The Limits of Sci-fi

[Marco]

So, to wrap up, I think my contribution to the analysis here is that there is a broad class of SF which is poorly represented in gaming literature because the form itself has a mismatch with several traditional gaming tropes: book publishing, indefinite replayability, having to show off its essential coolness to prospective players before they begin.  But that none of these aspects are *necessary* to gaming, and that this class of SF might therefore be beautifully handled using Indie gaming styles.  Go for it!

I'm going to answer this anyway--I was in the process of it and got stopped--and Fang did it. So this will be short.

There're a lot of reasons to use Generic/Universal systems. This is, IMO, the most compelling. Rather than being an "indie" style, I think this is actually the most traditional and (IMO) most powerful style of gaming in existence: GM as author-of-the-world (and the big ideas that exist in it).

-Marco

[John Kim]

As far as I'm concerned, science fiction is never about "the future," but about the Now when it was written. I consider most of it to be explicit political cartooning.

The Truman Show and Gattica are science fiction - no real surprise there, I trust.

And in role-playing? ... big pause. Uh-oh.

I don't think you are being entirely fair with SF RPGs, Ron.  For example, I would point out that Blue Planet pretty clearly fits your definition of science fiction.  It is pretty much political cartooning mainly for ecological causes.  Star Trek is certainly no stranger to political cartooning, although it has changed somewhat in the later series.  

I also think that both Ron and Harlequin are implying that the only valid sci-fi is short stories or one-off novels which are based around a single idea (like "Gattaca", say).  While those are fine, I think there is also precedent for a continuing sci-fi series, of which I think Star Trek is a fine example.  Of course, it varies in quality from episode to episode and series to series -- but I think at least the format is capable of interesting sci-fi stories.

[Valamir]

I think in order for any use of Science Fiction to have any real meaning one has to define what one means by it.  I think the core to that definition is nicely highlighted by Ron's post above.  

Fact is the stuff that originally came out under the label of SF is far different from the recent stuff.  Sooo there's really two ways to go about it.  One could apply the broad heading of SF to all the stuff and treat the original stuff as being one particular manifestation while the other stuff is a different but equally SF manifestation.  This would be much like "fantasy" being subdividable into epic fantasy, and D&D fantasy, and sword & sorcery etc.  

Or one could take the approach that I think Ron is using which is to say, the original stuff is SF.  It is what was meant when the coin was termed.  In which case much recent stuff isn't really SF at all, rather it just usurped the term and could more properly be called Science Fantasy, or Techno Drama.

[Marco]

Ron's defintion doesn't address the science part of the term--the Simpsons would qualify.

Working Science Fiction Definition: fiction with the trappings of advanced or alternative science.

-Marco

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

1) John, I'm with you on the Star Trek (why does everyone think I'm picking on Star Trek?). The original series was quintessential science fiction. Similarly, I agree with you about the potential length of the piece in question; your inference that I must be talking about short fiction and film only is incorrect.

2) Marco, I'm a little surprised that you're distinguishing between "indie" and traditional/powerful (and I take your "traditional" to mean long-standing). I don't see them as different; you should know by now that the "fringe, alternative, hip, off-beat" interpretation of "indie" cuts no ice with me. My whole "Mainstream: a revision" thread was all about this.

I agree with you regarding Universal/Generic design entirely. No need to defend it to me.

Best,
Ron

[Rod Phillips]

For me, my best internal definition of SF is:

"Stories about the effects of science on people, or conversely, the effect of people on science."

I don't think technology or outer space have to come into it at all. They just frequently do because they are the past few generation's most visceral examples of "science". Remember, there are social and biological sciences as well as physical ones.

I definitely don't personally believe that SF is obligated to "follow the rules" of known science. Indeed, you'd severely limit the horizons of speculative thinking if the thinker is not allowed to open up the mind to the seemingly impossible.

There are incidental limits to this, of course. An author would certainly not be taken seriously if he speculated that "the United States launched it's first FTL vessel in the year 2005". I'm sure that we all know the value of "suspension of disbelief", so I won't bore you with an explanation of why "not following the rules" of known science IS limiting in this scenario (a least without a damn good explanation of where such technology comes from within the next 2 years).

To get back to the application of all this to RPGs, and the apparent limits to what can really be effectively portrayed in SF RPGs, I think that gamers and creators alike have largely not been able to see beyond the trappings of the "things" of SF to the potential of games that focus on (I'll repeat it here):

"Stories about the effects of science on people, or conversely, the effect of people on science."

