Wow.

I agree with what everyone above has said. He book is great. GOod layout. Wonderful generation tables that you can extrapolate going forward or for other games and projects.

Easy but deep character generation and cool and unique spells.

This is amazing and I can't wait to get my group to play.

If you like this check out Atlantis 2nd Age for something similar but different.

We need more books and RPGs like this to show how deep and rich he mythology of other world cultures are and to experience something a little different.

So glad I bought this.

I really dislike 1d20 games, so I am appalled at how much I like Godbound. It's mostly the setting, the fact that you can have almost any genre or culture and then hop between them and the rules allow for that. The game has potential for epic stories very quickly, but includes the human element. Overall I compare it to Spire for imagination, which is high praise. Sadly you are left with the randomness of 1d20s and no degress of success, but I think the game succeeds despite that.

Fantastic toolbox game with simple and mostly effective rules and mechanics. Slightly lacking in narrative elements like bennies and margins of success but so much inspiration. Good job.

Every single book this author does is an excellent value, with top-notch production value and and lot of creative tables to help a referee improv/create wildly fun situations for their players. This book is spectacular and an excellent continuation of my love affair with Kevin Crawford's game design.

All,

This corebook is another masterpiece from Kevin Crawford.

I have been playing RPGs for 30 years and used/played about 100 published core books/systems. I almost always end up reading with interest only to find I can not (without massive work) translate the ruminations into an actual game.

Listen to his 1-hour interview on youtube if you want to understand how cleverly he thinks about these things - you will have even more respect for his work. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziteyWHAzCs

Consistent with the interview, his works are GM practical focussed. As he notes, many works are filled with puff/guff talking about playing in the setting/story without actually practically assisting the GM to deliver it.

This work is a great practical enabler you can actually use - better than books 5 times the cost, containing more useful material.

Buy it to improve any fantasy setting.

Oliver

What a spectacular product, innovatively including non-Western traditions into the SWN community. It is different, exotic, alien, and respectful. Well done.

A truly great game! It allows for a highly modular style of play where you can add rules for transhumanism, mechs, psuonics, cybernetics and much more. It has rules to modify star ships and stations, if you're into that. The Gamemaster advice is next level, even more so so if you want to run a sandbox. The game strifes to make it as easy to run as possible and it is highly compatible with other systems. You could take a Traveller adventure and run it with SWN without mich of a hassle and the same goes for a bunch of other systems. I am super satisfied with the book and its superb layout, it is super easy to reference and find stuff.

anyways, 5/5

A great game. Very, very, well written. However, the psionics is very, seriously horrible. It allows "magic" into a sci-fi game. What even worse is that it provides god-like powers: healing within a 10 meters (30' feet) of the target, transforming targets into any other humanoid form within 50% of their own mass, if the psychic dies it doesn't actually die...largest bit of skin can slowly grow and the pc will recover. I only allow psychic powers below Level-2. Other than that, its really great a game.
Another thought...at least the Traveller rpg provides the possibility of having a starship (which SWN doesn't).

The good folks at Sine Nomine are ingenius. So much content was provided with the Free edition... that you might ask... "Why would I pay for the full version? Why would I buy the print version?"

That's the brilliance... the free edition gives you so much meat... but it isn't the full feast provided by the full version.

The system is relatively simple... a flash back to the bygone eras of the boxed editions... but with a twist... same stats... the usual 6... generated by rolling 3d6. But now... throw in skills, backgrounds...

Character classes are Expert (aka Rogue), Warrior (Fighter), Psychic (or Mage) and Adventurer (think "Jack of all trades" you can be a Warrior/Expert or Warrior/Mage... you get the idea...)

Skills... lots of skills.

Foci (think "feats")

Best of all... the GM Section... build worlds... build empires... build factions...The GM section alone is a gold mine of ideas, hints, tricks, etc to really make the game your own.

After getting the Free edition PDF... I knew I needed the print version... and it is worth it. The art... the additional components... space magic... yes... space magic. Battle mechs... starships... build alien races and societies...

And it is all compatible with Worlds without Number.

And with very little effort... you can bring modules from pre-3rd edition D&D...

The GM resources section is very system agnostic as well...

Like Chaosium's BRP? The resources transfer... with little effort.

Want to fight the cult of the Space Reptile God? This is the tool kit to make it happen...

Want "Space Elves?" You got it.

Want to build space monsters and creepy crawlies? You got it.

But do not ignore the elegent simplicity of the Sine Nomine system. It is deceptively simple.

All this being said... the quality of the PRINTED product is second to none.

WOW!!! And they are GIVING THIS AWAY?!?!?

You can tell the confidence of the creative team where they throw a product like this out as a FREE edition...

Unbelievable. A lot of care, creativity and thought went into this. And beyond that, though a system is provided, the deeper rules and tables are so system agnostic, you could take the second half of the book... and build on your own campaign and game... using ANY system...

Definitely going to be on the lookout for the handcover edition to add to my collection.

Distant Lights is a fantastic supplement for building places for your players to go. I'm using it to build parts of two campaigns, one in Stars without Number and one in Starfinder. It is stated that the book is system neutral and they mean it. But it isn't bland either. It has very creative seed ideas for outposts (An asteroid base hiding in the glare of close orbit to the system star? Yes please).

This book took me twice as long to read because I kept finding myself daydreaming locations as I was reading!

I purchased it as a physical copy, it's very handy for keeping a thumb in one page while you reference a table elsewhere. The art shows very nice and the pages feels nice and flip easily.

Exactly what I was looking for and exactly as advertised.

Stars Without Number (SWN) lives up to the hype (mostly). Positives include the price (free if you just want the core rules) and some of the best culture and adventure-generating rules I've ever read. Negatives include a different game mechanic for combat from every other skill, over-emphasis on psionics (i.e. Space Magic), and an OSR flavor that treats "gritty" gameplay as the "proper" way to game.

Wait what? This is "Starter"? This rulebook have more info than a lot of other, fully paid rulebooks! If you wonders if this enough to play few sessions: YES! I think it's even enough even to play whole campain. System is really flexible, I can't say nothing about Lore, because I used SWN to play short campain in Mass Effect world. And mechanics fits it like a glove! During playing we found some "weird" solutions but it's maybe because we played too much D&D and we used to some things.

Great, great book. Not only the ruleset is pretty cool, the setting is super evocative and varied. ...All of that is quite nice and worth the money, and it's not even half the book. THEN you get to the world-building tables and other campaigns and DM-tools. These are beyond superb, and useful far beyond the system and the setting in the book. For 20 USD, this is a steal. Cannot recommend this enough. Thanks a lot to the author for this product, very much looking forward to whatever else he is producing.