Fading Suns
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It'd be a FS game!
Embrace the drama! From the No Really I'm An Ancient History Scholar So I Know You're Not Playing Your <Insert Noble Surname> Right snooty slapdowns on public, to typical hijinks by the same people, I dunno how much worse it is that an NPC that people are familiar with is part of things than an NPC that's just staff created is. -
Very, if it's a Gary Stu invincible kind of character.
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The history and foreign affairs major in me does not like to just do some creative handwavium to say that imperial politics are not in play for the setting but something that is often forgotten in a Fading Suns game is that... well, a planet is kind of a big place already, much less stuff on a galactic scale. So whatever the case, the greater metagame can be ignored but I'd rather run that by committee rather than any executive decision since several folks now have indicated disdain for the Byzantium Secundus aspect of the theme.
This is all somewhat academic as I have neither the time nor resources (ahem, a coder) who would want to work with me on a project. But to distill down the conversation, there seems to be an interest in a Fading Suns game and there seems to be an interest in less political focus and more of the adventuring/space opera feel of the theme per the books. There is the subject of chargen and the game system being wonky but as someone said before, it may not be the best game system but it isn't necessarily the worst. FS 2.0 did help mitigate, in my mind, some of the excesses of FS 1.0 although I personally like FS 1.0's sheet process better. But I've always been the crazy one.
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@Apollonius I am working on that CG system. But seriously, even with the Revised Revised in Players guide and lifepaths from the new lifepaths book, I'm at 1588 lines and counting and I've only done Nobles. That doesn't even include the Tour of Duty choices which will come later since everyone shares them. This system is not friendly to coders.
As to the dislike of the emperor. I'm not really on either side of the fence, but if the emperor is involved then it kind of rains on the parade. The emperor is the final say so if he gets involved then he's getting involved because he has a way to deal with it and that's that. That can be done well and it can be done badly.
Like you said though, and it falls in line with the book, there are many planets and the empire doesn't have time to rule them all. That's why the noble houses exist, that's why he gives lands to knights and barons and all other manner of people, including the guild and church. That's why there are bishops who are in charge of planets. Because he can't be everywhere. So it's a space rome type deal where he stretched too far, so it's very likely you never feel his presence and it's very easy to justify the phoenix empire never coming up beyond conversation.
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@Alzie Right. Imperial involvement guarantees the necessity of huge staff fiat trampling over people. While staff might do that with their own NPCs anyway (as @mietze says) I still think it's better not to make it a REQUIREMENT by including that content. There's basically no way it can end well, ever, so why do it?
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@bored If there is anyone in the FS MU* space that would despise the OOC Imperial hammer, it would be me. This was well before most folks' time but here's my version of the story.
During a period when Paulus and Lextius and pretty much the entire staff vacated Vargo and left it with Foresti (the staffer who had a doombot coded to pretty much implode the game on whim), my PC Caius Hawkwood had been working diligently to take over the governance of the main continent through a mix of political alliances with the local Hazat (not Custodius at that particular point in time), some friendly (bribed) Decados, and doling out enormous amounts of the coffers to build support from the local restive populace for a Hawkwood takeover. Vargo's natives were restive pro-Republican terrorists and Caius played into them like a fiddle, promoting a regime that supported local governance through its native aristocratic families (who were not really nobles but more like landed British gentry of second sons in the American colonies).
Anyway, Paulus saw that the little ragtag group of players left after he vacated the game was pretty active so he came back in full force, taking back controls to the game and firmly planting his own PC, Iskander, as the ruler of the planet by imperial fiat from the Emperor (despite Caius' own pleas to Princess Victoria of Delphi), marginalizing my PC by both OOC and IC means, and using his staff position to sow discontent amongst the players. In comes Custodius shortly after and with it both activity and toxicity that the man brings where ever he is found.
So no, I don't like Alexius. I don't like the looming threat of Imperial fiat coming in and wrecking PC activity. I suppose privately, the scenario between Alexius, Theafana, and Salandra is a means of neutering him on sort of a weird meta-meta level. One of the big giant open ended thematic components is who Alexius would end up marrying, which seems to attract a lot of people and a lot of partisans. But then again, almost all knights and ladies games devolve into marriage simulators given enough time.
What I am proposing is a game where the Emperor's court is distant, distracted by its own squabbles, and frankly in the position of abandoning its outer periphery to their demise after Alexius' own mismanagement of affairs is resulting in the rapid decline of the Phoenix Empire.
