Sci-Fi RPG Faith Does Away with Pen and Paper!
February 23, 2015 by dracs
A new Sci-Fi RPG has appeared on Kickstarter with an interesting gameplay mechanic that does away with the traditional focus on pen, paper and dice.
Faith takes place in the far future in a galaxy locked in a cold war between two highly advanced races, with humanity stuck in the middle and struggling to survive. Players can choose to delve into this conflict, or go out and explore space through the Labarynth, a series of wormholes connecting the different star systems.
The most intriguing part about Faith is its approach to gameplay. Rather than the traditional method of having players constantly sifting through piles of papers, Faith does everything with cards. Character boards give you the layout for your character, while gear cards show all the stats for the various equipment they will be carrying.
Dice have also been done away with, as players instead each draw from their own deck of cards. These are specialised poker cards, featuring the awesome artwork detailing the world of Faith.
Players can then use these cards to improve their chances when overcoming challenges, adding an extra tactical element of resource management to the game.
As a big fan of pen and paper RPGs, Faith promises an intriguing new role playing experience. There seems to be a lot going on with this game, all of which comes together to make the experience both unique and immersive. Hopefully, it will do well on Kickstarter and we will soon get to experience it for ourselves.
Do you fancy backing Faith on Kickstarter?
Thanks to wallofiron for letting us know of this.
Supported by (Turn Off)
Supported by (Turn Off)
"Faith promises an intriguing new role playing experience."
Supported by (Turn Off)
Seems a bit like trying to reinvent the wheel
Nothing wrong with bits of paper I am not sure about other groups but in ours the DM always kept the character sheets. I wonder how you store the info between sessions without losing bits
“constantly sifting through piles of papers” honestly, even playing the Hero System, that never happens. This just leads me to think “you’re doing it wrong”. Also, they just traded their “piles of papers” for piles of cards you have to “sift” through.
Seems like another case of trying to fix a problem that doesn’t exist by manufacturing an argument that it does. Then not actually fixing the problem they claim is there by just changing the context like cards instead of dice. The FFG Warhammer FRP 3rd was just horrible. This does all the same things but looks worse.
Looks nice and fancy! I wouldn’t be surprised if the tokens were all magnetised in some way tbh, as it would help protect again spillage of beer when you quickly move everything out of the way. 🙂
I had a character for 2300 that was just done on the back of an envelope did me fine for 4 years
Oh God, is that GDW’s Traveler 2300? I tried to design a star ship in that game and my brain melted after about three hours. All I managed was the hull and a few doors. Nothing wrong with the RPG itself, though.
Also used to play the “prequel” RPG: Twilight 2000. Yeah, when the year 2000 was the “imagined future.” ** sigh **
…should have tried weapons or high-tech vehicle using ‘Fire, Fusion & Steel’. I have four degrees and it was IMPOSSIBLE!
I’m a backer, and (obviously) hope that Faith does well. I have faith that it will. 😉
To me it’s not about the status quo already being good enough (I play D&D 5th ed. and got into hobby gaming with 2nd ed.), but about trying a new experience. Faith looks like an interesting system and I’m interested enough to back it.
Had another look just to make sure . Reminds me a lot of the Torg system by west end games
Possibly old fashion but I find cards, and all the bits that are great in a board game detract from an rpg experience – that’s a personal thing the only thing I want to see in an rpg is someone telling me what their character is doing. After that as a GM I should be able to say roll dice and then let them know if it worked the instant you have to think about the system it breaks immersion in my view.
Graphic looks great though, so best of luck to them.
I think its interesting enough idea to make it worth supporting to see the actual results.
I don’t think that the creators of Faith are attempting to solve the problem of “piles of paper”. In fact if you read the kickstarter page they do not mention such a problem. They do say that instead of dice they use a deck of cards to solve game situations. It sounds like an interesting idea for an RPG. Given that cards do work in some miniature games why they should be able to work in and RPG as well.
I get the old school attitude of that there is nothing wrong with a piece of paper. Your right there is nothing wrong with it. I’ve played RPGs for 30 years and paper is great. Having said that there is nothing wrong with doing something differently.
The art looks great. I’m going to support this kickstarter and if it funds and I never play it I’ll be happy with the cards and rulebook because of the beautiful art.
Wow it is an honour to be in BoW! Hi guys, I am one of the designer of the game 🙂
As zeker1966 kindly mentions we do not think there is anything wrong with PNPs, but we simply did not see the point in making another D20, there are already plenty of great ones out! With Faith we tried to make something a bit different – and if you still rather use paper & pen, you can: simply print out the character sheet and write on it instead.
We have a short video in which we explain the core mechanics of the game in about 6 minutes (the second video in the campaign wall), and the rules are available for download for free from our website; you can play it before you back it and see if it is for you.
