Strange, I think there are plenty of RPGs that are harder sf than Star Trek - I thought this was going to be about the absence of games set in Arthur C Clarke/Isaac Asimov/David Brin type universes. Maybe Star Trek level of sf is at the hard end for video games, I didn't know Mass Effect was an outlier. Something like Elite would surely be at least as hard sf as Star Trek though.

Why are true Science Fiction settings so rare?
1. Science
2. Math

Quote from: Simlasa;880774Yes, to varying degrees. Our home town in the game has a definite hierarchy of government, laws we're expected to obey... taxes on the land and buildings we own. There are laws against wearing armor and weapons openly in town.
My sorcerer PC had to register with the local archmage and the wizards' college.

Nope.

Once again you seem to be under the impression that everyone plays their games according to your preconceived notions...

Reminds me when my players plotted a downfall of a Greekxpy City - State by trying to exploit their sales tax politic.

To be fair, I had a guy who worked in IRS helping me develop the whole thing, but it was still pretty funny.

Quote from: CRKrueger;880798Why are true Science Fiction settings so rare?
1. Science
2. Math

Pretty much this. I'd shoot my head off if I wanted to run a hard sci - fi, because I know a lot of my friends'd be riding my arse too much over inconsistencies.

Quote from: CRKrueger;880798Why are true Science Fiction settings so rare?
1. Science
2. Math

Look man. I made it through Universe. The RPG where you need to do square roots just to finish char-gen! :cool: And then you have to calculate your jump routes in three dimensions! :cheerleader:

Without getting into Star Trek vs. Star Wars?

SF games are rare because SF as a genre has been dwindling in pop culture visibility for the last 10 years at least. Star Wars and Star Trek have been pressing on for decades, in one form or another, but none of their modern incarnations has had the sheer popular impact of the originals, and to the best of my knowledge no other IP has come close.

Meanwhile, on the fantasy front, we've had Tolkien movies, a runaway hit ASoIaF TV series and even Shannara is getting a live-action version. Four-color superheroics are a Big Thing in Hollywood. But very little "straight" SF.

Quote from: The Butcher;880809Without getting into Star Trek vs. Star Wars?

SF games are rare because SF as a genre has been dwindling in pop culture visibility for the last 10 years at least. Star Wars and Star Trek have been pressing on for decades, in one form or another, but none of their modern incarnations has had the sheer popular impact of the originals, and to the best of my knowledge no other IP has come close.

Meanwhile, on the fantasy front, we've had Tolkien movies, a runaway hit ASoIaF TV series and even Shannara is getting a live-action version. Four-color superheroics are a Big Thing in Hollywood. But very little "straight" SF.

Hard Sci - Fi was never really a big thing - I'd say the number of classic hard sci - fi writers entering mainstream and classical literature acclaim is about double of fantasy writers, but that is counting Verne and Wells.

Quote from: Rincewind1;880811Hard Sci - Fi was never really a big thing - I'd say the number of classic hard sci - fi writers entering mainstream and classical literature acclaim is about double of fantasy writers, but that is counting Verne and Wells.

What does that have to do with anything I posted above? :confused:

Quote from: The Butcher;880809SF games are rare because SF as a genre has been dwindling in pop culture visibility for the last 10 years at least.

Not quite. Theres been a big push towards the hard side of SF in movies and especially TV series lately. Then it will swing in another direction again and so it goes.

I'd love to see some more hard SF shows like Star Cops and the short lived Moonbase 3. Or lighter on the scale, but still overall hard SF like the first season of Space:1999. Theres some others. But those three I enjoyed.

Qustion is though. How Hard do you want the SF?

Some players do not like the really hard SF of Albedo. No lasers. No aliens. No artificial gravity, just about no robots and effectively no psi.

Some like the median such as Star Frontiers. Lasers, aliens, but no anti-gravity or psi. Or Buck Rogers which had no aliens.

Or further down the ladder as more fantasy elements get added in like super-science and psi that acts like magic.

From working on RPGs like this and quizzing customers. Seems psi powers is the cut off point most often cited. Empathy or telepathy? ok. Telekinesis? Maybee. Energy beams and throwing tanks? No.

