The Inside Scoop on Gaming

Holistic Design's setting, Fading Suns has what can be described as, at best, a rocky history, especially of late. Many of the more recent supplements, such as War in the Heavens: Lifeweb and Legions of the Empire, I've found to be deeply flawed, not living up to either past quality or the promise of the setting itself. Since I've long called for more information about the worlds within the Empire itself, I was not entirely thrilled at the news that they would soon be releasing a setting expansion. While I was glad to got new setting material after the second edition of the basic book, I was wary since there was still such sparse detail on what the company had already published. Either way, I got the book and was really surprised after I read it, startled at how good it was, overall. Despite the exorbitant pricing, the book is really a quality product.

Visually, the book is quite nicely done. There is a well rendered (although sadly black and white) expansion to the jumpweb inside the covers and the rest of the book follows the same pattern as most Fading Suns books: not much art, but what there is usually comes out okay or excellent. Alex Sheikman and John Bridges provide their usual excellent fare, although neither is used nearly enough, and the Ron Spencer art is typical of him - good but not excellent. Mitch Byrd also illustrates a fair bit of the book and I was surprised by how little I liked his work here, considering how enamoured I was of his pictures in past publications. Almost all of his Vuldrok pirates look the same, and that got very annoying very fast. John Poreda rounded out the art staff with his work, and I've decided that I like his style fine - as long as he doesn't attempt to draw spaceships, which is pretty much the only thing that Holistic Design uses him on, sadly. The writing is up to the usual par for the line, written by the veterans of the game.

Divided into two broad parts, the book deals with the two main "barbarian" cultures in the setting, the Kurgan Caliphate and the Vuldrok Star-Nation. Following in the long tradition of the game almost stealing outright from history, the former is the "Islamic empire" threatening the Spanish nobles (the Hazat) while the latter is the space-age Vikings, pillaging along the English noble's (House Hawkwood) borders. Each half of the book starts off with the history of the region, moving on the culture and character creation, and the finishing up with a complete catalogue of their member worlds, following the same format the company introduced in the first Imperial Survey book, on the Hawkwood worlds. Ironically, this means that there is now more information on these new worlds out beyond the frontier than there is about many of the homeworlds of the Houses themselves.

The book starts with the Kurgan Caliphate, an empire that has always been a personal favorite of mine, despite having almost no information on it. I was hoping for an interesting culture and another look at the teachings of Zebulon. I got the former, at least, but the latter is wrapped up in the largest flaw of the entire section. While I really did like most of the culture of the Kurgan Caliphate, I found it genesis to be completely unpalatable. The Caliphate began because Bjorn Egon, a fantastically rich corporate tycoon of the Second Republic, kidnapped large numbers of people, shipped them to a secret planet and then brainwashed them into something resembling an Arabic culture. Virtually everything the citizens of the Caliphate believe about their history and their religion is a bald-faced lie created wholesale by some megalomaniac with too much money on his hands. It's relatively easy to fix in play, but it is such a staggeringly bad idea for the foundation of an empire that players are supposed to take as viable that I can't believe it went to print.

I was hoping for a culture that was radically different from that of the Known Worlds, and, for the most part, I got it. The Kurgans are organized in a rigid class structure with a variety of castes organized in a complex and convoluted manner, which serves to make the Caliphate seem a vibrant society. My biggest disappointments were in the subjects of technology and religion, neither of which are explained quite to my satisfaction, nor do I entirely like what is there. When I began the culture section, reading about the castes made me hope that the Caliphate had a higher level of technology than the Known Worlds, at least among the common people. In some ways it was true, but the wedding of religion to technology that I had hoped for was not there. Similarly, the religion section was also interesting but not nearly as exciting as I had hoped. I really loved the idea of the Pilgrimage, although the idea that every pilgrim can be expected to see the new sun through one telescope is more than silly. And yes, that's right, the Caliphate has the only new sun in the entirety of humanity's space, and that makes for quite the religious event in the Fading Suns universe. There is too little information about Kurgan religion, however, and coupled with the truth that Bjorn Egon fabricated the basis for it, it comes across as obvious delusions, especially when faced with the Universal Church. That stance I most definitely did not like.

