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 Nightshift: VTSW (Veterans of the Supernatural Wars) is a love letter to the gritty, urban fantasy horror of the 80s and 90s. If you grew up watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The X-Files, or Supernatural, or if you spent your nights playing the classic World of Darkness, this game is aimed squarely at your nostalgia.It’s designed by Jason Vey and published by Elf Lair Games. Here is the Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

Hello friends!

The preorder for Middarmark 2E is now live! It’s a huge expansion for Torchbearer.

• 45 new denizens, creatures and monsters!
• 28 new settlements
• 4 new maps
• 3 new classes: the elf dream witch, human sea raider and jotunn salt heart!
• 1 new stock: the jotunn!
• Rules for forming clans, hero cults and adventuring bands!
• Rules for ritual boasts, grudges, feuds and lawsuits (including judicial duels!)

Check it out!

Tsutomu NiheiThe following suggestions for dungeon adventure rpgs may not be entirely novel, but they certainly aren't common in published rpg dungeons, and I feel like they have potential.

Master of the Dungeon

Rpg dungeons sometimes have bosses, but mostly they seem to sit and wait for dungeoneers to get to them. In other media, they sometimes take a more active role taunting the protagonists or bedeviling them in various ways before the ultimate conflict. While this might become tedious, I feel like when used judiciously, it could be an interesting change of pace.

Time Trial

Despite the emphasis on resource management in some dungeon games, I don't think I've seen a dungeon that opened and close on a certain schedule. This is the case in all the "bauble"-based vaults in Reynolds Revenger series and forecasting the opens and how long they will last is an important job for looters. The anime adaptation of I Left My A-Rank Party... also has some dungeons for which time is a factor, as I recall.

A dungeon with strict time limits, in addition to adding pressure to move quickly, would also force characters to have some strategy about what they explore and loot. Do you try for the big-ticket items immediately or focus on quick exits with lower value items?

A Team Sport

While adventuring guilds aren't ubiquitous in settings, they're an established element. What I don't think I have seen in a rpg setting, though, is competing guilds or organizations (larger than individual parties). Inspiration could be found in the chariot racing factions (demes) of Byzantium or Roman collegia. 

Welcome back to my 40-year retrospective as a gamer.

If the early years were defined by beautiful chaos, 1993 was the pivot. At that time, my gaming schedule was highly irregular. We’d get together whenever we could, play whatever game was popular at the time (with mainstays like Rifts and AD&D 2nd Edition), and rarely play longer than a few sessions before moving on and rolling up new characters.

I quickly realized I wasn’t enjoying this scattered approach.

I sat down and seriously considered what I loved most about tabletop role-playing games. I knew I preferred being the Game Master. I loved long-form campaign play where characters grow and weave a massive story together. I wanted a regular schedule—weekly, if possible—and to stick to one system to facilitate long-term play, rather than constantly chasing the hot new game.

Playing in a world of my own creation was key to this. Running a homebrew campaign was a form of creative expression that kept me deeply invested. I figured that if I set a firm date and time and stuck with it, people would show up. I also hoped it would naturally pare down the increasingly large, rotating crew of players I was managing.

The Metro Comics Crew

By 1993, I had been working at Metro Comics for two years. It was my part-time job while I went to college. Metro Comics in San Patricio Plaza is a comic and game store (and yes, it is still there!). Back then, they had a great game selection, carrying the big-name releases of the day: lots of TSR, White Wolf, Palladium, and a few smaller indie games.

Through Metro Comics, I made many new friends, and my close-knit table grew. Gamers I met through my work at the store—like Luis Alvarado, José Fernando, and Pierre Anthony—pulled up chairs alongside my high school classmates. (Fun fact: José is still a regular in my current weekly gaming group, 32 years later!)

Circa 1996 or 1997 (from L to R): Roberto (me), Gilberto, Luis Alvarado, José Fernando,
Luis Miranda, Pierre Anthony, and Misael

We also connected with friends of friends who played at the University of Puerto Rico. Because I’ve always had trouble saying “no” to people who want to play, I typically ran TTRPGs for groups of eight or more. To this day, I consider six players a “regular-sized” group; anything smaller feels too small.

