Fading Suns d20 is another conversion of a fairly popular role playing game to the d20 rules. It's 192 pages, softcover, and priced at a fairly standard $25. The cover art is by 'Brom', but unlike most of his work that I've seen, doesn't feature some sort of corpse, but rather, a long haired noble holding a sword in one hand and a banner in the other. In the background you see fire, smoke, wreckage, and 3 spaceships flying by. It's actually the cover from the PC game, Emperor of the Fading Suns. Like the cover, some of the artwork inside is recycled from other previous Fading Suns products, but some seem to be new. In any event, it's a bit grim, stylish, almost gothic looking, but fits the tone of the game well. Also inside, the margins are small, and the text size is also small, so this book has a high text desnity.
The original Fading Suns game was perhaps never hugely popular, but has something of a cult following. I had bought the original game when it first came out (I think 1996), but never actually used it because the original rules are very clunky, and not much fun (in my opinion, anyway). So I looked forward to the d20 version (though somewhat ironically, the original game system is also based around a d20).
Fading Suns is a science fiction game, but as the cover says, it's more space-fantasy than typical science fiction. It's set in our far future, the year AD 5001. Mankind has gone to the stars, but suffered something of a setback, and is just now barely emerging from a new dark ages. In fact, the Fading Suns future largely parallels the fall of Rome and Western Europe. So, Fading Suns universe resembles medieval Europe in outlook - nobles and the church make up the ruling class, with the majority of people being serfs (literally), with a small percentage making up a middle class (guilds, mostly). Technology exists, but mostly lies in the hands of the nobles and the guilds - much of it has been banned by the church. While there was recently a noble crowned emperor, there are several noble houses, sects within the church, and dozens of guilds all plotting and scheming for power. Basically, think Dune combined with medieval Europe (in particular, Italy - the people who developed Fading Suns also make computer games, including one called Machiavelli the Prince...).
It's a very rich setting, a with an emphasis on role-playing more than breaking down doors and killing everyone evil. There is lots of room for scheming and such. So, it's not surprising that the section introducing and giving an overview of the Fading Suns universe is the largest chapter in the book, at almost 50 pages.
You get a brief history and an overview of the 5 main noble houses - the Hawkwoods, kind of Arthurian nobility, the Decados, really decadent and perhaps evil (think the fat floating guy from Dune), the Li Halan, real religious types, the Hazat, who are sort of bland soldiers, and the Al-Malik, who are fairly modern and open minded merchant types. There's a brief description of some minor houses.
It also gives the basics of the church, and the main church sects. The church is monotheistic, sort of a combination of the old Roman Catholic Church (in organization and practice) and Islam (no savior or anything like that, but a Prophet). It's actually sort of Pantheistic - god as the universe, which is perhaps why the god in it is called the Pancreator. That might be overstating it a bit, but it's big on the fact that god controls the universe really really tightly (again, not unlike the view in medieval times).
The five main sects are described - the Avestites, who are basically like Jesuits with an even worse attitude - they like to burn people alive for their sins (like using proscribed technology or occult powers or heresy), the Amaltheans, who are healers, the Eskatonics, who are mystics bordering on heresy (think the Sufis, Gnostics, or Essenes) but who are tolerated because their occult powers are needed to fight the Symbiots (think an organic version of the Borg), the Brothers Battle, a militant order like the Templars or Assassins, and the Urth Orthadox, who are pretty much like Catholics.
There's also an overview of the various merchant guilds - most of which are pretty obvious. The most sinister is The Muster, who mostly find people to fill jobs but dabble in slavery and other nasty stuff. The other major guilds are devoted to techology, starships, scavaging, and banking.
The 2nd chapter in on characters. You briefly get stats for the 3 main alien races, the Ur-Obun (kind of like nice elves), the Ur-Ukar (kind of like dark elves), and the Vorox (kind of like gorillas or Wookiees, only with 6 limbs). Because the latter are tough, they have a ECL of +2 (essentially, a starting 1st level Vorox is considred a 3rd level character). Though since the ECL rules aren't open gaming content, Holistic came up with another explanation of it.
After that, you get 25 pages or so of new classes. Fading Suns doesn't use any regular d20 classes, but has new ones (though many resemble d20 classes). Oddly enough, because the Fading Suns universe is heavily casted, character classes make a lot of sense
Beastfriend - Sort of a combination of ranger and druid. No spells, exactly, but has special powers regarding animals, including being able to borrow powers from it's animal companion (or cohorts, as they are called). This is one of the more interesting classes, I think.
Brother Battle - Member of a militant religious sect. It's basically like a paladin with the ability to do real damage while unarmed, like a monk, but not as much as a monk.
Guilder - A member of a guild. Sort of an improved expert. Odd save progression which might be a typo? I'm not sure.
Knave - Pretty much a rogue
Living Weapon - Basically a monk with a horrible, horrible name.
