Digging into Fading Suns 4

A Spread from the Universe Book

I managed to find a copy of the Fading Suns 4 core books and I’m starting to dig into the first volume, the Universe book. It has beautiful illustrations throughout, all full colour, some full-page and some inset. The trade dress is useful - you can see the chapter you’re in clearly.

The book is set in 10pt Baskerville, a serif font which is really easy to read, but it does feel information dense. There is less overall white space than, for example, The One Ring second edition which probably drives that feeling. There is a backprint behind the text but it doesn’t really interfere for me. The book itself isn’t huge – 120-pages – but it does contain a lot of information because of the typeface and font adopted. 

As I’m reading it, I’m getting little sparks from the descriptions of opportunities to put games in the spaces. I’m enjoying settling back into this setting.

I have skimmed the separate rules book (the Character Book), but decided I wanted to remind myself why I loved this game so much when I owned the first & second editions of it before I went into games mechanics.

Overall, this is very nicely presented and clear to read. I’d rather have a shorter, tightly written book than a huge monster. I’ve just seen the advert for the refreshed edition of Ars Magica which is coming later this year and that turned me off by boasting about being 600-pages long. Bizarrely, Fading Suns 4’s core books rock in at 548-pages, but by splitting them into three sensible volumes which break out naturally, it has avoided giving me that reaction. Perhaps it’s just that I don’t like huge telephone-book or old-school family bible sized tomes?

More as I explore this further, but so far I like what I see.

17 July 2024