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.

Dead Levels

"If a game has dead levels, then it is a flawed design."

The number of times I hear that statement repeated on D&D YouTube is starting to sound like the annoying yapping of tiny dogs. It sounds entitled, almost spoiled, and it assumes players are only playing these games to accumulate power. I recently heard this tossed at Worlds Without Number, and it is just a really lame argument in the context of a larger game and experience.

These people have not played a BX fighter to level 14, have they?

You, Sir, get NOTHING!

The point of dead levels is to force the referee to think about alternate rewards players can get, without giving them too much, without making players feel they "already got something this level," and without holding back an external, social, or other intangible award or power. Magic items, weapons, or armor? A social rank allowing the character to request help or get special resources? Favors? Contacts? Even a supernatural ability, the referee "just gives" the character —like danger sense, an ability score modification, an innate spell, or some other special bonus — that could have a limit per day.

Dead levels are breathing room and opportunities for the referee to introduce alternate rewards.

They are not design flaws.

I swear the 5E and Pathfinder 2E generations are being indoctrinated with "rules as written" being god. You get nothing unless the book says you get it, or else you are breaking the game, upsetting the designers, embarrassing yourselves on YouTube, and ruining the experience for everyone. I have seen people like this argue against homebrew because "it ruins the game for everyone, and we are not playing by a standardized set of rules anymore."

What are they talking about? These people have not played old-school games, and I fear that if they did, they would slavishly adhere to the books and rules-as-written and still fail to understand how the game is supposed to be played.

"But I expect to get something every level!"

Games are spoiling us; we feel entitled to "get something every level," and the game slowly drifts away from being about story, character, exploration, and the world—and becomes more about the build, rules, exploits, power gaming, and what is allowed within the book. If you give characters too much power, the game breaks, and play drags to a crawl since higher levels need to scale hit points.

I don't want the book or a level chart to be the master of my destiny.

I want my choices to be.

Dead levels are a design feature, not a flaw. They let the level chart relax and deemphasize the constant need to be "fed something" at every level. Stop treating level systems as a Skinnerian approach that requires rewards at every milestone. It is a lame design, and advancement can mean something much more profound than just "what the books give you."

Many make Worlds Without Number their core fantasy system, playing only this game after game, and it is a great book. There is a trivial difference between a 1d6 skill system in BX and the 2d6 skill system in the WN games, except that we have a bell curve and can have a more meaningful skill level and modifier system. I prefer 2d6 skills, since it makes them fundamentally different than "just another d20 roll" and highlights we are doing something other than "rolling to kill." Putting the entire system "on one die" can make every roll feel the same.

The Kevin Crawford WN games are classics, easily masterpieces, and outstanding solo experiences.

One book can generate an entire world.

Public Domain Gaming

Why hasn't the community adopted public domain gaming?

I stare at the Without Number SRDs, and both are in the CC0 public domain. We have the Wizards SRDs, which are on a higher level Attribution license, but in all honesty, rules cannot be copyrighted. A lot of this is already public domain language and concepts. Goblins, orcs, and trolls are folklore - they can never be tied to one gaming license or another. Of course, over the years, plenty of companies have introduced lore into these concepts that should be avoided.

But for the section of the gaming community notoriously opposed to Wall Street shenanigans and business practices, most gamers crawl back to D&D Beyond and rules that are controlled tightly within corporate grasp. I get it; the platform will win every time, but where are your principles?

Why isn't the community converting everything into a public-domain rules framework and breaking free of all this corporate control of gaming? Free and open licenses (attribution) are great, but an even better level of openness is when things are put in the public domain.

But companies can steal what is in the public domain! This is Disney's entire business model, and to an extent, it is the Wizards' model. You can't stop them, but don't have to support them.

You have a choice.

The Worlds Without Number SRD is an excellent public domain fantasy set of rules, ready to be expanded and used for any fantasy game. This is 100% compatible with B/X spells, monsters, classes, and magic items - and public domain versions of these can be created, too. Any B/X compatible content works with the game. All that is needed are compatible public domain and historical source expansions. You could replace all OGL content with public-domain works, and everyone owns this to do as they please, create games, computer games, or any other derivative works.

If everything is put into CC0, we could be done worrying about licenses and "who can do what, how."

Why wait to convert my games and put my expansions into CC0? Here is my orc, my dragon, and my troll. Here is my Mana Shock spell. Here is my Fire Blast spell.

Other Creative Commons games are good, too, except for the ones that force you to buy the "paywall parts" of the game just to play. But a part of me feels the public domain is the best way to go.

Gaming, how we interact socially, should belong to the world. Nobody should own it.

The concept of ownership of rules and content in gaming needs to go away. The community must focus on contributing to the greater whole of humanity and future generations. Building a public-domain gaming library will free the hobby from corporate control forever. Derivative works will blossom and flourish, but that core will always belong to the people of Earth.