This premise is not only limited to "what happens to a guy that I shoot with my raygun?". We've certainly already got enough games that focus on this. I firmly believe that we've only begun to scratch the surface of what's possible in SF RPGs. No "Flat Earther", me!

For my money, "Paranoia" is the most effective "true" SF RPG that I've come across over the years.

In my personal game-writing over the past months, I've been taking another look at books like "The Stars My Destination/Tiger! Tiger!" and "The Demolished Man" by Alfred Bester; "The Weapon Makers" series, "Slan", and "The World of Null-A" series by A.E. Van Vogt, and the "Dune" books. Can you spot my theme?

This has been a fascinating thread!

-Rod

[Marco]

2) Marco, I'm a little surprised that you're distinguishing between "indie" and traditional/powerful (and I take your "traditional" to mean long-standing). I don't see them as different; you should know by now that the "fringe, alternative, hip, off-beat" interpretation of "indie" cuts no ice with me. My whole "Mainstream: a revision" thread was all about this.

I agree with you regarding Universal/Generic design entirely. No need to defend it to me.

Best,
Ron

I was replying to this by Harlequin:

"this class of SF might therefore be beautifully handled using Indie gaming styles"

I assumed he meant "alternative" in the use of indie and not "this would be a good way to play with small-press/creator owned games." I put "indie" in quotes in my post as a (sic.)

For the record I see no reason at all that indie games (no quotes) would not be among the most powerful gaming experiences. It's "Indie gaming styles" (whatever that means, I know how *I* read it) that I'm questioning.

-Marco
[ Edited to add: For the record I find Ron's *take* on the definition of Science Fiction to be insightful and valid *criticism* (i.e. with merrit)--I don't think it's a good working *definition.*

...

And he's wrong about the Cutlture ;) ]

[M. J. Young]

Wow.

Once again I start a thread, and come back the next day to find more on it than I can possibly digest. I do appreciate all the responses, whether I pick on you or not in this one. Thanks for the ideas.

I am glad that Ron mentioned Harlan Ellison in his rant, because that's exactly who was coming to mind as I read it. I heard Ellison raving about how Science Fiction and Sci-fi were not the same thing, and shouldn't be in the same category, and I'm afraid my reaction to that is simple: you can't distinguish genre on quality. It is not a valid distinction to say that all the good stuff is part of the genre we love and all the dross and copycat and trash and fanfic is some other genre. Quality is not a genre convention.

I am quite aware that sci-fi stories are usually commentary on the present. One of the reasons the new version of The Time Machine bothered me so much was that on that particular point it did not represent the original. Wells' story is about a man who travels to the future solely for the sake of scientific inquiry--a motivation that made perfect sense to the nineteenth century man. In the film, he builds the time machine solely for love, which seems the only valid motivation in modern minds. Wells' future is populated by two thoroughly post-human races, transparently evolved from the lords and the peasants of that age (the one, elohim, actually is named with the hebrew word for "lords"); the movie keeps one human, so it can imply a happy ending in which the hero finds happiness with the girl. In Wells, it is merely the product of evolution; the film requires a catastrophic event to destroy civilization and bring about the new race. All the social commentary of the original is lost. In a very real sense, the book is about something that has been completely erased in the movie.

Yet the movie is certainly science fiction; so is the book. In a sense, they are different stories told in the same setting.

It was several years ago that I was arguing elsewhere that one of the problems is science fiction is not a genre (like romance or adventure) but a setting (like western or historic). You can tell love stories, murder mysteries, action adventures, thrillers, and any other kind of plot-story in a science fiction setting.

In the same way, fantasy is a setting. You can tell any kind of plot-story in a fantasy setting as well.

This also clarifies another point, and that is that when I say it's a setting, I don't mean it's one setting, but that it's a kind of setting defined by certain aspects. Chief among those for science fiction is advances in science or technology that are outside what we know (even if placed in an historic context--Alias Smith and Jones is sort of a science fiction western setting). With fantasy, it's generally the presence of some kind of magic (although there might be other aspects, such as the presence of magical creatures even in the absence of magic).

If a story is set in such a world, it is science fiction, whether it is a great story that deals with human conditions and political concepts or merely some swashbuckler in another world.

All that said, I think there are a lot of great ideas here (and I really hope John Kim will find the time to post those other ideas he's considering). I'm going to have to let a lot of this simmer.

--M. J. Young

[Ron Edwards]

Hi everyone,

Look, Marco, we're agreeing again! ('cept on the Culture, but I'll spot you that one) Thanks for clarifying. I also agree that I haven't provided a working definition; I used a lot of personal qualifiers in my post for that reason. I'm not expecting anyone to buy or apply that input; it only explains why I'm a lousy respondent for threads that pose questions about SF this-or-that.

