Overview

Worlds Without Number is the latest tabletop RPG from Sine Nomine Publishing, a one-man band operated by the prolific Kevin Crawford. Crawford has made his name by writing games with mechanics based on old-school D&D, particularly the B/X edition. Over the years he has created numerous settings and refined his own take on the ruleset.

Worlds Without Number (WWN) is a fantasy version of 2017’s Stars Without Number Revised (SWN:R), the latest edition of Crawford’s science fiction ruleset. In particular, WWN tries to capture the feel of the Dying Earth genre of fantasy, featuring a far future world returned to a faux-medieval society by entropy and the sheer weight of history. The Dying Earth books by Jack Vance are the quintessential example of the genre – hence the name – but other works such as M. John Harrison’s Viriconium and Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun form part of the inspiration for WWN.

WWN was funded via Kickstarter, and there is a free version which contains everything you need to play. Paying customers gain access to plenty of Deluxe material, but the main rules and tools for play are in the free version, which lets you try before you buy!

System

The old-school D&D roots are very visible in this system: the classic 6 stats, classes, levels, AC, saving throws all make an appearance. However, Crawford’s system has evolved over time and includes an ascending AC scale and the inclusion of Foci, which resemble Feats from 3rd Edition D&D.

The basic system here is very similar to SWN:R, with a few tweaks suitable for fantasy gaming, such as a Focus for characters who are adept at setting and dismantling traps, and one for those who have mastered the deadly art of poisoning. The basic classes are Warrior, Mage, Expert and Adventurer. The Adventurer is this system’s version of multi-classing – an Adventurer partakes of two classes, for example Warrior/Mage or Expert/Warrior.

Combats in WWN are quick and often deadly – level 1 PCs in particular are prone to going down to a single hit, so players should be prepared to choose their battles wisely or avoid violence altogether.

The game contains several magic systems. Practitioners of High Magic are casters in the Vancian tradition of D&D magic – they wield powerful but quirky spells devised by the mages of old, and can call on such powers only a few times per day. In addition, they must choose which spells they wish to prepare at the start of the day. Other magical practitioners, such as Elementalists and Necromancers, can wield less devastating magics more often, though they are limited to arts within their particular purview. Classes in the Deluxe edition give even more flexibility to spellcasting, offering new takes on the tropes of the shapeshifting druid and the healing cleric.

The Renown system gives player characters a way to make their mark on the world, using their growing legend (and piles of silver, if necessary) to create changes. This could be anything from building a wall around a village to founding a university or outlawing a despised practice. This system encourages the players to become invested in the setting, and gives them new challenges to overcome. Often the initial cost in Renown points for a radical change is too high for the PCs to afford, leading them on adventures to remove resistance to their plans or find ancient artefacts to assist.

Setting

WWN is set on the Latter Earth, the far future of SWN:R, where the Earth has been repeatedly invaded by alien Outsiders who have transformed areas of the planet and its inhabitants to fit their unknowable goals. Earth is special due to the millennia-long build up of a network of magic and technology called the Legacy, which is now steadily decaying. The civilisations of the Latter Earth are moribund relics of great empires, or vigorous new states hoping to seize territory from disinterested decadents. Most people live at a medieval level of technology, but ancient relics of magic and science can be found and exploited by those brave enough to venture into the ruins of former days.

More detail is given on the Gyre, a particular region of the Latter Earth, which is mapped and described in this book. These are high-level summaries rather than a detailed Gazzeteer, but it’s plenty to stoke the imagination of a GM who wanted to use the published setting. Crawford seems very aware that many GMs will use the game for other settings, so he stays light on details and heavy on re-usable setting elements such as the Anakim (the setting’s variant on orcs).

The setting is an interesting take on the Dying Earth genre and the rules and setting dovetail nicely. As is typical for Crawford, the worldbuilding focuses on conflicts and opportunities likely to be of interest to a band of adventurers, rather than detailed timelines and family trees of ruling dynasties.

GM Tools

Like every product from Sine Nomine, WWN includes an entire host of GM tools, from a faction system to model the clash of guilds, city-states and empires to an enormous quantity of random tables to build locations, groups and adventures. The flavour of these tools is lightly tied to the Latter Earth, but almost everything can easily be used in any fantasy RPG, and most of it could even be applied in other genres. You could throw away the entire system and setting and still get value out of reading this book, if you’re the kind of GM who likes to take inspiration from random tables and adventure seeds.

Art & Production Quality

WWN is a beautiful book with some stellar art – the cover in particular is fantastic. The quantity of art will seem sparse by some standards, but the quality is consistently good and in-keeping with the Dying Earth fantasy genre. The layout is excellent, the text is readable, and the chapters are reasonably well organised.

Conclusion

I find it hard to criticise this book, it’s of consistently high quality throughout. If you’re skeptical of its value, you’re welcome to try the free version which contains everything you need to run a game. So there shouldn’t be anyone who is disappointed by it.

If I was searching for a flaw, it would be that the system largely recapitulates what’s already been published in SWN:R, so there are large portions of the text which offer nothing new. Even then, there are new options to suit the genre (such as shattering shields and charging into combat) so not everything is repeated.

This is an excellent product for anyone who is interested in systems based on old-school D&D, or for people who wish to explore the waning days of a future Earth steeped in obscure sorcery and forbidden ruins of ages past.