RPG Review: Worlds Without Number

Worlds Without Number

Kevin Crawford

Sine Nomine Publishing

In college I became friends with a guy named Greg whose passion was cars. He raced them, fixed them, learned all he could, spent all his money on them. 

He and a number of other car people owned 1990s Honda Civics - small, low-horsepower, hatchbacks - not flashy. I asked him why and he that they were old, so easily accessible, cheap, simply constructed with plentiful spare parts for modifications. The light frame gave it spectacular performance when the engine was upgraded. Greg took me for a ride once and the performance of his modded Civic was indeed spectacular.

To compare Kevin Crawford's 398-page RPG rules tome to a light-bodied racer might seem nuts, but bear with me. First, and most importantly, Worlds Without Number (WWN) is a complete game. Everything you need to play and to generate game content is inside, and it is well thought-out so that newer GMs and veterans alike should be able to benefit.

As a comparison, currently the most popular tabletop roleplaying game: Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition requires the Player's Handbook for basic rules and character creation, Monster Manual for monster and NPC stats, and the Dungeon Master's Guide for some optional rules and halfhearted attempts at guidance for GMs who wish to create their own content. That's 992 pages, not including the hotfixes and canonical addenda constantly being produced in numerous splatbooks and adventures.

More than a simple early edition Dungeons and Dragons rules rewrite, this is an evolution of the system that Crawford created with Stars Without Number, compatible with many of the older versions of D&D, but thoroughly updated with the benefit of play and rules invention through all these intervening years.

The Book

The book starts out with a quick introduction of the world, Latter Earth, a sort of pastiche of Jack Vance, Gene Wolfe and other science fantasy- [don't fret if you prefer medieval fantasy, the rules can very much support both.] It gives a brief description of adventuring and sandbox-style play before jumping into character creation.

There are three basic classes, Warrior, Expert and Mage, along with the Adventurer, which is dual-class hybridization of the others. Mages are broken down into a number of subclasses (that can be also combined as Adventurers) including the High Mage (Wizard) and specialists such as the Elementalist, Healer, Necromancer and  Vowed (Monk).

Character creation is fun, detailed and full of choices. Players can choose or roll backgrounds that grant skills and also pick Foci (essentially feats) for further customization. The process, though involved, is well explained and yields characters that are on average a bit better than OD&D or B/X characters but not superheroic like characters in the most recent edition.

Rules

The next 22 pages detail the rules of the game, including rules for skills, combat, wilderness and site exploration, along with character advancement. In relatively few pages the entire system is laid out. It could have been even shorter but Crawford explains the purpose and intended use of many rules and writes almost exclusively in prose, saving technical language for copious tables.

Skills checks are rolled using 2d6 against a target from 6-14, affording a  more predictable distribution for experts in various fields. Skill modifiers range from -1 at untrained to +4 for unparalleled talent with relatively flat bonuses from attributes (-2 to +2). The skill list (of 20 skills) is broad enough to encompass most actions with a flexible enough interpretation though my personal preference is for a bit more detail. I have created alternative rules  to introduce further specialization here. Experts are the class that excels most at skill-based tests but no classes are artificially barred from any skill and I like that flexibility.

Combat is familiar, running on 20-sided dice with combat skills added to the rolls just like any other skill. Damage is rolled using different dice based on weapons. Shock is a new type of damage applied on a melee miss, speeding combat. A weapon's shock damage triggers based on the defender's AC, thus it helps to differentiate weapons and armors. A list of combat maneuvers is included to provide tactical options. 

Healing is available and relatively plentiful, but it is not easily applied during combat unless playing a mage with magical healing abilities. System strain is a new resource that limits healing as players who accrue too much can no longer benefit from magical healing and may die. System strain can be recovered slowly with rest (along with hit points equal to a player's level) each night. 

Another example of thoughtful design is the frailty rule: When a player goes to 0 hit points they do not die immediately but they are mortally wounded and if stabilized by allies they become frail. Frail characters are unable to heal naturally and require a week of bed rest to cure. This arrangement is far better than yo-yoing to 0 health and back again with the plentiful healing of modern games but it is also superior to the older rules mandating instantaneous death at 0 hp because it creates a decision point. Players need to decide whether to push on when frail or retreat to safety. 

