FAITH unfulfilled

Tiantang is the first supplement to be released for FAITH: The Sci-Fi RPG. The Spanish Science Fiction Roleplaying Game from Burning Games presented an intriguing far future setting in which Humanity plays a relatively minor role and which mixes themes of rampant capitalism and individualism, the greater good of the community, strength and honour, and faith in gods, which when strong enough in their believers can grant them gifts strong enough to change the universe as Soulbenders. Beyond the core book and the FAITH: A Garden in Hell - RPG Starter Set, the roleplaying is not particularly well supported, which is why is the Tiantang sourcebook is such a welcome addition to the line.

At the core of the setting is Tiantang, the near-Dyson Sphere which is home to the Corvo, the technological, capitalist, and expansionist insectoid-like species. It is a huge Dyson Ring—one that is slowly expanding into a full Dyson Sphere—that is home to billions and billions of Corvo, the bulk of them of living in vast agglomerations of Zero-G habitats which have accreted from the debris of old spaceships, space stations, and more as well as the corporate purpose-built modules. Most of the inhabitants of these slums derive their income from ‘skulling’, the practise of plugging in and selling their time and brain as computing capacity for Corvosphere’s three mega-corporations and their many subsidiaries. Whilst all Corvo are used to living or spending time in zero gravity, the middle classes can afford to live on giant multi-level stations called ‘gyro-zhans’, which spin fast enough to generate artificial gravity. Whilst all gyro-zhans have some accommodation for those who work there, many are all but wholly devoted to particular aspects of Corvo life and Corvosphere corporate culture. Thus there are whole gyro-zhans dedicated to handling the Corvosphere’s stock exchange, corporate headquarters and offices, manufacturing, algae farms, research and development, tourism and entertainment, and so on. Then there are the rich. Some have villas in the most well-to-do gyro-zhans, but the richest own palace-ships from which they conduct their day-to-day lives, some never leaving and some running the huge mega-corporations which dominate Corvo life.

Tiantang is broken down into Ten Sectors, including Shiyan, the academic and scientific research sector; Xiao, a Zer0-G slum dominated by Mob activity, and Taiyang, a trade and entertainment centre which attracts most of the tourists coming to Tiantang. Each of Corvosphere’s three mega-corporations—The Union Megacorp, Wang Megacorp, and Nation’s Solution Megacorp—has its own sector headquarters, and there is also an eleventh sector, Tiantang CS, a neutral ground for all of the mega-corporations and corporations in the Dyson Sphere, which is not counted as part of the Ten Sectors. As with the rest of Corvospace, there is no central government or polity on Tiantang, each sector typically being governed by either corporate or criminal interests. Although there is plenty of travel within most sectors, travel between sectors is prohibitively expensive to prevent the mass movement of labour forces. Although there are forms of mass transit found in many of the sectors, most travel within each sector and between sectors is achieved via spaceships—commuter spaceships each ferry thousands of workers each day—and Tiantang has a very high volume of spaceship traffic in transit at any one time. This includes to and from the Mehdi Gate, the wormhole access to The Labyrinth, which in turn provides interstellar travel to the rest of the Corvosphere and beyond. Traffic in and out of the Mehdi Gate is heavily policed and organised to prevent it becoming clogged—though accidents do happen.

Each of the individual sectors, plus Tiantang CS, is given a full write-up, highlighting important NPCs, districts—each sector further consists of hundreds of districts, particular locations and organisations. So for example, Gu is Tiantang’s largest slum, the first stop for immigrants, squatters, and the desperate. Essentially a massive hive-like cluster of habitats and repurposed industrial detritus, it is all but ignored by the corporations who little or no influence here and if there is any sector management or authority, it lies in hands of Gentleman Dao, a captain of the Hwang Tong, who wants to purge the sector of all other criminal activity. Unlike other sectors there are no districts, but there are still persons and places of note. These include Little Heimis, an ex-ice fortress that is home to Tiantang’s Raag community—whom the corporations employ as mercenaries and the gangs and the Tongs avoid; the Egui Building, supposedly haunted, but definitely home to unexplained weirdness; and the Death Dancers, a reformed gang that now carries out acts of terrorism against the corporations. Stats are given for a typical Death Dancer, and adventures seeds suggest the player characters could become involved in gang warfare, earn bounties looking for policemen missing in Gu, get involved in a Romeo and Juliet set-up within the Hwang Tong, and even signing on to help establish corporate law in the sector. Tiangtang does this again and again for each sector, so that as a supplement it presents adventure hooks and ideas aplenty, many of which would lead to interesting encounters and situations.

Rounding out Tiantang is the adventure, ‘Secret of the Yinshen Shi’. This is a murder mystery, set in the Nongchang sector, a residential and cultural hotspot sector which is on the up as the various mega-corporations attempt to gentrify it. The adventure is decent enough and has a Film Noir quality to it, but does not feel very strongly tied to the sector it is set in.

To work with both the adventure and the supplement in general, stats are provided for some nine generic NPCs, such as High Class Corvo, Mob Boss, and Human Merc, plus some new equipment. This is in addition to stats provided for the various NPCs detailed in the sector chapters. One nice touch is that there is an index of these at the back of the book.

The final page of Tiantang provides some new rules for gaming in the mammoth Dyson Sphere, covering the ease of obtaining goods and listing the prices for services such as ambulance, remote first aid, military aid, remote hacking, and so on. There is even a cabaret crew to hire which will provide an impromptu street performance as a distraction from whatever mission the player characters are undertaking. Barring the last service, these very much have the feel of earlier Cyberpunk roleplaying games such as R. Talsorian Games, Inc.’s Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0. and Shadowrun from Catalyst Game Labs.

