SWN Rules Explained: How to Build a Sector in Stars Without Number

Rules Explained

Sep 17

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This episode of SWN Rules Explained looks at how to build a sector in Stars Without Number, the map of star systems where a campaign takes place. Brian walks through the setup from the revised rulebook: an 8-by-10 hex grid, a d8 and a d10 to place 20 to 30 stars, and the three-hex limit that keeps systems close enough for ships to reach. From there he covers world tags and the enemies, friends, complications, things, and places each one points to, plus the short list of questions that turns a planet from a dot on the map into somewhere the players actually want to go. He frames it against the crew's arrival at Prometheon Station in Episode 31, "You're Arriving Very Late," the far end of a sector map the Star Master drew up well before the campaign started.

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[00:00:03] Brian: Access approved. Greetings, Dark Star Adventure Cast listeners throughout the galaxy, and thanks for joining me on another installment of Stars Without Number, Rules Explained. I am Brian, the voice of Captain Thorn, Assistant Star Master, and occasional backup Game Master, and I will be your host once again as we delve into the systems and mechanics that make the Adventure Cast tick. While the main episodes focus primarily on the story, there's a lot to learn and appreciate about Stars Without Number, the tabletop role-playing system ruleset that we're using behind the scenes. If you're the kind of person who appreciates the rules at play in a given scene, or if you're a Star Master looking for information or insight on the way the game is written, then sit back and enjoy, because this segment is for you. The topics for today's episode were chosen based on feedback from our listeners and, as always, in part by the events of the latest AdventureCast episode. You're arriving very late. It's finally time for the scapegoat to make its final drill run to Prometheon Station, the secret Viridine facility that Dr. Voss spoke of so long ago. Now the crew rushes there in hopes of finding her, but what if they've found way more than they bargained for? If you haven't already listened to that episode, you should go do that first. In this installment, we're going to talk about creating a sector, an important starting point for many Stars Without Number campaigns. What is a sector and what are the most important details to get started? What are some good ways to use all that information? And how do we use the sector design to inspire our adventures? So what in the vac is a sector anyway? The easiest way to think of it is as a group of star systems that are close enough together that interstellar travel and communication is still possible. I say still possible because by this point in the Stars Without Number setting, humanity has lost much of its ability to travel through space, and many worlds have been out of contact for generations. The best primer for the Stars Without Number setting is the History of Space chapter, starting on page 121 of the revised rulebook. It explains the current states of humans across the universe and what technology they use, but suffice to say, a sector is the setting for your adventures. Entire campaigns can be played within a single city, but players sitting down to play Stars Without Number are probably looking to explore a wider area across space. Building a sector is a lot like creating a world map for a fantasy game, only instead of oceans and continents, we're populating our map with stars and planets. If you think that sounds like a lot of work, you're not wrong. Building such a large area for your players to play in can seem incredibly daunting. The rulebook will even frequently mention that you should only prepare what you think you will reasonably need, and you should stop if you're not having fun. These are both great pieces of advice worth repeating. I want to talk about the value you get out of taking the time to work through this process, but sometimes a planet is just a dot in the sky until it needs to be anything more. Don't worry about the specifics of 30 worlds when your first few sessions will all take place on one. Use these rules to your advantage, don't let them force you to do anything that isn't fun for you. But if you're willing to put in a little bit of effort up front, a sector map can be a veritable font of prompts and ideas for you to use to inspire countless adventures. The rules for creating a sector start on page 129 of the revised rules. I highly encourage Star Masters to read through it as they build their sector. You can take my words here as a primer, but there's so much useful advice in these pages that you'd be doing yourself a disservice to skip out on them. The first thing we need for our sector is a grid map on which we'll place our star systems. Grab a hex grid that's 8 wide by 10 high, and decide how many stars you want in your sector. By default, the book recommends somewhere from 20 to 30 stars, and that may seem like way too many, but it can be valuable later. If you want, you can start with a smaller number just to get your feet wet, and then add more as you get comfortable or as you have the time. Roll a D8 and a D10 to determine the column and row of each of the stars and mark them on the grid. The book recommends doing the first 20 or so randomly, and then using the remainder to fill in clumps or connect areas that might otherwise be too far to travel to. Based on the normal setting rules, any star that is more than three hexes away from any other star is going to be too far for normal space travel. For more details on why that is, check out the space travel rules starting on page 110. Once your stars are placed, you now have a map of your sector. When a ship uses their spike drive to drill from one star to the next, this map will determine where they're able to go. Don't forget though that due to the meta-dimensional properties of spike drives, stars that are adjacent on this map are not necessarily close together in three-dimensional space. They could be, but just because something is a short drill away doesn't mean it's physically close. And in fact, a much more distant star could be easier to drill to than one that's right next door. This probably doesn't matter in most games since you'll be using the sector as a map to calculate travel times, and traveling to any star via normal means would take lifetimes. But it may be an interesting fact to think about when you think about how the people in these star systems will interact. Now, for