I was musing on re-reading DUNE for the 8th time, when I began to consider how to best bring such an Anachronistic SciFi setting to life throuh an RPG. This is not a "create a DUNE rpg" thread, but one inspired by the sort of world seen in DUNE (forget the follow-up books. I have).

The primary elements which concern me:

1) A society based on archaic models existing on a galactic interplanetery scale.

2) Political gamesmanship, manipulation, and covert action have replaced large-scale war.

3) A complex heirarchy of social structres, orders, secret societies, training schools etc.

4) Heriditery acension to power w/ generational power struggles

5) Feudal trading culture- weird trade goods take the place of manufactured synthetics (resin from a special tree grown on a single planet is used to make assassin knife blades, the glands from the brain of a special squid caught on a certain world is used to make a longevity drug etc).

6) Several key core supertechnologies- FTL and some kind of nearly perfect countermeasure vs technological devices. These need not be scientificaly justified, but should be internaly consistent.

7) NOT a high tech culture fallen into a dark age- a functional culture which relies on several core technologies it can still produce, but which render many other 'modern' technology obsolete. I want knife duels instead of gun fights.

8) Weirdness. Some weirdness is acceptable, but it should not be rampant. More than is seen in DUNE (precogs, superhumans, 'the voice', past lives manifest ect.) but not full-out magic or psionics. I was toying with the idea that the core tech and the manifest weirdness all relate to probability manipulation. You don't read minds, you guess what others are thinking with absurd accuracy. Oddshields warp the odds in your favor to prevent attacks from landing...you have to get close enought to your enemy so that your natural probability field interacts directly with his, perventing Oddshields from warping the path of your attacks etc. Probability duels involve not only heightened physical training and superior skill and reflexes, but also the ability to improvise without hesitation, as certainties turn into impossibilities under the influence of an Oddsman's manipulation or an enemie's Oddshield.

I figure FTL and AG is just an aplication of this (???).

9) System. ???

Basicly, my gut tells me it needs something on the border between G and N. Some floating authorial control to allow players to enliven the setting with plots and machianations, whith some gamesit elements to 'keep score' and mark progress, and to reward actions within the 'theme' of the world.

I am not concerned with simulating reality- this setting is not terrible realistic or pragmatic- but with creating a sense of conflict and social coup couting with the mechanics of the system itself.

Combat will for the most part be interpersonal- man to man- with melee weapons and Odds-tweaking.

I'd like to set up PC groups so they themselves are the motivators being a campaign- they have goals, desires, and scores to settle, and they make it happen. The GM would narate and provide resistance, but wouldn't "run adventures". The players would be powerful and influential enough to go forth and make what they want happen.


10) Premise- dynamism vs tradition. The galactic society is very old and very tradition-bound...but the people who move and shake within it- the PC's and their antagonsist- are dynamic. They use the traditions of the larger society to their advantage- like the rules of Chess- to formulate complex strategy. If they bend (or break) to many rules, they will find themselves outlawed, with no status, and with a price on their heads.

11) Color- enormous baroque castles miles tall. Hollow asteroid pallaces. Vistas of farmland, with a huge star cruiser resting light as a feather feet off the ground. Ships with control rooms filled with polished brass, rivits, enamled iron rittings, expensive stained wood. People of strange blended ethnicity, exotic figures with deep unknown secrets. Sumptuous dens of inequity filled with painted whores with rubies for teeth and sickly sweet narcotic smoke. A ship the size of a ocean-liner drifts silently down into an open meadow, lowering a ramp down which a single man- cloaked in black and chrimson- trods heavily- the ship whisks away just as silently. The culmination of years of planning, plots, manipulations, bribes, and black tricks is a fight to the death in a stinking back alley on a forgoten planet with poisoned knives and steel-toed boots.




These ideas are thus far just a conceptual framework- more a stick figure than even a skeleton. Anyone care to add some flesh?

May I suggest the greatest science fiction series of all time:
Exordium: by David Trowbridge and Sherwood Smith.

The science is very hard, and in some areas very advanced, but the society and culture are VERY baroque, very class concious, very Borgia, and very believable.

There are some "wierd tech" but its mostly of the form of stuff thats incredibly high tech but taken absolutely for granted. Kind of the equivelent of a digitial watch...they may be mentioned in a story, but no one explains how they work, because they are such a trivial item.

Thats something the Exordium series does better than any other series I've read. So much of science fiction gets caught up in explaining how stuff works it makes it seem very unreal and artificial. In Exordium the stuff the characters use they just use, just as we'd use a watch, and they don't explain it any more than we'd explain a watch. Leaves the reader with a little bit of extra work, but alot better sense of wonderment.

At any rate, its not a perfect fit for everyone of your elements, but several of them you'll find great inspiration there.


1) Yup, the 1000 worlds, are a galactic Panarchy. More 16th-17th century than Feudal but definitely not "modern" (and it makes perfect sense).

2) Political gamesmanship is the rule of the day. Their are super powerful battle cruisers, but the 1000 worlds has few external enemies (although the main plot involves the rise of one)...also has the coolest most non "fighters in space" space combat ever.

3) Social structures and heirarchies...and how. There are many many layers.

4) Heriditary power...yup...generation power stuggles...yup...especially witnessed in the transfer of power in the 1000 worlds rising enemy.

5) Wierd Trade goods...not exactly...but there are some REALLY bizarre items of technology.

6) Super technologies...Yup...and they actually make sense. The weapons and drive systems of the space ships are especially well done.

7) There are vague references to some flight from earth in eons past but at the time of the stories the 1000 worlds are sort of like Pax Romano at its peak.

8) Some wierdness...especially with the few aliens...they are very alien.

10) Check

11) That's pretty much the entire series.

I figure FTL and AG is just an aplication of this (???).

Bailywolf, yer a bastard. See, right now I've got graphic design gigs piling up -- there's Ron's nearly finished Trollbabe, some Godlike work, and a whole slew of projects by Forgers, including Jared, Valamir, and hardcoremoose.

So, needless to say the deadlines are printed on the back of my eyelids.