Circa 2000 (from L to R): Karlo, Luis Alvarado, Roberto (me), Pierre Anthony, José Fernando, Piwie

When I decided to put my new long-term campaign plan into practice, I invited the players I thought would best mesh with the style: a mix of high school friends, longtime players, and the Metro crew. It took a bit of shifting, but we found our rhythm. In no time, we established a core of six or seven long-term players, with a few others who came and went as real life demanded.

The Games We Played

The changes were a massive success. Over the next 13 years, I ran 12 distinct campaigns. Three of those were multi-year epics (averaging 2 years), with 8 shorter campaigns interspersed, ranging from 6 months to 1 year. We played all of these from beginning to end. (The only exception was a 9-month play-by-email campaign that fizzled out when work ate up my free time).

What did we play? Mostly D&D. While the rest of the world went all-in on the World of Darkness in the 90s, I stuck hard to D&D and fantasy. We played a lot of AD&D 2nd Edition, and when D&D 3rd Edition came out, we eventually made the change.

We also dabbled in variations of Big Eyes, Small Mouth, the Silver Age Sentinels system, and its Tri-Stat dX versions. Alternity was a short but incredibly important game for me during this era. I also kept going back to Palladium to try and make the system work for us; aside from Heroes Unlimited, I was growing weary of Rifts and their other titles.

Gaming in a Bubble

Because my group was so large—mostly friends and friends of friends—my gaming circle became incredibly insular. I left college, started working, got married, and essentially played in my own little bubble.

I was completely disconnected from the larger Puerto Rican gaming community. When Dragon magazine stopped publishing, and no new AD&D 2nd Edition books were coming out, I noticed, but it didn’t affect my table. We just kept playing with the books we had.

I wasn’t a recluse; I was online, but my internet use was focused elsewhere. I started my Master’s degree and wasn’t heavily involved in wider fandoms, TTRPG forums, or gaming news. I was perfectly content just creating maps, writing lore, and running my homebrew world.

Mind you, gaming was still a massive pillar of my life. The night before my first wedding in 1998, what did I do? I played a TTRPG session all about friendship with my regular players.

But life inevitably brings changes. This era saw me finish college, start a professional career, get married, and eventually go through separation and divorce.

After my divorce, things shifted again. I found myself with more free time, so I started playing with a more varied group of people, expanded my circle of regular gamers, and slowly began to reconnect with the wider gaming community around me.

Circa 2002 or 2003 (from L to R): José Fernando, Piwie, Luis Alvarado, Luis Lao, Roberto (me), Karlo, Pierre Anthony, Victor, Luis Lao, José Fernando, Karlo, Piwie

Then, in 2006, some friends mentioned they were heading to Gen Con the following year and invited me to tag along. I said yes.

But that is the beginning of a whole new era, and the subject of my next post.

The Stats (1993–2006)

• Total Campaigns: 12
• Years Active: 20 (Consecutive play from 186 to 2006)
• MVP Systems: AD&D 2nd Edition & D&D 3rd Edition / 3.5

How were these years for you? Did you ever go through a phase where you played in a “gaming bubble,” completely disconnected from the wider community or what was happening online? And during the 90s, were you a D&D loyalist like me, or did you get swept up in the World of Darkness craze?

 In the spirit of classic Sword & Sorcery, these encounters prioritize peril, atmosphere, and moral ambiguity. These aren't just "monsters to kill"; they are fragments of a dying world where the environment is as dangerous as the steel in a mercenary's hand.This blog post picks right up from Kull era Encounters & Treasures Table For a Sword & Sorcery Castles & Crusades Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

By Stephen Smith
Mister Smith Design
OSE
Levels 2-4

Exaggerated tales of the mammoth ship have spread like wildfire. But now, the truth is undeniable. The wreckage looms—larger than any ship has the right to be. A virtual leviathan of wood and steel, even in its half submerged condition. Its origin is a mystery—but no matter where it came from, it’s here now and ripe for picking. A colossal siren’s call for those brave or foolish enough to salvage its secrets—before it is lost to the waves forever.

This forty page adventure details a shipwreck and its environs, with about sixty locations in all. Layout and formatting are admirable, and as a standard dungeon it would be ok. It tries the faction thing but that doesn’t come off well, nor does the fantastical nature, from the use of plain language?

