Fading Suns 2017

[Packrat]

Rise thread, from the grave!

So I am still recovering from conference flu. But I actually have a (still basically empty) server up, I have the code from Star Crusade and I have a massively sprawling google documents mess of theme documentation and draft system numbers for a Fading Suns game. This does include the broad outlines of a numerically defined character generation system where people pay points for stats/skills. Also for rank and wealth.

It is going to need more people to actually staff it though and things like the economy system and also mass combat really require more minds to brainstorm, playtest and contribute. If anyone is interested in taking part then send me a message and I can shoot you the Discord channel information.

[Packrat]

So I am quite serious regarding this, do you want to see Fading Suns 2017 happen? Do you have ideas as to how it should happen?

Then message me. The more minds collaborating the better this is going to be and the more likely it will be 2017 rather than 2018. Even if you are not going to want to help staff the place I do want to avoid the issues previous FS games have had and ensure there are comprehensive systems in place prior to launch, this is not something which is going to work very well if I come up with stuff in a vacuum. Regardless of the improbable number of hours I have spent considering the issues with prior Fading Suns games whilst commuting.

[Apollonius]

I didn't realize I had posted this... this year (2017). Maybe it's the boredom speaking or old age but I'm vaguely interested in a viable Fading Suns game, but it looks like interest is scattered and the toxicity of Star Crusade has lasting ramifications to attracting interest.

Ever since the collapse of SC, I've always been interested in smaller tabletop adventures or conversely just playing out bad life decisions in CKII or EU4. I wouldn't mind an online TT campaign that is fully supportable out of the box without major customizations to theme or new game mechanics outside of the main game platform.

I feel like there was a lot of interest in a FS-themed adventure, but it got perverted by a lot of the horrific mechanics that were introduced to warp SC into a text-based reskin of CK2. And Paulus and Lextius managing to screw up their own game in a completely horrific manner.

I'd personally love fighting off Vuldrok raiders and various Houses racing towards some sort of Vau artifact with consequences based on the actions, teamwork, and timing of the story.

Not holding my breath, though. The track record of actually standing up any online game has been pretty poor. But looking back at the 15 odd years of being faithful to this theme, the experiment in trying to set up a viable economics and military system, particularly when they become debased due to bad staffing with no checks or balances, should be deemed a failure. MU*s just aren't structured for that kind of complexity to run autonomously outside of staff intervention or perceptions of improper staff interventions.

[Packrat]

This is actually being worked on, albeit slowly, I have built the core of the grid and character generation is being coded.

Edit: Also things like jumpwebs, planet write ups, etc, rereading of various Fading Suns supplements gave me some hooks to tie into the 3rd Republic and I can also confirm that Vuldrok will be involved for that space viking flavour.

Also been working on it today, enjoy a massively high resolution version of the Nestorian map:

[Apollonius]

Whatever historical misgivings, I'd still bite. I may be some sort of epic masochist.

That said... I know everyone wants Lords and Ladies in Space but I reiterate that every effort, Fading Suns-themed or original, has collapsed on the weight of its own bad decisions. Primarily, people don't fundamentally understand the economic and political system that they are being handed and modern analogues break the system that is already straining from a lack of comprehensive testing, auditing, enforcement, and staff transparency. Even the most vetted systems that have undergone vigorous QA end up in total disaster. Or often in my case, there is that situation where your PC has maxed out in IC advancement/achievement and you teeter out.

I'll be curious how XP will run if the game ever comes to life. It is the single most significant source of strife, entrenchment, and imbalance in a game. Successful games I have seen have a very loose XP transfer policy and the XP flows freely.

I suppose the elephant in the room is that a truly successful FS game will likely not have Paulus or Lextius or any of their cronies anywhere near staffing positions and probably none of them, Custodius, or myself even on the grid. I know in my case, it will be extremely difficult to play in a game with Paulus, Lextius, Yara, or Custodius ever again. I'm sure many folks will say the same about me.

If there's ever a lesson to be had from the prior iterations of Fading Suns, its that many of the players are a small pool of sometimes deeply flawed individuals and a second chance is a brand new day for them to abuse any good will in that chance.

