Life in the 27th Century

I'm getting ready to GM a Terran Empire campaign. Now I have enough experience as a GM to feel comfortable with my ability to create exciting adventures and memorable foes. What I'm worried about is my ability convey the details of a believable far future setting. I've never tried to GM a campaign that was set far in the future before.

I'm wondering what other GMs have done (or would do) to make Terran Empire campaigns seem real to their players. How do you present the everyday life of citizens in the 27th century? What details of present times have you decided to keep in your campaign and what details have you changed to add futuristic flavor.

Thanks in advance to all who respond.

Here's my $0.02. I haven't GM'd a future campaign, so take this with a grain of salt.

Play up the technological conveniences. Like when ST:TNG's Picard orders "Tea Earl Grey Hot" and it magically materializes in the fabricator thingy. Those annoying targeted ads in Minority Report are another example.

Language could be fun too. New slang for different things. TANJ from Larry Niven's Known Space.

You might take a look at roleplayingtips.com. There's probably something about Sci Fi settings.

A few things to remember about a believable future.

Problems are solved, new problems develop.

If people don't need money, people will still crave power or adventure or a new vice or just plain danger. People may not need jobs, but they need to do something. Even if it's roleplaying. :)

Although computers would probably be implantable by then, you might still want computers to have terminals (although voice activated) and be as annoying as their 20th century counterpart. Why? Because, it's different, yet familar. If computer problems don't exist in 27th century, it won't be believable. However, the things you can do with a 27th century computer should be impressive since everything is connected and probably on-line (even if it shouldn't).

Medicine will be different. Things that were incurable now are waved away with a simple shot. You will still need to be looked at by a doctor who will scan you, look at the numbers and tell you to come back in about a year. Even though it's a 1/100000 chance that you will develop anything worth worrying about. (Unless you are a PC playing with experimental stuff)

If replicators exist, make sure you know what limits them. Else everyday will be Christmas with an electronic Santa building everything for the PCs. You can be rude and give them an amazing replicator bill at the end of the month. "Replications aren't free."
OR make sure that anything of value can't be replicated. Especially computers, replicators, certain starship parts. Stuff that can't be replicated (for any reason) will be valuable.

Are replicators even possible? I've always wondered why SF assumes it is possible to convbert energy to matter. Hasn;t anyone ever heard of conservation of energy?

At leats in the Terran Empire setting you don't have to mess with transporters, another device whose theoretical science borders on the delusional.

Quote:

Originally posted by Michael Hopcroft
Are replicators even possible? I've always wondered why SF assumes it is possible to convbert energy to matter. Hasn;t anyone ever heard of conservation of energy?

IIRC, replicators don't convert energy to matter, they just convert matter to matter. You want tea, it just puts electrons and neutrons and protons together into configurations of Hydrogen, Oxygen, and whatever you make tea out of. I could be wrong though.

Quote:

Originally posted by Michael Hopcroft
Are replicators even possible? I've always wondered why SF assumes it is possible to convbert energy to matter. Hasn;t anyone ever heard of conservation of energy?

With today's technology, it is possible (through very difficult) to move atoms one at a time. Just as a cow can chew grass and water and make meat, it is possible to construct a machine that can take grass and water and construct meat. Grass can be constructed by sunlight (energy), carbon dioxide and water. Therefore, meat can be constructed with energy, carbon dioxide and water. It is even possible to do it more efficiently than the grass and cow since grass needs roots and a cow needs bones and needs to digest the grass rather than photosynthize directly.

Yes, replicators require power. It requires roughly the same amount of power (possibly less) than to construct it in a non-replicator fashion.

You might want to think of them as recyclers.

Quote:

Originally posted by Michael Hopcroft
Are replicators even possible? I've always wondered why SF assumes it is possible to convbert energy to matter. Hasn;t anyone ever heard of conservation of energy?

I take it you've never heard of Einstien? :)

Remember, E=mc^2 ... that 'E' stands for 'Energy' and the 'm' for 'mass'. And in case it isn't obvious, an equal sign lets you move freely BOTH ways, or it isn't an equal sign.

In other words, you can convert matter into energy (fusion, like in the Sun or an H-bomb). You can also convert energy into matter. Particle physicists do this on a daily basis at those huge particle accelerator research facilities. The only real drawback is that it takes a HUGE amount of energy to create a tiny bit of matter.

Just FYI, it used to be 'the Law of Conservation of Mass' and 'the Law of Conservation of Energy'...two seperate laws. After Einstien, it was changed to 'the Law of Conservation of Mass-Energy', recognizing you can freely interchange between the two states. Ultimately, since physics usually deals more with energy states than with matter larger than the subatomic size, it was shortened down to just 'the Law of Conservation of Energy', since matter is just energy in a 'frozen' state. It in no way implies that you can't change energy into matter or matter into energy just because it no longer mentions matter.

For an analogy, imagine this. You know about water, and about ice. If you smash to bits or shave into flakes the ice, the total amount of ice remains the same, though it may now occupy a greater volume. If you pour a single container of water into several smaller containers, the total amount of water remains unchanged despite is now being distributed in different places. Since your measurments show these amounts (ice and water) remain unchanged, you come up with 'the Law of Conservation of Water' and 'the Law of Conservation of Ice.'

Now imagine that you discover you can MELT ice (change its state)...and you get WATER! This makes you wonder if you can turn water into ICE...and after some trial and error, you discover how to do that. You combine the laws into 'the Law of Conservation of Water-Ice', since if you melt ice you get a certain calculable volume of water, and if you freeze water, you get a given amount of ice. Changing it from one state to another doesn't alter the total amount of combined water & ice you have, it just alters the ratios between them. (Example: 5 parts ice, 5 parts water. You melt two parts ice; now you've got 3 parts ice to 7 parts water, but still 10 parts total.)

