Quote from: SpikeAs a SF buff, I think overly slavish focusing on REAL physics is actually detrimental to a good story.  When I read a book set thousands of years in the future, with alien races running around (or merely leaving ruins) it doesn't make much sense for the technology to be pretty much stuck at 'today except in space'.

Agreed. The timeline and time distance between now and then, or evolution level of the society if it isn't based on contemporary projected forward, justifying the difference is an important aspect to the pausibility.

QuoteI've been toying with ideas on creating a space campaign that takes a drastically different view of physical law. Pretty much completely discounting all of Relativity and the "gravitational" view of the universe in favor of the "electromagnetic" view of the universe.

At this point, is it still "Hard SF," while using different physical laws?

To apply the pinciples of my view here:

If you think that those principles are pausible and you feel the world is portrayed using those laws in an internally self-consistant manner, that be Hard SF.

If you think those links are akin to the Time Cube, or you feel it isn't applied consistantly in the fictional world with all the appropriate conciquences, that be Soft SF.

It could also potentially be borderline Fantasy if the fact that it isn't even explained that the world functions not as expected because of this different take on physical laws. Especially if it has magnet dragons zipping around.

P.S.  Another example of the Fantasy/SF boundry shifting is Xmen 3.  The comic had Jugernaught as 'magic'. He was converted to being a mutant, and thus subject to the anti-muntant powers, for the movie.  Same basic abilities, different explaination (or lack of I guess) of the source.

Mmm....

Magnetic Dragons.....



:hmm:

Quote from: VellorianI've been toying with ideas on creating a space campaign that takes a drastically different view of physical law.  Pretty much completely discounting all of Relativity and the "gravitational" view of the universe in favor of the "electromagnetic" view of the universe.

Has anyone looked at THIS?

Or THIS

In a nutshell, these are electrical engineers who claim they can better predict what the universe is doing, what it looks like and how it behaves using electromagnetic principles, with the claim that "gravity is too weak of a mechanic to explain the behavior of the universe" (paraphrase).

At this point, is it still "Hard SF," while using different physical laws?

I'm familiar with them, yes. Is it Hard SF if you adhere strictly to these theories? Not quite - which is why Cold Space misses out on the Hard classification - as the theory is not generally accepted. The electromagnetic universe is accepted at somewhere between the crank and crackpot level.  Hard or not, I think it would be fascinating!

-mice

Quote from: Caesar SlaadI seem to remember an editor of some SF short story rag chiding one of the writers to "limit it to one patent implausibility per story." It could have been Bova, as he's done some editing.

That's my rule, I would be astonished if nothing we currently consider correct doesn't turn out to be wrong, but I wouldn't expect all of it to be wrong.

So, arbitrarily, I allow one gimme per setting.

Yes, "physics breaking" is allowed in "Hard" Sci-Fi.  A lot of it depends on how its done and how far you are supposed to be from current day.

We have energy weapons now.  They are terribly expensive aren't effective on a battlefield so no one uses them.

If you assume nanocapacitors(lab only tech currently), or something similar works out and enters mass production they become much more feasible so are reasonable if you want to go that way.  

We have rail guns - only on battleships.  Not unreasonable to make them smaller

We have reasonable theories of quantum communication.  (Quantum Entanglement)

Quantum Encryption and Quantum Computers are on the edges of real tech, they aren't completely fanciful.

FTL is usually the big one, but sci-fi isn't much fun to play without it.  PC's need to be able to rush from place to place at least once.  If every trip is years long you lose that.
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Quote from: Xavier LangFTL is usually the big one, but sci-fi isn't much fun to play without it.  PC's need to be able to rush from place to place at least once.  If every trip is years long you lose that.

Well, though the verdict looks certain, the jury is still out. There are plenty of credible physicists who formulate theories on travel via things like Einstein-Rosen bridges and Alcubierre drives.

Of course, typical SF makes things seem a lot more convenient than those theories suggest.

Quote from: VellorianI've been giving this a little thought lately:

Can "Hard SF" truly accept "physics breaking" elements?  

Wormholes, hyperspace, dimensional travel, most "energy weapons," "gravitic drive systems," and many other common, sci-fi (SF) elements tend to break (or severely bend) what we know of physics.

Is it truly acceptable to the lover of Hard SF to include these elements, or do they represent an element of "fantasy" slipping in for convenience?

Dude, its fiction.We don't know what the state of real physics will be in a hundred years so SF authors make it all up.Wether they're right or not, only time will tell. Why get all worked up about such stuff if you are running a game?
If I'd bought a book labelled as such and found it totally Starwars, then I'd get a bit miffed!

Well, I think there should be a few categories of science fiction -- but I'm not terribly concerned about the terminology.  

The main thing I want to argue against is that not breaking physical laws is somehow no fun, and that you need FTL, psionics, or whatever in order to have a fun game.  There are tons of fun science fiction stories and games which have no physically impossible actions: from "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" to "When Gravity Fails" to "Red Mars" and plenty of others.  

Quote from: Xavier LangFTL is usually the big one, but sci-fi isn't much fun to play without it.  PC's need to be able to rush from place to place at least once.  If every trip is years long you lose that.

You're assuming here that the game has to include light-years distant trips.  There's plenty of possibilities within a single solar system -- heck, even on a single planet.  I find that the urge for interstellar travel very often stems from having a "desert planet" or a "forest planet" or similar nonsensical ideas.

Quote from: jhkimYou're assuming here that the game has to include light-years distant trips.  There's plenty of possibilities within a single solar system -- heck, even on a single planet.  I find that the urge for interstellar travel very often stems from having a "desert planet" or a "forest planet" or similar nonsensical ideas.

QFT

Our Traveller campaign still hasn't left the confines of the run-down and technologically-backwards star system we started in, and probably won't for some time, I hope.  I was at pains to build enough hooks into the moon that serves as "home base" as well as the other planets in-system so that we could have adventures there for a good long while before playing around with Jump Drives and such.  I've also tried to avoid the monoecological planet syndrome ("It's raining on Barsoom!") you allude to, though it's easy to fall into that trap.

Thus far, my players haven't expressed an interest in leaving the home system, though I'm sure they'll do so eventually.  Varied environments and giving a sense of the scale involved in a "mere" solar system have helped in this regard.