Fading Suns d20

Having just finished Fading Suns d20 (Bill Bridges, Andrew Greenberg, Andy Harmon), I'm left with one essential, burning, massively disrespectful question: Is this Dune?

I don't think it is, but when I ask myself the complementary question, "Is this not Dune?"  the "yes" sticks in my throat a bit more than is entirely seemly. But then, I could swap out Dune for Warhammer 40k and my dilemma is essentially unchanged. So I guess, by the transitive property, my opinion is dogshit.

"Fading Suns is basically Dune," said the guy who also thought Warhammer 40k is basically Dune.

I mean, it's medieval-European-style feudalism in space. There are sword duels that are made more complicated by energy shields. It takes place after a golden age of technology, that people destroyed in a religious war. The broad strokes are very similar.

There are nuances, though. The Emperor in this universe is politically beholden the Patriarch of the Space Orthodox Church (although, to one such as myself, untutored in the aesthetic nuances of schism-era Christianity, the Universal Church looks like standard-issue Space Catholicism) and is neither a holy figure like in Warhammer 40k nor an independent secular ruler like in Dune. The vibe surrounding the forbidden heretical technology of the prior age of galactic expansion feels a bit different. Like, in Dune it feels like society has zeroed in on its preferred technology level and locked it down, and in Warhammer 40k, it feels like nobody knows what the fuck they're doing and technology is used or not used according to a theory of mysticism that bears no resemblance to any recognizable earthly phenomenon. But Fading Suns has a church that is broadly against "technology" in general but will cynically play politics with what is and is not forbidden and there remains in society just enough technical expertise for this hypocrisy to really land. The technology that is vital for the maintenance of an interstellar empire is exempt from prohibition, so long as it is the noble houses who are using it, because of course it works that way, and everyone who's serious about power knows the score.

But the biggest difference is probably in the handling of non-human intelligent species. In Dune, there weren't any, and Warhammer 40k is all "suffer not the xeno to live," but Fading Suns is like, "White guilt? Never heard of it. Where would you get a silly idea like that? Ha, ha, ha, HA, HA!!!!" And you can tell they're not trivializing the issue, exactly, but they are very publicly working through it in a way that is uncomfortable to witness.

It's probably intentional. At least, I have no reason to believe that the authors were naive enough to have the human star empire expand to inhabited planets, displace the native species with aggressively-spreading colonies, render many of these worlds uninhabitable to their indigenous populations via terraforming, then have the scant survivors confined to "reservations" (the book's word, not mine) and somehow not draw the connection to real-world colonialism. In fact, the first time this happens in the canon history, the incident gets its own heading and the text directly focuses on how unjust it all was and how sad people were about it after the fact. So I'm inclined to say it's not an accident.

Also not an accident - the dozen times it happened in subsequent years without anyone mounting effective resistance (or even registering a sustained objection). This bad thing keeps happening, and we know you know it's bad, because you keep framing it as if it were bad . . . but is this a theme? Are you saying space feudalism is bad? 

It doesn't feel like the book is saying that, at least not consistently. The people who oppose the empire are "pirates" or "barbarians" (and hoo boy, is that term as loaded as it sounds - the book helpfully suggests some real-world ethnicities to look to for inspiration - "They can be Viking types, Mongol types, or Islamic types.") And there's not really a sympathetic rebel, outcast, or peasant-rights organization. 

I think what's going on is some combination of soft 90s liberalism and an understandable, if somewhat misguided, desire to have fun with the premise of the game (medieval Europe in space) instead of immediately deconstructing it in the core. It leads to a weird situation where, since the default assumption is that you'll be playing aristocrats and/or members of their entourage (because peasants are too thoroughly oppressed to adventure freely in this universe), you kind of wind up accept that their viewpoints and values are neutral. Aw shucks, those aliens keep getting very nearly wiped out and forced onto reservations . . . if only there were a nicer way to take over their planets. And gosh, who would want to attack us? Barbarians, no doubt. They're probably just jealous. By the way, did you know that the priests of our oppressive technophobic religion usually have a Good alignment? "Alas, a few are evil." But "most of them are good."