Then, you go and post this thread, almost _exactly_ what I've been tinkering with in my "game designer's notebook." Damn you and you ever-present interests that always seem to coincide with mine! ;)

See, I'm with you on about 98% of every aspect here. Even had a few specific notes written down myself, influding:

*Few, if any "supernatural" elements, maybe subtle Psi powers, as you hint.
*A vast and fairly diverse human culture, with elusive "first contact" aliens still knowable only as radio transimissions that become a near worshipped voice over centuries (i.e., few aliens, but various human types/factions/player characters).
*A caste of duelists employed by the ruling elite that act as one man "armies" to settle scores and disputes. That is, the elites have extraordinarily talented and trained champions with "thrum-blades." They employ the duelists to avoid the ugly mess and bad diplomacy of war.
* A dominant religion of ancestor worship, where adherents acknowledge hundreds even thousands of human ancestors as kind of saints, (and genetic fanatics that trade "holy" DNA!).

Now, if it weren't for the above deadlines, revising Dust Devils for the big Con, and -- oh yeah -- that whole Dreamspire game I've been working on, I'd be all over this NOW. However, I'm going to have to keep it back burner. I will offer this teaser, though. I plan to create a PDF "space opera" game loosely based on my Dreamspire rules set, which actually fits better than it might seem, given the apparently different trappings. I'd then create a setting "module" much like the one you're discussing here, and encourage folks to create their own SF mods if so inclined.

Problem is, of course, that it'll take me a few months to do it. Keep the good ideas coming, and I'll try to as well, in between the cracks of other duties!

Matt

P.S. Thanks, Valamir, for the reading suggestion (Exordium). I've been looking for something in that vein with little success to keep me sated 'til I can work on this as a game. Anybody else have similar reading suggestions?

Sweet, man, sweet. I want on board. I've been trying to do this one for years. Being a rabid Dune-phile (I read and adored all five sequels), I really want to see this one come out. Fading Suns tries it and comes close, but just doesn't quite cut it somehow. System first off, but the setting isn't quite right either. Too much angst, not enough politics maybe.

Anyhow, here's my croc of an explanation of why knife fights. Actually, I wanted sword fights, which this works even better with. Comes down to Calibrium (or whatever name; I belive the generic is Unobtanium), a metal forged from iron and rare earth metals only found in minute quantities in remote places like asteroid belts. So minute are the quantities that you can't the expense in making stuff from it is insane. Made only possible by the fact that when energized in an esoteric fashion the metal becomes impervius to just about anything, including being near atomic blasts, for instance (a large antimatter weapon at ground zero might do the trick, but then that would probably eliminate the planet as well). The sole exception is Calibrium itself, which can, when also energized appropriately, penetrate other Calibrium.

What does this mean? Well, for those who can afford it, a suit of such armor and a sword makes you an unstopable killing machine. Except by others similarly armed. Guns that fire large Calibrium rounds that are self energized exist, but rare. And the ammo is limited, costing as much as a sword does for each round.

Anyhow, the armor is powered, of course, making the combatants extremely quick, accurate, and powerful. So much so that suits are constantly being upgraded to make sure that nobody has an edge. Which leaves it to the skill of the individual operating the suit to make the difference, often. Not to say that all kits are equal, but having an advantageous one is reserved for Kings and the like. Usually the advantage is in the power of the weaponry as opposed to the speeds. The lesser ones would put a lightsabre to shame. A realy powerful one might have devices capable of leveling office buildings in short order.

At the rate that these battles occurs at takes huge skill. In fact, only one in a million people can operate such a suit at all. These people have one of those "near psionic" abilites that you mention that allows them to operate at hyperspeeds.

Anyhow, this also gives you your super-commodity. He who controls the Calibrium controlls the universe. But more importantly, the people with the ability become another resource as well. This leads to your feudal society, with armored knights, and their leige lords. Those with the resources can provide protection, those without must seek it.

The other important commodity (yes, lets do Dune one better) is Hyperium which, of course, allows for the FTL travel. Which gives the Merchants Consortium their pull. A suit of Calibrium can be lined with Hyperium as well to make it possible that such equiped people can travel from world to world as need be (the suits fly fast enough to close planetary distances in short order without resorting to FTL to get there). The amount of Hyperium needed is almost as much for a suit as it is for a starship, however, making this inefficient use another staggering outlay to provide.

Much of the tradition exists in part to keep the suit operators from going rogue, and trying to start their own kingdoms on the fringes. Which still happens at alarming rates. It's too much power to put in the hands of just one individual. The other reason for the tradition, and an explanation fo the lack of other technological development, is that the established powers fear that a technology could be devloped that would make the Calibrium technology obsolete. Which would mean an end to their power. Plus, human labor is cheap, and the powerful have gotten used to using them for things, which explains all the hand crafted stuff, and the poverty despite the available technologies.

So, what do you think of my Unobtanium solutions? We should do a hole-poking session. When you do that, you create explanations to plug the holes, which creates other interesting setting details.

Mike

One thing I wanted to really enforce is the sense that the technology is not the star character- the star ship, the phaser, the time machine- the characters are the stars, and the tech is nearly invisible- and on the surface no more advanced than the 18th or 19th century. Native riding beasts provide easy common trasport- I have this image of a giganitc space barge hovering a foot off the ground while a long line of beast-drawn wagons loads bags of narcotic leaves for shipping...

The only true resource in DUNE was the Human. Spice only served as an enhancing agent to boost the value of a human respurce. I wanted to do this one better. IN Dune (the books, not the movies) FTL was possible as a process of the Holtzman planer shield effect- same theory which produced AG and shields.

In this thing (what the hell should it be called? I was thinking "The Game of Empire" or some such- perhaps translate that into a dialect of latin)- in this thing, I wanted everythig to be an extension some basic human capacity- FTL, the McGuffin defense, and all- all direct or indirect aplications of human discipline.

The more I think of it, the more I like the probability manipulation scheme for weirdness- it can extrapolate to all sorts of stuff (including really bizare forms of person martial arts which seek to set up ripples of ghost probability designed to confuse and colude the oddsense of an enemy).

