Stars Without Number II: Sine Nomine Strikes Back

It has come to my attention that there is a new edition of Sine Nomine's Stars Without Number -- the appropriately named Stars Without Number (Revised Edition). This has rekindled an old interest of mine.

Longtime readers of my blog know that I had many incomplete attempts at building a campaign inside the setting of Stars Without Number (Confederation Chronicles posts). They all trailed off, in retrospect, because I was trying to recreate an old Hero System homebrew setting in a different system, and I got overwhelmed by the conversions.

This time, I have a different approach, and I'm going to try again.

Core Campaign Frame

I'm salvaging what I can from my old Condederation Chronicles posts; in fact it's from one of those failed restarts that I have this summary:

In "Confederation Chronicles: A Campaign Premise" parts 1 and 2, I decided that I was going to riff off of the Battlestar Galactica concept -- a fleet of ships trying to find their way home. Unlike that show, or the other inspiration show (Andromeda), they actually come from a stable part of the Imperium: a self-sufficient cluster of worlds and systems that survived the mysterious disintegration of their galaxy-spanning Empire.

And they've been charged to find a stable path of travel along linked routes back to the Throneworld.

In "Confederation Chronicles: A Mobile Base of Operations -- Part 01", I explore the benefits of a self-sufficient, ridiculously powered ship being available to the PCs, with Blake's 7, Andromeda, and Farscape as inspirations.

In "Confederation Chronicles: A Mobile Base of Operations -- Part 02", I look at how dialing back the power levels and scale might affect the setting, while looking at the other campaign elements shows like Battlestar Galactica, Robotech/Macross, Firefly, and Starblazers/Space Cruiser Yamato dealt with life on a ship.

In "Confederation Chronicles: A Mobile Base of Operations -- Part 03", I decide on the Stars Without Number source material I'll be using to build the campaign's traveling fleet: the Imago Dei and the Bruxelles-Class Battlecruiser sourcebooks in the Mandate Archive series.

However, I'm dropping the Confederation Chronicles part of things, and just embracing a lot of the elements (and ready-made tools, ships, and equipment) in the Stars Without Number setting.

My revised overview is as follows:

The Sol Finder initiative (working title) is a massive conglomeration of ships from various backgrounds with a single purpose -- to find a path across the various Sectors to the Terran Mandate worlds. A cabal of AIs have analyzed decades of data and determined the best route through lost sectors to Lost Terra.

My overall goal for this kind of meta-campaign, is to create a broad enough background wherein many different types of campaigns can be run. There are long-term campaigns that deal with the jump from a known Sector into a lost Sector, and the exploration and adventure that takes place as a result:

• espionage campaigns to infiltrate and gather information in the new sector;
• exploration campaigns to map out and uncover more clues as to how to progress toward the Terran Mandate worlds;
• factional politics as the fleet's progress, discoveries, and own economic gravity impacts the sectors it passes through;
• military campaigns (from police actions to war) as enemies known and unknown are encountered;
• new technologies, psychic abilities, and organizations arise and impact the campaign.