Physically, Tiantang is a lovely, if slim hardback. Like all releases for FAITH: The Sci-Fi RPG, the artwork is superb, something that all fans of good Science Fiction art will appreciate. The book also includes a mini-poster which shows cross sections of a gyro-zhan and a space slum, which are fantastic in beginning to show some of the detail of Tiantang. On the other hand, as good as the presentation is, the writing suffers from a lack of editing and reads rather oddly in places. There is also a lack of a general index and a glossary. Several new terms are mentioned and a point of reference for them would have been useful.

Unfortunately, Tiantang is ultimately hampered by size—the size of Tiantang the Dyson Sphere versus the size of Tiantang the supplement. At just over one hundred pages, there is just not the room in the book to really present a Dyson Sphere in any detail and this lack of detail shows. There is flavour and there are hooks, but Tiantang is never more than a very broad overview of the biggest artificial structure in the Corvosphere. There is no sense of what the inhabitants’ day-to-day lives are like, how they get around, what they do, what they buy, what they watch, and so on, so it feels just a bit too impersonal. There is some colour fiction in the opening pages of the book, but that is really the only time where you get an individual view. More of that would have helped Tiantang come to life.The same can be said of the mega-corporations, which operate from sector to sector, district to district, but will probably be easier for the Game Master to provide that information herself rather than what individual life is like.

Ultimately, given the size of what Tiangtang is setting out to describe as a supplement, it is never going to be more than underwhelming. Some of the content in its pages is both good and gameable, and any FAITH: The Sci-Fi RPG Game master is going to want this supplement, but to really bring it to life, she is going to have to provide some of the nuts and bolts herself.

FAITH Upgraded

When it was published in 2016, FAITH: The Sci-Fi RPG caused quite a stir. The Spanish Science Fiction Roleplaying Game from Burning Games presented an intriguing far future setting in which Humanity plays a relatively   minor role and which mixes themes of rampant capitalism and individualism, the greater good of the community, strength and honour, and faith in gods, which when strong enough in their believers can grant them gifts strong enough to change the universe. This came packaged in a big fat box which contained superb artwork, a solid set of card-driven mechanics, and an attractive set of components. More recently, the A Garden in Hell - RPG Starter Set  provided a full scenario to play through as well as the means to see the mechanics in action and get a taste of what the setting of FAITH: The Sci-Fi RPG was like. Even with these two products available, what the roleplaying game was missing, was the broader picture, a history, and a sense of what was going on. With the release of FAITH: The Sci-Fi RPG Core Book v2.0 there can be no doubt that these issues have been addressed.

Published following a successful Kickstarter campaign, FAITH: The Sci-Fi RPG Core Book v2.0 is a heavy weight, full colour, four-hundred-and-forty-page rulebook, of which less than a third—some one-hundred-and-thirty-one pages—is devoted to the game’s mechanical aspects. The remaining seventy percent is pure background, detailing the setting’s two major races, two minor races, their natures and behaviours, anatomies and physiologies, communication and language, societies, education systems, economies, cultures, spirituality, politics, law and crime, technology, weaponry, relationships with other species and the universe as a whole, and history and evolution, and lastly, the one threat they all face and which has brought them together. If the hints given in both FAITH: The Sci-Fi RPG box and A Garden in Hell - RPG Starter Set were at least intriguing and raised more than a few questions, then FAITH: The Sci-Fi RPG Core Book v2.0 certainly answers them.

FAITH: The Sci-Fi RPG takes place in the far future, but Humanity’s involvement only begins some three hundred years in the past of that future. The Corvo, an insectoid-like species, discovered the Earth and Humanity, reduced to wasteland and tribalism following a series of global wars fought for control of resources. The Corvo established a base and offered Humanity a chance to return to advanced civilisation and respite from their much-diminished circumstances. Valued for their adaptability, some Humans accepted contracts with the Corvo and returned with them to Tiantang, the near-Dyson Sphere which was home to the technological, capitalist, and expansionist species. The price was enforced sterility—lest Humanity come to form an interstellar polity of their own and to help the Corvo keep Earth’s location a secret—and in return, these Humans would serve as mercenaries in the ongoing cold war between the Corvo and their traditional enemy, the aquatic mammalian species known as the Iz’kal. Where Corvo society is highly technological and capitalist, the Iz’kal are communal and progressive, placing value on society and the greater good. Where necessary, the Iz’kal employ the Raag as mercenaries. They are aggressive, but honourable clansmen who come from an ice world and use spaceships of ice to raid, search, and trade for goods and supplies to return to their home world. The Iz’kal feel a kinship with the Raag, since both were once the slaves of a lost race known as the Korian.

The cold war between the Corvo and the Iz’kal was put on hold some three decades ago when first the Corvo world of Izuan Tai was attacked and destroyed, and then the Corvo co-operated with the Iz-kal to drive off a similar attack on their colony world of Parsaius. The attackers became known as the Ravagers and the likelihood of further attacks forced the two species—one corporate dominated, one state dominated—to work together along with increased numbers of Human and Raag mercenaries in an independent military force known as the Coalition. It might be the four species’ only hope in driving off and finding a solution to the Ravager menace, but the Coalition has become all but a polity in its own right...