Now you realize that since ice and water are really just two states of the same substance, you decide that using the long 'Law of Conservation of Water-Ice' is redundant, since you're using two words (water and ice) to talk about the same thing. You decide to shorten it to just one word, but which word? After some thought you realize that water is what you work with a lot more often than ice, since water is easier to use in experiments...you can more easily divide it up into small pieces of any size you want, it will combine with many other things to create a practically infinite variety of solutions, while ice doesn't readily form solutions and it can be difficult to get just the right size piece of ice for your experiment (it tends to chip, you know). In the end, you decide to simply shorten it to 'the Law of Conservation of Water.' This doesn't mean you've forgotten about ice, or that you can no longer turn water into ice or ice into water; it's just a convenience to shorten the name to describe the state you tend to use most often in your experiments, even though you could still talk about (and do experiments on) ice.

In much the same fashion, physicists find energy easier and more convenient to work with than matter, and it's what they use the vast majority of the time. So it just got shortened to 'the Law of Conservation of Energy.'

Does that clear anything up?

I assume we would have chemical replicators well before we can swap energy and matter like water and ice.

A chemical replicator can build things by chemical reactions not unlike digestion and breathing (although admitedly a replicator would have to do lots of different reactions). Making diamonds out of carbon dioxide is possible with a chemical replicator. Artifical diamonds are made that way today.

OK, now that I've actually run a few adventures, I feel ready to respond to my own thread.

First, I would like to thank those of you who were kind enough to offer your own insight. Since I'm running a somewhat dark and gritty future, I could have totally overlooked the convience thing so thank you projecktzero. Also, thank you Blue Jogger for reminding me that I didn't have to change everything and that it would be better if I left some things familiar.

I opted not to include energy-matter replicators. Of course chemical replicators exist but I decided not to have them as a consumer appliance. Thank those of you who gave your views on the subjuct.

Below are some of my own ideas for the 27th century:

"Reminder citizens: We will be having 2 hours of rain today strating at 7:42"

Climate controlled cities are a common in my TE. Day high and low temps are decided in advance along with precipitation, and wind speed. As one might imagine, the upcoming weather is always a hot topic (sorry about the pun) at city council meetings. Some cities have elected not to be climate controlled and some cities are climate controlled on a neighborhood by neighborhood basis.

Faster than a speeding bullet

I opted not to have flying cars as a common element of my TE but instead have very fast ground transportation for longer trips. Trams can get up to twice the speed of sound.

Fish work cheap

As I mention in the favorite alian pole, I like the Osathri and I arranged for them to get out and about more in my TE. So when checking into a hotel or buying somthing from a kiosk it is common to be talking to a fish. Ijust felt that this was a nice 'You're not in Kansas anymore' touch.

Internet? Don't you mean outernet?

The datanet is wireless and can be accessed from just about anywhere except deep space. Some people live physically very active lives while never going offline.

I work for jack

An organizational structure that is common in my TE, is the virtual corporation (VC). Employees of VCs accept corporate software into their neural interfaces in place of having a human (or alien supervisor). Such an arrangement is called a jack. This term has become part of many expession in my TE.
Here are a few:
"I would like to help you but I'm on the jack" meaning my neural interface is monitoring my actions right now for my VC (this can count as a Watched in game terms).
"Can't do it. I'm under jack" meaning my corporate software would prevent me from doing that (this type of jack functions as a Psych lim)
"I've got so many jacks I can't see straight" meaning I have multiple corporate software running in my neural interface. An example of this might be someone working at a starport with a jack to do port cleaning, another to try to sell ground transport to incoming travelers, another to steer incoming travelers to using a particular hotel, and another to keep an eye out for unusual travelers for law enforcement or the mob.

Can't see the writing on the wall

My TE is a post-literate civilization. The acts of reading a writing has been effectively been replaced by other forms of communication. The most notable of these being datastreaming. Datastreaming is a multisensory form of data conveyance done through either a neural jack or neural head unit. It is about 3 times as fast for most people than reading and gives better retention.

This last change has been the hardest for my players to come to terms with. They have difficulty wrapping there heads around a future with no written word. However, I've introduced as an element in my campaign adn am keeping it.

I'm coming in late, but I did want to add that far-future settings are perfect for justifying certain inherent PC advantages.

For instance, in my FF game computers were part of most people's biology. That allowed perfectly-encrypted, neural-controlled, unlimited-range, person-to-person communication. In other words, the PCs could talk to each other in-game just as easily and privately as the players would talk to each other OOC. That freed up the players to chat as they liked, as opposed to the usual "you're not there" self-censorship that is usually imperfect anyway. It also reduced the hassle of splitting up the party, as they were always in effortless contact with each other (unless I created a situation to the contrary).

I also decided that future-enhanced biology made the human body resistant to environments that would be dangerous or deadly to "natural" humans. So they could traverse vacuums without physiological damage, survive in toxic planetary atmospheres, endure unchecked solar radiation, etc. This freed me up as a GM to put them into exotic environments that would otherwise be impassable. It also placated my own sense of realism by allowing colonization of non-Earth-like planets, rather than contriving a series of planets that are conveniently Earth-like. (In fact this technology led to the sentiment that terraforming a planet was an abomination that destroyed budding alien biospheres. Terraforming was an archaic technology and terraformers were despised as genocidal criminals.)

In many ways a far-future setting is a pain to run, but in other ways it's a lot easier.

-AA