Fading Suns 2nd Ed Revised Review in Scrye #120

Published AGAIN! Wooo hooo! And I got to write a review of my favorite setting – Fading Suns. Although I am not a big fan of the Victory Point system, I still love the setting and overlook the system problems. There are many ways to get over the system. I simply chose to go the d20 route. There are other options.

I had a good idea for a replacement system using the current stat systems of the VP system.

This is what I posted on the Fading Suns Forums. It was not well received but I had just bought a game called CthulhuTech and it influenced this. I may do more work on it and but I will need to play test it……

OK, moment of inspiration… maybe because I’ve been trying to write a few reviews today and dealing with several systems in my head…

I am throwing this out there as an idea. Maybe it as not been totally thought out, but it is an example of a system that would be compatible with the current stat block but changing the way it works. I have not played VPS in a very long time so I could be way off base here, but what the heck, just throwing it out there to get ideas flowing.

You have your Standard set of Ability Scores which FS calls Characteristics ( a valuie of 1 – 10). That’s youu base value. Your skill level is the number of d20 dice you are going to roll. There probably should be a max number of dice and any value after that is some kind of bonus to the dice rolled or whatever. Say there is a maximum number of dice of 5. For skill levels above 5, you use the difference as a bonus or as rerolls options.

You roll all these dice and take the highest. However, I like “exploding dice”. A “dice explode” option is to set a particular value as the exploding value. That value could be equal to the base characteristic. So if he is rolling a skill with Strength and his Strength is 5, then a die explodes at a 5. It could even get more interesting in that he has to decide to either take the highest he rolled first or explode the die hoping to get a higher roll, but having a chance to getting a lower result at lower values. If he rerolls the exploding roll then he has to take that value even if it was lower than the original highest roll. That could be an optional rule for those that like to gamble.

In the end you have a die value you total, either from the highest or from an exploding die total. That value is added to the base to get a final value.

You would have to come up with a difficulty scale that works with that probability curve, but it should be fairly simple to do.

The difference between the difficulty and the total would be used to get your victory points, either through a one to one conversion or a table (so we can still call it a victory point system).

Wyrd points can be spent to get more dice.

Obviously, I am not opposed to rolling a fist full of dice 🙂