Original Sci-Fi?

[surreality]

@tinuviel I know, I am old. Though I was a late adopter of anything resembling a mobile phone. My first and only is barely a year old.

[faraday]

@surreality said in Original Sci-Fi?:

Hence the phone example. For most, 'it can make calls, send text based messages, and use little widgets, and you need to recharge it every so often, is breakable especially if dropped in liquid' is all someone needs to know about 'phone' to get by day to day, really.

I think the important distinction is that people need to know what it can and cannot do for RP. How it works is a different question. What kind of radio tech or battery tech the thing uses is not important... until of course the one day the players make it important by trying to "hack" the tech to do (this crazy thing). Which is absolutely a thing that sci-fi game players like to do.

[Thenomain]

@faraday

Wasn't it Gene Roddenberry who famously said that mankind of the future will understand their technology roughly as much as we do ours today? The average person of his day understood how to build a television just about as much as the Lords and Ladies of the future.

Personally, I think it strange that people can understand and accept Space Cowboys more than they can understand and accept Space Knights.

[faraday]

@thenomain But players aren't usually playing the 'average person of his day'. They're playing the Scotty's and Baltar's of the world, who want to reverse the polarity of the dilithuim crystals to save the day, or design a Cylon detector, or a Cylon-disabling computer virus, or hack the Cylon software so they can understand their tactics or take over a Centurion, or fly a Raider, or, or, or, or...

[Packrat]

Fading Suns avoids this in some ways, 99% of people in setting have no fucking idea of basic physics or chemistry, how electricity works is ICly something that is mostly limited to a secretive quasi religious mystery cult guild. Moreover, even if basic stuff like electrical lighting is pretty widespread outside of the peasantry, knowing how it works other than 'switch turns on light' is considered undesirable. Technology is seen as distracting you from the important stuff like spiritual harmony and the state of your soul and in that setting, where the suns are literally dying in an inexplicable and not at all natural manner that defies all laws of science?

That is a big deal!

But the player characters are not 99% of people and a good number of them will be members of various guilds, or educated by them. Also when trying to put together a living and consistent world you run into all sorts of questions. I mean aircraft are rare and expensive in setting, but how expensive, how rare? How expensive are helicopters compared to anti gravity bikes? Or spaceships? Can I have a holographic dress made of colour shifting space fabric? What fuel is being burnt in your Space Limo? (The answer to the last one is alcohol, of course there is no Space Oil on planets that have been inhabited for thousands of years, they use biofuels).

Though it does lead to awesome quotes like this one:

"And so it came to pass that (the Eskatonic mystic) Diophora, lecturing to (the tyrant) Kurgari'i Alecto, spake unto her, `Wilt thou be as the hovercraft, which, so long as the terrain is easy and sure, bears its master aloft on invisible wings of false hubris, detached thereby from man and Pancreator; but, upon coming to a great and lightless abyss, fails in its boastful endeavor, and sends both itself and its erstwhile suzerain spiraling down into the void?'"

[Ganymede]

@lithium

Try Heavy Gear or The Jovian Chronicles. They are anime inspired, mostly from Robotech.

[Ghost]

I would Heavy Gear or Robotech my ass off.

Just sayin'

CAVEAT: So long as they don't use the Palladium RPG System, because fuck that noise. While I don't terribly mind the percentile dice system, there is no way a MU would survive a single combat scene where 6 different PCs and multiple combat opponents each got 3+ turns per round.

[ThatGuyThere]

@ghost said in Original Sci-Fi?:

CAVEAT: So long as they don't use the Palladium RPG System, because fuck that noise. While I don't terribly mind the percentile dice system, there is no way a MU would survive a single combat scene where 6 different PCs and multiple combat opponents each got 3+ turns per round.

Oh it would survive, everyone involved might not but the game would. I still have traumatic flashbacks to large OWoD werewolf fights.

[faraday]

@ghost said in Original Sci-Fi?:

While I don't terribly mind the percentile dice system, there is no way a MU would survive a single combat scene where 6 different PCs and multiple combat opponents each got 3+ turns per round.

I don't get it? It would be like FS3 where the slow people only got to act once every 3 rounds. It would suck to be slow, obviously (been there - I'm looking at you Shadowrun) but I don't see how it's a dealbreaker.

