Fashan Part II: The Fashaning
Fashan Part II: The Fashaning
There Should Have Been Only One
This may be an auspicious occasion, in that, for the first time in Ghu-knows how long, I’m updating more frequently than once a month. (Can you believe I used to update this daily?) Of course, that assumes the words I am typing now will end up being publicly revealed soon after I write them. There have been times when I began an article, but didn’t finish it for weeks. We’ll see how it goes.
Why am I rambling thus? Well, other than because “rambling like Grampa Simpson, without the charm, is, like, my entire style”, it’s because the alternative to rambling is opening up Fashan again. So let me note that, while I am definitely not a fan of the ‘We Put More Effort Into Layout Than Rules’ school of RPGs (cough early White Wolf cough), there’s something to be said for trying to break up long pages of dense text. Even “Chivalry & Sorcery & Eyestrain” put more effort into a readable layout.
Alright, I wasted some more time looking for an original cover image, I can’t delay this anymore.
Fleshing Out Fashan
The previous article, per the rules, dealt with the “skeleton” of the character, that is, their key stats. The next step is to “[place] the ‘flesh’ on a character’s ‘skeleton'”. This means rolling a lot of D20s on ‘body tables’. These are known as ‘body rolls’, and they add a ‘special flare’ to the character. There are 10 of them. They should be rolled in order, though I don’t know if that will matter; the names of the tables don’t indicate they’re likely to build on each other, the way, for example, you might start with ‘family social status’ and then, based on that, roll ‘father’s occupation’ or the like.
I’m writing anything I can think of to avoid actually rolling dice, aren’t I? Bother.
OK, let’s get ‘er done!
Eyesight Table: I rolled a 2, which means I have X-Ray vision! This has a range equal to my Constitution, or 17 feet. Pretty impressive and useful, with no listed drawbacks or limitations. Note there’s no reason I have this power; I’m a normal human from Crumbudz. So, yes, this is some sort of post-apocalyptic world, maybe I’m a mutant, but is everyone a mutant? Just PCs? What?
Sense of Smell Table: “My PC has no nose!” “How does he smell?” “Awful!” Seriously, a roll of 14 is “Bad Sinuses”, which imposes a ton of negative modifiers on finding trails, initiative, and sensing hidden foes. Which would be logical if I were a bloodhound, but humans generally don’t rely on smell to track game, and a -10 modifier looks like a pretty severe penalty. (Not sure how the resolution works, but even if it’s percentile, a -10 for being stuffed up all the time seems disproportionate given we don’t really use our sense of smell that way.
Sense of Hearing Table: OK, I just realized I fucked up. You need to roll an “SR” before rolling on these tables. Rather than editing what I already wrote, I’m going to figure out what an “SR” is (Saving Roll?), and roll it, and if I fail, I’ll keep the original rolls.
Saving Rolls Of Fashan
This was quite a quest in itself! Saving Rolls, or “SRs” are defined in a list of alphabetical definitions, between “Reflexes” (an attribute we’ve already rolled) and “Season Parallels” (a worldbuilding thing). They are, thus, defined after they are required to be used in a process, which is Bad. (A compiled end-of-book glossary of all terms is Good; sticking it in one random section mid-book and having it be the only reference is Bad, for those of you confused about this ‘Good and Bad’ thing.)
There’s three types of SRs, and if you think these might be ‘Reflex, Will, and Fortitude’ or even ‘Spells, Poison, Breath Weapons’, well, you’re wrong.
The first type is “part of a general system” and has “evolved” its own mechanics, presumably by competing with other rolls for scarce resources and passing beneficial traits on to its descendants. These include Luck rolls, which “gage” (sic) random occurrences, and “Cling To Life” rolls, which are necessary when reading this game.
The second type are those where you must either beat a given number or suffer some manner of dire consequences; in other words, the normal kind of SR we’re used to. “Roll X or above or you have to keep reading Spawn of Fashan.”
The third type is, and while I am paraphrasing, I am not distorting the underlying concept: “Roll a D20 and the GM decides how well you did, or if you succeeded at all.” It’s a catch-all for any missing rules. Want to throw a rope to someone? Roll a D20, and the GM decides if they like the number or not.
It looks like the “SR” for the “Body Tables” is the second type: Roll a D20 and try to roll above the listed number, if you roll below it, you then roll on the table. As there are both good and bad results, a far easier method is to let the player choose to roll or not, and take the chance.
Anyway, for the tables I’ve already used:
Eyesight: SR is 5 because I am not a Thief or Trapper. I rolled a 5 exactly, which means I lose my X-ray vision, having “saved” against it. Or something.
Sense of Smell: Another SR of 5, except Trappers, and only trappers, have 6. I roll a 14, so, my sinuses are clear!
Now, on to Hearing, which I didn’t roll on. The SR for hearing is… 5, except for Trappers, where it’s 6. A 13, so, I skip that, too.
