2d20 for Fading Suns

Based on a suggestion from another Fading Suns GM, my preferred method of using the Victory Point system was with two d20s instead of one. The gist of the system (apart from accenting and wyrd mechanics explained at the link) was:

• Roll 2d20, keep the highest die that’s still a success.
• The roll is only a critical success if one die roll the target number and the other is also successful.
• The roll is only a critical fumble if one die rolls a 20 and the other is also a failure.

Doing this changes the success rate pretty drastically:

Target	1d20 Success	2d20 Success
1	5.0%	9.8%
2	10.0%	19.0%
3	15.0%	27.8%
4	20.0%	36.0%
5	25.0%	43.8%
6	30.0%	51.0%
7	35.0%	57.8%
8	40.0%	64.0%
9	45.0%	69.8%
10	50.0%	75.0%
11	55.0%	79.8%
12	60.0%	84.0%
13	65.0%	87.8%
14	70.0%	91.0%
15	75.0%	93.8%
16	80.0%	96.0%
17	85.0%	97.8%
18	90.0%	99.0%

Just looking at the chance of success, it’s interesting how much it suddenly curves to look much more like a White Wolf-style dice pool mechanic than a percentile mechanic. Importantly, in my mind, this means that it’s not as drastically necessary for players to try to absolutely max out their skills to regularly succeed: in practice, a trait total of 10 is supposed to be pretty good for a starting character, and now that character has better than a 50/50 shot on rolls. It’s immersion-breaking in the extreme for the system to pretend that you have a good trait and then fail on it half the times it’s important, at least in my opinion.

Additionally, this method puts a curve on fumbles and criticals. In 1d20, you have a 5% chance of a crit and a 5% chance of a fumble, no matter what. In 2d20, the chance of crit goes from 0.3% at TN 1 to 9.3% at TN 19, while the chance of fumble does exactly the opposite. Effectively, the higher your TN, the bigger your chance to crit and the smaller your chance to fumble, which seems more logical.

The other interesting thing is what it does to expected success totals:

Target	1d20 Avg. VP	2d20 Avg. VP
1	0.0	0.0
2	0.0	0.0
3	0.3	0.4
4	0.5	0.5
5	0.6	0.6
6	0.8	0.9
7	1.0	1.1
8	1.1	1.2
9	1.3	1.5
10	1.5	1.7
11	1.6	1.9
12	1.8	2.1
13	2.0	2.4
14	2.1	2.6
15	2.3	2.8
16	2.5	3.1
17	2.6	3.3
18	2.8	3.7

The chart above is the average number of victory points for a successful roll (not counting criticals). The numbers don’t look terribly different, save that the 2d20 is slightly higher. In practice, this is because, with 1d20, success VPs are completely flat: if you succeed on 1-10, you a successful roll has a 10% chance for each result. In other words, any time you succeed, you will roll less than half your best result half the time. Conversely, with 2d20, you have at least a 75% chance of rolling over the halfway mark (because if both dice are under the target number, you choose the larger result).

Old school game design looks at the 1d20 and declares it adequate: the higher your score, the higher the chance of success and the result of success. But looking at the raw numbers doesn’t cover the feel at the table, where excessive swinginess results in player disappointment. Over multiple rolls, a flat die result evens out, giving an advantage to the better character, but how often do characters make multiple rolls on the same skill outside of combat? In practice, a player may get once chance to shine with a given non-combat skill per session, and, with a flat die, the result of the roll can feel almost completely disconnected from the score. Using 2d20 to curve the result creates a situation where, even on a single roll, a higher score feels meaningful.

System Review: Fading Suns, Part 2

Character Statistics

If the dice mechanic for Fading Suns is like Pendragon, the character mechanic is much closer to White Wolf (with some notable carryovers from Pendragon, discussed below). This isn’t surprising, considering that Fading Suns was created by former White Wolf developers.

In most cases, a character’s trait total is equal to Characteristic + Skill + Misc Mods, just as in White Wolf. Characteristics range from 3-10, with 6-8 being regarded as a good range for a competent starting character. Skills range from 0-10, but, interestingly, the most commonly necessary skills (combat skills, perception, stealth, athletics, and social skills) start at 3. So, before modifiers, the worst a character can have in a common skill combo is generally 6 (min characteristic 3, min skill 3). The most a character can have is 20 (which, as mentioned in the last post, isn’t any better than an 18).

