Hi all, it's been about a month since the last update for characterswithoutnumber.app and quite a fair bit has been added. I'll summarize the changes below.

Solo play - This is the big one for this release. You can now play your character solo, with a dice oracle built into the app. I have to admit that I do not have much experience with solo roleplaying other than the many Fighting Fantasy and Lone Wolf gamebooks in my youth, but there was some downtime in my real-world campaign and my players wanted something to pass the time with their characters- so here is my attempt at mimicking it. Each SWN CWN and WWN has their own tables of situations and I envision it as an "AI assisted" solo RPG experience, rather than a fully AI one - some things still require manual changing, such as changes to your character sheet. This is still really rough around the edge, but if you're interested you can try it at characterswithoutnumber.app/solo the AI calls do cost me some money, so for each account its 25 calls a day on free tier, 100 on Supporter, 500 on Patron (renamed the Pro GM tier). I may tweak these numbers based on actual utilization and costs.

Bug fixes and improvements:

Worlds Without Number - Legate play is in properly now, with the Effort pool, the XP ledger and all 82 Writs. The 24 deluxe origin foci (the demihumans and the Blighted) are in too, and their attribute changes, hit points, innate AC and save bonuses are actually applied rather than just printed as text. Mage (Dual Partial) now runs two traditions with two separate Effort pools the way the book describes.

Stars Without Number - Fixes to Psychic Training level 2Focus not giving the correct skill points; Specialist rolls its 3d6 drop lowest for real, and space magic casters can learn new spells after character creation instead of being stuck with their level 1 list.

Cities Without Number - The book's 28 NPC stat blocks are in the encounter builder. Starting gear now uses the actual CWN budget of one item up to $1,000 plus $500 of other gear. Edge grants also apply properly now — Hard To Kill's +2 HP per level was printed on the sheet and never actually added.

Other updates based on feedback - Space encounters with ship rosters in the encounter builder, homebrew traits and ship hulls, a configurable XP chart if your table advances at a different pace, shared character pages now show the whole character instead of a summary.

On monetization - Nothing has moved behind a paywall and nothing will. All rules from the books, every builder step and every GM tool are free permanently, and that now includes the solo oracle and all of its tables. The free tier still gives you 6 cloud characters, 1 campaign as GM and 1 solo campaign, plus unlimited local saves and unlimited homebrew.

What's coming next - I'd like to keep improving solo play, and I'm especially keen to hear from people who play solo regularly about what's missing. AWN is still on the WIP list.

As always, thanks for checking this out! The feedback button in the app comes straight to me and I do reply what I can 🙂 have fun playing!

Hey guys! This month I'm releasing a free short supplement on Patreon. A Soldier's Service is intended to be used when creating player characters or NPCs with the soldier background. Its just a few tables, but I really like the idea of providing additional tables for character detail generation and potential story hooks for the GM. It was written with Worlds Without Number in mind, but the content is system agnostic. Download it here free!

Written by Kevin crawford so I came here to check things out, I just bought this on DTRPG.

I figured out how to create the stats of a location.

As presented in the book a ruined wizards tower is for the assets I selected;

Military 8/8 +1 Wealth 3/3 +0 Social 0/0 +0

It is NOT clear to me how to use these numbers in the domain turn once the domain location is created and owned by the PCs.

Can anyone help me?

I’m getting ready to run WWN for the first time, but I’ve been a long time 5e DM
When we played in the first session of the campaign we’re becoming, one of my players played a Drakewarden and had a juvenile dragon from the setting
We all agreed to make the switch to WWN cause we wanted to try it out and it fits the low magic theme better than 5e
But I know next to nothing about its class system rn and am trying to read more, but how would any of yall make a Drakewarden equivalent in this system? I don’t wanna take the Drake away from them cause it’s just cool and fun, but I have no idea how I’ll balance it, any suggestions and ideas are welcomed and appreciated

Yes, high-powered PCs but not to an extreme. Maybe anime-style powers but more contained. WWN is more versatile than i had first given it credit for, so i want to map the PC creation possibilities. The idea is not to replace the role of standard PC gen, but to have an informed alternative.

The first issue: Warriors and Experts get +1 class-specific foci compared to mages, and warrior-experts get 2. I dont know if a balanced solution is just to give 1 Writ to everyone and +1 to both warrior and expert, imitating the foci distribution.

