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Hird Dition Oncepts: Fading Suns Third Edition (Fs3) Redbrick Limited. We Outline Proposed Changes To The Rules
Hird Dition Oncepts: Fading Suns Third Edition (Fs3) Redbrick Limited. We Outline Proposed Changes To The Rules
C oncepts
F game system expanded with rules for better narrative play. To that end, well
add more examples to explain how the game works and define the roles of the
players and the gamemaster better. Wed like to keep the old-school feeling
of the mechanics, but will include tested and tried concepts of modern game design.
We do not start from scratch, of course, and Fading Suns Third Edition will indeed
become a revision of the Second Editiona major overhaul, but still a revision. We
intend to include more in-game quotes, comments, and rumors throughout the book to
make the background more accessible. A completely new layout and lots of new artwork
will help optimize the general organization and usability of the book.
Opposed to previous editions, and due to the fact that a lot of the old publications
are out of print, we will design FS3 to be self-containing; assuming that the reader
has no knowlegdge of previous books. While the old books are rules-light and
therefore remain useable for those who are interested in them, we intend to revise
all previously published material and compile it into several large supplements for
the Third Edition linealongside new material, of course.
The First Edition of the game focused on the aftermath of the Emperor Wars, and the
early years of Alexius reign. The Second Edition expanded the games horizon beyond
the Known Worlds borders with Star Crusade and War in the Heavens, highlighting the
deeds of the Questing Knights. For Fading Suns Third Edition, wed like to focus on
the political struggles of the Known Worlds. While we wont ignore the extended setting
beyond the borders, we intend to re-focus on the Known Worlds as the centre of the
Fading Suns universe. In addition, well highlight alternate campaign types beyond
the standard Questing Knight troupe, such as Inquisitors, Traveling Circuses, Bounty
Hunters, or Alien Rights Activists to encourage players to take full advantage of the
rich background. Besides adding the Etyri and Gannok races as playable options in the
core rules, we also intend to introduce a new guild, the Town Criers, to allow for new
character types (journalists, information gatherers, and spies).
As with the previous edition, well continue the timeline and advance it to 5008 or
beyond and intend to introduce Grail as the standard or starting setting offered
by the core rulebook, replacing Pandemonium for the reason that Grail serves as a
2 better representation of the Fading Suns universe. All the main aspects of the game
come together on Grail: the presence of the alien Etyri, a newly opened jumproad to
Rimpoche and the still hidden night road to Swans Way, and the complementary
political developments. As House Keddah makes its gamble to reclaim its royal heritage,
Grail moves towards the center of the political stage, emphasizing the politics/intrigue
aspects of the setting.
S hinted at in the previous editions are coming to a head. With the following
developments, well move the setting focus more strongly on the core of the
Known Worlds, and show how these political conflicts threaten to imbalance
Emperor Alexius carefully sustained equilibrium of the major powers.
3
Resurgence of House Chauki
House Chauki is caught between a rock and hard place; the Emperor will not
side with them or offer them protection. House Decados claims Iver by right of
gate and the Hazat claim Iver by right of blood. A protracted legal argument rages
over who has the right to govern Iver. The Chauki are forced to settle the matter
by direct negotiation with their two claimants. The Hazat agree to support House
FA DING SUNS
Chaukis petition for Imperial recognition in return for vassalage and support in
the call for a Kurgan crusade, an ironic reversal of fortunes, making the former
masters into vassals of the Hazat. Iver remains Chauki property, but is in fact
governed by a Hazat advisor.
Then the Keddah play their trump card, revealing the existence of Rimpoche and
claim it by right of gate. In an instant House Keddah now controls two planets. However,
the Emperor has yet to confirm Keddahs new Royal status or to uphold their claim to
Rimpoche.
New Fronts
With the exception of Cadavus, the Symbiots
have gone very quiet. The battle for Stigmata
has actually been won. While the humans fought
against mindless Symbiot drones to take and
hold surface territory, the Symbiots conspired to
access the World Egg by subterfuge. They simply
burrowed to the World Egg deep though it was
in human territory. With its awakening, the
planet has suddenly bloomed. The wild places are
expanding and the Hives are ascendant through
peaceful means. They are content to let the humans
have what they hold, though no one has told the
Garrison this.
