A tabletop role-playing game by Kevin Crawford of Sine Nomine Publishing, Worlds Without Number is a fantasy adaptation of Stars Without Number, Second Edition, which uses many of the same mechanics. Thematically, the setting owes much to Dying Earth and Numenera, in that it's set in such a far future that the very universe is different.
Ages in the future, the Earth we know is forgotten even to fable. Humans and stranger beings now live in the Latter Earth, after countless years ruled by human sorcerer-kings and alien Outsiders. Modern technology is not just lost, but impossible, as the physical laws of the world have been warped beyond recognition by the Legacy of their magics. Most people live lives of simple toil or brutal battle, but a few mages - and a few states - can call upon the power of the Legacy to invoke wondrous effects. And in this world live adventurers, who serve as hired blades for various lords or plunder the ancient Deeps of alien races for the wealth needed to live lives of comfort - or to change the world for good or ill.
Tropes without number:
- Always Chaotic Evil: Examined with the Anakim. They are beings Blighted as living bioweapons and cursed with the Hate, which compels them to instinctively hate all other beings and makes most of them psychopathic even toward each other. Most Anakim embrace this and live lives of plunder and slaughter, but individual Anakim are sometimes able to control the Hate and live normal lives (at least if their neighbors let them), and the Anakim of Sarul and of the Aristoi Principalities use strict social controls (religion in the case of Sarul, and a brutal culling of overly-aggressive children in the Principalities) to establish functional societies.
- Crystal Dragon Jesus: The Bleeding God's faith claims that He is the only God, that he has taken on the punishment for all beings' sins, and that they can find redemption if they turn to Him - and in the case of this church, the transubstantiation of blessed water into the Blood of God is entirely literal. The Sarulite Blood Priest is even this setting's version of the standard D&D cleric. A quirk of this is that his faith is most popular among the underclasses, since in most places it's not really appealing to the elite, and the one place where it's a state religion is Sarul—populated mainly by the Not Always Evil Anakim.
- Fantasy Gun Control: In most parts of the Latter Earth, guns just don't work. This is averted in Ondas, where the local Legacy is stronger and guns can be used. Everywhere else, pseudo-firearms called "hurlants" that use a variety of techno-magical means of firing, are the most advanced weapons—and they're both expensive and rare. The Atlas of the Latter Earth also has rules for more primitive black powder arms, if you're playing in a setting that has them.
- Honest Rolls Character: It's an Old School Renaissance game, so this is the default character generation method.
- Lord British Postulate: The PCs cannot defeat an Imperator head-on; these beings are like unto gods. However, if they want to take one down, there's bound to be some way to turn the situation from "you lose" to something where it has a remote chance of losing.
- Psychic Powers: The ancient Vothite Thought Nobles used these, allowing them to read and control minds and perform Mentat-like feats of mental prowess, and their arts are still known in fragmented form today.