Why do people play games where the owning company could legally threaten them for sharing their creativity? Because it ensures I can always find a game? Convenience is not a good enough reason.

I get it—some of them are nice games. They have the art and adventures to back them up.

However, in the long term, gaming must be a freer and communal space for future generations.

...Without Number SRDs

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/473939/worlds-without-number-system-reference-document

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/452790/cities-without-number-system-reference-document

So we have CC0 public-domain SRDs for Worlds Without Number (fantasy) and Cities Without Number (cyberpunk)? And I hear we have one coming for Ashes Without Number (post-apocalyptic)?

What a fantastic creator and gift to the community.

Thank you.

Off the Shelf: ...Without Number Games

...I pulled out all my "...Without Worlds" recently, including:

• Worlds Without Number
• Stars Without Number
• Cities Without Number
• Other Dust (soon to be an expanded edition Ashes Without Number)

Kevin Crawford is a genius in the gaming world, keeping the games simple and universal while delivering generation systems many other games struggle to reproduce. The games are written with the attitude of "play this game with the book's rules, or just use whatever rules you like."

The books are the best idea and setting generation books ever written and are also worthy games. They are White Box-style masterpieces of creativity and imagination.

I am searching for a great science fiction game, and there is no really getting any better than Stars Without Number. What I love about these games is how they borrow from B/X games, and the author says, "Go ahead; every B/X game you own is content for this game!" You can borrow monsters, magic items, races, spells, and even classes and powers.

Stars Without Number is also very easy to reskin. I can instantly transform it into Star Wars or Star Trek by changing a few weapon names and seasoning it with lore and flavor. This is much like the Cyber System's universality: it can be genre-neutral, X, Y, Z, or anything you want. This game could also easily create "game universes" like Traveller or Star Frontiers and any science fiction movie, TV series, or B&W serial.

SWN is also killing the new Traveller for me. I don't have the time to devote to a massive library of books, and for my needs, a simple, skinnable, d20 science fiction game that works with all my B/X books fits much better with my time and play preferences.

SWN is the Shadowdark of science fiction gaming, at least for me. This is my Star Trek, Star Wars, Starfinder, and anything else I need it to be.

I like the d20 vs. AC combat and 2d6 skill check systems. Some want "all systems on one die," but there is no reason. The skills feel different than "just another d20 combat roll" and give me that great-feeling 2d6 Traveller vibe while keeping the standard d20 combat system many are used to. Given their vast scopes and world-building tools, this uses the best parts of many classic games and mixes them into a game that is easier to manage.

All three of these games are the perfect jumping-off point into other genres from Shadowdark. You will get that "Shadowdark feeling" here, with a simple base system, level progression, parallel skill system, and straightforward gameplay. It is not 5E, but it is close enough you probably won't notice. If you like advantages and disadvantages, there is no reason not to use them. On a 2d6 roll, the A/D mechanic will roll 3d6 and then drop the highest or lowest die.

Oh, and all the "Without Number" games have free versions, so anyone can jump in and play without needing to buy a book. They have fewer tools (mostly gamemaster stuff) but are 100% rules-complete and playable. The free versions here are far more generous than Shadowdark's Basic Set, and the rules can be printed out on a two-page summary sheet players can print out and use during play.

Cities Without Number does Cyberpunk or Shadowrun-style games effortlessly and can put you more on a "street level" than either. The mission-generation system puts many other games in the genre to shame, and just one "gem in the rough" result from any of these charts can create a signature location, NPC, enemy faction, gang, or other element your campaign can latch onto for an entire campaign.

CWN introduces a "trauma" mechanic that makes gunplay dangerous and is a general advancement in the system for more gritty, realistic gameplay. If you want, you can back-port this to SWN and WWN; they will guide you through the process.

To do Shadowrun, just create a focus for your "fantasy race" and use the magic system in the book, one from another Without Number game or any from a B/X game. Equip your favorite B/X bestiary with monsters with body armor, implants, cyber-tech, and machine guns, and you are good to go for a cyber-fantasy game. Hit points and AC? Use them as-is.

Unique races are a focus pick. Still, I like how these games stick to a human base and let you interpret if there are fantasy races in your world at all. It is up to you. You don't need to accept a game that gives you a billion race choices and forces the game master to understand how the world works with all these cultures and kin. I just can't play some games because all the variety turns the game into a "junk soup" of everything in the pantry, cupboards, and fridge thrown into a pot.

Humans are incredibly wonderful and diverse—just look at our planet. Just humans in a setting are an excellent, diverse, player-engaging, and utterly representative game world.

If I want one or two unique backgrounds, they will be a part of the game's world, history, story, and factions. They will be "done right" and not just tossed in there because someone wants to cosplay a Tiefling dragon-born half-vampire again. I am done with the constant cosplay in some games; it distracts from the game, pushes out new players, encourages 'play as myself' behavior, and enables too many terrible player habits.