This thing start out great. IN the local seafaring bar there’s an old cristy dude telling others of the shipwreck he just saw. A HUGE ship, at least three times the size of a normal large ship, washed up and broken on a nearby atoll. A CURSED stol I tell ye’s! This is about a column of read-aloud, in italics, but it’s also fantastic. It reeks of crusty sea dude and bar folk. There are some nice in voice rumors to go with this. This is the old The Wizard is Dead We Better Get To The Tower First To Loot It thing. There’s a nice little bit about getting to the wreck, handled in about five bullet points. Perfect to spur a DM on with ideas for running this portion. It’s augmented by a decent little NPC description for four or so of the townies that you might majorly interact with to guide you, buy a bat, etc. “Speaks in a low rasp, never removes his salt-crusted

oilskin coat. Grizzled loudmouth cuss when drunk. Claims salvage rights (unjustified).” Just enough there to get things going for the DM, and thus the party. The old salt who claims salvage right, the young dude obsessed with the wreck, the widow in possession of a boat to rent who bargains shrewdly. The town doesn’t go on and on, in fact there’s nothing to it except that read-aloud, the NPC decisions, rumors, and five little bullet points with some ideas for the DM to run this section. Fucking focused man!

We move on to the atoll, with five locations and again a few general notes in bullet form for getting aboard the ship and the island. Perfect. There’s also a small section of sea caves on the atoll, with another ten or so locations, and then the GIANT ship, broken up, also, with about forty more. The caves and ship do NOT get these little notes, to the detriment of these sections, although there is a good little “what you see”section, bodies hanging from yardarms and the like. 

The descriopns of the rooms are inconsistent. In one play we get “The chamber is dim and musty, with several old stacked crates and barrels. Faded scrawlings mark the containers. A mob of aged, pus-swollen cadavers are scattered around the area—along with one body that looks freshly torn apart (the curious pirate).” Nice summary, pus-swollen cadavers is always a good sign in a room description. Nicely evocative. And then in another place “Broken shelves held the shattered jars and bottles now decorating the floor. An alembic, soggy parchment, and other alchemical tools rest on a wooden desk.”  A little more facts based and less interesting in the word choice. Some of the descriptions mention who is in the room and some do not, just listing below the description something like “5 pirates.” This is maddening, the inconsistent nature. Some are terse and easy to follow and some go to great lengths to describe the trivia of the room. There is, after the text description, a nice little bullet point list of special/interesting things/facts/DM notes, which provides a nice summary for the DM. 

And then, the factions. This was a pirate ship, magic thing happened, ship got big. So we’re dealing with things on a larger than normal scale, 2-3 times or so, but that never really comes across in the text. The ship has a few monsters in it, and the helmsman is hiding out in it in fear of being hung by the crew because of the accident. But, more importantly, there gnoll pirates are now in charge and have the human pirates locked away below decks. A group of pirates were also taken away during a raid by deep ones (being now hidden away in the sea caves), except these are good guy deep ones, who are trying to save the pirates and atone for the sins of their relatives. Except they are alien minded deep ones, the pirates are scared and the caves are dangerous. 

And NONE of this really comes through in the text. Oh, you get essentially what I just told you in not many more words than I just used. But the encounter descriptions, the set ups, the guiding text, it’s just not present anywhere. And, there is NOTHING here that makes anyone seem like a pirate. Or even a seafarer, other than like two of the townfolk. They don’t act like them, they are not described like them. There’s just nothing in the way of specificity in looks or actions that there. “Pirate”. Great. It’s just maddening. The ship is complex, with hatches and the like, but that is downplayed as well. 

I like the set up here. The townfolks are great, the consequences are fucking great. Rescue the pirates? They tear up the town in celebration. “Tension is in the air. Stalls stand half-empty. Merchants are wary. A woman sobs quietly beside an overturned cart. Blood darkens the cobblestones. “They are out of control, some- thing needs to be done!” There are five or so of these and they provide excellent springboards for some consequences. The core of this, though, feels weak. Maybe because it really is just looting? But, then, why play up the factions if they don’t really exist, or do anything, if I can even call “this is a faction” playing up a faction. Didn’t need a lot here, but those five bullets for the town and atoll really worked wonders, The caves, ship, and factions could have used those also. Maybe that, instead of the pages dedicated to nine mens morris?

