[Grim Tales] Using GT for sci-fi?

[Wulf Ratbane]

One of the things that I really like about D20 Future is the way it uses the computer use skill for just about everything technological -- including nearly everything you'd want to do on a ship.

That means that every character can have a rank or two in a skill that will allow them to be minimally effective in a starship situation. It takes feats and other skills to do things well, and to do a few of the key positions on the ship, but everyone can try to contribute something.

Personally, I actually lean towards Profession, believe it or not. Profession (science officer), Profession (chief engineer), etc.

But will that contribution be satisfying? Who wants to be the sensor officer on the millenium falcon? I want to fire the guns, or pilot the ship -- or as a distant third be the engineer, trying to squeeze a little more out of the engines or patch up the new gaping hole in the side of the ship.

Agreed.

So, I think statting up a starship like a character makes sense, and it can be a useful way to look at the challenge of starships in future gaming, it may not quite be enough to handle the problems of the genre.

I really appreciate you sharing your thinking on this issue-- you've got me thinking, too.

In retrospect I think the spaceship is actually more analagous to a fantasy castle (albeit, perhaps, a flying castle), and I'd look towards crafting the same sorts of adventures for a spacefaring team as I would for a group of PCs in possession of a flying castle.

 

[Radiating Gnome]

Personally, I actually lean towards Profession, believe it or not. Profession (science officer), Profession (chief engineer), etc.

Well, that all depends upon what you want from the game. That would work, and it makes sense within the given rules, but it would mean moving away from the computer use model where everyone can contribute in a very very generic way. If you were running a starship-centric game, that would make sense, but it might not in all campaigns.

I really appreciate you sharing your thinking on this issue-- you've got me thinking, too.

It's fun to think about this stuff at work when I should be writing a report for an executive board meeting tonight . . . so much more fun that writing my report . . .

In retrospect I think the spaceship is actually more analagous to a fantasy castle (albeit, perhaps, a flying castle), and I'd look towards crafting the same sorts of adventures for a spacefaring team as I would for a group of PCs in possession of a flying castle.

Flying castle may work better than character. It would be interesting to create a system that is abstract enough to handle starships, but that could also handle vehicles in other settings -- sailing ships, for example. For a seafaring campaign, the ship could have the same sort of personality as a starship, and it would be interesting to make sailing ships much more than just a frame from which your swinging ropes hang, or a place where it's not smart to wear your heavy armor.

I'm running my head around in circles. I start out with thinking about a system that would allow PCs to plug themselves into specific roles on the "platform" (starship, dirigible, etc) and each one would have the potential to add or improve one or more aspects of the platform. Better sensor checks, better attack rolls, better recovery from ingury, better rolls to avoid being hit, that sort of thing. But as soon as I start thinking about these sorts of PC sockets, I start thinking about saturday morning robot cartoons (voltron? I forget . . . ) and that turns me off. As soon as you plug yourself into the socket -- as soon as you become Voltron's leg, for example, as a PC you might as well go in the other room and raid the fridge, there isn't much for you to do until the combat is over. (And, in the case of Voltron, as I recall the parts were NEVER able to defeat the big bad, it was only ever by coming together as the big robot that they had a chance of victory . . . ).

It seems like the campaign models that will make starship combat the most fun, if it's going to be a big part of the campaign, will be the models where the PCs each pilot their own ships. Maybe they're all viper pilots on the Galactica. But in any campaign where there's one ship, and only a few PCs are really active in starship combat, starship action will necessarily be a sidebar, and not the main action. And, in that sort of campaign, PCs who DO pilot the ships will be crippled in any other part of the action if they've had to invest all of their skills, feats, and class abilities into being that pilot . . . so MOSt of the rest of the time they're weaker than the rest of the party.

The same problem exists in cyberpunk campaigns where Hackers/deckers/whatever need time to go off and do their VRnet thing.

In the end, if you're not running a narrow campaign, you end up running a fractured one that has many scenes where for a lot of the time you have PCs who are not active or whose effectiveness is severely curtailed because of the dramatic specialization of the characters.

I haven't spent any real time looking at any of the various Star trek systems that are out there, but it always struck me that, by and large, the star trek universe is one that exists without hotshot pilots. I mean, there was some lip service paid to whatshisbucket on Voyager, who was supposed to be such a great pilot -- and then there was the awful moment when Riker got to use a joystick to fly the enterprise out of a nebula in one of the less satisfying movies . . . but other than those exceptions, flying shuttles and capital ships seems to mostly be a matter of pressing a few buttons and saying "evasive pattern delta". That shifts the focus away from individuals as agents in ship-to-ship encounters -- maybe the captain comes up with a clever tactic, but that's about it. Would that sort of game be satisfying for players to actually play?

I think that players and GMs that are looking for a very starship-centric game, what they're looking for is a game that is as close to car wars in space as you can make it. They want space and weight and cost and frames and a variety of gear, and to be able to design starships where they must balance speed and maneuverability against firepower and protection and they spend hours between sessions tweaking their ship designs. But that sort of detail isn't at all appropriate for most games.

gotta run . . . more later . . . -rg

 

[GMSkarka]

Serenity, Enterprise, Millenium Falcon-- these aren't just ships, they're characters.

It's not SF, but that's one of the reasons why we did CORSAIR the way we did (ships statted like creatures, able to use templates, and to gain levels in the Legendary Ship NPC class). The Legendary Ship NPC class literally makes the ship a character, able to gain experience, feats, etc.

