Author: Moonsilver | Stefan
About The System
Worlds Without Number (WWN) is a D&D-esque medieval fantasy TTRPG and belongs to a category of games called the Old School Renaissance (OSR). At first, this might evoke ideas about boomers being stuck in nostalgia in the worst sense of the word, but that is not at all what WWN is about: WWN takes the ideas that worked well from 2nd edition D&D and earlier and combines them with modern TTRPG design and streamlining practices from the past 2 decades. This leads to an experience where the players interact with the world created by the DM (and it is truly a world created, and not a single storyline like we see in most modern D&D-esque games) in creative ways that no one (not even the GM) could have predicted while using simple yet impactful rules. To get more of an understanding of the OSR and its playstyle, we recommend watching this video.
Complexity: (★★☆☆☆)
System Strengths
WWN is simple. It does away with matrices, heaps of modifiers stacking, and opaque rules; and instead gives a streamlined, clear system with simple yet impactful choices.
WWN supports niches. If you make your character good at something, they are good at it—this actually does a lot to alleviate problems with martial-caster-balance since everyone at the table gets to do what they set out to do, rather than the wizard doing everything better than everyone else.
WWN is open ended. The game includes mechanics such as reaction rolls, which determine if a monster is extremely hostile, extremely amenable, or something in between, which leads to unexpected game outcomes for both players and the GM: What happens if the orc guard takes a liking to the characters, rather than attacking on sight? The game also has really simple combat stat blocks, making the loss of preparation on the GM minimal if the players skip an area, befriend a ‘supposed’ foe, or trivialize an encounter with a clever plan; furthermore, the game doesn’t have a concept of an “adventuring day” like 5e does: combat is meaningful from the very first round in the day and the party doesn’t need to be flung through a meat grinder before combat decisions truly matter, which means adventure sites can be smaller, adventures can include less or no combat, and turning a combat into a social interaction doesn’t unbalance the entire adventure. This means there can be significantly more adventure sites in the world and the GM can be a lot more open to different outcomes—significantly reducing their desire to railroad to not waste prep.
WWN is quick. The game’s resolution mechanics both in and out of combat are streamlined, simple, and plain fast: if your group is actively playing the game, you’ll have a lot of experiences in a single session—it rarely becomes a slog because the situation is so rapidly changing.
WWN is compatible. OSR games have the amazing ability to interconnect with each others’ content very easily with little conversion effort, which means despite the game only being a year old, there’s half a century worth of adventures published for it—enjoy!
WWN supports the DM. As mentioned before, not having the concept of an adventuring day, as well as having simple monster stat blocks, significantly cuts down on prep work. Mechanics like reaction rolls move the narrative burden away from the DM and towards the system. And the game can even do more: It comes with an amazing, system agnostic appendix on creating a campaign setting; it also comes with simple yet incredibly effective rules to formalize how players might achieve goals such as “abolish slavery in the kingdom”, or “get Bromir elected as town speaker”—this rule is called Major Projects.
WWN supports exploration. Thanks to the adventuring day not existing, and simplicity of prep allowing for many locations to be created, wilderness exploration and/or hex crawling can be used as an amazingly fun and player-driven way to explore and interact with the world. Its robust yet simple encumbrance system alongside its dangerous combat allows for dungeons to feel appropriately dangerous and like a race against time—how much treasure can you collect before you have to return to town to recuperate?
WWN is easy to expand. The game has very clear base mechanics, and its design philosophy is explained clearly in the book; combined with half a century of OSR-esque expansion systems existing, it’s trivial to add to the game what you need.
WWN is free. Most of the game comes in the free version linked below and that version is plenty content to enjoy the game for years; the biggest problem with the free version is that the paid version is so good, you want to buy it.
WWN is flexible. The game comes with a bunch of variant rules for character death and character/level advancement to tune it to suit your needs.
WWN has a science-fantasy sister game: Stars Without Number. Which shares pretty much all these listed properties, and again is available in a free and paid version.
System Flaws
WWN’s default extrinsic motivation is weak. The default XP system is that you gain 3 XP at the end of a session if you have engaged in meaningful adventuring activity during that session—this is an okay system, but it doesn’t drive play as hard as some alternatives. The game offers advice on what other progression systems to use and “XP for gold” would certainly do more of what one might want it to do, but it’s not described well enough to easily be implemented, requiring one to do a lot of the research and fiddling oneself.
WWN is not a combat focused game. This is less of a flaw in the truest sense of the word, and more something that you should generally be aware of: combat is an utterly acceptable way to solve some of your problems, but if you want to solve all your problems all the time with violence, you’re likely better off with a system that has deeper tactical choices such as 4th edition D&D, ICON, or Lancer.
Example Games
You can use pretty much any OSR adventure and convert it easily with the methods described in the WWN rulebook. A decent one to start with might be the free “The Sepulchre of Seven” which is reviewed / flipped through in this video.
Links
Free Version (90% of the paid version’s content)
I played D&D all through the 80s and into 90s. The game in the TSR era was awful, but it had the excuse that it was /first/, it was going to be less refined than the waves of better games that followed. That excuse had already worn thin when 2e failed to improve much through its run.
5e, of course, looks back to that era, rolling back myriad improvements in the prior WotC editions.