Survival needs like food and water are also connected via system strain as deprivation adds to strain and prevents natural healing. Along with foraging rules and an elegant encumbrance system that uses slots to track meaningful items the whole system allows for meaningful resource management choices while exploring both overland and through dungeons. It is sadly common these days for RPGs to omit rules for time and resource management and these rules, including wandering encounters, chases & dungeoneering are functional without requiring a spreadsheet to track everything.

Several character advancement systems are provided, with the default stipulating that characters are awarded 3 experience points per session that they attempt some adventuring. Crawford gives options for predicating these rewards on different types of behaviors, but the default system seems a tad perfunctory. I will plan to adapt something to make the rewards more contingent on player performance. There is, however, a renown system that rewards players for  social standing and allows them to spend down good will in the furtherance of long term goals.

Magic is Vancian and should be familiar to D&D players, though fewer spells are granted and they are a bit more powerful than in other systems. In lieu of cantrips, mages can use Arts that provide special abilities based on class. The range of arts available allows partial mage classes to cover everything from traditional D&D clerics, to shape-changing druids, to psionic telepaths.

Worldbuilding

There is a 20-page gazetteer of the Gyre, a section of Crawford's Latter Earth. The content isn't as detailed as I would prefer for my own setting* but immediately afterward there are two immense chapters on building campaigns and adventures.

The worldbuilding section encourages GMs to choose a scope (world, region, or kingdom) and think of the information necessary to run a campaign and then presents tables on how to procedurally generate geographic features, locations and social institutions. Social institutions like religions, courts, houses and guilds are easily derived from tables characteristics and really flesh out the world and provide seeds for drama. Hundreds of tags are provided in order to generate tribes, ruins, temples and various other features. The section is long but Crawford includes many paragraphs explaining how various features can be used to create a sandbox for players to explore and that will help generate its own adventures. There is also advice on using WWN with other settings and material from different editions of D&D. Most "Old School" D&D is completely compatible. 

The chapter on building adventures provides all sorts of GM advice from when to call for dice roles to advocacy for non-plot-based sandbox-style play, to advice and random tools for generating combat, exploration, mystery and social encounters. There are procedures for creating locations and hexes, stocking dungeons and building encounter tables. There are rules for domains, crafting, magic items, and gaining reputation. Many of these ideas will be familiar to longtime GMs and many of them have been done in more detail or more definitively or succinctly elsewhere, but these ideas rarely make it into single-volume rule sets! This chapter is particularly amazing for newer GMs because there is so much information in one place and so much of the advice is focused on aiding gameplay.

The next chapters include a bestiary, a chapter on faction play and several on character options including additional partial mage classes and a chapter on playing more powerful characters including demigod-like Legates, and a chapter of more quality random tables for generating NPCs and more. Bestiary isn't a full monster manual. It doesn't have the full-page pictures of other monster books but it has a lot of useful stats and even includes procedures for creating your own monsters. The chapter on building factions relies on tags and assets to represent faction abilities. It is a bit abstracted but allows for a chess match between rival groups. Crawford has a more detailed treatment in An Echo, Resounding but the core has been ported over here.

On hearing this litany of features one might be tempted to ask who this book is for. No one is likely to use all of these features. If not exactly a 1990s Civic, WWN acts almost like a catalog of potential features modifications. The rules are updates on a slim, efficient 1970s chassis but with all of the streamlining and advances of decades of development.

WWN particularly rewards newer GMs or GMs with little experience running sandbox games because of the quality of its advice. It doesn't have the gritty tactical combat of Hackmaster or hyper-detailed domain management of ACKS or labyrinthine skill systems and of course there are RPGs that do more unique settings or shorter rule sets. If you want something very specific you might be better off with one of those. However, if you don't have very specific preferences then you probably should consider using this system. Did I mention that WWN is available for free in .pdf form? Almost every D&D 5th Edition player should be playing Worlds Without Number instead. Kevin Crawford's work is so well-tested, so comprehensive, so thoughtful that it simply should be the default.