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2022-10-28, 01:40 AM (ISO 8601)
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Worlds Without Number (compared to 5e)
It has a predecessor, Stars Without Number (with which I have no experience.)
The free version is available on DriveThruRPG.
There is an article explaining the differences and similarities between the Worlds Without Number and D&D5e.
1. I wonder if any others here may be interested in it… If so have a look, it’s really neat.
2. Does anybody else here have more experience than myself and what advice might you have moving forward?
Here, I am going to list several different key points that stood out to me from the article I linked above:
Spoiler: Article Quotes1. Worlds Without Number takes old-school rules, expands them into something a typical 5e or Pathfinder player would find at least familiar, and then uses them to build out a rulebook for the specific purpose of sandbox gaming. The results maintain old-school lethality and removal from mathematical optimization as play, but still allow rules-forward, dice-forward play that is more modern than old-school.
2. Warriors are straight combatants, Mages are magic users, Experts are skill-based characters, and the multi-class Adventurers allow for more flexibility. Adventurer is a catchall for characters made up of two ‘partial’ classes, which allow for significant hybridization. The magic traditions, of which there are five, exist in both full and partial-only versions and when combined back with the other two classes can easily emulate clerics, druids, monks, sorcerers, warlocks, and many other D&D classes, all with fewer rules and arguably more customizability (though at the expense of differentiation).
3. From the player’s side, this gives an old-school experience while still providing rules-driven resolution that modern players are going to be comfortable with.
4. From the GM’s side, though, Worlds Without Number and Fifth Edition couldn’t be more different. Comparing the first 100 pages to the Player’s Handbook takes some careful reading…but the next 200 pages blow the Dungeon Master’s Guide completely out of the water.
5. If you look just at the prose Worlds Without Number is not all that more verbose than the Dungeon Master’s Guide of Fifth Edition, but it never stops at the prose and there are always tools and tables to help any GM of any skill level find inspiration or make exactly what they want.
I have recently looked into this and done a little play-testing. So far it’s been quite enjoyable. I still have a lot to learn.Last edited by animorte; 2022-10-28 at 02:17 AM.
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2022-10-28, 07:15 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Worlds Without Number (compared to 5e)
I have the book and have browsed through it quite a bit. The feel I get is satisfying. The world building tools are quite good.
1. I wonder if any others here may be interested in it… If so have a look, it’s really neat.
2. Does anybody else here have more experience than myself and what advice might you have moving forward?Last edited by KorvinStarmast; 2022-10-28 at 07:16 AM.
Avatar by linklele. How Teleport Worksa. Malifice (paraphrased):
Rulings are not 'House Rules.' Rulings are a DM doing what DMs are supposed to do.
b. greenstone (paraphrased):
Agency means that they {players} control their character's actions; you control the world's reactions to the character's actions.
Second known member of the Greyview Appreciation Society
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2022-11-04, 12:50 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Worlds Without Number (compared to 5e)
I have the book and have run two campaigns and a few one-offs of it. I'm also semi-active in the SWN/WWN online community.
The first advice (perhaps an 'of course') is that, as a not-current-edition-D&D, you will probably have to run it, rather than play it, at least until/if the group loves it enough to internalize it as a go-to game and some of the other group members who GM might take a turn.
The second is to realize that it mostly runs like an OSR game. A lot of bones thrown to modern gamers --feat-like modular features, some multiclassing (chosen at 1st, like AD&D demihuman multiclassing) and prestige-class-like options, a skill system and semi-rigorous non-magical/non-combat general resolution system, etc. However, it is still an OSR game in its' marrow. Combat is deadly and should be entered with caution (preferably with overwhelming advantage). Management of limited resources is a significant part of the game, and if you handwave it, the game might feel like it is missing part of the point. While the multiclass-system (and everyone-can-fight and everyone-has-skills subsystems) means you don't need people designated to specific roles, you still really want to fill all the roles (especially magical healer*). Also, like OSR games, although there are plenty of monsters (and their abilities can make for interesting challenges), it seems expected that you will spend a fair bit of combat time fighting other humans/human analogs. Or at least there's a fair bit of the combat interplay is weapon vs armor/shield, etc. Spells for the default caster is pure vance, so knowing what's up ahead is incredibly valuable.
*there are more ways to heal than just spells, but if you drop in combat (which is entirely likely) but rally through one of many means, the next time you drop is auto-fatal unless you received magical healing (this actually can be solved with a house rule if no one wants to be 'the HP battery.'