Noble - Basically an improved Aristocrat, though this is actually a lot like the Guilder class.
Priest - A lot like the Guilder class, actually. No spell casting abilities
Psychic - People who have psychic powers.
Solider - Almost exactly a fighter
Starwolf - Pretty much a barbarian, though the special abilities are completely different.
Techie - Closest to the rogue, only with better hp, and completely different special abilities (technology related, obviously...)
Theurgist - Basically a religious person who can perform magic (rites)
And lastly, there is the Yeoman, which is the Expert class with a new name. No prestige classes
Chapter 3 is only a few pages, and adds a handful of new skills.
Chapter 4 is on Feats, and is 20 pages. This is a very interesting chapter - it introduces a new type of feat, the 'Social' feat, which deal with interacting with other people. (As fitting the Fading Suns universe, many of the character classes get bonus social feats, much like the fighter gets bonus martial feats or the wizard gets bonus magic feats).
While some of these new feats are only really applicable for the Fading Suns universe or something similar (like say, "Reeve Advocate", which gives you a lawyer on call), most are useful in any d20 setting.
Chapter 5 deals with equipment. It starts off explaining technology in the Fading Suns universe, then introduces the concept of Masterwork levels. Basically, they are like masterwork items, only even higher quality. Good idea, because there are no magic items (not exactly, anyway).
There's also a handful of new guns. The damages are basically like in the DMG, and so are pretty low. For instance, a light pistol does 1d6 damage, a medium 1d8. There's a lot of new armor. Very few pieces, but each armor type can be made out of several different materials.
There are also brief rules and coverage of vehicles, computers, and cybernetics. Starships are only mentioned briefly (other than a damage chart).
Chapter 6, also 30 pages, explains how the magic system in Fading Suns works. Basically, it's a spell point system - each magic using class gets a power or spell every other level or so, and then they use the spell points for every use of that power or spell. But at the same time, every spell or power is also considered a skill (and require skill points to improve the use of). It's a bit tricky, but seems to work pretty well.
Chapter 7 is on gamemastering, and is about 18 pages. It has some sample NPCs (all villains), a few pages of monsters/critters, and new types of experiences awards. Some of the samples NPCs are a bit hard to decipher because their classes aren't obvious. For instance, the pirate example is a Nob1/Vul4. Which apparently means a Noble 1, Starwolf 4.
After that you get an appendix, which gives a brief (1 paragraph each) of the known planets in the Fading Suns universe. (There aren't that many, and all are connected by a series of jumpgates).
The last page is a character sheet.
Content wise, this is a really good book. Other than starship combat, which really isn't common in Fading Suns because the ships are extremely precious, pretty much everything is covered (it's not covered in the original Fading Suns rulebook either) from a rule point of view. From a background point of view, new players and GMs might have trouble figuring out what to do, since there is no sample adventure, and the specific background is rather scant. But they do offer a free adventure and detailed info on one planet on their web site, so this is somewhat mitigated.
How do the rules fit the Fading Suns universe? Well, it's a mixed bag. For the most part they work, but combat is not very deadly. While this is largely true in the original Fading Suns, because of Energy Shields, guns in Fading Suns just don't all that much damage. This is offset in other modern or sci-fi games by increasing the damage of guns (the ones from Pinnacle, or Dragonstar), or by using an alternate damage system (Star Wars, Spycraft, Traveller d20).
There's also at least one place in the text where they forgot to change the rules from their own system to d20, though it's actually not a rules problem, just in the description.
Still, HDI did a good job of adapting the d20 rules to the setting, rather than just a quick search and replace job like some other companies have done. Among the nice touches is that each of the new classes has it's own version of an 'Iconic' character. For instance, instead of Lidda the Rogue, Fading Suns had Oksana the Knave.
The social feats also really help capture the spirit and tone of the Fading Suns style of play. While to a certain extent, I think some of them can be represented solely by role-playing, or in game events, they add a whole new aspect to d20, almost. For instance, take the Ally feat,in which someone with some power is friendly towards the character. On the one hand, something like this shouldn't be a feat, but something that that the character earns or gains through gameplay, probably by saving a nobles life or such. On the other, the feat is good for quantifying things coming out of the blue, or out of the game sessions. So I like them a lot.
As for usefulness for people not wanting to run a Fading Suns game, but want useful d20 material for their own games, I would also say this book is very useful. While some of the classes are probably not really apropriate for regular d20 games(the Priest, Noble, and Guilder, with their focus solely on social feats), I think most can fit in a non-Fading Suns game, particularly other science fiction games or even fantasy. In particular, the Beastfriend. The feats are also fairly useful, as are some of the cyberstuff. The weapons are a bit vague, not much more than what's in the DMG.
So, all in all, this is a very good book. And since HDI seems to have decided to dual stat all future Fading Suns books, this book won't be an orphan like I originally feared (which is why I took so long to buy it, or one of the reasons).
