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This
massive RPG clocks in at 433 pages minus the covers etc.; once you take credits
and the detailed, general index away, you’re left with 426 pages, not including
the 4 pregens and 3 general sheets included for your convenience.
This review
was moved up in my reviewing-queue due to me receiving a print copy of the book
in exchange for a fair and unbiased review. The review is based on the massive
full-color hardcover.
All right,
I am going to deviate somewhat from my usual reviewing style while tackling
this beast and separate the review in 3 sections, namely formal qualities, game
engine and setting.
The first
thing you’ll notice upon laying eyes on the book, is that the cover image
evokes a sense of advanced Cyberpunk-ish aesthetics. There is a reason for
that, an Altered Carbon flashbacks you may have are entirely justified, as the
game does not necessarily lend itself to Shadowrun-ish cyberpunk, but works
rather well in more extreme versions for the genre. That being said, make no
mistake: FAITH is very much a sci-fi game in aesthetics and its ambition, and
not one of the many space-opera-ish games out there. But we’ll get back to that
later. The second thing you’ll notice upon opening the book, would be layout
and artwork. From color-coded riders on the side to boxed texts, the layout of
the book is engineered to make its use simple: Advanced rules have their own,
shaded boxes, as do examples of play/rules in action. This provides clear
visual cues for the use of the game.
And then
there would be the aesthetic component. FAITH is easily one of the most
beautiful RPG books I have ever laid my eyes upon. I am not kidding. See that
cover? I’d actually argue that it’s one of the weakest artworks in the book. We
get panoramic vistas of alien cityscapes and planets, drop-dead gorgeous
depictions of the races, and the quality of the artwork throughout is on par
with expensive video-game artwork books. I am not kidding when I’m saying that
many a conceptual artwork unlocked in current triple A-videogame titles pales
before the sheer aesthetic joy evoked by many of the artworks within. Even
better, the book actually has a distinct and unified art style, which is 100%
coherent and concise. Now, it should be noted that the artworks for the races
include nude renditions of the alien and human races, so if any depiction of a
non-sexualized human body offends you due to some irrational taboo, then that’s
something to look out for. Then again, if that’s the case, you probably
wouldn’t get anything out of this book in such a case, as it is a book that
focuses on big questions in a plethora of ways.
As stunning
and gorgeous the book is on a visual level, I’m afraid I can’t say the same
thing for the editing. While the vast majority of the book is presented in a
level of precision and care you’d expect from such a big core book, and thus
remains very much a precise, well-crafted book, there are sections interspersed
throughout the book where concentration seems to have wavered, one of which,
unfortunately, is the introductory section, where e.g. a doubled paragraph and
more formal glitches can be found than you’d expect from a book that showcases
such stunning visuals. The somewhat uneven editing remains one of the most
obvious imperfections of the book.
Now, I have
seen some reviews accusing FAITH of being a hybrid between a card/board-game
and a RPG. I’d frankly argue that this is a folly. FAITH employs cards as
randomizers, yes, but the book does not require any special cards, miniatures,
etc.. You can purchase the FAITH-specific decks, sure, but the game works just
as well with regular decks of cards. It should be noted that e.g. items all
come with their gorgeous artworks, and while these can be had as cards, the
book also features them, including their gorgeous artworks. As a card-based
game, the game spends some time advising on how many card decks you should
have. Personally, I’d strongly advise in favor of each player and GM having
their own decks. The value of an ace is 1, jack 11, queen 12, king 13. That’s
pretty much all you need to know, value-wise, to play FAITH with regular cards.
Now, the FAITH deck (which I do not own and haven’t used) knows 4 suits:
Wilderness, Urban, Space and OS – all of these suits have their own icon and
correspond to one of the suits of the classic poker deck. Jokers are special:
They can only be played in specific circumstances: After declaring successes
and failures, you may play a joker to improve the level of success of one
success, or decrease the success of an enemy by one step. So yeah, no one
should feel that tracking these basics overexerts their mental faculties.
It should
be noted that a key concept of FAITH is that each player has 7 cards (humans
may have up to 8), and may not look into deck or discard pile. Players may not share
the values of the cards in their hands, not show them o other players, but they
can provide general hints of how well they’re doing. When do you draw again?
