Fading Suns to BRP

[KPhan2121]

I finally finished my document and just uploaded it. 
If you guys find any issues with the rules or wording of the text, please tell me so I can fix them.

 

[clarence]

Really impressive work. Highly recommended. 

[rsanford]

Very cool!

[Rhialto the Marvellous]

Really well done! As someone who ran a FS campaign for a few years but grew tired of the system and endless expansions this is incredibly useful...A few things:

Ur-Obun text on p.4 is reproduced for the Ur-Ukar, and presumably they'd have some different skills?

Energy Shields on p.13 says "...the shield may burn out. It can also be caused by being by multiple hits..." when it should read "...the shield may burn out. It can also be caused by being hit by multiple hits..."

P.15: I think it should be "Magna-Lock", not "Lick".

For those of us without M-Space: does the "Hd" for the ships represent "Handling"?

P.24: Should be "Subtle Sight", not "Suble".

[KPhan2121]

16 hours ago, Rhialto the Marvellous said:

Really well done! As someone who ran a FS campaign for a few years but grew tired of the system and endless expansions this is incredibly useful...A few things:

 

Thanks, glad to hear that you liked it!

 

16 hours ago, Rhialto the Marvellous said:

 Ur-Obun text on p.4 is reproduced for the Ur-Ukar, and presumably they'd have some different skills?

 

Ah, I spotted the mistake. Luckily its only a minor one, other then forgetting to change the name, the rules are as stated. The two races start with similar skills, but one of the languages is different.

 

16 hours ago, Rhialto the Marvellous said:

Energy Shields on p.13 says "...the shield may burn out. It can also be caused by being by multiple hits..." when it should read "...the shield may burn out. It can also be caused by being hit by multiple hits..."

P.15: I think it should be "Magna-Lock", not "Lick".

P.24: Should be "Subtle Sight", not "Suble".

Ah, thank you for pointing those out. I'll rewrite those parts as soon as I can. Is it alright if I credit you for some of the changes on the next update?

 

16 hours ago, Rhialto the Marvellous said:

For those of us without M-Space: does the "Hd" for the ships represent "Handling"?

Yes.

 

I have a request to ask you. Since you've played Fading Suns for a long time, can you take a look at the Urge and Hubris rules. Those were the rules where I had the most difficulty in translating Fading Suns to BRP and I ended up using Sanity to represent them. I'd like to hear your opinions on how they function.

[jean]

I can help for Urge and Hubris

Urge is a rating like the psi rating.

When a psyker breaks a social taboo he has a chance to increase his urge rating.

When a pskyker does penance he has a chance to decrease his urge rating.

The Urge is the psyker's evil twin, his guilty soul. It is usually dormant, but is is awakened when the psyker fumbles a psionic power or when he uses it to replace a psi skill.

The awakened Urge can try to steer the psyker toward actions that will increase the Urge potency.

 

Hubris is a rating like the theurgy rating.

The mechanism for gaining or losing Hubris is similar to the mechanism for gaining or losing Urge

The effects of Hubris are usually permanent and tied to the level reached by the theurge.

 

Jean

 

[Rhialto the Marvellous]

7 hours ago, KPhan2121 said:

I have a request to ask you. Since you've played Fading Suns for a long time, can you take a look at the Urge and Hubris rules. Those were the rules where I had the most difficulty in translating Fading Suns to BRP and I ended up using Sanity to represent them. I'd like to hear your opinions on how they function.

Sure: I wouldn't worry too much about absolutely replicating the FS mechanics, as I prefer your simplified versions and like that you've reused an existing mechanic (Sanity) to achieve close to the same effects. Urge and Hubris represent the dark sides of using psychic or  theurgical powers, and can easily slip into insanity: neat and tidy.

[KPhan2121]

Finally got down and fixed up the typos Rhialto pointed out and some others that I found.

 

 

[clarence]

Good work!

