Jump to content

SF Rant


tkdguy

Recommended Posts

2300 AD, aka Traveller 2300 is described as a hard SF game, although it has quite a bit of space opera in it. I was originally going to use it as my background, with the Alcubierre drive replacing Stutterwarp. I dropped the idea because:

1. Fully developing the Alcubierre drive in the near future is unlikely.

2. I couldn't decide how developed life would be outside the solar system. I had already ruled out alien races, but not yet extrasolar flora and fauna.

3. The story arc (mankind's early struggles in space) doesn't need interstellar travel anyway, and colonizing the solar system already provides lots of challenges.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 138
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

And your missing the entire point of what I said. No aliens =/= no choice. If a player wants to play a steampunk gorilla in your modern military game the player is being an ass. If a player insists on being a half-ogre, half-drow dual-weilding magic great swords in your Avatar: The Last Airbender fantasy game you are not " limiting his choices" by saying "no". If your game group has decided to run a hard scifi game and one person wants to play a klingon warrior raised by romulans, sent to Earth as a spy who betrayed his people to protect humanity that player is making a character inappropriate for the setting and there is no reason to warp the entire campaign around that one person to the detriment of everyone else's game.

Saying "elves are not a playable race because I hate the pointy eared fops" in a standard high fantasy game may be limiting concepts. Saying "um, this is CoC and we are not inserting Tolkien-esque elves in 1920s USA" is not.

I didn't miss your point, i was actually using your example of someone wanting to playa jedi like character in a traveller game. i do remember them adding psionics in certain versions of traveler, so i dont think it would necesarily be out of place. some gm's are more restrictive than others when they run their games.

 

For example, in my experiences with world of darkness, the majority of gm's i played with would stick to one particular game or other and would not allow other character types in the game with maybe one or two exceptions. me? when i ran world of darkn ess, i let people play any character type that existed within the world of darkness with maybe one or two omissions. werewolf, vampire, mage, changelling. didnt matter to me. i made it work.

 

In the case of a traveller game, some gm's may have thoughts that they want to run a game where the players have their own cargo ship and they run goods (both legal and contraband) from planet to planet and get into an adventure or two in the process. player-x, who always wants to be different, says he wants to play a jedi. you tell him jedi are from star wars and this is traveler, no jedi. he asks if there is something like a jedi. many gms would roll their eyes and say "NO!"

 

Me? i would look through the books and find the closest equivalent i could find for him, or create something that would satisfy his desire. likely i would peruse through the psionic institutes book (mark miller's traveller) and come up with something and work it into the game. thus, i have a happy player that gets to play a member of a religious order of psychics and my traveller game get going.

 

Thats what i'm talking about. i'm a lot more flexible about letting players play what they want than a lot of gm's i know. i'll make it work, and if i can't, i have no business being the GM.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I didn't miss your point, i was actually using your example of someone wanting to playa jedi like character in a traveller game. i do remember them adding psionics in certain versions of traveler, so i dont think it would necesarily be out of place. some gm's are more restrictive than others when they run their games.

 

For example, in my experiences with world of darkness, the majority of gm's i played with would stick to one particular game or other and would not allow other character types in the game with maybe one or two exceptions. me? when i ran world of darkn ess, i let people play any character type that existed within the world of darkness with maybe one or two omissions. werewolf, vampire, mage, changelling. didnt matter to me. i made it work.

 

In the case of a traveller game, some gm's may have thoughts that they want to run a game where the players have their own cargo ship and they run goods (both legal and contraband) from planet to planet and get into an adventure or two in the process. player-x, who always wants to be different, says he wants to play a jedi. you tell him jedi are from star wars and this is traveler, no jedi. he asks if there is something like a jedi. many gms would roll their eyes and say "NO!"

 

Me? i would look through the books and find the closest equivalent i could find for him, or create something that would satisfy his desire. likely i would peruse through the psionic institutes book (mark miller's traveller) and come up with something and work it into the game. thus, i have a happy player that gets to play a member of a religious order of psychics and my traveller game get going.