The setting of FAITH: The Sci-Fi RPG is hi-tech. Both biological and technological upgrades and implants are available and many devices can be accessed and even hacked using a Cortex Connector—every Corvo has one of these and anyone residing in Corvospace typically has one also. The stars are reached not by Faster Than Light starships, but by accessing a network of wormholes called the Labyrinth, whose extent remains unknown. Beyond this though—and this is where FAITH: The Sci-Fi RPG is different—faith and a belief in the gods play a fundamental role in everyday life and beyond. Five are described. Ergon, the God of Community, favours selflessness and happiness; Kavliva, the God of Survival, values strength and ambition; Vexal, the God of Freedom, favours liberty and respect for individuality; Hexia, the God of Progress, values the pursuit of knowledge for the common good; and Ledger, the God of Chaos, favours individualism above and the chaos it can reap. Of the five only Ledger does not have cults organised around his worship, although such cults are more organisations through which their members can demonstrate their faith rather bodies sanctioned by the otherwise intangible gods whom their adherents worship. Each of the four species tends to favour one god over the other four, so most Iz’kal are either Ergonauts or Hexians, most Corvo are Kalivans with its cult of celebrities, whilst Vexales are found everywhere and Ledgers only in secret...

Proof of the existence of the five gods lies not just in the faith that their worshippers have in them, but also in the favours they grant—especially to their Soulbenders. Anyone who follows and embodies the commandments of one of the gods may be granted gifts or Divine Upgrades and become a Soulbender, able to warp reality. Thus, an Ergonaut who faithfully follows Ergon’s Commandments (‘All are Equal’, ‘Bend Your Will to the Needs of the Many’, ‘Do Not hinder Your People’, and ‘Help Others Be Their Greatest Selves’) may be granted powers which enable him to create bridges between people and places, communicate telepathically or empathically, to impose thought on others in the face of their selfishness, form solid or energy shields, and to heal or repair objects and people. Of course, most player characters are potential Soulbenders.

A player character is defined by his Species, an Affinity, a God, six attributes and twelve skills, and one or more Upgrades. Each of the four Species available—Corvo, Iz’kal, Raag, and Human—provides one or more traits as well as a Background trait. Of the five races available, the Corvo start the game cortex connector Tech Upgrade and can connect it to a device via their tails. The Corvo also have an innate Affinity for Space. The Iz’kal are amphibious and via a biological Hyperlink can connect together to form hive minds—actually preferring this over using their gene-added vocal cords, although some lose this ability through trauma. Humans are resourceful and so hold more cards from their Player Decks in their hand and are always at an advantage when taking athletic actions.

Each character also has an Affinity. This is for one of the four suits in each Player Deck—Nature, Urban, Space, and OS (Operating System)—used as part of the game mechanics in FAITH: The Sci-Fi RPG and representing where the character grew up, was trained, and so on. A player character’s choice of God provides a core ability for worshipping that deity and options as to how he may develop in terms of his Soulbending abilities. The six attributes are Agility, Constitution, Dexterity, Link, Mind, and Faith. Of these, ‘Link’ represents a character’s ability to understand and interact with technology as well as limiting the number of Tech Upgrades he can have, whilst ‘Faith’ defines his ability to connect or communicate with the Gods, his conviction in those Gods, and limits the number of Divine upgrades he can have. The roleplaying game’s twelve skills—Ballistic, Close Quarters Combat, Hacking, Piloting, Cunning, Survival, Initiative, Athletic, Medical, Technical, Extravehicular Activity, and Profession—are fairly broad, so Cunning covers all deception and stealth-related actions; Hacking covers breaking into electronic devices and computers as well as protecting them against such attempts; and Profession covers everything related to a character’s job, from knowledge to pay, but not an actual skill. So, a character with the Piloting and Medical skills might take Emergency Medical Technician as his Profession or Mercenary if he had the Ballistic, Close Quarters Combat, and Athletic skills.

Characters can also have upgrades. These can be Tech Upgrades, Bio Upgrades, or Divine Upgrades. Bio Upgrades include Echolocation, Improved Build, Powered Reflexes, Tissue Regeneration, and so on. Tech Upgrades range from Atomic Balance and Bionic Arm to Optical Disruptor and Shielded Skull. Basically, Bio Upgrades are bioware and Tech Upgrades are cyberware, both familiar from fiction and other RPGs, but Divine Upgrades are granted by one the five gods in FAITH: The Sci-Fi RPG. They include Extended Awareness and Phantom from Kaliva; Gravity Shift and Planeswalker from Vexal; Altered Reality and Future Sight from Hexia; and so on. There are a total five Divine Upgrades for each of the five gods. Characters can begin play with Divine Upgrades, a player spending some of his beginning Experience Points to purchase them, but they do require roleplaying adhering to the commandments of their chosen god in order to keep them. Ultimately, each Divine Upgrade can be raised to Prophet Level, but that is a significantly long-term aim for any one character.

To create a character, a player selects a Species and Background Traits, as well as an Affinity and a God. He sets his character’s Skills—one at 5, one at 4, two at 3, two at 2, three at 1, and the last three at 0 and spend Experience Points to further enhance the character. As well as Upgrades, this last step also includes the attributes which all start at one and have to be improved at this stage. (In previous iterations of the rules, a set poll of points where distributed among the attributes leading to more powerful starting characters.) Talents can also be purchased for skills rated at five or above, but may not be an option during character creation given the cost of raising attribute levels.

Our sample character is Yīnying, a Corvo resident of Tiantang. He is a freelance Hacker who believes in freeing information and aims to be a Hacker freedom hero.