[Rhialto the Marvellous]

Sorry, just sat down to look over the revised (1.0.1) version and noticed some more items: this is incredibly useful, as I have a friend who really wants to run FS, but is not keen on the original system. I showed him this and now he's all set, so thanks very much. 👍

• p.8, Weapons Table: should be Garrotte or Garrote, but I haven't seen garote before (though both variants I mention are accepted)
• p.9, Vibrating Blades: I'd change to read "A vibrating blade does no extra damage but it will cut through energy shields easier, which only provide 7 AV instead of the full 15 AV." to distinguish from regular (non-energy) shields.
• p.13, Note for Energy Shields should probably read "The first AV value is the shield’s normal AV. The second AV is the shield’s AV against weapons or attacks that slip past or leak through energy shields." You might want to consider italicizing or otherwise highlighting terms you define in this document, as I did in this example...but then you're taking another step towards a more formal document. 😉
• p.14, MedPac: "Standardized" or "Standard" in place of "Standardize"
• p.15, VS Perimeter Guards: should read "A small floating orb that sets a perimeter around a camp and monitors the area."
• p.15, Wet Jackets: delete "A jacket" and start with "Silvery sheets..."
• p.15, Facial Scanner: should read "Recognizes human and alien faces and can store pertinent information on them."
• p.15, Arm Harpoon: should read "Holds up to 5 short spears that can be launched up to 10 meters."
• p.15, Jonah: should read "A slightly more expensive version of the Arm Harpoon; involves a cable attachment and an internal pulley mechanism."
• p.16, Stimusim: should read "Stimusim replicates the sensitivity of flesh..."
• p.17, Pilot: should read "...can double as the navigator."
• p.17, Gunner: should read "They man..."
• p.25, Soma/Hardening: should read "...providing an AV of 3 plus 2 for any extra power points..." (matches phrasing of other abilities under Soma).
• p.28, Vis/Note: should read "Instead, at 61+%..."
• p.29, Urge: should read "When a psychic fumbles a psychic powers check, commits a heinous deed or breaks a strong personal conviction, they must roll against their Sanity."
• p.36, Hubris: should read "When a theurge fumbles a Theurgic Casting check, commits a heinous deed or breaks a religious taboo, they immediately roll against their Sanity check."

[KPhan2121]

5 hours ago, Rhialto the Marvellous said:

Sorry, just sat down to look over the revised (1.0.1) version and noticed some more items: this is incredibly useful, as I have a friend who really wants to run FS, but is not keen on the original system. I showed him this and now he's all set, so thanks very much. 👍

• p.8, Weapons Table: should be Garrotte or Garrote, but I haven't seen garote before (though both variants I mention are accepted)
• p.9, Vibrating Blades: I'd change to read "A vibrating blade does no extra damage but it will cut through energy shields easier, which only provide 7 AV instead of the full 15 AV." to distinguish from regular (non-energy) shields.
• p.13, Note for Energy Shields should probably read "The first AV value is the shield’s normal AV. The second AV is the shield’s AV against weapons or attacks that slip past or leak through energy shields." You might want to consider italicizing or otherwise highlighting terms you define in this document, as I did in this example...but then you're taking another step towards a more formal document. 😉
• p.14, MedPac: "Standardized" or "Standard" in place of "Standardize"
• p.15, VS Perimeter Guards: should read "A small floating orb that sets a perimeter around a camp and monitors the area."
• p.15, Wet Jackets: delete "A jacket" and start with "Silvery sheets..."
• p.15, Facial Scanner: should read "Recognizes human and alien faces and can store pertinent information on them."
• p.15, Arm Harpoon: should read "Holds up to 5 short spears that can be launched up to 10 meters."
• p.15, Jonah: should read "A slightly more expensive version of the Arm Harpoon; involves a cable attachment and an internal pulley mechanism."
• p.16, Stimusim: should read "Stimusim replicates the sensitivity of flesh..."
• p.17, Pilot: should read "...can double as the navigator."
• p.17, Gunner: should read "They man..."
• p.25, Soma/Hardening: should read "...providing an AV of 3 plus 2 for any extra power points..." (matches phrasing of other abilities under Soma).
• p.28, Vis/Note: should read "Instead, at 61+%..."
• p.29, Urge: should read "When a psychic fumbles a psychic powers check, commits a heinous deed or breaks a strong personal conviction, they must roll against their Sanity."
• p.36, Hubris: should read "When a theurge fumbles a Theurgic Casting check, commits a heinous deed or breaks a religious taboo, they immediately roll against their Sanity check."

Right, made the changes.

5 hours ago, Rhialto the Marvellous said:

p.13, Note for Energy Shields should probably read "The first AV value is the shield’s normal AV. The second AV is the shield’s AV against weapons or attacks that slip past or leak through energy shields." You might want to consider italicizing or otherwise highlighting terms you define in this document, as I did in this example...but then you're taking another step towards a more formal document. 😉

This is more of confusing rules on my part. The Slip Past Shields would go through an energy shield's AV instead of reducing it to 7. I added a sentence on page 13 "Success on the attack completely bypasses an energy shield's AV." As for the note under the energy shield's stats I changed the sentence to "... weapons or attacks that leak through energy shields." I hope that clears up the confusion.