Take care!
Great to have you here, game looks great.
Thank you for having me 🙂
I have been playing RPGs for coming up on three decades, I’ve played rules heavy systems, rules light systems; I’ve played story systems, combat systems, challenge systems, reward systems; I played systems that are rail-road friendly, systems that are collaborative friendly; d6, d20, d10, d+, dPercentile, d-rock-paper-scissors; under-written systems, over-written systems, indie-pamphlet games, big house high gloss games, single core book games, and supplement rich games… And here’s what I know:
For every game under the sun, someone will like it and ten more will stand up to explain why it’s not as good as what they play. 🙂
And that’s ok, RPGs are a lot like beers, everybody has their own brand or style that they like, so most bars have plenty on tap because no single draft will please everyone.
As far as this game goes, it’s part of an important evolution that has been happening for the last 5 years, taking eyes off the stats and opening ears to the story by using game aids.
It’s true, many groups play story-based games without these aids, they are pure dice and pencil gamers – and that’s great – but if you don’t know the pain of a buff-monkey or a min-max munchkin, you are a lucky – extremely lucky 🙂
Personally, I find game aids to be extremely helpful – I’m a fan of 3rd edition Warhammer, I like that players are holding their spells as cards and can check the rules at a glance and not flipping through 2-3 books looking for what they need; I like that players make tactical decisions about whether to attack hard or soft in each round rather than throwing dice and doing math.
In my opinion, game aids take the mind off the crunch and puts it into the drama, rolling dice are good, they add the suspense of random – great for making non-combat rolls; card hands I find better for combat, the decisions about which card to play is the kind of tension that reminds me of Ned stark fighting Jamie lannister, not a random roll-off but steely-eyed stratagem.
Now, I’m not saying that this game brings that, I hope it does, and the ones in on @tahyer and co. To do that, but I’m positively optimistic about what this system looks like.
That being said, it looks like the characters are pre-gen, and I’m not a big fan of that… They’re good for quick start, but part of the RPG experience is complete character customization (within reason)… So that’s a little worriesome
Hi apocryphal! Thanks for your message – I agree there should be games for all the tastes 🙂
Let me put your worries aside, of course you can create your own characters in FAITH! You can also “level up” and gain new abilities and cool powers… The whole deal.
You probably think you cannot because the beta rules come with a pre-gen campaign with pre-gen characters. It is made like that for those that want to try the game without having to learn much about it before hand and see if it is something for them.
The character creating rules are in The Rulebook.pdf starting at page 24 🙂
– See more at: http://www.beastsofwar.com/faith/scifi-rpg-faith-pen-paper/#sthash.AAXMiq3Z.dpuf
Hi apocryphal! Thanks for your message – I agree there should be games for all the tastes 🙂
Let me put your worries aside, of course you can create your own characters in FAITH! You can also “level up” and gain new abilities and cool powers… The whole deal.
You probably think you cannot because the beta rules come with a pre-gen campaign with pre-gen characters. It is made like that for those that want to try the game without having to learn much about it before hand and see if it is something for them.
The character creating rules are in The Rulebook.pdf starting at page 24 🙂
@tahyer actually, the player boards are what got me – the game comes with them and they have pre-gen pictures, will there be blank ones?
Yes, although I don’t know at this point how many – It will depend in the amount of stretch goals we reach that might unlock more illustrations. But we will hear people’s advice on this after the campaign.
The pre-gen pictures have no gameplay value, they are simply an image of how your character could look like. That way it is easier to know “Does my alien have a tail? Do I have elbows?” 😀
When I read the headline, i got very excited – “Sci-Fi RPG Faith Does Away with Pen and Paper!” – I thought it meant an RPG that had finally got with modern times and decided to use mobile / tablet apps for character creation and maintenance.
But no… it’s just an RPG with a deck of cards.
Don’t get me wrong, Faith looks good, and interesting, but it does remind me a bit too much of Fantasy Flight’s Warhammer FRP 3rd Edition, which was a horrible mess of cards, counters and abstractions that ended up making things far more complicated than they were before.