Yīnying
Species: Corvo
Concept: Hacker
Affinity: Space, OS
God: Vexal

Agility 01 Constitution 01 Dexterity 02
Link 02 Mind 02 Faith 01

Physical Health: 2
Neural Health: 4

Ballistic 0, Close Quarters Combat 2, Hacking 5, Piloting 1, Cunning 3, Survival 0, Initiative 1, Athletic 2, Medical 0, Technical 4, Extravehicular Activity 1, Profession 3 (Hacker)

Traits:
Technological, Tail Reflex, Spaceborn

Talents:
Merchant’s Soul (Hacking)

Bio Upgrades:
Tech Upgrades: Cortex Connector 2.o (Data Storage)
Divine Upgrades: 

The mechanics in FAITH: The Sci-Fi RPG are built around the playing of cards from a Poker-style deck and player choice. Ideally, each player, as well as the Game Master, has a Player Deck, a fifty-four-card deck divided into the four suits—Urban, Wilderness, Spaces, and OS—plus two Jokers. Note that each Player Deck is similar to a standard deck of playing cards and if a player does not have one to hand, he can use a standard deck instead of a Player Deck specific to FAITH: The Sci-Fi RPG. A player will draw from his Player Deck so that he has seven cards in his hand at the start of a session and then at the start of each scene. He will play cards from this hand whenever there is Confrontation and his character’s action is opposed or the character is faced with a Time Sensitive Event. Starting with an Action Value equal to the total of the appropriate Skill, for example Piloting to manoeuvre a shuttle into a field of debris, a player can play cards from his hand to increase the total of the Action Value. The maximum number of cards he can play being limited by the Attribute. If a character’s Action Value exceeds the opposing value by five, he achieves a decisive success and a critical success if the Action Value exceeds the value by ten.

FAITH: The Sci-Fi RPG Core Book v2.0 includes some changes to the mechanics seen in the previous versions of the roleplaying game. Players now get to keep Jokers from their decks rather than handing them to Game Master and used to alter a character’s level of success or lower an opponent’s level of success after a confrontation is played through. Instead of confrontations with the Game Master, a player can attempt to have his character attempt to overcome a Time Sensitive Event (or TSE), the number of cards played by the Game Master representing the challenge involved. The Advantage and Disadvantage statuses now simply apply flat bonus or penalties to an Action value.

Ambience and Affinity add a pair of interesting wrinkles to a player’s management of his hand. Play a card whose suit matches the environment and a player can immediately draw a new card, but if he plays a card whose suit matches both the environment and his designated Affinity, he gets to draw two cards and keep one. Proficiency, that is, playing a card equal to or less than the skill a character is using in a Confrontation, he is being proficient and the effort has not yet exhausted himself, so again, he can draw a card.

For example, Yīnying has been contacted by An-Bai, a member of the Hwang Zhul Tong in Tiantang. The Tong member has data packet he wants decrypting. Now An-Bai will not divulge where it is from—and Yīnying will not ask, but after agreeing to a good price for the task (one benefit of having the Merchant’s Soul (Hacking) Talent), he agrees to do it and sets up a Sniffing attack to extract and decode the data. Unfortunately, a trio of a trio of Zhul Tong, from whom An-Bai stole the data packet, is on An-Bai’s trail and will attempt to retrieve the stolen item. The question is, not if Yīnying will extract the data, but when, so the Game Master will run this as a Time Sensitive Event. If Yīnying fails the Time Sensitive Event, the Zhul Tong members turn up to claim their property before he decrypts the data; if he succeeds, he decrypts the data before they turn up; and if he succeeds with a decisive success, Yīnying succeeds and gets paid!

Yīnying has a starting Action Value of 5, equal to his Hacking, and his player can play a total of two cards, equal to Yīnying’s Link. Like much of Tiantang, the environment where this taking place is in zero gravity and the action itself involves computers, which match both of Yīnying’s Affinities—Space and OS. The Game Master determines that the challenge for the TSE will be three, so she can draw three cards.

The aim of these card driven mechanics is not to negate the presence of luck or chance in the game, but to favour a player in handling his character’s luck from scene to scene. A player will always start a scene with seven cards in his hand and they become the resources he must manage for that scene. Of course, chance is involved in drawing cards when refreshing his hand from scene to scene, but under the right circumstances this can be offset by Ambience, Affinity, and Proficiency that will enable him to keep drawing cards as he plays them. Further, since a player knows what is in his Player Deck, he at least knows what he has used and is thus still available as the game progresses until the Player Deck is emptied and the discard pile reshuffled.

These mechanics are get a little more complex once Ambience, Affinity, and Proficiency become involved, these having been derived from Upgrades and Technology. Fortunately, they are supported and explained in a fully worked out and fully illustrated example of play, necessary because the mechanics to FAITH: The Sci-Fi RPG Core Book v2.0 are different. Not just from other roleplaying games, but also from previous iterations of the game. In addition to these rules for playing the roleplaying game, there are rules for playing with miniatures and advice for the Game Master on running the game. As well as solid sections on technology, equipment, and spaceships, FAITH: The Sci-Fi RPG is rounded out with a short scenario. ‘A Relic in the Streets’ is set on Tiantang, and casts the player characters as freelancers working a criminal gang which has been intimidated into handing over a piece of alien tech. Their task will be to get it back. ‘A Relic in the Streets’ is quite short, offering no more than a session or two’s worth of play, but does a reasonable job of showcasing the rules and it shows that there are other possibilities in the setting other than facing the Ravager threat—the focus of the previous releases for FAITH: The Sci-Fi RPG. The scenario comes with four pre-generated characters. This is addition to the many NPCs, secrets, and hooks presented throughout the background.

