Spike Drive ranges and how they affect the play in Stars Without Number

A few months ago I was introduced to Stars Without Number, a scifi RPG by Kevin Crawford. My group and I have had some good experiences with his other system, Godbound, for awhile, so I was interested to see his take on the genre. The book was fun, but we had a few months still before we could start playing it, so I decided to give the highly praised RollPlay Swan Song show a go.

When I was discussing some of the mechanics with my friends, I was made aware that both the Swan Song crew and myself understood one of the core mechanics wrong (thinking the spaceships could Drill into any hex on the map, even empty ones, rather than only the ones with stars in them), and the subtle change has some profound impact on how the game plays. So, after having confirmed the proper mechanics with the game's creator, here is a small explanation of Spike Drills, and how they affect the play in Stars Without Number, based on Swan Song's Sector Asgard Sigma.

Spike Drill mechanics

Stars Without Number is a game about traversing a relatively small sector of the universe. You will have about 25 inhabited planets orbiting around half that number of stars. Each star occupies its own space on a hex map. Some stars are on their own, while others appear in small clusters. For example, this is how Sector Asgard Sigma looks:

The spaceships in this universe travel between the stars using Spike Drives. It's a form of faster than light travel that abstracts the physical distance between the stars. At Spike Drive 1, you can travel between two adjacent hexes in 6 days. Spike Drive 2 allows you to jump to a system two hexes away in 6 days, or to an adjacent system in 3 days and so on. Spike Drives go up to rating 6, but they become less and less common. NPC Factions can move their units one hex, or up to three hexes at higher end.

Due to the relatively slow travel time, the setting has an "age of sail" feel to it - people, goods and information travels slow.

At any rate, the crucial mechanic of travelling using the Spike Drives is that the ship can only end their movement at a hex that contains a star. While at the start this can sound inconsequential, it changes a lot when you have to consider the empty hexes that fill most of the map and separate the various clusters of systems. Without being able to "slowboat" between systems, an upgrade in Spike Drive rating not only affects the speed at which you travel, but also what routes you can take.

How Spike Drives affect the travel routes

Lets once again use Sector Asgard Sigma in our example to illustrate the differences the various Spike Drive ratings have on the game.

At Spike Drive 1, the players are confined to the cluster they start in. They might be stuck in the northern cluster of 8 planets, or the eastern cluster of 4, or one of the two 3-star clusters, end up in the 2-star cluster, or be stuck in one of the four singular stars. At this rating they can't leave their starting cluster until they make an upgrade.

At Spike Drive 2, the players are finally able to travel anywhere in the sector. There isn't a star beyond their reach, although travel time might be rather long.

At Spike Drive 3, the players can start cutting your first corners. Suddenly you can go from Vahdat to Forrughi in one jump, rather than three, and from Forroughi to Bakhtiar in one jump rather than six - cutting the journey down to 6 days from the whopping 33 days it would've taken originally. They can also go from Stavrou to Geaxi bypassing Tovar entirely, possibly breaking some blockades of the remote corner of the map.

At Spike Drive 4, the players get to the last major shortcut - going straight from Laodice to Mjalimi over the three empty hexes.

Further Drive ratings don't change the game in much more significant way.

Affect on the gameplay

By limiting the Spike Drive travel to only occupied hexes the system adds some new layers of narrative into the game. While it may only force the players to stick to one sector initially until they get their hands on enough money to upgrade, the system has much greater effect on the Faction system.

Suddenly, a lot of Factions are contained within their initial sector - the basic travel distance for a Faction is only one hex. Even bigger factions can usually project themselves only three hexes away. This generally means that it's possible to anticipate natural choke points and conflict zones depending on just the layout of the hex map. Multiple factions within the same cluster are likely to get in conflict quickly. A world on the far end of a cluster might be safe from invasion, while a lonely star might turn out to be the bridge warzone between two major powers.

Thanks to the Spike Drive movement restrictions, the geography of the sector starts writing its own stories for the GM to tap into for its games.