Modifiers typically come from Blessings and Curses (the system’s merits and flaws), which typically provide a plus or minus 1-3 to certain rolls (Beautiful characters gain a +2 Charm, for example). These stats aren’t terribly well balanced, especially during character creation. The value of a blessing or curse is often equal to the value of the skill bonus it provides. Since the Current Level Conundrum is in full effect, it’s often far more effective to buy up the associated skill further instead of taking a blessing, or to buy up the skill with the points from a curse to completely negate it. Essentially, blessings and curses are too straightforward and mechanical, making them very easy to min-max.

Characters also have Benefices and Afflictions, which replicate White Wolf’s backgrounds and non-mechanical merits and flaws: rank, ownership of property, addictions, phobias, etc. As with blessings and curses, these are fairly easy to min-max. Also, an interesting artifact of the price of rank means that many PCs will start off much higher ranked (in their noble house, church sect, or guild) than the setting seems to assume. For example, becoming a Baron is easily within range of a starting character, when all the fiction assumes PC nobles will be knights (the minimum possible rank). Since the genre fiction is less specific about the relative political potency of church and guild titles, it’s not uncommon to have PCs with 5-7 points in their guild or church rank being led around by and deferring to knights with only 3 point titles. This is weird.

But not as weird as Opposed Traits.

Opposed Traits

As mentioned at the top of this entry, there is one set of character statistics that takes more inspiration from Pendragon than from White Wolf: Spirit characteristics. In addition to three physical and three mental characteristics, characters also have six opposed characteristics (eight in first edition). A character’s sum of two opposed characteristics cannot exceed 10. Since they start at 3 and 1 for each pair, a character will typically have 3-9 in the primary characteristic, and will only raise the secondary characteristic if the GM likes to call for rolls of it a lot. But the GM probably won’t, because, despite being the most complicated traits in the game, the opposed characteristics have erratic mechanical support.

For example: Extrovert vs. Introvert. Extrovert is the only social characteristic in the game. There are two primary skills and four secondary skills that require Extrovert as a base. There are only two skills, both secondary, that suggest using Introvert. Introvert is effectively another mental characteristic, so Wits, Perception, and Tech are much more frequently used. A character that decides to make Introvert primary is effectively deciding to not be able to participate in social rolls, in tradeoff for an advantage with a handful of psychic powers (at least as many of which use Extrovert).

Another set of opposed traits, Faith vs. Ego, is typically meaningless unless the character has powers, in which case psychic characters raise Ego and church mystics raise Faith. Of all the opposed traits, Passion vs. Calm is potentially the hardest choice, as both traits actually have useful associated skills. However, because the system rewards having very high trait totals, it’s still probably better to raise one of the two to exclusion of the other to gain a good chance on one vs. a mediocre chance on both.

Opposed traits work (to the extent they can be argued to work) in Pendragon because they are rarely directly, mechanically used except to test a character’s response to a social stimulus and to qualify for prerequisites. And there’s still relatively little reason not to completely favor one trait out of each pair. Also, a character automatically has the maximum possible value with both traits combined (e.g., there’s a total of 20, so a trait of 5 on one side automatically means a 15 on the other) and strategy is about shifting the midpoint to a place that the player is happy with. In Fading Suns, the opposed traits start out low and paying to raise one lowers the effective maximum for the other. The game tries to make both sides relevant to all characters and fails.

In practice, players raise Extrovert if they have to make a lot of social rolls, raise Faith or Ego if they have special powers, and otherwise completely ignore the traits as too much exp for the benefit. While I have some issues with the opposed traits in Pendragon, Fading Suns managed to copy all of their flaws and none of their merits.

Part 3

System Review: Fading Suns, Part 1

The New Dark Age of the Year 5000

The year before Fading Suns released, I picked up a promotional flyer for it at Dragon*Con, where it was set to release at the next con. I spent much of the year in anticipation, and got my copy as soon as the dealer room opened on the first day. I have a larger percentage of the supplements for Fading Suns than for probably any other game line with more than a half dozen products. My longest running campaign was Fading Suns. To sum up: I am a huge fan.

I say all this to give some context when I also say that the system is generally pretty terrible.