Well, that is one of the most intriguing aspects of the FAITH game: It grants
the GM pretty much perfect control over the difficulty setting, if you will, of
any given sequence. FAITH divides the game into scenes, and at the beginning of
a scene, everyone draws up to their maximum hand-size of cards – usually 7. The
hand-size is a general indicator of physical and mental fatigue. Characters are
assumed to succeed in most regular actions, unless contested. Initiative is
governed by its own Skill, and turn are taken according to set value. However,
a character may choose to Rush, by discarding one card and adding its value to
their initiative score, but only at the start of a round. There are two
statuses a PC can have each round: Ready and Spent. If the character is Ready,
he can perform an action or wait – if the character is Spent, he can’t do something
and must wait for the next round – this is important, as the PCs can attempt
counteractions, which, obviously, means that they use their action. This basic
framework allows for surprisingly dynamic engagements.
At the end
of the round, there is the so-called maintenance phase, where each character
that is not traumatized currently and hasn’t taken neural damage that round,
regains a point of neural health. After that, the next round starts.
Maintenance phases can happen in non-combat situations as well. As noted
before, FAITH assumes actions to be successful and knows three degrees of
success: Regular, decisive and critical – decisive successes are successes by
5+, critical ones by 10+. Simple. If an action is difficult to perform due to
time constraints, or the opposition of environment, characters, etc., then we
enter a “Confrontation.” The triggering character determines the action, with
related skill and attribute used, using up to one Activated and one Sustained
effect. The GM declares the number of cards to be played. Any affected
characters aware of the action declare counteractions. Interesting here:
Counteractions, unlike the action triggering the confrontation, may only affect
the triggering individual. Played values of cards are compared and if the
counteraction surpasses the value of the triggering action, it cancels the
triggering action. It is only successful versus targets with a lower value. For
example, if you throw a grenade into a room with two targets, and one declares
to jump out of the room’s window, while the other attempts to run away, and the
former is successful, but the latter isn’t, you still blow up the guy that
attempted to run, while the guy jumping through the window got away. If the
first guy had chosen to kick the grenade back, you’d have been in trouble…
Whenever a
character performs an action, he uses a skill. If a skill value is 0, the
character suffers a disadvantage. Skill values are decreased by 1 for each
damage point (physical and neural) suffered, to a minimum of 0. Neural damage
suffered from Activated or Sustained actions occurs as the action resolves, and
hence does not penalize the action. Advantage and disadvantages are represented
by plus and minus-symbols and add/subtract 5 from the value, respectively.
Now, I’ve
already mentioned attributes: The respective attribute determines how many
cards you can play per round to add to the values set by the skill. When a
player plays a card whose value is equal or less than the Skill, he may draw
another card. When the environment in which a card is played corresponds to the
suit of the card, the player may also draw a card. This is called ambience. A
character also have an affinity with a suit: When playing a card that
corresponds to the affinity and in the proper ambience, the player instead
draws two cards, one of them in hand, the other must be either be placed on top
of the deck or discarded. In case you were wondering: There are only 12 skills,
and to state explicitly what I implicitly mentioned before. At character
creation, you assign fixed values to them: one 5, one 4, two 3s, two 2s, 3 1s
and 3 of your skills will be 0s. You also get 60 points to assign to the 6
attributes (Agility, Constitution, Dexterity, Faith, Link and Mind) and skills,
allowing for further customization. Now, it should be noted that Skills and
Attributes do not necessarily have a fixed connection. Athletic skill, for
example, can be used with Constitution or Agility. Attributes also have maximum
limits, depending on the race chosen and the traits of that race – those would
be basically a combination of racial and cultural components; planetside and
spaceborn characters have different traits, for example.
The game
knows both physical and neural health as hit point-like resource, with physical
health being twice Constitution, neural health being equal to twice the Mind
value. = neural health knocks you out, 0 physical health means you’re bleeding
out. The game knows an additional damage that does not apply to characters
directly, ACS, adaptive circuit severance, usually inflicted by hacking and
neural assaults. Repairing and recovering health via Medicine and Surgery are
btw. not something you’ll do instantly, so damage does matter. And that’s
already pretty much the whole basic system.