Quote from: The Butcher;880814What does that have to do with anything I posted above? :confused:

Well I thought it was an obvious elaboration on your point - it's hardly surprising that Hard SF games are so popular, because not only SF is generally dwindling in popularity, it wasn't very mainstream to begin with.

Geeks will eat anything that is sprinkled with Star Wars. Star Wars is the future of getting anything sold now. Must be something to do with the nerd sticks?

Quote from: Rincewind1;880818Well I thought it was an obvious elaboration on your point - it's hardly surprising that Hard SF games are so popular, because not only SF is generally dwindling in popularity, it wasn't very mainstream to begin with.

Right. Sorry. I wasn't really dwelling on "hard SF" as I don't think either Star Wars or Star Trek fit the bill. Besides, I feel "proper" or "straight" SF (meaning, SF as its own genre, as opposed to a component in a mash-up) as a whole, and not just the difficult-to-pin-down Hard SF subgenre, has been underrepresented in TRPGs at least since the 1990s.

You are right that SF lit has always been niche but, in my experience, no more (and maybe even less) than fantasy lit. I feel pop culture cachet has everything to do with "priming" the target audience of a game.

Quote from: Omega;880816Not quite. Theres been a big push towards the hard side of SF in movies and especially TV series lately. Then it will swing in another direction again and so it goes.

There's definitely been a push on the hard SF front — Gravity, Interstellar, The Expanse — but it may be early to say whether it'll be a successful one, in terms of leaving as lasting an impression as Star Trek or Star Wars, or the LotR and ASoIaF adaptations.

Hard SF can be brutally boring if it isnt some sort of war or criminal theme. Moonbase 3 for example. Still a great show. Whereas Star Cops has the investigative angle or Albedo has the WWII in space angle.

Generation ships can work too. Though those tend to end up just being environmental sets and little SF in some cases. Early episodes of Starlost of all things had a good mix of SF and environ.

Dragon Magazine ran some nice articles on adapting Top Secret to a orbital and moon based setting. And there were the two Star Frontiers modules that converted it to 2001:space Odyssee.

SF RPGs are not rare, Hell, I've personally written Sweet Chariot (2 editions), StarCluster (3 editions with a fourth on the way), In Harm's Way: StarCluster, The Necklace, the Cold Space-FTL Now-Commonwealth Space trilogy of games, Lowell Was Right, and the free game Merchanters and Stationers. All 'true' SF RPGs, not a 'science fantasy' game in the bunch.

I would say that the authors of that screed are full of shit on two counts - one that there is some scarcity of SF games, as I bet that SF games at least as 'Hard" as StarTrek far outnumber Science Fantasy games, and two that the divide is between StarTrek and Star Wars type games.

-clash

Quote from: flyingmice;880841I would say that the authors of that screed are full of shit on two counts - one that there is some scarcity of SF games, as I bet that SF games at least as 'Hard" as StarTrek far outnumber Science Fantasy games, and two that the divide is between StarTrek and Star Wars type games.

I wouldn't say SF games are "scarce" but, in my (possibly insular and/or exceptional) experience, they are definitely underrepresented next to the huge chunk of attention that at least two other genres (fantasy, with horror a distant second) garner.

As for the Star Wars vs. Star Trek divide, well... I'm loath to declare Star Wars "not real SF" as it's a genre-defining example to a truckload of people, but deep down I feel the overarching narrative of the original trilogy does seem to have more in common with high fantasy and even fairy tales, than with Star Trek's episodic problem-solving formula. So I kind of see where video guy is coming from, even if I see no point in the "what is Real SF" pissing match.

Well, if you take the premise of Science Fiction as "posit a new technology, and explore the ramifications", then Star Wars isn't Sci-Fi at all.  Space doesn't make something Sci-Fi.

Outland isn't a Sci-Fi movie, it's a western in space.

However, a lot of Star Trek episodes aren't Sci-Fi either, the science is just Deus Ex Machina technobabble.

However, some Star Trek episodes, like City on the Edge of Forever, are as Sci-Fi as it gets.