Creating a "Hard" Science Fiction RPG --- Too Hard?

[Matthew_Teets]

I'm working on trying to make a "Hard" science fiction game, basically without any "magic foozle" things or anything like that.  My biggest struggle is that with trying to use articles from Science Journals to plot what could be done, it makes the games so much harder to control.  I'll give an example:
Fusion and Anti-gravity, theoretically both plausible.  Now the problem is that Fusion gives amples amounts of power for almost any endeavor.  Anti-gravity should open up for advances in material sciences with super hardened materials.  So I'm trying to think of how fortresses would be built after both, and I suddenly realize that if you take a super hardened object even the size of a car, constantly accelerate from around Jupiter, by time it hits good old Terra then, well I can't even compute the force of the explosion.  Theoretically in the future just about anyone could use something like this cheaply.
Of course there is also the problem of characters dying, and weapons in a hard science setting would be terribly destructive.  If you toughen up the humans too much, do they become too unhuman?
The more I think about trying to design the game, the more I have trouble with not only suspension of disbelief, but how to get it so the players and the GM can avoid tormenting each other.
Looking out there, I don't find that much "Hard" science fiction, or it is underpowered for reality.
Is this just a struggle of "too much realism" or am I missing something?
I'm beginning to think that "foozle" is looking pretty good.

[Aussigamer]

yes you end up balancing game mechanics with real life, some where down the track. Or the maths break the flow and will lead to player boredom as the GM takes 15 mins to work out the imapct angle and speed of the slug bolt.....

After all most people die from being hit by a plasma cannon, but for games sake you have HP and then you survive.

Belief wise, I think if the "universe" you design is consistant then players seem happy enought to go along with it. My 1st campaign attempt of scifi I had a mix of demon possession of a machine and ghouls. the players were OK with the ghouls, to them they were diseased humans but hated the machine. So in the end the campaign is what the GM and players are happy with, setting wise.

You can make a "hard" science RPG, just has to be able to be converted to easy speak for us gamers :)

[Eero Tuovinen]

Matthew: if what you're REALLY looking for is hard scifi, I think I can help. It might be that this is not what you're looking for, though...

What hard scifi is about

A typical roleplayer misconception is that there is "adventure" science fiction where the point is to have adventures with laser blaster guns, and "hard" science fiction that prides itself on the internal consistency of it's setting and the realism of it's physics. And to a degree this is true, at least when you look at it from the viewpoint of the audience. As an audience to a good Frederick Pohl novel or whatever it is indeed the physics that captures your imagination, especially those simple yet astounding implications the writer lays out. "What is life like in a relative universe?" the author asks, and gives an answer that's often more fantastic than the weirdest fantasy novel. A conceptually simple matter like flying to the Moon with a chemical rocket gets to be the center-piece of a whole novel, which is really cool.

However, see where that got us, that discussion of what makes a hard scifi novel great has nothing to do with roleplaying adventure! In a so-called "hard scifi roleplaying game" the "hard" part is often just a setting constraint on what the characters can reasonably do. Check out Traveller, the grandfather game of hard scifi; my experience is mostly with the 2300 brand of the thing, but from that experience I'd say that the game is about shooting bug-eyed aliens and Frenchmen (often interchangeably, it seems), not about exploring the logical consequences of the science of physics. This is a rather different thing. This is, actually, just scifi adventure with stricter constraints on the accompanying techno-babble.

So, what's the secret to having REAL hard scifi in a game? I'd say that it's giving the freedom of exploring the logical consequences of science to the players. Your job is NOT to build a logically functioning scifi universe, it's to give the players tools for building one themselves! When I get a hankering for hard scifi (or really, any scifi of the classical brand) it always starts with a question: "What would life be like on a neutron star?" or "How do you protect planets as military objectives when anybody can launch asteroids?" or "What would happen if souls were quantifiable by science?" or "What would society look like stretched on a hundred planets in different solar systems?" or "What's it like to be an astronaut?" If your game gives me no means of exploring these questions with my friends, then it's completely useless as a tool of hard science fiction roleplaying.