There is also character creation information for the Caliphate, including Life Paths for the various castes. There was, unfortunately, no detailed information on the fearsome occult and changed troops that the Hazat have been struggling against on Hira. The rest of the Kurgan half of the book is taken up with world entries on the seven worlds within the Caliphate. While I liked all the worlds and found them interesting and rich in game ideas, I was disappointed by the seeming over-abundance of desert-like or barren worlds. While not as overt as the stereotyping of the planets in Vuldrok space, it is faintly there.

The Vuldrok half of the book is of better quality than the Kurgan information in a few ways, namely that their culture wasn't created whole cloth by some madman. With the very powerful rune-casting occult tradition in Vuldrok space and the fact that they once controlled almost all the planets now in the Kurgan Caliphate, one almost wonders if the authors had a soft spot for the Vikings. Oddly enough, that Viking nature ends up limiting the Vuldrok, as the number of disparate cultures in their space all end up following a Norse-derived pantheon. Although it is rather flexible and varied, almost a mirror image of the Gjarti faith, I can't help but feel that it should have been more fractured. The Vuldrok culture itself is more a collection of various tribes, many of which have nothing to do with the Norse roots the Vuldroks show as a whole. There are African and Amerindian cultures raiding along their Norse compatriots. It is this cultural variety that is the Vuldrok's strength, I think, giving them a lot of potential, although there is not enough space in the book to go into it all. Overall, this section gives a great deal of information, hampered by a lack of space more than anything else, avoiding some of the larger blunders that the Kurgan information stumbled into.

There is also the same kind of character creation information, including Life Paths and Benefices and Affliction before the book moves on to deal with the five worlds of the Vuldrok Star-Nation, where the biggest problems of the latter half of the book appear. First of all, the format for the world information is drastically different, instead of the history > culture > solar system > geography/territories format that Holistic Design has followed everywhere else, the Vuldrok systems only had the history and territories mentioned, completely ignoring both planetary culture and the information about the rest of the system. As the importance of the rest of the solar system is already often ignored in the game, its complete absence was really infuriating. Second is a problem that has plagued the game to one extent or another for a long time, stereotyping worlds. Every Vuldrok world is really darn cold, with large ice caps and pine forests and tundra. While I can buy some planets having "specialized" climates, giving the Viking analog only northern European planets is just a little too far for me. I prefer "inspired by history," not taken directly. Aside from that, the planets are good, but those problems really kept me from enjoying that section.

The book finishes out with an index that has a short overview of all the planets in the new jumpweb that aren't owned by either the Vuldrok or the Kurgans, giving each the same amount of space the basic book gave to the planets of the Empire. That is to say, not enough, but this will apparently be resolved in Star Crusade's companion volume, Lost Worlds, due out later this year. A new minor noble house of Indian descent and updated information on the Nizdharim, the octopus-like aliens that I've always liked. There is also a newer alien race introduced, the relatively primitive Ishkin, a badger-like race in Vuldrok space. The final section of the book deals with the new occult power of runecasting, harnessing the power of the Annunaki runes to channel great power. A really great idea, it is unfortunately a little unpolished and not given enough room and detail. Similar to many other "verb-noun" systems of magic, runecasting has a lot of very intriguing potential to it, and development of the Ur is definitely a good thing.

In the end, I was satisfied with Star Crusade. It does a good job of actually adding something worthwhile to the game, even if it does stumble a few times and suffer from a lack of space to detail more, like much of the line. It is also, however, definitely not a central supplement. There are a lot of great ideas here and some very nice adventure ideas and cultures, but the fact that the Known Worlds are still so nebulous and lacking in detail makes me feel like the effort that went into Star Crusade should have gone into developing what Holistic Design already had for the game first. The price also makes me worry, as $25 for 140 pages is more than a little steep, especially when compared to other books I bought at the same time. Post Modern Magick from Atlas Games for the small Unknown Armies game line was more than 40 pages longer and a few dollars cheaper. I hope that Holistic's prices don't continue to climb.

