Topic: Science fiction II
Started by: vegasthroat
Started on: 12/13/2002
Board: RPG Theory
On 12/13/2002 at 9:09pm, vegasthroat wrote:
Science fiction II
I am so not smart enough for these forums, yet...
I think the problem with most Science Fiction games is that they try to encompass the entire genre than focus on a few or a single aspect.
I mean, yes CJ Cheryh's Foreignor is pretty fun -anthropological sf- but it's a very, very, very different sort of SF than say Egan's Diaspora or Permutation City.
Also there are many games which are actually science fantasy (star trek, shadowrun,farscape, etc.) and not science fiction. For some of us, SF means HARD SF, and that's it.
I think the biggest problem with writing an SF game write now is the number of conceits you'd have to include to have a coherent take on technology. One need only to look at the size of computers in Traveller for example to see how horribly and quickly dated your game can become with just a few off-course assumptions.
Personally I can't concieve of a Cyberpunk game that doesn't include Egan's, Sterling's, Vinge's and Robinson's rather well-developed extrapolations of modern tech advancement.
SF Reader's note, for all it's hard science about terraforming, Robinson basically lets his computers become 'black box' items in the MARS Trilogy.
Obviously this is partially because of the sort of story he wanted to tell (One with a focus on human interaction, and the transformation of the planet/culture/species theme). But I also think it's because Robinson just didn't want to have to consider or address ANY of the speculative problems that come from delving too deep into programming, computer architecture, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, etc. Or his book would have sidetracked into the territory of a completely different sort of SF (very much the domain of Mr.Greg Egan, btw).
This same sort of focus on 'what kind of stories can you tell with my game'
may be why there isn't ,IMHO a completely satisfactory sci-fi rpg on the market.
2cents
On 12/14/2002 at 12:40am, Alan wrote:
RE: Science fiction II
Mike Holmes wrote: . . . each Sci-Fi story has a different Premise. Unlike all Gothic works, or all Romance novels, or all detective fiction, Sci-Fi is the "genre" where you define a new Premise every single novel.
This bears repetition. In another thread where I asked about narrativist premises for space trader/Heinlein juvenile SF, Ron suggested that, in good novels of that form, setting highlighted and intensified the hero's personal premise.
After much thought I think this is true of all good SF - all good fiction really, but SF is one area where uncoordinated theme and setting stand out like a thirty sided die. In addition, an SF theme usually has larger implications and it's difficult to coordinate and capture everything in one novel.
For RPGs, a simulationist approach may address the issue. One game that never really had a chance was SPI's Universe, back in 1980, which had a good hard sf approach to interstellar exploration.
But - I'm also struggling for a way to create an hard SF RPG designed to favor narrativist preferences. The problem is: how to maintain consistency when not every player has the same level of scientific understanding. I think that Paul Czege's thread on sim-like in narrativist games is discussing some of these issues. I also think that a hybrid approach might work - passions or drives overlaying a simulationist design.
Come to think of it, some forms of SF are about technology and encountering physical phenomena. A solution for these, might be to restrict directorial power over these items with a sim ruleset. Still, there's the "just in time" effect in most fiction, where the characters are in the right place, at the right time, with the right skills and resources to just barely pull something off. To simulate this consistently, I think I'd use a narrativist-favoring mechanic.
On 12/14/2002 at 1:13am, Gordon C. Landis wrote:
RE: Science fiction II
Hi vegasthroat - welcome to the Forge! (in case no one's said that yet),
I guess I'll play "Forge cop" for a momenet and say that this thread (and a few others you've posted to) are really kinda old - and Forge etiquette is to start a new thread, with the bit you want to respond to quoted, rather than post to the end of a months-old thread.
That said - you're plenty smart enough for these forums! Your point that a "SF" label is at BEST at starting point for an RPG, and that further focus is needed to make it a really effective game design, sounds exactly right to me.
Again, welcome,
Gordon
On 12/14/2002 at 3:57pm, Ron Edwards wrote:
RE: Science fiction II
Hi there,
Here's the thread that vegasthroat was posting to - Science fiction - and by all means, continue the discussion, anyone, if you see fit. (Please read the older thread first.)
Best,
Ron
Forge Reference Links:
Topic 2227
On 12/14/2002 at 6:00pm, Thierry Michel wrote:
RE: Science fiction II
vegasthroat wrote: This same sort of focus on 'what kind of stories can you tell with my game' may be why there isn't ,IMHO a completely satisfactory sci-fi rpg on the market.
Case in point: Transhuman Space. You would expect heavy stuff from the title, along the line "what does it mean to be human ?", like the fictions from Egan of course, but also the recent sociological book of Fukuyama and the philosophical essays of Habermas and Sloeterdijk (spelling ?) about voluntary eugenics.
