Quote from: The Butcher;880845I 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.

I was using the terms as used by the link, Butcher. Yes, there are far fewer SF RPGs than fantasy or horror, but "real" SF games are not rarer than "Science Fantasy" games (again, using their terms), they are more common. Personally. SF is on a huge spectrum, where sub-genres bleed into other sub-genres, and I have no problem with Star Wars as SF. It's just a bit less sciency than StarTrek, which is a bit less so than Traveller, which is somewhat less so than The Expanse, which is a tad less so than The Martian, but exactly where each fits into the greater spectrum I don't particularly care. I'm not a dividing line kind of guy.

-clash

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.

I don't see that as fun, but hey, if your crew likes it, I have no right to say it's good or bad.  You keep on trucking!

Quote from: Simlasa;880774Nope.

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

That statement was to show one of the problems with a Sci-Fi setting, where information gets passed around at an incredibly fast rate typically, which can limit part of the 'exploration' factor of an RPG session.  And for SOME people can be a big factor as to why we don't do Science Fiction all that often.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;880880I don't see that as fun, but hey, if your crew likes it, I have no right to say it's good or bad.  You keep on trucking!

It's fun because it challenges the players think of ways around it. If you challenge them, players get used to thinking outside the box.

QuoteThat statement was to show one of the problems with a Sci-Fi setting, where information gets passed around at an incredibly fast rate typically, which can limit part of the 'exploration' factor of an RPG session.  And for SOME people can be a big factor as to why we don't do Science Fiction all that often.

It's not a problem if you as GM are prepared for information zipping around at an incredibly fast rate, and you build that preparation into the game. Yes, you can't just slap a D&D adventure into a SF game and expect it to work. But if you design your adventures around that you will find it's not limiting at all.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;880880I don't see that as fun, but hey, if your crew likes it, I have no right to say it's good or bad.  You keep on trucking!

I prefer it to the 'murderhobo' routine. It emphasizes the consequences of our actions... at this point we've got a whole community to think of, so pissing off powerful enemies can come back on more than just our PCs. And like Flyingmice mentions, it creates more complex situations that can't necessarily be solved by hitting them with your axe.

QuoteThat statement was to show one of the problems with a Sci-Fi setting, where information gets passed around at an incredibly fast rate typically, which can limit part of the 'exploration' factor of an RPG session.

Yeah, sorry I misread you.
There is fast travel/communication available but they're expensive/uncommon so it doesn't mean all locations are discovered and locked down. The last dungeon we went into was much like a Shadowrun mission given to us by the cult that usually is in charge of monitoring the place.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;880880I don't see that as fun

Out of curiosity: are your players unconstrained by any form of laws/government? I mean, I understand it's fantasy, but what the redhair speaks about doesn't struck me as particularly challenging/complicated elements of any civilization, no matter whether it's fantasy or not.

Quote from: Omega;880816Qustion 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.

.

See, I hate this sort of purist 'hard' sci-fi you describe here. Mostly it looks to me like people want to read about 1970's era america with no gravity.

Lets look at what you put up in your description of Albedo.

No lasers:

What the fuckity fuck? Lasers objectively exist. This technology is REAL. Can't have it. Its not science fiction enough for Hard-Sci-Fi purists?  

What would make it harder is a clear grasp of the science that make Lasers work. You know: Lens diameters and focal distances. The same with any more 'advanced' speculative technologies that don't exist yet, but could.

No Aliens?

Well, granted we don't know of any alien sophonts out there yet, but we're pretty sure they do exist somewhere.  To cut that out entirely by declaring anything with aliens 'not hard' is pure elitist bullshit.

No Artifical Gravity:

Eh.  And a hypothetical Science Fiction story written in, oh, 1870, should not include things like heavier than air flight or working submersibles?  

Now I'm actually fairly on board with this is a lesser sense. I think over reliance on easy artifical gravity is a lazy writing technique rather than speculative fiction, but I also accept that one day something more effective than 'spin like a motherfucker' will be in use.  

No Robots:

See my argument about lasers.  Robots are a real thing, they exist and are doing shit now, as in today. Your typical Amazon warehouse is sorting and stocking using entirely robots, and they are talking about using robots (Drones) for deliveries, and experimenting with them now.  How the fuck is having robots in the future somehow 'Not Hard Sci-Fi'?

No Psi:

No argument there.  The Psionic's boat has sailed. Its 'future magic'.