As many of the issues as FAITH: The Sci-Fi RPG Core Book v2.0 addresses—a fuller presentation of setting’s history and background, a better exploration of the importance of faith and the gods, expanded character generation rules, and so on, it is not perfect. In terms of production values, a map of the known galaxy would have been as useful as it would have depicted where the various worlds and governments are in relation to each other. Some suggestions as to naming conventions for all four species would been useful too, although it should be pointed out that the Corvo all have Chinese names. This is intentional as the nearest equivalent names found when Corvo translation software interfaced with what remained of Human software, were Chinese. This occurred again with the Iz’kal and the Raag. What this suggests is that the setting of FAITH: The Sci-Fi RPG Core Book v2.0 is not quite neutral, but rather written from a Human perspective.

Physically, FAITH: The Sci-Fi RPG Core Book v2.0 is an impressive book, but then the production values on the first two releases were also high. The artwork, is excellent, imparting much of the feel and grandeur of the setting. That said the flavour text on the NPCs, weaponry, gear, and vehicles is too small and too faint to really read. In places, the book needs another edit, as there are some odd turns of phrase, but in the main, the localisation from Spanish to English has been well handled, and whilst a great deal of effort has gone into the rules explanation, it could have been better. The various chapters supporting characters and character generation could have been much better organised.
With the FAITH: The Sci-Fi RPG Core Book v2.0, the setting of the Faith: the Sci-Fi RPG finally gets the treatment it deserved and brings it to life with a detailed exploration of its religion, its four (five) alien species, and its mechanics. FAITH: The Sci-Fi RPG Core Book v2.0 is the treatment the game has been waiting for since the release of FAITH: The Sci-Fi RPG box set in 2015 and the Upgrade has been worth the wait.

—oOo—

Burning Games will be at UK Games Expo which will take place between June 1st and June 3rd, 2018 at Birmingham NEC. This is the world’s fourth largest gaming convention and the biggest in the United Kingdom.

Faith's First Steps

Published by Burning Games in 2016, Faith: The Sci-Fi RPG is a Spanish Science Fiction Roleplaying Game that suffered from a number of issues which hampered play. Primarily these consisted of a lack of a scenario to play and a lack of background and objectives for the player characters, but the RPG also came without effective examples of how the rules worked or a fuller example of play. Despite these issues, Faith: The Sci-Fi RPG was not without its merits. The setting was intriguing, depicting a future in which some time after the collapse of human society, an alien insectoid species known as the Corvo appear, annex the Earth, and begin using humans as mercenaries in the ongoing cold war between the Corvo and their traditional enemy, aquatic mammals known as the Iz’kal. This lasted for nearly three centuries, but in the last three decades this war has been put on hold as the Corvo, the Iz’kal, and other species have been attacked by the Ravagers, a hive-race intent on harvesting any genetic material it can. The Corvo and the Iz’kal have formed a Coalition to defeat this threat, with Humans serving alongside both them and other species.

The setting of Faith: The Sci-Fi RPG is fairly hi-tech. Both biological and technological upgrades and implants are available and many devices can be accessed and even hacked using a Cortex Connector. The stars are reached not by Faster Than Light starships, but by accessing a network of wormholes called the Labyrinth, whose extent remains unknown. Beyond this though—and this is where Faith: The Sci-Fi RPG is unique—faith and a belief in the gods play a fundamental role in everyday life and beyond. Five are described. Ergon favours selflessness and happiness, Kavliva values strength and ambition, Vexal favours freedom and respect for individuality, Hexia values the pursuit of knowledge for the common good, and Ledger favours individualism above and the chaos it can reap. Of the five only Ledger does not have cults organised around his worship, although such cults are more organisations through which their members can demonstrate their faith rather bodies sanctioned by the gods. Anyone who embodies the commandments of one of these gods may be granted gifts or Divine Upgrades and become a Soulbender, able to warp reality.

Further, the mechanics in Faith: The Sci-Fi RPG favour player choice rather than randomness. They are card driven, each player drawing from their own decks, whilst the GM has his own. Although each player only holds a limited number of cards for each scene, they enable a player to better control his character’s luck rather than relying on the randomness of dice. Lastly, Faith: The Sci-Fi RPG is fantastically well illustrated with numerous, fully painted pieces of artwork that capture and depict the feel and grandeur of the setting far more than the writing does.

Now Burning Games has followed up Faith: The Sci-Fi RPG with FAITH: A Garden in Hell - RPG Starter Set. Funded via Kickstarter, FAITH: A Garden in Hell - RPG Starter Set is designed for two to five players, including the Game Master, which comes in a box that contains an eighty-page Campaign Book, a thirty-eight-page Rulebook, four player character folios, a GM tracking sheet, a deck of fifty-four of Gear & NPC Cards, a player deck, and four Boss Cards. Notably, the campaign, ‘A Garden in Hell’ is designed to be played straight out of the box, including as it does a scene that sets the campaign up and runs both players and Game Master through the mechanics.

Opening the box that contains FAITH: A Garden in Hell - RPG Starter Set and the first thing that you come to is the GM’s Outline. This four-page folio is the starting point for the boxed set, but it is primarily used to track the player characters’ progress through the campaign. It enables the GM to mark off chapters and various effects that will may affect later chapters as the campaign proceeds. Below this are the four player character folios, each four pages in length and complete with a background, technological and divine upgrades—currently possessed and available to take as the campaign proceeds, and of course, the character sheet. These folios are presented in a clear and open fashion, and are easy to read and use, especially the explanations of how various upgrades work. One notable feature is that each character’s skill and attribute ratings are marked not in black, but grey so that they can be easily amended as they play through the campaign and gain experience. These are accompanied by full colour card decks that detail the campaign’s NPCs and equipment, whilst the major NPCs are described and given stats on larger cards, essentially, ‘boss cards’.

