Organic Tech setting

[CassandraR]

I am curious what people might think of a setting that was based on the normal modern world except all the technology was organic in nature and was grown rather then being build of metal and plastics. Bug-like cars followed scent pathways down a tightly packed road of organic material, computers mostly interacted directly with the brain through a female creature implanted into the neck of the users and connected through a small cord with the matching male creature on the end. Buildings are grown from the ground up with bioluimensicent fungus to provide light. And so on.

[Andrew Morris]

I'd need to know more about the setting to know if I'd be interested. If the game is about the bio-tech, I'd not be that interested myself. If it were about, for example, the moral implications of genetic tampering, then probably yeah. As it stands, though, I don't know enough about your game/setting to say yea or nay.

[CassandraR]

Well thats just the setting mostly. I'd imagine the overall game would be based around modern roleplay. So you could play any number of old concepts in a new world with new rules and possibilities and limitations. Kinda of an alterent reality type thing. Want to play a miltary or spy game? Sure. Normal life with extraoriginary events? Sure also. And as you said exploring the morality of genetic tampering could be a storyline for it certainly. I guess im thinking more of a world then an actual game.

[Andrew Morris]

Okay, then I definitely can't give you an answer. The setting alone doesn't grab me, but then, I tend to have very particular preferences. In general, though, "it's the modern world except X is different" settings don't really appeal to me on their own. See what others have to say, though.

Oh, and by the way, since I'm tired, I seem to have forgotten my manners -- welcome to the Forge!

[b_bankhead]

That's the first question anyone coming up with a really odd setting needs to be asking themselves.  What do you visualize your potential players DOING in this world?  What does this unusual background offer anyone that a more normal one doesn't?   How do you make the setting come to the foreground?   This is an important consideration, all to  often I have seen supposedly 'exotic' settings fade into backdrops when the action devolves to just the same ole Cops&Robbers in the forground.
So in closing ask yourself:

1.What will the players be doing IN the setting?
2. What will they be doing WITH the setting?

And for gods sake include support in the rules for more than just shooting at things! (the Traveler heartbreaker....)

And check out the Karbon 24 hr. rpg as an example of what NOT to do in a new-wave science fiction rpg. I will be exanding on this theme in my response to that gamel.....

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=12109

[dewey]

Hi CassandraR,

To make such a world "roleplayable" one needs to consider a few things:
- Why do people use organic things instead of mechanical tools? This is essential, since anyone inventing a simple clock would have a great advantage over an organic one: no need to feed. So why not do that?
- How do living tools and people interact? It's different to communicate with a living screwdriver and a living house. Or not?
- What can people do more exactly? Without a much more detailed setting, these "play a military spy game" and "normal life with extraordinary events" are too hazy to react to.

One way to make such a universe varied (and so justify the existence of many types of game) is to declare that there's no FTL travel, and people are settling the Milky Way in living generation starships (LGSs). In that case, in different star systems society would be radically different and every imaginable social and individual conflict could be justified. And conflict is the base for adventure...
Or settling one strange star system could be a great adventure in itself. Hey, the tools you are using (living ones) might as well adapt to the environment faster than people themselves...

Well, all I really wanted to say is that the idea is great, but be more specific and detailed. Weave a conflict, consider social consequences of living tools, and present them here for discussion. The more detail you give, the more feedback you'll get.

[CassandraR]

Yea. I like to talk through ideas mostly before working on them overly much. I doubt I'd make a system or mechanic. Just a setting and use it with some other system.

I do like the idea about the generation ship. I had an idea once where they were on one such as that except normal metal tech and there was an accident in the labs released a virus and it became necessary to seal about half the ship. About 30 years later a vital component of the ship begin to break down and needed to be repaired in the sealed section. So people were required to venture into it. The people trapped there changed over time and developing a vague collective consciousness and the ability to grow and manipulate organic constructs which now fill their side of the ship. So the players would have to interact with the strange new culture and talk them into letting them repair the part of the ship.

As for a living generation ship the reason they could be using organic technology instead of artifical is that they couldn't carry enough material or machinery to make the travel worthwhile or even possibly. Organic matter recycles much easier then metals and plastics do so they could replace damaged systems easier though repair would take longer as the systems were coaxed into healing themselves. With a mixture of solar energy and water and large nurient banks they could sustain travel for virtually forever inless the ship was badly damaged in someway. Once they got to their colony planet they could use extra nurients and banks of genetic material to grow new buildings and things they would need for their colony.

[Christopher Weeks]

I think the setting has tremendous potential, but like others have said, you need to know the whys.

I think that good science fiction revolves around a single difference between reality and the fiction.  The story explores the consequences.  I think that needs to be the same for your game or setting.  

You might want to simplify the scope of the difference by pinning it all on one thing.  Breakthrough nanotech of a distinctly biotech flavor granted by aliens in 1740 or the evolution of a psychic intelligent plant species that is enormously flexible in what it can choose to produce or a caste of people who have the ability to manipulate genetics through some supernatural and misunderstood intuition.  Any of these specific settings carry attendant tension and conflict that can guide a game through good, tuned play.  But I think your first description here was too broad.

Chris

[Jack Aidley]

Have you read Harry Harrison's West of Eden books - they might serve as valuable source material.