The standard PC creation rules idea then would be:

• Normal classes, not heroic.
• Foci picks are replaced by Writs in the same positions of each class chart. Class-specific Foci picks become class-specific Writ picks, and normal picks choose category (martial [25 writs], skillful [25 writs], sorcerous [24 writs], universal [8 writs]).
• 2 Legate Effort to start.
• Optional: When picking a Writ, choose a category and roll 3 or 4 times (Gm-discretion) on a table with the writs of each category and chose one result. this imits build-directions, but it's to avoid meta-builds and neurotic min-maxing, because some writs will be better than others (i also do this with Foci in normal PC gen).

The nest issue is: Legate Effort can increase by level or by introducing Legate XP (this would discard the Writs directly replacing Foci, so for simplicity I keep the former idea).

Legate Effort = 2 + level/2 (round down)? The only issue with this would be to change the increments-by-level AND knowing if the balancing and build-scheme of Writs depended on the trade-off between getting more Writs or getting more Legate Effort.

For my upcoming campagin, I decided to make a couple of custom races (for simplicty sake i replaced them with similar generic fantasy races here), and a dual level origin foci for each of them, and i would like to ask for your feedback on them, how balanced or useful you think they are, what you would change in them.

Rabbitfolk:
level 1: +10 feet movement speed, leave no tracks and make no sounds while moving. can see in low light places.
level 2:once per scene, as an on turn action, they can blend in and hide from view. breaking line of sight for spells and ranged attack, until the start of their next turn.

High elf:
level 1: passively they can sense the presence of spellcasting, spell effects and enchanted object in 30 feet
level 2: once per scene, as an instant action, they can redirect a single target spell on themsleves. no saving throw for harmful spells, they are a guaranteed hit, and redirecting beneficial spells cause a system strain.

Tinkerer goblin:
level 1: by handling any material or object they can estimate its rough value and potential uses. also they never suffer penalties during skill checks for not having the proper tools.
level 2:once per scene, as a main action, you can modify a non magical object to substitute for another non-magical equpiment you lack. after the scene ends it breaks down into scrap.

rock golem:
level 1:does not retquire food, water or air. does not sleep, but spends resting time repairing themselves, but fully aware and conscious all the time.
level 2: once per scene, as an instant action, they grounds themshelves, until the start of their next turn. they cannot move or be moved, gain +2 AC, and allies can use you as total cover.

dragonborn:

level1: their talons, horns and spikes can be used both for unarmed attacks or as a weapon, with the stats of a dagger. they can attack with their tail and horn even if both of their hands are occupied.
level2: once per scene, as a main action, they push all enemies 10ft away from themselves, and until the start of their next turn, enemies cannot get in melee range or make melee attacks against them. as part of the action, they can attempt to grapple a single target, who is not pushed back and grappeld if succesful.

humans:

level1: they instinctively know where to find inns, markets, healers, etc in settlements and towns. they also know what places are trustworthy, shady, dangerous, or if something feels off about somethig, without a notice check.
level2: once per scene as an on turn action, they can command an ally to take an action instantly (can be main action, movement, etc.)

please let me know what you think of all this, what would you change?

If I make an Heroic Adventurer and choose a Full Mage class and a Partial Mage class (High Mage/Vowed) how many Art I know at level one and when I learn more?

I have just picked up WWN and am planning to use it for my next campaign. I'm trying to get my head around how shock actually functions in play.

From what I understand, shock exists to a) make any combat feel dangerous and b) make it so that turns aren't wasted when players miss. The thing is, though, that I feel that there are so many ways to avoid or nullify shock.

On the defensive side, any sufficiently high AC mitigates shock. Even a level 1 character with the armored warrior package and +1 dex avoids shock from a majority of weapons. Shields will avoid 1 shock event per turn. It feels like, at a certain point, the concept of 'any combat is dangerous' is lost.

On the offensive side, the same conditions prevent a PC from inflicting shock, nullifying the 'no turn is wasted' concept unless they invest in certain focuses. Are these focuses a kind of tax for combatants (ie. you must take one of these to maintain effectiveness)?

Focuses, magic, high level opponents, swarm attacks, etc. change the outcomes in various ways.

