Breaking the Heart of the Universe

[Snowden]

So, if Multiverser can do Science Fiction and Fantasy without batting an eye, GURPs can pretty much do the same, and a host of Space games developed for d20 (D&D), where are the game mechanic differences between what fantasy and science fiction need if not the framework of sci-fi literature instead of fantasy epic?

I think that at one extreme, the mechanical differences are trivial: in the big picture, "Dune" and "Ringworld" don't make any demands on system (as opposed to setting)  that Tolkein, Howard, and Homer don't.  At the other extreme, "conceptual" science fiction (which I've never seen reflected in RPG design) might need tightly focused rules tailored to whatever each story/game was about.  This isn't really that different from fantasy gaming, where you have D&D and Heroquest at the first extreme and My Life With Master and Trollbabe at the other; I think what sets science fiction apart is that "weird" end of the spectrum is much more strongly represented in the source material.

[contracycle]

On the face of it, this definition would appear to exclude a lot of things that are commonly accepted as "science fiction" (Star Wars and Trek, Dune, Martian Chronicles, Childhood's End, a good chunk of Heinlein, the Alien franchise, Niven, and every non-"cyberpunk" SFPRG I can think of including Traveller), because they either don't feature technology as a prominent element, or use it only as color to amplify and embellish a story that could have been told without it.

Yes.

I'm admittedly among the hard care mentioned here in the Wikipedia's article on types of science fiction (section Other types below):

Hard science fiction

Main article: Hard science fiction

Hard science fiction, or hard SF, is a subgenre of science fiction characterised by the copious use of science and technology, and a focus thereupon. Hard SF stories focus on the natural sciences and technological developments. Some authors scrupulously eschew such implausibilities as faster-than-light travel, while others accept such plot devices but nonetheless show a concern with a seemingly (though often times not) realistic depiction of the worlds that such a technology might make accessible. Character development is sometimes secondary to explorations of astronomical or physical phenomena, but other times authors make the human condition forefront in the story. However a common theme of hard SF has the resolution of the plot often hinging upon a technological point. Writers attempt to have their stories consistent with known science at the time of publication.

Soft science fiction

Main article: Soft science fiction

Soft science fiction is the subgenre where plots and themes tend to focus on philosophy, psychology, politics and sociology while de-emphasizing the details of technological hardware and physical laws. It is so-called 'soft' science fiction, because these subjects are grouped together as the soft sciences or humanities. For instance, in Dune, Frank Herbert uses the plot device of a universe which has rejected conscious machines and has reverted to a feudal society. Consequently Herbert uses the Dune saga to comment about the human condition and make direct parallels to current socio-political realities. Soft science fiction may explore the reactions of societies or individuals to problems posed by natural phenomena or technological developments, but the technology will be a means to an end, not an end itself...


Other types

There are, of course, many borderline cases of works using outer-space settings and futuristic-looking technology as little more than window-dressing for tales of adventure, romance, and other typical dramatic themes; examples include Star Wars (which is considered by some diehards to be not science fiction but fantasy) and many Hollywood space operas, such as Star Trek. Some fans of hard science fiction would regard such films as fantasy, whereas the general public would probably place them squarely in the science fiction category. It has been suggested as a method of resolving this confusion that SF come to stand for speculative fiction and thus encompass fantasy and horror fiction as well as science fiction genres. During the 1980s another new type emerged: Cyberpunk. Cyberpunk was probably first written and conceived by William Gibson through his work Neuromancer.

I'm probably reading this definition as more strict than it was intended to be...could you clarify what you mean by "technology" and "irrelevant"?

No you are reading it correctly.  Take the Aliens franchise - the first movie is nearly SF, but is not because in fact the monster is just a monster designed to be monstrous, and there is no explanation of its origins.  It's as impossible a creature as a dragon.  On the other hand, the Legacy of Heorot (Niven/Barnes/Pournelle) while also being mostly a monster-hunt story is real SF because of the discussion of the native ecosystem necessary for the humans to figure out and thus kill the monster(s).  The presence of that ecosystem, the process of its investigation, and the capabilities of the monster constitute the extrapoloation of the known possible necessary for hard SF.

I also noticed this paragraph from the Wikipedia article:

Fiction which is concerned with science has been repeatedly diluted and dumbed down for the mass audience of radio and television. Ironically, this dumbing down process has been so effective that the television version of sci-fi has come to be used as a format for dumbing down other scripts which would have been tossed out as "too cerebral". This happened with the satirical dystopian novel It Can't Happen Here which was transformed into the science fiction series V in order to dilute it down to a level the TV company considered appropriate for a television audience.