Unfortunately, it seems the scenarios ideas in the book are of the "pirates in space" style with a substantial part of the book devoted to the construction of cool vehicles. Nothing wrong with that, but it looks like a missed opprtunity for me.
On 12/14/2002 at 6:30pm, vegasthroat wrote:
RE: Science fiction II
I can't possibly agree more with you about Transhuman Space. I was on Pyramid when a lot of that book was being playtested and the 'fatbeards' over at SJGames didn't want to talk about TRANSHUMANISM at all on the playtest boards. It was a like a secondary or tertiary subject that fell far beyond the more 'simulationist' concerns (I really, really hope that I'm using that term properly.) I mean to me, if you have a game called "TRANSHUMAN" Space than it should be less about your cheesy cyber-armor constructs and vehicles and more about say, what does it mean to be human in a world where consciousness and physiology can be warped at leisure? ie. what does it mean to be transhuman?
Totally ignored in the game, IMHO, at least to the degree I would have preferred.
Completely off topic -tangent (apologies fo rant)
I admit a personal dislike for the SJGames Forums people because of my experience on there with Transhuman, in fact.
I really think they had an opportunity to make a superior hard-sf game that you could tell some great stories with, and sort of dropped the ball. I blame this, frankly, on the tastes of the Pyramid Playtesters who come from a Niven/Pournelle/Anderson -era of Hard SF, and frankly are hostile to Gibson (whose work is 20 freaking years old!) and certainly couldnt be bothered with the 'new breed' of the Hard SF genre, like Egan, Marusek, Chiang, etc.
On 12/14/2002 at 7:22pm, Uncle Dark wrote:
RE: Science fiction II
VT,
I'm not sure that the rant was off topic. Probably because I agree with it.
I read the old Science Fiction thread last night, and one of the things I saw there was a meandering meta-discussion. Sort of a "hey, guys, what are we talking about here?" sort of thing. Several varieties of story ususally labeled SF were mentioned, but not discussed in any depth.
Where I'm going is this: It sounds like what you were expecting was a setting in which the emotional depth of the stories came from a "what does it mean to be human" question. Sure, the plots and story points could be all space pirates and free-trader campaigns, but the emotional meat came from questioning the limits of humanity.
Let me suggest this: Let's discuss science fiction as a genre which asks questions like that, using the trappings of science (real or imaginary) to establish the question.
For example, a game featuring a cybernetic ship which is essentially a human brain in a jar running the ship, is that still a human being? Do we treat it as such? Why is Bob, with the full-body borg prosthesis human if the ship is not?
Similar questions regarding genetic engineering. Is the person engineered to live on an unterraformed world human, despite its genetic differences? If so, is that alien also human, in the sense of being a person?
Lon
On 12/14/2002 at 8:50pm, vegasthroat wrote:
RE: Science fiction II
I think that the problem with most SF games that I've seen is that they tend towards the simulationist heavy approach to the system
As I've said before, there are a LOT of problems with this (least of which is the fact that new developments can keep entire aspects of your carefully calculated extrapolation outdated before you even get your game to press.)
What I would prefer is an SF game that approaches the tech from a more narrative/gamist approach.
In my opinion it is not really important to know how many Ghz the processor of the computers in the game world are, so much as it is important to understand the narrative limits of what they are capable within the structure of the background.
Don't get me wrong, real world physics should be considered when building the gamist models used (again, I REALLY hope I'm using this term correctly) but actual simulationism should be kept to a bare minimum.
I think this would alleviate a lot of the problems. People with a deep understanding of technology would be able to insert all the detail they felt comfortable with as flavor, while people with less interest in hard tech could rely upon the 'faith' that the game designers have modeled the relatonal aspects of technology in the system (that is gamist? correct?)
I think in this fashion you could have a 'realistic' HARD SF game that didn't require a b.s. in a hard science to run in a consistent and logical fashion.
Taking a gamist/narrativist heavy approach to SF would seem counter-intuitive in some ways, but I think in the end it solves far, far more problems than it creates. Let the individual GM decide that HAL9000 is running with parrallel 900Ghz Processors, and another just let HAL be 'black box' technology that doesn't need to be realistically described so long as it's implicityly what HAL9000 can and can't do in terms of story/plot and setting.
what do you thinK?
On 12/14/2002 at 8:57pm, vegasthroat wrote:
RE: Science fiction II
Uncle Dark wrote: VT,
Let me suggest this: Let's discuss science fiction as a genre which asks questions like that, using the trappings of science (real or imaginary) to establish the question.
Sorry my last post was sort of OFF of that thread.
But I think that what it discussed sort of proposes what I think my solution to writing a SF game that deals with such questions should be like mechanically.
