Interest Check: Fading Suns

[Hawkwood]

Fading Suns is an RP setting reminiscent of Dune, Hyperion, and Warhammer 40k, with some added Cthulhu and Battletech flavour.

The year is 5005, and Emperor Alexius sits on the Imperial Throne after 50 years of civil war. e. Following the fall of the old regime, and centuries of darkness and warfare, most worlds have slipped backward to a technology level not much more advanced than 21st century Earth, and a number of alien threats lurk in the shadows. Pushing at the borders of the Known Worlds lurk the mutangenic horror of the Symbiots, the ancient and enigmatic Vau, and the barbarian empires of the Kurgan and the Vuldrok, all waiting for their chance to throw humanity into darkness and chaos. Players can take the role of either a member of a Noble House, of one the various merchant guilds, or a member of one of the numerous religious sects. A number of alien species, most notably the human-like 'psychic' Ukar and Obun, and the six-limbed, bestial Vorox, are also available as player characters.

[Voidknight]

It's one of those settings I know _of_ more than I know about- but consider interest certainly lodged, most likely to play a human, possibly a merchant.

[Kolbrandr]

I am super into Fading Suns, I say as I turn slightly to eyeball my complete collection of 1st and 2nd ed books.

What sort of setup are you considering for it? Intending to use its system?

[Muse]

  *peeks*  i have this book somehwere... 

[Hawkwood]

My plan would be to use the Victory Point system rather than d20. But I can understand if that gets a wee bit too clunky (it was, face-to-face, so I imagine more-so in PbP).

Depending on interest, I was going to go for a questing Knight and coterie. If no PCs want to be the Knight, then it WILL be a Vorox. :-D

[Kolbrandr]

The d20 was deeply unfortunate, though victory point is also pretty rough. Between the two I'd rather the second one.

Would you be amenable to a couple more starting build points just for sake of the characters feeling competent?

[Aracia]

You know I'm in, but I'm replying here just to register interest on the thread, also.

[Hawkwood]

This is a gratifyingly big selection of people!

Before I start thinking about build points - what sort of concept do people want, both for individual characters and also for the group?

[Kolbrandr]

I'm really into the various noble houses for my own part, would enjoy a chance to play one of such as far as whatever the game structure ends up being. For the group I'm otherwise pretty open.

As far as something more specific.. hrm, maybe a member of House Hawkwood that was part of the family's somewhat nascent and faltering attempts to set up a dervish program to compete with the Hazat's and is now a bit rootless and left to their own devices with the house semi cooling on the idea. Maybe half Thana for one of their parents having taken a Thana spouse in an effort to have a psychic kid, deals with the issue thus that come from being sympathetic to what the Thana now are and their plight, that kind of stuff.

[Aracia]

I don't have a character concept myself yet.  If we're a small group, I can't help thinking it'd be fun if everyone was one general group.  For example, everyone played nobles or something.  I'm probably alone in thinking this, though, and I'm certainly not going to push for it.

I do tend to prefer games that are a bit more oriented to politics.

[Athem]

I've got an idea for an adventuress of House Decados. Not quite as twisted as a corkscrew, but the character most likely to ask "How much does it pay?" when called upon to do something heroic  :-)

Picking a specific edition of the rules might be an issue: Fading Suns seems to be as bad as White Wolf for making every edition and revision subtly incompatible with each other.

[Hawkwood]

I too prefer something noble / political.

I've got ... three separate versions of the game, I think. I think I'll go with the latest version, and work out problems as they come up. My intention, though, would be to try and minimise unnecessary dice-rolling; I find in tabletop it gets sort of intrusive. In a play-by-post environment, we could very easily spend several dozen posts describing about 10 minutes of in-universe time.

[Aracia]

My preference for dice rolling is that it does happen when there are conflicts/challenges and it needs to happen, but everyone declares their intentions and the GM rolls for the next several rounds and posts overall results.  Anyone who wants to change their actions changes them, and then the GM does a bunch more dice rolling and posts results again.  Depending on the nature of the scene, probably only 1-2 round of this, rather than a blow-by-blow situation where everyone rolls dice for every action.

[knightsdestiny]

If there's still room for interest, this sounds fun. I would even be down for being a knight. :) Just point me in the direction of resource material.