Style: 3 (Average)
Substance: 4 (Meaty)

Star Crusade
Author: Bill Bridges, Samuel Inabinet and Rustin Quaide Category: game Company/Publisher: Holistic Design, Inc Line: Fading Suns Cost: $25 Page count: 143 ISBN: 1-888906-20-0 SKU: FS #239 Capsule Review by Derek Guder on 04/29/00. Genre tags: Fantasy Science_fiction Far_Future Space	Holistic Design's setting, *Fading Suns* has what can be described as, at best, a rocky history, especially of late. Many of the more recent supplements, such as War in the Heavens: Lifeweb and Legions of the Empire, I've found to be deeply flawed, not living up to either past quality or the promise of the setting itself. Since I've long called for more information about the worlds within the Empire itself, I was not entirely thrilled at the news that they would soon be releasing a setting expansion. While I was glad to got new setting material after the second edition of the basic book, I was wary since there was still such sparse detail on what the company had already published. Either way, I got the book and was really surprised after I read it, startled at how good it was, overall. Despite the exorbitant pricing, the book is really a quality product. Visually, the book is quite nicely done. There is a well rendered (although sadly black and white) expansion to the jumpweb inside the covers and the rest of the book follows the same pattern as most *Fading Suns* books: not much art, but what there is usually comes out okay or excellent. Alex Sheikman and John Bridges provide their usual excellent fare, although neither is used nearly enough, and the Ron Spencer art is typical of him - good but not excellent. Mitch Byrd also illustrates a fair bit of the book and I was surprised by how little I liked his work here, considering how enamoured I was of his pictures in past publications. Almost all of his Vuldrok pirates look the same, and that got very annoying very fast. John Poreda rounded out the art staff with his work, and I've decided that I like his style fine - as long as he doesn't attempt to draw spaceships, which is pretty much the only thing that Holistic Design uses him on, sadly. The writing is up to the usual par for the line, written by the veterans of the game. Divided into two broad parts, the book deals with the two main "barbarian" cultures in the setting, the Kurgan Caliphate and the Vuldrok Star-Nation. Following in the long tradition of the game almost stealing outright from history, the former is the "Islamic empire" threatening the Spanish nobles (the Hazat) while the latter is the space-age Vikings, pillaging along the English noble's (House Hawkwood) borders. Each half of the book starts off with the history of the region, moving on the culture and character creation, and the finishing up with a complete catalogue of their member worlds, following the same format the company introduced in the first Imperial Survey book, on the Hawkwood worlds. Ironically, this means that there is now more information on these new worlds out beyond the frontier than there is about many of the homeworlds of the Houses themselves. The book starts with the Kurgan Caliphate, an empire that has always been a personal favorite of mine, despite having almost no information on it. I was hoping for an interesting culture and another look at the teachings of Zebulon. I got the former, at least, but the latter is wrapped up in the largest flaw of the entire section. While I really did like most of the culture of the Kurgan Caliphate, I found it genesis to be completely unpalatable. The Caliphate began because Bjorn Egon, a fantastically rich corporate tycoon of the Second Republic, kidnapped large numbers of people, shipped them to a secret planet and then brainwashed them into something resembling an Arabic culture. Virtually everything the citizens of the Caliphate believe about their history and their religion is a bald-faced lie created wholesale by some megalomaniac with too much money on his hands. It's relatively easy to fix in play, but it is such a staggeringly bad idea for the foundation of an empire that players are supposed to take as viable that I can't believe it went to print. I was hoping for a culture that was radically different from that of the Known Worlds, and, for the most part, I got it. The Kurgans are organized in a rigid class structure with a variety of castes organized in a complex and convoluted manner, which serves to make the Caliphate seem a vibrant society. My biggest disappointments were in the subjects of technology and religion, neither of which are explained quite to my satisfaction, nor do I entirely like what is there. When I began the culture section, reading about the castes made me hope that the Caliphate had a higher level of technology than the Known Worlds, at least among the common people. In some ways it was true, but the wedding of religion to technology that I had hoped for was not there. Similarly, the religion section was also interesting but not nearly as exciting as I had hoped. I really loved the idea of the Pilgrimage, although the idea that every pilgrim can be expected to see the new sun through one telescope is more than silly. And yes, that's right, the Caliphate has the only new sun in the entirety of humanity's space, and that makes for quite the religious event in the *Fading Suns* universe. There is too little information