Stars Without Number: Revised Edition

@opencharacter/swn-revised is an unofficial Open Character Format pack for the character rules of Stars Without Number: Revised Edition by Kevin Crawford (Sine Nomine Publishing), built from the game's free edition. It is for apps that build, show and play its characters with an OCF engine: attributes, backgrounds, skills, the four classes and the partial classes, foci, psionics, advancement to 10th level and beyond, saving throws, combat, System Strain, and the free edition's armor, weapons, gear and cyberware.

It is not affiliated with or endorsed by Sine Nomine Publishing. Its text comes from the free edition only, with the author's permission; nothing from the paid deluxe edition is included.

Install and load

pnpm add @opencharacter/swn-revised @opencharacter/engine

This release needs spec 0.4: @opencharacter/engine 0.4.0 or later. An engine for an older spec refuses it (spec-version-unsupported).

The package's default export is the pack's release, ready for loadRuleset; its English text is @opencharacter/swn-revised/i18n/en (also as JSON, release.json and i18n/en.json).

import { applyChanges, computeSheet, loadRuleset, startAction } from '@opencharacter/engine';
import scifi from '@opencharacter/swn-revised';

const loaded = loadRuleset([scifi]);
if (!loaded.ok) throw new Error(loaded.errors.map((e) => e.code).join(', '));
const { ruleset } = loaded;

// A random character from the quick creation tables: every table is rolled.
const blank = {
  specVersion: '0.4.0',
  id: 'basil',
  packs: [{ id: 'swn-revised', version: '0.3.0' }],
  creating: true,
};
const run = startAction(ruleset, blank, {
  action: { id: 'swn-revised:quick-character' },
  params: { random: true },
  policy: { dice: 'auto', choices: 'auto', allocations: 'auto' },
});
if (!('status' in run) || run.status !== 'finished') throw new Error('creation paused');
const made = applyChanges(
  ruleset,
  blank,
  run.proposedChanges.map((p) => p.change),
);
if (!made.ok) throw new Error('creation failed');

const sheet = computeSheet(ruleset, made.character);
sheet.values['swn-revised:saves.physical']?.value; // 15 less the better of Str and Con modifiers

License

• License: LicenseRef-sine-nomine-free-edition. The free edition's text is used with the author's permission, and apps that show this pack's content pass on its credit:

  Text from Stars Without Number: Revised Edition (Free Edition), © 2017 Sine Nomine Publishing, Inc., by Kevin Crawford. Used with the author's permission.

• Notices: permission (the free edition's content is reproduced with the author's permission; nothing from the paid edition is included) and not-affiliated.

• LICENSE gives the terms. The contributors' own work in the pack (its data, and the names and labels written for it) is under CC0 1.0; the free edition's text and names belong to Sine Nomine Publishing.

• Text: names and labels are in i18n/en.yaml and i18n/en/. Descriptions are the free edition's own text: the skills, backgrounds, classes and partial classes, every focus and every psionic technique.

