Stars Without Numbers

So, for those not interested in reading through the PDF or looking it up on youtube and watching episodes to see what its like, I'll give a TL:DR version as I'm quite interested in Al getting this game going, and think it'd be fun with our current players. The system is a fairly old school style of d&d using pretty much the bare basics for rolling and such. To determine if you succeed or fail on a save you simple roll a 2d6+any modifiers that apply at the time, if the roll is 7 or higher you succeed with higher successes sometimes giving you better gains, whereas a 6 or lower is simply a fail. Your skills themselves all start with a -1 modifier which is changed by receiving training with them which increases the modifier up to 0, +1, +2, +3, +4 based on the level of training. In combat you roll initiative with a d8+dex mod and the highest goes first, while you attack with a d20+weapon mod+skill mod+ability mod+target's AC, if you roll above a 20 then you hit, anything under a 20 and you miss. As for the classes, there is the Warrior which is basically your fighter who can range from a melee expert to a tactical sniper based on how you want to play him. You have your Psycic who gets to use powers that are basically like magic and then an Expert which get alot of skill points per level and can focus in many areas of expertise like piloting, navigating, medicine, ect. Character creation is pretty simple, you roll your stats with 3d8 and they are locked into the locations based on the order you roll them (unless Al decides to change that). The stats themselves really aren't super important, a 3 or a 18 in a stat gives a -2 mod or +2 mod respectively, whereas a 4-8 and 14-17 give a -1 and +1 respectively. Everything inbetween those gives a 0 mod, so you can roll all single digit stats and still suffer no huge penalties. Overall the campaign is a massive sandbox where players can generally go around and do whatever they want. That being said, the game is also very deadly considering the weakest guns in the game still do 1d6 damage while your character starts with d4 for Psycic, d6 for Expert and d8 for Warrior + con mod for hp. Normally you roll those values, so it is very possible to have a character with 1 hp (again, Al may change that though). With that in mind, the campaign is very roleplay oriented, with players being responsible for alot of micro-managing as well as controlling their character. You have to maintain things like life support, food, fuel, ect if you manage to get yourselves a ship, on top of upgrading and improving said ship. I think it'll be alot of fun, a crew of 4 to 6 people seems like it'd be nice to have.

Very early days on learning the system, it is somewhat simple, but still big enough to take some time to work out. If I do take the plunge, and it is still IF , I was thinking in terms of late September, probably Friday nights and late(ish), perhaps 9 or 10 PM Eastern USA time. Fridays I get done work at about 10 Am if the Boeing Gods smile on us, and I need to be rested to take on running an unfamiliar game. If you want to know more you can get the free edition here : Link . It has almost the whole game in it, certainly enough to run a game. I am ordering the book, which has two sections not in the free edition. if we do run it, it may be on the Dev. Server to take advantage of some different math handling on the "D.S.". I am thinking in terms of 4 or 5 players, I can't handle a mob when learning the game. Of course current and legacy players will be given first shot at any slots in the game.

The cool aspect of it is that its pretty much an entirely sandbox world, so I can only imagine the crazy adventures Al is going to have us on. Hopefully that IF turns into a for sure thing as I'm quite interested in doing this campaign. I'd also like to point out that this style game has the party splitting quite often, atleast from what I've seen, so our group should fit into it perfectly lol. 

Friday nights are a bad time for me... Looks like I'm out.

