Technology as color in science fiction

[Snowden]

Split from Breaking The Heart Of The Universe, which has been expanding at a geometrically increasing rate.

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.

I disagree.  Most of the sources you mention seem like a cross between the Wild West, Jules Verne, Gulliver's Travels, Don Quixote, and "The Odyssey" in space.  If anything, the HAL segment of 2001 (but not the Monolith and Star Baby segments) is the exception because it specifically explores the issue of non-human consciousness; simply replacing the computer with a human (no matter how racially or culturally "alien" to the crew) would miss the point in a way that replacing most space ships with boats or horses or covered wagons would not.

I think the technology is required to maintain the setting at a literal level, but functions as color on a thematic level.

[xenopulse]

Labels and categories are arbitrary and always gray. Anything we categorize with our human cognition is by necessity based on fuzzy patterns, because we purposely ignore differences in order to focus on perceived similarities. As Wittgenstein can tell us, categories are often word-families rather than one clearly delineated set of attributes.

How do we learn these categories? By example. I know what I consider to be green because different shades of green have been pointed out to me as a kid. Because of the way this has happened, some borderline shades I consider green that others, who have learned through slightly different examples, consider blue.

What's the point of this rambling? We learn what we consider to be Science Fiction by example, and afterwards try to extrapolate some common denominators. For some people, the similarity lies in advanced, imagined, expanded technology. For others, it's more about the style of literature that it produces or the way it creates settings that speak to one focused point.

When you say:

Most of the sources you mention seem like a cross between the Wild West, Jules Verne, Gulliver's Travels, Don Quixote, and "The Odyssey" in space.

It does not necessarily prove how that negates the classification of Science Fiction as determined through the focus on technology. After all, there are many other stories that have the same influences that the person who named these shows/stories would not classify intuitively as Science Fiction. You might see the thematic commonalities amongst what you consider Science Fiction. Others learn the category by pointing at futuristic settings on the literal level. There's no right or wrong answer to the question of what constitutes Science Fiction, because a category is an arbitrary construct that is created, not discovered.

Some categories can be agreed upon, others are just too diffuse or are taught/learned in incompatible ways. It seems to me that Science Fiction is the latter kind. That is why people come up with "hard" and "soft" varieties, "Science Fantasy," etc., to describe their differing underlying principles. So the question of whether technology is color or setting really is one of choice, not of truth.

[Storn]

Split from Breaking The Heart Of The Universe, which has been expanding at a geometrically increasing rate.

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.

I disagree.  Most of the sources you mention seem like a cross between the Wild West, Jules Verne, Gulliver's Travels, Don Quixote, and "The Odyssey" in space.  If anything, the HAL segment of 2001 (but not the Monolith and Star Baby segments) is the exception because it specifically explores the issue of non-human consciousness; simply replacing the computer with a human (no matter how racially or culturally "alien" to the crew) would miss the point in a way that replacing most space ships with boats or horses or covered wagons would not.

I think the technology is required to maintain the setting at a literal level, but functions as color on a thematic level.

I agree with the original quote.  Your own words back me up.  A cross between a western, jules verne, gulliv's travs...etc. etc.  IN SPACE.  Trust me, I know what a horse between the legs and fording a river is.  I have no concept of what space and starships are like.  Those two experiences are a universe apart.  Buck Rogers DOESNT take place in a car, or on a horse, no... it takes place in fighter craft and rocket ships (depending on version).

The element of IN SPACE is one of those defining sign posts of science fiction.  I don't care if that is pop culture, serious literature or what have you.  Robotic parts replace human ones, psionics, and space travel are just some of the sci fi bits.  It doesn't matter if it is crass explotation and pulp adventure... or it is incredibly sensitive exploration of what it means to be human with these strange, weird, new ideas, ideals or products.

If the words come IN SPACE after any idea, then 99% of the time it is going to strike me as science fiction.  Even Spelljammer can be D&D in Space and still lean towards teh SciFi end of the spectrum and away from fantasy... in the hands of folks who would want to do that.  It doesn't matter to the definition of science fiction if it is convienient hand waving of technology ala Star Wars... or if it is really serious extrapolation of technology ala Red Mars.  They  both can be shelved in the science fiction section at Borders for all I care.  And btw, they aren't... because license titles get their own section...but that is another tale.

I think this forum has a tendency to overthink and over define things... a necessary evil to what is trying to  accomplishe but Snowden, sometimes being literal is precisely what a definition needs.  Who cares if technology in sci fi is literally the diffence or simply the color?  It doesn't matter.  If a crime story takes place in a land of swords and horses, it is probably historic novel.  If it takes place in the lands of cars and highrises... it is probably a thriller.  If it takes place on a space station, it is probably science fiction.

