Is this better than Traveler?

You'll have to post a PDF and tell us what I'd does and how it plays, homiesaurus.

File: Stars Without Number.pdf (1B, 486x500px)

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>>51725670
Allow me.

It's okay if you're looking for Traveler with less crunch. That's LESS crunch, not no crunch. Anybody who hates math is still going to be in for a bad time. I didn't particularly care for it's preexisting skill sets, since most of us still felt highly incompetent on a starship despite that being our only job. Its attempt to simplify Traveler combat kinda fell flat too; you are either a warrior and get to participate or an expert who will shoot once, hit, and scurry away.

Can't comment on Psychics, GM banned them. It's an alright game, I just prefer Traveler. Skill training is needed in this game and they charge you out the ass for it.

This is the best space-op companion a sci-fi GM could ask for. Don't like the rules? Forget them, get it for the best advices you'll ever get for running a sandbox campaign among the stars.
AND you also get a shit-ton of awesome tables for generating adventures that are actually fun to play.

>>51725850
>Its attempt to simplify Traveler combat kinda fell flat too; you are either a warrior and get to participate or an expert who will shoot once, hit, and scurry away.

Absolutely. It has the Autistic Fighter problem of a lot of fantasy heartbreakers, where you're either in combat and the combat guy is great, or you're out of combat and he's sitting on his hands so he doesn't fuck everything up.

I prefer Traveller, and if you pick your options carefully it's not all that crunchy either. And I really like that it's not chock full of D&Disms like saving throws and levels and XP and so forth.

How about Ashen Stars? Has anyone played/heard of that?

I really don't like SWN's core mechanics at all, but I love everything else about the game.

>>51728071
This

Also, Traveller's character gen is incredibly fun while SWN has the most boring chargen I have ever seen without any of the benefits of the simpler chargens out there. In addition, if you ever need something statted/inspiration Traveller basically has more books than even GURPS so you'll never hunger for content.

>>51726534
This. Also, the expansion subsystems (trade, mercenary armies, et c) are fantastic. I would use Suns of Gold in any game involving trade (with some modifications, so that you don't have 12th century trade caravans carrying spike drive components).

>>51728572
> (with some modifications, so that you don't have 12th century trade caravans carrying spike drive components).
Pussy.

>>51728689
Now that I think about it
>scattered scifi worlds in the vein of Trav
>crash on medieval planet
>turns out they have working autofacs
>theoretically capable of repairing your craft
>locals won't give you it for free though
>you have a few crates of valuable supplies and some dude's horse you're in debt for
>capitalism, ho!
I'd play it.

>>51725471
SWN Without Number and Traveller are like a loaf of bread and sliced ham. Sure, you can eat them separately, but they're better if you use them together,

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What is it with all the Stars Without Number threads lately? Is Kevin getting bored and trying to shill or something?

>>51729406
The 2nd ed announces have piqued the interest of numerous people.

>>51726534
>Forget them, get it for the best advices you'll ever get for running a sandbox campaign among the stars.

This. Both are good. Traveller is better for some things and SWN is better for others.

Like >>51729101 said, Traveller and SWN go together like ham & cheese, PB & J, chocolate and peanut butter, etc.

>>51730850
Honestly, the one thing I feel about Traveller is that it's impersonal.
Like you have UWPs and the like, but they don't tell you exactly how people on your worlds live, or people on any given planet of a given TL live differently to a people of the same TL. Plus, SWN has adventure hooks built in to the worldgen.

SWN on the other hand is married to OSR, which isn't bad if you're doing an early modern hexcrawl, less so for the far future.

But if you take Stars Without Number's world building stuff and couple it to Traveller's mechanics and chargen system (and tech, if harder sci-fi is your thing), you end up with a thing of beauty.
Especially with supplements like Suns of Gold which turn a trading system (which Traveller just advises you to hand over to the players between sessions), into a proper adventure generator.

Regardless of how you feel about Traveller vs SWN, I'd definitely recommend SWN should be included in the "You should pillage what you want from the various Traveller editions"

>>51729974

This, to be honest. I stumbled across the announcement and was sorta smitten with those goddamn tables. I mean, the base system is shit but all the modular stuff i super useful.

On a (slightly) related topic - what does everyone think about Diaspora as an even rules-lighter alternative to run a spess game (and in my case - for stubborn fuckos who only change systems because of my constant pressure and are still Pathfindertards deep at heart)

>>51683174

Anyone have links to good ship floorplans?

People who are seasoned in the genre probably prefer Traveller because it has more meat mechanically.

SWN is better for my group, my players don't really care about building characters and just want to explore.

>>51731328
This, SWN has great mechanics... when they are not the ones it cribbed from OSR.

>>51729974
Tell me more.

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>>51728756
my fellow merchant!

File: StarsWithoutNumberRevisedCharacterCreation0.4.pdf (1B, 486x500px)

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>>51738451
Kevin has released some early previews of his rewrite. What I read is that it's not so much a 2.0 as a big update of the base system in light of all he has learnt writing all his games since then.
That linked file is the one he put up on his Google+ account. There is another for his revision of the starship combat system.

Funnily in both cases I think he's trying to adress the issues that have been raised in this thread.

>>51738573
Does he have a release date? I'm about to start a campaign with some new players so having the newer and better rules would be swell.

>>51725850
gm was right to ban the psychics, our level 6 psychic was legitimately capable of leveling a city block each combat round, cant remember how he did it.

>>51738573
Not release date. The plan is to have a Kickstarter for the summer from what I read. But since he always starts a KS once he has everything written, that means you should be able to get the PDF then, as soon as the campaign starts.

In any case, from what I've read and people asking similar questions, there is no reason not to start playing right away with the current system. He seems to be going for backwards compatibitity. Your savefiles should work fine.

If you were going to invest, you could just take the Free Edition, you'd only miss out on a few bits (AI/robots/mecha and societies).

>>51738613
I mean to answer you with this
>>51738683

File: StarshipCombatRulesv0.2.pdf (1B, 486x500px)

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Might as well post something useful if I'm gonna be a triple posting idiot. Sorry.