If you want hard SF gaming, it should probably be based on hard sf sources, like known space for example.

Another good source that has not had an actual RPG based on it yet would be the foundation series by Asimov, but a lot of that ended up being ported into traveller.

Quote from: J ArcaneHow utterly juvenile . . .

Hey, I meet juvenile with more juvenile. It's even free!

Quote from: Consonant DudeBecause I wasn't talking about popularity when you begun replying to me, and you'd know it if you pulled your head out of your ass and started replying in good faith.

The thread is about popularity, so if you're not talking about popularity then why the fuck are you here?  Get with the program, retard.

KoOS

Quote from: King of Old SchoolThe thread is about popularity, so if you're not talking about popularity then why the fuck are you here?  Get with the program, retard.

KoOS

No, the thread isn't only about popularity. Might want to get on with the program yourself.

Quote from: Elliot WilenThis isn't to say they don't have a "cool" factor for fans, that carries over to games (a medium that doesn't need the visual personalization like cartoons do). However, while, I haven't played any mecha games, I suspect that the humanoid form of mecha can help overcome a different limitation of tanks & planes: it somehow makes sense to have mecha degrade partwise and ablatively, just like characters in an RPG with hit locations. Whereas with tanks (for me at least) it's difficult to justify much other than an all-or-nothing damage system. (Well, most tactical tank wargames allow for immobilization, destruction of the main gun, and destruction of the tank as a whole, each as a binary result. But that's not enough to make control of a single unit tactically interesting.) Add in the way that many mecha carry multiple "magic items" with "charges" (i.e., 1-2 types of gun and 1-2 types of missiles) and you can see that they're like PCs writ large.

See, I think that's an argument to make the mech the character, and the driver/crew just one of the stats. Or perhaps omething in the troupe stylee, with the mech itself being like a group of wizards in Ars Magica. This might work especially well with those giant-robot anime, where separate parts come together to make a Voltron sort of a thing. But I dunno, I'm shooting from the hip here.

Maybe we should start a separate thread for mecha and get back to "proper" sf. On that topic, as a thought experiment, how would we make games out of some of our fave proper sf writers?

F'rinstance, Greg Egan, the rpg:

I think a Greg Egan rpg would be a bit like CoC. In TGERPG, PCs must search deeper into the secrets of the quantum world without loosing their essence when they realise that, in some important respects, they don't exist at all, or only exist some of the time, or what have you. This would be expressed mechanically through... er... okay, I don't have a clue.

Ned

RPGs tend to be singularly bad at introspection.  I think if there was to be a Greg Egan RPG it would need to be more Terranesia and less "Mr Volition".

Well, there's your problem right there. "Proper" fiction of any sort is inevitably about introspection, or has been since the modernists. I think a Greg Egan rpg that ignores all that identity and reality stuff becomes Just Another Cyberpunk setting. If you want rpgs that reflect "proper" fiction of any sort, it has to address internal, introspective issues.

But then you become Swine, and the Game Police declare war on you.

Ned

Quote from: Ned the Lonely DonkeyI think a Greg Egan rpg that ignores all that identity and reality stuff becomes Just Another Cyberpunk setting. If you want rpgs that reflect "proper" fiction of any sort, it has to address internal, introspective issues.

I believe it's doable.  "Doom Patrol" meets "Transmetropolitan" with large chunks of "The Invisibles"

I've almost got the system right and I might look at it again in a year or so.  The hardest bit is some of the concepts about facets of personality and changes to your identity don't even have words to describe them yet

On the bright side, I believe it will be the first RPG to have "Violence" as an primary attribute

The invisibles is nothing like Greg Egan.

The invisibles is incoherent, woolly-headed cack written by a man so egotistical that he casts himself as the book's biggest badass.  I read the first couple of books and downloaded this speech that Morrison made and decided that I couldn't think of anyone who needed to have the shit kicked out of him more.

"Och, ya see... magic rilly works"

Oh FUCK off!

Even Killroy's less of a twat than Grant Morrison.

Quote from: Mr. AnalyticalEven Killroy's less of a twat than Grant Morrison.

Hey Mr., I mean there's hyperbole and everything, but come on, man!

It's neck-and-neck, surely?

- Q

no no no... Morrison's easily a bigger twat than Killroy.  You didn't see that speech he gave.

Quote from: Mr. AnalyticalThe invisibles is incoherent, woolly-headed cack written by a man so egotistical that he casts himself as the book's biggest badass.  I read the first couple of books and downloaded this speech that Morrison made and decided that I couldn't think of anyone who needed to have the shit kicked out of him more.

Peter Akinola leaps to mind as someone who is in more need of a kicking (as does Fred Phelps), but other than that I agree with you.  When the final issue of Seven Soldiers comes out I'm taking the whole thing back to the FLCS and exchanging it for store credit

Quote from: Mr. AnalyticalThe invisibles is nothing like Greg Egan.

However and for example, at the end of "Bloody Hell in America", Mr. Quimper (baddie) inserts a fragment of his personality inside the mind of Ragged Robin (goodie) in an attempt to take her over.  Rags realises what he's done and spends much of the "Kissing Mr. Quimper" story arc creating an artificial personality, complete with memories so the Quimper-fragment takes that over instead

If that doesn't scream Greg Egan, then I don't know what does

Yeah but in the case of Egan that would be in the context of a post-singularity civilisation.  Not *waggles fingers* magickq.