"The year is 3200 and mankind's empire lies in ashes — and a whole sector waits."
Stars Without Number is an old-school-inspired sci-fi RPG built from the ground up for sandbox play and to simplify the GM's job. B/X heritage in space — attributes, classes, saves — paired with generators for sectors, worlds, and factions. Famous for its genuinely complete free edition and the best sandbox-campaign toolkit in the genre.
Six hundred years after the Scream — a psychic catastrophe that severed faster-than-light travel and collapsed galactic civilization. Now humanity re-stitches the shattered stars: frontier worlds, forgotten Precursor tech, psychics, and silent AIs. A classic space frontier, wide open to explore.
Sector & world generation
Roll up a star sector in an evening: tables generate worlds, and two 'World Tags' per world seed conflicts and adventure hooks. A ready-made sandbox with almost no hand-crafting.
Faction turns
Factions act between sessions like a strategy game: building assets, attacking each other, seizing worlds. The setting evolves by itself — the GM never has to railroad.
d20 + 2d6 hybrid
Combat is familiar d20 vs AC. Skills are 2d6 + attribute + skill against a difficulty. Two simple mechanics anyone who's played old-school D&D already knows.
Three classes & Foci
Warrior, Expert, Psychic (plus the Adventurer multiclass). 'Foci' fine-tune a hero. Psionics is its own dangerous system of telepathy, telekinesis, and metapsionics.
Open in Session Zero to let every player vote and see the results.