YATU...How to identify???

[KeithBVaughn]

To the Group Members and Moderators,

While I have seen many comments on what makes another "Fantasy Heartbreaker" or "Yet Another Fantasy Game" from the neophyte game designers, I'm curious of the pheonomen on the Science Fiction side of things or: "Yet Another Traveller Universe" (YATU). My first attempt at a game was a SF game using Traveller as a yardstick of what had to be included. Looking at it now, I realized I had done a character creation and combat game with little for the referee to use. But back to subject...

What elements create a YATU that is doomed to fail due to being an imitation? I'm curious as I have had some new ideas and would like to use the base system and rewrite a game that isn't warmed over Traveller.

Thanks in Advance,
Keith B. Vaughn

[Andrew Martin]

...I have had some new ideas...

Hi, Keith.
Welcome to The Forge!
If you've got new ideas, then write them up! I command this! :)
Seriously, if they're new ideas, and they don't look like traveller, then I don't think that they will become another YATU. :)

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

At least one person is working hard on a "Science Fiction Heartbreakers" article even as we speak. Let's get this thread going to help him out.

Best,
Ron

[Mike Holmes]

The pitfalls of Heartbreakers aren't in the fact that they're immitative. Nothing all that wrong with Traveller, IMO. So if you put out a game that was exactly the same as Traveller, you'd have an "OK" game.

For 25 years ago. Even the later editions of Traveller have done little to project them forward in terms of design theory. Fortunately Traveller was way ahead of D&D when it came out.

The bigest pitfall of Hearbreakers is that they are imitating designs that are ancient history in most cases. The second pitfall is that when you immitate a design at all, you get stuck with it's problems. Most Heartbreaker designs have, at thier core, a desire to "fix" certain problems with the immitated system. What happens is that, even if these fixes are made brilliantly (which they often are, hence "Heartbreaker"), this means that the fixes reside in a system that is otherwise flawed. So, do you fix more of the system?

No, I tell you, down that road lay madness.

OK, that's a bit overdramatic, but I've had some bad experiences myself with this. You can fix Traveller til the cows come home, and never get it to be what you want. Or if you do, you'll find that looking at the result, that it looks nothing at all like the original game. IOW, there was no reason to start with the game's assumptions at all in the first place.

So don't.

Start from scratch. Now, nobody is completely original. You will steal from this, and you will steal from that. Nothing wrong with that. Just don't limit your stealing to one or two systems. If you're not stealing from at least five other systems that you know well, you're not doing your homework. Because that's where originality comes from. You realize taking an element from game A and another from game B, that suddenly you can eliminate them both with something like...C! Voila, you're making a game that fit's your specific design goals.

And that, is, of course, the key question. What are your design goals? What is it about Traveller play (or better yet, idealized Traveller play) that you want to have in your game? What don't you want? What other unrelated elements do you want? Build that map, and have that be your guide, rather than an old RPG system (or even a new one).

Just how I see it.

Mike

[Kester Pelagius]

Greetings Keith,

What elements create a YATU that is doomed to fail due to being an imitation? I'm curious as I have had some new ideas and would like to use the base system and rewrite a game that isn't warmed over Traveller.

Having only ever played (or purchased material for) the Traveller 2300 line I can't speak to the original Traveller system but, if I were to approach this question from a development standpoint, I'd say:

To begin a proper examination grab the core books, some scratch paper, sit down and before you thumb through the books write up a list of what it is about Traveller that makes its unique, from your perspective.  Now, that done, take a look at the list.  Be sure you've got it all down.

Next crack open the books and flip through them to refresh your memory and see what else you might want to add to your list of SF tropes that make Traveller what it is.

The same approach could be done with just about anything, even CRPGs like Elite or, for that matter, ancient BBS door games no one remembers like Tradewars.  (Tradewars: Trading game, moves are sector by sector, random encounters with alien baddies, players are able to form coporations to share resources, yada yada yada.)

If done properly you should be able to seperate the world mechanic (meaning the background setting that is unique to Traveller) from the basic SF tropes common to most Space Opera.  Once you've done that you can then take those individual tropes, shake, stir, and repour into a new mold.

Also it doesn't hurt to compare systems, games worlds, or even how such universes are presented in novels.  There are vast mines of ideas out there just waiting to be plundered, er, well, yeah plundered.  *smiles*




Kind Regards,

Kester Pelagius

[Walt Freitag]

Hi, Keith. Welcome to the Forge!

There was a recent thread about a game called ZAON that you shold take a look at. In my opinion ZAON is a good candidate for SF Hearbreaker and/or YATU status, though I haven't played it and I don't know whether or not it's completed yet.