Special conditioning trains someone with the talent of Oddsmithing into one of many different specialities (the class of duelists is friggin brilliant, and provides a ready-made campaign structure for a traveling band of characters- a duelist and his entourage- who travel and get involved in plotting and such. Especialy powerful oddsmithers would be nearly autisitc, and would be trained for such purposes as FTL probability jumping or FTL communication (by "guessing" what another Talksman is hearing halfway across the galaxy).


Matt

All your stuff is brilliant- I would love to get in on this when you start working it out. Can you give a quick overview of the system you would use?

Bailywolf wrote:
Matt

All your stuff is brilliant- I would love to get in on this when you start working it out. Can you give a quick overview of the system you would use?

So, what do you think of my Unobtanium solutions? We should do a hole-poking session. When you do that, you create explanations to plug the holes, which creates other interesting setting details.

Bailywolf wrote:
Color- enormous baroque castles miles tall. Hollow asteroid pallaces. Vistas of farmland, with a huge star cruiser resting light as a feather feet off the ground. Ships with control rooms filled with polished brass, rivits, enamled iron rittings, expensive stained wood. People of strange blended ethnicity, exotic figures with deep unknown secrets. Sumptuous dens of inequity filled with painted whores with rubies for teeth and sickly sweet narcotic smoke. A ship the size of a ocean-liner drifts silently down into an open meadow, lowering a ramp down which a single man- cloaked in black and chrimson- trods heavily- the ship whisks away just as silently. The culmination of years of planning, plots, manipulations, bribes, and black tricks is a fight to the death in a stinking back alley on a forgoten planet with poisoned knives and steel-toed boots.

Bailywolf wrote: One thing I wanted to really enforce is the sense that the technology is not the star character- the star ship, the phaser, the time machine- the characters are the stars, and the tech is nearly invisible- and on the surface no more advanced than the 18th or 19th century. Native riding beasts provide easy common trasport- I have this image of a giganitc space barge hovering a foot off the ground while a long line of beast-drawn wagons loads bags of narcotic leaves for shipping...

Mike Holmes wrote: The problem with the low tech against high tech setting is that you need a good explanation for why. Why, if we have enough tech to go FTL, do we rely on pack animals. I mean, not even cars? Do they do this just for kicks? This needs a good rationale. Is the tech still there, but just so unobtrusive as to be invisible? If so, are the pack animals in your word picture artificial or something?

Matt Snyder wrote: To expand this specific answer, perhaps what appears as low tech to us isn't. That is, things like pack animals, swords, and other neato elements aren't so much low-tech as they are just good ideas -- actually the products of high tech, but taken for granted such that they seem low tech.

OR, the other argument is ... who cares? I got to thinking about this SF stuff after re-viewing Attack of the Clones again, but at one point in the movie I was thinking, "So why are guys (jedis) with energy melee weapons charging into a full-scale heavy battle with battle-ship sized machines, missile launchers and rockets flying about?" Then I thought, "Who cares! It's Star Wars! How much fun is this?!?" We can over think this -- the goal, at least for me, isn't nerd-proofing the ideas; it's making a far out setting & game, man!

Man, must be something in the water. I've been kinda sorta working on something in a similar vein myself.

Some tech ideas I had included solar-powered rifles. They would have relatively low damage capabilities and inconveniently long recharge rates. This would make primitive weapons like knives valuable for their reliability and ability to kill quickly.

There would be very deep fissures in places that would release steam from far under the surface. Steamriggers would be used to collect the steam and condense it into liquid. Water being a precious commodity, the steam rigs could be under danger of attack (no Ice Pirates references please ;] ).

I also had the idea to have strange colonies of bacteria live within the steam fissures. Often a colony of bacteria would be lifted into the atmosphere by the rising steam. If someone came into contact with one of these pseudo-sentient colonies they ran the risk of becoming "contaminated". The bacteria would form a symbiotic relationship with the host and as the bond strengthened the bacteria would attempt to bend reality (in small ways) to the hosts will. There would have to be discouraging side effects, maybe painful death in some cases, but I haven't gotten that far yet.

There was another idea I was playing with that is a little "out there". It involved an "ancient" artificial intelligence that had been hidden on the planet. The A.I had been infected by the bacteria and all sorts of weirdness had resulted. Pockets of virtual reality existed, almost a kind of digital pollution. If you entered one you could be physically "translated" into a virtual space created by the symbioses of the bacteria and the A.I.

Stemming from that was a sect of quasi-religious cenobites (monks) in a give and take relationship with the A.I., they would have devices that allowed them to link mentally with the virtual realm without having to be there physically (less dangerous that way). I had this vision of them developing blueish veins around their temples in patterns that rezembled circuitry. The more they "translated" the more pronounced the veins would become.

The working title is "The Face of Aramei", a reference to the planet and possibly some idigenous mythology.

-Chris

Mike Holmes wrote:
Ahh, that's not so good. Internal consistency is important. Even if it's a cheap one. Why are the Jedi charging? Becasue they are just that tough. They have a good defense against ranged attacks so they don't fear those, and they are deadly when they do close range. Not the greatest explanation, but it's enough to swallow the action presented. I'm not saying you must have an airtight reason, but just some reason. Your reason above wold be fine.

Mike Holmes wrote:
One thing I do like about thinking about such reasons is that often you end up fleshing out things by doing so. I think that it's pretty easy to avoid any potential damage of overthinking. And there's a hard sci-fi edge here (or so it seems to me) that demands at least a little thought.

I've been kicking around a concept that could be the Luddite Simulationist twin of yours. It's set in a desert place, heir to the Roman Empire. It's got

1) A society set in an archaic time.

2) Political manipulation in a world where large-scale war is more difficult.

3) A complex hierarchy of social structures, orders, secret societies, schools and the like.

4) Monarchy and merchants.

6) Feudalism and a trading culture.

