Stars Without Number: Back in Black
A campaign page for the Stars Without Number: Back in Black campaign, run by The Wyzard.
Contents
Adventurers
Companions Lost and Killed
The Ship
The Setting
Personal Equipment
Characters begin with a compad suitable for adventuring. It has the following capabilities:
- Everything that a cutting edge iPhone or Android phone will do, plus much greater capacity in terms of battery life (a week of heavy use) and memory (all of it.) Like those, it is essentially a tiny computer. If you're on-board the ship or close to it, you can easily share data between the two.
- The camera has decent zoom and at least HD quality, and you can take 3d photos of smaller things so long as you're willing to manually pan the camera around the thing until your phone tells you it's had enough.
- It can tell you if atmosphere is safe to breathe, and will chirp if that changes. It will give you barometric readings, temperature, humidity, a smoke alarm, etc..
- It will warn you if there's unsafe levels of radiation.
- It is shock resistant and reasonably waterproof.
- It has a transponder function that will let your friends find you, if you're still in a condition to turn it on. If you have a comm server, it can be set to give you the direction and approximate distance to the server.
- It will automatically link up to any planetary or space station communication network.
- If there isn't a planetary network, it can still let you talk to your friends like a walkie-talkie. If your crew has a comm server, the range gets much longer so long as you are within range of it. A comm server is considered sufficient to let you talk to your ship while it is in orbit, so long as you have LOS.
- You can receive messages from your ship if you have LOS, even if you don't have a server and can't talk back.
- If your ship has done even a basic survey of the planet and downloaded localize data into your pad, it can usually function as an altimeter, compass, etc., and perhaps a GPS.
- I assume that if something can be done with an app (like using the camera flash as a flashlight) then you probably have that installed.
Armor and weapons have social implications, and you should consider what you're carrying around with you.
- In general, armor is frowned upon more than weapons. Weapons might be worn to dissuade people from attacking you or for self-defense. People who are wearing armor are more likely to be assumed to be looking for trouble. You can get away with an armored undersuit almost anywhere outside of the most civilized places, and even there it's not a problem unless you're going someplace that will have weapon detectors set up (banks, spaceports, government buildings.)
- Space stations are almost always a little rowdy, and you can usually get away with a sidearm and an armored undersuit, even if it's obvious you're wearing it. Many places will disallow pistols but allow swords, so monoswords are actually a very popular weapon with spacers
- Pistols may be carried openly or concealed based on local custom. I assume PCs with guns have appropriate concealable and non-concealable holsters for them. Long-arms or SMGs are almost never carried openly. Having one "to hand," such as in a rack on an ATV, is just fine on more rustic planets. Actually carrying it around with you will make you look militarized in a way that's likely to make people uncomfortable.
History of the State
A long time ago, the Terran Mandate ruled a civilization vast beyond comprehension. They had legions of master psychics, impossible science, and Jump Gates that could throw a ship scores of light years in an instant.
Then The Scream came. A psychic shockwave echoed from one end of the galaxy to the other, and it killed the vast majority of psychics (of every sapient species.) It also wrecked the Jump Gates, not that they could have been operated without the Master Teleportationists anyway, and burned out most of the Spike Drives as well.
Whole worlds starved, descended into savagery, or were destroyed. The network of trade and communication collapsed. Without the guidance and expertise of the Psychic Authority, many worlds lost the capacity to reliably train those with psychic talent, and they were left unable to use their abilities safely or reliably.
Centuries passed. Much was forgotten. The location of Lost Terra is unknown. In the midst of the sleeping wreckage of the empire, a spark of light has risen again. A century ago, a highly advanced cluster of worlds known as the Nyx Federation rediscovered Spike Drive technology. Their Primus was a woman who is either brilliantly forward-thinking or merely psychotically ambitious, depending on who you ask. The Primus bent the strength of her whole civilization to regaining mastery over the wilds of space. They found other human colonies that had survived, and using their technological advantages they soon crafted a sort of hegemony, or federation. With the discovery of a long-dead psychic academy, they reconstructed the training regimens that allowed psychics to use their powers without dying or going mad. There is now a healthy and buzzing psychic academy, reconstituted fifty years ago and with growing enrollment every year.
The Nyx Federation has now become the core of what is referred to as the State. Twenty systems claim membership, with a varying number of worlds or colonies within each system. For those human colonies that are rediscovered, joining the State is nominally optional, but so far no one has refused too bitterly.