OK, 25 September 15, 22:00 EDT. Richard, Mark, and two others. We will do group char-gen, I am looking for each to make two or three characters, this will give you a wide skill set to put together groups. stats, money, and everything else are rolled, background, skills etc are chosen. You all work on either a mining moon or a mining planet., working at Walmart or Mc Donalds barely making your living expenses, fortunately you have saved some money or had good luck gambling and you have money to buy basic equipment. A whole lot will be either revealed or available to you when the time comes. I am building a very large database to start out, and you will be able to buy access to a terminal, or possibly use one without permission. There is commercial transport available to some  places, others will require other means. You will all know each other from your shitty jobs, you will not meet in a bar, although you could go to one. A headset and mic are absolutely required. This game is fast paced, so I would really prefer that nobody is watching TV, videos, dancing "Afternoon of a Fawn" or other things while playing. Please mute your mic when taking bong hits, and keep the background sounds on, you can lower the volume, but the sounds are very important  at times. I am figuring on variable game length in the three hour plus range, we will stop when my voice goes, or when we come to a logical stopping point we agree to pause. We will roll a master party intiative, the group can vote to make someone first initiative, when asking for party actions outside of combat I will go through in order to hear what people want to do. It is important that you know that stats are not as important as in other games. The idea is that you are just a bunch of shlubs trying to leave your past behind and get rich and/or famous, while staying alive if at all possible. There are many, many deadly things out there that will kill you without breaking a sweat, the choices you make are very important. In the beginning there will be a simple adventure presented by your mutual friend Aaron. Aaron is your first contact and will be your first source of information. As always, some of his information will be wrong, exaggerated, or missing key points that could cost you all your lives. Developing other contacts is the key to success. Ultimately you would like to develop triangular sources of information. Anything you receive from three sources is probably reliable for the most part.

I don't work on Saturdays so I'm fine until whatever time in the morning. As for the other players, at some point we'll need to discuss what types of characters we're thinking about playing, so I suppose this post is as good of a place as any. I'm looking on doing a combat specialist (big shocker I know), but someone who will focus in energy weapons and tactics, though still be competent with a projectile weapon. From what I've gathered a "balanced" group of four in SWN consists of a combat specialist, a pilot, a computer specialist and a field medic. I don't believe we'll be having access to a ship any time soon so a pilot might be lack-luster early on, though there are alot of navigation checks in general so it'd still be quite useful. A computer specialist will almost always be useful for hacking and gathering information, or bypassing doors and what-not. Field medic is pretty self explanatory, any group without a healer is pretty much dead to rights. Considering the weakest gun in this game does 1d6 damage and a Warrior, Expert and Psychic start with 8, 6 and 4 hp (assuming we start at max hp and not including any con modifier which at best is +2 more).

I will be the computer specialist/psychic

Frankie Baby, if you would like to join, I will send you a link when I get home, currently on a B-767, surprised I am getting this much Internet... I will also send you the instructions for rolling a character. You will use the macro and roll one time only, you can change one score to 14, and some limited fiddling as per instructions in the macro. The stats matter much less than D&D.

So we have myself, Natural and John from the "Mike" campaign? Oh man, this is the Friday night mishaps all over again. We're going to turn your sector upside-down Al.

Gravitationally impossible to turn the sector upside down. Hunter is a power player as well, you may surprise yourselves and wind up on the side of the angels... I have given up on Swan Song , A.K. should be called "Monty Haul", they have all of the goodies the galaxy has to offer, I will be stingier with goodies, They are rolling in cash by the end of the fourth week. Given the astronomical cost of stuff, it will take, in my estimate the entire first season for you guys to actually own a functional ship. I am structuring this like a BBC series, the first season ends late November to early December. Then a break for ZooPS to try to kill me with hours. The second Season will start in January and run to mid March, ending when I take my Spring Vacation. By season two I will have purchased a new computer with a lot more power, my plan is to record the sessions and put them out on the interweb...

Fortunately since we play so late it'll be rare that work stops me from being able to play, assuming I don't have to go over to third shift for anything that day, which is only a few times out of the year for department resets.  As for recording the sessions, I am capable of doing that if you'd like, its generally not a good idea for the DM to be the one recording a session for obvious reasons lol. There is a website called twitch.tv where people stream stuff like this, the Swan Song is uploaded to Youtube for people but its originally live streamed on twitch. In the past I've let a friend of mine watch us play in the Mike campaign for a bit using it. Yeah Swan Song's crew does get kitted out pretty quickly,. though there is more for entertainment purposes. They have thousands of people that watch them live when they do their streams, so Adam tries to keep it interesting for the viewers. I prefer struggling to get the stuff to a degree though so getting a ship by the end of the first "season" seems like a good pace. That being said, we could just try to murder the crew of a ship and take theirs lol.