I also italicized all instances of "Leaks through energy shields" as well as all instances of "Energy Weapon(s)" to differentiate them as terms.

[Rhialto the Marvellous]

14 hours ago, KPhan2121 said:

This is more of confusing rules on my part. The Slip Past Shields would go through an energy shield's AV instead of reducing it to 7. I added a sentence on page 13 "Success on the attack completely bypasses an energy shield's AV." As for the note under the energy shield's stats I changed the sentence to "... weapons or attacks that leak through energy shields." I hope that clears up the confusion.

I also italicized all instances of "Leaks through energy shields" as well as all instances of "Energy Weapon(s)" to differentiate them as terms.

Okay, the leaking seems fine, but I'm not sure of the "slip past": the concept behind the latter was that only slow attacks could slip through, which original FS modelled with a damage ceiling before the shield triggered. Why not stick with that idea?

[KPhan2121]

11 hours ago, Rhialto the Marvellous said:

Okay, the leaking seems fine, but I'm not sure of the "slip past": the concept behind the latter was that only slow attacks could slip through, which original FS modelled with a damage ceiling before the shield triggered. Why not stick with that idea?

In earlier drafts of the game, I had considered using a minimum damage threshold based similar to the original game (and the d20 adaptation). The values were derived from the Fading Suns d20 game. In that game, you would roll damage then make a d20+damage rolled against a DC, it was 17 for melee attacks and 15 for ranged attack. I wanted to avoid too much needless dice rolling so I subtracted 12 from the shield activation DC from the d20 games and came to the minimum damage threshold values of 5 for melee and 3 for ranged.

The first problem I ran into was Martial Arts, getting better at dealing damage would increase the chance that the shield would activate and stop the attack. I tried to solve this by making it so that any extra damage would not be counted towards the damage threshold, after all good technique and craftsmanship should not activate the shield. In the end I did not like the solution as it slowed the game down. The attacker would either have to declare which dice is the weapon's damage dice or roll the dices separately.

One solution I've considered doing was making it so that Martial Arts lets you bypass the shields, but I thought that it made shields useless. I tried to make the benefit weaker, like every 20% of martial arts raises the minimum damage threshold by 1. Another was allowing the characters to decrease the accuracy of their attack to raise the minimum damage threshold. There were many more that were tried and dropped in favor of the current rules.

Another problem was that the original game rolled for it's armor and the d20 adaptation had no damage reduction based off of armor, the BRP rules default to static armor values. However, there is the option to roll for AV, but I think it would slow down the game too much. Imagine having to roll to attack, then rolling defense, then rolling damage, if it exceeds damage threshold, roll shield AV. If the attack goes through the shield, then roll armor. The problem is further compounded if you have to do that for like 15 hits from an assault rifle.

In the end, I think that the original Fading Suns system was created for that setting in mind. There are so many rules that only exist because of some facet of the lore. I've tried to introduce many houserules for BRP to accommodate for how it works in Fading Suns, but it was taking too long and the document was over 30 pages at one point. I haven't even touched the occult and space combat rules yet, the end result could easily reached 50 pages. I decided that it was better to have a simple system where characters take a penalty to attack based on the SIZ of their weapon. I think the increasing accuracy penalty captured the spirit of the Fading Suns rules without the complications involved in trying to replicate it. However, if you still prefer to do it like it was in the original Fading Suns game, I've posted a topic where I discussed how to  make Fading Suns shields for BRP. It should be enough for you to use for your own game.

 

[Rhialto the Marvellous]

Thanks, I didn't see that earlier topic. Given your detailed, reasoned response here I think the rule now is the best solution (even though I tend towards BRP with Easy (x2), Avg (x1) and Hard (x1/2) task levels, and not the +/-% modifiers).

[KPhan2121]

Head's up guys, I just received a notification from Chaosium that my Fading Suns to BRP document has been taken off the site for having copyright material in it. I'm currently asking the mods if its possible to re-upload that document if I removed all of the copyright materials from it.

[kafka47ca]

May I have permission to see this document?

[KPhan2121]

On 4/1/2021 at 3:21 PM, kafka47ca said:

May I have permission to see this document?

Sure, I'll give you a PM.