Now.  Why is science fiction so hard to run as a game?  That's the question I have.  Not what is science fiction.

[daMoose_Neo]

Why is science fiction so hard to run as a game?

Because of exactly the reasons posted above: Flying a space ship ISN'T riding a horse, just like driving a car isn't like riding a horse. Realistically speaking.
This follows along with posts of my own in the same thread. No, they aren't the same, but in gaming terms they're TREATED the same. There is no wonder that "I own this starship", its just accepted as the mode of transportation for the genre, as is a horse. Its not a big deal I have a prostetic cybernetic arm. Hell, that scenario could be milked for a worth of character action and play. However, unless its got some uber bonus to it, not many players will pick it for their character if its just a replacement, cept maybe a touch more durable than flesh. it has to have all sorts of hacker abilities or enhanced strength, or built in force fields. It can't just be a prosthetic limb.

[Callan S.]

Flying a space ship ISN'T riding a horse, just like driving a car isn't like riding a horse. Realistically speaking.

True. But if your RPG doesn't exploit the differences, your not likely to feel much of a difference between the two in play.

Similar to your prosthetic arm issue. If the system doesn't help explore the ramifications behind such things, then it tends not to happen (and if it does, the RPG didn't do anything)

[NN]

Why is science fiction so hard to run as a game?

I think that a "hard" sci-fi game does have some challenges

Firepower
Undetermined cosmology
Heroism vs the cold hard facts of Phyics...
a burden of Plausibility

[Marco]

Flying a space ship ISN'T riding a horse, just like driving a car isn't like riding a horse. Realistically speaking.

True. But if your RPG doesn't exploit the differences, your not likely to feel much of a difference between the two in play.

Although this is easy to say, I'm not sure that anyone will really agree on what it means. Does a table involving square roots that's used to calculate travel time mean you are "exploiting the difference?" Does a ship-combat system mean that? An onboard computer? A turbo-boost button?

The fact that a spaceship is nothing like a horse doesn't seem to convince you so what's your standard?

And if you tell me, how does your statement hold up in light of that fact that it isn't mine?*

Similar to your prosthetic arm issue. If the system doesn't help explore the ramifications behind such things, then it tends not to happen (and if it does, the RPG didn't do anything)

IMO this is based on a misunderstaning about science fiction elements. It is perfectly valid that the prosthetic arm simply establishes that the cyborg is a combat veteran in a way that broadcasts it to everyone he meets. It needs only to be as 'supported by system' as a character's scar or eyepatch or special forces tattoo.

The I, Robot methodology wherein the robot arm is wrapped around a contrived melodrama is not in any way superior to the throwaway scene in the begining of Neuromancer where the bartender with the clunky soviet-steel appendage casually shreds someone's weapon.

Both are valid in the literature but one (the movie), IMO, jumps through exausting hoops to make one relevant. The other, IMO, uses the cybernetics to tell us volumes about the world in a few chilling sentences.

The idea that an arm or a game system must lead one to an issue is making poor generalizations about what people other than the speaker would want in a game or fiction.

-Marco
* Firstly most spaceships are, IME, modeled after sailing ships, not horses. There are very few points of similarity between horses and most RPG spaceships. Secondly, much of the the source fiction related spaceships to saling ships so making a strong departure may mean moving your game further from it's source fiction--which would make this a call for what would commonly be recognized as bad design

[Storn]

Yeah, sometimes the point of science fiction is how BLASE everyone is about the technology around them (much like us about cars... sure, we ooh and aah over high performance vehicles, but take for granted the every day transport).

So, in the Neuromancer scene that Marco describes, it is a foregone conclusion that some will have cybernetic prosethtics.  No big whoop.

And that is perfectly valid in science fiction.  Or it can be a HUGE deal, such as Niven's Gil who has a telekinetic arm.

Here is why I think SciFi is hard on RPGs.  There is SO much more that the group has to collectively agree on.

In Fantasy, the scope is much more manageable.  High or low magic?  Medieval level of technology, perhaps Renneissance?  A broadsword might be different than a scimitar in game stats... but as an technological impact on the way people live... not so much.  Stirrup or no stirrup has more impact, to be honest.  And lets be clear, there is an infinite amount of variety in fantasy within its borders.... ERB's Tarzan is fine next to Conan next to Tolkien next to Talislantia next to Greyhawk.

