For me, one of the wonderful benefits of the OSR has been some great efforts in extending it to the sci-fi genre. "Exonauts!", "Terminal Space", and the rebirth of "Starships & Spacemen" have all been welcome additions to my library and game sessions. At the same time, however, none have really been enough to take a substantial share of my time from my favorite SF RPGs such as "Thousand Suns", "Diaspora" and "Traveller".

And then, seemingly out of nowhere, comes "Stars Without Number", and it appears I will have to make room for one more. In fact, I could see how SWN may very well supplant one or two of my favorites entirely.

With no disrespect intended towards other works and authors, I have to say that through SWN, Kevin Crawford has created an absolutely epic work here. In the same way that "Lamentations of the Flame Princess" turned OD&D up to 11, SWN does the same with the idea of an OSR SFRPG. SWN is a well executed labor of love that, in 210 pages, gives a GM and Players everything (and more!) they would need to build a fascinating, long running sandbox-style campaign that could run for ages. And because of its OD&D simplicity, it could just as easily be used to run a quick and dirty adventure (including character generation) in a single evening. SWN is truly simple, but has the capability to be deep. If you're an old-school group who ever wanted to give something like Traveller a try, but preferred to stick with the system that you know and love, this game is for you.

Kevin's writing is crisp and direct, layout is clean and the book is well-edited. Presentation is excellent, though I've seen these SF clipart graphics before. This is a game worthy of its own art, someday. The PDF is well-bookmarked (THANK YOU!) and includes a Table of Contents and a complete index. Record sheets for everything from the characters and their starships to sector map, planet record, adventure sheets and alien records are included. The number and quality of resources is mind-boggling and suitable for almost any SF game: adventure seeds, NPCs, random tables for religion, politics and architecture, proper names in 8 languages (!), Designer Notes to guide GM customization, starship creation, world generation, alien creation and the list goes on and on. I would almost say that this is a more complete game than the original Classic Traveller with a lower learning curve.

More than that, this game feels more open (to me) than CT and many other games which seem to have military, trade or Star Trek style adventuring baked into them. I prefer to play adventures in universes that resemble those of Asimov and Poul Anderson, and although "Thousand Suns" has been my goto game for this for years, I find the elegant simplicity and sandbox friendly nature of SWN to be a strong draw for my attention for the foreseeable future.

Also worth noting is the adventure module "Hard Light", released separately, which is well worth the low cost and another great example of this game's old school sensibilities. If these are published in print, I will definitely be purchasing it and I look forward to more from Sine Nomine Publishing.

When I first saw this product, I was skeptical.

It's wroth a read, I'll give it that. What it lacks in classes (with only three, though admittedly you can do a fair amount of variation between the three), it makes up for in being fully-functional in the rules department.

I don't think I've seen some of the features in this free game in three or four expensive games combined. It may be simple, but there's still a lot to do in it, so if you wanna play a game quick, and be able to come back to it the next week, choose Stars Without Number!

This game combines many of the best elements of other games (old and new) and comes up with a consistent background which justifies psionics, and planets with differing tech levels. Claustrophobic and vast. Technological and gritty. Moody with optimistic ambition. A really nice selection of illustrations set the tone. It's probably as rewarding to play this game as it is to read. Nice one, SN publishing! - D20 meets old Traveller meets Cyberpunk, in an existential universe where survival may depend upon hidden gifts. Love it!