Third is not to be too beholden to the default world. It's a typical case of 'fantasy realm based on our past is actually a post-apocalyptic future world' scenario where some of the 'whys' for things are 'because an elder peoples did something for their own bizarre reasons, and this is either that thing outside its' initial context, or what became of that thing once no one was left to tend to it.' It's... fine, I guess. Probably would be more impressed if it wasn't the 538th time I'd read that as a game world description in an RPG. Anyways, the amazing part of the book is the mechanisms for creating worlds and societies and groups, so put them to good use!
Here, I am going to list several different key points that stood out to me from the article I linked above:
1. Worlds Without Number takes old-school rules, expands them into something a typical 5e or Pathfinder player would find at least familiar, and then uses them to build out a rulebook for the specific purpose of sandbox gaming. The results maintain old-school lethality and removal from mathematical optimization as play, but still allow rules-forward, dice-forward play that is more modern than old-school.
2. Warriors are straight combatants, Mages are magic users, Experts are skill-based characters, and the multi-class Adventurers allow for more flexibility. Adventurer is a catchall for characters made up of two ‘partial’ classes, which allow for significant hybridization. The magic traditions, of which there are five, exist in both full and partial-only versions and when combined back with the other two classes can easily emulate clerics, druids, monks, sorcerers, warlocks, and many other D&D classes, all with fewer rules and arguably more customizability (though at the expense of differentiation).
3. From the player’s side, this gives an old-school experience while still providing rules-driven resolution that modern players are going to be comfortable with.
4. From the GM’s side, though, Worlds Without Number and Fifth Edition couldn’t be more different. Comparing the first 100 pages to the Player’s Handbook takes some careful reading…but the next 200 pages blow the Dungeon Master’s Guide completely out of the water.
5. If you look just at the prose Worlds Without Number is not all that more verbose than the Dungeon Master’s Guide of Fifth Edition, but it never stops at the prose and there are always tools and tables to help any GM of any skill level find inspiration or make exactly what they want.Last edited by Willie the Duck; 2022-11-04 at 12:50 PM.
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2022-11-04, 01:02 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Worlds Without Number (compared to 5e)
Avatar by linklele. How Teleport Worksa. Malifice (paraphrased):
Rulings are not 'House Rules.' Rulings are a DM doing what DMs are supposed to do.
b. greenstone (paraphrased):
Agency means that they {players} control their character's actions; you control the world's reactions to the character's actions.
Second known member of the Greyview Appreciation Society
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2022-11-04, 09:13 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Worlds Without Number (compared to 5e)
Something Borrowed - Submission Thread (5e subclass contest)
TeamWork Makes the Dream Work 5e Base Class Submission Thread
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2022-11-05, 04:27 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Worlds Without Number (compared to 5e)
I took a glance at it based on its reputation for having world building tools. IIRC it was "just" a bunch of procedural generation charts. Quotes because that's always incredibly helpful if you want to design a sandbox. But the impression I'd been sold on was it had far more than that.
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2022-11-05, 10:31 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Worlds Without Number (compared to 5e)
With SWN there was a reasonable bit in the texts in & around those charts about making gameable content. At least last time I looked. It was pleasantly direct about using & how to use it to create short bits of the adventure. I came away with a fair impression on the procedure they intended you to use to start making adventures to fit the system. Couldn't say for WWN tho.
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2022-11-07, 05:19 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Worlds Without Number (compared to 5e)
The stars without numbers people take the idea that "the smallest amount of rules possible is best". Moreso than 5th ed, it throws basic concepts of reality out the window to make the game run 2% smoother.
This idea that everything in the system must be at a first grade level really takes the fun out of games.
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2022-11-07, 05:48 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Worlds Without Number (compared to 5e)
I haven’t seen SWN, but you find it insulting? I can see that.
Well, seeing as I have young children that I have begun introducing to this wonderful style of game, simplicity is a blessing. Accessibility is also important, introducing new friends or relatives (and their young ones) is fantastic.
I like being able to really go in-depth, but the more detailed or complex a system is, it’s also less convenient for my current purposes.Something Borrowed - Submission Thread (5e subclass contest)
TeamWork Makes the Dream Work 5e Base Class Submission Thread
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2022-11-08, 03:31 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Worlds Without Number (compared to 5e)
So they're the anti-Jenna Moran? Okay, my understanding of Jenna Moran is that her games run really well once you know them, they're just hard to get.
This idea that everything in the system must be at a first grade level really takes the fun out of games.
- Lots of people don't have much time to learn a new system after work and family(/relationships).
- Most people let their maths and reading abilities deteriorate after school. Not to a Year 1 level, but probably to somewhere between primary and early secondary (a quick Google suggests somewhere between 9 and 12).