In SciFi, the check list is immense.  Hard, best science we can muster, based.... or space opera?  How do we get around the galaxy, FTL or stargates left by Ancients?  Does the populace practice genemanipulation and we have dogmen, bunnymen and such (transhuman space) or are we jacking into the galactic net?  Are hand guns really glorified small arms of today or blasters and rayguns and anti-matter torpedoes?  Anti grav on spaceships?  Or do we spin the dang things to simulate gravitiy?  Aliens?  If so, how many, what are they, how much does the man in the street know about them?  Society?  Fractured by colonization?  Unified by outside threats?

and on and on and on.  There is SO much to define.  Because our player characters would have access to SO much information that they would take for granted.  Would be ingrained.  Information that the PLAYERS must absorb over time, no one can absorb it simply by reading the game book(s) and react to it like you can during a game.  

Information control is a heck a lot easier in a fantasy game when its; "oh, you all start out as best friends in a tiny village on the frontier.  None of you have travelled more than 30 miles from home.  When..."

[Snowden]

I think this forum has a tendency to overthink and over define things... a necessary evil to what is trying to accomplishe but Snowden, sometimes being literal is precisely what a definition needs. Who cares if technology in sci fi is literally the diffence or simply the color? It doesn't matter. If a crime story takes place in a land of swords and horses, it is probably historic novel. If it takes place in the lands of cars and highrises... it is probably a thriller. If it takes place on a space station, it is probably science fiction.

I started this thread because I do care about this question, and I would assume that people would post on it because they share that interest.  In response to your point above, I don't disagree that a single "crime story" could be told through swords and horses, cars and high rises, or space stations.  I think our fundamental disagreement comes from the fact that I think that the phrase "science fiction" has a meaning (although this may not be its only meaning) that exists at the level of "crime story" and not just "space stations."  As a result, you could tell a "science fiction" story without using space stations or cybernetic technology; no-one seems to have trouble accepting "steampunk" as a sub-genre of science fiction, for instance.

I should also have clarified in my initial post that I didn't mean that technology was always just color, but that I was speaking of the examples I quoted.

most spaceships are, IME, modeled after sailing ships, not horses. There are very few points of similarity between horses and most RPG spaceships.

While I agree that sailing ships (for "star cruisers") and fighter planes (for "star fighters") are more obvious and literal points of reference, I think there's a strong undercurrent of cowboy-ish "one man and his loyal horse" mythology present in some space combat fiction (Luke camping out on Dagobah beside his trusty X-wing), as well as a strong resemblance between frontier wagon trains and space expeditions as often portrayed in fiction (i.e. community travels on transport vessel, protected by fast-moving individuals that ride out to meet any threat a la "Battlestar Galactica").

[Kedamono]

Thanks for starting this thread Snowden!

Science Fiction can add more than just color, it can alter the very mechanics of play.

For instance, imagine a police procedural RPG set in a future where cloning is common, rendering DNA evidence nearly useless. I can imagine a scenario where a murder has been committed, and the DNA trail ends up with a man and his five clones. The physical evidence indicates that the crime was committed by one person, so which of these six people did it?

Top it off with the PCs all being clones themselves, it can really change how a game is played.

Another idea in the same vein was a SF series where teleportation was possible, but not the way you think it would be. You would be scanned and the information would be sent to another world, where a new you would be assembled. Some people would "sell" themselves off and a "dumbed-down" version would be creates as a servant on the other world. In the story in question they were investigating a world and artifacts that were deadly, so probes would be sent near the artifacts and repeated scans would be made of the same person, and through transmissions the original, well second generation copy, would watch what happens and then send a new version of himself when his scan clone gets offed. Just imagine how this would affect how a scenario would play out. You run yourself as the clone, then later, as the original working out what had happen and trying again with another clone.

Boggling isn't it?

[Callan S.]

Flying a space ship ISN'T riding a horse, just like driving a car isn't like riding a horse. Realistically speaking.

True. But if your RPG doesn't exploit the differences, your not likely to feel much of a difference between the two in play.

Although this is easy to say, I'm not sure that anyone will really agree on what it means. Does a table involving square roots that's used to calculate travel time mean you are "exploiting the difference?" Does a ship-combat system mean that? An onboard computer? A turbo-boost button?

Exploit means anything you as a designer impliment to so it has some impact at the users end (impact being whatever the user wants for the money he laid down). As a designer, what sort of material exploitation do you prefer...there are quite a few methods you might prefer, so asking me about something you don't prefer wont help either of us. What do you use/intend to use to give your customer something for his money?