The four player characters include two male and two female characters. They consist of a Corvo tech-engineer with a cybernetic arm, a Raag med-tech and xenologist, an Iz’kal covert ops specialist, and a Human military explorer. Interestingly, it is the Human character—Humans being primarily employed as mercenaries in this future—who is in charge rather than one of the major races of the Coalition. On the other hand, one race not represented in the ‘A Garden in Hell’ campaign are the Ravagers, who are available as a player character race in the Faith: The Sci-Fi RPG. Now there are reasons for this as the campaign does deal with secrets about the Ravager, but perhaps having a Ravager player character on the team would have been actually more interesting and more poignant once those secrets are revealed? Were a Game Master to want make adjustments to the campaign, this might be one that would add to ‘A Garden in Hell’.

The first of the two books in the box is the Rulebook. This is v1.5 of the Rulebook, which is available to download here. The Rulebook does include quick rules for creating player characters, so that a player could create his own to play through the campaign, though the four pre-generated player characters are designed with the campaign in mind. This version of the Rulebook benefits from more examples, but there is no example full play and the writing is perhaps a bit curt in places.

The ‘A Garden in Hell’ campaign casts the player characters as members of Team Inferi, a recon unit in the Coalition’s Planetary Expedition Corps. The Coalition has just launched a major operation against a Ravager strikeforce, but as the campaign begins, it is not going according to plan and Team Inferi finds itself alone, having crash-landed on System NT-44 after being attacked by Ravager forces. Team Inferi must survive this biologically rich and fecund world, recover what supplies they can and gather other survivors before going on to discover the secrets that the world hides. The structure of the campaign—which will find the player characters undertaking a wide array of mission types, including diplomatic, exploratory, patrol, recon, and rescue missions, and more—is somewhat linear in structure. There are points where the campaign opens up to allow the players to choose the missions that their characters can undertake and who they report to, allowing them to explore and experience more of the world and discover its secrets. Spread out over twenty-one chapters across four acts, the bulk of the encounters do involve combat, primarily against Ravager forces, but the planet is itself equally as dangerous, whether it is from native species or the environment itself, such as the acidic seas.

The ‘A Garden in Hell’ campaign does involve quite a lot of purple prose to read out, but notably, the first scene is specifically designed to walk the Game Master and his players through the rules and how they work. Essentially this can be done as soon as the Game Opens the box and examines everything, but to be fair, he would benefit from reading through the Rulebook first before running the campaign.

Unfortunately, FAITH: A Garden in Hell - RPG Starter Set is not without its issues. The most obvious one is an insufficient number of Player Decks. Now the new edition of the Rulebook that comes with this Starter Set does include new rules for multiple players to play using just the one Player Deck, but if they want a better showcase for the rules, a playing group can easily substitute Poker decks though or use those found in the Faith: The Sci-Fi RPG. The other is the writing itself. Although clear in meaning, it is often unnaturally phrased in places, for example, the use of ‘Unconfronted’ instead of ‘Uncontested’. Ideally, it needed localising before seeing print.

Physically, the components in FAITH: A Garden in Hell - RPG Starter Set are all in full colour and of good quality. Of course, the artwork in both the books and on the cards is fantastic and fantastical. In particular, the artwork created for the campaign—including the cartography—is particularly good and much of it can be used as illustrations to show the players as they play through the campaign.

Faith: The Sci-Fi RPG was a difficult game to approach because it did not give the Game Master and his players the means to apply it. FAITH: A Garden in Hell - RPG Starter Set does this and more. It provides the means to apply the rules and get a feel for what for the RPG is like, doing so through better presented rules and a playthrough example. Above all, FAITH: A Garden in Hell - RPG Starter Set provides a solidly written, well presented campaign that offers multiple sessions of good play and a taste of the Faith: The Sci-Fi RPG universe.

—oOo—

Currently, funds are being raised on Kickstarter for FAITH: The Sci-Fi RPG Core Book, which includes the complete rules and background.

Faith Requires Faith

At some point in the future, mankind’s desire for resources drove society into near perpetual war, followed by collapse, and then tribalism. Mankind only reached the stars when the skies opened, an alien species known as the Corvo dropped onto the planet, established a base, and took humans back as genetically sterile mercenaries. They serve as soldiers in short, sharp deadly engagements in between being kept in cryogenic suspension. Their masters, the Corvo, are an insectoid-like species that has adapted to life in zero gravity, having shifted in their billions to a Dyson sphere constructed of spaceships that continues to grow. Adherents of the radical free market, their traditional enemies, the Iz’kal, are aquatic mammals capable of communicating with each other in a vast hive mind via a hyperlink, who embrace efficiency and state control to an equally radical degree. Other known species include the Raag, aggressive, but honourable clansmen who come from an ice world and use spaceships of ice to raid, search, and trade for goods and supplies to return to their home world. Lastly, the Ravagers consist of genetically acquisitive hives travel from world to world. The stars were reached not by Faster Than Light starships, but by accessing a network of wormholes called the Labyrinth, whose extent remains unknown. Mankind’s arrival upon this galactic stage took place three hundred years ago.

This is the set up for FAITH: the Sci-Fi RPG, a Science Fiction RPG originally published in Spanish by Burning Games and then published in English following a successful Kickstarter campaign. Or at least it probably is, because FAITH: the Sci-Fi RPG has a number of problems, the first of which is a lack of accessible background or future history. This is a pity because FAITH: the Sci-Fi RPG is an attractive package, with superb artwork, a solid set of card driven mechanics, and an attractive set of components. These components consist of character sheets in thick cardboard into which can be slotted tokens for a character’s attributes and skills, affinity and favoured God, tech, bio, and Faith upgrades; Player Decks and Equipment Decks for both the players and the GM; and an NPC Deck for the GM. All of these come in rich, fully painted colour artwork, that do much, much more than the given background to evoke a far future alien setting. Now the background is more along the lines of the following, which is taken from the Kickstarter page for FAITH, but which is not replicated in the core rules, which only serves to make the RPG if not inaccessible, then at least obtuse.