The key feature of an SF heartbreaker is having no clear idea of what the game is about -- that is, no answer to the question "what's the game about?" other than "it's about what the system and/or setting background handles" such as spaceships, the perpetual conflict between the Whatchamacallit Empire and the Whoosit Federation, and of course, lots of small-arms combat. You go to use this stuff in an actual game and you end up imitating some other genre -- smoking out some lurking horror in a derelict space ship, or running spy missions on an enemy military base -- or, more often than not, you end up right back on Free Trader Beowulf where you started in 1978.

One of the real challenges ahead is determining exactly how this old race of Darcanan are integrated with the Empire and the dynamic relationship between them.

No, that's not one of the real challenges. That's the easy and (for the authors) fun part. The real challenge is explaining what the dynamic relationship between the Darcanan and the Empire means for players.

- Walt

[KeithBVaughn]

I had a little spare time this afternoon so I thought I'd try to figure out what some of the features of Traveller are.

*A large nebulous empire...it's an all too common cliche' in SF that echos Rome.
*Space Travel is hideously expensive, often difficult and starships are for billionaires or goverments only.
*Starship tactics and weapons resemble World War II fleet tactics
*Communication is STL (Slower Than Lightspeed)
*When you travel FTL you drop out of the normal universe and are isolated.
*Humanoid Aliens, friendly too.
*Dog and Cat and Horse aliens abeit feral
*Ancient civilization has left artifacts lying around to be found--but no living members to question.
*Several large, conjoined empires with no man's land (neutral zone) between.
*Criminal Activity/Mentality of the characters.
*Nobility and Titles--aren't we through with this phase of our civilization?
*Previous Human Empires that have fallen.
*Late 1800's for areas of empire: Civilized but old Europe, Energetic Eastern United States and Wild West Frontier.
*Psionics are Outlawed.
*Balkanized Cultures under a central authority.
*Prior Military Service for Characters
*Wildly varying Technologies from planet to planet/area to area.
*Humans are able to walk upon worlds with totally alien ecologies and aren't poisoned or sick for weeks.

All of this said, Traveller is one hell of a good game that set a very high standard for any following SFRPG. The biggest problem is the SF it is based upon is firmly rooted in the 40's - 60's. It almost reads like an amalgam of Andre Norton, Issac Asimov and a pinch of Star Wars.

That's just some random thoughts. Does anyone else want to add to the list or challenge it? I look forward to it.

Also, I'll add two heartbreakers to the list:

Worlds Beyond
Manhunter

All for Now,
Keith B. Vaughn

[arxhon]

Another heartbreaker: Shatterzone. Geh.

[Blake Hutchins]

More heartbreakers:  Universe, Web of Stars, Space Opera,, and y'know, I'd actually consider adding Battletech.

Best,

Blake

[M. J. Young]

The key feature of an SF heartbreaker is having no clear idea of what the game is about -- that is, no answer to the question "what's the game about?" other than "it's about what the system and/or setting background handles" such as spaceships, the perpetual conflict between the Whatchamacallit Empire and the Whoosit Federation, and of course, lots of small-arms combat. You go to use this stuff in an actual game and you end up imitating some other genre -- smoking out some lurking horror in a derelict space ship, or running spy missions on an enemy military base -- or, more often than not, you end up right back on Free Trader Beowulf where you started in 1978.

I think Walt's only half right here. Traveler may be the D&D of sci-fi. In a sense these might be called genre-specific generic engines: it makes it possible to run a large variety of different kinds of stories or adventures within a narrowly defined kind of world. Do you want to run a mystery? Fine, run a mystery. What about the exploration of a new frontier? Easy enough. An encounter with some foreign/alien beings? A war? A peace conference? A succession of leadership? The game system provides three primary things: core mechanics, setting, and character identity. The rest is up to you.

One mistake people make about science fiction is it's not really a genre. It's a setting. Mystery is a genre. Romance is a genre. Action/adventure is a genre. Thriller is a genre. You can do any of those things in a sci-fi world; you can do any of them in a swords & sorcery world. Maybe what Keith wants, what Traveler is, is a game engine that will let him create this wonderful science fiction universe in which he can run any of these kinds of stories he wants. In that case, the questions that have to be asked about Traveler is what aspects of it are in the way. If there's nothing wrong with Traveler, there's no reason to create yet another game to create the same world and run it the same way (except maybe that you want to rename all the planets and such so you feel like it's yours). But we'll assume that there's something wrong with it in relation to what we want to do with it, and seek to discover that.

In some ways, I think Walt's observations don't really apply to "science fiction game" of this sort. They certainly do apply to a genre-specific science fiction game. You can probably create great games that take the form of "espionage genre, sci-fi setting" and "thriller genre, sci-fi setting" and maybe even "romance genre, sci-fi setting", with rules that are designed to facilitate that kind of play. That's a different idea than Traveler. It's a good idea, but it doesn't sound like what Keith is thinking.

--M. J. Young

[MoonHunter]

Sci-Fi has always been the "step child" of gaming, though it is the mainstay of speculative fiction. It has three problems (historically).