F
ading Suns Third Edition will no longer support the d20 game mechanics.
Instead, we will update and streamline the original rules, based on the core
mechanics of the Victory Point System. Some of these you will be familiar with
already, as we included some of your earlier suggestions.
Core Mechanics
Characteristics and Natural Skills: these will start with an initial value of 3 (or
possibly even 4; this equals a 30-40% chance of success for utter novices). Learned
Skills still start with 1, but we will apply an increasing XP cost for learning skillsto
make it easy and cheap to learn the basics, but more expensive to master a skill).
During Character Creation, we will ensure that the core skill package of a character has
enough skill points to make a difference.
Successes and Failures: we will remove automatic failures and successes on 19 and
1, respectively. Normal failures and automatic successes (formerly 19 and 1) will be
moved to 20 and the Goal Number, respectively. Critical successes and failures will be
moved into a secondary roll with the same goal number. If the player rolled a 20 and
the second roll is a failure, the result will be a critical failure. If the player rolled the
goal number and the second roll is also a success, he scores a Critical Success. However,
rather than doubling the number of successes, a critical success allows the character to
add the VP of his second roll to the VP of the first roll.
6 Six-sided Dice: these will be removed from the game entirely. Instead of effect dice,
there will be effect points, which work just the same (just assume each Effect die is
automatically successful). The same goes for armor, which will also use points rather
than dice.
Victory Chart: For increased simplicity and less table-lookups, we alter the chart to give
a VP with every 2 successes, rather than 3. Since this has rather high rates of success, we
will encourage more contested rolls, so the GM (and players) can counter an attackers VP
(and maybe reduce his success to nothing). The VP table will look like this:
Roll VP
1-2 +1
3-4 +2
5-6 +3
7-8 +4
9-10 +5
11-12 +6
13-14 +7
15-16 +8
17-18 +9
19 +10
20 Fail
Character Creation
The character creation system remains largely the
same, with the following proposed changes:
Vitality: these points will be separated into a physical, a social, and a mental track.
While the physical track retains the same function as the previous Vitality, a characters
base Social Vitality is 5 + PRE and his Mental Vitality is 5 + WIL. Losing Social Vitality
levels define how well a character holds up in social situations (debates, negotiations,
FA DING SUNS
etc), while a characters loses Mental Vitality levels state how susceptible he is to occult
powers and similar abilities.
Faith: formerly known as Wyrd, the Faith rules will be expanded to make them more useable
for non-occult characters as well. Faith can now aid to pull out the stops and perform amazing
feats above and beyond normal capacity. Players can only spend 1 Faith point per action,
which can be spent for:
Best Out of 2: Re-roll your test; choose the favored result and apply it to
your action.
Incite Passion: As per previous editions, but simpler and adapted to the
new Attributes and rules.
Note that (if we implement it) the game does not have to be played
this way, but merely supports a different gaming stylewhich,
however, could take Fading Suns to an entirely new level.
Languages and Skills
In keeping with our design goals, we intend to restructure the skills and languages
system. This involves the following changes:
Languages: The vast majority of player characters are members of the elite (nobles,
guilders, priests) that need to be able to read and write, a free ability for player characters.
Ignorant serfs can buy the Illiterate Affliction, however, if they cannot write in their native
language. To encourage players and gamemasters to make the most of the many different
cultures of Fading Suns, we are adding an element of cultural awareness to Language
Skills; a character who can speak and read Vuldrok well also has a good idea of Vuldrok
culture as he has been exposed to cultural concepts when learning the language.
Natural Skills: This list largely stays the same, but well consolidate a little to bring
all skills to the same scale of usability: Influence replaces Charm/Impress/Intimidation,
Observe includes Searching, Athletics includes Acrobatics.