The great ships of years past are still unattainable. But the Nyx Cluster can churn out fighter and frigate-class vessels equipped with spike drives, and they are plentiful enough. A few of the more powerful worlds have a cruiser or three, and Nyx itself has a single Battleship which is widely considered invincible. Not that there is any great need so far for military vessels; no alien powers have been encountered that can stand up to a Human expeditionary force, even if it does only consist of a few cruisers and a double handful of frigates.
The State exists on a model far different from that of the Terran Mandate. Where the Mandate required control and centralization, the State is quietly fearful of a second Scream. No one knows what caused the first, and the risk of a second is far too great. Every system is required to either be self-sufficient in the absence of spike drives, or to be working toward that goal. This requires at a minimum the agricultural capacity to support its population and the ability to manufacture and maintain in-system vessels that could serve any asteroid bases or similar.
There is only a single functioning psi-academy, the Black House. At unbelievable expense, the State is slowly equipping it with psi-shielding that might allow the teachers and students that reside there to survive a second Scream.
The term 'The Black House' actually refers to both the artificial world it is built on and the academy itself. The academy itself is "merely" the size of a large university, and is dominated by a central building that is like a cross between a medieval cathedral and Angkor Wat. The artificial world is a ring approximately three million kilometers in diameter, with an inner surface approximately two thousand kilometers wide. High walls at the edges keep the atmosphere in, and the rotation of the ring provides a normal day-night cycle and 1G worth of centripetal force. The habitable inner area has a surface area approximately 40 times that of Earth, with a normal mix of land and ocean area. However, it does not have tides.
The Black House could not possibly be constructed by State technology, and there is a healthy debate about whether even the Terran Mandate could have built it. The expert consensus is 'no.' It is assumed to be a pre-human relic. It is currently open for colonization, as the human population now consists solely of the Black House and its surrounding community, probably less than two hundred thousand people.
Survey Claim Map & Notes
House Rules
- Hit Points: I reroll a character's entire pool of hit points each time they level. You take the new result if it is higher. This means that it is possible to gain a level and have the same number of HP you did previously, but it also means that you can't roll a few ones and be screwed forever.
- Characters gain XP mostly by making money as adventurers. Every 5 credits worth of loot, salvage, valuable data, etc. that the PCs take back to civilization and sell is worth one XP. XP is pooled and divided between the characters evenly (excepting that Rook receives only half a share.)
- As noted in the recruitment thread, characters gain double skill points on leveling. Please note the separation between class and non-class skills!
- Squares on the sector claim map are not the same as SWN Hexes. To calculate the length of a drill route:
- Don't count the number of squares the line showing the route passes through. Count the number of squares in the shortest distance from the origin system to the destination system. This is pretty much exactly like calculating range in D&D4E.
- Divide the number of squares by two and round up. That's the number of hexes it counts as.
- Weapon Damage figures in the base book are a bit too high. The following are revised. Weapons are -2 to hit against armor that is 2 or more Tech Levels higher. Weapons ignore armor that is 2 or more Tech Levels lower.
- Small low-tech weapons such as clubs, daggers, saps, etc. do 1d4.
- Medium-sized one-handed low-tech weapons like swords or maces do 1d6.
- Two-handed low-tech weapons such as greatswords do 1d8.
- Primitive and Advanced bows do 1d6.
- Grenades do 2d6.
- Kinesis Wraps do 1d3+1
- Stun Batons do 1d6
- Suit Rippers deal 1d4
- Dagger-sized monoblades do 1d6+1. Sword-sized monoblades do 1d8+1.
- Firearms don't differ wildly in damage depending on their tech level. However, they do interact differently with armor and of course low-tech guns can't match a modern weapon's rate of fire, ammunition capacity, or in some cases reliability.
- Crude Pistols, Revolvers, and Semi-automatic pistols do 1d6.
- Muskets, Rifles, Combat Rifles, and SMGs deal 1d8.
- Shotguns and Combat Shotguns deal 2d4+1.
- Sniper Rifles deal 1d12
- Void Carbines deal 1d8+1
- Mag Pistols deal 2d6
- Mag Rifles deal 2d8
- Spike Throwers deal 3d6
- Laser Pistols deal 1d4.
- Laser Rifles deal 1d6.
- Thermal Pistols deal 2d4
- Plasma Projectors deal 2d4+1
- Shear Rifles deal 2d6
- Thunder Guns deal 2d6+1, +1d6 on a 19 or 20.
- Distortion Cannons deal 2d8
Style Guide
The style guide is a set of expectations for the players and, to a lesser extent, me. Reading it is fairly mandatory.