If that
sounded somewhat hard to grasp, then that’s not due to the system being
complex, but due to the fact that the game system plays rather differently from
most RPGs. Miniature play is supported, should you choose, but unlike most
d20-based games, it is by no means required to get the most out of it, you can
play FAITH in full theatre of the mind-mode sans any issues. All rules,
including play examples etc., fit comfortably on 113 pages, with the basic core
rules only taking up 25 pages. FAITH is easier to grasp if you approach it
without preconceptions from other games.
Now, once
you compare the total page-count with the amount of pages taken up by the rules
themselves, you’ll end up with 300 pages unaccounted for. Indeed, the book
presents these BEFORE the rules of the game. The vast majority of this book is
devoted to the setting, and there are two different aspects that set this
massive setting apart.
The first
of these aspects would be the importance of “Religion” – now, I am putting this
term in quotation marks, as, while the game is called FAITH, I’d argue in favor
of the game actually lacking faith in the traditional sense. Faith, as a term,
denotes belief in something without empirical evidence, often in spite of it.
In fact, as an atheist, this aspect had me very concerned. Science-fiction
often makes sense due to the lack of supernatural elements, and once you
introduce too much magical aspects, it’s progressively harder to maintain your
suspension of disbelief without the game becoming space opera-ish. Now, I have
commented on the like before, but while I *like* space opera-style gameplay, I
expect more from any game that designates itself as sci-fi; I expect an
internal cohesion, that things make sense. Faith, per definition, lacks sense,
lacks the empirical foundation that lies at the heart of good science-fiction.
So how does FAITH handle this aspect, how does it sell you on the concepts of
deities in an otherwise rational universe?
Well, I’d
argue that the gods are not really gods in the way that we think about them.
Instead, they should be seen as a combination of a Weltanschauung, Zeitgeist
and general, value-based ideology; 5 such deities have been identified, with
their true names collated from thousands of different representations across
different cultures. These concepts/beings are Ergon (cooperation, empathy,
teamwork, social concerns), Hexia (intuition, vision, learning,
self-improvement), Kaliva (competition, action, adaptability, strength and
struggle), Vexal (change, freedom, passion, movement and hope) and Ledger
(opposition to all dogma and rules, the trickster/adversary that seeks to undo
the work of the other gods). So, while the gods exist undoubtedly, they are
basically distilled powers of philosophies, extremes of moral and rational
values, and each has a vision of sorts for the universe, each represents the
core principals for a plethora of different factions. Now, why do I think that
there is no faith in FAITH? (Again, a good thing, in my book!) Well, because
the gods are ideas manifest that exist. There’s empiric proof that they exist,
and people embodying the ideals of their gods have divine powers of significant
proportions. Each god has a diverse set of commandments, and since adhering to
these grants powers, as soulbenders can twist reality in accordance with the
doctrines of the deity.
Ultimately,
there is no question that requires faith; there is no REQUIREMENT to believe in
something uncertain with a lack of evidence. “Belief”, arguably, does not enter
the picture at all. After all, the gods are a fact, they are ideals made
manifest, and as such, are subject to scientific inquiry within the context of
the setting; not pseudo-science à la creationism etc., mind you. In the
universe of FAITH, philosophy and, indeed, faith itself, is as tangible a force
as intelligence, education, etc. is in our world. This focus on the empirical
realities also extends to the fact that there is no afterlife myth for any of
the gods – irrational notions of heaven or hell have been abandoned when the
gods were proven to actually exist in the tangible, material universe. This way
of integrating gods into a sci-fi context did a remarkably good job at
conveying not only the wonders, but also the horrors that spring forth from the
philosophies represented by the deities. So yes, this is an intelligent,
creative and genius way to establish general philosophical baselines that
transcend the conditions of existence of vastly different species.
