Thanks for making this, and splitting it into chapters, its a huge help. WWN seems to add the character bits that OSR lacks without going full superhero.
Wait... did I hear that Jack is running Arden Vul w/ W w/out Number? Man, I'd LOVE to chat w/ him about his experiences. I'm planning on doing the same, coming up w/in the next month or so.
It's been on hiatus for awhile, but I ran it from levels 1-3 with a group. The only major modification I made was to switch to the gold standard and use gold-as-xp (with the progression based on a post from the WWN subreddit). It works better for megadungeon pacing imo, since your level correlates more or less directly to how much you've poked around. I ran the OSRIC stats from Ardun Vul as-is, adapting DCs on the fly, no changes to the monsters (the OSRIC to-hit works out to just be HD anyway). It ended up being a lot more fun than I felt like it would've been with a non-WWN party since they have quite a few traversal and utility spell options that aren't on hard usage limits and so they're empowered to use to move around and interact with the dungeon. Jack
Kind of, yeah. To my understanding, the predecessor to this (Stars Without Number) basically had the goal of blending OSR and Traveller, iirc) (Sorry if I’m explaining stuff you already know, I just like talking about this stuff)
I had sleep on Crawford's "...Without Number" games until recently. I recently found a used, near-mint SWN for $50 USD; I thought I'd use it to mine ideas, but I now I want to run it as is.
Interested in seeing how this goes as I've heard good things. My only comment is re-rolling all hit dice every level isn't really mean, it kind of makes it so you get closer to the average hp over time. It can feel real good to reach second level with a 2 hp character and get to re-roll that.
Yeah also you can't roll underneath your current. You get +1 to it so it actually ends up being at the very least, meh, but never worse off which I can appreciate.
It's definitely swingier the first two or three levels, but you're right that it starts to, at least theoretically, converge on the average as levels increase. But it's definitely less kind than giving a fixed amount or having larger available PC hit dice.
@@iamdrwizard Hmm yeah I can see that. Character creation sounded fun! I love the Vancian spell names. The ability to specialize with Foci is neat and something you don't get with many other old school inspired games. Also I like that the foci are all special and not things that make you think "shouldn't everyone just be able to do this"
Thank you for uploading this! It helped answer a couple questions I had about character creation. Which character sheet are you using? It is one you made or is it form fillable?
I'm glad you found it helpful :) The character sheet is the built in one that you get using Foundry and the built in compendium (if I am not mistaken. The Compendium may need a separate installation in the mod section.) If you want the entire modlist I use for WWN games I can probably find it and post it for you. :)
@@jameshart542 hey james, that is awesome to hear! This was a while back so I'll just give you my current list of active modules I use in my WWN games these days using the latest version of Foundry (V11). I would say you could probably get a lot more, but these are good enough for my needs :D Bug Reporter, Actually Private Rolls, Dice So Nice!, Dice Tray, Find The Culprit, GM Notes, Initiative Double Click, libWrapper, Ownership Viewer, Pings, PopOut!, Settings Extender Hope that helps and best of luck with your WWN campaign!!
So I haven't uploaded this or the following episode since I want to keep the AP Podcast from being clogged up with several of the one shots we have done already and will do. However, the WWN Temple of Elemental Evil campaign is on the podcast if that interests you. If you search WasabiBurger's Actual Plays you should be able to find the show on Spotify :) wasabiburger.podbean.com/
You state that the hp rolling is mean at 10:52. I think the math is actually much better for the players. You will never get stuck with one or two bad rolls at lower levels. You have many chances to have much better totals every time you level since you can never go down. This is actually very clever and makes it less swingy over time.
For example if you started a player at level five you could either (a) do a sequence of rolls for levels 1-5 until you arrive at level five. OR (b) just roll level five dice once. Option (a) the same as option (b) plus the additional opportunities roll. Those rolls give you the chance to remove bad rolls from previous levels.
TLDR this system lowers the likelihood of having an improbably low hp character at higher levels because you don’t get stuck with bad rolls from previous levels.
@@MrBrauk It does end up being better for the players as the levels go on, however it's definitely less forgiving than the fairly common practice of games that give fixed HP and include larger hit dice at level 1. And given the slightly higher power level of WWN than something like B/X, it can be, imo, a bit meaner at the first couple levels. That said, you have Foci like Die Hard and the handful of AC-improving ones that you can take to mitigate this, so it's really not an issue except in a place like this one shot where you can get a 5HP level 2 warrior with some unlucky rolls.
I have less experience with C&C but I would say it is easier than WWN. However for doing more classic dungeon crawling with younger folk, I think Shadowdark would be another good system to look at as it is pretty easy to pick up and play and run dungeon crawls with in my opinion :) and you can get a free quickstart pdf version of it on DrivethruRPG
Thanks for making this, and splitting it into chapters, its a huge help. WWN seems to add the character bits that OSR lacks without going full superhero.
Looks like a really cool system. Thanks for the intro to it.
Wait... did I hear that Jack is running Arden Vul w/ W w/out Number? Man, I'd LOVE to chat w/ him about his experiences. I'm planning on doing the same, coming up w/in the next month or so.