[Patty]

Any updates on this?

[Packrat]

Sadly not, I basically lost all impetus when my grandfather died over the holidays and have not done any work on the game for a few weeks.

I am trying to get back into it now that the funeral is done but burnt out after only writing a few paragraphs of stuff yesterday.

[deadculture]

@packrat Take your time. Losing a loved one is never easy. Especially if it's someone you've been very close to.

[Packrat]

Well I have been poking at this on and off all day now and actually started getting stuff done.

I need a noble house to rule Khangai though. Khangai is kind of like a... Partially de-terraformed Mars? Low gravity, lots of elevation, atmosphere half stripped away in the millennia since the end of the 2nd Republic. People still live in the deep canyons and crater bottoms but there are myriad abandoned cities in the highlands that are picked over by scavengers or bases for pirates using oxygen tanks or space suits.

The duke or duchess ruling the planet has only minimal actual control but remains pretty rich, decadent decaying palaces, vassals who pay only lip service and travel between the oasis of remaining civilisation by rare and expensive flitters.

Not sure if I should go major house or one of the minors.

[deadculture]

@packrat Justinian.

[Patty]

@packrat I'm very sorry for your loss. I've lost a few loved ones over the last year, and it's never an easy time. MUSHing should play second or third fiddle, in that case.

[Packrat]

So I have been working on military units and mass combat some.

The basic idea is that any given benefice holder who cares about such things will likely have between two and five military units, discounting militia or somebody very very rich who spams cheap infantry hordes. Each unit is a discrete formation which is able to meaningfully do War Stuff by itself though varies in size depending upon exactly what it is.

There are only six basic types so far, three grades of infantry (Regular, Elite, Special), with the better troops coming in much smaller numbers and so actually weaker units overall, then Armour, Artillery and Flitters. They have fairly specific roles and so there should not be an optimal choice, it depends on both an individual's resource distribution and their goals.

So are you a rural baroness? You absolutely want to go for lots of regulars, you have plenty of Manpower and are liable to need to actually fight battles. A Guilder and a city mayor? Perhaps you fulfill your feudal obligations to the Duke with a couple of tanks, or have a flight of fighter bombers, relying on arming up your militia to guard the city walls.

Each unit then has a 'Training Level' from 1 to 6 and can pick a Speciality for every point in excess of 2. Specialities could be something like 'Desert Expert' (Better in deserts), 'Ranger' (Better for scouting or raiding) or 'Terror Troops' (Messes up average or lower training foes).

Unit types come with a base training level but you can work to increase it for individual units, mostly through persuading a PC to spend multiple strategic actions working on things. So hiring a badass to come lead/train your troops is seriously helpful. Also units can be given more/better equipment as expensive options, so you might have a unit of Regulars as cavalry, or equip a unit of Specials with powered ceramsteel armour, if you are rich enough.

So moderately complex but each person who does have an army only needs to deal with a few units and they can be recorded as say 'Regulars, Training 2, Mounted' or 'Elites, Training 3, Motorised, Grenadiers Specialisation'. The main idea is that it is not just 'Jill has more troops than Bill and so matters more'. Jill might have a horde of desert cavalry raiders who are super devastating at skirmishing in deserts, Bob might have a bunch of stalwart line infantry and some artillery who are inferior overall but a lot better for sieging a castle or holding a mountain pass.

Jane might then have nothing but a few dozen cyborg space knights in powered armour who are really not a match for either on a battlefield despite costing at least as much but you absolutely do not want disgorging into your palace unexpectedly or boarding your spaceship.

That kind of dynamic is the goal at least, with the plan that just going 'I have three units of regulars and one unit of elite retainers' should be completely valid for anyone who does not want to do anything fancy and, overall, the optimal strategy if you do not have particular goals in mind.

[bored]

@packrat FWIW, it looks like you're repeating a lot of Paulus' design (and thus, mistakes).

First, no one is that interested in peasants with pitchforks. People want their toys (see many SC examples and how few people bought anything low-tech with discretionary money). So in your example, you're just making the game less fun for the Baroness, more fun for the guilder with his fancy tanks or spaceships.

