the arctic world of Gelida with its iron towers full of zealous fire-cultists, it’s something of a waste to run an adventure about a double-dealing psychic charlatan-thief and his sapient alien “monkey” henchman
Sounds like somebody's an unimaginative fuck.

But its also explicitly designed to be cut up and ported to whatever kind of game the players and gm want. That's the entire point of the design.

Not sure why you think stealing a ship, or fighting ancient androids for parts is bureaucratic. Pretty sure you're an idiot though.

...

>Pretty sure you're an idiot though
Oh, the cringe...

Corebook p.82 outlines how it would be unsual for a group to start with a spaceship, that they would be easily interested in adventuring on the starting planet, to limit their means of travel to a small area, and that the struggle to maintain a ship once gained is a fun part of the game.