This illustrates the central point of my argument.  I would agree that I am among the hard core who do not regard SW or Trek as having anything to do with science fiction at all.  And I recognise that for the bulk of the public, whose exposure is to TV and film sci-fi, sci-fi means anything that is vaguely futuristic.  Thus I argue, this fault-line in perceptions is echoed in RPG too: those of us interested in actual, hard SF are frustrated by most RPG going the route of pop TV, which has nothing in common with the hard stuff at all.

Hence the sense that there is something like an SF heartbreaker; games that want to be SF in the way the hardcore junkies want it to be but doesn't rise to that point.  Where I think this differs from the fantasy heartbreaker is that the crippling historical influence is not prior RPG but prior pop sci-fi.

[daMoose_Neo]

NOTE: I think that being overly picky about what role science plays is missing the forest for the trees.

Here, I'm not thinking so. If you start trying to apply this discussion to pop culture and book store allocations, then yes, we have a huge, unnesseary mess.
But, in this situation, this distinction is important. We either end up with a refined definition of what it is that Science Fiction is, or, as I'm seeing the discussion, a redundant definition of what a Heartbreaker is.

Let me lay it out as plainly as possible, and someone please answer this: Why do we need an article specifically for Science Fiction Heartbreakers?

1) We've already ruled out the level of technology as a red herring, as a piece will reflect the technological know how and speculations of its time.
2) A fair concencus points to D&D as the granddaddy of SF RPGs, but Traveller has a fair bit there. How much influance has each had? If the former, is there enough Traveller influance to include it as a major influance?
3) What is it that you feel a SF RPG needs and why a Fantasy system cannot deliver those things for you?
4) Consider the discussion from an RP Game mechanics level, which is what Ron's essay is mostly about. The setting is a consideration, but the GAME is the heartbreaker on analysis, not the setting. Where do these games get their conceptual mechanics? Broken D&D? Broken Traveller? Broken Star Frontier? What was the expectation of the new system? Did it meet it? On a mechanical level, what makes these game different from their Fantasy bretheren?

In short: do we need another Heartbreaker essay or not and why?

[M. J. Young]

If those stories could have happened without those particular gadgets, in a setting other than that specifically bounded by the technology of the setting, then it is not SF.  As I have quoted, SF is specifically about the impact of technology on the human experience.  If you are telling a story to whch the technology is irrelevant, then it is not SF - it is just using a futurisitc setting.

I'm sorry. I can't think of a single story in all of Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, or Stargate that could not have happened without the technology. 2001 could have worked if Hal was an intelligent and educated negro slave aboard a seventeeth-century sailing vessel. Now, maybe there are a few episodes in which the technology really did matter, in which the same story could not have been told with minor variations in a different setting, but the bulk of this material requires the technology merely to maintain the setting.

What I read you as saying is that most of what most people call science fiction is not science fiction. That's exactly the same argument Harlan Ellison makes, and I reject it.

If the definition of a science fiction heartbreaker is that it does not fit this extremely narrow definition of science fiction, then the category is nonsense. The number of players who would even recognize that distinction is vanishingly small as compared with the number who would say, "Oh, yeah, science fiction! Like Star Wars!"

You want to define science fiction by "the good stuff". You can't do that. That's not the definition used by the bookstores when they put stuff on the shelf, or by the typical gamer who talks about science fiction games.

But then, it appears that Gareth admits this is exactly what he wants. He wants to say that all science fiction games are heartbreakers because all of them take as their model the space opera/science fantasy model of sci-fi which he discounts (disdains?) as not part of the genre. Gareth's complaint then is not that these games do not succeed at their objective, but rather that he does not consider their objective to be valid science fiction--it's not where he wants to go.

The kind of play he wants, however, requires something extra, something genuinely narrativist. He wants to explore the ramifications of technology on society as a player. He doesn't want a game that tells him "this is the technology, and these are the ramifications for society". However, it may be that this is exactly the sort of game that is a priori impossible to design. The designer must pose a set of technological advances in society, then not tell us what impact this has, which means that he must not provide a description of the society that results from these advances. The referee must also resist the urge to draw conclusions based on those advances. It isn't until the game actually begins that you can start to create the world, but that means you must start play without any context, that is, without the setting that must develop from the technology.