Second, 'Elite, Training 3, Motorized Grenadiers' is already way past 'moderately' complicated. How many Training 1 Regulars is that worth? Do they beat or lose to Training 5 guys with no fancy stuff? Etc etc etc. I'm the kind of player willing to do spreadsheets or write a simulator to sort this stuff out, but I'm not most players.

Finally, 'if you're rich enough': How big of a gap can you really create here without recreating SC's Counts of Doom vs. Barons of meaninglessness? It seems like any scale where one dude can conceivably field full units in one of the rarest pieces of equipment in the game is going to have a pretty major haves and have-nots.

To end with something positive: the situation you describe at the end of your post seems like the ideal you want to push for, so maybe you should make that more inherent to the design. IE: everyone gets some appropriate troops and then one special thing. FS was never a game with all this civ stuff, it was all background to players running around with the really badass toys.

[D-bone]

@bored B-but.. HOI 4 taught me the most important principle of warfare and training!

"Perfect" weapons are overrated, a large number of "good enough" weapons is the path to victory!"

The easy balance is that it should take a ton of time to build a tank- and 2 minutes to put a gun in the hand of a dude and tell him how to pull the trigger and go die... something along those lines anyway. Every tank a guilder loses should be a massive loss that can't realistically be replaced in a short war- but retraining soldiers- is significantly cheaper and more feasible. Also you can just throw out complete raw recruits too to fill the gaps. Guns r cheap.

[mietze]

I think one of the annoying but ignore-at-your-peril issues of a smallish fan base for a system is the fact that you’re going to have to deal with people still salty/smarting over wrongs real or perceived from all other mushes of that kind previous. And they are all going to be on there together and they will all know who’s who!

I was not new to FS before Star Crusade (avid player tabletop and PBEM) but as a fresh face to whom a variety of opposing people vented to, folks were still ranting/resentful/holding onto grudges/transferring suspicions from like...10 years before.

I think every system has this problem obviously, but WoD has enough larger fan base that you don’t have like 90 percent of the people affected. I’ve seen it on the old SR places too since my god the ooc dramas that caused the various spinoffs were epic.

But anyway. I think any new FS place is going to have to deal with a certain amount of people who are going to flip their shit if they perceive that “oh this is like SC/Vargo/the one before” because a lot of players won’t let old grudges go. For some reason you can’t spit on a FS place without hitting a lawyer or someone with a grad degree in esoteric history, which doesn’t help.

I totally miss that community though!

[Packrat]

On the subject of actual theme stuff and writeups of what would be available to players, here is something covering the '3rd Republic':

The elites of Nestoria and some more informed individuals of the Known Worlds do know some basic facts about the 3rd Republic, but what?

• The ‘Republic’ launched a treacherous and unprovoked attack upon Nestoria about three years ago, slaughtering the Duke of Panticapaeum, most of his family and many senior nobles. Conspiring with rebels and traitors, they seized almost all of the northern continent of Nestoria before the newly crowned Duchess Carolina broke their fleet in orbit, but are too entrenched to root out.

• The 3rd Republic has inferior technology to the guilds of the Known Worlds, outside of a few outliers such as being able to mass manufacture poor quality personal energy shields.

• They are a multi system polity, with several planets, extensive populations and immense wealth.

• They purportedly follow the Universal Church but are heretics who worship technology and embrace democracy, they even laud psychic powers.

• Their army (The Republican Guard) is very well equipped and highly motivated but does not appear enormously competent, Republican troops and officers are awful with the blade yet excellent shots with primitive cybernetic enhancement. They are also cowards who refuse duels yet are prone to fighting to the death.

• This carries through to space, whilst their ship handling and crew quality are superb and they have an awful lot of heavy warships they are technologically inferior. They also shun boarding actions, relying heavily on think machine directed missiles and numerous fighters with excellent pilots.

• They have some kind of hostile contact with the Vuldrok and captured Republican Navy personnel are often veterans of void warfare against them.

• An uncanny number of those taken prisoner by the 3rd Republic then turn traitor following release.

• They conduct active and dangerously successful infiltration and espionage activities, often trying to turn members of the Guilds or minor houses.