M. J., indeed, you've pegged one of my slightly-unhealthy influences in life in the inimitable Harlan Ellison* ... although as it turns out, my statements above are not the same as his. You'll notice that I don't claim any degree of "good" or "bad" in the categories. Star Wars, by my lights, is brilliant, just not science fiction (which is why Fang's comments about "coming of age" and so forth are not refuting any point of mine). Again, by my lights, a great deal of the self-titled New Wave SF from the 70s is definitely science fiction, but it's also unreadable wanking trash.

Best,
Ron

* Everyone: I refuse to permit a big ol' "discuss Harlan" fest at the Forge. Take it to private communication.

[Harlequin]

To briefly refute - Marco, I meant exactly the same thing you do.  Small press, author-owned, and so forth.  I used "styles" because this environment permits styles of game authorship which are effectively disallowed in more established publishing... such as the precise ones I identified in my post, where the game book may only be "playable" once by any given gamer.

The publishing industry wouldn't permit this; small-press could.

And heavens, I wasn't suggesting that the independent gaming "experience" was inferior - I have no idea where that cropped up.  Much rather the reverse, to the point of bias. :)

That being said, I think we agree on the relevant points.

(Also, John Kim, you read an "only" into my comments about the short story, where there was none - "well served by" is about as far as I go out on that branch.)

So - We have agreed to disagree on some minor points, but have three main "working definitions" of SF (and I use the initials so as not to have to say whether I mean science fiction, "sci-fi", or speculative fiction, since in this case connotations may be the death of meaning - we wish to discuss all three), each of which has proponents.

Ron says SF is literature which uses an extrapolative mask to both empower and disguise present-day commentary, probably social.

Fang and I look at (some) SF as literature designed to explore the far-flung ramifications of a setting or concept too strange or too big to test in the laboratory. :)

M.J. and others are happy to envelop anything under the term SF, so long as it has technology and science as the primary way it's different from the world we live in.

(And there may be a fourth, in Rod's definition of literature about people relating to science, or the effect of science on people.  This dovetails somewhat with Ron's definition, but could be argued as distinct.)

Taxonomy only gets us so far.  M.J.'s definition is the most inclusive, with the others as increasingly smaller subsets of the picture, though the subsets may actually include examples not included in the broadest version.  Lovely.

Do we have any insights on the original question?

*None* of our definitions seems, to me, to get "its share" of the RPG limelight, compared to fantasy.  (Which latter term I will simply not define here, nor should we.  You know what I mean.)  By this neither M.J. when he started this thread, nor I, mean that it somehow "deserves" more intellectual bandwidth... but it is nonetheless interesting to ask why it doesn't get it.

So, whether or not we identify SF by Ron's definition or any other, why does it seem to be either less appealing to write in RPG form, or more difficult, or both?  And, subset of question, does it seem to be more difficult to do *well*?  I'm less sure of the answer to that one.

[Le Joueur]

Fang and I look at (some) SF as literature designed to explore the far-flung ramifications of a setting or concept too strange or too big to test in the laboratory. :)

Actually, I was trying to encompass all of how you put each person's opinion in mine (though you do do it justice).

Ron says SF is literature which uses an extrapolative mask to both empower and disguise present-day commentary, probably social.

M.J. and others are happy to envelop anything under the term SF, so long as it has technology and science as the primary way it's different from the world we live in.

"Present-day commentary" is as much 'about people' as anything else, I just don't limit science fiction to this commentary.  Likewise, I don't see how "far-flung ramifications" can't be "the primary way it's different from the world we live in."  But hey, I just try to cast my net as wide as I can with such a blurry, controversial term as 'science fiction.'

Fang Langford

[ADGBoss]

I think there are some interesting ideas here on how to re-evaluate what was once considered to be in the vein of Science Fiction.

I was watching a History Channel show (yeah I know History channel is not end all and be all but) and it was showing the progression of the Sci-Fi genre... They classify it as starting in the early 1800's with Mary Shelly's Frankenstein and then progressing to EA Poe's work. Now I personally would say Poe was horror but I suppose one could view it in the context of what we generally consider Science Fiction.

In the Early days of our own Century, they had a different word... Scientifiction I believe it as called but one Editor (forgive me I forget his name) moved from Amazing to some other mag, he had to come up with a new term, and Science Fiction was born.

