How do you follow up the best OSR game? Well, you pick another genre and make the best (let's say) Cyberpunk game. That's essentially what happened. While both games are rather barebones and require enumeration of their suggested peripherals, I could see retiring from the overall hobby and seeking to merely play WWN or CWN until the end of time. The game is so good it caused me to buy Stars Without Number just to have more material to use with it.
Now I had a period where I wasn't sure if Kevin was a total genius or just another Chris MacDowell but with more fuel in the tank. CWN cemented to me that Kevin's is a purposeful, elegant minimalism. More like essentialism. There are enough toys to tweak that just because the manual only includes to models of pistol - light and heavy - doesn't mean it has to stop there. There's enough bones that you can add your own meat between the bones and that seems to be Kevin's Modus Operandi. The details don't matter as much as the skeleton, and these games give a great skeleton.
Someone tried to sell me that you can add Cyberpunk 2020's setting on top of this ruleset, and I agree it's possible but at the same time not necessary. This is the first time I've seen a ruleset that doesn't unfairly force comparison. This game is better than Cyberpunk 2020. Indeed you can build your own Night City with all of your own eccentricities that PCs will have to find out about in play and not be able to read lore to cheat a greater understanding of the setting than you have. The GM of CWN will always be the guy who knows the most about the setting. And that's head and shoulders above having to digest the ~14+ book line of Cyberpunk 2020 setting material.
As far as rules go it has no classes, so you can see the evolution of the Sine Nomine house system from SWN (strict limited classes) to WWN (modular, nearly limitless classes) to CWN (no classes). The next game out, AWN is also classless. This game also adds a new damage mechanic, Trauma, causing critical injuries unlike previous iterations. When you roll damage you roll an additional die like a d6. If it meets or beats your opponent's trauma score, often a 6, you get a damage multiplier. It's essentially a second attack/damage system with a far less chance of occurrence.
Not sure if it's a good thing or bad thing but its definitely been tested and is rolling forward to Ashes. I'm looking forward to what is obstensibly OSR Fallout: the RPG. All the other Fallout RPGs, old, new, OSR, and not have been fairly bad. This one should be good if quality holds up from everything else we've seen.