I'm even okay with a situation where the planet's jumpgates no longer work and everyone is trapped in a single planet with no access to the metagame outside. Actually, this should be the case outright in my opinion, other than a few NPC Charioteers that managed to survive with knowledge of the jumpgate coordinates who smuggle in the occasional supply or Kurgan pirates. One can easily set up the game that way and voila, no imperial interference. What I don't want is a cognitive dissonance where the people simply do not acknowledge the Empire outside of the game or having to create the theme of a pre-Alexius time frame. When the jumpgates basically don't work, it doesn't matter who the fuck you're related to. In fact, it should mean you are the first victims of any shakedown operation by those with sharper, pointier sticks.
@Alzie I'd be happy to help out with theme and campaign running if you can manage to get a game running, my reputation notwithstanding. That said, I know a major reason why Fading Suns hasn't been spread around much in the MU* community is because of the stupid intricacies of the chargen process. This is one of the reasons cited to me by P as to why they were hand-statting people and also handling XP spends the way that they did.
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Yeah the imperial power should be distant. And I say this as someone who on a fiction level loves the emperor being around and Imperial Sci-fi in general, I also tend to play imperial leaning nobles or outright Questing Knights. But I do thing that should be kept far in the background.
I also say this as a player who want more adventure in the setting. Hard to be adventurers in a place that is settled and has a lot of Imperial power set up, because they would be there to hand the issues adventures normally deal with. Barbarian incursion, well the army is right here, we pay taxes make them deal with it, instead i want barbarian incursion, well lets send a message out but it will be months before we get any back up and likely not even then so let go deal with it. How often in a vamp game does a high ranking US official show up, never that I have really seen, that is also how often a high ranking Imperial should show up in FS. -
I'm reviewing the planets in the books and I'm not particularly enthused by any of them.
Anyone else have that problem?I just put together a possible theme for a post-apocalyptic nightmare FS game that I'd run a few campaigns with. I'm sure I'm missing a lot of canon for Paradise and hand waving or forcing some of the thematic licenses below but honestly, you can replace the planet name and the main players and get the same result of merging Fallout with Fading Suns. There's some weird changes in tense and it sorta flows in a stream of consciousness manner. I just hobbled something together at 3AM my time.
Paradise Lost Again:
The famed jumpgate to the Justinian homeworld Paradise was recovered only for it to be a nuked out husk of a planet with huddled masses of humanity clinging onto the wreckage of centuries of war and devastation and dashing the hopes of a Justinian restoration. It is later found that House Decados has been in contact with Paradise for the better part of the century, in a proxy war with the Vuldrok, later on delivering nuclear weapons to unsuspecting natives who irradiated the planet against Vuldrok invaders.
Nonetheless, the House Justinian claimed Paradise as their own, while Hawkwood and Decados partisans claiming ancient treaties and marriage relations, both ancient and recent, swooping down to lay claim to whatever is left of Paradise. Imperial, Church, and League groups also descend into Paradise to fight the Vuldrok, recover lost artifacts, and rebuild Paradise. The effort against the Vuldrok come to a grinding halt, the Justinians controlling the main continent, while significant contingents of Decados aligned with League agents and Hawkwood aligned with Church agents as well as a Vuldrok chieftain all controlling large pieces of territory. There was a rush to find the Justinian scepter, bringing in questing knights of all shapes and banners trying to bring glory to their House.
Was being the operative word. An unknown ship of ancient make crashed into one of the nuclear-infested regions, bringing in rumors of a night road to Symbiot territory, brought into reality when Symbiots are confirmed. Rather than opening a new front against the previously contained Symbiots, a detente was achieved between the Vuldrok and the Known Worlders to simply abandon Paradise to its fate and seal the jumpgate again. After the initial exodus of people, the Vuldrok and Decados confiscated as many of the jump keys as possible and otherwise shot down any Charioteer and ship that refused to comply. The Decados would tamper with the jumpgate as they did during the fall of Alecto, this time sealing the gate all together.
Stranded against an impossible foe, the remaining humans on Paradise must take a stand against the Symbiot infestation or resign themselves to destruction or find another way out, the jumpgate seemingly open to the hell that is Symbiot territory still. To make things worse, the close proximity to Vau space is rumored to have alerted the Vau into summoning a fleet to destroy Paradise entirely. Whether that is true or not remains to be seen.
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One big problem is an individual house doesn't fuck with the Charioteers at that level IIRC.