Of course if you're not automating combat... then yes. Run away, run far away.

[golgoth]

Interestingly, a lot of games I have visited have put a lot of detail in the tech (or whatever) so that players who want to can do further research on the topic. They become more involved with how their cyber arm or nanos work and thus become more immersed in the setting.

Of course, some still don't do it and they utilize the same mentality as expressed here... Common people typically aren't concerned with HOW something works, bit just that it does.

I am not a staffer on a major game, but I have never, as a player, seen an issue like this come up where the player hasn't put the effort into learning something about the craft their player is involved with.

[Ganymede]

@faraday said in Original Sci-Fi?:

I don't get it? It would be like FS3 where the slow people only got to act once every 3 rounds. It would suck to be slow, obviously (been there - I'm looking at you Shadowrun) but I don't see how it's a dealbreaker.

Anything by Palladium is something you don't want to get, darling.

[faraday]

@ganymede said in Original Sci-Fi?:

Anything by Palladium is something you don't want to get, darling.

C'mon, I grew up on the Robotech RPG Megadamage! I wouldn't want to play it now, but the multi-action combat turns are really the least of my concerns there.

[Pandora]

Atonement

This is the MU I was referencing in the original post when I was talking about something original. I fully recognize there are licensed sci-fi universes out there that would cater easily to the lowest common denominators, but there's already a thread for whatever-sci-fi, you know? I'm only interested in original themes , preferably with enough complexity that people disinterested in reading/learning would just take a hike.

[surreality]

@golgoth This is really just what I can't get into. There's a certain level of detail that's handy for the reasons @faraday describes: answering the questions 'can this be hacked to/reverse engineered to/etc.'

That answer doesn't need to be technically figured in advance and available as easy reference when the game opens. It needs a 'yes' or a 'no', and either the creators can come up with a how to add to the tech info, or allow the first player to perform this feat to come up with something and add that.

Players are the exceptional characters in a world, sure, but not all players are interested in telling stories all about the tech. Some folks -- myself included -- are far more interested in telling the human (or not human!) stories of how people are affected by the danger and isolation of being in space, of how to handle matters of scarcity (The 100 is a great example of this), of first contact with aliens or alien relics or societies (any number of films and television series), and so on.

I have yet to find this in a sci-fi game, because the tech -- and the arguments springing from the tech, which are for some reason about ten times as grating as any rules lawyering game system argument -- becomes such a hyper-focus that it drowns out everything else. Firefly was not a story about tech, for example; the tech is not the primary reason why people loved that series. The Alien series of films is not about the tech, either. Tech is featured in these things; it is not their primary focus, and that's where most sci-fi games end up failing me in terms of my personal taste regarding anywhere I'd like to play.

Trek, to me, is a great example of handwavium.

How do these people get their food? Uh, from a magic box that takes food orders. (We'll figure out how the magic box works beyond the very basics later or the fans will fill that in.)

How do people get from place to place without shuttles? Uhm, they teleport! Cool! (We'll get the basics down, and anything specific doesn't need to be known from the start of the series and wouldn't even be known to most of the characters who have used these things all their lives beyond the basics we'd think of as cautions to drive a car: wear a seatbelt, don't exceed this speed, this is the safety feature people would be familiar with: the airbag... )

...and so on. This gets the nitty gritty of the technical trivia out of the way of the actual story people want to tell, and it's important, because without some measure of handwavium, all you're doing is sitting around like Gune, wondering what that thing was you built last night in your sleep.

This is really not everybody's brand of fun and I really wish there was a sci-fi game that didn't fetishize the tech so hard.

[faraday]

@surreality said in Original Sci-Fi?:

Some folks -- myself included -- are far more interested in telling the human (or not human!) stories of how people are affected by the danger and isolation of being in space, of how to handle matters of scarcity (The 100 is a great example of this)

That's where the problem comes in, I think. Because yeah, The 100 tells some great human stories. But the science/tech in them is COMPLETELY F-ING RIDICULOUS. That show is practically unwatchable for me because the writers don't even bother with the most rudimentary levels of plausibility.

