Nyrath

Re: Time Travel in Sci Fi and Games....The Good, The Bad, and the Oh so Ugly...

I think one thing you need to deal wiht in any time travel adventure is the language barrier. As we all know' date=' or should, language changes over time; those of you who read [i']The Canterbury Tales[/i] in school will remember that it was barely recognizable as English--and that story was only about five hundred years old. And who knows how the language will change in the next five hundred years?

From http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3ao.html#inventWords

Another fun avenue is taking English and postulating some form of futuristic grammar or spelling reform. Here is an interesting attempt to predict how the English language will look like in the year 3000. Example:

 

1000 CE Old English: Wé cildra biddaþ þé, éalá láréow, þæt þú tæ'ce ús sprecan rihte, forþám ungelæ'rede wé sindon, and gewæmmodlíce we sprecaþ...

 

2000 CE Modern English: We children beg you, teacher, that you should teach us to speak correctly, because we are ignorant and we speak corruptly...

 

3000 CE Futuristic English: ZA kiad w'-exùn ya tijuh, da ya-gAr'-eduketan zA da wa-tAgan lidla, kaz 'ban iagnaran an wa-tAg kurrap...

Re: Martian avalanche caught in the act

Actually, it looks like wormsign to me...

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/01/11/another-dose-of-martian-awesome/

This does not directly inspire a plot seed, but I included it because it is utterly awesome.

Though a devious game master could use the image as a subtle clue for the players, perhaps the avalanche is evidence of the bad guys hot-footing it across the Martian desert, caught on a Mars Orbital SpySat.

Re: Looking for a technobabble Term

Of course, xenoarcheology is a high risk occupation.

http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3x2.html#alien

Re: Duke Saturn & The Astro Commandos (6e)

Basically, they are VPP's with small Pools but with large Control Costs.

 

What I've been thinking is something around 10-20 Point Pools with a 100 Point Control Cost.

 

This makes them very capable tools but it doesn't let the PC's treat them as the toolbox.

That is a very nuanced construction method. Very versatile, but not too uber-powerful.

Re: Plasma Rocket!

The great thing about this new technology is the vast reduction in size.

Well, technically the great thing about the VASIMR is that it has a far superior "specific impulse" compared to the best possible chemical rocket.

The practical upshot is that more of the rocket is payload and less of the rocket is fuel.

Re: Duke Saturn & The Astro Commandos (6e)

I vaguely remembered that one of the biggest dangers facing the Green Lantern Corps was Sinestro.

The thought occurs to me that one of the biggest dangers that could face the Astro Commandoes is one of their own number who decide to be evil.

Re: The Singularity?

For me it boils down to the fact that' date=' despite any sort of algorithmic evolution, great advances in processing are going to require physical artifacts to facilitate them. I suppose you could posit scenarios like a machine that uses electrical inductance to connect itself to an adjacent, unattached machine, or invents a time machine that appears from the future, or some other SFy handwave. But these are pretty farfetched ideas. In reality, no matter what software it's running, a machine is a pretty limited thing.[/quote']

Ummm, I take it you've never seen a modern automobile assembly line? The ones were computer controlled waldoes assemble cars?

Re: The Singularity?

I would ask "what does 10000 times smarter actually mean?"' date=' and point out that power line running into the facility where the AI is located.[/quote']

Heh. That might not be as easy as it sounds.

That was more or less the entire plot of the novel The Two Faces of Tomorrow by James P. Hogan. Which is a ripping good read, and a great source for a Star Hero campaign, by the way. In the novel, the scientists want to find out if a computer AI can develop an "unpullable plug", that is, come to a point where humans cannot shut off the power to the computer. Hilarity ensues.

 

It is available for free from Baen Books.

Go to

http://www.baen.com/library/

On the left, click on "The Authors"

In the Author's Index, click on "James P. Hogan"

Scroll down and click on The Two Faces of Tomorrow

You can download it in a variety of formats, or read it online.

Re: Plasma Rocket!

Yes, this report is about the good old VASIMR engine, which has been in the news for a few years now

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_Specific_Impulse_Magnetoplasma_Rocket

http://www.google.com/search?q=vasimr

Like most engines of its type, the thrust is low, but the "gas mileage" (specific impulse) is fantastic. It is no good for take off or landing, but it is great for traveling between planets.

Also, unlike almost all other engines, it can "shift gears." That is, it can increase the thrust at the expense of gas mileage, and vice versa.

Re: Time Travel in Sci Fi and Games....The Good, The Bad, and the Oh so Ugly...

And there's also the growing awareness that Time Travel is only possible becuse a Time Traveller provided the technology - and invented the Banana

Great paradox.

Like in the old movie "Somewhere In Time." Consider, when was the pocket watch constructed?

Re: Duke Saturn & The Astro Commandos (6e)

The only thing you have to be careful about is to ensure all the ring holders are of noble mind.

Otherwise you've created a "Highlander" situation, where the ring holders will start killing each other in order to increase the power of their rings.

Re: The Singularity?

