Ok, nanotech has been the race in SF, anime and some game settings for a while now. Some game systems keep it on a fairly short leash, like THS, and others apparently have in only in a limited, invisible mode, like, maybe, traveller, which might use nanotech in industrial or medical roles but only in a very limited fashion if at all.

Do you use nanotech in your games and if so at what level? Keep it limited and plausible or let it become a surrogate for magic in SF games?

I try to keep it low key, I let it do some things like fixing stuff, or building items from a menu, but it has to be contained in a special eutactic chamber, the smallest of which are about the size of small microwave ovens. I don't let it run around loose doing all sorts of near magic stuff, tho I do allow insect sized machines built by nano assemblers run around doing various tasks. "Like a "bug" that actually plants itself...)

During my first Nob campaign the PCs at one point found themselves allied with Marek, the sentient nanotech swarm from the book: that's just about the extent to which I've used the stuff in the last few years. But if I ever get around to actually running Engel, nanotechnology will of course serve as "substitute magic", since that's what it effectively is in the setting.

In StarCluster, you will find no mention of "nanotech," not because it's not present, but because it's subsumed by function. Some of the "drugs" you take to promote healing are nanotech devices, and more are menufactured with nanotech. Active Plasteel - a programmable material - is nano-controlled. Active Surfaces - which change texture, color, and spectral characteristics - are nano-controlled. It's nothing like magic, and nothing like what the popular image of nanotech is, but it's what I think is probable, useful, and intersting for the setting. People don't talk about nano-this and nano-that because the means are no longer important - nanotech is part of a range of tools that you use, what's important are the functions of those tools.

-clash

I try to keep nanotech low key and in the background because I've seen too many examples of nanotech=magic in games and fiction.

i'm wondering how i would include it in traveller, my preferred SF back in the day.  i guess it would have to be sketched out via TLs.  i'll have to re-read reynolds' revelation space stuff for more ideas (only got through the first two, tho).

There are one or two EABA settings that foreground it... what were the names again... One of them is a postapoc setting in the wake of a nano rampage. From what I remember, the blurb sounded pretty cool and not magicky at all.

Quote from: beeberi'm wondering how i would include it in traveller, my preferred SF back in the day.  i guess it would have to be sketched out via TLs.  i'll have to re-read reynolds' revelation space stuff for more ideas (only got through the first two, tho).

Well, in traveller assume limited, fixed nano is used in autodocs, low berths and medkits for various functions.

Also assume some of the strong materials are assembled by nanoscale machines in factories.

(delete)

Quote from: RedFox(delete)

nanobot problems? :confused:  :haw:

i can do CT/MT nano in industry and medical--it's just the initial mental disconnect for play purposes.  my older traveller reflexes tend to the earlier versions of TLs.  if you really ponder TL13+ nano, it'll wreak havoc with everything.  image a nano plague on a high tech world, re-processing the very buildings etc. into some strange AI vista of insanity.  or the same plague on a lower tech world, without the safeguards a higher tech world would have.

then again. . . . :raise:

Quote from: Pierce InverarityThere are one or two EABA settings that foreground it... what were the names again... One of them is a postapoc setting in the wake of a nano rampage. From what I remember, the blurb sounded pretty cool and not magicky at all.

'Age of Ruin' is an EABA supplement that depicts a setting where nanotechnology got loose and ran amuck.  The primary driving force in the ecosystem is nanotechnology, and all living creatures are thoroughly invested with them.  It's a very...odd...setting.

Quote from: Tom B'Age of Ruin' is an EABA supplement that depicts a setting where nanotechnology got loose and ran amuck.  The primary driving force in the ecosystem is nanotechnology, and all living creatures are thoroughly invested with them.  It's a very...odd...setting.

If you like that, you might want to read "Bloom" by Wil McArthy. It's about survivors in the outer solar system after a nanotech outbreak consumes the inner system.