[Humanity Beyond Earth] A nar/sim transhuman space opera.

[Elliott Belser]

Hi!
  (Snip)
What's the theme? Is it that Adding machine to humans makes them less human, or is it that yo can;t stop evolution? Is there a Technocracy theme? Do those who have the most tech rule? Is there a Technoratti theme, where those with the most money and influence benefit from tech while the unwashed masses live still haven't imrpoved? Are all humans treated well, while intelligent machines are treated unfairly like second class citizens?

It depends on the culture, but "you can't stop evolution!" is the default theme - as is "We have met the aliens, and they is us." Ultimately, whether shedding your body makes you less human is up to the players and will be reflected in thier choice of Motivation shift.  (I've not played a game yet with a good Humanity mechanic, although note I have yet to play Sorcerer.) Mostly it's about cultural clashes.

In the Principality and the New Earth Republic, machines aren't even citizens: among Those Who Learned they're second class citizens: among the Free Transhuman League they're equals: in the Network they arguably RULE (the computer is your friend, trust the computer).  Genetic engineering is anathema to the Republic, the domain of the highest nobles in the Principality, mandatory for TWL, a non-issue in the Network where everyone wants to upload thier mind and escape thier bodies anyway, and an art form for the FTL.

Space opera meets transhumanism here: optimistic but not naive is the goal.  One thing I'd like to do is have a cold war setting: they're fighting over what's left of Earth, which is kind of sliding towards an Ice Age.  (Anna and I kind of disagree on whether Earth should be around still.)  I want this to support dramatic diplomatic luncheons to discuss trade routes into League space as well as screaming battles where you fire all starboard electromagnetic kinetic cannon and deperatley try to reprogram and reason with your AI fightercraft on the fly.

[Anna B]

I'm not sure how often motivations will lead directly to rewards. We are still working on the mechanics behind this.

WW uses Motivations (in the form of Nature and Demeanor) as an rp hook for the kinds of things that PCs must do in order to refresh a spendable Trait (Willpower).  Something similar could work here.  This gives the player a game-mechanical reward for good rp.

I've never gotten that to work. I suposed some that could just be game size. I had difficultly remembering what Legacy everyone had. (I used to run I small Changeling LARP). I suposse this could be problem with motivations too. But hopefully they will come up in play often enough that players won't forget. Legacy or Nature and Demeanor never seemed to matter much after character creation.

Besides at the moment motivations are spendable. You can use your emotional drive to get things done. They shouldn't refresh themselves.

And El you can destroy the Earth if you like (and everyone else agrees.) I'll just be sad about it. I like the earth.

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

I'm going to propose something you're not going to like, Elliott. I promise you I'm bringing up these ideas because I think they'll help you make a better game.

Don't have classes, skills, or a stack of eight stats. These are things I think you're doing because they're like other RPGs you've played, not because they're good ideas.

Instead, have Motivations and Modifications. You stats should be useable, but need not be perfectly descriptive. Motivations are human desires, like love, money, power, and the survival of one's offspring. Modifications are things that make these people different from you and me; they can be robot bodies or powerful philosophies. Stats serve a solely mechanical purpose, but you probably want to color them lightly.

Think about how you want the game to work, rather than starting with this stuff. Think about your themes, which will no doubt be about the nature and definition of humanity. Only have stuff in the system that has to do with that. If, indeed, the theme is "You can't stop evolution!" then perhaps episodes should be one session in length, returning to the story a generation on. Every time a character dies without fulfilling hir Motivation, you know that the principles embodied in that character aren't going to make it to the next round. The next character that player plays will either be of a dominant genotype or part of a failing one, with a chance to mutate and change for the next episode.

Above all, don't penalize players for the exit of their characters, through death, irrelevance, or whatever. Keep resources (character points or whatever) in the hands of the player, not the character. You get just as much storytelling power from being part of a failing genotype as you do for being part of a successful one; you can just do different, probably sadder, stuff.

Resolution is totally broken in it, but you might want to check out v. 0.1.0 of my current project, Shock: Social Science Fiction. It discusses humanity mechanics at one point. The game works great right up the moment you start doing stuff, so check out the World Creation phase and the Praxis Scales for ideas about what you're doing. I wish I could recommend just using the game for what you want, but it's too broken.

[Elliott Belser]

Not having classes, skills, and predefined stats?

...that actually seems extremley sensible, if problematic.  The game isn't about that, you're right.  The game is about A) What does it mean to be human?  And B) How will human societies interact? 

I DO want there to be an identifiable game world, but I could just make it very lightly Sim, and say "These are the only things that you have to take on thier own terms."  I still want to have my 5 Cultures, if only as examples of how to build characters.

Motivations and Modifications... as the only stats, you mean?  Player defined?  What do you mean by "color them lightly?"

Point taken about playing a character of a people fading into irrelevance or dying - it should be an opportunity for tragic play.

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

Not having classes, skills, and predefined stats?

...that actually seems extremley sensible, if problematic.  The game isn't about that, you're right.  The game is about A) What does it mean to be human?  And B) How will human societies interact?

OK, so how do Protags demonstrate what it means to the players to be human? What do they do?

There should be some sort of culture shock mechanic, maybe? Societal interaction should be built into the scenario creation rules, probably.

I DO want there to be an identifiable game world, but I could just make it very lightly Sim, and say "These are the only things that you have to take on thier own terms."  I still want to have my 5 Cultures, if only as examples of how to build characters.

OK, but I would build them with interesting synergies, rather than "Elves hate Dwarves" kind of stuff. I realize that's not what you're doing, but that's the Cyberpunk "Empathy" solution to culture clash.

Motivations and Modifications... as the only stats, you mean?

I didn't mean that, but it's a good idea.