The fact that a spaceship is nothing like a horse doesn't seem to convince you so what's your standard?

Don't get me wrong, there's lots of stuff a star ship can inspire amongst the players in terms of games material, that a horse can't (and vise versa). It's just that in terms of games mechanics they are often treated not much differently. This is perhaps just an opinion of mine on the industry and might not be yours. But if in a journey I have to roll 'fix spaceship' a few times to get there, it's not much different from picking up a dice and rolling 'fix horseshoe' a few times. If your finding a lot of mechanical differences, then this doesn't apply to you.

Myself, I would be afraid to pay for a print run of a game where in the original game got you from A to B with a vehicle called a horse (and used some horseman skill), but for the 'new' game I use a vehicle called a spaceship and use a pilot: spacechip skill.

And if you tell me, how does your statement hold up in light of that fact that it isn't mine?*

I'm hypothesising potential areas to explore in the RPG market which aren't covered now. Whether I can speak for you (as part of a demographic) or not , I still have to do this like everyone else.[/quote]

Similar to your prosthetic arm issue. If the system doesn't help explore the ramifications behind such things, then it tends not to happen (and if it does, the RPG didn't do anything)

IMO this is based on a misunderstaning about science fiction elements. It is perfectly valid that the prosthetic arm simply establishes that the cyborg is a combat veteran in a way that broadcasts it to everyone he meets. It needs only to be as 'supported by system' as a character's scar or eyepatch or special forces tattoo.

The I, Robot methodology wherein the robot arm is wrapped around a contrived melodrama is not in any way superior to the throwaway scene in the begining of Neuromancer where the bartender with the clunky soviet-steel appendage casually shreds someone's weapon.

Both are valid in the literature but one (the movie), IMO, jumps through exausting hoops to make one relevant. The other, IMO, uses the cybernetics to tell us volumes about the world in a few chilling sentences.

The idea that an arm or a game system must lead one to an issue is making poor generalizations about what people other than the speaker would want in a game or fiction.

Since I was replying to Nate/daMoose_Neo, you might want to argue this with him, since I was taking up where I presumed he left off:

Its not a big deal I have a prostetic cybernetic arm. Hell, that scenario could be milked for a worth of character action and play.

It could, with system assistance. I'm imagining he's speaking from actual play that it doesn't, and I'm also imagining its because there is no system assistance for this sort of thing. If you want this sort of thing.

[M. J. Young]

Now.  Why is science fiction so hard to run as a game?

Permit me to hazard a guess.

It's because to play in the future we have to be able to get into the minds of people to whom the future is normal.

That's tough to do with the past, but at least we have examples of people who really did live in the past, and we know what we did and can begin to understand why they did it. When we attempt to look to the future, we keep falling into the trap of thinking those people think like us.

I'm reminded of two stories: Star Trek II The Wrath of Kahn, and Fantastic Voyage. The second I'll cover first.

In Fantastic Voyage, we're at some unspecified future date at which microminiaturization has become possible by some sort of manipulation of matter at the molecular level, something about shifting part of every molecule into another dimension. That strikes me as being at best mid twenty-first century. It was clearly intended to be "future" when it was written. However, it maintains a Cold War mentality--they never speak of the Americans or the Russians, but it's clear that they're very much focused on Us and Them, and a race between two superpowers for the cutting edge in technology for military use, to keep the balance between them. That sort of Cold War thinking dominated the world when I was in grade school. It's gone now. No one thought it would be gone. I was in a Multiverser game once in which I landed in Florida in the mid eighties, and no one even suspected that the Cold War was almost over; yet it was. That entire layer of thinking is gone. People don't think like that anymore. In that sense, Star Trek had a better vision of the future than Asimov, because Roddenberry knew the Cold War would not last forever.

Yet in a very different way, Star Trek made a thinking mistake in the second movie.

Enterprise has fled into the nebula and goaded Kahn into pursuing. Then Spock says (paraphrasing somewhat), "An analysis of his strategy reveals two-dimensional thinking." Kahn was a brilliant general, but he had no experience at the three-dimensional reality of space. That was an excellent thought on the part of the writers.

What does Kirk do? He drops Enterprise below the plane in which Kahn's ship is passing, and then as the ship passes he rises up alongside it and opens fire.