Contact - one of the best worst RPGs you'll never play

While back my gaming group have been considering giving CONTACT - Tactical Alien Defense Role-Playing Game a shot. We were initially really enthusiastic about it since the game has had a lot of good things going for it. Unfortunately, after looking into it and familiarising ourselves with the system for awhile, we decided it wouldn't be a good game for us. Below are some of the reasons why you should give Contact a try, and the core reasons why we didn't decide on playing it.

The Good

Contact is basically X-COM the game. You play the role of an OMEGA operative hoping to fight off an alien invasion by shooting aliens and researching their tech to shoot aliens more effectively. Between skirmishes you will also be managing an entire base of operations to help you get an edge over the invaders.

Characters are created using a point build system. You pay for your attributes, your skills, as well as special traits ("I'm very educated", "I'm a junkie", etc.), biomods, gear and so on. Everything comes from the same pool of points, but you also have some restrictions on how many points you can spend on what so you don't end up with unbalanced builds.

The same character creation process is also used for making more unusual characters - you can play as an alien, a full blown robot, and you even use the same approach to making dog companions if you're a dog handler character. The system is very neat and looks rather balanced.

You can start the game as a low-tech tachikoma

It seems that the game is focused on the players having a larger roster of characters, just like in X-com. To maintain and balance that, we have the Base Management Simulation component. It basically boils down to the players managing a budget of a base - hiring staff, building new buildings and upgrading them. While it might sound daunting, it is really streamlined and should be approachable for a lot of groups (then again, I enjoy spreadsheets in space, so take it with a grain of salt ;) ). Each mission feeds funds into BMS on top of a monthly budget, so the players should have plenty of funds to make their base their own and outfit their troops with some good gear.

Now, the best gear in the game is initially locked off. While the players have access to futuristic tech like robots, lasers and cybernetic implants, there is another level of gear they can unlock over the course of the game. This is accomplished through Research Projects. Just like in X-com, the players gather some alien bits and bobs, hire some researchers and in the next fiscal quarter they too can be angels of death clad in power armour. The game doesn't feature a research tree, but the available projects should feel rewarding to the group without feeling repetitive.

You too could be this awesome!

So with the characters ready and geared up, the military industrial complex humming along and the research lab going, the players should be in for some great fun, right? Well, not exactly...

The Bad

Let's say you want to shoot an alien with a burst from your slag gun. How complicated can that be you might ask? Well...

You take your weapon you want to use, check its firing mode to determine how many Action Points you have to spend to use it. You take your skill with using the weapon, apply weapon's quality (good guns are easier to shoot), your damage modifier, add some situational modifiers (light level, size of opponent, etc.). Determine the distance to the target and apply distance penalty. If the enemy is behind cover, apply twice the percentage of their body that is behind cover as a negative modifier. If you are aiming, apply a modifier based on the limb you're targeting. That's roughly your to-hit chance. You roll your die and you hit! Congrats, now let's figure out the damage you do...

You used AP ammo, so you do Ballistic Damage. The target has Ballistic Armour, but luckily you ignore half of it thanks to AP ammo. You take the Armour amount and subtract that amount from your Ballistic Damage. Whatever is left is applied as Damage, after you reduce it by 10% because AP ammo. Whatever was soaked by Ballistic Armour gets converted to Bashing Impact Damage, but luckily enough, the enemy also has Impact Amour! We subtract that Armour value from the Damage. We have some more Impact Damage still remaining, but luckily our body is resilient against this damage - we subtract our Mass score from the Damage - whatever gets subtracted is converted to Fatigue. Apply the remaining overflow Damage.

Now, do this all over again for every other bullet in the burst! Oh, and by the way - with each bullet fired apply a negative modifier based on the difference between weapon's minimum strength requirements and character's Strength. Oh, and only the first bullet in a burst is aimed, so for other ones roll a random location.

If a character takes too much damage their limbs can get crippled and you get some extra effects. If you hit the same location again the limb can get re-crippled. With wounds piling on you get negative modifiers to hit based on those wounds and your Pain Tolerance. The same goes for Fatigue and E. Tolerance. Oh and shotguns have a spread cone.

