Fading Suns

When I first heard about Fading Suns, I had no idea whether this was to be a fantasy game - "Isn't that a D&D world?" asked one of my playtest group - or a science fiction game. All I knew was the name, and the name lends itself to either genre. Now that I've got the book, and have played around with it for a while, I can honestly say that it's both.

Fading Suns takes place three thousand years in the future, after humans have expanded their sphere of influence to a few dozen "known worlds" and quite a few "lost worlds," planets which were cut off - intentionally or otherwise - when the Church began to crack down on technology. Now, though, technology and the technological Guilds are making a comeback, and the Lost Worlds are slowly starting to rejoin the fold - and the stars have begun to die. There's a lot of philosophical debate about this, but it's not necessarily what the games are going to be about.

There are four major factions in the world of Fading Suns: the noble houses - five major and innumerable minor, the Church - several branches, the Guilds, and the aliens - who can also belong to the Church or one of the Guilds and whose worlds are often governed by the nobles. The universe is similar to that of Star Wars, kind of; one of my players likened it to the Mos Eisley Cantina. The introductory story gives the impression of a dustball out on the edges of the known worlds, sort of run-down but great for scum, villainry, and the poor schmuck of a noble who's there to try and keep an eye on things.

Character creation is fairly simple; attributes are divided into three sections, and skills into two. Body Characteristics include, well, physical stats; Mind Characteristics deal with mental tasks, and include the character's technical aptitude; and Spirit Characteristics are opposed: they deal with the character's psyche and personality, and are paired; no pair may ever exceed a total of ten points. Imbalance in a pair means that the character leans one way or the other in that particular area. (Yes, it's confusing; I can't think of a better way to put it, though, without plagiarizing.)

There are, as I said earlier, two types of skills: Natural Skills and Learned Skills. Natural skills are those which everybody has in the Fading Suns universe - they include fighting, dodging, and observing. Learned skills are "tricks of the trade," as it were, and can be pretty much anything not already covered.

Next come Benefits and Curses, and Benefices and Afflictions. The former generally deal with the character as a person - psychological quirks, physical stature, that sort of thing - while the latter involves things that the person has - church vestments, travel passes, money, et cetera.

Die-rolling in Fading Suns is extremely interesting; the player rolls 1d20, aiming to roll under the target number - usually a Characteristic plus a Skill - but, if he manages to roll under that target number, the closer he gets to it, the better he does, and the more victory points or extra effect dice he gets on the roll. On a target number of 13, therefore, rolling 12 would be better than rolling 11 - and a 13 would be a critical success, doubling the number of victory points or effect dice. 19 always fails, though, and 20 always critically fails, visiting disaster upon the character. A 1, on the other hand, always succeeds, no matter what the target number.

The neat thing is, though, that's all you ever roll. Only the target number changes - so you need exactly one die for the entire group. Even damage requires only that you roll the same die several times. (I find it unfortunate, however - and this is something I dislike about a great many games - that you can critically succeed on a combat roll and do absolutely no damage, even before the other person dodges and counts armor/parrying in.)

My verdict? I love the world. I like the system. My players are bugging me to run it again, though, so I ought to be off...