Which is two-dimensional thinking. If they'd genuinely been thinking three-dimensionally, they would have dropped below the plane on which Kahn was moving, tilted the bow up ninety degrees, and waited for Kahn to cross their newly defined plane, at which point they'd have opened fire, hitting a much larger target (those starships are pretty slim seen broadside, but from above and below they've got those huge vulnerable thin flat discs you can probably shoot straight through on a good shot).

The problem is getting players to think in the mindsets of people who grew up in those worlds, and to do it on the fly. Skilled writers like Asimov and Roddenberry make mistakes that look positively stupid in hindsight, and they have possibly months to figure things out before committing to them. Players have to make that kind of situation-intelligent decision in minutes.

The best you get really is the inverted Connecticut Yankee: what a modern person would do if he were dropped into this futuristic technological world.

Perhaps the Buck Rogers model is the best choice: the player characters are ordinary modern people who somehow find themselves five hundred years in the future and unable to get back. Then only the referee has to figure out what people who grew up in that world would really do and think, and the players become the fish out of water who have to figure it out.

--M. J. Young

[Rob Carriere]

I'm wondering if part of the observed phenomenom that SF is harder to "get into" than fantasy isn't that we're using different standards.

For the fantasy case, we're pretty much limiting ourselves to "stock fantasy" or minor variations thereof. I haven't seen anybody consider playing in, say, the setting of Pollack's Unquenchable fire, or Lessing's The marriages between zones three, four and five, or one of Leguin's psyochomyths. Heck, even the simple point change in Donaldson's Mordant's Need will already floor most fantasy RPG systems.

On the SF side, we're allowing ourselves much more leeway, so naturally the problem is harder. Add to that there is a lot less experience with SF RPGs out there and you end up trying to handle a harder problem with less mature tools. The difference is indeed impressive, but, IMO, largely, possibly entirely, due to comparing apples and oranges, not to intrinsic difficulties with SF.

A similar argument applies, I think, to the problem of playing a character in an SF setting. Certainly it is difficult for us to think through a three-dimensional combat, but is it more difficult than grasping the outlook of a 1,000-year old immortal elf? So again, I think the crucial distiction is that we're willing to accept verisimilitude over veracity for the portayal of the elf, but insist on the unattainable goal of veracity for the starship captain. Apples and oranges.

SR
--

[Marco]

I'm wondering if part of the observed phenomenom that SF is harder to "get into" than fantasy isn't that we're using different standards.

This is a good point--as is MJ's. To expand on it a bit, in stock-fantasy, even if you are a 1000-yr old elf, the players, IME, still kinda "know everything." I mean, I can make up 'Elven lore" off the top of my head if I have to.

In terms of knowing about the world, even the Elves stopped around darke-age tech plus magic--and if there's a history of wars and stuff it's usually simplified.

Simplified science fiction doesn't quite work as well.

As someone who tried to play in Star Trek, we ran into problems: Does the bridge crew really beam down? That doesn't sound smart. Is there military protocol (it's not displayed on the TV show, reall--no salute, very little 'Captain on the bridge,' etc). Who runs the ship when Kirk and co. are asleep (there'd need to be some more crew, we thought). And so on.

This didn't bother me for the show--and we could've ignored it and just played a "story-game" of it, sure--but in the end, for the players to have a real grasp on the world, it came down to this:

At some level we expected SF worlds to make 'more sense' than fantasy ones.

That's harder to do.

-Marco
[Another problem was dissemination of info. In a sense, Traveler's homogeneous universe makes that easy--you read the books, you get a sense of it. When stuff was made up, there was, at times, a lengthy discussion of history, local politics, universal politics, etc. This was because we didn't want to "just do a genre piece" (it didn't happen in anime-mech-games, for example) and weren't "doing a story game" wherein we weren't just sort of making it up as we went along around a given theme. ]

[Snowden]

For the fantasy case, we're pretty much limiting ourselves to "stock fantasy" or minor variations thereof. I haven't seen anybody consider playing in, say, the setting of Pollack's Unquenchable fire, or Lessing's The marriages between zones three, four and five, or one of Leguin's psyochomyths. Heck, even the simple point change in Donaldson's Mordant's Need will already floor most fantasy RPG systems.

This may be something that belongs in a new thread, but I would really like to hear more about such "non-stock" fantasy; I for one haven't read Pollack, Lessing, or Donaldson, and I don't think I've read the LeGuin books (or stories?) you're referencing.  I have seen Robert Scheckley short stories take a somewhat unconventional, sci-fi approach to classic fantasy tropes, but I had assumed that this kind of thing was an anomaly characteristic of science fiction authors who occasionally "dabbled" in fantasy writing.