7) Er, no key supertech, but you've got to admit that I was close

8) "Some weirdness acceptable", but actually probably only in the amount seen in Dune.
Undoubtedly my baby RPG was influenced by Dune, which might explain some of the similarity.

9) We may be able to trade some ideas, if you like what you see. I've mostly been banging on mechanics, and while they have a bit of a Nair/CharSim feel to them I'm sure they're flexible enough to be "Beaten to fit, painted to match." If not, I'd be interested to hear what you would do differently. Our design concerns might illuminate one another. The resolution stuff I've mostly banged out, but I'm still hashing out genre support and encouragement (system does matter, yep).

10) Er, my premise is actually different, but both are based on achievement, at some level. "How do a group of people change as individuals, and as a group, when presented with opportunity and adversity."

11) Color- enormous baroque castles miles tall. Hollow asteroid pallaces. Vistas of farmland, with a huge star cruiser resting light as a feather feet off the ground. Ships with control rooms filled with polished brass, rivits, enamled iron rittings, expensive stained wood. People of strange blended ethnicity, exotic figures with deep unknown secrets. Sumptuous dens of inequity filled with painted whores with rubies for teeth and sickly sweet narcotic smoke. A ship the size of a ocean-liner drifts silently down into an open meadow, lowering a ramp down which a single man- cloaked in black and chrimson- trods heavily- the ship whisks away just as silently. The culmination of years of planning, plots, manipulations, bribes, and black tricks is a fight to the death in a stinking back alley on a forgoten planet with poisoned knives and steel-toed boots.

One thing to support some of the low-tech justification... if probability manipulation and control exists, then some of the standard physics stuff that could lead to cars and such just might not ever be reliable enough to trust on any large scale civilzation use... as opposed to low tech which developed along with these manipulations... maybe only certain techs...like the anti grav sleds are reliable enough.

an idea anyway,
Bob McNamee

Mike:My idea was just to get away from people saying 'We just gas the supersoldier dude or hold him underwater or something.'

Here is my setting ideas:

Long ago humanity spread accross the galaxy. All possible habitable planets were colonized(There wern't that many). Terraforming made a few more, but it was expensive. No planet other than earth was found to contain native life. Earth life was always imported to each new planet. No-one ever managed a method of FTL communication. Thus, a FTL drone network took info between planets.
The tech involved means it would take many years to launch an expedition to another galaxy. None ever reported back.
Since time immorial technology had always improved at a pretty good rate. Eventually, this rate slowed, and then stopped. Some theories involved said that there were some laws of the univers that couldn't be broken, no matter how hard you tried. Other said that technology had gone beyond the range of the human brain to grasp it. A scientist had to spend most of their life learning, despite all attempts to speed the process. By the time they learn enough to understand the cutting edge, they were past their prime. Mathematicians came up with explanions based in chaos theory and something called 'infinite complexity' or the idea that some things could change faster than our ability to understand them.
Oh, technolgy still advanced. Old ideas could be applied to new things, things could be done in better ways. But there were no new breakthroughs for a LONG time. This produced the death of learning. What's the point if theres nothing new to discover? Some people still became scientists, but it became rarer and rarer as time went on. In some places intellectuals came to be viewed as drain on society, as they hadn't produced anything in thousands of years. Small groups and individuals perservered, but they lacked the resources to do anything really new.
Eventually, all the original planets started getting used up. Their resources ran out. Even with recylcing programs, they still ran out.
Also the disasters happened. (Actually they happend all through history). One planet was pushed to far, it's climate fell in chaos, alternating between an ice age and massive deserts over a several hundread year period. All life on it died, aside from artificial research stations. One was nuked so hard it started a chain reaction in the atmosphere. One was destroyed in an asteroid mining accident. (They tried to bring the rock back to the planet, you figure it out). Plague got others. There were the usual wars, even a Luddite revolution at one point. Most planets have some scars, like a large area still radioactive from a nuclear accident, or a
remenat of the time the climate became unstable.

As their resources got used up some planets were just abandoned. One even got hit by a nova.
Even the Unobtanioum deposits used to power FTL vessels started to run out. Communication became less frequent, due to the increased expense of the drone network. Few planets would have all the resources required for advanced tech, and as interplanatary transport got more expensive a planet might let some techs slide in favor of more useful ones. A few key technologies were lost when all the people with knowledge of them died.
Small amounts of Unobtanium can be synthesised with immensie amounts of energy, but only a few planets could actually support this. In one case, so much energy was drawn out of a planets core that that the core solidified and shrunk , collapsing the crust on top of it. These planets were favorite targets in wartime. Sometimes attacks did more damage than intended.

Tech got concentrated into the ruling class. The started rationing it, as high technology requires a large resource base to produce, and that was shrinking. Planets started getting a 'ration' of usefull devices, usually stuff that would make them more productive/ efficient, or would pacify the populace(like VR-entertainment).

Calibrium tech was relativly well understood, and had the advantage that it's wasn't used up when it was processed. Also these warriors didn't do TO much peramant damage to the limited resources on a planet when they fought. Thus, it became more dominant.

Sorry, that came out longer than I intended, but some parts may be usefull.

Two base thoughts on the low-tech high tech argument:
1 Some tech can't be imported by ftl...it just disintegrates. Also, no guns are allowed in starships for obvious reasons.
2 Corrolary to the who cares option: it sounds like the basis for the question is very exploration of setting; if players are making setting as they go...see what I'm getting at here?

Well, Herbert's universe takes the shape it does from two major sources- the jahad which eliminated any thinking machine (and any technology expressly dependent on thinking machines), and the planer shield effect whcih made conventional weapons useless- and after a few thousand years, they fell into general disuse (spring dart and maula pistol aside).

I propose Oddsmithing- a highliy evolved capacity inherent in sapient minds to alter or read probability. Like Nivin's "psychic luck" seen in his Known Space but conscious. A warrior Oddsman can- with minimal effort- warp the path of ranged fire because such vectors and things are tenuous and- a slight variation in degree of aim at the point of fire can mean a miss by inches or miles at the point of impact.