Sorry to hear that! I hope you find the game you are looking for 🙂
I am not sure how Warhammer 3rd was played, but in this short video you can see how Faith is played (I promise it does not have too many abstractions): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5BZU6YRQt0&spfreload=10
Not your fault, and I’m certainly not saying that Faith doesn’t sound good or like a great idea in itself – I’m just wary after Warhammer 3rd edition. It felt like Fantasy Flight was trying to turn an RPG into a boxed tabletop game, with expansion packs and tokens for everything, but it lacked the detail, flavour, and feel of the setting. With Faith being designed around it’s own setting, those issues probably won’t turn up 🙂
In any case, i wish you all the best with it. I doubt I’ll be funding the Kickstarter, but I may well pick it up somewhere down the line 🙂
Thanks! We want for the core set of Faith to be the full game so you don’t need anything else. It is our baby and we want it played 🙂
Hopefully you will see it some day in a store, but it will be hard to get there
Yet you limit expansion and players ability to expand the system by using such a component heavy system, I respect you for having the ambition to aim for your targets but after looking at it, it looks like a even more component heavy version of WFRP3 without the revolutionary dice system that used and the thing with that game is the system really only got good once the 4 major expansions were released as they added new components that expanded the mechanics in new ways without adding complexity.
Your actions, equipment etc are all on cards so its more a board game without a board to my eyes and your players creativity is always going to be limited to what components they have. I really feel you’d be better off working on a narrative card game or card based board game using the system and altering the target market because RPG players want as free form mechanics as possible so they can be fully creative.
Interesting though as has been said Wfrp3e brought a lot of the game away from a sheet and on to components though that was not the only major change to RPG’s that system brought as the Dice pool mechanic which creates narrative results was truly fantastic. However FFG far from got everything right with WFRP3 and chose a very poor game to pilot this new style of RPG, as it only succeeded in splitting the community and they went to far into the components making it the most expensive RPG I’ve ever owned but with a fraction of the setting material I have from the previous edition.
FFG did learn a lot from the experience however and created the Edge of the Empire and Age of Rebellion star wars systems using a lot of the Core that was in WFRP3 which is a far more polished system. It is interesting to note however that they moved away from the overly component heavy side parts of WFRP3 partly because RPG gamers do not want to pay for a Board game when a book is all they need and also because a lot of the components reduced the ease they could bring out additional content and a lot of gamers cut or simplified many components or in fact brought them back to the Character sheet.
Personally I feel while taking the RPG character to components seems good in theory its aimed at the wrong market as RPG’s and Board Games are very different in there approach and the gamers have a very different budget in mind before hand. It also brings up the loss factor (of components) and increases the work required for any fan support materials as they will need to be able to design and create the components etc as well as rules/campaigns stories. Which is another point RPG players write epic campaigns with story arcs more complex than A Brief History of Time by S Hawking so really how big a selling point is no filling out character sheets going to be really?
While I am going to look at this project I’m far more interested in mechanics that create more immersive narratives than I am anything else and recently the best thing I’ve seen on that is the FFG Narrative Dive systems though I must say I’m always going to be biased towards dice pool systems for RPG’s as its provides the greatest possible scope and range of results that can be fine tuned.
Hi crimsonsun, thanks for commenting! 🙂
I have never played Warhammer 3rd edition, so I cannot comment on it. But I will like to say that with Faith we do not limit the players ability for expansion at all – that is far from our intention. Let me explain:
The decks of cards you need to play are poker decks – ours simply have beautiful illustrations from the universe of Faith to immerse you in the game. Do you want for another friend to join? You can use a normal poker deck 🙂
Gear comes in cards instead of as a list in the book to help you visualise what you are using and removing the need of browsing through the book. Your creativity is not limited to the gear and NPCs listed in a book in other RPGs, so why should it be different when it is listed in cards? It simply allows you to hand them over to each player and help them visualise some sci-fi gear that it might hard to imagine otherwise. Whatever gear or NPC you make up does not need to come in a card, you can simply write it in a piece of paper.
Character board are beautiful and cool, but you can replace them with printed character sheets.
Actually, you don’t need to buy our game to play it. We offer a free P&P in our website, feel free to check it out and we would love to hear you feedback in the system.
I heartily agree with your statement: “I’m far more interested in mechanics that create more immersive narratives”. In Faith we do this with two mechanics:
– If you are in advantage over an opponent he plays one card less than usual. Advantages can be obtained from a few sources and they are extremely valuable. They can be granted by equipment or divine powers, but they can also be granted by the GM if the player describes a situation that could indeed be considered advantageous, such as being under cover when shooting at an exposed target, or thinking of a smart solution to repair a machine. Some players will come up with some really amusing explanations as to why they deserve an advantage 😛
– Gods in Faith represent moral paths that characters can choose to follow. So when a player plays in character, doing things make sense with his background, he will eventually be rewarded with divine powers from one of the Gods. When he deviates from that path and acts randomly he might lose those powers – but if he does it in a heroic way (a selfish character stays behind to cover his friends facing a sure death), another God who sees value in his new ways can reward him with his own powers.