So to take that and go play on a game where the theme basically says: "Abandon all laws of physics and common sense, ye who enter here..." That is not fun for me.

Note: I'm not saying it can't be fun for other people. Go for it. Just illustrating how "handwavium" can result in a massive disconnect between different players and their expectations.

[Lithium]

@ghost said in Original Sci-Fi?:

I would Heavy Gear or Robotech my ass off.

Just sayin'

CAVEAT: So long as they don't use the Palladium RPG System, because fuck that noise. While I don't terribly mind the percentile dice system, there is no way a MU would survive a single combat scene where 6 different PCs and multiple combat opponents each got 3+ turns per round.

Kingsdale RIFTSMU* used the full palladium system, multiple attacks per round and all. It actually isn't that bad, cuz most people go then next attack sequence, and so on and so forth. Each 'Round' just plays like mini rounds.

[golgoth]

My point came across wrong. I have never been to a game where it is either strongly enforced or so overly handwaved that it doesn't draw a player in techwise. I have had bigger issues with entering into a game and needing to know minute details about the theme when my character, and the vast majority of the characters in the game, will not and usually should not.

Even then, I fake usually fake it til I make it. If it really came down to it, I personally appreciate references as needed but also mostly appreciate being able to handwave most aspects of whatever profession as needed.

Anyhow: Big pro Sci-Fi. Wanna see more games based around it! Cyberpunk gets a plus, so does Eclipse Phase style (because I can have my horror, cyberpunk, etc as needed).

[Collective]

I am always, always, always amused by nerds when it comes to plausability.

"Look, I'm fine with interstellar teleportation, true AI and space Mormons, or FTL ships, matter transmutation and fields of coherent invisible energy that block attacks, or space samurai, laser swords and moon-sized ships, but damn it, this one thing over here is just a step too far!"

[ThatGuyThere]

Kind of related to the tech thing for original sci fi for me is always the culture questions.
One of the big reasons I prefer modern or games set in properties with a lot of lore is that is makes the social RP a lot easier. In a modern game I can just look at what exists in the world around me, my character has different tastes for entertainment then I do but I can pull up a list of shows that fit a category and with a bit of wiki reading fake being a fan of them.
That is one issue I tend to run into in original setting is what would my character talk about, what is done for entertainment etc.
A lot of home brew settings miss this part which for me makes it hard to get into a character.

[surreality]

@faraday said in Original Sci-Fi?:

@surreality said in Original Sci-Fi?:

Some folks -- myself included -- are far more interested in telling the human (or not human!) stories of how people are affected by the danger and isolation of being in space, of how to handle matters of scarcity (The 100 is a great example of this)

That's where the problem comes in, I think. Because yeah, The 100 tells some great human stories. But the science/tech in them is COMPLETELY F-ING RIDICULOUS. That show is practically unwatchable for me because the writers don't even bother with the most rudimentary levels of plausibility.

^ And the level of vehemence, that feels not only like shouting down and egregious condescension, but misses the point of what someone else finds interesting about it, is exactly the experience I have had on every single sci-fi game I ever tried, and seen in every conversation about ones that exist or are being built, and turns me off so hard I have completely given up on the genre.

I am not trying to insult you or say you did something crappy there, but 'someone is going to vehemently make me feel stupid for liking something that has cool X stuff going on, and that I like that cool X stuff, and I have no idea what Z things they're complaining about because the Z things are completely irrelevant to me' is a shitty feeling to have.

Since this seems to be the #1 pastime of sci-fi games, I consider them an unfriendly environment on the whole, often to the point of active hostility and ugly condescension in the same way the people who are obscure comics lore experts railing about how so-and-so is 'doing it wrong' in their portrayal of a character are obnoxious, or it would be obnoxious for me to OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG SO STUPID DID YOU SEE THAT HEADPIECE?!?!?! WHAT SERVING GIRL CAN AFFORD THOSE PEARLS; THIS IS CRAZY! at people enjoying an episode of Reign, and modeling something they do on an L&L game on that dubiously accurate ensemble.

It surprises me that we recognize that the latter two examples are absolutely jerk behavior, but the first, which is exactly the same things, is instead the cultural norm that is embraced and insisted upon for another genre.