So why offer an OSR game as an alternative to 5e?
If all you’re looking for is non-WotC 5e D&D, many OSR games will be at least as bad as 5e.
Or just keep playing 5e, WotC won’t be selling it much longer.
Please, come up with a meaningful alternative next time.
Worlds Without Number is not a retroclone, arguments about poor games (which btw were also caused by poor *modules*) of the 70s, 80s, and 90s have no bearing on the game – this is also true of many other OSR games.
The article explains in sufficient depth why this OSR game is recommended – the most important reasons (which btw are fundamentally adversarial to the ‘improvements of 3rd and 4th edition D&D’) are being open ended and supporting exploration.
Yeah, I played all through the 80’s and 90’s too, and thought the game was fantastic. If it was so awful, why did you continue to play? I still prefer 2nd Ed to any of the later editions. But I guess too many people whined about their stupid actions leading to painful consequences for their characters as being ‘not fun’. Nothing gets the heart racing like real consequences that can’t be easily undone by sleeping for 8 hours, like facing off against a high level undead and their level draining ability. ‘But that’s just not fun!’ OK, so then after you are almost mortally wounded and go unconscious, sleep for 8 hours and we’ll pretend nothing ever happened!
This overview of strengths and flaws, pointing out the advantages for both player and DM, is really helpful. I have been interested in this at a distance, and now I’m going to go download the free version and check it out for real. I look forward to the other system summaries in your new series!
“(OSR). At first, this might evoke ideas about boomers being stuck in nostalgia in the worst sense of the word”
Which is exactly what it is. Grognards staggering about under the weight of their metre-thick rose-coloured glasses.
I don’t doubt that some OSR games might emulate their authors’ loving memories of a golden age that never was. But most are indeed clones, however mutated.
And 5e was conceived in much the same spirit. Wanting to be D&D in the 80s – especially in terms of popularity.
“2nd edition D&D and earlier and combines them with modern TTRPG design and streamlining”
Describes 5e.
“simple. It does away with matrices, heaps of modifiers stacking, and opaque rules; and instead gives a streamlined, clear system”
5e also makes this sort of claim.
” fundamentally adversarial to the ‘improvements of 3rd and 4th edition D&D’)”
Hey, that describes 5e, too.
And, I also came away with very little information about this clone:
It has reaction rolls. Huh, so did AD&D.
You get about 3xp per session.
Aside from that (3xp), as it’s “compatible with other OSR games,” presumably including retroclones, we’re left to assume it’s not so different from primitive D&D, stripped & polished –
– like 5e.
I’d have liked to hear, for instance how it eliminates the adventuring day?
Are all classes resourceless, like 5e martials?
Or do they all get per day resources, like 5e casters?
WWN just avoids trying to balance the heroes with easily avoidable or pointless resource attrition. It has system strain which keeps most things in line well enough the GM can find tune it. Without heavy GM buy in you won’t get around it and being sandbox heavy design the world doesn’t wait around for the heroes to get their act together after they make poor choices.
As for classes go it hard to put out a simple answer because the classes have a few key features but that has to be cross referenced with foci and skills.
The classes features are few but big. The warrior isn’t a little better at combat they are effectively able to face off with challenges the other classes wouldn’t be able to in the same manner.
It’s a blast to play and by far my favorite system to run thanks to the fact it’s GM facing and it’s flexibility.
Some other major points of it:
Fluid action system. Coupled with how fast it moves you don’t get players building dice towers waiting for an opportunity to act because that is almost always the case.
Over a 1000 class combos that are all relevant options. Cross reference with the two tier feat system and it’s heavy skill focus you have almost unlimited opportunities to fulfill concepts.
I love that mane OSR products have been free or mostly free.
It shows how much the authors like what they do, support the community and are convict that they do a nice job and some people gonna pay to support it.
The “easy to GM” of WWN have an especial place in my heart. Because i don’t like to spend much time preparing and love to improve in the table with the players.
Do you have any good tips for how to solve the lackluster EXP system?
No two tables want exp to do the same thing so it was a smart move to only include in in spirit.
The majority of the game’s progression isn’t “meta” so it stands to reason to give it a light touch with exp.
I’ve spent more time thinking about WWN’s XP system, and I begin to see more and more why the author went with it: It’s just so hard to find a one-size-fits-all implementation (and in fact, it’s most likely impossible)
Personally, I’ve only made a small adjustment to the system for my games: The GM gets to increase or decrease the XP gain at the end of the session depending on how big (or small) the players’ achievements were. So if they were wasting time in town doing nothing of relevance to the game, they get less, if they overcome some huge challenge with clever play, they get more.
But for more actionable table advice: Ask yourself what your campaign will be about, and pick an advancement system that fits. The book does offer some ideas, and plenty are floating around in common 5e practice as well. Is your game a relatively linear story/epic? Probably want to level them at certain story beats. Is it some player directed affair where they define their quests? Level them after every X quests. Is it about oldschool pulp fiction? Level them if they’ve gained/spent X silver pieces. Is it about murdering hack and slash through a mega dungeon? Level them after X rooms or after killing X hit dice worth of stuff.
The goal is to use a system that rewards what you want players to do, ‘3 XP at the end of session, up to +-2 depending on if you were daring or not’ does that for me