That's not even getting into people with dyslexia and/or dyscalcula who might want to play.
Like, that might not be the reasoning here, but it's not like there aren't valid reasons to simplify rules. I'll also note that while the maths may be at Year 1/2 level (with many other systems maybe getting as far as Year 4/5) I'll be shocked if it's written for a reading age below secondary school levels.Last edited by Anonymouswizard; 2022-11-08 at 03:32 AM.
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2022-11-09, 01:44 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Worlds Without Number (compared to 5e)
I don't know what the game was sold as. Certainly would not be the first time that a kickstarted project was advertised as doing more than it does, nor that a gameline or developer with a dedicated fandom (and Crawford is one of those) has people touting that it can do everything but the kitchen sink.
Regardless, I agree with that it is mostly* "just" a bunch of procedural generation charts. Also with Telok that it has textual support walking the reader through how to use the material to make your game. I liken it to the procedural dungeon-design and dungeon-exploration sections of BX/Moldvay-Cook -- there's nothing specific that you can point to that is specifically groundbreaking, but the whole does a good job of explaining how you are meant to use the game system to cultivate a specific experience**.
*there are some specific rules like faction strength and other subsystems which do new things
**and if we'd ever read BX front-to-back when we started gaming at 8-9, well, we would have probably still houseruled the thing until it barely resembled the printed rules (because procedural cautious dungeon-crawling and avoiding combat was not how we wanted to play), but we would have at least had an understanding of what the game was we were deviating from
OSR-style games often do restrict themselves to very BX-like basic rules (or, where they do deviate, that is the fundamental conceit of their variant), and tend to stick to curating a specific game experience through guidance, aids, changes to theme, or incentivization structures. Other games (such as Forbidden Lands, or PBtA variants) give themselves more leeway in coming up with expansive new subsystems for such things. If I had a major critique of WWN, it is that it is overly cautious in including more expansive rules for treating groups or nations or economies or other worldbuilding facets as entities to be managed as one might an NPC or the like (it has some, but they are constrained).
If you find something unfun, I'm not here to tell you otherwise. Still, I don't know anything specific that SWN/WWN does that falls outside the range of other games. I'm not sure what exactly about this system makes it significantly moreso 'throws basic concepts of reality out the window' than all the other games where one person acts and then mostly freezes in place while the next person acts, has abstract concepts like Hit points or always-damage-avoidance armor, fall damage which increases in severity arithmetically to fall distance instead of geometrically or more, and so on. As to first grade level, I don't know about that, but I certainly understand why it benefits a game marketed for kids and adults to be consumable at the 4th or 5th-grade level. Since early in gaming (and here expanding to wargames as well), there has been space for BX and Tunnels and Trolls where if you can read a newspaper article beginning to end you can probably follow everything in the game to GURPS or Battletech or D&D 3e where it's all simple math but there's enough of it to lose track of stuff (or find you just don't care/it's complexity in search of a purpose) to tactically or conceptually complex games like Over the Edge or the Jenna Moran games or Starfleet Battles (where each game mechanic about power usage or ship rotation serves an purpose and helps determine victor and you either love the minutia or don't). Everyone has a preference, and it's to everyone's benefit that there are so many out there to serve many (if not most) of them all*.
*provided, of course, that you can get a group together to play the one you want. A continuous problem.
Jenna Moran games are 'complex' in that they tend to be pretty far afield from most other games in what you are playing as, what your goals are, and how the game expects you to go about achieving them. For the most part, once you've grokked what you're there doing, they play out pretty similarly to any other game outside of the trad games that focus on combat, encumbrance, etc.
While I'm the kind of person who has no inherent opposition to quadratic equations in games, I get where they're coming from. There's two general factors that means reducing the required mathematical and reading ability are likely in their best interest:
- Lots of people don't have much time to learn a new system after work and family(/relationships).
- Most people let their maths and reading abilities deteriorate after school. Not to a Year 1 level, but probably to somewhere between primary and early secondary (a quick Google suggests somewhere between 9 and 12).
That's not even getting into people with dyslexia and/or dyscalcula who might want to play.
Like, that might not be the reasoning here, but it's not like there aren't valid reasons to simplify rules. I'll also note that while the maths may be at Year 1/2 level (with many other systems maybe getting as far as Year 4/5) I'll be shocked if it's written for a reading age below secondary school levels.
*I am a manager for a group of programmers/data scientists who I'd be unsurprised if they all were TT RPG players. A huge proportion were advanced in/interested in math, computers, formal logic, etc. but expect that most people around them didn't have a similar experience.