For the Body Table, you roll an SR, but instead of a boolean result, your roll determines how many rolls you get, based on your Profession. I rolled a 19. As a Mercenary, this means no rolls. For everyone but Trappers, Traders, Swayers(?), and Mercenaries, a roll of 11+ means no rolls; those other professions need an 18+ to not roll. Why? Only the author know for sure.
Another digression: Fashan, not unlike many late 70s RPG designs, is full of “differences that make no difference”, seemingly arbitrary complications that have extremely small effects on play or which use such steep bell curves that 95% of characters end up with the same value. This is an example of something I’ve called “Cargo Cult Rule Design”. A lot of games have tables, rolls, and modifiers, so, our game must have them, and often, they’re done with no attempt at basic statistical analysis to figure out if their impact will matter. And then the next designer is inspired by these games, and the cycle repeats. You didn’t start seeing really rigorous numeric analysis of rules until the rise of the Internet, at least not in my experience.
The Insight Table: This is SR 5 for me, SR 6 for another random bunch of professions. I rolled an 8, so, nada.
The Intellect Table: Again, an SR 5 for me. 17. No go.
Mental Illness: This is SR 3 for everyone. I roll a Nat 20! Nothing here.
Phobia: A 10 or better means no phobias; like the Body Table, lower rolls can mean multiple phobias. I got an 11.
Compulsion: Yet another ‘roll to see how many times you roll’. I got an 8, which leads to 1 roll. This is a d100 table, mind you, despite the rules earlier saying all of these were D20 rolls. (Several of the preceding tables were also d100, I’m not interested enough to go back and tell you which.) Anyway, I roll a 78. This is “Animal Lover Extreme”, which, fortunately, only means I will try to protect animals from harm, not, er, you know.
Handing it to Fashan
We’re allegedly almost done. I now roll a D10 for my “handedness” and ask the Referee (who is me) what it means. I roll a 5, so I’m right-handed, and have a -5 to hit with my left hand. I then roll a d6 for Height and Weight. I roll a 3. This means my height is “the third step in this bracket”. There’s three “brackets” for height/weight (average, low, high) and various rules for moving between brackets and changing the “step” on each. Height is “like a ladder”, but oddly, weight is not “like a scale”. Also, fruit flies like a banana. Ultimately, all this folderol seems to indicate I’m 5’8 1/2″, and 151 lbs (I rolled again for weight, TBC).
Loose Ends
Now we get to “loose ends”. Fortunately, this does not involve a roll on the “intestinal distress” table. I must “adapt” any changes to my statistics based on my character type. “Adapt” is an odd choice, as the word you’d normally use is “apply”. Someone has a bad case of Cooper Syndrome.
Cooper’s word-sense was singularly dull. When a person has a poor ear for music he will flat and sharp right along without knowing it. He keeps near the tune, but is not the tune. When a person has a poor ear for words, the result is a literary flatting and sharping; you perceive what he is intending to say, but you also perceive that he does not say it. This is Cooper. He was not a word-musician. His ear was satisfied with the approximate words. I will furnish some circumstantial evidence in support of this charge. My instances are gathered from half a dozen pages of the tale called “Deerslayer.” He uses “Verbal” for “oral”; “precision” for “facility”; “phenomena” for “marvels”; “necessary” for “predetermined”…
Mark Twain, “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses”
So it is with Fashan. The writing is often almost, but not entirely, unlike English. However, we must slog on. My Courage rises by 1d10, and I have no sense. Sorry, no senses, at the beginning of the game. Courage increases by 2. My hit points are a d4+8, and I rolled a 4. I suffer half the usual penalties from fatigue, and my Fatigue Rate is one Con bracket higher than my Con would indicate, which is good, I guess? I also have a “learned ability” with weapons. The “learned ability” chart doesn’t distinguish between ability categories, so I guess I roll, and it’s not weapon-related, roll again? I get a 34, which is “Expert Marksman”. I roll “two 1-6, adding it to [my] Cou”… or, in other words, Fenimore, “increase Cou by 2-12”. I roll a 5. This increases Courage to 21. Well, one of them. I have three Courages, remember, and I’m still not sure what to do with the other 2. I also increase my “to-hit” with a bow by 1-6, and I get a 4. I get an extra phase in combat when using a bow. And if you think I’m gonna read the combat rules until I understand what that means, you just failed your SR vs. “expectations”.
As my Intelligence is below 20, I do not gain any other learned abilities. It is over 12, so, I do get a language. My roll of 4 indicates I understand “the dialect of another society on the planet”, and, yet again, Mr. Cooper seems to be using the wrong word – in context, it seems to clearly indicate a different language, rather than a “dialect”, which typically refers to a variant of a base language. Had I rolled better, I might have understood the language of a specific animal, or even a “mystic language of wheezes, faints, and roars” which could be the language of a god, or a lost civilization, or a legendary monster. And I have no idea what word is supposed to be used in place of “faints”.
Third Time’s The Charm?
I had not intended this to go to a third part, but I just looked at the list of additional statistics I have to calculate, and considered that there’s perfectly good heated spikes, covered with fire ants, I could be jamming into my eyes instead of going further today, so… yeah. Let’s just finish this up some time in the future.
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