The Fading Suns setting is brilliant. You can run just about any kind of game in it from epic fantasy to gritty mystery to Lovecraftian horror to technological thriller to political drama. The books do an excellent job of putting together a fairly coherent universe in broad strokes such that it’s easy to fill in whatever detail you need to run what you want and still make it feel consistent with the setting. My game linked above featured running around on spaceships looking for ancient artifacts, dealing with intrigues in the succession of a noble house, tracking down the source of an intergalactic drug ring, stopping a horrible enclave of genetic engineers, and thwarting a plot to throw the politics of the known worlds into disarray by unleashing a barbarian horde into civilized space. It was pretty wide-ranging in tone, and I couldn’t have done anything similar in any other setting.

And I had my players roll dice as little as possible.

Core Mechanic

The only other game I’ve played that has a similar mechanic to Fading Suns’ Victory Point System is Pendragon. It has some minor differences, but the core concept is the same “Price is Right” mechanic: roll as high as you can on a d20 without going over the target number. Like in Pendragon, rolling exactly your target number is a critical, and rolling a 20 is a fumble. Unlike Pendragon, the results are actually converted to successes (“Victory Points”): if your result was successful, divide it by 3 to get successes. If it was a critical success, those points are doubled (so rolling a 15 as a normal success is 5 VPs, rolling it if that’s exactly your target number is 10 VPs).

This is probably a good time to mention, again, that I have a nigh-irrational dislike of roll-under systems in general. Even though, statistically, it’s possible to make a roll-under system a 1-to-1 match for the probabilities of a roll-over system with the same kind of die, it doesn’t feel the same. As a GM, it’s harder to remember to apply a bonus or penalty to rolls than to set a difficulty to roll over. As players, we’re trained that rolling higher is better, so it’s a disconnect to actually want the results toward the middle of the die. In addition, “Price is Right” methods feel even swingier in play than normal roll-under mechanics: over many rolls, a higher score makes a difference, but on any given roll it may feel like your score is meaningless if you happen to roll low anyway.

All that said, the problems with the Victory Point system are not limited to the die mechanic.

Part 2

Serial Numbers Filed Off 4: Gates

Originally posted April 2008

Planescape: Ascending Primes

The greatest of the Sensates have begun to hear a new noise, a ripple from the fabric of creation. The greatest of the Fated have deciphered it, revealing a ritual of great power. The greatest of the Athar are certain that it’s a ritual to contact the true gods beyond the Powers.

The Powers are silent on the issue, strangely so. The streets of Sigil must be inked with the runes of the spell, turning the city of doors into one single gate. Standing at the center of the Outlands, where no magic should function, the ritual will send a single seeker through the torus of Sigil and into the unknown.

Assuming you can even gather all the materials needed for the ritual, how do you get a city full of factions, much less the Lady, to let you enact such a working? And what will you find beyond?

Fading Suns: The Fading of Men

Three Keys for the noble-kings under the sky,
Seven for the church-lords in their naves of stone,
Nine for guilded men doomed to die,
One for the builder on his dark throne,
In the gates of Sathra where the shadows lie.
One Key to rule them all, One Key to find them,
One Key to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them,
In the gates of Sathra where the shadows lie.
— From the Eskatonic Scriptures

Many have forgotten the sad affair of the Keys, which hastened the fall of the Second Republic. A brilliant pilot and engineer, it was said, discovered twenty philosophers stones in an ancient cache, and worked out how to turn them into universal jumpkeys with the help of human and Ur tech. They could open any jumpgate, no matter to where, no matter if it was locked, no matter if it was in the middle of reset. Some say they had other abilities built in, too: not the least of which was the power to adjust the Sathra dampers and jump engine of a ship to render it effectively invisible to all sensors.

Such power is dangerous enough alone, and great battles broke out over the upset balance of power. Then the builder revealed his master stroke: the one key he had kept for himself was bound to the others, and he could monitor them and selectively control their access to extort obedience from their owners. Eventually war was made upon him and his allies, and his ship was destroyed, the Key seized by a great leader, one of Alexius’ ancestors. He never made it home, and the One Key was lost to the jumplanes.

Now the Key has been found by unlikely travelers. And the Builder is somehow moving once again: the church elders say that the manipulation of the Sathra field by the Keys left him and others open to the demons between the stars, bound by the gates. His consciousness seems stretched across the gates, and the lesser Keys, seeking to bend men to another war and to open the gates to the dark between the stars.

The only way to stop him is to return the One Key to the Ur ruins from which it came, and hope that the ancient tech is enough to purge his consciousness from the jumpweb. But the ruins exist deep in lost space, and the Builder’s old allies are even now marshaling there for a great assault on the known worlds.

Pray that men have not faded with the suns, for their greatest strength is needed today.