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Month: January 2026

  • Edges: Philosophy

    Before going into individual Edges, I thought I’d first talk a little bit about what makes a good Edge. Edges are the building blocks of your character in the later Without Number books. They are defining class abilities, but what that means can be a bit unclear. Especially when you also consider Foci, which can also be defining.

    My philosophy on Edges are they should fall into one of two categories. They either need to Solve a Problem, or make you Significantly Better. The latter category usually means adding an ability modifier. Such upgrades are rare (see my post on Backgrounds about that), so improving a key ability mod is worth the Edge. Not many Foci outside of racial/origin choices give a modifier bonus, and the Edges usually come with a few other things as well.

    The other option for an Edge is that they Solve a Problem. My go to example of this is the Veteran’s Luck Edge. Originally a Warrior ability in Stars and Worlds, I think it’s one of the best abilities in the game. It gives the player options (kill something or not be killed), and it can be used often. It Solves a Problem, the problem being something is about to kill you. When making my own Edges, I try to consider how they compare to Veteran’s Luck.

    Unfortunately, many of the base Edges in Cities and Ashes compare pretty poorly. Something like Educated is a pretty poor choice (being the equivalent of 10ish skill points). That’s not powerful or interesting nor does it really solve anything. One thing I tried to do is improve some of these Edges. Some Edge’s got reworked, others got a smaller boost in how often their abilities can be used.

    One reason I’ve done this is for balance sake, but also for genre. As attested to by Keven Crawford in many reddit posts, characters using Edges in Cities and Ashes are weaker than their Stars and Worlds counterparts. This is for the sake of the genre: cyberpunk characters are assumed to make themselves more powerful with cool cyberware, and post-apocalyptic survivors are meant to be less powerful.

    Neither of those assumptions fit the game I want to run. I plan for characters to go on adventures, fight evil threats, and in general be heroes. There’s no major enhancements like cyberware, or at least none readily available. So characters need to be stronger. Ashes recommends giving an extra Edge at level 3, but I think my reworks will work better and keep characters more focused.

  • Equipment: Artillery and Others

    While it’s not likely a group of characters is going to carting around a cannon or Gatling gun, I don’t think you can have a game in this time period without acknowledging the possibility that they’ll get their hands on some heavy artillery. It’s a thing I didn’t want to spend a ton of time on, because of how rarely it will come up, but there needs to be a process there just in case.

    The various Without Numbers games have a framework for things like grenades and mortars, so mostly I used that. The most important thing is to get the feel right, which means wide-scale destruction that someone survives mostly by luck. If you get hit by cannonfire, I want the effect of everyone around you being blown to bits, even if your PC status gives you some extra protection.

    So all artillery has an area of effect and requires a Luck save to avoid. Shock damage is usually meant for melee combat, but I think it represents well the small damage someone might take by avoiding the main blast. Shock should also works well for “spread” effects like using grapeshot or a shotgun.

    One thing I’ve pondered is misfiring. I wrote misfiring rules for artillery a while ago, and they’re a little specific and complicated, allowing for rerolls and requiring skill checks. More recently, I wrote a misfire table for “new science” devices which is much simpler but doesn’t allow for as much character interaction. For now, I’m going to keep them as is, but it’s possible in the future artillery might just get a similar “misfire table” if artillery proves cumbersome.

    Then there’s armor, which isn’t much of a thing for the time period. I’ve limited it to just “light” and “medium” armor. Since most guns have full armor penetration (some models like the derringer or muskets only have armor piercing at short range), armor isn’t going to be useful as often. So I keep it simple and move on.

    Finally, to wrap up equipment, there’s everything else. The gear, the services, things like that. These can be interesting because it really tells you what kind of game you’ll be playing. If individual meals and services and priced out, you’re probably expected to spend a fair amount of time making decisions about what you’re eating, when you’re sleeping, etc. I prefer a more generic “lifestyle” charge which puts all that in a lump sum.

    I’ve had mixed success with this so far in other games, but I want it to work so I’ll keep trying. Players tend to get enough money pretty quickly that it doesn’t matter much, or they hem and haw about the details trying to get a few dollars shaved off the cost. While the second issue can be rightly ignored, the first is pretty common after a level or two. I think it’s just a reality of how rewards work. If you want players to be able to afford cool guns or whatever, at some point they’ll just take a chunk of that to pay for boring things like food and housing.

    Kind of a rambling post here, but we’re about to get into the good stuff: Edges, what I’ve changed, new ones, and my philosophy on how they’re supposed to work.