Ok so where does that leave us? We have HArd Sci-Fi and Sci-Fantasy and Space Opera (which is how I classify Star Wars btw) but none of these seem to quite fit anymore.  When we hear Science Fiction, we tend to think SPACE. Well its not always about Space. Fundamentally I think all "Science Fiction" is about Humanity and Human beigns, along the lines of what others have said.  Even Alternate History can fit into the catagory.

I think breaking it down into Sub Genres is the best, Space Opera, Cyberpunk, Futuristic, etc etc there are many ways to do it. Also, I see the word Fantasy used alot, but I was thinking, we try so hard to define Science Fiction, and we define it by using Fantasy, how do we define what is Fantasy?  Defining subsets or elements of one genre with another can be dangerous and lead to confusion.

Also Genre, the term itself may be overused or not-understood or defined enough to be useful. Personally I define it as the framework in which a story is told.  Saving Private Ryan can be a sci-fi Story just as easily as it can be a Fantasy.  All depends on the Framework.

BAsically to sum it all up, perhaps we need to define how we are re-defining. i.e. X is Science Fiction but Y is Fantasy and Z is Space Opera, well it does us no good if Fantasy and Space Opera themselves are not defined.

Sean

ADGBoss

[Paul Czege]

Hey everyone,

Where SF games like Blue Planet, Aurora, and CyberSpace fail for me personally is in the extent to which they institutionalize the setting, always at the expense of character individuation, despite that main characters in classic SF literature always transgress against the setting in some way. In Asimov's The Caves of Steel, Detective Elijah Baley is assigned a robot for a partner, and as far as the reader knows, this arrangement is unique to the setting. In CyberSpace, I can create a character who has an artificially intelligent, mechanical war creature implanted in a cavity in his body. It's in the biomod rules. But who the fuck cares. Any character or NPC could have the same thing, differentiated only by the most superficial elements of Color. The setting is entirely prepared to respond to my character having such a biomod. Color-based differentiation, I'm sorry to say, isn't contributory to the significance of a character. Can I be the first individual ever in the setting who is psychically in tune with a cosmic consciousness? No. Any character I can create in CyberSpace is an expression of the setting. And it's not just chargen mechanics that institutionalize a game's setting. Imagine a Jeotsu male in the Aurora setting who falls in love with a female during the mating season, and decides he wants to stay with her, that he doesn't want to return home to help his sister with her offspring. Can I transgress against the setting like that? You might say, "sure," because at least in this case there aren't mechanics constraining me...but the fact that there are 250 pages of rules and 350 pages of setting material really does suggest that the game is about the characters responding to the setting, and not the setting responding to the characters. Someone needs to write me a SF game that provides a provocative cultural substrate for interesting and thematically meaningful transgressions, which Aurora clearly does, but that also actually facilitates the individuation of player characters at the expense of the setting. It seems that for fully realized SF settings, anything less than active facilitation of character individuation functions as passive deterrent.

Paul

[Walt Freitag]

Hey Paul,

Beautifully said.

A lot of what you say about the classic SF also applies to fantasy that succeeds in having a "mythic" quality. Mythic stories, too, are about unique beings and unique situations. There may be other rings, but the story is about the One Ring. Luke doesn't fight a battle fleet, he fights THE Death Star as he attempts to become the universe's ONLY active Jedi.

In fantasy games, though, it appears to be fairly easy to play so as to present specific things and characters as unique in the game world, even if they're hackneyed for the genre as a whole. A certain type of magic sword can easily be portrayed as the only one of its kind, even if it's right off of Table IV-C. A player-character can easily be portrayed as the only elf who keeps the company of humans, or vice versa, even if it says otherwise in the Race Profiles.

Your last sentence tells me that a place where drift can, with some effort, take you in a fantasy setting, SF games must be consciously designed to get to.

- Walt

[Harlequin]

That /is/ lovely.

I'm not sure that Walt's feeling that this quality of individuation is easier to achieve in a fantasy setting is not a touch facile, though.  Perhaps the distinction lies partly in lowered expectations - thank you, D&D fantasy? - on the players' part, and partly in the manner in which the setting itself is evoked.  