He can also react instinctively to the actions around him- fighting as if one beat ahead of his enemies, dodging blows before the fall. Against enemies with no ability to Oddsmith (most of the pleabian classes certainly) he could be nigh invulnerable. Combine this well honed mind-body talent with the highest quality weapons & light unobtrusive armor and one man could devistate many thousands.

You can't poison him, drown him, sufficate him etc- he simply avoids your intended attacks by reacting to the probability of their success. Without your own Oddsmithers to couter him, your technology will fail (complex as it is) and your armies will snarl into confused masses as every possible accident and battlefield folly befalls you.

What is left are eliet units of Oddsman Comandos or Duelists who fight their esoteric battles both on the material plane, but also on the methphysical plane of quantum possibility.

On a grander scale- planetery politics- the competing influences of the various power blocs stable of dedicated oddsmiths counters out...but if one factions oddsman defected...or were assassinated...

Some facitons will treat their oddsmithers with nigh worship and privelege, others like most valued employes, still others like nothing but slaves or human merchandise. The Empire will condition its oddsmiths for total loyality...and various training schools will instill similar ethical conditioning.

Any profession can benifit from a dedicated Oddsmith- an oddsmith surgeon can expect his treatments to work as well as possible. An oddsmith enginere can see his machines go for years without service.

And perhaps there are a rare few- part prophet, part mesia, part revolutionary- who can apply their powers to ALL things- from controling the reaction of a crowd, to the weather, to the harvest, to the function of a FTL drive....



Naturaly evolved living creatures are far more resistant to direct oddsmith interference- they have huge redundancy built in by millions of years of random mutation. Innefecient, but flexible. Most mechanisms fall sway to an oddsman's hex with disturbing ease. When a Gravtank can be made to founder and explode among your own troops with a bit of focused attention from the enemy's Jinxers, those lancers astridse riding raptors look much better...

Bailywolf wrote: He can also react instinctively to the actions around him- fighting as if one beat ahead of his enemies, dodging blows before the fall. Against enemies with no ability to Oddsmith (most of the pleabian classes certainly) he could be nigh invulnerable. Combine this well honed mind-body talent with the highest quality weapons & light unobtrusive armor and one man could devistate many thousands.

That reminds me of a question I never get an answer for. If your squad is up against a Jedi, why don't you coordinate/time your fire or use a field effect weapon? I mean there's only so much space between a hail of bullets (imagine an Oddsmith trying to walk dry through a heavy rain) and where can you 'hide' from a concussion wave (trinitrotoluene is pretty low tech)? (Note; this originally occurred to me trying to Nemesis-think versus Spider-man's 'spider sense' dodging.)

Now I'm not trying to poke holes it what sounds like a really intriguing concept, it's just you'reF out-thinking yourselves. Go too far with this and you'll rationalize away all the good stuff. I mean what I think we're talking about here is that old 'sense of wonder' stuff. What made Herbert's stuff cool had little to do with his rationalizations for the 'mix' of technology, it was the consistency of 'cool.' If you spend a lot of time concluding why the technology is mixed the way it is, won't you lose track of the 'buzz' the inspiration gave you? I say go far enough to catch the 'glaring errors' and then stop. Bolting on rationale after rationale will only make a clear idea mediocre; stick with the good stuff.

Just a world from someone who's overdesigned a few things to death.

Fang Langford

Bailywolf wrote:
Probability Engine- an enormous construction resembling a clockwork egg a hundred meters tall, and filled with man-seze hunks of etched crystal, planes and rings of gold and brass and silver, and controlled by dozens of polished levers. it is driven by a thick shaft- like a generator's turbine- running from the ship's atomic pile. When fully spun, it generates a point of infinite probability- all things are infinitly and equaly possible- and at that moment, a special conditioned Oddsmith Navigator can 'flip' the odds on the ship just a hair, and suddenly it becomes a 0 point certainity that the ship was where it was, and a 100 point certainity that it is where it is intended to be.

Bailywolf wrote: Well, Herbert's universe takes the shape it does from two major sources- the jahad which eliminated any thinking machine (and any technology expressly dependent on thinking machines), and the planer shield effect whcih made conventional weapons useless- and after a few thousand years, they fell into general disuse (spring dart and maula pistol aside).

he way I forsee an warrior Oddsmith's defesnive powers is two fold- he actively evades the most dangerous probabilities,
and also actively warps and distorts others. He not only moves in such a way as to reduce the chance that a rain drop will hit
him, but also subtly alters the paths of the drops when they fall so that they are already highly unlikly to hit him.

Balbinus wrote:

This came up on rpg.net recently, where the (I think correct) consensus was that the Dune universe only worked as a result of strong social controls.

The shields actually stop very little in terms of potential weapons, they certainly don't lead to the necessity of swords and duelling. On rpg.net three or four posters in as many minutes came up with anti-shield weapons of greater lethality than swords without really trying and without breaking Dune canon.

Save for one thing, they all broke the cultural rules set out in Dune. The key to Dune isn't technological, it's cultural. Same with all these kind of settings, if we don't use stuff it's because we choose not to.

This is a nice idea, but it sounds extremely close to Fading Suns. Couldn't the same result be obtained just by dropping the psionics and theurgy from that game?

what would happen to us if all our computers suddenly failed?

Bailywolf -- do you need an analog to the Butlerian Jihad? If my hazy memory of Dune serves, doesn't that basically explain away computers, or more importantly A.I. (as well as imply a cutural distrust of that tech)? If that's the case, then your Oddsmithing idea serves both purposes just fine!

First, it becomes the slightly weird (and altogether cool) shield tecnology. Second, it serves to spoil any chance a powerful computer, or even A.I. has at working properly. All an Oddsmith has to do is alter the quantum computer's processes just this way or that and PRESTO, computers are untrustworth and unreliable. There may be a cultural reason attached to this as well, but Oddsmithing has a nice way of summing up both ideas.

I think that concept of Oddsmithing is really the crucial element of the idea as presented thus far. It makes for interesting Player Characters (complete w/ kewl powerz!), and it jives well with the premise of tradition vs. dynamism. Oddsmiths seem clearly able to buck the system, and throw tradition on its ear.