I can think of one possible way to approach this. Start with a modern setting, then propose exactly one technological innovation that is introduced into the world as it is. The players then get to decide what they do with it as it grows from rare to ubiquitous; together with the referee, they must also predict what other people will do with the same technology. Once you've got one going, introduce another. Keep adding one at a time, and integrating the impact as you progress. Even this, though, requires that the players be particularly insightful. The application of new technology to unusual uses is the hallmark of societal change. It takes vision to make those kinds of extrapolations. It's a difficult game at every level.

The remaining quotes are from Nate.

Why do we need an article specifically for Science Fiction Heartbreakers?

The argument is that the same pattern of copying from copies that afflicts Fantasy games also afflicts Science Fiction games. If that's correct, and it yields the same outcome of many games that fall short of their promise because they fail to break out of the established patterns, then a Science Fiction Heartbreakers essay is appropriate to identify what those patterns might be and how to escape them, as well as recognizing the gems amidst the dross of these other games.

A fair concencus points to D&D as the granddaddy of SF RPGs, but Traveller has a fair bit there. How much influance has each had? If the former, is there enough Traveller influance to include it as a major influance?

It's a difficult question to answer. Traveler used a skill system, if I recall correctly, which could be viewed as a major departure from D&D; but Traveler did not invent the skill system concept. Thus it is difficult to know whether Star Frontiers, which also used a skill system, got that from Traveler or from another predecessor outside the science fiction category (I think Fantasy Trip used skills, but that's outside my real knowledge). Lifepaths seems to be Traveler's innovation, but I don't know to what degree that is followed in the genre (Star Frontiers does not use it). Arguably the decision to focus on space opera as the representative type for play has been followed, but this is less a matter of games following Traveler and more a matter of our categorization of games. Star Frontiers makes the same choice, but Gamma World becomes the grandaddy of the Post-Apocalyptic type (mutants, radiation, extant misunderstood technology from an earlier age), and Metamorphosis Alpha (precursor to Gamma World) bridges the gap, being the lost colony spaceship in which the adventures happen, a post apocalyptic world lost in space. Thus to say that all games which choose to represent the space opera concept are following Traveler but those which don't are not in the science fiction category is silly. So I'm not sure what innovations Traveler introduced that are really influential, beyond the idea that you could do "D&D in Space".

What is it that you feel a SF RPG needs and why a Fantasy system cannot deliver those things for you?

The big thing in my view is support for the technology.

There is also something of a "world view" aspect that might matter. If you play D&D or most fantasy games, your character is inherently a religious being: the gods are active in the Earth, and magic is abroad, and the spirits of our ancestors must be respected or they will be angered. Fantasy has essentially religious foundations of one sort or another. Science fiction is largely populated by people who are irreligious. Even those who are religious have that sort of modernist compartmentalized belief system, that religion is important to them but doesn't matter outside its own sphere. To the degree that a fantasy game system supports such religious concepts as true good and evil, immortality of the soul, supernatural realms and powers, and moral obligations, it may be incompatible with the goals of a science fiction game. I don't have this problem (I think that the irreligious view of the future is unrealistic, that religions will continue to have a major impact on humanity far longer than twentieth century skeptics imagine), but given its prevalence in so much of the literature I can see that some would find it difficult.

On a mechanical level, what makes these game different from their Fantasy bretheren?

It's a fair question, and one that's not likely to get a clear answer. After all, by now there's so much crossover mechanically that it's not so easy to see any specific mechanics that are exclusive to one genre. Of course, that happens in science fiction as well. The living starship in Farscape strikes me as very similar to the living starships in AD&D2's foray into space travel, but the former is accepted as science fiction and the latter is clearly fantasy. At some point, the edges blur. When you asked Charlie Daniels what kind of music the Charlie Daniels Band played, he said, "Charlie Daniels Music". Sure, some people set out to do something they think is fantasy or science fiction, but most writers and many game designers I suspect start out to write something they have in their mind without worrying about categories. Categories are slapped onto them later. I still don't know whether the Multiverser novel Verse Three, Chapter One is fantasy, science fiction, or something else. I don't particularly care, as long as the readers enjoy it.

--M. J. Young

[daMoose_Neo]

The argument is that the same pattern of copying from copies that afflicts Fantasy games also afflicts Science Fiction games.