 

Thats what i'm talking about. i'm a lot more flexible about letting players play what they want than a lot of gm's i know. i'll make it work, and if i can't, i have no business being the GM.

Okay, make any of the other examples I gave work.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Okay, make any of the other examples I gave work.

For the Ogre/Drow or the Steampunk Gorilla. I might talk to the players and make sure that what I was proposing is what the Players actually want to play or if they actually want to play a different genre game. Perhaps a synthesis of my original idea and the player's idea can create something unique and fun for everyone. Sometimes you have to say No. ie I require that players make HEROIC characters. No Evil bad guys. I don't flex on that at all. Pretty much everything else is flexable.

 

BTW Psionics were in Original Traveller. They had writeups for most of the Star Wars characters in Citizens of the Imperium. Star Wars influenced Traveller a bunch.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

For the Ogre/Drow or the Steampunk Gorilla. I might talk to the players and make sure that what I was proposing is what the Players actually want to play or if they actually want to play a different genre game. Perhaps a synthesis of my original idea and the player's idea can create something unique and fun for everyone. Sometimes you have to say No. ie I require that players make HEROIC characters. No Evil bad guys. I don't flex on that at all. Pretty much everything else is flexable.

 

BTW Psionics were in Original Traveller. They had writeups for most of the Star Wars characters in Citizens of the Imperium. Star Wars influenced Traveller a bunch.

You say no to some things? According to Nu's last post that means you (and anyone else that disagrees or has a different playstyle it seems) have no right GMing
Link to comment
Share on other sites

You say no to some things? According to Nu's last post that means you (and anyone else that disagrees or has a different playstyle it seems) have no right GMing

I am pretty sure that he meant no such thing, and I think you really know that. I am pretty sure that he is advocating a GMing style that tries to say YES and tries to adapt to players wants. Sometimes you have to say no, but you should try accommodation first.

 

Steampunk Gorilla in Modern Military campaign could be a HUGE muscular guy with a Mechanical Hand or who is a BA Baracus Clone (Mr T in The A-Team). Drow/Ogre duel wielder in an Avatar campaign. Perhaps a Fire Nation/Earth Nation hybrid with Stone flaming swords and MA's based on duel wield Swords. Klingon Warrior raised by Romulans. I would try to find either Aliens who fill the same niches as Klingons and Romulans or at the worst Human cultures that were similar (Japanese/Spaniard or Japanese/Italian). Just takes some thought and sometimes it starts out as "Well, there are no Klingons, Romulans, Uplifted Gorillas with Cyberwear, Drow or Ogres in the campaign, but there are these alternates that might fill that niche." 

 

 Too many GM's (including me sometimes when I don't stop myself) forget that a PnP RPG is a group activity. It should be a collaboration between the Players and GM. That one should be working WITH the players when designing the world. You should be willing to change your vision to accommodate players. That doesn’t mean that you should suddenly change your modern Military campaign to Star Wars or Dungeons and Dragons. Unless the majority of your players are really interested in those games more than the one you presented to them.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's also important to remember that GMs often haven't got the luxury of dictating what kind of game will be played.  Often it's not a question of who's in the campaign, it's what campaign is the preexisting RPG group going to play next.  And everyone is going to have their preferences.  Whenever we play fantasy, the one guy has to play an elf.  Whenever we play SFB, the one (different) guy has to play Romulans.  Even I have a strong preference for playing 'plain' humans because I'm more interested in getting into character and I have a hard enough time playing human females, let alone alien races.  And you wind up working these preferences in, because otherwise the options are 1) ostracize otherwise good players, 2) play with strangers, or 3) don't play.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Very true, but in my group, I'm the only GM. So I often have the group try out a new campaign premise. And if they can't be bothered to create a character (to be fair, some are new to the rpg scene, so they don't know how to create characters yet), I just give them pre-generated PCs. That way my campaign ideas get some play at least once.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm more and more taken with the notions of transhumanism. GURPS: Transhuman Space is an excellent resource for a mostly realistic SF setting in the near future that gives you variety without aliens, and manages to keep things pretty interesting. And folks RAVE about the setting of Eclipse Phase (though I've not read it all myself) with many of the same notions. Both are more than a little Cyberpunk Grows Up - less dark in many cases, but a logical progression.

