Characters Without Number

The Without Number RPGs

Three tabletop roleplaying games — science fiction, fantasy and cyberpunk — that share one rules engine and an unusual reputation: they are the games people buy for the game master tools. Each has a complete free edition.

Where to get the books Build a character free

The four games

Stars Without Number

SWN Science fiction

Far-future space adventure built for sandbox play: a crew, a ship, and a sector of worlds to get into trouble across.

Start here if you want space opera, or if you are a GM who wants the strongest set of "generate me a whole sector" tools in the series.

  • ▸ Sector and world generation you can run a campaign out of
  • ▸ Psychic characters with a distinctive Effort economy
  • ▸ A full starship construction and combat system
  • ▸ Faction rules for what happens off-screen between sessions
SWN character builder → Get the book →

Cities Without Number

CWN Cyberpunk

Chrome, debt and bad options in a city that does not care about you. Missions for pay, and the slow cost of the hardware you bolt on to survive them.

Start here if you want cyberpunk, or if you like the idea of a game where the city itself is the thing you build.

  • ▸ Cyberware with System Strain — power always has a body cost
  • ▸ A hacking system that is playable at the table rather than a solo minigame
  • ▸ Drones and vehicles as full subsystems
  • ▸ District, gang and mission generators for building a city
CWN character builder → Get the book →

Worlds Without Number

WWN Fantasy

Old-school fantasy adventuring with a modern chassis — and the deepest worldbuilding toolkit of the three, whatever fantasy game you actually play.

Start here if you want fantasy, or if you GM any fantasy game at all and want the tag-driven world tools.

  • ▸ Warrior / Expert / Mage, plus partial combinations for hybrids
  • ▸ Several distinct magical traditions rather than one spell list
  • ▸ Foci that let two Warriors play nothing alike
  • ▸ Worldbuilding tags usable with any fantasy system
WWN character builder → Get the book →

Ashes Without Number

AWN Post-apocalyptic

What people do after the world ends. Scavenging, mutation and the hard arithmetic of keeping a settlement alive one more season.

Start here if you want post-apocalyptic play, or if you want the one game in the series with no classes at all — survivors are built entirely out of Edges and Foci.

  • ▸ Classless characters: two Edges and a Focus decide who you are
  • ▸ Mutations as a whole subsystem, with a point economy of their own
  • ▸ Scrap rather than money — gear mods and vehicles are built, not bought
  • ▸ Three genre modes in one book: after the fall, deadlands, mutant wasteland
AWN character builder → Get the book →

Why people play them

The short version: they solve the game master's problem rather than the player's. Most roleplaying books spend their page count on character options and leave the person actually running the game to invent a world from nothing. These spend it on generators — roll a sector, a city district, a faction, a ruin, and get somewhere with problems already in it that you can run this evening.

That is why you will meet people using the worldbuilding chapters with a completely different rules system. The tools produce places and trouble, not stat blocks, so they port.

The second reason is the price of entry. A complete free edition of each game is a standing policy, not a limited promotion, so you can read the whole thing before deciding whether to spend anything.

One engine, four genres

All four run on the same chassis, which is the thing newcomers most often miss. Learn one and you can run the rest after skimming a chapter:

  • ▸ Six attributes and a small modifier from each, so a good score helps without deciding the character.
  • ▸ Skills on 2d6 plus skill level and an attribute modifier — a bell curve, so competence shows up reliably.
  • ▸ A d20 to hit and saving throws that get easier as you level.
  • ▸ Class plus background plus foci — the foci are where two characters of the same class stop resembling each other.
  • ▸ Effort as the budget for special powers, whether that is psychic disciplines, magic or cyberware strain.

The genres differ in what sits on top: starships and psychics in one, chrome and hacking in another, spells and traditions in the third.

What to expect at the table

Character creation takes minutes rather than an evening, and the books include a quick method that builds someone playable off a handful of rolls. Combat is fast and genuinely dangerous at low levels — these are not games where the heroes are assumed to win. Advancement is steady rather than explosive, and a campaign is expected to be a sandbox: the group picks what to poke at, and the faction rules quietly move the world along between sessions whether or not anybody was watching.

If you have played old-school D&D or its retroclones, this will feel familiar with the rough edges filed off. If you have not, nothing here assumes you have.

Where this site fits

Characters Without Number is a free character builder for all four games — it does the arithmetic, knows the equipment and cyberware catalogs, and gives you a sheet that levels with you. There is also a free solo oracle if you want to play without a group, a ship builder, a sector map editor and campaign tools for GMs.

It is not a replacement for the books and does not try to be — the rules text, the generators and the GM chapters are the publisher's, and buying them is how the games keep being made. What the site does is take the bookkeeping off your hands.

Common questions

What are the Without Number RPGs?
A family of tabletop roleplaying games by Kevin Crawford, published by Sine Nomine Publishing. The four current games are Stars Without Number (science fiction), Worlds Without Number (fantasy), Cities Without Number (cyberpunk) and Ashes Without Number (post-apocalyptic). They share one rules engine and are best known for the depth of their game master tools.
Are the Without Number games free?
Each of the four has a complete free PDF edition — not a quickstart or a demo, but the whole game. The paid editions add deluxe material on top. Starting with the free edition is the normal way in.
Which Without Number game should I start with?
Pick by genre: Stars Without Number for science fiction, Worlds Without Number for fantasy, Cities Without Number for cyberpunk, Ashes Without Number for post-apocalyptic. They teach the same core rules, so whichever you learn first makes the rest easy.
Do I need to know old-school D&D to play them?
No. They draw on old-school design — classes, levels, a d20 roll to hit — but character creation is guided and the maths is simple. Modern rules such as skills on 2d6 and the Effort economy have no old-school equivalent.
Can I use the worldbuilding tools with a different game?
Yes, and many people buy them for exactly that. The sector, world, faction and city generators are largely system-neutral — they produce places, factions and problems rather than stat blocks.

Start with a free book

All four games have a complete free edition. Read one, then build a character here and see whether it clicks.

Get the books Build a character