Now, this isn't to overly pick on you, or Albedo, which I know only what you told me in your post, more or less.  I just get really tired of being told something isn't 'Hard' Sci Fi because it isn't based on what NASA was doing when I was a child.  That's an amazingly regressive view of the genre, and more importantly it misses the boat by focusing on the window dressing, the technologies employed.

To me the difference between hard and soft sci-fi, or sci fi and space opera or space fantasy... however you wish to describe the spectrum... is how much effort the author puts into understanding his technology and its implications, how true to what we understand he tries to be.

I'm having a hard time putting clearly, so I'll resort to an example.

Faster than Light is a staple of Science Fiction, though it is a point of contention on the Hard/Soft science debate.  

If the author merely has ships zipping around the galaxy willy nilly, or tosses out some mcguffin statement about 'hyperspace'... that's pretty clearly soft.  Either he doesn't understand that going faster than light is, to our current understanding, impossible or he simply doesn't care to think about it.

If, on the other hand, he (or she, as in Bujold for example), recognizes that limitation and postulates using some form of wormhole technology, with clear and consistent rules (if not math), that's clearly at least moderately firm science fiction. The understood laws of physics (relativity) aren't being violated, but we are taking it for granted that some buzz wordy concepts are actually going to prove viable at some point.

In our final example our author takes a currently speculative theoretical concept and lays out an expansion of the current mathematical principles, lets say he talks about the concept of space as a sheet, with large bodies of mass depressing the sheet (gravity), and then expands that to explain how FTL works by bunching that sheet and punching through the bunches (Folding space)... well, we're getting harder, maybe much harder, depending on how much work he's put into this purely speculative technology.

Now, I don't want to get caught up in suggesting worm holes are jello-sci-fi, and folding space is hard sci fi. It could just as easily work the other way around. The difference is the amount of work in creating the plausibility of the purely speculative technology, and tying it to what we already know or suspect.  So the Tannenhauser Gates of Heavy Gears (wormholes) are 'harder' than Bujold's wormholes (without actually getting to be hard sci-fi... spectrum, recall), because we have quite a bit more effort into tying their existence to the world we already know.

And that last bit is amusing because in general Bujold's science is more realistic than Heavy Gear.  the point is that her Wormholes simply exist and are used/exploited for FTL travel with no further explanation, and some asshole in Dream Pod 9 actually sat down one day and worked out who discovered stable wormholes and how they worked, then put it in a book.

btw, like the guy or not but Michio Kaku wrote such a book once:


I think it might come in handy when "which future-tech is possible" is discussed. ;]

Quote from: JesterRaiin;880904Out of curiosity: are your players unconstrained by any form of laws/government?

In the S&S game I just started about 3 days ago there is no government where they are at the moment.  And if something goes tits up in one city, they can go somewhere where no one will know them.

In the Supers game I'm running, they're vigilantes, and have to deal with the consequences of their actions, but they're allowed to do what their hearts' say.  They haven't actually killed anyone, because they're allowed to choose.

The thing is, in a Fantasy game, a bunch of ragtag heroes can challenge an evil lord and make things better for all involved.  In a more modern setting (short of a Superhero game) the Evil lord tends to control every avenue of change, and worse, they have a higher authority to appeal and likely win back any change that occurs.

Because there's a power structure in place that players typically feel that they can't do anything about.  (Not saying it's true, it's a common perception from where I'm from.)

Quote from: Christopher Brady;880908In the S&S game I just started about 3 days ago there is no government where they are at the moment.  And if something goes tits up in one city, they can go somewhere where no one will know them.

In the Supers game I'm running, they're vigilantes, and have to deal with the consequences of their actions, but they're allowed to do what their hearts' say.  They haven't actually killed anyone, because they're allowed to choose.

The thing is, in a Fantasy game, a bunch of ragtag heroes can challenge an evil lord and make things better for all involved.  In a more modern setting (short of a Superhero game) the Evil lord tends to control every avenue of change, and worse, they have a higher authority to appeal and likely win back any change that occurs.

Because there's a power structure in place that players typically feel that they can't do anything about.  (Not saying it's true, it's a common perception from where I'm from.)

Tell me, if it's no secret: are your players always/usually on the side of "good" (in a broad sense, details aren't the important thing here)?

Quote from: JesterRaiin;880911Tell me, if it's no secret: are your players always/usually on the side of "good" (in a broad sense, details aren't the important thing here)?

Typically?  Yes.  Not entirely sure why.  But they are.

Quote from: JesterRaiin;880907btw, like the guy or not but Michio Kaku wrote such a book once:

I think it might come in handy when "which future-tech is possible" is discussed. ;]

I'm assuming that's for me?


If so, thanks. I'll look it up.