 

Well speaking of people who rave about the Eclipse Phase setting ... I was already planning on mentioning it.  It's a hard science friendly setting which gives the player tons of options making their characters and has no shortage of easy adventure hooks.  Also, you can download the main book in PDF form for free with the blessings of its writer so you don't have to spend a lot (or any) money to figure out whether you like it.  On the the downside, IMO the rule system is the game's weakest point so you might not want to be too quick to throw away your Hero books.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I loves me some space opera. I like David Weber's Honor Harrington universe*. Every book involves ginormous fleets of warships slugging it out with missiles, lasers, and whatnot. He pays lip service to Newtonian physics. While his universe boasts three--THREE--different ways to travel FTL, space battles still take place at sublight speeds mostly inside star systems, and often involve hours of maneuvering (often just closing the distance to weapons ranges**).

 

The Mote in God's Eye (Niven & Pournelle) shows us an even more Newtonian-based universe (and warships). There is no such thing as artificial gravity. No FTL except naturally occurring jump points between systems. All the battles take place between ships moving at human-survivable speeds, and they use actual Newtonian propulsion systems that burn through huge quantities of fuel, which is a frequent issue for rapid travel.

 

For my tastes, the Stargate: SG-1 tv show become less and less interesting the more it aped (in later seasons) all the tired Hollywood/Stark Trek tropes. They largely abandoned what made SG-1 unique and interesting (contemporary Americans exploring the universe, mostly on foot, via the stargate, using contemporary weapons and gear...for all the tired old cliches of Star Trek. A command crew fighting by pushing buttons on the bridge of a ship; force fields...always on the verge of failing. Ships always on the verge of catastrophic structural failure. Transporters. Space battles at knife fighting range. Et cetera.

 

As far as realistic SF goes. I suspect we'll be living in a ubiquitous computing, augmented-reality cyber-future full of transhumanism (electronic AND biological) long before we have anything resembling convenient, high-speed space travel either in-system or FTL. If we ever do. Cyborgs and computer implants and a functional illusion of AI*** are looking a lot easier to manage than cracking the nut of getting around Newton's third law of motion or the speed of light.

 

*Though my taste for his...excessively wordy writing style has waned. I mostly just skim his books these days for plot and space battles.

 

**Though the ranges are nothing like the knife-fighting distances we see on tv and in the movies. They routinely fire missiles moving at way more than 800 gravities of acceleration that still take minutes to reach their targets.

 

***Is that machine _really_ self-aware and sentient? Or is it just incredibly cleverly programmed to seem that way? How would we know for sure? Given that philosophers still argue over whether WE are truly self-aware or just think we are, I don't know that there can ever be a definitive answer. And anyhow, it won't really matter. If my personal version of Tony Stark's "Jarvis" speaks and listens and behaves like it's truly self-aware...that's good enough.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I actually didn't care for Space: Above and Beyond. I saw the first episode and didn't like any of the characters. Same deal with Stargate: Universe.

 

It took me a while to warm up to the new BSG, but I ended up enjoying it more than the original series. One of my friends doesn't like it at all.

 

IIRC, the 1960's series UFO used Army/Air Force ranks. Commander Straker was an Air Force colonel.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You say no to some things? According to Nu's last post that means you (and anyone else that disagrees or has a different playstyle it seems) have no right GMing

Except the first two liner, every post in this thread has been a reply to anotehr poster. Each time you developed a worst case horror scenario interpreation of what was said.

Honestly to get from what you quoted to what you said I would have to apply quite an amont of ITL.

 

People use stuff that are a telltale of Trolling in one of two cases:

a) having a really bad day/week/month/year/decade.

B) being a Troll

 

I asume for you it is A and ask you to stop working of whatever problems you have here.

 

Star Trek: The Next Generation is a Space Opera?

As with the ages of Comicbooks, Space Opera has been through phases.