Learned Skills: We are taking a step back towards Fading Suns First Edition in using
the limits placed on specific skills denoting those that can only be learned from Nobility,
Church, or Guilds. This does not prevent outsiders learning them but it makes them
more difficult to obtain. The point of this is to enforce the differences in social station
and function, and spotlight the monopoly status on training specific things.
A lchemy L ore
B eastcr aft a catch-all specialty skill can include
Animal care, training, riding knowledge of sciences, folk lore almost
any special knowledge a character might
A rts require
Painting, sculpting, etc.
Bureaucr acy P erform
acting, playing instruments
C ulture P hysick
the ability to understand the language
covers first aid at the lower ranks, gen-
and customs of a given culture/society
eral medicine, surgery, etc at the higher
D iscipline levels
resist pain and mental domination reg-
ulate autonomic functions; formerly Stoic
P ilot
using spacecraft
Body/ Stoic Mind
D eception Sail
using watercraft
lying, disguise
D riv e Surv ival 9
using landcraft Steal
sleight of hand and pick pocketing,
E mpathy tricks of dexterity
a perception skill; Influence is used to
change minds or opinions Streetw ise
lower class society
Etiquette
high society T ech R edemption
make and fix technology
Ga mbling
I nquiry Think M achine
using and programming computers
I ntrusion Torture
lockpicking and security systems
FA DING SUNS
The Occult
We are planning to expand and restructure the list of rituals and psi paths to
make them more interesting and consistent. Occult powers now come as their own
abilities, and each is based on an attribute (roll Attribute + Power rank).
Learning Powers and Rituals: Psi powers belong to a given Path, which determines what
powers can be learned by the character. Although all theurgy rituals can theoretically
be learned by all theurgists, they are usually only taught to members of a certain sect.
Also, rituals can only be learned when reaching a certain rank in the sect.
Urge and Hubris: these no longer have powers, they should have effects because they
represent something lying beyond the control of the player. We encourage gamemasters
to come up with their own urge and hubris effects and on how to use the consequences
of player characters actions to encourage roleplaying, conflict, and drama.
Combat
Initiative: Initiative will be replaced by a different system, due to the high number of
complaints about having to use the same Skill that was used in the characters action.
Instead, this is now replaced by rolling Wits+Observe at the beginning of a round or
once per combat (or optionally, once per round, for those people who like to roll the dice
to kick off a new round). The more successes, the quicker you go. As usual, a critical
result doubles successes. If the roll is failed, the character goes last. A critical failure
results in the character stalling for one round, unable to act at all.
Actions: Each turn, a character can act once and evade one attack (evasion is a free
action; a contested roll). Characters cannot evade attacks of which they arent aware of.
The VP gained on the evasion roll subtracts from the attackers VP; if the attackers VPs
are reduced to zero, his attack fails.
Combat Options: Combat Actions are gone from the systemas they made combat more
complicated without having much tactical value. Differing fighting styles are a matter
of description; a game mechanical representation is not really needed. What we can do
is add a set of general Combat Options (a similar concept is used in Earthdawnwhich
covers fighting defensively, aggressively, etc) which allow the player to achieve the
same thing without pumping XP into something they should be able to do anyways.
The game mechanical basis is different in Fading
Suns, but can be easily adapted. This is especially
suitable for running duels.
Blaster Resistant: Treated to resist hot plasma. Armor not labeled blaster
resistant gets only its protection (rounded down) against blasters.
Stacking Armor: Most hard armor cannot be worn on top of another, but a
soft/soft or soft/hard combination is sometimes possible, such as wearing a
synthsilk jumpsuit beneath a leather trenchcoat or a chain mesh vest. In such 11
cases, do not add the Protection values together; instead, take the highest
Protection rating and add 1.
Starships and Vehicles: one of our goals is to keep up with the recent trend of
playing starships and vehicles as if they were characters by keeping the underlying
game mechanics at a similar level, allowing for fast and furious combats on one
side, and for development of the vessels over time. To keep the game compatible to
the Noble Armada game, there will be a conversion guide allowing to convert game
statistics from one ruleset to the other.
2007 RedBrick Limited