Genres/Settings I enjoy watching but not playing in. You?

[Umbran]

Serious hard SciFi, anything set past 2100, players probably will never be in charge of a ship... if the ship isn't an AI, it's still likely to be able to inform of the range and fuel status for overtake fast, and won't let them do suicidal courses (including no-return) so that really is pretty irrelevant, with a knowledgeable and fair GM.

sigh. So, you see, this is exactly what I am talking about.

Orbital mechanics are not the only example, but they are a great one, because they are a study about how our intuition fails us. Yes, of course, the players can be made aware of things that will be immediately suicidal, and choose not to do it. But, orbital mechanics are a study in very strict budgeting. People who live on the ground do not realize how much that choice will restrict future choices. And it is that restriction that can be disastrous.

Let us say the players make a maneuver now. They can still reach home, fine. But now they have used some of their reserves, so that later, when they need to make the huge course correction to avoid disaster... they no longer have the juice.

If it is actually a hard-science game, abstracting the issue to a die roll doesn't change that. It should, in fact, enforce that. And folks who do not understand the science will not really grok it, until it is too late.

And, as noted, this is only one example. The real world where we put sci-fi is an unforgiving place. More unforgiving than a grim'n'gritty, "I hate how fast healing is so I'm eliminating all healing magic and you heal one hit point a week" GM. It works in fiction because fiction is determined by an author. In real space, when things don't go according to plan, it isn't cool drama. You just die.

That's why I raised the point about "fair". The vacuum of space is not "fair". So, what constitutes "fair" GMing in this kind of environment?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

SoD mechanics, FTW!

On a certain level, I think certain kinds of RPers will do better than others, even if they’re both relatively science “under-informed”...at least in particular circumstances. Circumstances change, of course...

For example, players who are stingy about expending critical PC resources in general- like magic spells in a Vancian system- will probably be similarly tight burning ships’ fuel. Or breathable oxygen.

Of course, if they forget you don’t need fuel to simply continue moving in the same direction...


* Science or Death

 

[TarionzCousin]

* Science or Death

Where cake = science

 

[dragoner]

 

[Stormonu]

Sounds to me like I wouldn’t enjoy a hard sci-fi game, as much as I like the Expanse.

I’ve also figured out I’m terrible at running a Supers game, though I don’t mind playing in one.

Also, as much as I love the concept, I can’t do a Toon game.

 

[aramis erak]

sigh. So, you see, this is exactly what I am talking about.

No, I do not see what you're on about. In fact, you come across to me as a bit inchoate about this topic. No offense intended; I think you're stuck on your space travel chase strawman.

I'm using fair as the antonym of unfair, not of borderline incompetent, BTW.

If it is actually a hard-science game, abstracting the issue to a die roll doesn't change that. It should, in fact, enforce that. And folks who do not understand the science will not really grok it, until it is too late.

Did I say anything about abstracting to die roll here? Not that I can see. That was someone else: Dannyalcatraz.

That's why I raised the point about "fair". The vacuum of space is not "fair". So, what constitutes "fair" GMing in this kind of environment?

A fair GM in a hard science game is one who:

• doesn't use player ignorance against players
• informs players when the character should know something that the player doesn't
• gives players enough information to make reasonable decisions upon
• warns players when they're about to try something stupid - but if they insist (for character reasons, usually), lets them.
• Lets players resort to die roll when the player notes they cannot make a reasonable decision based upon the narration, either due to lack of player knowledge or lack of understanding of provided information.

It's about letting the players have

1. meaningful decisions to make,
2. enough information to make them
3. characters more competent than themselves.
4. situations they can reasonably interact with given points 1-3.

The Tyranny of the Rocket Equation makes space travelling hard sci RPGs extremely hard to run. And the characters running the ships generally not that interesting, because it's long, slow, boring travel. Probably in chemically induced hibernation.

BTRC's Mars 2100 was a very good hard-sci-fi setting and ruleset... it wasn't about the hardware, it was about the people on a colony on Mars, and their political agendas. Great fun. Greg decided to tinker it to death in playtest, but it's the best hard SF setting I've run.

Space Opera is much easier to run, and a space chase is almost purely a thing of space opera and space fantasy; it has little place in hard SF.

 

[John Dallman]

… in order to run [hard science fiction], you need to know a lot of science. To play it, you usually also need to be a highly science-literate person. And getting a whole table of that together is really difficult.

The campaign I'm running at present is fantasy-with-outcrops-of-hard-science, rather than SF, but my players have good science literacy, often more than me. I have managed to get away with using Noether's Theorem as a plot point, even though I don't understand Langrangian mechanics, and at least one of my players does. The trick was to use a credible NPC to suggest the idea (an Edmond Halley who has been exposed to mathematics and physics up to the mid-twentieth century) and let the player do the work of deciding if it made sense.

 

[Imaculata]

I'd love to run a Jurassic Park campaign/adventure some time, but I fear that it is just not well suited for roleplaying.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I'd love to run a Jurassic Park campaign/adventure some time, but I fear that it is just not well suited for roleplaying.

Depends on which species you can play...

You could run it like any old “survival“ themed game.

Here’s a thought: pick your favorite system and use it as the core to run the game. If that system doesn’t have something like it, give each player 3 “deus ex machina” tokens to be cashed in to survive unsurvivable situations.

IOW, borrow a version of the clones mechanic from the various editions of Paranoia or the “lives” of countless video games.

 

[Imaculata]

That is an interesting take. I like the idea of tokens for “deus ex machina” -style escapes.
But other worries I have are with the plot and the characters. All my players are familiar with the movies. So that raises the question where and when the campaign/adventure should take place. Do their characters replace the main cast of JP1? Or do we explore Isla Sorna from JP2? Should any of the original characters feature at all, or just the side characters? And how can I surprise the players with the plot, when they are all so familiar with it?