It's been on hiatus for awhile, but I ran it from levels 1-3 with a group. The only major modification I made was to switch to the gold standard and use gold-as-xp (with the progression based on a post from the WWN subreddit). It works better for megadungeon pacing imo, since your level correlates more or less directly to how much you've poked around. I ran the OSRIC stats from Ardun Vul as-is, adapting DCs on the fly, no changes to the monsters (the OSRIC to-hit works out to just be HD anyway).
It ended up being a lot more fun than I felt like it would've been with a non-WWN party since they have quite a few traversal and utility spell options that aren't on hard usage limits and so they're empowered to use to move around and interact with the dungeon.
Jack
It's like Traveller and DnD had a baby.
Kind of, yeah. To my understanding, the predecessor to this (Stars Without Number) basically had the goal of blending OSR and Traveller, iirc)
(Sorry if I’m explaining stuff you already know, I just like talking about this stuff)
I had sleep on Crawford's "...Without Number" games until recently. I recently found a used, near-mint SWN for $50 USD; I thought I'd use it to mine ideas, but I now I want to run it as is.
Interested in seeing how this goes as I've heard good things. My only comment is re-rolling all hit dice every level isn't really mean, it kind of makes it so you get closer to the average hp over time. It can feel real good to reach second level with a 2 hp character and get to re-roll that.
Yeah also you can't roll underneath your current. You get +1 to it so it actually ends up being at the very least, meh, but never worse off which I can appreciate.
It's definitely swingier the first two or three levels, but you're right that it starts to, at least theoretically, converge on the average as levels increase. But it's definitely less kind than giving a fixed amount or having larger available PC hit dice.
@@iamdrwizard Hmm yeah I can see that. Character creation sounded fun! I love the Vancian spell names. The ability to specialize with Foci is neat and something you don't get with many other old school inspired games. Also I like that the foci are all special and not things that make you think "shouldn't everyone just be able to do this"
I love that mechanic!
Does Jack have more actual plays? Dude has a smooth delivery.
We also did a Delta Green Actual Play on the channel GMed by him. He ran Operation Unfathomable. Outside of that though, nothing else at this time!
It was actually Operation Fulminate (aka Sentinels of Twilight) but running Operation Unfathomable in DG would've been quite the experience 😂.
@@iamdrwizard whoops!
Thank you for uploading this! It helped answer a couple questions I had about character creation.
Which character sheet are you using? It is one you made or is it form fillable?
I'm glad you found it helpful :) The character sheet is the built in one that you get using Foundry and the built in compendium (if I am not mistaken. The Compendium may need a separate installation in the mod section.) If you want the entire modlist I use for WWN games I can probably find it and post it for you. :)
@@wasabiburger3047 This video really helped me get started on my WWN campaign, did you post that mod list for Foundry VTT anywhere?
@@jameshart542 hey james, that is awesome to hear! This was a while back so I'll just give you my current list of active modules I use in my WWN games these days using the latest version of Foundry (V11). I would say you could probably get a lot more, but these are good enough for my needs :D
Bug Reporter, Actually Private Rolls, Dice So Nice!, Dice Tray, Find The Culprit, GM Notes, Initiative Double Click, libWrapper, Ownership Viewer, Pings, PopOut!, Settings Extender
Hope that helps and best of luck with your WWN campaign!!
where can I get that nice action sheet
Sounds interesting, are you planning on uploading this and future episodes to spotify by any chance?
So I haven't uploaded this or the following episode since I want to keep the AP Podcast from being clogged up with several of the one shots we have done already and will do. However, the WWN Temple of Elemental Evil campaign is on the podcast if that interests you. If you search WasabiBurger's Actual Plays you should be able to find the show on Spotify :) wasabiburger.podbean.com/
You state that the hp rolling is mean at 10:52. I think the math is actually much better for the players. You will never get stuck with one or two bad rolls at lower levels. You have many chances to have much better totals every time you level since you can never go down. This is actually very clever and makes it less swingy over time.
For example if you started a player at level five you could either (a) do a sequence of rolls for levels 1-5 until you arrive at level five.
OR
(b) just roll level five dice once.
Option (a) the same as option (b) plus the additional opportunities roll. Those rolls give you the chance to remove bad rolls from previous levels.
TLDR this system lowers the likelihood of having an improbably low hp character at higher levels because you don’t get stuck with bad rolls from previous levels.
oh yeah I've totally changed my stance on it since this video and have played WWN more. I think it's a good system
@@MrBrauk It does end up being better for the players as the levels go on, however it's definitely less forgiving than the fairly common practice of games that give fixed HP and include larger hit dice at level 1. And given the slightly higher power level of WWN than something like B/X, it can be, imo, a bit meaner at the first couple levels.
That said, you have Foci like Die Hard and the handful of AC-improving ones that you can take to mitigate this, so it's really not an issue except in a place like this one shot where you can get a 5HP level 2 warrior with some unlucky rolls.
Do you think this is easier or harder for a new GM to teach children how to play together, than "Castles&Crusades"?
I have less experience with C&C but I would say it is easier than WWN. However for doing more classic dungeon crawling with younger folk, I think Shadowdark would be another good system to look at as it is pretty easy to pick up and play and run dungeon crawls with in my opinion :) and you can get a free quickstart pdf version of it on DrivethruRPG
What VTT are you using?
Looks like Foundry