“In FAITH, Gods live side by side with technology and bio experimentation inside the Labyrinth, a gigantic web of wormholes that connects the universe. Meanwhile, a mutant menace silently devours all worlds in its path, rapidly evolving. Welcome to the Universe of FAITH.
None of the species of FAITH have fulfilled the dream of comprehending the vastness of the Universe. It is still a place of wonder, a vast, dark pool of which very little is known, with only a small fraction charted. Only two species, the Corvo and the Iz’kal, are capable of opening wormholes by using enormous amounts of energy. However, they cannot decide where these wormholes will take them and their exits appear to be totally random.
Both species found the Labyrinth, a natural web of wormholes, and explored it from different exits unaware of each other, conquering and mining dozens of systems before coming face to face. Now they fight a cold war for its control, racing to conquer as many exits as they can before the other.”

Notably the opening sentence of this description is what marks FAITH: the Sci-Fi RPG—“In FAITH, Gods live side by side with technology and bio experimentation…”—that and of course the game’s title. Most Science Fiction RPGs either tend to ignore religion, certainly as being intrinsic to a player character, or opt for monotheism, or set it in the very far future after some kind of disaster. GDW’s Traveller is an example of the first, Holistic Design’s Fading Suns an example of the second, and TSR, Inc.’s Empire of the Petal Throne: The World of Tékumel, an example of the third. Not so FAITH: the Sci-Fi RPG, where gods and thus faith are part of the setting and the mechanics. Five are described. Ergon favours selflessness and happiness, Kavliva values strength and ambition, Vexal favours freedom and respect for individuality, Hexia values the pursuit of knowledge for the common good, and Ledger favours individualism above and the chaos it can reap. Of the five only Ledger does not have cults organised around his worship. Anyone who embodies the commandments of one of these gods may be granted gifts or Divine Upgrades and become a Soulbender. 

Now exactly how there came be gods in the setting of FAITH and how they came to be first encountered is never explored in FAITH: the Sci-Fi RPG. Although they remain intangible, proof of their existence lies not just in the faith that their worshippers have in them, but also in the favours they grant. Especially to their soulbenders.

A character is defined by six attributes and ten skills. Of the attributes, ‘Link’ represents a character’s ability to understand and interact with technology as well as limiting the number of Tech Upgrades he can have, whilst ‘Faith’ defines his ability to connect or communicate with the Gods, his conviction in those Gods, and limits the number of Divine upgrades he can have. The skills are fairly broad, so Cunning covers all deception and stealth-related actions; Hacking covers breaking into electronic devices and computers as well as protecting them against such attempts; and Profession covers everything related to a character’s job, from knowledge to pay, but not an actual skill. So a character with the Piloting and Medical skills might take Emergency Medical Technician as his Profession or Mercenary if he had the Ballistic, Close Quarters Combat, and Athletic skills.

Each character also has an Affinity. This is for one of the four suits in each Player Deck—Nature, Urban, Space, and OS (Operating System)—representing where the character grew up, was trained, and so on. Of the five races available, the Corvo start the game cortex connector Tech Upgrade and can connect it to a device via their tails. The Corvo also have an innate Affinity for Space. The Iz’kal are amphibious and via a biological Hyperlink can connect to and form hive minds, although some lose this ability through trauma. Humans are resourceful and so hold more cards from their Player Decks in their hand and are always at an advantage when taking athletic actions. The Raag are simply large and tough, whilst the Ravagers can have more Bio Upgrades, can change them, and scavenge them by eating other characters. They also possess a natural LinkWave to communicate with each other, but this can be hacked. Ravagers come in a variety of forms, from Infiltrators and Ironskins to Swarmers and Technos.

Characters can also have upgrades. These can be Tech Upgrades, Bio Upgrades, or Divine Upgrades. Bio Upgrades available number twenty and include Echolocation, Improved Build, Powered Reflexes, Tissue Regeneration, and so on. Tech Upgrades number just twelve and range from Atomic Balance and Bionic Arm to Optical Disruptor and Shielded Skull. Basically, Bio Upgrades are bioware and Tech Upgrades are cyberware, both familiar from fiction and other RPGs, but Divine Upgrades are granted by one the five gods in FAITH: the Sci-Fi RPG. They include Extended Awareness and Phantom from Kaliva; Gravity Shift and Planeswalker from Vexal; Altered Reality and Future Sight from Hexia; and so on. There are a total five Divine Upgrades for each of the five gods. Characters do not necessarily begin play with Divine Upgrades, but must roleplay adhering to the commandments of their chosen god in order to earn them. 

To create a character, a player selects a Species, an Affinity, a God, and sets his Skills—one at 5, one at 4, two at 3, two at 2, three at 1, and the  last three at 0; distribute ten points between his character’s Attributes and Upgrades; and lastly, purchase equipment. Once done these elements are represented by tokens that can be slotted into the character sheet. A character’s gear—smart suits, robots, armour, weapons, and more—are each represented by a card taken from the Gear Deck.

Our sample character is Ottilie Creagan, an Earth native who signed on with a mercenary company, the Leung Action Group, employed by the Corvo. She has been trained as an Emergency Medical Operative to work combat and/or high risk situations. Although the Leung Action Group has combat contracts with the Corvo, she is currently assigned to an Emergency Rescue Services contract in Tiantang, the near-Dyson Sphere that is home to the majority of the Corvo.

