Games Without Number

Right there on the same shelf as my Old School Essentials games sits my collection of ...Without Number games. There are some of the most amazing games in my library, easily complementing OSE games with fantasy, science fiction, cyberpunk, and post-apocalyptic gameplay. Yes, there is another fantasy game in here, and it is worthy and BX compatible.

If a game ever fails me, these will do them all, and keep me in my beloved BX framework. The best thing about these games is that they are all BX-compatible, so I am not wasting library space keeping these or my OSE books out on the same shelf. I am gravitating towards games that work together and support each other, rather than the new "system of the week" pushed on crowdfunding sites, or the mess that 5E became.

Worlds Without Number is an interesting fantasy game. It reminds me a little of Numenera, a post-civilization fall into a feudal world where the old world is forgotten, and the advancements of that age are lost to the sands of time. This can be played more like straight traditional fantasy, too, with your typical elves, dwarves, halflings, and other fantasy races and monsters pulled directly from OSE. Either way you go, and even using this as your world-building book for OSE, you can't go wrong.

The magic system seems very strange at first, and almost like it doesn't do as much as a Vancian BX system, but it actually does more and operates on a higher power level. It is a very strange system, but once you wrap your head around it, you find it gives a magic-using character a lot of power and flexibility that a bog-standard BX wizard just does not have. Plus, you will gain world-breaking spells of power if you find them. The magic system here is very different, feels more materially satisfying, and offers greater tactical flexibility than BX, despite seeming far less in-depth.

The system itself is BX, but nothing like BX in feeling. It feels really good, strange enough to transport me to another time and place, yet familiar enough to run fast and stay out of the way. It is (and is not) your typical race-and-class system and feels fresh and amazing at the same time. If anything, the characters feel fully realized, like characters from a novel, and there are clear specializations at play here.

Shadowrun? Cyberpunk? Why do I need them? I got Cities Without Number right here, drop in some OSE races, and I have a Shadowrun-like world ready to go. Better yet, I get Tieflings, Dragonborn, Ratlings, Drow, and all my OSE favorites, along with OSE magic - and full OSE monster lists. It is honestly a better experience that plays on all my favorites, and allows for a true fantasy world inside a modern sheen of chrome and oppressive mega-corps.

The d20 System tried to do "D&D Shadowrun" with Urban Arcana. The pairing of OSE and Cities Without Number does it better since the races, monsters, magic items, and spells of BX all port directly in. This is a trivial conversion, and who cares if it does not make any sense? Some wizard somewhere blew a wish spell big time, and we ended up with a fantasy world put on top of Earth.

Or, you could say "this is not Earth" and randomly generate a modern world hex by hex, saying "this is a fantasy modern world waking up," and they uncover the "fog" and start discovering new cities, ruins, lands, and places in the world as the New Era awakens. There is a dragon over there, orcs over here, a ruined subhere there, a megacity over here, and whatever you want.

Now, I love GURPS Space.

But Star Frontiers, Space Opera, Traveler, Star Trek, Starfinder, and many other games can be done as well, and in the comfort-food framework of BX with Stars Without Number. Again, I can do a Starfinder or Dragonstar science-fantasy game easily with the OSE races and magic. It is easy, I get a full monster list to use as-is or reskin, and I can have a laser-basilisk if I want. A robo-dragon. A mutant ogre-kin. A metal-eating chrome-slime. The OSE monsters reskin so well, and even the spells can be converted to "space force" powers if you want. There are OSE psionic books, too, and you are free to do whatever you want here.

Why do I need Traveller 5E, again? This works, has no issues working alongside a BX game, and SWN does not need an online VTT character sheet to be playable. SWN does a great Traveller, and in fact, the star generation methods here are more tag and adventure-focused, and work out better for space exploration and discovering new adventures on worlds.

And I wrote a conversion article about 5 years ago where I renamed everything to fit different ideas, and it still works well...

SBRPG: Empires & Federations (Without Number)

You can play any variant of science fiction with SWN, and just swap the names of things, and you are good to go. A rock-solid BX engine, compatibility, and ease of play with any sci-fi genre? Drop in BX classes and monsters at-will? This is a solid, great game, and you are not getting fleeced every few years for a new crowdfunding sci-fi game.

And the ships and weapons of SWN are reskinned easily, too, and I could name the weapons one thing and have Star Wars, and another thing and have Star Trek. A procedural space hex-crawl BX "Star Federation" adventures style game? Where did I hear about that before? 

I had the Starfleet Voyages game in 1982 (my Sister bought it for her birthday, and we played it with her), and I miss it. I really miss those BX-Trek adventures; they were so silly and stupid, beaming down to a colony, hearing about trouble in the space mines, and exploring them with phasers and encountering Klingons like they were Orcs in a room, stealing space gems.

We were kids, dumb, and had the time of our lives with this one. We even ported in BX monsters to live on planets, like a planet with space giants attacking colonists. That is when you break out the big phaser rifles and photon grenades. BX-like systems, back then, could do anything. SFV was slightly different, but similar enough to feel like BX.

I can do BX-Trek directly with Stars Without Number, and the classes, powers, rules, ships, and universe generation are all right here. I just have to add Klingons as Orcs, Romulans as Dark Elves, and Vulcans as the Elf race, and we are nearly all set. It was such a rip-off of the obvious franchise, but we loved it; it was pure kitsch, with an innocence and wonder that few other games could capture.

SWN does this, Star Wars, Star Trek, Traveller, Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers, Firefly, Star Frontiers, Alien, Space Opera, Starship Troopers, and everything else you can imagine perfectly well. I hope this gets a new edition someday with the updated rules found in Cities and Ashes.

Ashes Without Number is the new game, a massive post-apoc toolkit good for any post-apoc game, doing the game itself, or meshing with any BX rules. This game is the perfect companion to Gamma World, Rifts, The Walking Dead, Aftermath, Mutant Crawl Classics, Mutant Epoch, Car Wars, or any other post-apoc game you have in mind. The rules work well, too, again, mixable with BX if you want drow, goblins, and elves running around the wastelands. Play it on its own or with other games; this is a toolkit that will give you decades of fun.

Ashes can be used alongside Cities pretty closely, with Cities providing the system for urban environments, and Ashes filling in the wastelands between massive fortress cities. Most Car Wars games will work this way, with the places between fortified towns savage wastelands, while inside the walls is a more urban, almost Cyberpunk level of control and politics.

And again, I can reuse all my BX monsters directly in this game, reskin them as mutant beasts, give them laser eyes and radiation blasts, launchable quills, electified tentacles, or sonic attacks, and they are terrifying beasts of the wasteland. Why do I need to buy post-apoc bestiaries again? My imagination and a good source of BX monsters do far more, bonus points if I have a mutation table handy. Oh, wait, the game has that, too.

If you are planning a BX library to be your be-all end-all games you will support, the ...Without Number games are must-haves that support every other game on your shelf.