I'm not quite sold on the need for a Sci-fi HB definition.
Your answer is quite applicable for Heartbreakers, but it doesn't say what patterns are so radically different that it needs seperate analysis.
Lining things up as they stand:

Magic -> Technology - Magic weapons, artifacts, devices etc. are Fantay's way of dealing with the impossible/improbable. Technology is Sci-fi's. Innate magic, such as mind reading or other manipulative measures, are usually explained in detail as genetics at work, human evolution.

Tolkiens Races -> Roddenberry's Big Heads - Both groups fall prey to using one established source or another and not deviating far. Fantasy falls back on Tolkien's beautiful, immortal Elves while Sci-Fi has a higher tendeny to fall back on either insects (maybe because of the old Bug Eyed Monster flicks? heh) or "made for TV aliens", creatures that are humans except...for that antenna. Or that pointy ear. Or that colored blood.
Both are usually, as stated, monocultured. Elves are usually "tree loving hippies", ancient and wise. Dwarves are gruff miners. Halflings are gentle, hardworking and generally pleasent. Alien's haven't quite developed such a ubiquitous race, except for maybe the Grey, who are usually wise/highly intelligent, especially interested in Earth, and of course- short with big heads and big black eyes. They're also telepathic.
Bringing up Farscape, I'd say they had about the best alien races I've seen, as well as concepts. Why does everyone speak the same language? Translator microbes in the system, developed to translate recognized speech into a form the host can understand. You even had a few instances where Chriton ran into folks who he COULDN'T understand, and vice versa. Really worked out quite well.

Travel by Horse -> Travel by Spaceship - Horses were expensive and fairly important in feudal times, but in fantasy everyone has a horse. Not really a complaint on my part, since your characters are assumed to be heroes, who would be given access to these things. Some people cite this as a problem in SF games, but really its just the same thing- what would normally be an expensive mode of transportation

Plotting Courses and Travel- Both of the genres in the RPG realm consist of quite a bit of travel. This part is easy to explain- GMs creating new material, players wanting to explore new material or adding their own touches. Similarities exist in both where travelling fraught with all sorts of dangers and possible missteps for the most common forms of travel. Bandits, traps, collapsed black holes, graitational pulls, whirlpools, etc.
For the most part, plotting travel and actually traveling bare a lot of similarities. Such things as stasis pods and what not are trivial- its just an easy way to having to avoid 6 months adrift in space through RP while remaining quasi realistic. Most times gamers will say "Okay, we spent 6 months at sea and now we're at port!" when sailing- stasis pods are the SF equivilent means to the same ends.

Gods -> Science - Looking at the vast majority of whats out there, Fantasy does indeed have and rely on many many Gods. SF, however, replaces this dependance on higher powers with Science, which makes sense. You don't have a Cleric or Priest in the party, you have a Professor, or a skilled scientist (developer of the device you're using maybe).
Stargate is a fairly blatant example- the Gou'uld (or however that is spelt) pose as Gods using elaborate technology to provide their "divine power". When SG-1 encounters a new race or tribe who pledge whatever alligence to the "Gods", one of the first things they do is say/prove "This isn't a God- this is a guy with a fancy ray gun!" (and O'Neil would say it that way too, lol)

There are more nitpickier things, but looking at that list...major elements (those being at the fore in most games) are quite similar between the two beyond simply swapping out horses for "jet powered rocket sleds", swords for ray guns and King Arthur's Round Table for King Arthurs Round Asteroid. Wanting an SF game with loads of tech on space travel is fairly similar to wanting a Fantasy game with its own detailed fedual travel system. An SF with extensive weapons details is fairly similar to a  Fantasy game with tons of offensive Magic.
If anything, I'm seeing copying and many parallels in terms of structure (though obviously not content) from Fantasy to Sci-fi.

[John Kim]

Both groups fall prey to using one established source or another and not deviating far. Fantasy falls back on Tolkien's beautiful, immortal Elves while Sci-Fi has a higher tendeny to fall back on either insects (maybe because of the old Bug Eyed Monster flicks? heh) or "made for TV aliens", creatures that are humans except...for that antenna. Or that pointy ear. Or that colored blood.

I'm not sure I understand your methodology here.  My impression is that you have a set of games which you consider to be heartbreakers, and that then you are looking through them to see what qualities they have.  Could you list out the games which you consider to be the group of SF heartbreakers?  Unless I know the games which you're talking about, there's no way I can agree or disagree with your conclusions about them.

[b_bankhead]

Well its been bun and thought provoking but I think this thread has evolved to the point that it has several subthreads going beyond the original it's time to spawn new threads for them.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Damn good call. Time to stop this one and spawn new ones.

Best,
Ron