This is $6 at DriveThru. The review is fifteen pages. You can see from it how one might get excited. But then the ship, which is where the preview lets off, is where things are going downhill fast. Hinted at, I think, by the sea caves

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/541667/the-wake-of-the-brawny-witch?1892600

It’s dawned on me recently that I’m simply not reading enough these days: books, graphics novels, name it. I used to ingest words faster than Red Bull, and for the last year or so, I’ve definitely slowed down. All that
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The post Me Wants Read appeared first on Looking For Group.

I’m sick today – some minor sort of dread lurgy the main symptoms of which seems to be low self-esteem and the overwhelming urge to lay around glumly watching the Olympics. It’s a raging snow-ice storm outside and I am so sick of winter that I can scarcely look out the window, so I thought I’d break up the misery of the day by telling you a little story.

A little over a week ago I got a phone call that someone had an emergency (minor) and needed my help. I immediately booked a flight to the (even more) frozen (even further) North and set about packing my knitting. I’d be gone a week, I was going somewhere really cold, and to my way of thinking this somehow equalled a metric tonne of knitting that I’d be doing. I put my Self-Imposed-Sock-Club socks in there, then I put the shawl I’m working on in there, then I went and got all the extra yarn for the shawl and added that. Then I frowned and fetched a little baby set that I’m working on and have barely started and laid that on top. This I thought, this was a decent amount of knitting. Loads really. Then I opened instagram saw the Canada Mittens and thought – I should make those. I should make those right now. Actually (as the Olympics flickered on the screen near me) I realized that all the knitting in my suitcase was trash and I should make several pairs of those right now. Lucky for me the yarn shop that made the pattern and had the yarn (Briggs & Little sport, the OG Canadian brand for yarn) is nearby-ish and they have been super quick to ship in the past, and so I ordered a ball of each of the red and white, then paused… hovered my hand over the cart to checkout online and… ordered more. 2 red and 2 white. That’s lots. I’m good. I added a little note that said something like “Quickest possible delivery please” noted that I was leaving on Sunday (this was Friday and let me assure you this seemed really reasonable to me) and clicked send.

Almost immediately someone awesome emailed and said no. It was too late, there’s no delivery pickup on weekends so the soonest they could mail it was Monday. Did I want to come get it, they asked? I did. I did very much want to come and get it, but Galt House of Yarn is in Cambridge and I was in Toronto and Joe had the car and so it was a no. I thought about it for a minute (I cannot stress to you how much I wanted this yarn right away) and then asked the next best thing. Could they ship it to my destination- send it North? They could – swiftly the shipping address was changed, I was assured it would arrive there at the end of the week, and I set about maturely coping with the disappointment of waiting a week for yarn I wanted right now.

Apparently I was both terrible at this and transparent about it, because the next day (Saturday) Joe offered to drive to the shop and pick it up for me. “Really?” I asked “No…” he said “I’m just trying to torture you.” That was a joke it turned out, and Joe left for the yarn shop in the afternoon. For my part, I took Elliot skating and sent a quick email to the yarn shop telling them that my glorious spouse was on his way to get the order. A little bit later – when Joe was pretty much in the parking lot of the shop, they emailed back to say that my glorious spouse was no match for their intrepid shipping staff and that they had already shipped it – a staff member choosing to do me a solid by taking it to Canada Post themselves so it would have a head start getting up North.

I sat there, and then I laughed out loud. I’d been defeated by fabulousness and fantastic people who were so dedicated to getting me my yarn that I couldn’t have it, and in that moment I snapped, and told Joe to get more. “Just get it” I texted. “Just tell them to give you a skein of red and a skein of white just like the two red and two white they shipped. Just say that.”

Now Joe’s been a knitting adjacent spouse for a long time, so he didn’t say anything. He didn’t say “Hold on, you’ve already got this yarn coming could you perhaps … wait a few days?” He didn’t say “How many pairs of these mittens are you fixing to make Steph?” He didn’t say “My bride, my sweet – are you sure?” He said nothing. He especially didn’t say anything when after reflecting for a few seconds, I texted again and said “Double that. Just tell them to sell you what they shipped.” Moments later Joe walked into that yarn shop and said that, and you know what? The yarn shop didn’t say anything about it either.

He brought home the yarn, I cast on my mittens, putting two balls into my carry on, and put the other two balls (I wound them) into my suitcase – even though there would be four balls arriving in a few days. Nobody said a single word about that either. I got on the plane, I stayed there for a week before coming home with this much of ONE mitten knit and pretty much all eight skeins intact.

