In November 2023 we presented the Sine Nomine Corebooks Bundle featuring the complete Deluxe Editions of Worlds Without Number and Stars Without Number, along with Wolves of God, Silent Legions, and other standalone RPG rulebooks by acclaimed designer Kevin Crawford of Sine Nomine Publishing.
In 2010, while working at a research library, Kevin Crawford wanted to improve his skills with Adobe InDesign. Having seen Albert Rakowski’s Terminal Space, an SFRPG based on white-box D&D, Kevin decided to write his own RPG as a working text – a setting-agnostic SFRPG based on Moldvay B/X D&D and Traveller. (Moldvay Basic is “the Raspberry Pi of the game hacking world,” he said in an August 2017 Reddit r/rpg AMA. “You can stick a huge number of adaptations or mods onto it, and it’ll still work.”) In December 2010 Kevin posted Stars Without Number: Free Edition on RPGnow (later DriveThruRPG). “Things got out of hand quickly,” he says laconically.
In his years-long hand-over-hand climb up the cliff face of RPG publishing, Kevin has highlighted a path to success that is simple but by no means easy: Identify an unusual niche (in his case, system-independent sandbox gaming tools); produce with what he calls “bibliomanic intensity”; and distribute a generous free version of the rulebook that lures customers to the backlist. Kevin has run 12 Kickstarter campaigns with a Vulcan clarity of purpose. First he finishes and lays out the book completely, leaving space for art; then, and only then, he launches the campaign; he avoids stretch goals and delivers early. “I wrote, laid out, produced, and published every one of those games and supplements myself, learning more with every new book,” he said on the February 2014 Scarlet Heroes Kickstarter campaign page. “There are certainly finer game authors and more elegant publishers, but I execute like a Jacobin – because getting a job done on time and to spec is its own special sort of beauty.”
From seven past offers (mostly 2013-2017, with two as recent as early 2023) we assembled seven complete standalone Sine Nomine rulebooks with a huge array of system-independent sandbox gaming tools. Easily generate kingdoms and AIs, planets and pantheons, cults and factions, monsters and mechs, dungeons and starships, and tons more. These tools make creation easier for even the most experienced GM – and they make a great gift for a roleplayer new to Sine Nomine games. (To give a Bundle of Holding as a gift, log out of your current browser session, then purchase the offer using the recipient’s email address.)
There were three complete rulebooks in our Starter Collection (retail value $50) as DRM-free .PDF ebooks, including Stars Without Number: Revised Edition Deluxe, the post-apocalypse SWN spinoff Other Dust (plus the free supplements Grandfather’s Rain, Cult of the Still Lady, and Cult of the Wraith), and the African fantasy Spears of the Dawn. As a convenience, we also included the free version of Kevin’s latest work, the cyberpunk game Cities Without Number.
Those who paid more than the threshold (average) price also got our entire Bonus Collection with four more titles worth an additional $75, including the Deluxe Edition of Worlds Without Number:, Wolves of God: Adventures in Dark Ages England, the one-on-one FRPG toolkit Scarlet Heroes, and the horror RPG Silent Legions.
All these rulebooks except Cities Without Number have appeared in one or another of seven past Bundle offers: Stars Without Number (Oct 2013), Fantasy Frontiers (July 2015), Nerves 3 (Oct 2015), Bundle for Two 1 (Feb 2017), More SWN (March 2019), Cornucopia 2022 (Nov 2022), or Non-OGL Fantasy (Jan 2023).
Ten percent of each payment (after gateway fees) went to the charity designated by Sine Nomine owner Kevin Crawford, Benzie Food Partners, a food bank serving Kevin’s home county in Honor, Michigan.