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@Usekh The idea is that every sane KWer understood that if the Symbiots were at the doorstep of Cadavus, it would be a second front against the Symbiots... and that the BB and Muster don't have the manpower to handle both a campaign in Paradise and Stigmata, not that the Decados alone are shooting down ships. I don't think they have the manpower to shoot down every single ship anyway.
The idea is that there are three ways in (KWer, Antagonist, Symbiot) and two (KWer and Antagonist) are barred. It hermetically seals the system (for the most part, obviously there are going to be some means of smuggling shit in and out) ICly and OOCly in many ways. The Charioteers would be the most reluctant to give up the jump keys to Paradise but they'd be pretty damn cognizant that a second front of Symbiot activity would mean there is no more business at all to handle in the Known World. The Decados and their League buddies (understanding the League in itself is not a singular entity) would probably take the lead in sealing that space (or make an unusual agreement with the Hawkwoods) to prevent Symbiots into Cadavus, although some crazy Hawkwoods may just want exactly that.
It'd mean a messy, sloppy cover up on a galactic scale about the giant fuck up that has occurred in Paradise and perhaps cause turmoil across the Phoenix Empire. The focus of the game is the remainder on Paradise who are FUBAR. If the players excessively focus on off-world matters, well, maybe they deserve to get wiped out IC. Want to play a marriage simulator? You get a marriage simulator with Symbiot monstrosities.
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@Apollonius Cool TT, terrible MU. Which I think describes most of your FS ideas so far.
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@bored @Apollonius I don't think they're bad per se, but they do seem more in the vein of table top GM games because Apollonius is presenting them in the sense that he has a story to tell and everyone else is along for the ride. I don't think that's a bad thing. There have been some good Mu's that have basically been players playing someone's brain novel.
The only thing I have a problem with is: If you're so against politics, then why are you allowing nobles. You can't allow royals without allowing politics. It's like saying 'I want to have merchants, but I don't want to really think about the economy that much.'
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Well, I didn't say they were bad ideas or a bad thing overall. But I think the chance of a more TT-oriented idea working out well on a MU is slim. A big problem with his setting, like the prior ones, is it immediately puts the focus on certain factions and then you have usual issues with that.
In this offering, it's the Decados. In a TT, you could as the GM simply say, OK the Decados are major antagonists here, if you play one you're going to be working against your own house because I don't really want PvP inside the party (or maybe you'd say something else - whatever). In a MU, it almost certainly ends up with people playing Decados as the ruling class of the game, whether as favored PCs, standard staff-abused NPCs, whatever.
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I'm totally offering a TT style environment. That is how Fading Suns should be played.
Every player can have unlimited alts but after a certain amount of plays with a particular pc, you need to sit him or her out for a discrete amount of time. At the end of a full campaign, there would be incentives to kill off that pc, give that pc a voluntary rest, or otherwise roll again based on the next big plot.
That isn't to say that there is no permanence. I'd relax rules about interconnecting family members (just no PCs of that nature active at one time) or theme connections. Social RP is okay and you can have as much of that as you like. Staff approved player run TPs could interact with the overall world and meta plot. At the end of a major campaign, players get incentives to write up their version of events and they get recorded into a central database that explains the story so far.
If a PC achieves a certain amount of IC power or status, players will be allowed to play them from time to time as NPCs but their chronicle is more or less finished.
Staff never play main roles in plots unless invited to a player run plot and are generally limited to quest giving NPCs. All NPC staff actions will be reactionary in scope and based on numbers that will be either transparent or randomized with dice.
I think this is worth an experiment. The other FS paradigm is doomed to failure imho.
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Eh. At the point of actual online TT I'd rather just... play online TT. With a pr-arranged group and not just whoever shows up. And I do! albeit not for Fading Suns.
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There is no point to a Tabletop-style MU, to be honest. There are ways to make a game's politics engaging without neutering PCs in favor of NPCs (One of Paulus' biggest mistakes along with the lying). The Decados are a stupid powerful House and to be honest whenever they're the overwhelming majority, crazy shit happens. They're basically the Tzimisces of Fading Suns. I'd suggest a neutral planet, like the one that's reminiscent of a Cyberpunk civilization in one of the books, or something else. Hell, even figure out how Star Crusade went wrong and put a planet with a classic KWer vs Kurgan dispute where the KWers are the invaders for once.
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5000 lines of code later, fading suns cg complete and all i've learned is that the book is really confusing and CG is so open ended that it makes coders cry tears of blood.
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@Alzie You are a hero
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Now quick, some masochist make a game so we can all sit here judging/criticizing your work!
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@bored Almost tempted to make a game just to see the system itself in action.
