Xavier Onassiss

The survivors of Charlottesville have a few things to say about all the false equivalency between the Alt-Right and Antifa.
 
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/08/what_the_alt_left_was_actually_doing_in_charlottesville.html?wpsrc=sh_all_mob_fb_top

What he said. They're all fun, as long as everyone is on the same page. My default preference is probably for medium-hard science, but I've also run Flash Gordon-style games where Mom ear irrigation appt science works however the plot requires.
 
I would also say I see Space Opera as a type of plot structure separate from how hard the science is; you can have space opera with hard or rubber physics.
 
Edit: OK I have no idea how autocorrect decided to insert "Mom ear irrigation appt" in the middle of that. But it's nonsensically awesome and I'm leaving it in!

Despite 40+ years of gaming and sci-fi fandom, I have somehow never run a sci-fi campaign. (Unless you count one near-future cyberpunkey game I ran based on GDW's Dark Conapiracy setting.) I'm really not sure why not.
 
I have run a few SF one-shot convention games, which were based on:
1) Firefly
2) Hero's Alien Wars setting
3) Buck Rogers
 
Currently playing in a Star Wars game with heavy influences from Traveller as well as Futurama.
 
The Grand Space Opera campaign I've been writing in my head for years and may even get to run Some Day Dammit is a mishmash of:
1) Babylon 5
2) The Expanse
3) Valerian and other old Heavy Metal SF stories
4) another French comic called Scourge of the Gods IIRC?
5) Saga (comic book)
6) Traveller The New Era
7) Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat series
8) and a little Farscape and Blake's Seven thrown in for seasoning.
 
And if your thinking most of those sources are mutually exclusive, that's the point. Some Day Dammit...

Larry Niven's Known Space stories introduced me to the notion that you could build an entirely adequate setting in which humans occupy a relatively small bubble of space, with only a few glimpses of what might exist beyond it. No need for a Galaxy-wide society. His essay on megascale artificial habitats was inspiring as well, even though I didn't include any in the setting I ended up building. (Some aliens have ringworlds and the like, but they are far away.)
 
Star Trek: TOS for beginning my love of SF, and first exposure to the idea that some aliens might have been around for a long time before humans arrived in space. But nothing in my setting was really Trek-like, and I didn't want it to be.
 
David Brin's "Uplift" setting was more influential than Trek in this respect, as I decided I wanted my advanced aliens to be at best uninterested, and rather menacing just from the scale of their power compared to new-kids humanity. Some humans think humans should bend the knee and imitate various aliens because the Galactics are obviously so much wiser and more powerful than we are.
 
Dean Shomshak

Many thanks.
 
I forgot to include the six o'clock news as a resource.
 
I don't mean to say I blatantly insert current events into my RPGs, (I don't) but taking a bit of real-life politics or socio-economics here and there and using it in the background can really make a setting ring true. If you do it right, players will look at what's going on and instinctively "get it" without needing everything explained to them, because they've seen it before and they know how it works.

Good poll. There's a similar scale with a bit more detail here:
 
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MohsScaleOfScienceFictionHardness

Good poll. There's a similar scale with a bit more detail here:
 
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MohsScaleOfScienceFictionHardness

The only gaming source for my wider SF setting was Anders Sandberg's "Big Ideas, Grand Vision." I ported a few ideas for future-tech and social implications. More importantly, I wanted to use the wider premise that advancing science and technology is blasting wide open the possibilities for human society. We are heading toward a point where "What is human?" becomes a multiple-choice question, for individuals, societies, and humanity as a whole.
 
The planet of Sard was a Planetary Romance setting. The societies on it also illustrated various possible directions humanity could go. (Though I tried to keep that aspect in the background. I'm running games, not writing a philosophical essay.)
 
Dean Shomshak

Many thanks.
 
I forgot to include the six o'clock news as a resource.
 
I don't mean to say I blatantly insert current events into my RPGs, (I don't) but taking a bit of real-life politics or socio-economics here and there and using it in the background can really make a setting ring true. If you do it right, players will look at what's going on and instinctively "get it" without needing everything explained to them, because they've seen it before and they know how it works.

For the SF campaign I actually ran (and then played in, when a friend ran the sequel), the chief inspirations were Barsoom, the Kregen series, and other Planetary Romance books. But that was because Planetary Romance was the only subgenre some players were willing to try.
 
The wider universe was intended to be, hm, not hard SF -- I'm no Ph.D. -- but, let's say, I tried to get some rigor in the rubber science. Tech has implications. I think my favorite model for good Space Opera writing and universe-building would be the Vorkosigan series by Lois McMaster Bujold.
 
No time to post other sources, the library's about to close.
 
Dean Shomshak

I'm posting a modified version of the reading list from my setting, since I've done some reading since it came out.
 
