Skulls Without Number: Minimum Viable Product
The void: the forbidden frontier.
These are the voyages of the Rogue Trader House {name}. Its holy writ:
To explore benighted alien worlds;
To exploit new life and new civilizations;
To boldly conquer where Man was never meant to go!
Read the session reports here!
Skulls Without Number is my hack of Stars Without Number, with the goal of combining the basic *WN chassis with systems and concepts from Fantasy Flight Games' Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader TTRPG (RT).
I have a deep affinity for RT. It was the first-ever roleplaying game I actually, properly played, way back when I was wee witchling. Also the first game I ever ran (my forever-GM career started early.) I've been wanting to run another Rogue Trader game for some years now. There's lots to recommend for a game about a Rogue Trader crew. It's essentially an evil, cosmic horror-y Star Trek. Go to new worlds, conquer lost civilizations, and see things Man Was Not Meant to Know. I like settings where the player characters exist in a transitional space, one-foot-in civilization and oppression and one-foot-out in the wilderness and criminality. The Imperium is a rigid, authoritarian, fatalist empire where no one, top to bottom, has freedom - except for Rogue Traders. Rogue Traders have a mandate from the Imperium to conquer worlds and bring them into its domain, but they have a relatively free hand in how they do so, and monitoring them is an infrequent affair. In a world where the default, "canon" response of the Imperium to all aliens, heretics, non-Imperial humans, etc. is "KILL KILL KILL", Rogue Traders are allowed to treat them as people. It's a fantastic position from which to view the 40k universe, because they are simultaneously insiders and outsiders.
I'll have to hammer out my 40k thoughts1 and how I conceive of a Rogue Trader game at some other point.
As I mentioned in a previous post, I played a little test game with some friends2 and I ended up dissatisfied with the system as it is. From where I stood, there was a lot I liked, but there was a lot of cruft (especially in the combat and skill system) leading to lots of page-flipping, player decision paralysis, and general confusion. RT just has a lot of fiddly bits that I don't have the energy or time for, and which can't be fully offloaded to the players. I still want to run a Rogue Trader game, but something I've learned in my mumble mumble oh God how old am I? years of playing elfgames is that I can, in fact, just hack stuff.3
Thus, Skulls Without Number, a hack of a system I already like and think works relatively well for me, mixed what I like and think works about RT. Now, I have tried to make my own systems before, and I've always gotten bogged down in details and fretting over the exact implementation of systems. This time, I'm going to set out a list of what I need to get to Minimum Viable Product, i.e., what I think I need to get this to the table. If I complete this list, I'll feel confident enough to at least start a game, and then refine on the fly if I need to.
Skulls Without Number Elements
These are the elements I think I need to get to MVP for SkWN:
- Skill System: Use the 2d6+stat bonus+skill+mods resolution system from core SWN. Use the custom skill list from the previous post.
- Combat: take the core (d20 roll to-hit, bonuses from class, skills, stats, situations; roll damage on a hit; subtract damage from hitpoints; reroll initiative each round; one Move action, one Main action) of the combat system of SWN.
- Talents and Traits/Foci and Arts: This one is going to be a humdinger. On initial review, what RT groups into "Talents" ends up being a big mix of e.g. class features, cybernetic enhancements, training, diegetic advancement, and level-like numerical bonuses. My current plan is to break these up and redistribute them in a few ways. Cybernetic enhancements will be entirely cleaved off into the cybernetics system as it exists in SWN. Some talents will become class features or part of Foci. And for any that remain, I'll probably fold them in as Arts that can be gained by certain classes as part of level-ups.
- Languages: Turn languages (ciphers, spoken languages, and secret languages) into their own "thing", their own element on a character sheet.
- Weapons and Armor: Consolidate the list from RT down into just the key weapons (we don't need fifty variations on a boltgun.) Using a rubric (laser rifle = lasgun, mag rifle = boltgun, combat rifle = autogun), convert the list of weapons to be closer to the SWN baseline. Take the key armors from RT, but remove the coverage of separate body parts - all armor is full armor. Consider moving to AP for anti-vehicle weapons (i.e. like mech weapons in SWN).