And I have to take a moment here to crow about being completely right about alignment as a mechanic. Whether priests of the religion that supports the rule of the nobles who enslave the peasants and genocide the aliens can be good or are bound to be evil is a complex and subtle question. The average priest has no power to change the system (at least not without running afoul of the violence it uses to maintain itself) and they do dedicate most of their life to helping people (ministering wounds, tutoring basic literacy, pleading for clemency, etc), but the aggregate effect of the system as a whole is deeply harmful, and that can't happen without the active participation of the priests at every level, even (or maybe especially) the lowest. Perhaps "good" and "evil" are reductive labels, that obscure as much as they enlighten. Maybe we are all just trying to navigate a complex world, and a human landscape that is shaped as much by culture and circumstances as by individual agency, and we should extend each other grace, because morality is a maze (but not too much, because that maze has a lot of obvious dead ends). 

Or, you know, you could add a tag to the character's stat block that clears up that ambiguity and lets everyone know the official position of the editor. 

I am being, of course, a massive grump about this, to an almost unforgiveable degree. It is entirely missing the point of a romantic epic to start agitating against the enabling social structures behind all these beautifully jobless aristocrats and their good-natured bootlickers. Space feudalism lets me play as a futuristic techno-knight in gleaming ceramsteel armor. I can paint a coat of arms on my spaceship (or, at least, my squire can round up an artisan to do it for me). I shall pitch woo to my courtly love and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with my comrades against the deadly symbiote threat. 

I get it. I promise. I guess I'm being such a cynical pill about it because here in the real world, I am on my last nerve re: authoritarianism's bullshit and stuff like the space colonialism and the "barbarian" vs "civilized" dichotomy and the peasants being hopelessly oppressed for hundreds of years piggybacked on that to get under my skin. Fading Suns real sin is just being a perfectly serviceable roleplaying setting that never quite connected with the part of my brain where spectacle overcomes my knee-jerk criticism.

In an attempt to redeem myself, I will now engage in some thoughtful, careful criticism - I could not find any rule in this book for how psychic or priestly theurgist characters regain wyrd points (mp, basically). I'm pretty certain that there was supposed to be a daily refresh, because whenever powers are discussed, they are spoken of as if they were something you could use every day. But this is not, strictly speaking, a foregone conclusion. D20 Modern had Action Points, which only refreshed at level up. 

Other than that, I'd say the system works fairly well. I liked the new category of feats, Social Feats. The Noble, Guilder, and Priest classes get virtually no other features, but there are enough new feats that it should be pretty easy for even high-level characters to feel distinct, and as much as they might feel drastically underpowered in combat and utility compared to the D&D analogues like Soldier (Fighter), Knave (Rogue), and Living Weapon (Monk), it does feel like they were aimed at 3e's neglected interaction niche. 

Overall, I liked this book. My favorite part was, embarrassingly, learning the canon ending for the Emperor of the Fading Suns video game, but I can always appreciate a fully fleshed out new world with more lore than can comfortably fit in a core book's pagecount. I don't think I'll ever run an rpg set in this universe, but next time I play the video game, I'm going to be able to enjoy it on a deeper level than I ever have in the past.

Ukss Contribution: Like most rpg splats, the five noble houses fall into some pretty basic archetypes. Li Halan is the religious house, Decados is the sneaky house, Hawkwood is the honorable house, al-Malik is the technological house and the Hazat are the military house.

It's this last one in particular that interests me. Normally, I have nothing but scorn for "the warrior guys" but there was a detail about the Hazat that took my scorn and turned it back against me. It is such a purely concentrated form of everything I dislike about the warrior ethos that I can't help but admire its nastily satirical edge.

"When the Hazat begin their military training at around five, they are trained for a command position. During the Emperor Wars it was not uncommon for 12-year-old Hazat knights to lead forces of hardened veterans."

The arrogance. The cruelty. The uncalled-for institutional humiliation of adult professionals as an inseparable part of a much greater war crime. This is the sort of depiction that aristocrats deserve.