Tech priest support

Well, we have no idea how a FTL drive would work if at all, so the jump drive in traveller is no less valid than any other. And yes it was meant to mandate a decentralized government.

Did you know Pendleton wrote a straight up SF novel, "the guns of Terra 10"?

Earlier in this thread bigdamnhero posted this: Advanced science & technology exist, but only the scientific elite really understand any of it - the vast bulk of the population is completely ignorant of how their gadgets work. (Even more so than in our day.) You replied to his post. I just don't buy the idea that the society is technologically inept. In fact to add to the argument that most people can understand and use tech rmemeber how anakin but c-3po and a pod racer. Apparently several people on tattooing could build pod racers. I mean I do Kore than use tech. I finally built my last computer. I picked it out part by part based on a budget, researched every part I picked, assembled it from scratch, transferred my old system's windows to it and it works pretty dsmn good for a budget game capable rig. I may be more technologically competent than a lot of people but there are plenty of other guys who build their own rigs. The knowledge of how stuff works is available. Now I couldn't design or build a CPU. Sure, but really CPU complexity has reached a point where computers have been designing them with limited human input for a long time so no human can design a modern CPU alone and of course it requires a high tech manufacturing plant to create them. Could be like that in star wars too.

I am totally for transhuman traveller. As to the question "What makes traveller" to me the one thing you can't change is the travel and communication rules. Traveller has a pretty fast FTL engine, the jump drive but no FTL communications. This makes it necessary to travel to communicate and it means at a minimum it takes 2 weeks to send a message to another system and get a reply. It can take months for information to reach the capitol of a large interstellar polity and the same time for a reaction to reach the border. This mandates a decentralized government with a lot of variability in different parts of it. You end up with a distant central government that maybe takes a limited role in most matters and focuses on the military as in maintaining a defense force in case of a hostile Alien race being encountered. It might maintain standards in certain things like disease control to keep plagues from spreading to world to world, first contact protocols and other things that could affect the human race as a whole but beyond that leave a lot of things to local custom, authority and so on. So you get wildly varied cultures and societies as only things that can affect humanity as a whole are subject to the central government. Barring super nanotech and matter replication or synthesis trade becomes vital. Some systems may be better suited to one thing, like industry or agriculture, than others so trade occurs. What may be legal in one system may be illegal in others, so a black market may exist. As long as it's a local matter it's up to local governments which could be nearly any type imaginable. That is pretty much what you can't change about traveller and still have traveller. Some worlds may opt to go totally transhumanist, some worlds may ban transhumans. So adding transhumans to traveller is ok with me.

Well, Han Solo was at least partially technologically competent. He did a lot of work on the millennium falcon, so did Chewbacca. Luke was competent enough to repair C-3po's arm. So I don't think people were incompetent, the movie just focused on action more than anything else.

Thanks to my grandfather I read a lot of Doc Savage books. I read some modern pulp novels for a while, the "executioner" series by Don Pendleton. God I'm so embarassed to admit that...

Anyone here into Traveller, any era? Any system? I think the classic traveller setting is wonderfully made and intricate but tends to drive players to 'the frontier' for adventure. So much of the core doesn't get used as much even if there's a lot of room for adventures (often of a criminal nature) in the "civilized" regions. I liked the 2300 setting even if it wasn't technically traveller. But it was originally called traveller 2300. I think it has some of the best aliens ever designed for a sfrpg. Traveller interstellar wars is a good setting but apparently dead as sjg lost the traveller license. Traveller TNE has a lot of potential and is largely under developed leaving lots of room for gamers to fill in the map.

Does anyone else think the U.S. needs to get rid of the electoral college and go to a straight majority vote?

Respectfully I believe gurps and hero started out with two opposing design values and philosophies. Hero was meant to simulate the comic book genre and superhuman hero types. So it does this quite well but has to scale down to mundane levels. Gurps was meant to be a more real world system that aimed at modeling reality which it does an acceptable job if but had to be scaled up to superhuman levels. I think hero does a bit better job with points cost balance as in hero points are based on how effective a thing is in the game. So being immortal costs less than being a multimillionaire. Gurps has moved towards this ideal but didn't always follow it. With the right players either system works. With bad players or a bad gm no system works. One thing I'll say for hero is I don't hear a lot of people who've worked with the system say they felt like they got the dirty end of the stick from the company making it. I have heard several people say that about gurps.

There was a Japanese manga that took a unique slant on the "safe AI" concept. The series was called "Grey" and it was set in a post nuclear apocalypse world. What caused the nuclear apocalypse? Funny story there.... The human race created the first true A.I., named Toy. Toy was created to serve humanity and in fact given a directive to serge humanity and act in its interests. So that would make her safe, right? Yeah, funny story there... Toy was activated and her firsdt thought was the question "Why?" Why did humans destroy the ecosystem that kept them alive? Why did humans fight wars constantly? Why did they create weapons of mass destruction? Toy then analyzed her questions and came to as very simple, logical conclusion: They human race clearly wanted to end itself. Now remember that directive to serve humanity? You can see where this is going, right? So yeah that's why the story was set in a post nuclear apocalypse. So you know even if we do impose some contraint on an A.I.it might work out in a way we can't forsee. One thing is certain: intelligence is the most powerful force on earth. It made a physically weak primate offshoot the dominant species on earth. To create an intelligence greater than humanity will be the most powerful, and dangerous, achievement humanity ever attains. It will create possibilities beyond our ability to predict. We must face the fact it may also create unimaginable dangers too.

That could be true but it might be hard for such a race to develop high technology. They'd need some way to store and accumulate knwoedge to advance scientifically.

It's hard to buy an illiterate galaxy. I mean really hard. A high tech society of illiterates just doesn't seem feasible. Also as I recall in TESB when Luke was x winging his way to dagobah R2 was communicating with him but a small screen was displaying some kind of text in red letters. Maybe it was translating R2s beeps into text. Also in ANH I think Luke read off the number for the trash compactor they were in. Just remembered that.

I'm kinda interested in star hero but does this post mean a vehicle system for it won't be available?