Stephen Baxter; the Xeelee sequence
David Brin; the Uplift novels
Wil McCarthy; The Collapsium (and sequels)
Alastair Reynolds; Revelation Space (series)
Ken MacLeod; the Fall Revolution novels, Newton's Wake
Paul McAuley; The Quiet War, and Gardens of the Sun
Charles Pelligrino & George Zebrowski; The Killing Star
John Scalzi; Old Man's War (and sequels)
Allen Steele; Coyote (and sequels)
Bruce Stirling; Schismatrix
Charles Stross; Singularity Sky, and Iron Sunrise
David Weber; the Honor Harrington novels
Walter Jon Williams; the Dread Empire's Fall trilogy
C.J. Cherryh; Chanur novels and Downbelow Station
Kim Stanley Robinson: Mars trilogy
Dani and Eytan Kollin; The Unincorporated Man series
Larry Niven; Known Space novels and stories
 
Non-fiction:
 
Martin Beech; Terraforming: The Creating of Habitable Worlds
Jack Cohen & Ian Stewart; Evolving the Alien
David Darling, PhD; The Extra-Terrestrial Encyclopedia
James Kaler; Extreme Stars
John S. Lewis; Worlds Without End
Eugene Mallove & Gregory Matloff; The Starflight Handbook
Gerard K. O'Neill; The High Frontier
Robert Young Pelton; The World's Most Dangerous Places
Marshall T. Savage; The Millennial Project
Peter Ward & Don Brownlee; Rare Earth*
Nicholas Johnson; Big Dead Place
Jerry Linenger; Off the Planet
 
Television:
Babylon 5
Firefly
Battlestar Galactica (reboot)
The Expanse
 
Movies:
I'm thinking... oh yeah, The Europa Report.
 
On the web:
http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/index.php
http://www.orionsarm.com/
http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/Game/BigIdeas/index.html 
http://www.solstation.com/stars.htm
 
 
*Yes, I've heard all the BS about "creationism" in this book. And no, there quite simply isn't any. Don't start with me again because I'm not having it.

I'm posting a modified version of the reading list from my setting, since I've done some reading since it came out.
 
Stephen Baxter; the Xeelee sequence
David Brin; the Uplift novels
Wil McCarthy; The Collapsium (and sequels)
Alastair Reynolds; Revelation Space (series)
Ken MacLeod; the Fall Revolution novels, Newton's Wake
Paul McAuley; The Quiet War, and Gardens of the Sun
Charles Pelligrino & George Zebrowski; The Killing Star
John Scalzi; Old Man's War (and sequels)
Allen Steele; Coyote (and sequels)
Bruce Stirling; Schismatrix
Charles Stross; Singularity Sky, and Iron Sunrise
David Weber; the Honor Harrington novels
Walter Jon Williams; the Dread Empire's Fall trilogy
C.J. Cherryh; Chanur novels and Downbelow Station
Kim Stanley Robinson: Mars trilogy
Dani and Eytan Kollin; The Unincorporated Man series
Larry Niven; Known Space novels and stories
 
Non-fiction:
 
Martin Beech; Terraforming: The Creating of Habitable Worlds
Jack Cohen & Ian Stewart; Evolving the Alien
David Darling, PhD; The Extra-Terrestrial Encyclopedia
James Kaler; Extreme Stars
John S. Lewis; Worlds Without End
Eugene Mallove & Gregory Matloff; The Starflight Handbook
Gerard K. O'Neill; The High Frontier
Robert Young Pelton; The World's Most Dangerous Places
Marshall T. Savage; The Millennial Project
Peter Ward & Don Brownlee; Rare Earth*
Nicholas Johnson; Big Dead Place
Jerry Linenger; Off the Planet
 
Television:
Babylon 5
Firefly
Battlestar Galactica (reboot)
The Expanse
 
Movies:
I'm thinking... oh yeah, The Europa Report.
 
On the web:
http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/index.php
http://www.orionsarm.com/
http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/Game/BigIdeas/index.html 
http://www.solstation.com/stars.htm
 
 
*Yes, I've heard all the BS about "creationism" in this book. And no, there quite simply isn't any. Don't start with me again because I'm not having it.

Re: The Non Sequitor Thread
 
Oooh, eee, oooh, aah, aah....

Someone mentioned Venezuela.
 
Drink!

Some interesting news/analysis here...

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatches/2017/05/18/rosenstein-appoints-special-counsel/

Some interesting news/analysis here...

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatches/2017/05/18/rosenstein-appoints-special-counsel/

Trump delivering the news that "life isn't fair" to Coast Guard Academy grads has got to be a new high point in irony for this administration.
 
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/03/16/us-coast-guard-objects-trumps-funding-cut/99274238/
 
Trump: "Life isn't fair."

Life: "Trump isn't fair."

Trump delivering the news that "life isn't fair" to Coast Guard Academy grads has got to be a new high point in irony for this administration.
 
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/03/16/us-coast-guard-objects-trumps-funding-cut/99274238/
 
Trump: "Life isn't fair."

Life: "Trump isn't fair."

Co-worker: "You working until close?"
 
Me: <Looking around at empty store> "Nope, just pretending to work until close. Pays the same, though."

Awesome Gamer Spouse: "We should get going."
 
Me: "You should put on some shoes, dear."
 
AGS: "Shoes are a pain in the butt."
 
Me: "You're wearing them wrong."

Awesome Gamer Spouse: "We should get going."
 
Me: "You should put on some shoes, dear."
 
AGS: "Shoes are a pain in the butt."
 
Me: "You're wearing them wrong."

Co-worker: "You working until close?"
 
Me: <Looking around at empty store> "Nope, just pretending to work until close. Pays the same, though."

It was decreed by Bondo, the Used Car God!

The poll lacked an option for "Enestration" so I didn't vote.
 
Apparently Cancer does not do windows....

The poll lacked an option for "Enestration" so I didn't vote.
 
Apparently Cancer does not do windows....