Speaking of
which: Know how many games that take place in space, how many
universes/franchises spam you with differently-colored humans? FAITH does no
such thing. There are 4 races to play, with a lot of variance within the races
to account for different environments and cultures. Here, the book does
something genius: You see, we as human readers are presented the realities of
the setting, but considering how universal translation has pretty much gotten
rid of language barriers, the alien races are linguistically coded – one, for
example, employs Inuit nomenclature, while another uses Chinese terminology.
Considering the very dominant role of English and associated nomenclature in
RPGs, this adds a linguistically based marker for alterity. There is a reason
for these choices hard-coded into the setting as well.
There is
another component that sets this game apart from e.g. Star Trek and similar
franchises; somewhat akin to e.g. Mass Effect, humans are relative newcomers to
the universe. You see, mankind manages to bomb itself back to post-apocalypse
and wrecked earth. For a not clearly defined timeframe, we have basically lived
on a constant downhill slope. Meanwhile, a rather nasty alien species of
conquerors saw its empire fall, a former slave race rise to the status of
empire, and another take to the stars. We, as a species, only enter the stage
of FAITH’s universe as second-class citizens, for, as it turns out, humans may
suck at adapting to space, but we’re actually physically really powerful in
comparison and we make formidable soldiers. Thus, a majority of humans in FAITH
are sterilized second-class citizens and feared soldiers that fight the battles
for the two major competing empires, with post-apocalyptic gameplay being still
very much possible in the ruins of earth.
Anyways,
the second race that acts in a similar manner would be the Raag, who have
marsupial-like pouches and are the only race to be physically more potent than
humans. The Raag have a matriarchal system, with males being more
impulse-driven and violent than females, and it should come as no surprise that
they are somewhat connotated as spacefaring nomads/soldiers, with a rigid
clan-structure (where adoption into a clan is a significant step) and serious
differences between the clans regarding their outlook on life. The Raag serve
as an example for something that the book does PHENOMENALLY well. This would be
the depiction not only of biological realities of the species within, but also
of the cultures that sprang forth due to their collective experiences. The way
in which the races are depicted is, without engaging in hyperbole, pure genius
and a triumph of fantastic prose-writing and world-building. The cultures and
traditions depicted are absolutely stunning in how alien they are to the human
reader, and in how believable they still remain at the same time. There is a
staggering amount of detail and internal cohesion and logical
interconnectedness that renders all of the different cultures presented more
alive than 99.99% of alien cultures depicted in science-fiction media,
regardless of whether in roleplaying context or beyond that; if more sci-fi
novels had this compelling and engrossing prose, I’d be reading more in the
genre.
The
interconnectedness of lore also extends, unsurprisingly, to the influence of
the deities, which tie in with churches, factions, groups, etc., so yes, the
world-building is absolutely mind-blowing and compelling – to the point where I
had a hard time putting the book down.
This is, at
least for me, even more true regarding the two massive empires, the Iz’kal and
the Corvo. The Corvo are the guys that “found” humans, and their vast empire,
the Corvosphere, represents pretty much the default made of play assumed by
FAITH, with the vast Dyson Ring (yes, gravity works properly!) of Tiantang
being probably the default starting area for most groups. Now, the Corvo are
somewhat insectoid, but remain actually kinda sympathetic…in a, for humans,
utterly horrifying manner. You see, Corvo psychology has basically taken
Keansian economic ideology and upped it. The Corvo have developed a truly
uncompromising hyper-capitalist meritocracy that may be well read as a scathing
satire on Western, first-world culture and Chinese economies, but what would be
just a satire is further enhanced by the vast differences in the way that Corvo
psychology works. Sans the human need to cling to ideals and certain societal
structures, the rampant, one would say virulent, growth of the Corvo made them
superbly adaptable and cutting-edge; there is a sense of backstabbing and
uncompromising harshness ingrained in them, but logically, a society this
advanced would have issues, right? Automation, after all, already is
problematic for us, much less an even more advanced culture! The Corvo, with a
wise taboo on AI, are primitive in one way that makes their culture work: They
have developed a direct-to-brain-interface, and a vast amount of the poorer
populace must lease out the processing power of their minds for hours and days
on end, powering the complex calculations required by the advanced society.