Player defined?

See "Traits" in Dogs in the Vineyard if you want to do it this way.

What do you mean by "color them lightly?"

Well, assuming that they're not the central elements of a character, assuming that they're instead the bare minimum a character needs, they really should be thought of first in mechanical terms. Once you do that, you'll find you don't need a huge string of them. Then name them whatever you want.

Point taken about playing a character of a people fading into irrelevance or dying - it should be an opportunity for tragic play.

Yeah. Tragedy seems to be a favorite of mine lately, so it's probably coloring my advice.

I don't know if you've already seen it, but it bears repeating that this post is pretty handy.

Lest I neglect that world creation is an important part of this (and I agree — world creation is very important, particularly given your Schismatrix inspiration. Don't forget, though, that those are a bunch of short stories that build on one another. Sterling didn't plan out everything that was there, then traipse his characters through; he created as he went. Just like any decent GM does. I think you've hit on the right idea when you say that you'll keep your five cultures and make other stuff up on the fly: the cultures are there to apply pressure on each other as long as the protagonists are in the middle. Other stuff will stem from that, and I recommend that it does so on a case by case basis, during scenario creation.

[Adam Dray]

I think you need some kind of way to capture the ups and downs of being more than human. Modifications should come with advantages and disadvantages, and you should let the player write them. Letting players write their own allows them to Address Premise with their character.

Perhaps some kind of player voting system will reward players for bringing in cool ads and disads of their Mods during play. Also, some kind of static reward for bringing a Mod into play, like keys in The Shadow of Yesterday.

The way I approach design is to think: What is the game about? How do I get players to do that? What tools do they need to express it? How do I reward it?

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

I think you need some kind of way to capture the ups and downs of being more than human. Modifications should come with advantages and disadvantages, and you should let the player write them. Letting players write their own allows them to Address Premise with their character.

I started off being against this, and now I'm for. Again, I think a Dogs In The Vineyard-Like system of Traits is what's called for.

Perhaps some kind of player voting system will reward players for bringing in cool ads and disads of their Mods during play. Also, some kind of static reward for bringing a Mod into play, like keys in The Shadow of Yesterday.

... or Minutiæ in Shock:.

The way I approach design is to think: What is the game about? How do I get players to do that? What tools do they need to express it? How do I reward it?

Adam's right. Think about this mechanically, as in, "What do I want the players to be able to do? How can they do it?"

[dindenver]

Hi!
  OK, what do you consider to be the real world effects of these implants and modifications?
  If you could see better than humans, how would you act differently than them?
  If you brain was digitally enhanced, faster with better retention and recall and you knew it, would it effect you psychologically?
  What if you knew you could make a backup of yourself and could never die, could you even relate to humans?
  In Cyberpunk 2020 the mechanics assume that there is only one reaction, superiority and disdain for your fellow man. Do you agree with this assessment? Is there no other reaction possible?

[Adam Dray]

Hi!
  OK, what do you consider to be the real world effects of these implants and modifications?
  If you could see better than humans, how would you act differently than them?
  If you brain was digitally enhanced, faster with better retention and recall and you knew it, would it effect you psychologically?
  What if you knew you could make a backup of yourself and could never die, could you even relate to humans?
  In Cyberpunk 2020 the mechanics assume that there is only one reaction, superiority and disdain for your fellow man. Do you agree with this assessment? Is there no other reaction possible?

Dave, I think Elliott is not well served by those questions. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think the type of game he is trying to write asks the players to answer these questions. If his game answers them -- directly, in the form of game mechanics that support Humanity or something like that, or even indirectly -- the game does those players a disservice.

The trick is to write game mechanics that allow the players to ask those questions and answer them during play. That's when interesting play and fascinating discourse occur.

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

Adam hits it again.

The Motivation mechanic, whatever you come up with, will work here, but let the players fill in the blanks.

[Sean Craven]

Hey, Elliot!

"You usually start by risking your dignity in some way. "

When I read that, it suggested the possibility of a prestige or 'face' mechanism. And as soon as I thought of that, I remembered another semi-transhuman novel you might want to take a look at. It's called Down And Out In The Magic Kingdom, and it takes place in a near-future Disneyland. It's more or less a posthuman conflict for the soul of the Haunted Mansion...

Anyway, in that setting the economy is based on a sort of popularity contest -- the more people think well of you, the more affluent you are. It seems that a varient of that notion might work well in the setting you're talking about. One aspect of the setting that would impact that strongly would be the degree to which there is open information between the cultures. As an example, is there an internet analog that all cultures make use of? Of course, that would have some serious limitations in an interplanetary setting... But think of the ways pop culture transcends 'real' culture in our world, in terms of crossing national boundaries and so on. Then again, what makes a character admired in one culture might be anathema in another.

I suppose that what I'm failing to say here is that we're starting to get to a point where Andy Warhol's fifteen minutes of fame is turning into a condition where everybody is a media figure to one degree or another. When you can Google yourself and get results, then aren't you a star? Sort of? And if communications technology, information storage, and public surveilance keep on developing...

Oh, and Vacuum Flowers by Michael Swanwick is another seminal novel in the posthumanist canon. And while the science is weak, Great Mambo Chicken And The Transhuman Condition provides some interesting details and characters that you might want to look at.

Yours,

Sean Craven

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

Anyway, in that setting the economy is based on a sort of popularity contest -- the more people think well of you, the more affluent you are.

See, also Distraction by Bruce Sterling, speaking of Transhumanism.

I'm not sure you want to build something like this in; you've got a bunch of cultures who may or may not care about this.

What I thought of with your "loss of dignity" mechanic is Trollbabe's increasingly meaningful rerolls. It's free from the Adept Press site.