• There are definitely people using the name Al-Malik represented amongst the upper echelons of the Republic, though they do not appear to be in charge.

• Areas occupied by the Republic are then ruled by unruly 'Elected Councils' of former serfs who often launch brutal pogroms against those who were loyal to or prosperous under the old order.

[Packrat]

Working now on a revised and simplified economy/benefice pass, along with things like rank and codifying of the Influence system for social capital.

I am already using a new ranking system rather than the default Fading Suns one:

Now trying to work out how to handle proximity to high rank where I am tempted to mostly steal from Arx. Basically if you are immediate family to somebody then you have their rank -1. Only immediate family though, my feeling is that if you are a duke's cousin or nephew then nobody is going to think you are as important as a count or bishop unless you are actually their heir or betrothed to a duchess, etc.

Also trying to finalise how lifestyle spending translates to Influence. Cash and Influence are both strategic resources of nominally equal value so it cannot just be a case of more Influence income if you are blowing all of your money on lavish living. Currently considering lifestyle level giving a bonus to rolls when spending Influence on things.

On which note, what kind of things should one be able to spend really big chunks of social capital on? My current thoughts:

• Buying votes
• Reducing unrest
• Instigating unrest
• Persuading the NPC Duke or Archbishop of stuff
• Having NPC allies send/lend troops
• Having NPC vassals meet their feudal obligations with troops or cash (cheaper than the above).
• Get away with psi or cybernetics, employing psychics or cyborgs

You can also convert Influence into Manpower (pretty efficiently) or Cash (Not very efficiently). Some military units require Influence both to create and maintain.

EDIT:

Also working Feudal (and similar) obligations. Essentially there are three tiers of 'real' benefice (Fief, bishopric, business, etc). They are Poor, Average or Rich with Rich having about twice the incomes of Poor and costing twice as many points in character generation.

A Count (for example) might have a Rich benefice and a half dozen to a dozen barons, abbeys, city mayors, etc sworn to them, some of whom might have Rich benefices themselves for that matter. These vassals would not directly pay taxes but the overlord has a nominal right to demand a military unit from each or payment in lieu (scrutage) if they prefer not to provide troops.

Actually demanding a military unit every season is legal but considered an asshole move unless you are at war, but the count would have an obligation to provide the duke with say, 5-6 military units, more than they can afford themselves. Also they might want to demand scrutage every season because they love money.

A good portion of benefice holders would be sworn directly to the duke, or to the local bishop, or to the archbishop instead though, with the same obligations. That probably gives you situationally more leverage but the duke in particular will demand scrutage or troops every single season due to ongoing war with the 3rd Republic.

Also no direct tie between title and benefice. You could be a Count with a Poor benefice, or even a minor one not really able to sustain a single military unit thanks to having lost your lands. You could be an abbot with a Rich benefice because you control a fortress monastery and wealthy local towns, or a knight with a Rich business of some sort (though that sounds dangerous unless you somehow avoid clashing with the guilds).

[Arkandel]

@packrat said in Fading Suns 2017:

On which note, what kind of things should one be able to spend really big chunks of social capital on?

Focus first on what the in-game effects of such spends can be, and then you can figure out their type or what they're worth.

It'll do little good to have carrots no one wants to chase.

[Packrat]

@arkandel That is kind of what I am trying to work out, the strategic resources should be things that people want and need and never have enough of. Obviously maintaining military units is one expense, a bishop is a temporal as well as spiritual ruler and has feudal obligations and defense requirements demanding an army, but as a bishop that is probably not your main priority.

Unless you are one of those bishops. Or a Brother Battle.

[Arkandel]

@packrat Yeah, usually in games staff have a different view of their own MU* than players get to see.

To a bird's eye view "this guy can punch hard" is at most as useful as if not quite inferior to "can generate cash and bribe people with it".
Yet in practice cash is rendered mostly useless, bribery involves jumping through time consuming bureaucratic loops at best and the effect isn't worth the hassle.

But a punch is one dice roll long, immediately rewarding and never goes out of style.

It's good you're taking this into consideration on the early stages!