This is a stringent and poignant way to depict the fact that we, ultimately,
sell the time of our lives in every form of work, job, etc. – it’s the one
finite resource, and being required to cease being conscious, to lose
sovereignty over your mind and body for the time, can be a thoroughly twisted
concept from a human perspective. This, combined with the vast Corvo megacorps
that de facto rule the race, means that the Corvosphere can easily provide all
the Cyberpunk and Transhumanist context you might require. All the themes of
exploitation of the individual, all the struggles versus corporate greed and
intrigue – all this is firmly at home in an empire that, ultimately, is
familiar to human readers, yet absolutely, distinctly radical and
uncompromising. Alien. Uncanny. I love it.
After the
phenomenal prose depicting the Corvo empire, of how wondrous and at the same
time, horrifying, it turned out to be, I couldn’t fathom how the empire of the
Iz’kal could hold a candle to it. Well, if you thought the Corvo are strange,
you’ll be blown away by the Iz’kal. This race ‘s most defining characteristic
is undoubtedly them being empaths; their physiology allows them to commune with
each other, and their society is build on their premise. It’s also bereft of
currency. Yes, you read right. Neither is there trade per se. In a lesser book,
in the hands of lesser writers, the Iz’kal would have become a utopian
counterproposal to the Corvo, but they, ultimately, are just as frightening.
Birth rates are controlled, and your aptitude is judged by the state, which
then proceeds to assign careers to you. If you need a piano, you’ll get one,
but if you don’t use it, it’ll be withdrawn and assigned to another being. In
short, the Iz’kal society is one that is characterized by submission of any
form of personal agency to the collective will of the state and society. The
in-character prose, pieces of which are interspersed throughout the whole book,
drives that home just as well, as the fall of a Corvo paragon did in the
previous chapter: The Iz’kal are NOT humans with a thin alien-coating; they are
radically different in their psychology and the way in which their society is
depicted made me truly SHUDDER. As someone who generally did not identify with
the status quo, with the dominant opinions and cultural streams from a young
age, I was truly horrified by this seemingly utopian, willful loss of
individual agency, assumed by a whole species.
Think about
it. You like singing. You’re good at it. The state determines that,
genetically, you’re better suited to become an engineer, a task that brings you
no joy. You’ll be an engineer, no discussion. In a way, we have a Kantian
utopia that goes to the logical conclusion, that loses what we consider a very
basic right. A *human* right. The Iz’kal are not human, and it becomes ever
more apparent as you read, as you learn that the compromised self-determination
even extends to the integrity of their own DNA, with genetic adaption being
another aspect that the state exerts influence over. Those that lose the
empathic/telepathic organ or have it damaged, become something…else. Indeed,
the society of the Iz’kal is predicated on this physiological peculiarity, and
as such, is much less welcoming than that of the Corvo. Now, there are movements, there is diversity
here – but it is one that is rooted in a mindset that is utterly different from
anything you usually get to see. In a way, this chapter can be read as just as
scathing a satire as the chapter on the Corvo, but once more, reducing the
Iz’kal to that would do a disservice to the superb writing.
While I
have depicted both of these empires and cultures as somewhat horrifying, they,
at the same time, are beautiful in a way; in gleefully vapid, prejudice-free
consumerism that accepts beyond social status, race, etc.; in a harmony that
seems utterly impossible to achieve. I knew after finishing reading about these
4 races, that I’d fail the book. Indeed, I rewrote this whole section more than
once, and every time, I ended up disliking what I wrote; every time, I felt
like I failed to encapsulate the vast complexity, the logical connections, that
make these cultures and races feel so alive. As such, please take my word for
it: What I wrote here barely scratches the surface of the races and their
cultures, as each chapter introduces a vast array of factions and
organizations, as well as a ton of adventure hooks and sample NPCs, which
include a ton of movers and shakers. If you’re not inspired to run whole
campaigns after each chapter, I don’t know what will do the trick. The writing
here is frankly one of the best I have ever had the pleasure to read in a
RPG-book.
