JUGGERNAUT JUGGERNAUT VERSION 2.0 DISCLAIMER: This PDF is not intended for sale by any party. I do not own any of the images contained herein, nor have I been in contact with any of the artists that produced them. This system uses the same mechanics, with significant alteration, as the Stars Without Number tabletop role playing game by Sine Nomine Publishing. In addition, it uses many of the resources as originally listed in the SWN game. I have not been in communication with any artist or any publishing organization in relation to the production of this PDF. The information contained in this document is for experimental purposes among a shared group of collaborators, and any distributors of this document are responsible for any infringements they incur. Additional note: Because of the somewhat lacking formatting capacity of Adobe Acrobat, the format changes done myself, and the multiple font changes, you may some places where the objects are slightly misaligned or there's a bit of a gap between on section and another. This is unfortunate and irritating, visually, but the effort it takes to go through the entire document and fix these is prohibitive. Sorry. TABLE OF CONTENTS Note that until the document is finalized, these page numbers are incorrect. Introduction .........................................................................................................................4 Character Creation ...............................................................................................................6 Magicks .................................................................................................................................22 Equipment ...........................................................................................................................34 Super Science .......................................................................................................................53 Systems ................................................................................................................................66 Game Master's Guide .........................................................................................................83 World Generation ..............................................................................................................90 Adventure Creation .............................................................................................................112 Additional Races ................................................................................................................122 Bestiary .................................................................................................................................127 Resources ..............................................................................................................................137 Record Sheets .......................................................................................................................157 The Industrial Revolution is giving way to colonialism and New and revolutionary political ideologies are taking the world by globalization, and it is the turn of the century! a storm. Anarchists and communists talk to each other in hushed circle at midnight in clandestine coffee shops. Great industrial Radio and the telegraph allow people to communicate faster than autocracies hold millions in their thrall with nationalism and age- ever before, allowing news to travel at unheard of rates and for old kingdoms crumble under the weight of the people, ushering in militaries to expand further. Morse code is developed. and messages democracy. Two two ideologies - the liberal and the national - are encrypted with the first cryptographic algorithms. Strange begin to clash. Tensions rise in economics as capitalism is analytical machines are developed, with a promise of a brighter threatened by the birth of the Socialist. Some countries thrive on future. Man has begun to look up at the stars at night, in earnest this new system, happily adopting whatever ideology suits them now, and imagine the worlds that might circle alien stars, or the best, while other nations buckle beneath the strain. strange beast that might walk on Mars. Elaborate scientific fictions permeate literature. New diseases take hold as well, and the masses of people drawn to industrialized cities spread plagues like influenza. Papers publish Homes and streets shrug off a gaslight infrastructure and welcome articles about Germs and the Invisible Menace. the great electric light with open arms. The movie industry makes a Superdreadnoughts tread the seas and vast zeppelins take to the splash, with silent black-and-white skits being shown in the new sky, casting shadows across city blocks below. Brave flight movie-theatres that spring up all over the place. pioneers tackle heavier-than-air flight, and a new field rises as aeroplanes soar overhead. However, some nations are left behind, and the great industrial powers of the day absorb them into their bloated imperial mass. Nations have more exploitable resources than ever before in Exotic foreign spices and cloths come in from colonies, and the history. Their politics, ideologies, and territory lines clash. This natural resources are drawn in to support the ever-expanding new situation, combined with old grudges and politics, lay the infrastructure. foundation upon which tensions rise... Welcome to this rather liberal adaptation of Stars Without Number. Many of the skills, attributes, and player systems are radically A Stars Without Number fan? different from the source of inspiration, but the fantastic GM resources provided by Sine Nomine Publishing are represented If you’ve SWN before, you’ll readily recognize a significant portion almost exactly as they were originally printed (albeit adapted for a of this book, including the basic layout. This book is a loose different technology level). adaptation of the SWN system for a new setting. All credit for the systems involved to to Sine Nomine publishing, as they were the If you enjoy what you see here, I highly recommend checking out ones that did the real work here. the table top role playing game that inspired JUGGERNAUT: Stars Without Number, as well as other Sine Nomine products, many of Although SWN was fully OSR compatible, meaning content could which are high quality OSRs. be easily ported back and forth between other old-school rpg systems, JUGGERNAUT deviates from OSR compatibility because when I homebrew, I just take the ball and run with it. The primary New to Role Playing Games? differences are the attribute system, the Moxie/Fortitude system, If you’re unfamiliar with role playing games, this book may not and the feats addition. If you can hack it, many of the systems make a lot of sense. It’s not a coventional spec fiction story and it presented within should be portable between systems. However, I seems to have a lot of rules and tables in it. In reality, you’re leave that particular adventure up to you. probably more familiar with it than you might imagine. In addition to the usual elements expected of a retro-inspired game, A role playing game, or “RPG”, is simply a game intended to allow JUGGERNAUT also includes mechanics for developing player- you to take the role of a character in a fictional universe. You use controlled factions and domains and creating sandbox-friendly your abilities and your natural wits to deal with the challenges of worlds for PCs to discover. A grognard interested in seeing where that world, working to attain your own goals and accomplish those this particular game differs from other offerings currently available ends that seem most fun and rewarding for you. should skim through the the GM’s Guide chapter to get an overview RPGs like this one date back to the 1970s, and were the fundamental of sector creation, and then look in particular at world Generation inspiration behind today’s enormously popular massively and the Adventure chapters. The Resources section might prove multiplayer online role playing games. Millions of people play RPGs useful for other games and settings, as much of the content there is on a daily basis, though usually in the form of a computer- system-neutral. moderated online game. A “pen-and-paper RPG” like this one cuts out the server and puts a human in its place. Th is human is the game master, or GM. He or she designs the situations the adventurers might find themselves in and judges the actions they take to deal with these circumstances. Gaming Terminology #d# Dice. “3d6” means, “roll a six-sided die three times and add it together”. Also seen as “2d12+2”, meaning “roll the twelve-sided die twice, total it, and then add two to the total”. GM Game Master; the person responsible for running the game and responding to player choices. NPC Non-Player Character; a character played by the GM, whether an antagonist or otherwise. PC Player Character; a character played by one of the game’s players. The PCs are the protagonists of the game. CHAPTER ONE CHARACTER CREATION Before you can begin playing JUGGERNAUT , you need to roll up In actual play, your character should be motivated to act , and to act a character. While the game can theoretically work with just a single as part of a group. Th e game does not deal well with hostile loners, player and a GM, things work best with 2-5 friends in addition to apathetic brooders, or other characters that have to be coaxed into the GM. A lone adventurer can get in a lot of trouble out there,