These games are the glue for building a million worlds.

Worlds Without Number is the game I feel the furthest from in the series since I already have a lot of fantastic fantasy games on my shelves. Still, there is no reason the toolboxes here could not be used to create worlds for Shadowdark, Dungeon Crawl Classics, Swords & Wizardry, OSRIC, Dungeon Fantasy, Old School Essentials, or any of my other go-to fantasy games.

The magic system in Worlds is a bit "movie-like" and not as mechanical and "sell list-centered" as I would like. Of all my fantasy games, the ones that "hit" on my ideas of what magic and classes are Swords & Wizardry or Dungeon Crawl Classics.

Magic use in this game is compelling but also very limited in scope and "casts per day," with most low-level mages only being able to fire off one or two significant spells daily. It is more "Conan" style magic, focusing on the melee and expert characters. There is an "art" system for lesser-magic spells that can be cast repeatedly, drawing from an "effort" pool that recharges daily. It is an interesting two-tier system that splits "big" spells (ones you see in the movie trailer) from the lesser spells (like throwing a magic bolt at an enemy).

If you want a "magic missile" spell, simply create art from it since it is minor. Make it create one 1d4 missile per level of caster, give it a range of 20' per caster level, and make it auto-hit.

Want a more high-magic game? Double the effort pool, or make a mana-potion resource to restore it. As it is, the game makes magic powerful but limits the number of uses to a few, which buffs the expert and melee classes. Too often in game design these days, casters take over the game, and those without magic are "why bother" classes that suffer because companies want to sell books full of spells and powers.

There are also options to create or borrow spells from other games. You either borrow profusely or use another game's class and magic system; it doesn't matter what you do if you keep consistent. I bet you could feel like a mysterious and powerful mage in this game if you put the time in to learn the system and how it works; as it is, the magic system in the game feels different and strange, which is a good thing.

You can't ignore your warrior and expert friends, which is good. Again, many 5E games and their clones put casters on a god-tier level of power, and the game goes superhero and never comes back. They feel like a waste of time, putting you in a "fake world" of "freely given power," and they divorce you from reality and any sense of challenge or "real world feeling." If you are doing things that make no sense in a realistic world, feel the rules protect you from what should happen, ignore your friends constantly, and live within a framework of magic powers instead of a realistic simulation - you are likely playing 5E.

Ashes Without Number is coming soon, too. It is a love letter to post-apocalyptic gaming, including Gamma World, Aftermath, Mad Max, gonzo-fantasy settings, and many others.

These are all some of the best genre games out there. They have super-generous free versions. They are straightforward games that are easy to play. These games are like Shadowdark; I can pick up and play with anyone at the drop of a hat.

If the industry sees a "Shadowdarkification" of gaming, that is a great thing since it means many more people will be able to pick up and play games with anyone else. Games like D&D, Pathfinder 2, and other complicated "cathedral gaming" heavy, multiple-shelf-spanning systems create "gaming cultures and cliques," which hurt the hobby. I don't want subscription websites or characters that must be made on computers. That isn't gaming that can be played with anyone, anywhere.

Complex games promote the lie that "I have more options. Thus, this is a good thing for me."

It is a selfish choice.

And yes, if this means my love of GURPS is a guilty pleasure, it means I accept that. I can't push GURPS on people who won't like it, be such a total fan that I can't enjoy anything else, or create pick-up games with others using systems everyone can join in on.

Shadowdark and games like it tell us, "It is more important to be able to play with everyone."

Mail Room: Worlds Without Number

I got this in the mail today, the offset print version of Worlds Without Number. I like both this and its sibling game, Stars Without Number, and it is nice to have an offset print (higher than POD) quality book for this game.

This is the fantasy version of Stars Without Number and it is a very cool sort of "dying Earth" fantasy game, so far in the future technology and culture of today's world has crumbled into the dust and only magic remains. We are way past destroyed future style games such as Gamma World or Rifts and into a savage new world where you are free to create your own continents and lands, strange alternate parallel realities, and an almost dream-like world of fantasy where alien runs cross the world and there are no such things as laser pistols, 20th century culture, roads, cities, and computers.

It is like like the Earth has been terraformed a million times by a million star civilizations, many with magic, and then the tired world forgotten and left to its feudal ways.

Or, you can play traditional fantasy with this with orcs and elves on a new world. Or use it as a world generator for Old School Essentials. Or 5th Edition. Or Mythras. Or Aftermath. Or Gamma World. Or Pathfinder 1e or 2e. Or AD&D.

Whatever floats your boat.

It is a game that gives you a cool setup, simple but expressive rules, the best world generation tools out there, and then lets you play however you want.

Which is cool.

More on this soon.