[RPGer]

I would be interested, but I'd like to know which Edition is being used.  I've never played Fading Suns before, but I've been interested for some time.

[Hawkwood]

So. As to which edition: 2nd (1999) edition. If you're planning on using Legions of the Empire / want to have a military background, that may require a wee bit of tinkering.

Characters: Nobles (mostly)!

Races: Probably human.

Premise: You're all on a luxury liner in Sutek. What could possibly go wrong...?

If you don't have access to the sourcebooks? Check out the wiki to learn more about the setting / flavour / feel for now - I can walk you through actual character creation a little further down the line.

[Kolbrandr]

With the edition picked, I did want to re-ask, any chance of a few extra points at starting? I had a rare occasion a million years ago to briefly game with one of the people that wrote supplements for the line, and they acknowledged that they boosted up their players in their own group sometimes just for a sake of competence.

[Hawkwood]

With the edition picked, I did want to re-ask, any chance of a few extra points at starting? I had a rare occasion a million years ago to briefly game with one of the people that wrote supplements for the line, and they acknowledged that they boosted up their players in their own group sometimes just for a sake of competence.

I very much dislike handing out extra CP - they are unearned. XP, by contrast, are a reward for doing something fun / good / useful / interesting.

I too had the chance to play with one of the people that wrote supplements for the line and that bastard took away my wireblade in the first session, and my plasma shotgun in the second! :(

[Kolbrandr]

To phrase it another way then, as it sort of impacts what I write my character like for what I view them being capable of. Is there any chance in play of being somewhat forgiving as far as the victory point system and succeeding at things in a way that isn't very marginal as far as interpreting roll results? I guess I'm asking as to your style of GMing for when you've run with it.

[Hawkwood]

Yes. Play will be forgiving. FS struck me as having a very arbitrary system to go with a space-opera-passion-play theme. It felt that trying to be book-loyal would be like using Conspiracy X to describe Die Hard / Traveller to describe Star Wars.

[Kolbrandr]

Ahh, in that case I'll put it more directly after quite a few years of suffering through attempts to make it work both as a player and gm: Starting characters suck at everything they're supposedly good at unless you hyperspecialize/game the system to the Nth degree, and I am not personally a fan of doing that. You are spot on in your assessment of it. It's a very arbitrary system, it's just that the d20 version manages to be worse.

It always kills me, because I love the FS setting to bits, it's one of the more engrossing and evocative ones that can be found in an rpg.

If play is going to be forgiving of that whole mess though, I'm cool to give it a whirl.

[Aracia]

Luxury liner on Sutek sounds good.  Are you wanting the liner to be from Sutek and traveling around, or from off planet?  Basically, are you wanting our chars to be from Sutek or not?

Also, is the plan to run the game here on Elliquiy?  I admit I have a distinct preference for email, in part because it's a lot easier for me to access, but also because it's a lot easier to navigate stuff.  I'll go with whatever the group wants, though.

[Hawkwood]

I merely want your characters to have a plausible reason to be on the liner! So that means if you want your character to be part of the Stigmata garrison, then you're going to be on leave, for example...

I'm still not entirely sure how I want to run games here; for me, a game is something done around a table with friends and snacks. Thoughts of others who're interested?

[knightsdestiny]

The setting seems to have a very Dune-esque feel to it. XD

So, in my experience playing games in a play by post manner works best when everyone is at the same general pace of posting. If you have people that post once every day or couple days and then people that might post 1 time a week or so, it really drags the game and interest wanes. Whether you do forum or email it comes out the same.

I also have found that having built character sheets and making the rolls make a good foundation for a character's capabilities, it's more enjoyable to have that fudge zone from the storyteller. For example, I have a character who is trying to break into a place. I make my roll and by the numbers my character fails, not terribly so but it's still a fail. However, in my post I wrote up a real clever way to break in that was clearly a moment of thinking outside the box. Maybe I still failed, but because of my unorthodox methods, I see a possible solution or if the fail was just barely a fail, the storyteller decides to make it a success.

[Hawkwood]

I like the approach Knightsdestiny. None of the other games I've played (like... ever) are quite so unforgiving as rules-as-written Fading Suns.

Anyway! I'll go create a dedicated game thread shortly!