Congrats, after a few paragraphs you have finished playing one character's action. Now repeat this for every character and enemy, multiply that by the length of the encounter and you have one session's worth of math. Now repeat this every session from day one until the aliens are stopped. This was so tedious I spend a few weeks trying to streamline it with the use of Google Sheets and those still needed an operations manual.

This is the main reason why Contact may be one of the best worst RPGs you will never play - the game is a faithful conversion of the X-COM game into the RPG format that expects you to simulate with dice and spreadsheets what the PC would simulate for you in the background. I know perhaps one or two people that would tolerate this and could bear through this complexity, but I wouldn't want to subject less hardcore members of our group to this.

Now, there is another major gripe with an X-COM style game and that is the variety of encoutners you could have in the game. Contact is focused on sessions that boil down to "go shoot aliens". Whether you're dealing with a crashed UFO, aliens invading a city, some bigger crashed UFO, an alien base or what have you - bullets will be flying and aliens will be dying. Sure, you can have a beach episode where the characters are just interacting. You can have a session where the characters are negotiating with the locals, but there is only so much you can progress the campaign before you go shoot the aliens again for their loot and corpses. So while the Base Management Simulation encourages you to have a longer running game, you will be running the same types of missions on repeat. Variety is good for longevity (as discussed before), and this game doesn't seem to have it.

The most interesting scenarios we could've think of to run with this game were either "a private 80's style corporation finds a Stargate and they explore alien worlds to loot and sell the R&D to fund themselves while trying to keep the military from snooping around", or "a private military corporation is sitting in the Middle East while the aliens are invading. The local powers are engaged in a Syria-like conflict with multiple groups being influenced by multiple foreign powers. Try not to take sides in the conflict while you have to trade arms for alien crash sites and scrap.". While either of those would make for a more compelling game, they would probably still not have enough varied content to carry a longer game.

Conclusions

Contact is a game with a number of great systems. The character generation appears to be balanced between normal humans, full on robots and aliens. The Base Management Simulation and Research Projects are a cool concept that gives the players an overarching goal and rewards to work towards.

At the same time, the game is too simulation-heavy to be enjoyable. The combat has so many variables it can take a long time to properly execute a single round, let alone a larger engagement. The game concept itself doesn't lend itself to a long campaign either - the system appears to be focused on one type of story being played in many variations.

Overall, I would recommend checking Contact for the Base Management Simulation metagame alone if it's a component you're interested in adding to your game. However, I can't recommend it as a game as is due to its overly complicated mechanics.

Game sessions and monomyths

Recently my roleplaying group has finished playing a system and we started to discuss some theories of roleplaying games. We discussed a few topics, one of which I discussed last time, but one idea that stood out to me was the realisation that most game sessions, not just the overall story arch, follow the structure of the monomyth.

Let me explain.

Monomyth - the hero's journey

Monomyth, also known as hero's journey is a template of a category of tales that involve a hero who goes on an adventure, in a decisive crisis wins a victory, and then comes home changed or transformed. You can see the monomyth structure appear in all sorts of stories, from Lord of the Rings and the Neverending story, A New Hope and the Matrix.

While this structure often applies to the overarching story of the hero (Link facing off against Ganon to save Zelda, Vault Dweller going into the wasteland to save Vault 13, etc.), the same pattern can also be seen in an individual adventure.

Monomyth adventure

Here is a typical chart of what the hero's journey looks like:

Now let's compare it to a typical adventure you can find in say, D&D:

1) Call to adventure - the party finds a map leading to the nearest dungeon, they decide to investigate.
2) Assistance - the group gathers its supplies and gears up.
3) Departure - the adventurers set off to explore the dungeon and they venture into it.
4) Trials - the heroes have to face off against monsters that infest the dungeon, deal with traps and so on.
5) Approach - after clearing most of the dungeon, the party approaches the final chamber.
6) Crisis - the group has to fight the biggest baddest monster in the dungeon.
7) Treasure - after defeating the main baddie, the adventurers plunder the dungeon's treasury.
8) Result - dungeon is cleared, time to head back.
9) Return - the party returns to the town laden with their spoils.
10) New Life - the adventurers celebrate their victory, enjoying their newfound wealth.
11) Resolution - the heroes reflect on how the journey has changed them and what new adventures lay ahead of them as they look forward to the next adventure and the next turn of the monomyth cycle.