With that in mind, I offer up the following thoughts on Oddsmiths.

First, what do they do? What is the actual scope of their powers? That is, by saying they can affect probability through subtle, psychic (?) manipulation of quantum mechanics, then that's tantamount to saying they can do anything. I think that's too extreme (and too vague), and I'm sure most folks agree. So, what, if any limitations do they and their powers have?

I suggest that it not be left open to the "anything goes" route. I don't think they should be one-man armies, nor do I think they should be effectively Mage: the Ascension in space, capable of altering reality. Instead, they should be subtle and unusual ... and mortal. Rather than being abe to do "anything" I think they should be quirky and easily recognizable to players. That is, I think their powers should be a set of abilities that have their own quirks and identity, rather than another excuse to have psi-blasts and telepathy.

If we keep pointing to Dune, then we can use many examples -- the Bene Gesserit seem to have their own unique and customary powers, as do Guild members and the assassins whose name escapes me at this point. (Wasn't there a groups of assassin clones that "resurrected" Duncan Idaho as a clone in the second book, which is as far as I got in the series? Been a while)

It might be interesting to have various specialty Oddsmiths. There might be various playable "classes" like Duelists, Diplomats, Mentats, etc.

Oh, one last radical idea to pose, even though I'm reluctant to suggest it because I like the emphasis on the human thus presented. The radical idea is that Oddsmiths are complex A.I. quantum computers. They can inhabit anything from a star cruiser's mainframe to a anthropomorphic clone. They'd still have Oddsmith powers, but they'd also be lots of fun to play in various forms -- a space battle when assuming the role of cruiser, a spy-game when disguised as a clone and so on. Just thought I'd throw the idea out there. Maybe it's still possible, that neural-net quantum computers are one "other" kind of Oddsmiths that often act as rivals and enemies for the human Oddsmith PCs.

Hey Matt.

Good points.

The way I imagined oddsmithing to work is the natural aptitude must be present to develope the abilities at all- and to some extens all oddsmiths can tweak everything slightly in their favor. But they recieve extensive conditioning/training which links their abilities to specific skills. So you have Oddsman Warriors, Oddsman Physicians, Oddsman Navigators, Oddsman Artificers etc.

From a game perspective, I thought the power itself would be 'attached' to specific skills- depending on the final shape of the game mechanics.

An Oddsman Duelist might have a core skillset of 5 skills (totally pulling this out of the air here): Awareness, Melee Combat, Unarmed Combat, Reflexes & Evasion. When using these skills, the player gets certain fairly extreme 'tweaks' to alter the success or failure of each one. By tweaking Evasion, he can become superhumanly hard to hit. By tweaking Melee Combat he can land impossible blows.

A person who could control probability across the board would be a prophet... or god.

Ahh, very good, that's what I was getting at, I think. That all Oddsmiths would have "core competencies' that generally make them special, but they all also have emphasis on specialties like Dueling, as you suggest.

For some reason I can't edit my post above, but I meant to say in one paragraph:

If we keep pointing to Dune, then we can use many examples -- the Bene Gesserit seem to have their own unique and customary powers, as do Guild members and the assassins whose name escapes me at this point. (Wasn't there a groups of assassin clones that "resurrected" Duncan Idaho as a clone in the second book, which is as far as I got in the series? Been a while)

An ideal term for creatures that can effect or defend again Odds powers would be... "Oddities"

Bob McNamee

So far the reason given for the lack of ubiquitous supertech has been that it would be too easy for malicious Oddsmiths to wreck. How about going the other way with it? Oddsmiths, who twist quantum reality by their existence, involuntarily make anything fail that relies on that level of detail.

Quantum computers would be the most obvious point of failure, if the quantum reality kept shifting in improper ways. This would limit computers to transistor technology, and large ones at that. Modern American technology is already close to worrying about quantum tunneling in chip fabrication and operation. The end result on computers is a growth limit.

The one exception to all of this could be the Unobtanium. Due to its super-robust quantum lattice (or some other unobtainable property) it acts as a proper Schrödinger quantum region (kryptonite). Unobtanium would both prevent intentional Oddsmithing against an object thus shielded, and also prevent the ubiquitous accidental quantum shifts from wrecking delicate electronics.

This would result in two major outcomes, I think. First, Star drives and supertech might be possible, but would be outrageously expensive and only used sparingly. In a world where everything is measured by cost / effectiveness the lower tech methods would likely be much more effective.

Second, I think this is a large flavor opportunity. A shield of unobtanium, onto which vacuum tubes might be grafted, would shield the occasional computer from quantum disruption. The tubes would be impervious to the low scale disruption of far off Oddsmiths, and allow humans to interface with the more fragile supercomputer lurking beneath the surface. Unobtanium gas might be used in stardrive buffers to prevent the unstable quantum polarizations from tearing the ship apart. The quantum disruptions of Oddsmiths might cause small telltale changes in their environment. (I remember in Scientific American a while ago they did the calculation of several hundred trillion years – or some equally unlikely amount of time - for a can of Coke-a-Cola to fall over on it's own quantum motion).

quot;BailywolfI never much cared for Fading Suns- I don't like the 'society in decline' or the 'last act of the morality play' or whatever angsty justification is given for an archaic society in a scifi setting therein. I wanted a sociaty which is vital, rich, and complex without descending uneringly into oblivion- the damn suns are fading. If all I wanted gloom, I'd play Vampire In Space.

Another idea:
Overuse of some sort of technology, say FTL, or powerful quantum computers damaged the fabric of space & probability. (I lean toward computers)
OddSmiths can actually work with this damaged space. Either they can manipulate it somehow, or perhaps they can just see probabilities, thus they can navigate the probablity dimension.

This makes the oddsmiths not responsible for everything. Thus, very limited high tech is possible, but two much starts opening up dimensional rifts or possibiliy probability goes hayware, events at the extrems of probability become more likely than common events. Elements may spontaniously decay, people may turn to giant tumors, ect.