Further to that, I do not feel like this was a learning opportunity and I am happy with all my choices.

Peace out. Go Canada Go.

PS – probably worth mentioning that there are one or two spots left at the Spring Retreat at Port Ludlow in a few weeks, if you’d like to talk about yarn in person, and if you happen to be more of the day-tripper type, there’s room in Debbi’s ace class where you make a custom dummy out of ducktape and an old teeshirt. email to info@strungalong.ca if you’re the type.

I'm reading DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I'm looking at comics that were published on February 21, 1985.

Infinity, Inc. #14: Member last month when I said we were promised we would see more form young Todd McFarlane soon? Well, here it is as he becomes the regular penciler on the book with DeZuniga inking. McFarlane's layouts are interesting with a lot of sort of illumination flourish around the panels, but also a lot of white space to no good effect. Soon after the crew returns from the tropical island getaway, Infinity, Inc. is asked to provide security at a concert, where an alien being called Chroma appears and sings an enrapturing song of birth, life, and death. Only Obsidian, shrouded in his shadows, is unaffected, and he's able to cause Chroma to leave somehow. Unfortunately, Chroma's song was recorded and may spread.

Batman and the Outsiders #21: This was an issue I bought as a kid. Barr is joined by 3 different artists for 3 Outsider solo stories. One has a good gimmick and the other two are decent. The best one will turn up in the Best of DC anthology and is a Katana story with art by Jerome Moore. Katana thwarts a gang trying to snatch an artifact (a vase or urn) being delivered to a museum. The gimmick here is that there is no dialogue, but the action is commented on loosely by the radio commentary on a football game.
The Geo-Force story has art by Trevor Von Eeden and has the hero taking on a mechanical shark at an aquarium park. The final story, with art by Randall, sees Black Lightning squaring off with Ghetto-Blaster a villain who has positioned himself as vigilante, knocking down the tenets of slum lords to the approval of the community, but he's really only doing it as a cover for a search for stashed loot from a heist.

Blue Devil #11: It's time for the Blue Devil movie's Hollywood premiere, but despite the superhero celebrity Cassidy has been catapulted into, Werner still isn't happy. What's worse, Blue Devil's trident seems to have a mind of its own, and Shockwave returns for revenge. He and his henchmen attack the theater at the screening. Meanwhile, Jason Blood has sensed a mystic evil rising and turns into Etrigan to track it down. Blue Devil finally defeats Shockwave with the aid of the trident, but after he does so he starts behaving strangely and announces that he is ready to "destroy the world of mortal men."

Conqueror of the Barren Earth #4: Cohn and Randall come to the conclusion of the series. Zhengla's army, with Jinal is primary strategist gets the business of moving against D'Roz, but only after a ritual with psychedelic Mulge mushrooms reveals Yisrah as one of the Old One's of that flying city and a spy. Through trickery and the Old Ones' overconfidence, they take the city, and as soon as they do Jinal betrays her lord and consort, shooting him in the back with the last shot of her blaster, paying him back for the humiliation and abuse she suffered initially. Her duplicity had been telegraphed, but only lightly, so it's a nice dramatic turn. The dying Zhengla remarks that the oracle had said only that he would conquer not that he would rule. He charges Jinal with taking up his dream of creating a new civilization on The Barren Earth. That's exactly what she intends do.
Now as ruler, she takes the Mugle mushrooms again and sees a vision of her forging the united Earth into a force to take into the stars and against the Qlov, but at that point Yisrah seems to speak with her and reveal a hidden truth: the Harashashan, Mulge, and Qlov are all human genetic variants created by the Old Ones to create groups that could survive on the changed earth. When the Old Ones showed the spacefaring humans what they had done, they rejected them, and when the Qlov achieved space travel on their own, a war broke out between the branches of humanity. Jinal realizes she must repair this rift.
Jinal goes looking for Renna and Skinner, only to find that a massive human starship has appeared in the skies over D'Roz. Her rescuers, if that is what they are now, have come at last. Unfortunately, this sort of "season finale" is the last we get of the Barren Earth. 

