Salvage Union vs When Sky & Sea Were Not Named

Compare Salvage Union and When Sky & Sea Were Not Named side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, and more.

	Salvage Union	When Sky & Sea Were Not Named
Genre	Scifi, Post-Apocalyptic	Fantasy
Tags	Mecha, Resource Management, Base-Building, Character Building, Exploration, Sandbox, Tactical, Survival, Narrative, Strong GM Support	Tactical, Theater of the Mind, Resource Management, Faction Play, Lore-Heavy, Base-Building, Exploration
Core Mechanic	For a pilot's risky action, roll an unmodified d20: 20 succeeds with a bonus, 11–19 succeeds, 6–10 presents a Tough Choice, 2–5 fails with a setback, and 1 brings a severe consequence. The Mediator frames costs and consequences from the situation.	Each hero has four action dice, one for each action type (Attack, Brace, Compel, Maneuver), with the die size set from d4 to d12 by the relevant attributes. To act, roll the matching die and read it against two thresholds. Against an obstacle, the Guide sets a failure threshold and a struggle threshold. Against a foe, the target's attribute is the failure threshold and its defense is the struggle threshold. Beating the higher number is a Success, beating only the lower is a Struggle that costs something, and beating neither is a Failure. Attacks deal damage equal to the roll minus the target's Guard and Armor, so one roll settles both the hit and its severity.
Dice	d20	d4–d12
Complexity	High	High
Availability	Free quickstart	Free core rules
Runnability	5 of 5 book tools	3 of 5 book tools
License	Salvage Union Open Game Licence 1.0b	All Rights Reserved
Third-Party Publishing	Commercial publishing allowed — Open license	Not yet researched
Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing.
Publisher	Leyline Press	Purple People Games
Year	2023	2023
Languages	English, Italian	English
Best For	Groups who enjoy building custom mechs, scavenging parts, and managing a shared stockpile of scrap to maintain and improve their equipment and mobile settlement.	Groups settling in for a multi-session campaign who want combat built on resource trade-offs, spellcasters that each play differently, and a Guide comfortable improvising rulings. The island-hopping rescue-and-rebuild structure rewards tables that enjoy both tactical fights and settlement-scale stakes.
Highlights	Recovered scrap funds mech construction and crawler upkeep, linking equipment choices to the community's survival. Swappable mech components let players build for jobs such as hauling or hacking. Players choose setbacks when NPC actions fail, giving the table authority over consequences beyond its own characters.	Each of the four defenses both resists incoming actions and doubles as the resource a hero spends to power abilities, so every turn weighs guarding against acting. A hero rolls a different die size for each of the four action types, so strengths and weaknesses live in which die they pick up rather than in numeric modifiers. Invoking an Ideal after a roll spends Spirit for an advantage die the Guide sizes to how dramatic the moment is, linking vivid roleplay to a mechanical boost.
Considerations	Players track separate pilot and mech resources, including Ability Points and Heat. Unpaid crawler upkeep normally prompts a deterioration roll, making regular salvage income an ongoing pressure. Encounters follow the world's circumstances rather than guaranteed balance, making reconnaissance and retreat consequential choices.	The three spellcasting callings each run a separate resource economy, creating a real skill gap between players who take a magical calling and those who do not. The Shinarian origin locks Agility at 0, which bars the Wanderer calling and leaves those heroes unable to evade, outflank, or hide effectively. Sizing invoked Ideal dice, setting challenge thresholds, and reading the Dreamshape table all rest on Guide judgment rather than fixed numbers, which favors improvisational Guides over those who want firm procedures.