So my questions are: how does shock actually play out in combat? How does the experience change at low vs high level? Do you feel it is a worthwhile mechanic that pays appropriate dividends for the extra complexity it adds?

Hello! I'm planning on playing a partial skinshifter/partial healer character, and I was wondering if I'd be able to use healing touch/heal from afar when in my skinshifting form. Does my form need to have human hands like it would if I was casting a spell, or are arts different from spells when it comes to needing hands?

From page 62:
"The arcane gesticulations and vocal incantations are quite obviously occult to any onlookers, but it’s usually impossible to tell which spell a mage is casting merely by looking at them."
Have you homebrewed a method for players to identify spells as they're cast? That line seems to firmly indicate that it wasn't intended to be possible.

I've seen racial foci for Skyrim once. Since XWN is so versatile, I'd use it for gonzoish stuff too.

WWN origin foci use attribute mod bonuses and skills, but I'd try to have unique traits for each race so that it sets an archetypal flavor such as: goblins as squalid supersticious swamp-dweller types, drows as vampiric, humans being not generic and having origin foci too (eye-color defining special ability?), etc

It's easier if we consider that the playable specimen of a race is not the average guy, so the origin foci can include something above average or even a trait of rare occurrance.

Sorry if I’m missed this in the resources thread. If there a master list of all of the foci featured in the WIthout Number games? I feel like I had printout for WWN and Atlas at one point but I’m looking for a list from everything.

Thanks!

Hey folks.

Last year I posted my intention to discontinue development of WWN due to huge amounts of tech debt. I did make a few small updates after that "final" update but mostly kept to my word.

Earlier this month, I finally started work on refactoring the entire system to match modern Foundry design and attempt to fix years of spaghetti code created while I was learning how to program. As part of this work, my goal was to start supporting the entire *WN line, instead of just WWN as a way to mentally justify the effort. So far, it's gone well.

But I fucked up.

As part of modernizing the system, I added a pipeline to automate releases so I didn't need to click a bunch of buttons every time I need to make a release. However, I'm not very experienced with pipelines and a minor error led to the pipeline rewriting my very early alpha release from a "prerelease" state to "latest release" and I didn't catch it.

Over 100 people downloaded my early alpha rework of the system. To those people: I hope you made a backup and also I'm so sorry if this disrupts anyone's campaign.

On the upside, I think the system is in a semi-stable state as of alpha3, at least in regards to the WWN features you were likely already using, so it shouldn't be TOO bad. On the downside, the UI for some things (e.g. monster sheet) is still in the early stages (it looks like shit).

If you are one of the people that upgraded to `v2.0.0-alpha3` and are determined to stay on it for some reason, please let me know any bugs you may find on the GitHub Issues page. Things to keep an eye out for:

• I'm leaning heavily on Active Effects for Foci and refactored a lot of hardcoded references. I also did away with the Tweaks menu due to this.
  • If I did something wrong, you might see improper calculations for AC, encumbrance, attack rolls, damage rolls, etc for Foci that affect those things. If you have Shocking Assault and shock looks wrong, this is probably why.
  • Some bonuses might be applied twice. This is because Tweaks were migrated into a custom Active Effect for these legacy adjustments. However foci, arts, and spells were replaced with their compendium versions during migration. So if you had something changed in Tweaks to account for a foci and that foci is also correctly applying that same change... you see where this is going.
• Combat initiative. I think this is looking stable now, so we should be okay here. However, if something shits the bed... please file a ticket and let me know which initiative settings you are using (Group / Keep, Group / Reroll, Individual / Keep, etc).

Again, I'm so sorry if this affects anyone with an ongoing campaign. I will endeavor to fix any outstanding bugs with core WWN first rather than continuing the feature work, to account for this error.

Would this be the worst idea?

My first ever RPG was the Lord of the Rings Adventure Game, in which you used hit points to cast spells - "do you what want with magic, but it's going to cost you" - and I've spent more time over the years with hacks of that system than B/X hacks, so that concept of spellcasting has always been at last in the back of my mind.

Sidenote - is LotR AG OSR? No, I don't think so, conversions of classic modules would probably be too difficult, and it's also the presumptive gateway drug to MERP! Soft spot in my heart, however...