G.I. Combat #277: The Haunted Tank story by Kanigher/Glanzman turns on Stuart's wrestling with his decision to spare civilian casualties that leads the infantry to take heavy losses. As usual, he puts himself and his men in the thick of it, infiltrating and Italian town to get the element of surprise on the occupying Germans, earning him and his men commemoration in the town's church stain glass windows.
There are two World War II stories. One is about a PT boat captain and is by Kanigher and Catan. The other is about Bedouins turning on their supposed German allies and is by Kashdan/Infante. Finally, there's a "Bravos of Vietnam" story with the group captured and put in a Viet Cong P.O.W. camp, until they manage to make an escape. 

Green Lantern #187: Well, the Wein and Gibbons run didn't amount to much, though they did introduce some new elements (namely the Predator and Hal giving up the ring) later teams will have to deal with. This issue is a fill-in by Kupperberg and Willingham before the new, regular team starts. After Rich's funeral, Carol and Hal both note the distance in their relationship, but neither knows the cause. It isn't helped when Carol finds the Predator in her house. He again declares his love, and Hal shows up to fight him, but gets beaten up. Meanwhile, Bruce Gordon decides to leave Ferris Aircraft, and Stewart as Green Lantern flubs the rescue of a space shuttle (though it turns out all right, no thanks to him). Frustrated by his mistakes, he goes to the Oans to request training, and they assign Katma Tui to help out.
There's a backup Tales of the Green Lantern Corps by Baron with atypically cartoony art from Rogers. It's the story of a mom Green Lantern that uses a bubble blown with her kid's toy to escape a yellow energy bubble.

New Teen Titans #8: Wolfman and García-López/Tanghal open with Thia having pretty much conquered Olympus. She takes a break then to explain to Lilith how she met her father (the former head of Sun Publishing) then killed him once Lilith was conceived and took over the business. Lilith was spirited away by a nurse, and for a long time, Thia thought she was dead until her powers activated. 
Meanwhile, the Titans find out about Thia, then travel to Tartarus to enlist the aid of the Titan gods and team up with them to defeat some giants allied to Thia. They vow to help their teen namesakes against the renegade titaness.

Sgt. Rock #400: In the main story by Kanigher and Gonzales, Rock takes shelter in a cave from a fire started by a group of SS out to kill him. He thinks about the individual (named) members of Easy, how they each have beaten the odds and get on going at one time or another. He feels like he can't do any less. Of course, he makes it out alive and reunites with his unit.
The second story by Harris/Wagner has a GI taking inspiration from the Superman comic he's derided by his sergeant for reading. A humor strip by Eric Vincent winds out the issue.

Saga of Swamp Thing #36: It's interesting contrasting this title with Flash, both of which are decompressed in their storytelling relative to the other titles of the era, but in different ways. Bates/Infantino take a rather soap opera approach where important moments are delayed by intervening incidents and cliffhanger endings. Moore and Bissette move the story along in more of a modern streaming drama sort of way. It's mostly character stuff that delays plot points and the cliffhangers tend to come after something is revealed, not just before. Swamp Thing's is the style of serial storytelling that tends to work well in compilation.
Anyway, as Swamp Thing is dying from his exposure to Nukeface and calling out to Abby for help, we spend most of the issue with a former employee with some complicity with the dumping that led to Nukeface who has also improbably come to Louisiana. His pregnant wife is inadvertently exposed to Nukeface while the police search the toxic man. Meanwhile, Abby arrives to have Swamp Thing tell her he loves her and that this body is dying, but he's going to try to enter the Green and then make a new one.

Warlord #93: I reviewed this issue here.

Who's Who #3: This issue features Blue Beetle who has yet to actually appear in the DC Universe. We get a few Firestorm characters: Breathtaker, Bug, and Byte. There's Blue Devil and his foe, Bolt. Blackstarr is here from her story arc in the short-lived Supergirl series, but the internet informs me she's got a couple more appearances before the end of Crisis.

A new Stars Without Number (SWN) supplement dropped five days ago, and I missed it!

How could I? It’s not like any important event happened this past weekend around February 14th, or that I’ve been sick since last week… okay, maybe I have excuses. But honestly? I feel like I should turn in my fan card.

If you’ve followed me here on the blog, on social media, or if you read Part 1 of my recent posts about my current favorite TTRPGs, you know that (quoting myself from somewhere online), “I worship at the altar of Kevin Crawford.”