- Healing, Wounds, and Injury: HP, system strain, and healing will all be taken from SWN, with possibly some aspects of WWN's extra healing taken as well. I may change how initial hitpoints are generated or how they're gained over levels, rather than just adopting the Warrior/Expert/Mage progression for each RT class. Steal grievous injury table from RT.
- Character Classes: I want to take all nine classes from RT. They're very evocative, they each have a reasonable niche in my opinion, and I think they can be made workable through giving them different progressions and Edges from CWN and AWN. Some will likely be pretty close to their SWN counterparts (an Arch-Militant is basically a Warrior and a Seneschal is basically an Expert), but others will need some thinking and tweaking.
- Character Creation: I really love the lifepath character creation in RT, and I want to retain that as much as possible. It could use with some trimming (too many finnicky bonuses and very conditional special abilities), but I'd like to adapt it rather than use the background section of SWN. I'm also thinking about whether to allow for totally free class selection, or to limit it by lifepath outcome as suggested in RT.
- Psychic Powers/Navigator Powers: The psychic powers will mostly be lifted from SWN and the Astropath class will basically just be the Psychic class from SWN, possibly with tweaks to ensure it's properly risky in the 40k style. Navigators will likely be their own class with Art-based powers (a la the Adepts, Sunblades, and Yama Kings in Codex of the Black Sun, or the Healers, Vowed, and other non-caster wizards in WWN.) I like Effort, I like how it works for activating powers, but I'll have to make sure it reinforces the horribleness that is being a psyker in the 40k setting. This is one I'm less sure about and will probably need a lot of refining.
- Character Advancement: I think I want to remain close to the basic system in SWN. RT character advancement is very customizable, with players having the ability to spend earned XP on upgrading skills, attributes, and adding talents. However, it is very strictly class-based and filled with lots of prerequisite trees. I want to move closer to the framework of SWN, where advancement is a little tighter (there will just be few things to buy/add, and more things that just change automatically), but have it be a little less class-dependent.
Additionally, RT has eight levels, despite a first-level RT character being a fifth-level character in its sister-game, Dark Heresy. I'll need to figure out whether characters start at level 1 or 2 in SWN terms, and how many levels I want. - Starships/Vehicles: Take wholesale from RT. Make adjustments where needed to fit the new skill system. Possibly adjust health and armor
- Other Equipment, Purchases, Currency: Take the Profit Factor system wholesale from RT. Items no longer have a price, just a rarity, craftsmanship, and short description of what they do. Trade will be folded into the endeavor system as it is in RT.
- Fate Points: Lift wholesale from RT.
- Cybernetics: Cybernetics will broadly work as they do in SWN.4 I'll try to incorporate as much of the cybernetic items/cybernetic enhancements from RT's equipment list as possible.
- Missions/XP: Take the Endeavor system from RT. Tweak numbers as needed.
- Worldbuilding/Adventure Seeds: Lift from RT, specifically Stars of Inequity. Use SWN and WWN tools to supplement as needed.
Obviously, still a lot of decisions to be made. I'll tackle these one at a time, and then post about them when I've hammered it out.
Friend of the witch Sammy J also informed me of an existing hack of SWN for 40k (Heresies Without Number). Ever the particular person, there are some things I like, some things I don't necessarily vibe with, and some solutions that we seemed to have arrived at independently. I'll definitely be using it for inspiration, and if the time comes where I just want to run the damn game, I might use it.
Needless to say I am not fond of where the modern 40k setting has gone, GW's focus in the setting, Space Marines in most shapes and forms, and the fact that the framing of many narratives in the 40k universe essentially endorse a fascist worldview.↩
Shoutout to Igneous and Doubloon of the Sci-Fi RPG Collective for being my willing
guinea pigsplaytesters.↩One thing I appreciate about a lot of the bloggers I've read and TTRPG people I've talked to is that they've all encouraged others to just... do stuff. The old meme about game design being easy is very true, at least if you're willing to accept it's never gonna be perfect.↩
I think SWN's cybernetics is a better model for how cybernetics work in 40k, and especially RT, than CWN's are. In SWN, the sort of cybernetics that would just give you a numerical bonus (e.g. think better, move faster, skill bonuses ) are elided as part of character creation or character advancement. The only things that get called out as cybernetic items in the book are those that give you meaningfully new abilities or let you function in a new way.↩