Does anyone have thoughts on some of the other things discussed in the video, like the more limited enemy palette and such?

Quote from: Spike;880905See, I hate this sort of purist 'hard' sci-fi you describe here. Mostly it looks to me like people want to read about 1970's era america with no gravity.

Lets look at what you put up in your description of Albedo.

No lasers:

What the fuckity fuck? Lasers objectively exist. This technology is REAL. Can't have it. Its not science fiction enough for Hard-Sci-Fi purists?  

What would make it harder is a clear grasp of the science that make Lasers work. You know: Lens diameters and focal distances. The same with any more 'advanced' speculative technologies that don't exist yet, but could.

No Aliens?

Well, granted we don't know of any alien sophonts out there yet, but we're pretty sure they do exist somewhere.  To cut that out entirely by declaring anything with aliens 'not hard' is pure elitist bullshit.

No Artifical Gravity:

Eh.  And a hypothetical Science Fiction story written in, oh, 1870, should not include things like heavier than air flight or working submersibles?  

Now I'm actually fairly on board with this is a lesser sense. I think over reliance on easy artifical gravity is a lazy writing technique rather than speculative fiction, but I also accept that one day something more effective than 'spin like a motherfucker' will be in use.  

No Robots:

See my argument about lasers.  Robots are a real thing, they exist and are doing shit now, as in today. Your typical Amazon warehouse is sorting and stocking using entirely robots, and they are talking about using robots (Drones) for deliveries, and experimenting with them now.  How the fuck is having robots in the future somehow 'Not Hard Sci-Fi'?

1: As noted. I am not exactly fond of it either. Albedo was not an example of that. Its an example of what hard SF can be.

2: No man portable lasers. And last check no space based ones. Part of the reason for that was it may be intentional. The other is that alot of space based warfare is ACV driven at very long distances. ship-to-ship beam weapons are impractical. In that setting nearly all the weapons systems are kinetic. See below for an example.

3: It is never explained why. It may be like in some other SF settings where there are no aliens. There are though some alien life forms but the while sector was scrubbed to some degree before the project began. The only animals seem to be fish and large predatory centipedes on a few worlds. I am definitly not in the SF camp that declares aliens=fantasy.

4: It gets annoying when its present even in settings where the tech obviously cant be. I used to think that viewers and readers were not so stupid as to require linear ships simply because thats how ocean ships are. But after watching the increasing insistence of so called fans to make the Star Frontiers ships linear. Guess people are.

5: As said. Mostly no robots. There arent any in the standard SF autonomous sense. But they are used nearly exclusively in space combat. Ships launch autonomous combat vehicles and these try to either intercept the other sides ACVs or slam into the other sides ships. Essentially guided kinetic weapons. They get used later in the series instead of nukes to create a concussion blast by slamming a bunch at velocity over a city from orbit. What ground based robots there are seem to be of the program and set sort. And again that may be intentional.

X: Star Frontiers for me counts as Hard SF for its lack of anti gravity, lack of psi, and overall depiction. Buck rogers may too. But I know about nothing of its system outside the SSI goldbox port to PC.

Hard Sci-Fi is a stupid name.  Because every time someone describes what it is, and puts more and more and more limitations on it, it becomes nearly indistinguishable to real life as that person understands it.

There's also this common mistake of forgetting the second part of that phrase.  Science FICTION.

And I'm pretty sure I've already argued this and posted this somewhere here but:  The only difference on, for example, Star Trek, 2001, Star Wars, V, Alien Nation (and so on) is how hard the setting leans on one side of the Science vs. Fiction coin.

I love stuff that would probably be labeled Hard Sci-fi but never understood the fight over purity of the genre or rigid definitions. Obviously it is a spectrum (some writers are more grounded in science and use that as a basis for speculating on the future), some respect the real world science but smooth over the details to make things more readable, and others are not as restrained by the real world science but still have a lot of the tropes and themes. At the end of the day, I have a better time reading something like Asimov or Clarke, but I can still enjoy Star Wars.

While I do think math and science are a barrier to harder sci fi and might explain why some GMs would lean more on the Star Wars style games, I think the reason you don't see as much of it in RPGs is because it is more constraining from a campaign and adventure standpoint (there are just more rigid limitations on things like space travel, time travel, etc if you are using real science---and breaking those limitations requires a good grounding in the science). 2001 makes a great movie but it is a bit harder to squeeze a campaign out of. At least, I think that is the impression people have and why they might eschew that end of the spectrum (I could see something like Caves of Steel being a cool basis for a campaign for example).