On another note. While I certainly wouldnt want to do it to the degree of the Albino Fleabag (delta-green mailing list codeword for :white wolf) I think that 'traditions/philosophies" approach to generating guidelines for the various viewpoints of a transhuman game might not be such a bad idea for such a setting.
In addition, we see this sort of approach taken within the literary conventions of the genre itself. Sterling's "Shaper/Mechanist" dichotamy, Egan's approach in "Axiomatic", Gibson's 'Lo-teks" and Cyberspace cowboys take very different approaches to tech.
Like I said, I'm not sure I'd like to see the concept developed to the point of WW's splatbook phenomena, but I think it might be a good way to start.
And I'd be more likely to buy a splatbook that was essentially a philosophical primer (written entirely 'in character') on a certain aspect of transhumanist philosohpy with a few extra 'gamist' approaches to tackling the ideas in your campaign (rules!) if you care to take a more focused approach to that particular idea.
what do you think?
On 12/15/2002 at 5:54am, M. J. Young wrote:
RE: Science fiction II
'Uncle Dark' Lon wrote: It sounds like what you were expecting was a setting in which the emotional depth of the stories came from a "what does it mean to be human" question....the emotional meat came from questioning the limits of humanity.....
For example, a game featuring a cybernetic ship which is essentially a human brain in a jar running the ship, is that still a human being? Do we treat it as such? Why is Bob, with the full-body borg prosthesis human if the ship is not?
Similar questions regarding genetic engineering. Is the person engineered to live on an unterraformed world human, despite its genetic differences? If so, is that alien also human, in the sense of being a person?
Multiverser is certainly not hard sci-fi; it can play fairly hard sci-fi, but always has some fantasy elements inherent to it. But it almost always addresses this kind of question eventually.
It helps that players start as themselves; this means they already have all the baggage of self-identity, that "who I am" stuff that makes them human. But in the course of play things change. I know characters who have lost body parts and replaced them with cybernetic parts, others who have extensive technological enhancements. There's one character who is so far from who he once was that he now most closely resembles Odo of DS9--an amorphous blob that prefers to take human form but can be pretty much anything. Some have grown wings, either permanently or temporarily. Yet for most players, there comes a point at which they are struggling with that line of whether they are still human, and whether that matters to them. I know one player who declined to allow an alien race to teach him psionic powers, because in his view of himself he would not be human if he could do those things. My own character has never shape changed to another creature (probably could, if he put his mind to doing it) because his human body is an anchor for his sanity in the constant flux of universes he sees. Eventually the game starts asking players what they are willing to become. And it loses a lot of the idea of "wow, I can play a cool cybernetic guy with all these powers" because what you're talking about is whether you would allow yourself to be converted into such a machine.
That's probably a problem with a lot of the efforts to ask such questions in a game. Look at Vampire: the Masquerade. It's supposed to be about the internal struggle of whether you have a right to exist by preying on others; in practice, it's usually about political maneuverings among blood-sucking supervillains. The players don't identify with it as "this is something I became" and so it doesn't have the impact it should. If Bob is a spaceship, well, we as players either accept that the spaceship is a person, too, or we relegate him to a piece of sophisticated machinery and so insult him (if he can be insulted). It's very different if it's played out that you were once a person but gradually being converted into a sentient space ship.
--M. J. Young
On 12/15/2002 at 7:11pm, Thierry Michel wrote:
RE: Science fiction II
The back-cover of Transhuman Space reads: "Will human cease to have any meaning in a world of genetic engineering and digital consciousness ?"
The contents of the book are of the type: "Cool ! robots, cat-people, space pirates".
It looks like just a new package for the Space Opera genre. I don't know whether it is because they felt there was no market for something else or because all SF roleplaying eventually turns into space opera naturally.
In my mind it's again the question of "what is roleplayable". Chasing space pirates obviously is, "questioning the limits of humanity" maybe is not (but I hope I'm wrong).
On 12/15/2002 at 8:10pm, Jack Spencer Jr wrote:
RE: Science fiction II
Thierry Michel wrote: In my mind it's again the question of "what is roleplayable". Chasing space pirates obviously is, "questioning the limits of humanity" maybe is not (but I hope I'm wrong).
This is the sort of question I was asking with the "Genre thinking outside of this particular box" thread as well. It is funny, but the idea of playing something like "questioning the limits of humanity" often gets the reply of "oh you can do that with any system." or something like it. I am not sure why it is or why you would say something like the above. I think it has something to do with capturing the imagination and getting excited and such. It's pretty easy to get people jazzed about chasing space pirates, it's not so easy to get them jazzed about the limits of humanity. Of course, afterwards, the pirates wears off with the adreniline (potentially) while the limits of humanity leaves a person profoundly moved (again, potentially) Naturally, the package is sold with the jazzier cover. More profound or not, the limits of humanity is subtiler and less suitable to ad copy. Or such is how it appears to me.