I think the only difference between "oddsmithing" and garden-variety-psionics is "colour". Oddsmithing is psionics with quantum mechanics talk. The colour makes the difference between fantasy and science fiction, but it does not "explain" anything or make it scientific. Like Dune, which attempts to justify some of its psionics by genetics talk. But fails in explaining it scientifically.

As I said Dune has its own scientific problems, but the Butlerian Jihad idea is brilliant and before its time in science fiction. Herbert saw that humans would be obsolete in the far future, when he wrote Dune (it was before computers got big). That's why he has the Jihad, I believe. If you have anything near todays rate in technological progress we'll all be obsolete rather soon. In my game the expiry date for homo sapiens was 2030, for example (it'll take more time in reality- I hope). Anyway, Luddite attitudes like the Butlerian Jihad are a good solution for epic, retro-style science fiction, where humans are under the spotlights.

Another retro-scientific solution could be obtained from the fact that a high-tech society requires a widespread industrial base. So it goes like this, somehow men are not rendered obsolete and nanotech, ai etc don't get realised. Humanity discovers ftl tech (again somehow) and expands very fast very far. But something changes (hyperspace storms? unforseen side effects of the ftl technology?) and suddenly ftl travel becomes much slower, expensive and rare, making export of mass produced goods out of question. Only luxury goods are traded, such as Mexorgian giant squid juices, Blurdian mega cherries, etc. And the locals use whatever they find, animals, knives etc. Any imported core-worlds technology will eventually fail as there are no local means to maintain it. Also what good are cars where there are no gas stations? Cellular phones where there is no network? etc. So each planet will have its own industrial/technological level and humans will be the only constant features. This may increase the value of flexible individuals who can both fire megablasters and duel with swords. You can get near psionic effects with superior training and conditioning techniques such as the Bene Gesserit "voice" and Guild Mentat training. These are scientifically possible, even though hard to believe, they are no psionics.

Finally, I think the "Unobtainium armour-wearing knights ruling the universe" idea has cartoon/manga level of realism. Many holes can be punched in it (through scientific criticism), but I won't do it here because I don't know the intended level or realism for that game. It will probably work well for a light-sf/manga space opera. Like Star Wars, but not like Dune. Dune is not so hard, but not so light either.

I hope I don't sound too negative,

Regards,
Gizem Forta

gizem wrote: I think the only difference between "oddsmithing" and garden-variety-psionics is "colour". Oddsmithing is psionics with quantum mechanics talk. The colour makes the difference between fantasy and science fiction, but it does not "explain" anything or make it scientific. Like Dune, which attempts to justify some of its psionics by genetics talk. But fails in explaining it scientifically.

gizem wrote: I think the only difference between "oddsmithing" and garden-variety-psionics is "colour". Oddsmithing is psionics with quantum mechanics talk. The colour makes the difference between fantasy and science fiction, but it does not "explain" anything or make it scientific. Like Dune, which attempts to justify some of its psionics by genetics talk. But fails in explaining it scientifically.

Another retro-scientific solution could be obtained from the fact that a high-tech society requires a widespread industrial base. So it goes like this, somehow men are not rendered obsolete and nanotech, ai etc don't get realised. Humanity discovers ftl tech (again somehow) and expands very fast very far. But something changes (hyperspace storms? unforseen side effects of the ftl technology?) and suddenly ftl travel becomes much slower, expensive and rare, making export of mass produced goods out of question. Only luxury goods are traded, such as Mexorgian giant squid juices, Blurdian mega cherries, etc. And the locals use whatever they find, animals, knives etc. Any imported core-worlds technology will eventually fail as there are no local means to maintain it. Also what good are cars where there are no gas stations? Cellular phones where there is no network? etc. So each planet will have its own industrial/technological level and humans will be the only constant features.

Finally, I think the "Unobtainium armour-wearing knights ruling the universe" idea has cartoon/manga level of realism. Many holes can be punched in it (through scientific criticism), but I won't do it here because I don't know the intended level or realism for that game. It will probably work well for a light-sf/manga space opera. Like Star Wars, but not like Dune. Dune is not so hard, but not so light either.

I didn't want really hard scifi... rather a setting which held together by its own rules- limited but broadly aplicable weirdness.

Matt has it spot-on. The kind of game system which underpins this thing has to be fully blended with the setting. Characters will of course be drawn from the oddsbending eliet upper classes- masters of a speciality or descended from a noble line etc.

The galactic society is complex, tradition bound, intricate... the characters are complex, dynamic, ambitious, and innovative... and by their nature they make change more likely. Dynamism vs Tradition...

I have this really hinky idea that Social Conventions can be generated through some kind of mechanical process... perhaps with a donjon-like "discovery"process whcih will allow players to construct the societies thye interact with and move through... I can see a multi-point matrix with differeing ratings in things like Openness, Adaptability, Censure, Stability etc... each with a color-filled discriptor....

Mallkandor Prime
Description: An old Core World renowned for its dedication to all things carnal.
Openness: 9 (nothing is hidden- let your deepst self out. Keeping secrets is taboo. )
Adaptability: 4 (dependent on its status as a Core World, tourism, and the Imperial Endowment to maintin its exotic lifestyle)
Censure: 3 (very little is punished- only robbing another of their pleasure is considered a crime. And any taste can be cartered to for the right price...)
Stability 8 (an old and entrenched Council of Astetics rules this world- they deny their flesh so as to rule a world of libertines. Very stable).



These are just larks (and not great ones), but you see where I'm going.

Matt-
You're right about the point I was trying to make. I used the word "colour" not in the sense Ron uses it. It was not really related to game design.

Mike-

If yo can buy the mentats, then it's not too big a jump to assume a hyperintelligent human who can just extend normal intuition to heights not before seen. After all we're dealing with the human mind, and that's something that we are really unaware of the capabilities of. Especially when you start to include the addition of such things as exotic drugs (the sixties analog of LSD is not overlooked). As such, I don't see anything in Dune as all that far out.