The same cycle applies whether you're D&D adventurers exploring a dungeon, shadowrunners hacking into a corporate system, or lightsabre-wielding scifi ronins blowing up a space station.

The overarching story of your campaign might be a large monomyth where characters go from being nobodies to saving the world, but each adventure along the way could also share a similar cycle.

Circles within circles.

Finite vs infinite games

Our roleplaying group has tried a number of systems in the last few months. We've done Godbound, The Veil, the new editions of Vampire, Mage and Werewolf, and we were recently getting ready to play some Star Trek and Star Without Number. While figuring out what to play next, we got into a discussion about some theories of roleplay games. One of the more interesting topics discussed was trying to figure out which games could be played virtually in perpetuity, and which games have finite lifespans. This is the topic I would like to discuss today.

Finite games

So, what makes a game finite? Basically, if there is a point where the group says "we have done everything there is to do, there is nothing else left", you know it's finished. While you could hit some reset button or thread water with some new plots that aren't a continuation of the previous adventures, that's not the point. After you defeat the biggest evil, save the world, ascend to godhood and all that, the story is done, anything you add after that won't live up to the previous accomplishments.

Exalted might be one of the better examples of a game that is set up in such a way as to be a finite game. In Exalted, you play the titular Exalted, a hero imbued with the power of a deity. Your destiny is to achieve great feats, and the world is your birthright as ordained by on high. In the default setting, the world is in a low point, rebuilding itself slowly after it was nearly destroyed centuries ago. There is a power vacuum that formed a few years back after the disappearance of the Scarlet Empress, ruler of the biggest empire in the setting. Now with the reappearance of Solar Exalted, the world is at the dawn of the new era. More likely than not, your player characters will strive to take over this world and forge a new empire.

The setting is finite for a number of reasons. First off, the final goal is clear and achievable - your characters will want to conquer the world. Even if that's not the initial goal you set out to accomplish, you will gravitate towards it because of the second reason - the characters in the setting are meant to be entitled. They are the inheritors of the ancient heroes that saved the world from the tyrannical Titans - every creature, human and god in existence owes them an eternal debt, and their birthright has been proclaimed by the highest of the high gods - The Unconquered Sun. All they have to do is enforce it, which they can do because of the third reason - the characters get very strong very fast. While early on they might have problems surviving against stronger humans, they will soon blossom into the god killers they were always meant to be. The Exalted are the strongest force in the setting, having beaten an entire race of eldritch beings that created the world into submission and putting them all into the prison made out of their own flesh.

Because the characters are so strong, they become entitled. Because they are entitled, they will set out to conquer the setting. Because the setting can be conquered, the game has a natural end to it - it is finite. Once you conquer the world, assert yourself as the top dog of the top dogs, there is nothing you can add to the game to make it more meaningful, and the story ends. Our group played through that in 5 seasons of Princes of the Universe.

The same can be said about Godbound, a game where your end game is literally ascending onto the throne of god and ruling the entire world. To some extent, Chronicles of Darkness are similar - whether you are a Vampire aiming to become or puppet the Prince of your city, or a Mage aiming to achieve ultimate power over magic, there is only so much that can happen in the story before it reaches its natural conclusion.

There are a few other ways a game could be finite without having to be a result of power inflation. The game could be repetitive by its very nature. For example, the Shadowrun game to an extent is a variation on the same formula on repeat - you run a shadowrun. Sure, your guns get bigger, your enemies get tougher and all that, but in its core - run 20 is comparable to run 1. In a superhero genre, the story is generally about punching minions until you punch your way to the main villain, which you then punch and save the day...

Now, having the finite games in mind, let's figure out what games might need to do in order to potentially go on indefinitely.

Infinite games

Infinite games are those games that you could run potentially for years and not really get bored of them. You want them to have some staying power, a variety of things to do.