Ottilie Creagan (Specialist/1)
Affinity: Space
God: Ergon

Agility 02 Constitution 02 Dexterity 03
Link 02 Mind 02 Faith 02

Physical Health: 4
Neural Health: 4

Ballistic 1, Close Quarters Combat 2, Hacking 0, Piloting 2, Cunning 0, Survival 0, Initiative 1, Athletic 3, Medical 5, Technical 3, Extravehicular Activity 4, Profession 1 (Emergency Rescue Operative)

Bio Upgrades:
Tech Upgrades: Bionic Arm (Surgery Kit), Cortex Connector

To undertake an action, a character uses cards from a Player Deck. Each player, plus the GM, receives one of these, a fifty-four card deck divided into the four suits—Urban, Wilderness, Spaces, and OS—plus two Jokers. All of the Jokers go into the GM’s Player Deck. Note that each Player Deck is a similar to a standard deck of playing card and if a player does not have one to hand, he can use a standard deck instead of a Player Deck. A character will draw from his Player Deck so that he has seven cards in his hand at the start of a session and then at the start of each scene. He will play cards from this hand whenever there is Confrontation and his action is opposed. Starting with an Action Value equal to the total of the appropriate Attribute and Skills, for example Dexterity and Piloting to manoeuvre a shuttle into a field of debris, a character can play cards from his hand to increase the total of the Action Value. The maximum number of cards he can play being limited by the Attribute.

Unless opposed by another player character, the total that a character has to beat is set by the GM playing cards from his Player Deck. The GM is limited to an Attribute value equal to the player character he is confronting, but no skill. He also has the benefit of Jokers which can negate the value of the last card played by a character and of two Advantages which the character has to overcome by countering them with Advantages granted by equipment and Upgrades lest he be in ‘Inferiority’ and have the number of cards he can play reduced by one. If a character’s Action Value exceeds the opposing value by five, he achieves a decisive success and a critical success if the Action Value exceeds the value by ten.

Ambience and Affinity add a pair of interesting wrinkles to a player’s management of his hand. Play a card whose suit matches the environment and a player can immediately draw a new card, but if he plays a card whose suit matches both the environment and his designated Affinity, he gets to draw two cards and keep one. Proficiency, that is, playing a card equal to or less than the skill a character is using in a Confrontation, he is being proficient and the effort has not yet exhausted himself, so again, he can draw a card.

For example, Ottilie Creagan is on a rescue mission aboard a spaceship that has suffered a reactor failure. She has located one of the engineers, badly injured and in a compartment that is in danger of imminent explosive decompression. She needs to stabilise him fast if she is to get him out of danger. The GM determines that this is a Confrontation. Ottilie has a starting Action Value of 8, equal to her Dexterity and Medical, and can play a total of three cards. The GM has a starting Action Value of 3, equal to Ottilie’s Dexterity and can also play a total of three cards. This being aboard a spaceship, the environment is Space, which matches Ottilie’s Affinity.

Although Ottilie has a Bionic Arm Tech Upgrade with Surgery Kit, this is not enough to counter the GM’s Advantages, so she is in Inferiority and can only play two cards instead of three. Fortunately, she can pull out a shot of Nano Surgeons from her medical kit and deliver those. This allows her to draw more cards from her Player Deck.

The aim of these card driven mechanics is not to negate the presence of luck or chance in the game, but to favour a player in handling his character’s luck from scene to scene. A player will always start a scene with seven cards in his hand and they become the resources he has to manage for that scene. Of course, chance is involved in drawing cards when refreshing his hand from scene to scene, but under the right circumstances this can be offset by Ambience, Affinity, and Proficiency that will enable him to keep drawing cards as he plays them. Further, since a player knows what is in his Player Deck, he at least knows what he has used and is thus still available as the game progresses until the Player Deck is emptied and the discard pile reshuffled.

Physically FAITH: the Sci-Fi RPG is actually physically imposing, coming as it does in a large, square board game-like box. Inside can be found cards galore—the Player Decks, the Gear and NPC Decks, the thick cardboard character sheets, and the tokens to slot into the sheets. All of which are done in gorgeous full colour with fantastic artwork. The writing in general is clear, but really it could do with more examples, a fuller example of play, of character generation, and of course, a history and some objectives… let alone an adventure or two.

Ultimately what sells FAITH: the Sci-Fi RPG is its art and its art alone. This is not because it is the only thing that the designers got right. There are after all, plenty of things that the designers also got right—the mechanics, the background of the various races, and so on. What the designers got wrong is the lack of an elevator pitch with which to sell the game, a lack of history to the game, a lack of background to the game, a lack of purpose to the game, and lastly, a lack of coordination that ties everything together into a cohesive whole. Essentially, FAITH: the Sci-Fi RPG is a game without a frame to hold everything together. The individual parts do work together, so that the rules work with the characters and the races and the gods, and so on, but in doing so the game feels fragile and incomplete because there is sense of history or story to the setting.

Simple, beautiful, and not without promise, FAITH: the Sci-Fi RPG is far from unplayable, but it is undeveloped and leaves more work for the GM to do than it should.

—oOo—

In the meantime, Burning Games has launched a Kickstarter campaign for FAITH: A Garden in Hell - Starter Set, which aims to address the problems in the core set. By presenting an overhauled ruleset and a complete campaign set a world in danger of falling to a Ravager Hive, it will also provide a more accessible means of getting into FAITH: the Sci-Fi RPG. The publisher also has plans later in the year to kickstart FAITH: Gates to the Universe, a sourcebook for the game’s setting.

—oOo—

Burning Games will be at UK Games Expo.