When you realize that this is what hard scifi is about you also realize that what roleplayers generally think of when they hear that phrase is nothing more than a general aesthetic. Your audience knows nothing about science, or at least nothing more than you do. So any judgemental mentality they might bring to evaluating your game realism-wise is, frankly, crap. The nerd who complains about your game having unrealistic plasma cannons because jadda jadda has totally missed the point. Life is unrealistic, so what? The best you can do is to be logical where it counts, and this brings us to the job of the author: the job of the players is to ask one of those questions from the last paragraph and be logical when it counts, when they answer the question. You can hack the rest of the setting, you don't even need very realistic character portrayal (ask Isaac Asimov), but you absolutely need to be logical when it counts, otherwise your story is nothing but fluff in the wind.

Consequently, the answer to your question is that you're approaching the problem backwards. You're trying to make a "realistic" adventure game by fiddling with the physical axioms, and getting stuck because you can yourself find the holes in your creation. This is not hard scifi, this is just uncertainty about your creative goals as an author (as opposed to a game designer). If you want hard scifi, you ask the question of "What would warfare look like if you had anti-gravity and fusion?" and let the players answer that question via the act of creation in actual play. Perhaps the players decide that for them, it's perfectly believable and realistic to have the human race imprison itself on Earth simply because any one political body or terrorist group indeed could destroy a continent from outside the gravity well, and nobody wants to let another get that chance (seems like a pretty reasonable starting-point for a scifi novel). So where's your orbital bombardment problem, now? Alternatively, they could decide that Earth was indeed bombed into ruin a hundred years ago already, and everything that's left is fully maneuverable nomadic asteroid colonies, simply because any fixed installations are also easily destroyed in any altercation. That's a completely different answer. The joy of hard scifi comes from laying out these answers and exploring the consequences. What's more important, if you answer the question in your setting material, you're dead certain to meet plenty of people who will think that your answer is unrealistic or uninteresting or in some other way completely unacceptable to how they want hard scifi to work, so it's not hard scifi after all, but just your own fantasies running wild. This is because roleplaying is ultimately an authorly sport: your players will quite rightly recognize that by pre-answering the big questions you're robbing them of their position as authors. They accept it from novelists, because that's how that form operates, but roleplaying works by different rules.

Alternatively, if the above doesn't convince you... if what you really want to do is have an adventure in a realistic setting... then what you should be doing is scrapping the whole idea of "hard scifi". It's not what you're doing, what you're doing is an adventure setting. That's the priority. So figure out what kind of adventure you want, and work backwards from that to some half-plausible axioms. So if you want to make orbital bombardment impossible, put in "statis shields" that make high-energy munitions ineffective. If "statis shields" sound impausible, justify them with quark-pair dislocation effects applied in grand scale. If that still sounds implausible, remember to add in those huge fusion reactors and posit that it takes 20-30 years to engineer one of those shields simply due to the time it takes to collect those separated-connected quarks. Or scrap the shield idea and assume huge clouds of replicating nano-machines beyond moon orbit, ready to eat anything thrown at Earth from above. Whatever works for you. The trick is to realize that you're not making science, you're just thinking up justifications that fit your aesthetics for "realistic".

If the above approach feels shallow, remember that you don't really have a choice: if your other option is to end up with a setting that doesn't allow those dramatic gunfights and narrow last-minute shuttle-pod escapes, then you can't really adventure in that setting, can you? Or as you say, if humans need to be changed into armored turtles just to survive the kitchen-sink-orbital-bombardment phase of tech evolution, then who wants to adventure in that setting? Either you build your setting with adventure in mind, or you make a game that isn't bothered by the places it has to go to realize it's logic.

[Callan S.]

The more I think about trying to design the game, the more I have trouble with not only suspension of disbelief, but how to get it so the players and the GM can avoid tormenting each other.

I think at a basic level it can be sorted out by determining who's turn it is to state something. One primary conflict is thinking it's your turn to add to the world and this thing from the other person is just an abomination that's in the way of you speaking. Get the turn order there and that's out of the way. Suspension of disbelief is more like suspension of your own turn to talk, allowing someone else to speak into your imaginary space.