**and here I pretty much just mean would enjoy spending an afternoon playing a many-hour tabletop game of any kind among like-minded people.
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2022-11-09, 01:59 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Worlds Without Number (compared to 5e)
Last time I ran Traveller I took advice from old hand and just threw that into a spreadsheet, ran columns as distances & acceleration as rows, came out with a table on a single 8x11 sheet of paper. Never did any math myself, if a dist was between cols I picked half way between the numbers. It's been a solved "problem" for over 30 years. No math involved for me or the players.
Seriously, once you get into a particular game's community there are bunches of solutions to stuff that looks like problems from an outside read. So I'm always willing to give designers the benefit of the doubt until I have some experience with the system in action and seen what the general community consensus on stuff is.
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2022-11-09, 02:52 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Worlds Without Number (compared to 5e)
Honestly for me the hardest thing to get was the action ladder stuff and those Nobilis 3 mortals rules. Not that I've got to run a Jennaverse game yet
(mind you, I haven't seen any with actual quadratic equations in one, or even any significant algebra except that one in-system travel time calculation in Traveller)
I've played with groups with more and less mathematical ability, as well as a GM who refused to read the rulebook (he was dyslexic, but he still shouldn't have agreed to run the game of he wasn't going to read how the Resources advantage worked*). You'll be surprised at how much ability and willingness varies
* I was a scientist and explosives expert and wanted to start with more explosive than alcohol. Oh, and some basic lab equipment like test tubes, pipets, some kind of burner, basic electrical supplies... Look I'd sunk pretty much all my Quality points into this, I wanted to play the resident science guy.Last edited by Anonymouswizard; 2022-11-09 at 04:44 PM.
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2022-11-09, 04:05 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Worlds Without Number (compared to 5e)
Try ship movement. You can literally travel many times the speed of light. With the best stuff, you can go from the oort cloud to the sun in like an hour (roughly 24-48 hours at light speed). The entire concept of navigation is thrown out the window cause it might be hard. The premise of the game is that it doesn't matter how far anything is, because space magic creates "highways" that let you go from one place to another. Each stop on the road might be 20 galaxies away. So you can go a billion light years faster than a single light year without a magic highway. Hint - you can never go a single light year without a magic highway. So there basically is no such thing as actual space travel in a space game.
They basically take all the space out of a space game. Its just bus stops to get to different planets. Even in system. Fun parts of ship movement are totally ignored, since your ship can be traveling at 30x the speed of light in system and suddenly turn and go backwards. Literally everything is hand-waved away. However, you can be 2 lightdays away from someone and instantly talk to them. Cause your magic radios? There are no physics in this game whatsoever.
Also consider ship combat - its all done by a single person. Everyone else can roll something create "action points", but its basically the gunner while the party watches. Using action points for anything else is 95% of the time detrimental. This is to "keep it simple", which really just means most people leave for an hour while the gunner and gm do the encounter.
As well, anyone can roll a dice and magically save a ship that was struck by a trillion nuclear weapons. Basically death saves. It doesn't matter what happened, you can just roll a d20 and patch it together, because like 5th ed, its not supposed to be a challenge, its supposed to be the story of how you win.Last edited by deadman1204; 2022-11-09 at 04:14 PM.
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2022-11-09, 10:52 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Worlds Without Number (compared to 5e)
I've been looking over WWN for the last couple of days, and I'm curious if anyone has an opinion on the rest mechanic/HP restoration and things like System Strain, Frail, etc.
I'm seriously contemplating porting the system wholesale into my otherwise standard 5E game. Seems like a great way to curtail yoyo-ing in combat. Provided there isn't a massive disparity in Con scores in the party, it looks like a pretty natural way to make otherwise unnatural stopping points appear genuine.
I think System Strain could also easily replace the exhaustion rules, or work as an additive component, depending...Trollbait extraordinaire
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2022-11-11, 10:51 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Worlds Without Number (compared to 5e)
I think it is more, if the GM is needed to adjudicate everything anyway, why have a bunch of rules that are not up to the task anyway. At least with the group of games these things belong to.
I looked at Stars Without Number, because it came up after I bought Solar Blades & Cosmic Spells. It's a solid system from what I saw. But I am not familiar with Worlds Without Number apart from a quick summary that it is the same basic system as Stars.
I will probably pick it up at some point (I hate that I am a damm collector now, but it is what it is).My sig is something witty.
78% of DM's started their first campaign in a tavern. If you're one of the 22% that didn't, copy and paste this into your signature.