What's modeled

• Attributes: the six scores (3–18) and their modifiers (−2 to +2).
• Skills: the 19 skills and the six psychic disciplines, each a level from −1 (untrained) to 4. skill-check rolls 2d6 + skill + an attribute modifier against a difficulty; untrained is −1. Foci that roll 3d6 or 4d6 and keep the best two raise the skill's dice.
• Saving throws: Physical, Evasion and Mental, 16 less the level less the better of two modifiers. saving-throw succeeds on a d20 at or over it; a natural 1 always fails and a natural 20 always succeeds.
• Creation: three starts.
  • standard, the full procedure: roll 3d6 in order (and set one score to 14) or assign 14, 12, 11, 10, 9, 7; a background and its free skill; the quick skills, two picks from the Learning table, or three rolls split between the Growth and Learning tables; a class (an Adventurer picks two partial classes); a Psychic's two disciplines or a Partial Psychic's one; one focus level, plus the Expert's non-combat and the Warrior's combat one; a hobby skill; hit points; an equipment package or 2d6 × 100 credits (the class's own package, its kit, recommended).
  • quick and random, the quick creation tables: class and style (the eight styles, d8), background (d20), two disciplines for a psychic (d6), foci from the style's row (d6) and a bonus skill (d20). random rolls every table, so an automatic run finishes the character; the equipment package is drawn among the ten packages and the credits roll.
  • Every skill pick follows the book: a skill's first pick is level-0, the second level-1, and a third is any other non-psychic skill below level-1. A psychic skill raised to level-1 brings a free level-1 technique.
• Classes: Expert (a non-combat focus, a reroll of a failed skill check once a scene, a bonus non-combat skill point each level), Psychic (unrestricted psionics, Effort), Warrior (a combat focus, +2 hit points a level, attack bonus equal to the level, and once a scene either a missed attack turned into a hit, an option on the attack, or a hit against them negated, the warriorLuck situational choice on the hit's damage; damage doesn't say whether an attack roll dealt it, so whether it may be negated is the table's call) and Adventurer, with two of Partial Expert, Partial Psychic (one discipline) and Partial Warrior (+1 attack bonus at 1st and 5th level).
• Foci: all 25 of the free edition, each with its bonus skill; their mechanical benefits are modeled where the sheet can show them (Ironhide's AC, Die Hard's hit points, Specialist's, Healer's, Hacker's and Sniper's dice, Armsman's and Gunslinger's damage, Unarmed Combatant's fists, Shocking Assault's Shock, Psychic Training's Effort, Wild Psychic Talent). Specialist's and Healer's extra dice don't add up: the larger pool applies.
• Situational choices the app offers on a roll: hacking on Program checks (Hacker), negotiation on checks (Diplomat), executionShot on Shoot checks (Sniper), telepathy on Mental saves (Neurointruder Alert), and warriorLuck on damage (above).
• Psionics: the six disciplines, their core techniques (held while the skill is level-0 or better) and 63 techniques, each needing its skill level. Effort is 1 + the highest psychic skill + the better of Wisdom and Constitution modifiers (at least 1); commit-effort commits it for the scene or the day, sustain-technique commits a point to a technique that lasts for as long as its Effort stays Committed (sustained: Cloak Powers, Concert of Minds, Kinetic Transversal, Metamorph, Neural Trap, Pressure Field (its shield for comrades), Prophecy, Spatial Awareness, Stutterjump, Telekinetic Armory and Telekinetic Flight), held on the technique's copy, the pick of a Wild Psychic Talent, or an add-on's core technique's grant, until release-technique reclaims it, and torch rolls the torching table for a free point. Cursed Luck's curse commits Effort for the scene and applies the technique to its target: their attacks, damage, checks and saves roll twice and keep the worse, attacks and damage against them roll twice and keep the better, and their throw-off makes the Mental save that ends it. The psychic's end-scene and rest end it too, on whoever holds it (a removal to: applied, which the app applies to the characters the psychic cursed). Psychic Succor's succor Commits Effort for the day on its first use in a scene (scene.succor marks it paid; none with Mastered Succor) and shows its healing at the biopsion's level on the technique (healDice d6 + healBonus).
• Advancement: the experience table (a level-up follow-up to 10th level; later levels are the GM's call). level-up rolls the hit dice, grants three skill points (one psychic for a psychic, plus the Expert's), and a focus level at 2nd, 5th, 7th and 10th. raise-skill, learn-technique and boost-attribute spend the points at the book's costs and level limits. A focus's bonus skill taken on advancement is three points toward that skill; what doesn't buy a level is saved as the skill's credit, which raise-skill spends first.
• Combat: attack bonus, attack (d20 + attack bonus + combat skill, −2 untrained, + modifier, +1 for energy weapons) against the target's AC, damage, Shock on a miss, ammunition and reload; Armor Class from the best armor, a shield and Dexterity. Each weapon shows its hit bonus, damage bonus and Shock damage as computed values. Burst fire is a burst parameter of a burst weapon's own attacks: with three rounds left it spends them for +2 to hit and damage, else it fires one.
• System Strain: permanent from cyberware, temporary from drugs; use-drug, trigger-cyberware and Psychic Succor (given the target's strain.total and strain.max) refuse what would pass Constitution. rest restores hit points, Strain, Effort and the once-a-scene abilities.
• Encumbrance: Readied (equipped) items up to half Strength, Stowed up to Strength, and the lightly and heavily encumbered bands. An equipment package readies its items, then stows readied gear and all but one weapon while they fit, so a weak character starts within the limits where the package allows; armor stays worn.
• Equipment: every armor, ranged, melee and heavy weapon, general equipment and pharmaceutical, and cyberware item of the free edition, with the equipment packages.