The other is bredth - spoken additions need to respect the previous additions. The exact boundaries of respect can vary, but they can easily and should be made concrete.

[epweissengruber]

Could this be a good time to talk about simulation?

A game that utilized real science and current speculation about future science would be great!  What GM and Players would need is a mechanic or a procedure for selecting which scientific principles would be of interest in any particular play session.

Writing such a game would be akin to writing a textbook for science teachers: how do you turn a few scientific principles into a few hours of interesting activity.

I have no idea how to do it, but if Sim involves an exploration of the SiS and the SiS in this case is to be plausible science, techniques of exposition, instruction, dynamic play could be productively brought in.

[Matthew_Teets]

Actually some very good comments.  One thought occurred to me about what I call a "foozle" (my own term I guess), it is that item which bends reality to its own whim and makes something possible that normally is not.  Magic, jump drives, resurrection are all what I would term "foozles".  That being said, they can also be constraints in the opposite direction, a perfect example of which is Metamorphisis Alpha, an old game that resurrects itself occasionally because it has one benefit, the GM has a very constrained universe, a ship.  ("I want to leave the ship."  "You can't.")
I don't really care for either foozle.  The fact is I would love to have a game that represents the far, far future as best I can guess it, which is a pretty wild place.  But darned if it isn't an easy place to die in or conquer easily, and I guess that is my problem.  I think the game that I would like to create is a much better novel than game, because it is very interesting but not very fun.  Also I think the problem is that looking at my notes, the future looks so strange I really debate most players ability to relate to their characters at all.  When you can get whatever you want and live nearly forever, what drives you?
So the foozle I'll say is back, trading fun for realism.  I'm not going to give entirely, but I'll say that this is no longer the first concept I'm considering.  Besides, there are just so many great worlds and experiences out there to create.

[TroyLovesRPG]

Hello,

Hard science fiction is one of my favorite genres and its not limited to space jockeys and aliens. There is a plethora of hard science fiction that is set on Earth. Check out the movies Coma, Jurassic Park and Strange Days. Think of "hard science" with a fictional twist on it. Or that the technological evolution is fictionalized. The colonization of the moon, undersea exploration and advanced prosthetics are examples of hard science fiction. Those are plausible and definitely could happen.

If you bend the rules of physics without breaking them then you have a good shot of creating a hard science fiction RPG. Keep the hard facts about life and death. The more real it feels then the greater the adrenaline rush. With enough raw materials and centripetal force, generation ships are a way to reach the stars. Is it glamourous or convenient? Nope, but its hard and very plausible.

If you need to fiddle with the universe then delve into string theory and relativity. What we observe truly is just a shadow of a much more complex universe. This is where the power of the mind could come into play and give you access to effects that cannot be explained with mere laws of physics. The act of thinking is a real thing. It doesn't just happen behind our eyes. It actually affects the universe. Frank Herbert did this in the Dune series.

I imagine the first step in developing a hard science fiction RPG is to know your science. Especially, focus on those areas that will come into play in your game. Using the phrase "that's just the way it works" too often won't fly with an audience having a hard science fiction background. Bring in real terms, equations and practical application. They'd appreciate more creative uses of current science (stretched just a bit) than fantasty. Star Trek is extremely entertaining, yet doesn't qualify as hard science fiction. Its the Love Boat in space. Alien, on the other hand, is very hard and very scientific...except for artificial gravity. Too many paradoxes with that one.

Good luck,

Troy

[razzmataz]

For a hard science RPG, one of the things I've heard before is you get to break one rule of the physical world (say FTL travel, or antigrav), and everything else has to be extrapolated from current technology.  That would take some time to flesh out a basic background for a game world that would be consistant with that rule of thumb.  I think if you start reading up on current technological trends, you would be surprised at some of the things coming up around the corner, whether it be computers or weapons or something mundane as improvements in material science.  If it is something you really want to go indepth with, I'd suggest looking for some of the various magazines and journals that some of the engineering and science professional societies put out (IEEE's Spectrum or ACS's Chemical and Engineering News are two that I know of).  If you do the background right it adds alot of spice to the game world, and sometimes provides enough direction for an enterprising GM/Referee to dive deeper into developing that kind of stuff.