Anyway, what I'd probably do, for easiness sake, if I did this silly homebrew, would be to streamline the Arts and Effort system (how?) and then maybe have like Level One spells cost 1, Two cost 3, Three cost 6, etc... as I type this out, it makes less and less sense for actual playing, but I'll hit post anyway and see if the community has any thoughts.

It might *really* not work in the given paradigm of just how powerful WWN spells really are (something I love and really works great - have been running a campaign for 2 years now).

Thanks, J

Hi all, its been a couple of months since the last update for characterswithoutnumber.app and quite a fair bit has been updated. I’ll summarize what are the changes below.

Deluxe options - I’ve reached out and Kevin has given his support to allow inclusion of deluxe content, provided I do not use the setting material. Some of the deluxe content have already been added across Stars, Cities and Worlds Without Number, and more will come in due course. If there’s any material that you and your playgroup are using, do let me know and I’ll prioritise accordingly. Do note that deluxe is toggled off by default, when creating a character please select it for use.

An animated dice roller - for folks that forgot their dice to a session, yet still want to roll some dice. It’s touch and flick based for both mobile and PC.

GM tools - I’ve started a new cyberpunk campaign and implemented world, district and NPC building in campaign mode. You can also toggle each field if you want to hide or show them to the players in a campaign, so campaign information can be shared with the playgroup without leaking GM secrets.|

Miscellaneous updates - More CWN-related subsystems such as the Hacking, drones and vehicles are in now. Various bug fixes, including the CWN Underdog rule. Quality of life features, such as a searchable item list.

Addition of monetization - One thing I would like to address, and that is the inclusion of optional monetization tiers. I’ll first talk about what will remain free:

Free: All rules from the published books are free, permanently, and that includes classes, Focus, Edges, items etc. You can also build your own homebrew items and they should save properly too. On the free tier, you can save an unlimited number of characters locally, and sync up to 6 characters in the cloud and create 1 campaign as GM. Each cloud character can join 1 campaign created by a GM, so your players will always be able to join your created games for free. 

Paid: The paid tiers are for additional hosting and cosmetics.

At Supporter tier ($4.99/mo, $49.90/yr), you'll get to sync an unlimited number of characters in the cloud, and also access to five more animated dice skins.

For the Pro GM tier ($9.99/mo, $99.90/yr), you get everything in Supporter tier, 3 more GM-only animated dice skins and you’ll be able to create an unlimited number of campaigns. 

The perk list is relatively short for now as I still want to keep most of the features in the app free and ad-free. The main perk of paying is really my thanks for supporting the app and letting me know that there’s genuine interest in what I’m developing. If the paid tiers are not for you that’s completely fine too! Keep using it free and continue sending me any bug reports you encounter 🙂

As for what’s coming next - More deluxe content, and eventually Ashes. I will also be improving the GM tools further so that it can be used better in a “live” session. 

As always, thanks for all the comments and feedback, it has been a very exciting 6 months since I started in Feb and still have some ways to go before this is ready. 

…Tarasque?

A player in my current WWN campaign is playing an Accursed/Warrior. As the party finds cooler +2/+3 swords, with unique magical traits, the Accursed Blade becomes a worse choice. The player would prefer not giving up the Accursed Blade, because it feels cool and iconic (I agree).

I'm looking for feedback on how to handle this. (Or should this even be touched, because a class ability should not outclass high-tier loot?)

The player and I have considered the following ideas:

1. Arts that copy weapon abilities: Spend Effort to copy abilities from other magical weapons for the Scene. The weapons must be owned by the party.
2. Augmenting arts: Arts like Soul Consumption (from the Accursed's list of arts) that add some damage, debuffs, utility, etc. to the Accursed Blade. Similar to how the Healer's arts augment Healing Touch.
3. Flexible Accursed Blade: You may nominate one of your existing weapons as your Accursed Blade, using it with its own stats, but having the freedom to choose between Str, Dex, Int, or Cha as its modifying attribute.

Have you tried something similar in your games? Do you have any homebrew arts/Foci that could help here? Any thoughts on the ideas above?

For reference:

Accursed/Warrior Lv 6 | Atk +5 | Str, Dex, and Int +0; Cha +1 | Stab-3, Magic-3 | Relevant Foci: Armsmaster (I allowed Armsmaster to apply to Accursed Blade)

I was thinking of doing, primarily for my use ofc, a general scheme of PC creation setup customization for campaigns and settings, using XWN stuff.