I am a huge fan of his corpus. There are a few TTRPG authors whose works I support in crowdfunding or buy sight unseen as soon as they are out. Kevin Crawford of Sine Nomine Publishing is one of them.

(Bruce Heard is another such creator, by the way, and he recently announced his next project for the World of Calidar. I’ll be sure to share more information on that as it becomes available. But I digress.)

The new supplement for SWN is titled Proteus Sector: A Gazetteer for Stars Without Number.

This gazetteer and rule expansion was created as part of Mr. Crawford’s latest Kickstarter campaign for a reprint of the offset edition of Stars Without Number: Revised. His Kickstarters are a masterclass in running an effective campaign: he never overpromises, communicates clearly, and is always on time—if not early.

I’ve backed 12 of his 14 Kickstarter projects. I only missed Spears of Dawn (his first, which I eventually got!) and this latest one.

Here is why I missed it: When I read that the rewards would include the Proteus Sector, I was tempted. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I already own two offset copies of SWN, plus a POD copy I got for table use. Not to mention a POD copy of the original edition. I think I own every supplement Crawford has published in print or PDF.

I couldn’t justify buying a new core book just to get the PDF of the supplement. I contacted Mr. Crawford to see if there was a reward level for the Proteus Sector alone, and he told me the book would be available as a PDF and POD on DriveThruRPG later.

True to his word, the book is available now by clicking this link. It’s an 83-page PDF for $14.99 and a softcover POD for $24.99 (which includes the PDF).

Is it worth it? Oh yeah.

A Short, Spoiler-Free Review

The book is part gazetteer, part rule expansion, and another winning entry in the Stars Without Number line.

The layout follows the classic Sine Nomine style we know and love. This book feels denser with illustrations than the core book, and the interior art is excellent and fits the tone perfectly. It includes a detailed description of a very interesting sector of space, including government structures, and every planet described gets its own image.

Kevin Crawford is all about making books usable. He provides tools to make a GM’s life easier, and this is no exception. Besides an excellent setting that continues to flesh out the default SWN universe, it includes a one-page player’s guide to the sector, plus tools and ideas on how to connect this sector to your existing campaigns. Planets include all sorts of details, adventure hooks, and NPCs. It empowers the GM rather than constraining them.

The Mechanics (The Good Stuff)

While I love the content as a source of ideas, I am a homebrewer at heart. What I really want are the rules.

Crawford’s work is renowned as a toolbox that can technically be used for any system, but I really love his version of the classic D&D B/X engine. Proteus Sector adds some great new levers to pull:

• Smuggling & Trade: It includes a simple smuggling and trade system—much simpler than the one presented in Suns of Gold. This is likely the one I would use at the table going forward.
• Augmentations: There are very interesting rules for augmenting characters and abilities that feel a lot like proto-ideas for a superhero game. (We can hope for Capes Without Number someday, can’t we?)
• Genetics: There are rules for genetically modified beings. This might finally be the tool I need to make that Buck Rogers XXVc conversion I’ve been thinking about for almost 10 years now. (Gennies Without Number, anyone?)
• Cybernetics: There are new, more powerful, almost mythical cybernetic rules. The book discusses how these differ from the main rules and how to adapt the cybernetics from Ashes Without Number for use in SWN.
• Combat: New opponents appropriate for the sector, as well as new starship systems, weapons, and rules to accommodate them within the existing starship combat framework.

One Caveat

I will admit that the cover and title design for Proteus Sector seemed off at first. I wasn’t a fan at first glance, but after reading the book, I understood the choice. It is a very evocative, certainly OSR-looking cover, but it’s my least favorite of the SWN books’ covers.

Final Verdict

I said it before, but I’ll say it again: this book is worth your time and your money.

If you are a fan of Stars Without Number, you’ll find something to use. If you want a sector to drop into your game—even if it’s not SWN—you’ll find something you can use here. I know I certainly will get a lot of mileage out of it.

I wholeheartedly recommend it.

 A Leigh Brackett-style Mars campaign for an Old-School Renaissance (OSR) game moves away from the "superheroic" feel of John Carter and toward a gritty, "Sword & Science" noir. Her Mars is a dying, dusty world where ancient civilizations are being encroached upon by cynical Earth corporations and hard-boiled mercenaries.This blog entry picks right up from OSR Mars Campaign Update :Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

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