If you are looking for inspiration on this, two RPGs come to my mind - Transhuman Space and GDW's old 2300AD rpg.

[b_bankhead]

I have bad news. No matter how much hard sf goodness you put into the rules or setting material, it doesn't matter if the players knowledge of science isn't up to it.
If it isn't it's going to come out 'hand me the plot device so I can reverse the polarity of the neutron flow" no matter what you do.
You have no way of predicting the level of scientific knowledge of individual members of your audience, in fact you must assume it will very immensely.
(And for god's sake don't buy the old saw 'gamers are more scientifically literate")
I short I come down with the 'player created universe ' crowd', hardness is in the players not the game.

[joepub]

I agree with b_bankhead.

But... I'd prefer to reword it this way:

Instead of trying to define a billion and one Technological Advances and Equipment Options...
You should create a system which charges the PLAYERS with outlining the technologies and how they function.

Check out Shock: Social Science Fiction for one model of how to do this.

But... judging by the fact that you are stressing the technologies, this might not put enough emphasis on the technical, crunchy bits for your liking. That's cool - it's still a really, really good idea to check out and play Shock.

Anyways, core point: Players should be developing the technology lines and gadgetry themselves. If the game is about the hard science, then put the hard science IN THEIR HANDS. Similarily, if the game is about the characters, put the characters IN THEIR HANDS.

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

Joe, I think Shock: is appropriate, too.

The purpose of Shock: is to give science fictiony stuff meaning.

Issues: Claustrophobia, Man is an animal, Man is ingenious.
Shock: Malfunctioning spacecraft on the way to the Moon.

There. We've got Apollo 13. As hard as you can get.

To make Shock: a hard SF game, use hard SF Shocks. Take lots of notes on Minutiæ. I even recommend reading the Science Times and Scientific American for inspiration in the Mediography.

What I did when I designed Shock: was to figure out what mattered to me the most about the science fiction I liked, then write it down and integrate it mechanically into the game.

Matthew, I think that's what you've got to do, too. Figure out what you care about the most. Maybe it's, "By the time this ship returns, 4000 years will have passed on Earth." or maybe it's "Radiation would kill anyone living in space for more than 10 years." Or maybe it's "The logical conclusion of biotech is the democratization of the technology, and people make bacteria for fun." Whatever. But I bet there's something that really matters to you beyond the "wowee" factor of these things. They mean something to you because they would impact your life, alter it hugely.

Shock: deals with this in an abstract manner because there are so many things to look at, and so many ways to look at them. But maybe you want something specific. You're talking about space travel, for instance. So maybe you want to do some research into space travel and generate some rules that say what you want to say about space travel and the characters who do that voyage. Maybe you want to deal with the psychology of long-term isolation, or mind downloading into tennis ball-sized spacecraft/VR rigs flying at .75c. If you want to get really specific with specific color in a specific setting, get specific with the rules, but I doubt you'll want to physically model the entire universe to do it. Do the parts that matter for the purposes of making a story with characters who do stuff that matters in the world you create.

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

(Oh, here's Shock: Social Science Fiction in case you can't find it.)

[dindenver]

Hi!
  I think the design would benefit from a few ideas:
1) Do a solid Power 3

• What is the game about? (Meaning what, as a designer, are you trying to say with this game?)
• What do the Characters do?
• What do the Players do?

2) Take each technology you want in the game and cut it both ways (Meaning if this game is about conflict, you need to determine how the tech effects both offense and defense). And only focus on how the tech effects the elements of what the game is about, and let the rest remain unsaid or grow organically from your initial conclusions.

  I don't think you have to leave the majority of the setting undefined and I don't think that it is all too hard to make Hard Sci Fi. You just have to know what you want and justify it if it is on the edge of possibility.