Enough that the wikipedia Article has this written under thier example book cover:

"Classic pulp space opera cover"

 

In fact the very tream has been redefined at least 3 times since 1960. The most recent one is:

"colorful, dramatic, large-scale science fiction adventure, competently and sometimes beautifully written, usually focused on a sympathetic, heroic central character and plot action, and usually set in the relatively distant future, and in space or on other worlds, characteristically optimistic in tone. It often deals with war, piracy, military virtues, and very large-scale action, large stakes."

 

When earth is about to be assimilated by the borg the stakes are very high.

Even discussion about the prime directive have big scale if it are whole planets that suffer from stuff like drug additiction.

Stuff is always "whole planet", "whole colony", "whole soceity", "whole species". The smalest it ever goes is "whole ship" and it is a ship with civilians on board (400 Crew, about 600 Civilians I think).

 

DS9 went a bit more into the whole "giant space battles" part during the dominion war.

I think one reason they never did them in TNG was actually the lack of Computer techology to do it cheaply. Just compare the first space battle of DS9 (Sisko at Wolf 359) with some of the ones during the dominion war. You can literally see the difference in quality and scale.

There is actually a clear cut to the whole "Epic Scale War". at the end of "Call to Arms", when the Defiant goes into formation with a giant Federation Fleet. The same war saw several large scale, large stake battles.

Compared to that, the whole Klingon/Federation War in DS9 was never that big scale despite having a similar space battle at the beginning.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I actually didn't care for Space: Above and Beyond. I saw the first episode and didn't like any of the characters. Same deal with Stargate: Universe.

 

It took me a while to warm up to the new BSG, but I ended up enjoying it more than the original series. One of my friends doesn't like it at all.

 

IIRC, the 1960's series UFO used Army/Air Force ranks. Commander Straker was an Air Force colonel.

 

Oh dear deity, Stargate Universe was ten pounds of **** in a five pound sack. (Takes a long, deep breath. I could rant on at length--and have on other fora--but I'll stop with that.)

 

On the other topic...I'd forgotten about Space Above and Beyond (I also didn't like it), but that gives us three models for space militaries--the navy, air force, and marines. What about the army? Anyone? Buehler?

 

You'd think that the navy would be the most likely model, given (as someone else mentioned) their experience at operating and fighting crowded warships in hostile environments. To say nothing of experience with fleet-style battles. But we used Air Force pilots for astronauts. So who knows? And it might be that we'll have to learn so much about building, maintaining and operating spaceships in a whole new environment that whatever experience the Navy has will be mostly irrelevant anyhow.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Oh dear deity, Stargate Universe was ten pounds of **** in a five pound sack. (Takes a long, deep breath. I could rant on at length--and have on other fora--but I'll stop with that.)

 

 

SGU did suck major wind. On the other hand, Robert Carlyle was brilliant -- and utterly unlikeable -- in it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Oh dear deity, Stargate Universe was ten pounds of **** in a five pound sack. (Takes a long, deep breath. I could rant on at length--and have on other fora--but I'll stop with that.)

 

On the other topic...I'd forgotten about Space Above and Beyond (I also didn't like it), but that gives us three models for space militaries--the navy, air force, and marines. What about the army? Anyone? Buehler?

 

You'd think that the navy would be the most likely model, given (as someone else mentioned) their experience at operating and fighting crowded warships in hostile environments. To say nothing of experience with fleet-style battles. But we used Air Force pilots for astronauts. So who knows? And it might be that we'll have to learn so much about building, maintaining and operating spaceships in a whole new environment that whatever experience the Navy has will be mostly irrelevant anyhow.

 

Just to be fair, there were also quite a few Naval aviators (at least one Apollo crew was all-Navy) and one Marine pilot (John Glenn) in America's astronaut corps.

 

For my two cents' worth: another reason future space forces are often depicted as being anologous to the Navy is that their ships often operate independently for weeks or months at a time, as opposed to Air Force sorties, which tend to last hours before their return to base.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Unfortunately, your content contains terms that we do not allow. Please edit your content to remove the highlighted words below.
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...