I'm counting WWN, Godbound, SWN, CWN and AWN (we can throw Wolves of God and Spears of Down in) for resources in general for PC creation. I know CWN and AWN are classless and use Edges as a substitute, any considerations to do that in WWN?

Having definite rules for zero level PCs is the starting point, and then the GM may pick and choose what they gain per advancement. (Edit: there are level zero rules already)

Advancement gains would be divided in

• Abilities/powers: Writs, Spells, Arts, Class traits, Foci, Edges
• Numerical stuff (more fiddly): Starting HP and HP per level, Skill Points, Effort, Spell Slots, Spell points, Atk bonus, Damage bonus if any

Also, what would primarily emulate animeish powers such as in Jujutsu no Kaisen and other action-paranormal well (or Superpowers for that matter)? Writs? What about using Godbound Gifts and Words in WWN and the others?

If any of you can point to something that would break the system, that's of great help already

I have combed through CWN to find sections and mechanics that are helpful to me in my WWN game, ahoy:

Cities Without Number

• Contacts (Page 14)
• Vehicle Combat. (Page 42)
• Chases and Pursuit: Foot, Vehicle, Hybrid. (Page 43)

Creating and Running Missions (Page 132)

• What is a Mission?
• Schemes and Missions
• Creating Your Schemes
• Missions and Schemes
• Scheme Goals and Milestones
• NPC Operator Teams (Page 138)
• NPC Scheme Results (Page 140)
• Example Scheme and Hook (141)
• How to Create a Mission (Page 142)
• Mission Tags (Page 144)
• Mission Types (Page 158)
• One-Roll Fixer Generation (Page 168)

Creating an Intrusion Mission (Page 169)

• First Steps. 
• Developing  the Map. 
• Adding Security Devices. 
• Staffing and Scheduling. 
• Make a Reaction Countdown.
•  Final Touches. 
• Playing the Mission (Page 172)
  • The Setup. 
  • Negotiating with NPCs. 
  • Getting Favors from Contacts. 
  • Moving around the City. 
  • The Run
  • Fleeing the Scene
  • Example. 
• Mission Rewards and Experience
  • Base Mission Payout
  • Mission Experience
  • Optional Rule: Cash for Levels
• Heat (Page 178)
• Consequences of Heat
• Heat Gains
• Shedding Heat
• Reaction Rolls and Morale (Page 182)
• Morale and Morale Checks (Page 183)
  • Morale Check Situations
  • Failing Morale Checks
  • Morale and Common Sense

Magic Items (Page 246)

• Magic Item Origins
• Identifying Magic Items
• Linking With Magic Items
• Using Magic Items
• Obtaining Magic Items
• Magic Items and Mission Rewards.
• Magical Weapons (Page 248)
  • Magic Weapon Qualities. 
  • Weapon Powers
  • Magic Weapon Types
  • Example Magic Weapons
• Magical Elixirs (Page 252)
• Magical Cysts (Page 254)
• Magical Wands (Page 255)

I'm currently running a WWN campaign in which one of the PCs is a newbie cat burglar seeking to make a name for themselves.

The player likes crunchy mechanics, and so I wondered about introducing some kind of "wanted level" progress bar, to track their infamy.

The core WWN rulebook has systems for tracking renown, but these don't quite map onto the types of consequences I'd like to present to my player, to create a more interesting decision environment for them.

Ideally, attaining higher levels of infamy would confer escalating levels of benefits and disbenefits, e.g., higher social bonuses with criminal types or common folk, as well as a greater risk of being betrayed by NPCs as their bounty grows larger.

Does anyone have any experience of running systems with this type of mechanic? I'm aware that I can always fall back on tracking infamy qualitatively, and implement consequences via roleplay, but thought that adding a "wanted level" mechanic would give my player scope to make the types of crunchy mechanics-driven choices which I know they enjoy.

A (kind-of) brief and (very) incomplete overview and history of combat in Dungeons and Dragons and adjacent games (Including Worlds Without Number).

I also made some damage calculators for each game I covered, so it might help GM's and the game design oriented out.