Re: [GZG] First Sci-Fi Game

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ef reply to Damo:

Yeah. I have a lot of GURPS (for GT and associated things) but once I
realized it was 'nice to read, argh! to game', I just put it on the
shelf to
be admired and mined for setting stuff for other systems.

Brief reply to Allan:

I had Ringworld too. Neat setting, neat game system. The way they did
the
Flashlight laser was very cool because it was a 4 in 1: Cutter, light,
fastest sword ever, and a deep penetrating beam if focused. If you
wanted,
you could use the beam to slash a bunch of targets shallowly or hit one
deeply. Neat.

Brief reply to Robert:

Robert, if people are gonna nit pick about FTL - which may end up being
possible - due to what we think we know now (notice some things we think
we
know come and go pretty quickly), then you should apply the same
standard
all over. That destroys almost all SF technology not already at least
partly
in production or in research today. Everything else ends up being
essentially a form of magic because we don't have the theory to explain
it
and can't prove it is do-able. Yes, you can come up with a setting here
that
might work, but it will have a very limited sci-fi potential and the
adventures will be constrained in many regards (whereas 'somewhat hard'
sci-fi is easier to do and space opera requires little or no
justification
other than occasional sops to internal consistency). That's why I say
boring
- you seriously limit your options.

Sam wrote:

"Not necessarily. SF != star travel. Transhuman space is limited to just
the solar system, and looks like quite an interesting setting (I have
all
the books, but I've never played it).

Cyberpunk style can also be done as Hard SF, and that doesn't even
require getting into orbit."

TomB: I don't disagree, I was only singling out FTL as one example of a
sci-fi trope that goes away when you bring out the 'hard ass science'
limit.
I'm pretty sure a goodly portion of Cyberpunk goes out that same window.
Nerve acceleration by myelin sheathing is in fact one such example - if
you
did it like the earlier cyberpunk material said it could be done, you
actually screw up the way the nerves work, rather than enhance them. Any
many of the other cyber mods are about as unlikely. Monofilament wire as
a
viable weapon ... have fun with that. And of course, the genetic mods
aren't
any better - we've only now begun to understand how our early concept of
DNA
was pretty far off and we seem to be moving along towards good things
with
that science, but we're a far cry from '+1 INT for my baby!' or 'Eyes
like a
cat!'.

Sam continued:

"On the other hand, something like the Revelation Space setting by
Alistair Reynolds has star travel, but no FTL. The light hugger
crews spend their time in sleep, and relatively short periods of
time pass for them due to time dilation. Running a campaign where
a trip to the next star system requires working out how society
has changed over 100 years is left as an exercise for the reader."

TomB: Interesting, and Alistair has some good work (I like Pushing Ice,
even
though parts of it were not so hard sci-fi). But as you say, there
becomes a
significant projective effort on how lengthy travel will change
societies
and the more you travel, the harder it will get to produce a believable
result. And your crew runs a serious risk of suffering psychological
issues
related to the vast change in societies while they were gone (for weeks
or
days in their terms). Fun mateiral for a novel examining the effects -
maybe
not so much for an RPG. Depends on your group I guess.

Sam continued:

"On the gripping hand, traversable wormholes could fall into the
no-FTL category (for a loose enough definition of no-FTL), and
would allow a large empire spanning time and space."

TomB: And they don't strain credibility more than FTL? My point about
the
hard-ass sci fi games is that so much is rules out or suspect that it
leaves
you very little to work with. You can choose ONE thing and throw it out
and
keep the rest, but that's not applying the same standard. If you're
going to
gripe about plasma guns, about FTL drives, and about the starmap not
being
3D or being 3D and being wrong (2300, I'm looking at you!), then you
also
have to get out the same lens to fry: Wormholes that are passable by
humans,
Hyperspace, human genetic modifications beyond the most basic,
practicality
of colonizing or trying to run a polity across interstellar space with
no
FTL, cyber modification of humans, etc.

I prefer less space-opera games (than say Star Wars or Gamma World) but
I
realize my games will include several things that are marginally
possible or
the PSB just sounds good if you don't look to hard at it. Things that
*seem*
harder sci-fi are just fine with me, even though when I really crank up
the
skepticism, it wipes them out too. So I don't crank up that skepticism.
But
the point was that if you go full skeptic, you're really left with a
small
toolbox.
-- 
http://ante-aurorum-tenebrae.blogspot.com/
http://www.stargrunt.ca

"He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy
from
oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that
will reach to himself." -- Thomas Paine

"When men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty
quits the horizon." -- Thomas Paine