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swnt - Command line tools for Stars Without Number GMs

swnt provides a command line interface to the roll tables and generators found in Stars Without Number : Revised Edition (free version). While the code is MIT licensed, all roll table content (except the name.System table) is the copyright of Kevin Crawford, Sine Nominee Publishing.

Features

  • Generate sectors up to 99x99 hexes
  • Export sectors as
    • plain text (with directory structure)
    • a hugo site using a fork of the docdock theme. This includes indexing and text search support
    • JSON
  • Has generators for pretty much all tables in the Free edition of Stars Without Number (I don't think I missed any, let me know if I did)

Installation

Arch Linux

swnt is available from the AUR at https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/swnt/ or via your favourite AUR helper. Personally I use yay.

yay -Syu swnt

Other Linux Distributions

You can build swnt yourself or use the binary release from the releases page.

Building from source

You will need the go compiler to install swnt. Once installed just run

go get github.com/nboughton/swnt
go install github.com/nboughton/swnt

swnt should build on other platforms but I'm not able to test them so I can't guarantee it'll work as expected on anything other than linux.

To make full use of swnt's hugo export function for generated sectors you'll also need Hugo

Usage

swnt is mostly for rolling on tables and generating content such as sectors, npcs, points of interest, quick encounters etc using the "new" sub-command:

$ swnt new -h
Generate content

Usage:
  swnt new [command]

Available Commands:
  adventure   Generate an Adventure seed
  alien       Generate an Alien
  beast       Generate a Beast
  conflict    Generate a Conflict/Problem
  corporation Generate a Corporation
  culture     Generate a culture
  encounter   Generate a quick encounter
  heresy      Generate a Heresy
  npc         Generate a NPC
  place       Generate a place
  poi         Generate a Point of Interest
  religion    Generate a Religion
  sector      Create the skeleton of a Sector
  world       Generate a secondary World for a Sector cell

Flags:
  -f, --format string   Set output format. (--format txt,md). Not all commands support this flag. (default "txt")
  -h, --help            help for new

Use "swnt new [command] --help" for more information about a command.

However it's fairly like the command users will want to play with most is "new sector":

$ swnt new sector -h
Create the skeleton of a Sector

Usage:
  swnt new sector [flags]

Flags:
  -d, --density string            Set star density in sector. Options are sparse, average or dense (default "average")
  -x, --exclude stringArray       Exclude tags (-x zombies -x "regional hegemon" etc)
      --export string             Set export formats. Format types must be comma separated without spaces. Supported formats are txt, json and hugo (default "txt,json")
  -h, --help                      help for sector
  -l, --long-tags                 Toggle full world tag info in output
  -o, --other-worlds-chance int   Set % chance for a secondary world to be generated for any given star in the sector (default 15)
  -p, --poi-chance int            Set % chance of a POI being generated for any given star in the sector (default 40)
  -e, --sector-height int         Set height of sector in hexes (default 10)
  -w, --sector-width int          Set width of sector in hexes (default 8)

Global Flags:
  -f, --format string   Set output format. (--format txt,md). Not all commands support this flag. (default "txt")

Note new sector doesn't support the --format flag as export formats are covered by the export flag and output differently.

Make sure you use a monospace font in your terminal otherwise the output won't line up properly.

A generated sector

All commands can be queried for their available options with the -h flag. For example:

$ swnt -h
A simple application for generating content for Stars Without Number

Usage:
  swnt [command]

Available Commands:
  bestiary    List creature statblocks
  help        Help about any command
  new         Generate content
  react       Make a reaction roll for an NPC
  show        Print the text of a world tag, table text will be added in future

Flags:
  -h, --help   help for swnt

Use "swnt [command] --help" for more information about a command.

Most sub-commands of "new" (and the bestiary) support markdown as an output option with the -f (--format) flag. This makes it easier to copy and paste content straight into a Hugo exported sector.

FAQ

Why not make a web app?

Because Sectors Without Number already exists and is an awesome tool. Also, I live on the CLI. It's where I work, where I'm comfortable and I suspect I'm not alone in that. swnt lets me just hammer a few keys and instantly get something back without having to faff around with GUIs and that's how I like it. I also like using screenshots of the player maps as my actual maps in Roll20. It's got that awful 80s retro-scifi look that just burns the retinas in all the right ways.