Cool idea. The only downside to this is that after a time each planet would likely achieve it's own high tech base. So you can't have an ancient tradition bound society. Instead you'd have a more wild west sort of atmosphere. A cool idea in and of itself, but might not work for what BW wants.

Ouch. I'm wounded. Well, to be fair, I did present it that way so as to display the underbelly of how it would work from a game mechanic sort of perspective, and thus failed to put forth any explanation of how it might potentially work. But if you really want me to display it in such a way as it makes harder sci-fi sense, I can do that. It'd have to do with force fields, and inertial conversion. Stuff that scientists are pondering as we speak.

In any case, anyone who points to the softness of such technologies while tacitly accepting FTL is making an odd point, IMO. Somehow that one always is allowed.

Bailywolf wrote: I propose Oddsmithing- a highliy evolved capacity inherent in sapient minds to alter or read probability. Like Nivin's "psychic luck" seen in his Known Space but conscious. A warrior Oddsman can- with minimal effort- warp the path of ranged fire because such vectors and things are tenuous and- a slight variation in degree of aim at the point of fire can mean a miss by inches or miles at the point of impact.

He can also react instinctively to the actions around him- fighting as if one beat ahead of his enemies, dodging blows before the fall. Against enemies with no ability to Oddsmith (most of the pleabian classes certainly) he could be nigh invulnerable. Combine this well honed mind-body talent with the highest quality weapons & light unobtrusive armor and one man could devistate many thousands.

You can't poison him, drown him, sufficate him etc- he simply avoids your intended attacks by reacting to the probability of their success. Without your own Oddsmithers to couter him, your technology will fail (complex as it is) and your armies will snarl into confused masses as every possible accident and battlefield folly befalls you.

What is left are eliet units of Oddsman Comandos or Duelists who fight their esoteric battles both on the material plane, but also on the methphysical plane of quantum possibility.

On a grander scale- planetery politics- the competing influences of the various power blocs stable of dedicated oddsmiths counters out...but if one factions oddsman defected...or were assassinated...

Some facitons will treat their oddsmithers with nigh worship and privelege, others like most valued employes, still others like nothing but slaves or human merchandise. The Empire will condition its oddsmiths for total loyality...and various training schools will instill similar ethical conditioning.

Any profession can benifit from a dedicated Oddsmith- an oddsmith surgeon can expect his treatments to work as well as possible. An oddsmith enginere can see his machines go for years without service.

And perhaps there are a rare few- part prophet, part mesia, part revolutionary- who can apply their powers to ALL things- from controling the reaction of a crowd, to the weather, to the harvest, to the function of a FTL drive....



Naturaly evolved living creatures are far more resistant to direct oddsmith interference- they have huge redundancy built in by millions of years of random mutation. Innefecient, but flexible. Most mechanisms fall sway to an oddsman's hex with disturbing ease. When a Gravtank can be made to founder and explode among your own troops with a bit of focused attention from the enemy's Jinxers, those lancers astridse riding raptors look much better...

Bailywolf wrote: The way I forsee an warrior Oddsmith's defesnive powers is two fold- he actively evades the most dangerous probabilities, and also actively warps and distorts others. He not only moves in such a way as to reduce the chance that a rain drop will hit him, but also subtly alters the paths of the drops when they fall so that they are already highly unlikly to hit him.

One thing about the Oddsmithing ability ... since it effects probabilities and observable events it could lead to science never advancing really very much.

If oddsmithing has been around for a long time, science may never really take off, since the foundation of scientific research is verifiable repeateble observations... and the "observer" nature of oddsmithing may prevent much hard repeatable experiments... especially if some scientist have a touch of "odds power"...heck, even our scientists skew data for their own pet theories...their experiamenter can literally skew the data.

Bob McNamee

...course that interpretation would take it more toward fantasy than Sci-fi....unless some of the really Hi Tech stuff is leftovers from older civs that no longer exist.

Well heres tuppence worth.

I liked Rings projections of unobtanium use, especially as an insulant. What if the problem is reveresed and its not so much the oddsmiths radiating dynamism as the technology. They have an absolutely free, large and infinite supply of energy in the form of a generator that operates on quantum fluctuations and virtual particles popping in and out of existance. The problem is not having too little energy, but too much - it radiates in huge quantities from the planetary stations, disrupting "quantum" interactions at huge distances like thousands of kilometers. Unobtanium is expensive and rare becuase so much of it is required as shielding for absolutely anything electronic that you want to work anywhere within these fields. However, another use for all this energy would be a laser launch system to propel ships, by detonating reaction mass like ice attched to the hull of a ship. Such a system would allow basically free access to orbit, and you can glide down at your convenience. The only place to be on a planet would be near a space port, but being near a space port means you cant use any electronics and or other level of tech.

You could also use this as an argument for the social structure; perhaps the "radiation" has a subtle effect on society, at least thats an area to possibly explore. Anywayway, you could structure a society that had limited high tech by making placement difficult; maybe the effects cover whole solar systems. Around where the majority of people will be, tech has to be low to be functional or high priority to be shielded. You might have a very high level of materials technology produced in shielded or remote production facilities, and mostly muscle power in its application. Which would also pretty much create a high demand for personal services in the affected zone, in that a high tech diamand lattice cart drawn by a few guys or a horse only goes so fast.

Also, one of the best investments you can make with unobtanium is a ship, becuase the whole thing has to be a self-contained bubble anyway. An unobtanium skin is easy to fit to something that has to be completely tight by design, and allows you to enclose a lot of high-tech hardware which you can fling into space with your free energy. And in space you can get all the iron and water and everything else you desire from solar powered autofacs in planetary and solar orbit. We live on planets becuase we like the wind in our hair and the grass between our toes.

As for warrior ideas, one decision that would have to made is to whether or not chemical and mechanical actions work, basically to address guns. But with this setup it would be easy to have melee weapons made out of all sorts of exotic materials extracted from the hearts of gas giants and the like. Its likely that with limited opportunity and even need for large scale manufacturing, many broad uses of technology would fall off the priority list in favour of general applications, like construction materail and household implements, and the extremely specialist, at the whim of the those who wield the unobtanium.