So, is
everything amazing regarding the world-building? Well…no. There is one aspect
that feels, at least to me, like a foreign body in an otherwise inspired
setting. That would be the Ravagers. These fellows are basically the
xenomorphs/Tyranids/boogiemen that made Iz’kal and Corvo enter a truce of
sorts. The Ravagers are a species that assimilate biomatter, reproduce it and
basically can duplicate anything they absorbed. This allows for doppelgängers,
we have vast, planet-sized queens, collective intelligence – it’s basically the
swarm. Now, the prose in the chapter, in the form of scientific logs, feels
aptly apocalyptic and horrifying, and the choice in favor of black backgrounds
here emphasizes the level of threat these seek to evoke, but as the big, bad
race, the Ravagers lack the same super-inspiring complexity of ideologies and
cultures that the playable races offered, and their angle, while somewhat
distinct from the aforementioned frame-of-reference aliens from various
franchises, never reaches the same level of pure creativity of the playable
races. In short, they are just good/very good, in a massive section that
provides pure, intellectually-exhilarating excellence.
Conclusion:
Formatting
is very good, while editing, as mentioned before, is slightly inconsistent and
represents the one formally not perfect aspect of the book. The layout and
particularly, the artworks employed throughout are amazing. The artwork is particularly
impressive and the interior artwork is actually even better than the cover
artwork! The massive hardcover employs thick, glossy, high-quality paper and
the production value of the massive book are impressive.
Okay, so
I’m not sure regarding who did what in this book, so I’ll list the authors in
their noted roles: As producers, we have Jon Egia and Helio de Grado listed;
game designers would be Carlos Gómez Quintana, Mauricio Gómez Alonso and Helio
de Grado, while writer credits go to J. C. Alvarez and Carlos Gómez “Quntana”
(I assume a missing “I” here), with E.G. Quinzel as a guest-writer.
Now, as far
as game design is concerned, I felt like the sequence of the rules-presentation
could have been slightly streamlined; since playing FAITH is pretty different
from your regular RPG, reading the rules required some close attention on my
part. That being said, if you do not have a ton of experience with RPGs, that
aspect will actually be easier. The system puts control firmly where in
belongs, into the hands of the GM. Rules-wise, this s an interesting change of
pace that is easy to grasp and master once you’ve managed to understand the
basic premises. So yes, FAITH is a good game.
That being
said, I firmly believe that, even if you have no interest WHATSOEVER in the
system FAITH uses, in the game aspect of this book, even then, you will
probably love this tome.
I cannot
overstate how excellent the world-building is. I cannot overstate how logical,
how clever, how intellectually-stimulating this book is. This book provided the
most compelling example of world-building I have read in a long, long time. In
fact, all of the different societies are so compelling that you really want to
play in these environments. The attention to detail given to the Corvo and
Iz’kal makes them and their cultures feel alien, and freed of the constraints
of hegemonic storytelling traditions. This really manages to feel like you’re a
human reading, through a universal translation about societies and people that
are utterly different from anything you usually experience in either real life,
or fictional media. There is an attention to detail, to narrative options,
that, from the take on the gods, to the societies and factions, suffused all
levels, from the global to the personal. This is distinctly a science-fiction
book; it is intelligent and tackles the big questions of morality, identity,
nurture vs. nature, consciousness, etc. - you name it, FAITH provides. Heck,
you can alternate between more cyberpunkish sessions, exploration of the
wormhole-labyrinth/final frontier, operations vs. the ravagers,
post-apocalyptic survival, diplomacy, infiltration…the game engine is robust,
but the campaign setting, the utterly GLORIOUS setting, is what makes you stay.
Heck, even if you prefer another game-system, it is my fervent belief that
you’ll find a huge treasure trove of pure, amazing excellence in this tome.
While not as refined as I’d like it to be regarding the copy editing and
sequence of rules-presentation, this book hence still constitutes a masterpiece
as far as I’m concerned. The game represents a great change of pace, and the
world- and culture-building is inspired on a nigh-unprecedented level. This
book is definitely worth 5 stars + seal of approval, and is a candidate for my
Top Ten of 2017.
You can get this great setting/game here on OBS!
Want print + cards? You can find the bundle here!
Endzeitgeist
out.