Thank you for the reply and I will check out your mechanics as its something I take an interest in. However I feel I failed to convey what would be my biggest concern and that is I do not need to buy an RPG for the Mechanics (though I enjoy them) I buy it it for a tool set to use to explore a world I have interest in. Now I now nothing about you setting but a component heavy Marketing system is going to make attaining ‘official’ source material/splat books seriously expensive and the information will be spread over a far more problematic form for actual studying as cards and boards are great for reminding those how have limited attention spans of what’s happening but they are awful for when you want to learn the materials and they also require storage, A LOT of storage actually especially once you start indexing and filing things as any obsessive compulsive DM will.
What I am trying to say is as a marketing method I fail to see how you will get even the beginnings of the source material and depth I am looking for in a RPG to me with out a dozen expansions the size of the core set to me and that’s going to be a serious investment. I’ve not looked at your costs but I can state without any doubt in my mind that WFRP3e cost me more than any 2 other RPG I possess combined and I own A LOT of RPGs with normally 10-30 hard back books expanding each and it covers a fraction of the content I got from the 2 edition of the game of which I got a first edition of every released product.
Now I play Board games, War Games and RPG’s so spending on my hobby is not something I tend to look at in terms of expense, but when weighed against content component heavy RPG’s simply do not compete and as such I’d not invest in another one even for WFRP which is my fav RPG setting.
Hi!
Faith is a small game, rules and lore light. The game is meant to be self contained and a game meant to be enjoyed even if we never release anything new for it. The amount of official stuff you will need is going to be very little and we plan to publish everything as a free pdf anyways.
This is getting made by me and three of my friends in our homes and only because we got a grant for entrepreneurs from a University. So is a very indie project.
Right, because the warhammer fantasy rpg/card game did so well!
It only appears to be a gimmick to me. And a game is not on my radar if it depends too much on that gimmick. Doing away with pen and paper is a dumb unnecessary decision. They are trying to stand out, and I see that, but this is not going to be an original breakthrough for these games like they think it will be. When FFG tried reinventing the wheel the same way, it was a short lived flop and the only good thing to come out of it was the dice mechanic.
Sorry to hear you feel that way!
We are very proud and happy with our system and we believe in our project, this is why we offer the rules for download for free in our website (now on beta). Feel free to check them out if you feel like giving us a chance 🙂
well, i think the system has potential.
What i like is that i’m not good as a GM to punish and kill players, i forgive 2 much and i cheat in favor of players 2….
i like the fairness of drawing cards.
the deck mechanic has also the potential to unlock mechanics we see in magic
graveyard management
scry the top cards of gm/player deck
shuffle flush or place the cards in order
the second point i like is that it levels the luck! you have to play the whole deck! so if you have 4 kings in hand you know they are GONE once played, this thing is really good unless players start counting cards!^^
i think that to get the best from this system you have to enforce roleplaying to avoid it becoming a pokemon royal rumble!^^
i’d like to see more npcs especially BEASTS (xenomorphs ftw)
what i don’t like is…. the presence of gods!^^
I’m an hard science fan… maybe i’ll tweak that part in some way
latent psi powers unlockable only if tou adhere to a strict code (representing mental control over your life).
i don’t get the reference to wh fantasy roleplay… if i recall correctly (if not plz tell me) cards were not standard poker decks also you had dices on top of that.
this System is quite different
it’s like having a d13 system where you can PRE roll 7 dices and use them when u want coupled with the fact you can’t roll the same number more than 4 times before the end of the deck.
Well, there is a slight reference to WFRP3e from the idea of gear cards and NPC cards – but the mechanics wise you are right – there is no relation at all; nor are the cards and uses for this game related to the way WFRP3e used cards aside from the most cursory examination. This game replaces dice with cards and it does it to help mitigate pure luck and add strategy (which is what other games do with buff stats)
Also, for the hard sci-fi thing remember “Any sufficiently advanced technology will seem like magic to those who don’t understand it, any sufficiently equipped individual will seem as a god”
That just remind me of a great book called “Lord of Light” by Roger Zelazny that takes place in India. In the book the indian pantheon of Gods and technology are so interconnected that you do not know if they are normal people using technology to become Gods or Gods using technology to expand their power. Really interesting book!
[IMG]https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTPPCMts33Qu3o_vY-cIOXZCt8fjCvCu90eWEt-WXOHt_mxlnlx[/IMG]
Damn! i don’t think i can hyperlink an image do i?
haha apparently no, but I managed to copy paste the link – what do you want to know more about? 🙂
Interesting for a giggle. ‘Aftermath’ was complicated character generation, but you could just abstract it all away……….D.x
We got interviewed by Sam from BoW, thanks man!
If you want to read the interview and find out more about the game here is the link:
http://www.beastsofwar.com/faith/interview-burning-games-faith-scifi-rpg/