each star we created, we want to create the primary world in that system. It's possible that some star systems don't have any people or any habitable areas, but for most, we will want to design at least one inhabited world. The book recommends that you stick with a single world for each star, assuming that the colonists from long ago would have chosen the single best planet in the system as the one to colonize. There are plenty of reasons why there could be multiple worlds in one star system, but to save on time and to save effort, it's fine to start with just one. If you do add more planets to one system later, you should think about what could have happened that would have caused humans to split up like that. So for each star, we're going to create a world by rolling two world tags on the table on page 132. World tags are the most important and useful part of creating your sector. Each planet should have two. If you have a certain thing in mind, you can always just choose two that you like, or you can make up your own. But choosing tags from the list in the book will give us a trove of helpful tools for our adventures. Once you have all the world tags for your planet, you can also roll several other properties at your discretion. The book has a table of atmospheres on page 160, a table of temperatures on page 162, a table of biospheres on page 164, a table of population sizes on page 166, and a table of tech levels on page 168. Each one of those is something you could choose or roll randomly for your worlds, but they're less important than the tags themselves. I still recommend taking the time to generate these though, because as with everything else we're doing here, you may end up with some interesting combinations you hadn't considered before, and it can lead to adventures that you never thought you could imagine on your own. Still, it's a lot of busy work to roll on six tables for nearly 30 worlds, write it all down, and then give them all unique names. So consider using a tool to make your life a little easier. I'd recommend something like Sectors Without Number, a web tool created by Mitchell Pigsley that will generate just about everything I've mentioned so far for you with a single click. You can check that out at sectorswithoutnumber.com, but don't forget that all of these properties are meant to be used as inspiration, so don't forget to read through what it generates for you so you don't miss out on the thought process. With all of that out of the way, our sector is basically complete. We can add optional points of interest as well, such as asteroid fields, space stations, etc., from the lists and tables on page 170, but other than that, we should have a pretty solid map of our sector. Now we just have to take this map and turn it into something that we actually use for dreaming up, writing, and running our space adventures. The first step is going to be defining trade routes and fleshing out our major worlds. Look at your map and look at how the systems are clumped to create lines and circles that show the trade and travel routes. From there, choose a planet to be the starting point or the focal point of your game. Now this is where the world tags are really going to come into play. By now you should have a good idea of what kinds of conflicts or stories you plan to have in your game, so choose a world or group of worlds with tags that seem interesting to you. This is where we want to start to zoom in and focus on building details around where the adventures are actually taking place. For the primary important worlds, look up the tags from the list starting on page 133. Each world tag has E-F-C-T-P: enemies, friends, complications, things, and places. Read through the E-F-C-T-P for the two tags on your world and choose at least one of them or combine them into something that makes sense. These are going to give you a lot of inspiration about what's going on in this world and what players are going to be able to do there. Don't forget to reference these against your other planet properties like population, tech level, and temperature. You might be able to interpret the same tag in multiple different ways, depending on the properties of the planet. So for the enemy, use the tags to dream up a single antagonist for that world and give them a name and a brief one-sentence description. Then do the same for friends, complications, things, and places. This'll give you just about everything you need to start having adventures on this world. And finally, the last step is to ask yourself a few questions about this world and jot down the answers. The book calls these answers, plus the EFCTP, the bare minimum of data you need to complete your planet. Question: what does this world have that the player characters might care about? Every world should have at least one obvious conflict. What is the biggest conflict on this world right now? How does this world react to outsiders? What is law enforcement like on this planet? And what is the name and general description of the main starport of the planet, or the place where the players are most likely to first land? You only have to collect all of this information for worlds you think the players are likely to visit within the next session or two. When you're first starting a campaign, you might find yourself detailing a few planets around the starting area, but don't feel like you have to do all of this before you and your group can start playing. Just focus on getting the bare minimum of what you expect you'll need, and if you've followed all of these steps, you'll be well prepared for all sorts of exciting adventures in a sector of your very own. Well, I hope you found all of this information useful, but unfortunately, that is the end of today's edition of Stars Without Number Rules Explained. As always, I really appreciate all of the feedback and support we've received about this segment and the AdventureCast as a whole. If you can, please leave us a like and a comment wherever you're listening. It shows us we have your support, and it helps the podcast grow. If you like this sort of content and want to hear more, head on over to our Patreon at patreon.com slash darkstaradventurecast, where subscribers get access to new episodes two weeks early. We'd love to hear from you there. Next on the AdventureCast is Jeff's Star Master Log, where he'll walk through some behind-the-scenes details about our own sector, the Viridian Expanse, and the characters within. Plus, interviews with the cast of the crew of the Scapegoat. Don't miss it! Thank you again to everyone out there listening. And as always, keep following that signal.