The first of which is that most people have specific tastes as to what is a "good sci-fi" background. Unlike fantasy, where most of it is fairly similar and a small percentage is notable different, futuristic or modern sci-fi automatically come with very, very different backgrounds, dependent on the premises the writer has developed it from. The balance of technologies and "sciences" in the various areas of the world are different for almost every world. Add to that different tones and themes of the world (for example, FTL 2448 is a great game, but it has a light tone that most people don't like in their science fiction... but love in their space opera. ), and finding a perfect match for a single gamer, let alone a group, is really difficult. You have an advantage with a licensed/ property game (StarWars, Star Trek, Farscape, etc) because players know exactly what they are getting into and know what to expect in the game.

This brings us to point two: The amount of effort and time the players must invest to learn the game background before they can effectively play. With a property/ licensed game, the Troupe knows ahead of time if they like the background and their is less of an accessability/ learning curve. Fading suns is a great game, but has a serious accessability issue, for most players, with the background. If you have not invested hours of reading about the background, the game sounds bad or is so confusing that you miss the point of most of it. There are some hard sci-fi games, like ICAR, which are hard sci-fi. They require the players to have a clue about the science of it all. That is another accessability issue.

The last issue is player acceptance. Players have to accept certain mechanics for the game. We had an example in a post above. People will accept classes in a fantasy game, yet balk at them in a sci-fi (yet they accept templates which are looser classes... ?!? ... but that is a topic for another time). V&V (Villians and Vigulantees) was the first game that did not have a class or template system way back in the late 70s. Now people balk at the power templates of the d20 Mutants and mastermind (even though you can get full freedom), because they assume super hero games are to be free of templates. Note: with the exception of it, SAS, Brave New World, and Nemesis, the genre is. Those kind of things aside, you have the mechanic issues that all games must face ("Dice Pools Suck!", "4 stats.. this is a child's game.", ... "Why do I need all these funny dice?", "Cards? No Fckn Way!", "Diceless? I'm not playing.") Every game designer tries to be unique and while they can suceed at that, gamers don't always embrace that uniqueness.

Lets face it. Sci-fi games have the deck stacked against them.

[MoonHunter]

One mistake people make about science fiction is it's not really a genre. It's a setting. Mystery is a genre. Romance is a genre. Action/adventure is a genre. Thriller is a genre. You can do any of those things in a sci-fi world; you can do any of them in a swords & sorcery world.

Science Fiction is part of the larger Speculative Fiction category. The Speculative Fiction cateogry includes what most people will call sci-fi and fantasy, with a small dip into horror.  Speculative fiction category is used by many larger bookstores to lump sci-fi and fantasy together in one category so their staff do not have to make judgement calls on which book is which.  

The main problem with the concept of genre is that it is fairly ill defined by the literary community, with problems compounded by its uses in the film, comic, and gaming communities.  

The best generic definition is from Websters:  
genre \Gen"re\, n. Kind; genus; class; form; style, esp. in literature.

A particular demand . . . that we shall pay special attention to the matter of genres -- that is, to the different forms or categories of literature. --W. P. Trent.

Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.

Working from that, Sci-fi defines any story revolving around Science, while Fantasy defines any story revolving around Magik.  These are broad, sweeping, generalizations that I hope you all forgive me for.  There are books that overlap Sci-Fi with psionics (the sci-fi codeword for magik) in it like Darkover and Pern and countless others.  There are fantasy stories that have science (Mercede's Lackey's later Valdemar books had the impact of science- watchtowers and other things- on their world).  Lets just stick to the generalization for the moment.  

The Sci-Fi genre has the primary tropes of, or tends to deal with,  science and technology, space and aliens, and the future (near or far).  A story can have romantic, adventure, or mystery subplots or story arcs, but still focus on the one of the tropes listed above, and be in the science fiction genre.  It is the focus that makes a story science fiction.  Hard Science Fiction revolves around the Science. Soft scifi, tends to have "fuzzier" science.  However, the focus of the sci-fi genre story needs to revolve around the science and technology (and people's response to it), space,  aliens, or the future of humankind.  

Asimov's Robot Detective series is sci-fi, even though they are mysteries because the mysteries revolve around the technology of robots.  

A story can have these elements, but focus on something else.  This would be stories that have a sci-fi setting, but have the tropes of another genre (romance, action, or mystery).  There are dozens of romances set in fantasy, sci-fi, horror settings.  We don't call them fantasy or sci-fi or horror, we call the Romance novels.  It is all on the emphasis.  

Star Trek stories tend to focus on the people and their interaction, with the technology/ science taking a back seat. Most episodes and books could be set in another time and place and still work as a story.  Many Robin Cook and Cricton books are not sci-fi genre, but are definitively of the sci-fi setting.  


These are just my thoughts.  If you want to discuss this more, we will need to either split to a new thread or do it via email.