Fading Suns Rpg

[NemoJBatkastle]

Does anybody remember the Fading Suns Rpg from about a decade ago. It was a really great techno-medieval space so-and-so put old by the guys who did 'Werewolf' and 'Vampire' (i think). It's kind of like Warhammer 40k, but exchanges the beefy homoerotic malevolence for sort of a bisexual enigmatic gloom (no, but seriously, I love everybody). Lost all my old books of it, but I bought some on Amazon recently and it's fantastic! It has one of the best settings I've every seen, and the writing style is superb.

Has anyone played it? Does anyone still play it?

And if so, does anyone know where that whole 'War In Heaven' deal was going?
There was some crazy metaplot going on with the Symbionts, the Vau, and some others guys. I want to know what happened with all that!

[Tsotha-lanti]

It is freaking wicked. I actually got into it through the computer strategy game Emperor of the Fading Suns - the amazing coolness of the setting came through very well.

Haven't played it much, but both the system and the setting are very cool.

No clue about the metaplots with the Symbionts and/or the Vau. Never paid much attention to those in RPGs. (Except in RuneQuest, I guess, where you can't avoid it.)

[Tengu]

Fading Suns is a game I've never played (but so would love to...), but I've read the books. It kicks ass. The setting is awesome and so universal (you can play anything in it, from The Name Of The Rose On Another Planet to Indiana Jones In Space to cyberpunk), and the mechanics are very cinematic, and a good balance between realistic and heroic.

[bosssmiley]

Redbrick Entertainment (the guys who do Shadowrun now) have the license for Fading Suns.

Loved, loved, loved the setting of FS (and did quite a bit of homebrew for it - ask me about the Vau Phantasmery Flute or the Lost World of Amhara sometime ).
Found the VPS system as written intolerably unheroic (the problems of trying to adapt a die-pool mechanic to a single d20 I suppose). The d20 version was ok, with some of the best PrCs I've seen, but it suffered from arriving on the cusp of the 3.0-3.5 changeover.

...sort of a bisexual enigmatic gloom

Good description of the tone.

[NemoJBatkastle]

I played it for a while my my friends in high school, and though we didn't play it too much it ended up being a close second favorite to Shadowrun (where do all these forgotten RPGs go? Perhaps the Githyanki live on their dead bloated corpses now). I ended up hoarding all the books, then later lost then along with my Blue Planets setting, almost the entire Planescape setting manuals, and a copy of Airplane and Airplane 2 (don't ask).

I had drafted an elaborate campaign that would have been quite interesting. An civil war breaks out, lead by an upstart Hazat leader on Sutek. The Hazat and the Church ally themselves to break the centralized influence of the Phoenix Throne. The Emperor seats himself on Tethys and fights back, enjoying a renewed alliance with the Hawkwood and in fact the Li Halan. A church schism occurs and the Al-Malik get basically a blank check from the Emperor to form a Republic. The Decados get sprayed with Symbionts and eventually it turns out to be the best thing that ever happened to them. Then fighting, shifting alliances, and oh, yeah, it turns out the Annunanki were actually humans long ago and they were behind it all the whole time in order to bring the poor Known Worlds in to the fold.

Highly non-canon, but it would have been fun. Oh well. The great thing about Fading Suns was it really wasn't that original, but rather a really, really well thought out trope. Kind of what I think of when I hear the term 'realistic fantasy'.

Also the art was fantastic, and really gave a sense of what the fadingsunsaverse looked like.

Also I hope nobody winced too hard at my gloomy bisexual...comment. Sexuality did come up in the setting, and it seemed to be fairly savoir-faire for a hidebound space Dark Age. There's a distinct flavor that comes with references to human coupling in fantasy settings, naturally the more well thought out the better. I'd like to see a campaign setting that references getting drunk and hooking up with an ex late at night. Now that would be realistic (and also horrific well beyond anything Lovecraft could think of).

[horseboy]

Redbrick Entertainment (the guys who do Shadowrun now) have the license for Fading Suns.

Don't I wish, but no, they don't do Shadowrun if they had, 4th wouldn't have sucked so hard, they do Earthdawn Classic.

[LibraryOgre]

I've got my Fading Suns Revised sitting next to my Star Wars 2e Revised and Expanded.

Damn, it's good to be a gamer.

[NemoJBatkastle]

Actually FS did reference illicit ex-gf hookups. If I recall their was some intermittent on-again, off-again between Emperor Alexius and Duchess Salandra Decados, and that guilt-ridden naughtiness was quite possibly the metaplot hook needed to pave the way for a brave new age of Hawkwood-Decados Detente.
Also, here's an important lesson o ye giants might enjoy: never throw out your books for some girl. If she already knows you're a gamer, even if she's not she'll probably still want to be with you. Sure, maybe she'll have a laugh at your expense at first, but with a little love and affection who knows? You and your babe could be rockin' the casbah as a gnarly bard and warrior team careening across multiverse. Trust me, it happens. Beats ditching your glorious gaming manuals in a field behind a pool annex in the wilds of San Francisco. Oh the things you learn with age...

[bosssmiley]

I've got my Fading Suns Revised sitting next to my Star Wars 2e Revised and Expanded.

*Heh* Shelf organisation hivemind.

[Maxymiuk]

Have it, love it, been wanting to actually run a game for a long time. Unfortunately, it's rare to find someone else who'd have even heard of that game anywhere around these parts. I tried to start an online once or twice, but similarly, it never got off the ground due to lack of interest.

I'd describe the setting's mood as Warhammer 40K: they share the "you're screwed" attitude, but FS comes with with more drama and less genocide.

[Attilargh]

sort of a bisexual enigmatic gloom

I need to get this game.