Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Stars Without Number to be published by Mongoose Games

It seems that Stars Without Number is going to be published by Mongoose Games. An announcement on the Mongoose site says that the release will be some time in September:
Stars Without Number will be published in September (though copies will be available at Gen Con) with the first supplement, Skyward Steel, following in October.
Stars Without Number, currently freely available to download, is an intriguing neo-clone in that its rule systems are similar to both old school D&D and old school Traveller. But above and beyond that, it has tables and source material very useful to any space-based science fiction campaign, and has eminently usable rules for dealing with factions (worlds, countries, organizations, political movements, secret societies, etc.) and allowing abstract resolution / simulation of conflicts between them.

Congratulations to Sine Nomine (Kevin), and here's hoping that it helps you produce even more products of quality!

Of course, since Mongoose is behind the current incarnation of Traveller and is a publisher of D20 derived material as well, one wonders if there will be conversion material in the future, whether it be setting or system conversions to or from SWN.

What am I hoping to see in that arena? Well, I know that Babylon 5 is out of the question (valiant effort, Mongoose), but certainly closer ties with all the new Traveller material and perhaps some representation in the newly revived "A Call To Arms" tabletop game. And an expanded faction wars system.

2 comments:

  1. I'll be paying more attention to the Stars Without Number Rules. I seem to have downloaded those sometime back. I've always been more of an SFRPG player by inclination, and reading what you have to say about it suddenly piqued my interest. As to a Babylon 5-type scenario, I don't see how you can't come up with one using the rules. I'm sure you''d be able to pull it off easily. We recently gave the Mongoose Traveller rules a spin (I ran the old Classic Traveller Chamax Plague/Horde using MongTrav). It seems to blend virtually seamlessly. Pretty good stuff.

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  2. The Skyward Steel book is a good sourcebook for ship-based military campaigns as well.

    Hope to see more stuff on SFRPGs in you blog soon! And again, welcome back!

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That's my side of things. Let me know what you think, my friend.