Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="aramis erak" data-source="post: 7883350" data-attributes="member: 6779310">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.Did I say anything about abstracting to die roll here? Not that I can see. That was someone else: Dannyalcatraz.A fair GM in a hard science game is one who:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">doesn't use player ignorance against players</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">informs players when the character should know something that the player doesn't</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">gives players enough information to make reasonable decisions upon</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">warns players when they're about to try something stupid - but if they insist (for character reasons, usually), lets them.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">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.</li> </ul>It's about letting the players have<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">meaningful decisions to make,</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">enough information to make them</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">characters more competent than themselves.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">situations they can reasonably interact with given points 1-3.</li> </ol>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.</blockquote>

Verification