Stars Without Number vs Worlds Without Number: What Is the Difference?
Short answer
Stars Without Number and Worlds Without Number share a designer and a rules lineage but not a genre. Stars is science fiction with sectors, starships, and faction turns. Worlds is fantasy with dungeons and magic traditions. Neither is a newer edition of the other.
Stars Without Number and Worlds Without Number are both by Kevin Crawford and share most of their design, but they are different games for different genres. Stars Without Number is science fiction: sectors of star systems, starships, factions with interstellar reach. Worlds Without Number is fantasy: regions and ruins, magical traditions, dungeon crawling. If you learn one, the other will feel familiar within an hour.
What they share
- Old school design sensibilities with modern presentation.
- Classes, backgrounds, and foci as the character building blocks.
- Extensive generation tables for building the setting.
- A faction layer that acts between sessions.
- A free edition alongside a larger paid edition.
Where they diverge
The obvious one is genre, and genre changes the shape of a campaign. Stars Without Number gives you a sector map and a ship, so travel is a resource and distance is a real obstacle. Worlds Without Number gives you a region and legs, so the map is smaller and the dungeon is the unit of adventure.
Magic is the other real difference. Worlds Without Number builds out several magical traditions with distinct feels rather than one spell list, which is a much larger subsystem than anything in Stars Without Number. Stars Without Number spends that design budget elsewhere, on starships, hacking, and psionics.
Which should you start with?
Pick by what your table wants to play. There is no learning order and neither is a prerequisite. If the group is undecided, Worlds Without Number tends to be an easier sell to players used to fantasy RPGs, and Stars Without Number gives a GM more to build with out of the box.
Can you combine them?
Yes, and people do. The systems are close enough that porting a class or a subsystem across takes judgement rather than conversion maths.
Related questions
- Are Stars Without Number and Worlds Without Number compatible?
- Largely yes. They share a core design, so material converts between them with light judgement rather than a formal conversion process.
- Which came first, Stars Without Number or Worlds Without Number?
- Stars Without Number came first and established the design. Worlds Without Number is the later fantasy game built on the same foundation.
- Do I need both books?
- No. Each is a complete game on its own. Owning both is only useful if you want to borrow subsystems across genres.