Lowered expectations crosslinked to the fantasy trope must, I think, play a part... people are willing to play "a thief" where playing "a rogue AI", not *the* rogue AI, grates.  Lowered expectations meaning a willingness to play a member of a type, rather than a frontrunner or Unique Status character of whatever sort.  I think this is in part beneficial; as a recentish article on RPG.net commented, "Not everyone in the playgroup can take on the one-in-a-universe wildcard role."  A Caves of Steel or the like provides for one, sometimes two, rarely three True Uniques.  Three is smallish for a gaming group, where I come from, so a certain amount of willingness not to require this as part and parcel of SF roleplay would be very useful.  Thus, perhaps Paul's analysis is a touch flawed, or points to a way in which this type of character, prevalent in SF literature, may not be able to be as much a staple in roleplaying.  Or recommends that SF RPGs on this mold carry smaller playgroups, certainly a valid option.

Alternately, the difference may lie in the way in which the RPG's setting is evoked, as Paul suggests.  After all, in theory, Hero Wars should promote exactly the sort of highly individuated characters Paul talks about - it's roleplay on mythic scale, and I agree with Walt that this should, properly, require the same element of the One of a Kind.  And Hero Wars theoretically targets its mechanics toward achieving this, in part through heavily grounding them in a societal matrix so that differentiation is more relevant if and when it comes.  [Caveats here are because I'm personally not impressed with how it succeeded; different thread, that.]

So maybe the problem is simply that the RPGs Paul is citing present the setting in such wise that it hinders, rather than supporting, this level of uniqueness.  

Certainly, I can see one way in which they might... in that, contrary to the literature, SF RPGs generally want to put all the tech goodies on the table to be savored.  When there is an indication of unavailability, indicating perhaps that this toy might not be commonplace, this indication is undermined by two very strong factors.  It is usually presented as simply an availability number, or legality index, generally a terse code... which needs to be parsed through special filters and ends up with the quality of the exotic pasted on like a price tag, rather than intrinsic to the description.  More importantly, the act of providing enough specifics on how something works - whether it be a piece of technology, or a type of relationship - tends to render it commonplace.  We assume that information in the game book is generally information which a sufficiently well-informed person would have, especially when it comes to the effects and so on of a described implement or scheme.  It's put forth as a fait accompli - somebody made one of these.  This robs the sense of wonder, and (when it contributes to a character's uniqueness) diminishes the bearer considerably.

In a way this brings us back toward the Big Idea trope.  Presenting the full information - as one in theory does, when presenting a setting - backlashes, because once it's laid down, it's unmysterious and concrete.  Even the shape of the thing, as laid down, robs it of some quality of the abrupt which seems to be necessary to its proper existence.  The players may not know the details, but they know that autonomous AI implants exist in the setting, so having a character with one may be *cool*, but it can't be *unprecedented*.

There's definitely a correspondence going on here.  In both cases, what's wanted seems to be a setting which leaves gaps.  Which not only permits the GM to add in his own cool tech concepts (small and large), but also in some clear and specific way encourages and supports this activity.  Then it's a unique and fascinating thing to have a character with an AI whispering in his ear at all times, and the *feel* of SF is much more well preserved.

I'm excited about this because it confirms a previously unformed gut feeling about my own work, that the specific setting I'm working with (not actually my creation) is rich not because it provides all the fabulous details, but because it does not - it instead provides a fertile plot in which such details grow and blossom.  Putting it in words like this lets me see a little of what might be called for, in terms of permitting such weeds to sprout.

Supporting their generation... that's harder.  I want to do that too... but it's always simpler to write games which fail to prohibit that which you want out of them, than to write games which actively promote that activity, make it rewarding and accessible to players and GM alike.  

I think there's a little of that there, too... the last playtest (a LARP) ended with one of the last characters I would ever have expected to be an interesting continuing character, now having one of the most fascinating life-summations I've heard yet.  This may be owing to the same phenomenon of individuation, operating on the theological rather than technological level (the game supports both very heavily).  [If you're curious, the character in question began play as "a captive angel," ended play as "newly fallen from grace, nearly died along the road, saved only through the preservation of her soul (?) in the flame of a candle - which must now never be allowed to go out."  She'll be back, for sure, even though the game itself was a one-shot.]  But I don't know what combination of setting richness, player ingenuity, flexibilty of the tools given to them in the system, and Kibo only knows what else, helped empower this result.

It is clearly, however, a *good thing*.  And something I would like to get a handle on.  As the example demonstrates, it's not limited to SF, nor to technological or "cosmological" (Big Idea settings) uniqueness... though Paul points out, in this phrasing, that much SF depends upon it, so getting a handle on uniqueness-promotion could mean getting a better handle on SF to boot.

I think I'll take this to another thread, once I've had time to sleep on it... it's fascinating, and I think I've only touched the surface of what can be done here.  How do we *actively promote* uniqueness of this degree, when encoding it in the rulebook seems to stifle it?