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Out of curiosity, what kind of balance between optimism and pessimism do people like to see in their science-fiction campaigns? Would you play a game in which humanity was essentially on a march to extinction and there was little you could do about it? Or would you prefer role-paying in a setting where life is significantly better for just about everybody than it is now?
Since I've been doing a "ground up" revision of the Kazei 5 setting, I've been thinking about this. The K5 universe is pessemistic as a whole. It is an example of capitalisim gone berserk, with the rich, the poor, and very little in between. The population of the world has dropped by a billion due to Aids, famine, disease, genocide, and war. Multinational corporations have far more power than many countries.
On the other hand advancements in science are bringing about an end to many problems, such as certain diseases, as well as having enough food. Humanity as a whole is changing as well, with genetic manipulation and the rise of the psychokinetic esper weapons.
The trick is, which way will the world swing? Or will the haves and the havenots eventually grow so far apart that neither side even recognizes the other anymore?
Actually I would go nuetral. Take the problems of today and simply transplant them to the future. Technology will raise the standard of living for almost everyone, but there will still be the threat of war from more violent governments.
I am not a big fan of dark settings. I don't enjoy playing in a game in which the actions of the characters ultimately matter for little. Not saying that the actions of the characters have to be galaxy changing events, but for some reason playing in a game that centers around the slow slide of civilization into the abyss does not entertain me. I don't want to play in a utopian game either. Corruption, intrigue, and other conflicts make for great stories so I don't want to eliminate those from the game universe.
How do you see the present day? Light or Dark?
Perception and Point of view, which everyone has and are often different from the next guy might help detail what the world is like today and what it may be like tomorrow.
I guess I see the present day as Nuetral to Light/Nuetral. There are good things and there are bad things happening in the world. I see society as continueing to grow and improve. I don't think we are in a downward spiral, at worst just stalled as we try to figure out how humanity and technology need to interact. Granted, this is a perspective vastly colored from living in the US. There are other places that much worse off and have other problems to deal with. The idealist in me thinks that these problems can be solved, but that it is not necessarily an easy path.
The best thing about sci-fi is you can do it all. You're not (usually) restricted to one worlds setting.
I agree with blacksword though, my favorite is to make it fairly balanced to give more contrast between the genres. Hide todays problems in neon and the pale green glow of the computer screen.
But as far as what I prefer on the big screen? Dark, definately. I really dislike the 'everything is coming up roses' Star Trek genre. I prefer Matrix, Pitch Black, Aliens, and other pessimistic views of the future. Not that that's how I think the human race is going to end up, but it's just more interesting to see people dealing with adversity than seeing utopians preaching to all the 'lesser' peoples.
I strongly prefer light future. Obviously, there can be lots of individual dark elements for the characters to oppose, but I don't care for post-holocaust or "humanity shattered" kinds of worlds. The real world is depressing enough... I don't need my gaming to depress me too. ;)
I think an interesting tack to take with sci-fi is to pose the question: "Will science and technology solve more problems than it creates?".
In the west, we tend to see science and technology as a panacea for all ills, but I for one do not. I think that while it can solve problems, it often replaces it with another, or it only treats the symptoms, and not the disease.
As a simple example, are we devolving? Because of medical science, people are living and breeding who would have perished before. Evolution relies on the principle that "that which does not kill us makes us stronger" (sorry Nietzsche). Many diseases or ailments in the past that would have weeded out the weaker are allowed to continue. As an example, eyesight is getting poorer (though it may be correctable, we're still passing on the genes to the next generation). In the past, we needed to rely on our eyesight to spot danger. Some will argue of course that our technology makes evolution obsolete, because instead of us adapting to the environment, we adapt the environment to ourselves. And yet this is the very reason why our environment is threatened by us human beings. We don't need a nuclear war to cause massive disruption....just pull the plug on your power and watch first world countries descend into chaos. Our dependence on technology has not made us stronger, it has in fact made society more fragile.
Moreover, our technological and industrial dependency has introduced diseases that were unheard of 100 years ago. We have forms of cancer that never existed before. Will technology be able to provide enough natrual resources to provide for the growing human population (human growth is exponential....is our technological capabilites going to be exponentially growing as well?)?
And perhaps most insidiously western reliance and dependency on science and technology has made us become extremely materialist. It has become the de facto religion for many. But science follows a cold hard objective materialist metaphysical viewpoint which leaves little room for spirituality and humanity. Even accounting to secular humanism, the material objectivism that science is built upon (material objectivism is the belief that things are individual and seperate matter or energy that exist within space-time....and yes, it is a belief, it is not fact...it is a proposed axiom, and axioms are unprovable) stresses the importance of material things. In essence, it leads us away from that which is not empirically observable...things like consciousness or spirit.
I personally feel the future will be darker and I like my sci-fi games darker. Now, when I say darker, I don't mean necessarily full of war and famine and riots and such. I mean more in the sense that people will lose sight of the ephemeral and the nebulous. People will want only power, wealth, and material comfort, for these are the things they are told will make them happy. They will have machines do the hard work for them, and perhaps even a lot of the thinking. For some, this may be utopia.
Take a look at tranhumanist or extopian ideas. For some, the idea of transhumanism and extopianism is paradise, and for others it is just the grasping of the ego for more power, or the rejection of death.
I'm a comp. sci major, and to be honest, I really worry about the future because of our technological progress. Even though my interest is in AI research, I worry that we will use technology not as a supplement to help us understand our quest for who and what we are....it will instead be a replacement for hard work and will only fuel the ego's desires.
I like games where the human race is not all that important. There are so many dif races and goverments that the humans are just one small voice of many. The light and dark would change depending on whos space you happen to be in at the time.
I prefer a mixture of light and dark. I suppose grey. I think that, in a very general sense, technology will improve our lives. I don't see it as a threat to our existence, but the way we use it can be. Basically, I think the future will be pretty much like today. Not a Utopia or a Dystopia, but different with some of the same problems with different faces. One of my favorite sci fi settings right now is Transhuman Space because it seems to reflect this idea well.
Well, my bughunter setting is definitely a dark future, with a crypto-totalitarian world government and that sort of stuff, but that was really to do with the situation of the clone troopers. I'd also be happy to do an upbeat, more space-operatic setting. ;)
I prefer neutral/mixed/realistic.
My games tend toward darker futures. Often the PCs represent hope in a dark world. I find a bright future to be too difficult to create challenging and believable adventures for. A setting that is too much better than our own world quickly becomes dull. A dark setting has more room for adventure and heroism. Just my take on things.
I agree with most of the posters on this thread. While technology seems to improve things it actually is replacing one problem with another. The diseases that plague humanity today will eventually be eliminated, only to be replaced with new diseases. The current form of pollution will be solved in some manner only to find that the solution has created its own problem(s). Perhaps we deveolp a method to allow humans to trully read another's thoughts and eliminate overt crime. In response people will only be more subtle about the crime. The Prohibition in the 1920's proved that a total ban on something is impossible to trully pull off. Introduction of non-human intelligence would only give people an outside focus for their hostility that is currently directed towards other humans. As a result the society of the future will basically be the same as the society of today is.
I think you can run a Dark Future, but you need to remember that how bleak that future looks that there still needs to be hope (however slim) that eventually they will crawl out of it. Otherwise the PCs are just passing time until the end comes.
Now, as for different planets, I have Acheron which is a bleak desert planet and Xenon which is a B-movie sci-fi utopia.