about Kurgan religion, however, and coupled with the truth that Bjorn Egon fabricated the basis for it, it comes across as obvious delusions, especially when faced with the Universal Church. That stance I most definitely did not like. There is also character creation information for the Caliphate, including Life Paths for the various castes. There was, unfortunately, no detailed information on the fearsome occult and changed troops that the Hazat have been struggling against on Hira. The rest of the Kurgan half of the book is taken up with world entries on the seven worlds within the Caliphate. While I liked all the worlds and found them interesting and rich in game ideas, I was disappointed by the seeming over-abundance of desert-like or barren worlds. While not as overt as the stereotyping of the planets in Vuldrok space, it is faintly there. The Vuldrok half of the book is of better quality than the Kurgan information in a few ways, namely that their culture wasn't created whole cloth by some madman. With the very powerful rune-casting occult tradition in Vuldrok space and the fact that they once controlled almost all the planets now in the Kurgan Caliphate, one almost wonders if the authors had a soft spot for the Vikings. Oddly enough, that Viking nature ends up limiting the Vuldrok, as the number of disparate cultures in their space all end up following a Norse-derived pantheon. Although it is rather flexible and varied, almost a mirror image of the Gjarti faith, I can't help but feel that it should have been more fractured. The Vuldrok culture itself is more a collection of various tribes, many of which have nothing to do with the Norse roots the Vuldroks show as a whole. There are African and Amerindian cultures raiding along their Norse compatriots. It is this cultural variety that is the Vuldrok's strength, I think, giving them a lot of potential, although there is not enough space in the book to go into it all. Overall, this section gives a great deal of information, hampered by a lack of space more than anything else, avoiding some of the larger blunders that the Kurgan information stumbled into. There is also the same kind of character creation information, including Life Paths and Benefices and Affliction before the book moves on to deal with the five worlds of the Vuldrok Star-Nation, where the biggest problems of the latter half of the book appear. First of all, the format for the world information is drastically different, instead of the history > culture > solar system > geography/territories format that Holistic Design has followed everywhere else, the Vuldrok systems only had the history and territories mentioned, completely ignoring both planetary culture and the information about the rest of the system. As the importance of the rest of the solar system is already often ignored in the game, its complete absence was really infuriating. Second is a problem that has plagued the game to one extent or another for a long time, stereotyping worlds. Every Vuldrok world is really darn cold, with large ice caps and pine forests and tundra. While I can buy some planets having "specialized" climates, giving the Viking analog only northern European planets is just a little too far for me. I prefer "inspired by history," not taken directly. Aside from that, the planets are good, but those problems really kept me from enjoying that section. The book finishes out with an index that has a short overview of all the planets in the new jumpweb that aren't owned by either the Vuldrok or the Kurgans, giving each the same amount of space the basic book gave to the planets of the Empire. That is to say, not enough, but this will apparently be resolved in Star Crusade's companion volume, Lost Worlds, due out later this year. A new minor noble house of Indian descent and updated information on the Nizdharim, the octopus-like aliens that I've always liked. There is also a newer alien race introduced, the relatively primitive Ishkin, a badger-like race in Vuldrok space. The final section of the book deals with the new occult power of runecasting, harnessing the power of the Annunaki runes to channel great power. A really great idea, it is unfortunately a little unpolished and not given enough room and detail. Similar to many other "verb-noun" systems of magic, runecasting has a lot of very intriguing potential to it, and development of the Ur is definitely a good thing. In the end, I was satisfied with Star Crusade. It does a good job of actually adding something worthwhile to the game, even if it does stumble a few times and suffer from a lack of space to detail more, like much of the line. It is also, however, definitely not a central supplement. There are a lot of great ideas here and some very nice adventure ideas and cultures, but the fact that the Known Worlds are still so nebulous and lacking in detail makes me feel like the effort that went into Star Crusade should have gone into developing what Holistic Design already had for the game first. The price also makes me worry, as $25 for 140 pages is more than a little steep, especially when compared to other books I bought at the same time. Post Modern Magick from Atlas Games for the small *Unknown Armies* game line was more than 40 pages longer and a few dollars cheaper. I hope that Holistic's prices don't continue to climb. Style: 3 (Average) Substance: 4 (Meaty)