Story description at bottom if you dont want a dry system description. PREFACE i dont care thats its not shadowrun, shadowrun has an interesting but narrow setting and an abundance of rules. .Im not interested in debating people who are SUPER into Shadowrun directly about if this game qualifys as "true" shadowrun. Its not meant to be shadowrun, its meant to be lightly flavored in that direction to add some spice to an intentionally barebones system. Also, Sci-Fi means you attempt to explain the science and keep it credible. How did the sheild belt deflect the bullet? with magnets? Sci-Fantasy means you just handwave it as space-magic. Blue laser beams scans over your wound, healing it, how? Space magic. The Dermal Regenerator uses Energy cells and just.... does it. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Stars Without Number (SWN) is a lightweight rule system meant for a Sci-Fantasy game of RNG generated planets in a true sandbox. There are two rolls. Skill and Combat. Combat rolls are d20 and whatever dmg dice you use. Skill rolls are 2d6, aiming for 7 most of the time. There are three classes, two are the same with minor differences except for their special ability. You can learn the rules of the game inside of minutes and have a charater rolled just as quickly. In vanilla SWN there is one race, human. My modifications are to include Elves, Dwarfs, Trolls, Orcs, and other fantasy races. Their existance is due to Humans self-genetic modifying. If you change your genes to mimic a tolkein dwarf and have kids, and they inherit your genes, and if ENOUGH humans did this and went to a planet to live as Dwarfs together.... then you have a race of Dwarfs, not humans. This narrative mechanic allows for fantasy themed races to fit into the setting. The rest of the shadowrun flavor is corrupt megacorps that rule things and a group of players that has to stick together and survive situations/find a way to earn money and otherwise make it through the chaos together when everything goes sideways. Combat is super deadly and should be either avoided, or you should strike first, hard, and with suprise. Gear is not a giant factor, you start off with good weapons. There is obviously better gear out there, but its not like dnd and the quest for the next +1. A single +1 in SWN is a big deal, so you tend to get it from skills. You can start off with a Assault Rifle(Laser) that shoots for 2d6+5 for dmg. At level one, you would have 10-12hp as a Warrior, the highest HP you can get. So at level one, you can die in a single shot from a common gun that averages 11 dmg when it hits. Other classes HP is 6-8 or 4-6 depending on Con mod. If you fight, you do not want to just wander in without thinking or a plan and start shooting. That said, i do favor a higher combat game than most, with that combat being difficult. Think Xcom or Xenonauts with more RP and more options. I also favor longer term but focused quests, and starting conditions that are interesting, telling a "rags to richs" story. One where you start with dick and turn it into an empire, or a god item, or something else. The lower your start, the more you feel like you made progress when you rise. =------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ You wake with a start, sweat beading down your forehead. You grab at your Pulse Rifle and scan the clearings edge for movement. Nothing on Thermal. You relax and check the rifles charge. A dozen shots and the cell is dead... You wonder about how you got here, being hunted by whatever.... *it* is... Even the thought of it sends shivers down your spine. A rolling ball of tentacles and death, it seems to take as much pleasure in terrorizing its victims as consuming them. A literal ball of what must be twenty tentacles? Maybe thirty? God knows. Slick and black, shiny like their covered in some kind of gel or ooze with hooked claws instead of pads like a normal Cephalopod. It used those hooks to grab at the crew of that APC and rend them into their base limbs before consuming it inside its... maw? You struggle to decide what to call that hole of teath and screeching. That thought reminds you... who were those guys? YOu didnt get a good look at their uniform before they were consumed and rent apart, but the uniform was not something you recognised from a distance. IT all happaned so fast, the Transport you were on shook as it passed by this planet, its atmosphere made of a composition that reacted with ion exaust causing it to look pretty as you pass. After the shake the engines cut and the gravity well dragged the ship down, all electronics shut down it seemed like. Lights, Gravity, engines, the whole enchilada went dead. The ship went retrograde and went down, hard. You barely had time to make it to the escape pod. It crashed in a small cluster of other pods, five in total. After crashing you all tried the emergency transponders, but nothing seemed to work. Your phones, most implants, flashlights. Something on this planet was wreaking havoc on electrical systems. At least most of them. One of the group had the idea to try to get to a nearby mountain top, to broadcast into orbit from there. With no better idea the group set out, but were only moving for no more than an hour when that drone flew by. Ten minutes later an APC comes crashing through the jungle. You only had a few seconds before the men in black uniforms filed out. Seconds later the tentacle beast smash into the APC and tear the men apart. A gun landed near your feet as they turned to fight it - thrown by a man tore in half - but it tore the vehicle, the men, the trees, and everything else around it apart in a tornado of chaos. You all fled while it ate. The one guy, a dwarf mechanic, Klein, he managed to get his phone to work, and repurposed a broken drone he found. Managed to get a decent birds eye veiw. The jungle is dense, and there are threats, but he thinks he saw the carcass of a starship not far, if its in decent shape he thinks he could salavge a junker and get us off the rock using more primitive spaceflight designs. Too bad hes a cripple, and his chair is broken. Ship is probably trashed anyways... Your thoughts are interupted, one of the other unlucky fools you ended up with shouts out an alarm. Another APC is coming... and they see your little campsite. --------------------------------------------------- The starting conditions are on a planet, being hunted by a group that you dont recognize and for unkown reasons. Just wrong place, wrong time kind of people who get forced together by fate. Your first goal is to survive, repair or otherwise acquire a ship, and fly of this rock that is seemingly trying to kill you, before you enter into the sandbox of the sector.