Add-on packs

A pack that depends on swn-revised can add content of its types, and creation offers it with the core's, in the guided picks and in the random draws (a die with a face per option, the book's die with the core content alone):

• Classes and backgrounds join the full procedure. A class names its recommended package in kit.

• Styles (style) join the quick tables: the class, the six scores and, for the book's styles only, table, the style's column of the quick foci table. A style without one picks its foci as the full procedure does (one of any kind, plus the class's extra non-combat and combat ones).

• Equipment packages (kit) are content: a package's own unpack action (listed: false) adds its gear and sets the credits. The starting-gear action adds the package as the entry kit, runs its unpack, then removes it, so only the gear stays.

• Foci join every focus pick; the tags needs-psionics and no-psionics limit one to characters with psionic access or without it.

• Open enums: weapon ammo, gear category and kind (what a weapon reloads with), and armor category. An add-on lists new values in extendEnums ('swn-revised:types.weapon.fields.ammo': [spikes]) and names them in its text.

• Naming what an add-on adds: it names each added value, option or key in its own text, under the key this pack would use, and createText finds it there when the app passes the ruleset's enumOrigins, optionOrigins and familyOrigins. For example, spikes added to swn-revised:types.weapon.fields.ammo is types.weapon.fields.ammo.values.spikes.name: Spike magazine (through enumOrigins).

• Tagged steps take an add-on's rules-level option and changes effects: attack.fire (the attack's step before the roll, which sets flags.burst), creation.kit (the starting package pick: an added option replaces the package), creation.focus and level-up.focus (a focus pick at creation or on advancement: an added option is taken instead of a focus), creation.finish (the last changes of both creation actions, before creation ends), level-up.level (each new level's skill points), rest.night (a night's rest) and rest.scene (the end of a scene).

• Skills and psychic disciplines are families: an added skill joins skill and general or combat (families: { 'swn-revised:skill': [xenology], 'swn-revised:general': [xenology] }), a discipline skill and psychic, and the add-on declares its skills.<key>.level (tagged skill and skill.general, skill.combat or skill.psychic), .dice and .credit, and its check tag (check.<key>). The core's changes reach them through fieldId, so creation, raise-skill, focus points and skill-check gain, raise and roll them. The enums that hold a skill are open and take its key: a background's entries (freeSkill, quick1, quick2, growth1–growth6, learning1–learning8), a focus's skill, a weapon's skill, and the parameters gain-skill.entry, focus-skill-points.entry, raise-skill.skill and skill-check.skill; a discipline's also psionics.discipline, a technique's discipline and pick-technique.discipline, so a new skill level picks its techniques. The Partial Psychic's and Psychic Training's discipline choices take it through extendChoices. The psychic classes grant each trained discipline's core technique (core: true, its discipline the key), so an added discipline's core technique comes with it.

Limitations

• Starships, vehicles, drones and gear mods are not modeled.
• Most psionic techniques change no number on the sheet: their use is the table's. Effort, sustained techniques, Cursed Luck and Psychic Succor are modeled.
• Foci whose benefits are narrative (Assassin, Authority, Connected, Savage Fray, Star Captain, Starfarer, Tinker, Wanderer) give their bonus skill; the rest is text, as is Unique Gift.
• Situational modifiers are the modifier parameters of attack and saving-throw, and the difficulty of skill-check.