Our GM for example feels the Ravenloft setting might be an example of something that is conducive to infinite games. In Ravenloft, you play your D&D style adventurers in a gothic horror setting. There are dark powers moving in the shadows and mysteries abound. Foul creatures stalking the land, powerful evil lurking in their dark towers. Life is harsh, virtue is rare.

In other words, you have a rich setting, filled with endless mysteries and an attitude in which whatever good the players might do, it will be noticeable. The characters don't have to set out to defeat the biggest evil and to save everyone. There might not even be a way to accomplish that. However, if they set out to help one person, or a village, or even act virtuous in the uncaring world, they are already an improvement. Moreover, since the characters can only get so powerful, there is no real expectation that they will be able to face off against the biggest horrors or even become very significant players in the grand scheme of things.

On the flip side, you might look at games that mimic the episodic format of a TV show. Star Trek Adventures is a good example of that - the game sessions feel like episodes of Star Trek. In STA, the players take the tole of Starfleet officers. They are not just some low-level redshirts mind you - the PCs start off at the level of Kirk, Picard or Spock. They are every bit as capable, trained and heroic. The main thrust of the game doesn't come from overcoming bigger and bigger problems, but with immersing oneself in the universe of the show. The players can set out to explore new worlds, deal with deep philosophical problems, or try to make the best of a bad situation.

From session to sessions, the characters don't advance as much as you'd expect from a traditional RPG. After a session, the character might change, reflecting their changing values. The growth happens very infrequently and isn't that substantial in comparison to the power level the characters start at.

While this on one hand sounds like the problem mentioned in the past section where the game should be essentially the same in session 1 and 20, it solves the problem of power creep. The variety of stories that can be told with the system and the setting should be wide enough not to fall into a repetitive cycle of gameplay hopefully.

For another example, I think Stars Without Number might be a good candidate for an infinite game system. In the setting, the players play a group of space adventurers in the vein of Firefly. The world is recovering from a calamity that fractured the galaxy into disconnected sectors. After a long period of isolation, many new cultures formed and took to the stars. There are mysteries to explore, ancient ruins to plunder, and loot to find.

What helps the longevity is the sandbox nature of the game. The core rulebook is packed with ways of generating random planets, there are supplements for random adventures, and even books for running a specific style of game (space trader, naval officer, merc, espionage). Moreover, the game encourages the GM to simulate Factions - large interstellar entities that will struggle with one another in the sector (example of these Faction Turns being streamed). All of this is poised to create many opportunities for the players to get involved with the setting.

Lastly, there is only so much a single character can do on its own in the setting. This goes well with one of the philosophies expressed in the core book - "don't keep the players starving". If the group gets a lucky break and earns a bank, they can't really make themselves overpowered. There are no all-powerful artefacts in the setting, there is only so much gear you can buy and carry, starships are still very expensive and require a large crew, and if all else fails - flaunting your wealth is sure to invite someone else to try taking it from you. A very successful character might be an admiral of a fleet, a factor of a merchant guild, or perhaps a ruler of a planet. They are still a single, mortal person that is as likely to get stabbed as they were before. They might be better defended, but they have also became a bigger target. Or the characters might end up as a full-time for-hire adventurer like Han Solo, working with a trusted friend, travelling the stars and making a living through random jobs.

So to sum all up, here are some factors that might help a game reach the infinite game potential, based on the examples above:

• The characters need to be small fish in a big pond - they shouldn't grow too powerful over the course of the game.
• The world needs to be bigger than the players - it shouldn't wait for them to come in and solve everything, but move on its own naturally.
• Focus on mysteries, but keep them contained - solving a mystery is always enticing, and they can be very varied. However, not all of the mysteries should be connected into some giant conspiracy - sometimes a problem happens in isolation and that's fine.
• Vary the problems - sometimes you want to focus on combat, other times on a social problem, and yet another time on some deductive mystery. By keeping the problems the PCs have to overcome varied, it prevents the games from feeling stale.

With these guidelines in mind, you should be able to run a very lengthy game. After all, while short games or one-shots may be fun, sometimes you want to keep coming back to the same setting and player over and over again.