For me' date=' it comes down to something more simple: technolnogy exists to serve peoople. If people feel they can't keep up, they'll just not buy or use the latest thing.[/quote']

 

Ummmmm, not to put too fine a point on it, but in the Terminator movies, the people could not keep up but it was not an option to not buy or use SkyNet. As much as you didn't want them, the blasted terminators would hunt you down and kill you.

In the same way, if we inadvertently start the singularity by creating an intelligent computer ten thousand times smarter than we are, it can do to us pretty much whatever it wants.

Re: Lessons from Byzantium

UGGH......mention not the complete Idiots Guide to Anything! Lowest Denominator writing is what keeps things boiled down to the lowest denominator.

Well, there is always Edward Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, but that is a little ... dense.

Re: The Singularity?

It's the timescale that doesn't make sense to me. Is new stuff just supposed to just magically appear out of thin air then be just as quickly if not more so replaced?

Not quite.

It means that sometime in the next couple of decades some clown will invent a computer with artificial intelligence that is smarter than we are. Since your average computer can think about five million times faster than we can, every six seconds it can do as much thinking as we can do in twelve months. It will be able to bootstrap itself into becoming a super computers. Give it a few minutes and the super computer can boostrap itself into being a super-duper computer. In less time it can become a super-super-duper computer.

As it thinks faster and faster, and becomes more and more intelligent, it will be the entity making new technological advances and engaging in planned obsolescence in a timeframe of microseconds. If we are lucky, it will allow us to upload our brains into the system so we can participate.

Alternatively, the Singularity might come not with intelligent computers, but by increasing our own intelligence. A "Flowers for Algernon" scenario, but without the balloon popping.

Re: The Singularity?

Well, if you read some of the writing about the singularity, they go even more extreme.

You know how it took a few years for us to go from VHS video tapes to DVDs? They say that shortly before the singularity such changes will be happening on a timescale of microseconds, not years.

Re: Lessons from Byzantium

Luttwak might help you write better scenarios' date=' but he's otherwise a nearly-complete waste of time. Just wrong on so many levels.[/quote']

Yes, but for a Star Hero campaign, it doesn't matter if it is wrong. It just has to be exciting.

I found the first few chapters to have interesting notes on the evolution of an empire's foreign policies, useful for outlining the dynamics of your galactic empires at various stages of their lifespan.

 

But if Luttwak annoys you, one can even find useful campaign material in, say, The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Roman Empire.

Re: Nova?

Well, the main obstacle to the development of a strong space infrastructure is the lack of anything valuable enough to make it worthwhile. For SF novels, I call such a resource "Maguffinite."

In Larry Niven's PROTECTOR, the Maguffinite is magnetic monopoles. It has to be something valuable that is not available on Earth. Say a substance that can cure male pattern baldness or be the perfect weight-loss treatment.

Re: Lessons from Byzantium

From another thread' date=' we're probably looking at sol-type systems almost 20 LY apart on average, and not all of those with fully habitable worlds.[/quote']

 

Well, that falls under the heading of "tweeking the average separation between Earth-like planets"

Re: Lessons from Byzantium

One thing though I point out to my players' date=' Earth Like, doesn't necessarily mean you want to live there heh.....[/quote']

"Earth-like" means "you will not die instantly if you stand on the planet in shirt-sleeve clothing."

Which includes places colder than Antarctica, hotter than the Sahara Desert, with more air pollution than Eastern Europe, with more UV than directly under the Ozone Hole, and other delightful spots.

Re: Nova?

True, but there will be some form of government supervision. This will be for the same reason the government generally does not allow corporations to own thermonuclear warheads.

I discuss this here:

http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3t.html#orbit

http://www.astronomynow.com/news/n1001/07dust/

Go to the link. Look at the picture. I'll wait.

Evil game masters will now be grinning from ear to ear. What will your stable of players not do in order to escape When Worlds Collide?

Why are the players in that system in the first place? Oh, I imagine that there is some kind of unobtanium that is only formed by planetary collisions, and therefore worth zillions of credits a gram.

Re: Nova?

Actually I think Jerry Pournelle's A Step Farther Out (which I found in my Lensman box)' date=' really laid out some nice stuff for all of that. Great book by the way if you have not read it (not counting you Nyrath I know you've read it heh).[/quote']

Yes, I have a note to that effect on the title page of my Atomic Rocket site.

Re: Nova?

Possession is 9/10ths of the Law. I'm pretty sure' date=' if some company manages to get up there to grab a nice chunk of metal in the form of an asteroid, then they'll own it. After all, how is someone going to take it away from them? That Outer Space treaty is a joke anyway and would go the same way as every other similar treaty that went to the compost heap dirtside, the second some company figured out how to make the profit exceed the investment.[/quote']

Well, up until the point where the company has the capability of slicing off the asteroid chunks capable of annihilating entire cities and accelerating them into an Earth impact trajectory. Before that point the company will experience an expression of displeasure from the national government which has jurisdiction (e.g., the company will be nationalized, the corporate headquarters will experience a commando raid capturing all the CEOs, military spacecraft will seize the company's spaceborne assets, something like that).

Re: Nova?

I understand that the total value on the current market of all the stuff that makes up a typical metallic asteroid is somewhere in the neighborhood of $20,000,000,000,000.

 

You'd think that would be an incentive.

Well, you have to subtract the transportation cost from that total.