I've been thinking about doing an SF version of those rules....the conundrum has been whether to just go ahead and do it, or try to figure out how to make it compatible with the existing D20 FUTURE ship rules.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

I've been thinking about doing an SF version of those rules....the conundrum has been whether to just go ahead and do it, or try to figure out how to make it compatible with the existing D20 FUTURE ship rules.

As far as I have heard there's not a whole lot salvageable from d20 Future, especially the ship rules. I think they were pretty quickly houseruled/overturned/improved by the fans.

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

IIRC, the original author of the D20F starship rules turned in a manuscript drawing heavily from the Alternity Warships rules (stellar rules, btw).

It was then hacked down for size and simplicity by the editors until it was pretty much worse than useless. Which would pretty handily describe the starship rules.

Whether this is true or not, I like to think that it is, just to make me feel better when I throw them out and hand-convert Warships over to d20.

--fje

 

[Radiating Gnome]

You know, that sad thing is I own a copy of Corsair and I've only skimmed it -- now I'm going to have to go back and look at it a lot more closely.

Now, though, to change gears a little, I'll vent on the other issue I'm looking at as I try to prep for my campaign. The problem of bullpucky science and players being able to come up with ideas on their own . . . .

In traditional fantasy gaming, players actually have a pretty good understanding of how the mechanics of what they want to try to do will work. Even in the case of magic, so much has been written and playtested and explored in the way magic works that even in cases where we try out variants on that system (GT, Black company, etc) the players still have a well trained understanding of how the system works, what they can and can't do, and they can work within the system.

Somehow, in my experience, the sci fi setting is a lot more mysterious. A typical player doesn't have the same sort of understanding of the mechanics of the systems behind what they are seeing in front of them, and is much less able to come up with solutions to the dilemna.

In D20 modern and future, you have scientist classes that have class abilities to come up with clever, scientific solutions to the problem with an action point and a wave of a hand -- but that seems unsatisfying to me. It doesn't engage the cleverness of the player, only a few points from the character. The system of fictional technology behind a sci fi game should really aspire to be as systematic and understandable to a player as the magic system is in core D&D. But doing that will take a lot of work -- more work than anyone is prepared to do, probably, and it's just so much easier to make base the whole thing on action points and wave your hands and presto!, you've got your jury rigged tachyon communication array.

It's one thing to just make skill rolls for repairs and to jury rig something -- but true innovations should be something that comes from the player -- not the DM. In an action point system, the player pays a point and that, in effect, pays the DM to come up with the innovative solution -- and that innovation will be empty.

If you wanted to, of course, you could ask your players to come up with their own technojargony blather and make an appropriate skill roll. "I want to try to jam their transmission by using my sonic screwdriver and this plasma field bagel toaster to generate a tachyon white noise generator" -- that might get a laugh, and then you could roll dice and see if it works, but if there isn't a system behind it, it isn't much more satisfying than action points.

So, is there a solution? You might try to model a science fiction technological system on the magical system in D&D. Different areas of technology could be like different schools of magic. Communications, Research & Data Management, Manufacturing, Transportation, Weapons, Defensive Systems, Entertainment, Nanotechnology.

Once you've got your list of technological schools, then you can think about the relationships between them, and what being a specialist in any of those schools would do for a character.

But, more important, you're going to need to sit down and work out a document that outlines the basic (fake) scientific system behind that area of technology -- probably at each tech level appropriate to your game.

So, let's take transportation. We need to know more than "there are hoverbikes, landspeeders, and aircars". We need to know that hoverbikes and landspeeders are powered by a high-yield battery cell that needs to be charged once for every 72 hours of operation. We need to know that the vehicles hover on a pillow of air, much like a hovercraft, but rather than cloth skirts the pillow of air is held in place by force fields, which extend up, making it possible to fly the hoverbike or landspeeder at high speeds in a debris-filled environment like a desert, at speeds where blowing sand might do serious damage to unprotected passengers. We need to know that propulsion, in most cases, is provided by high-efficiency jet engines, which makes high speeds possible, but only recommended in wide open areas. Because they ride on a pill of air, they can move very fast but have problems turning at high speeds.

Given a description like that, a clever, innovative player can do a lot more than he would with just "a hoverbike". He might be able to identify that the battery that drives the landspeeder might be able to power a computer bank for a little while. And he might be able to determine clever ways to disable a speeder -- by disabling the force field generator that contains the pillow of air.

So, the challenge there is to come up with all of that material. D20 Future has it's section on science that may get us off on the right foot -- a brief overview of some areas of science fiction science -- but it is no where near enough. We've all been players, we know that players love to pour over the books, reading about all sorts of things. That's when they come up with their innovative or goofy ideas.

Those player innovations require details that we just don't get from d20 Future. And I haven't seen any other sci-fi system or setting book that does much more. I mean, think about some of the most basic things we know about the core D&D magic system. A first level wizard has magic missile, which is as basic a spell as the system has. It can appear to be a variety of different things, and it pretty much always hits and does it's small amount of damage. But we also know that there are several things a PC can do to defend against it. She could cast shield, or wear a brooch of shielding, or find a way to have some spell resistance, or prepare her own magic missile as a counterspell. Where is the analog to that sort of detailed system of relationships and understanding in any of the Science Fiction systems that are out there?

It's worth noting that the one advantage that licensed products like Star Wars and Serenity have is that the players come to the game with everything they've learned from watching the shows or the movies.

I hate to put it in these terms, but what I think the Sci Fi Settings need most right now is a sort of Grimoir of Science. A Tech Compendium. Perhaps set up as components that can be added to a campaign -- A chapter on gravity science and it's applications in a variety of areas and tech levels. Then a chapter on nanotechnology that does the same thing. So GMs preparing for a campaign can say "we're playing with Gravity at PL 7 but nanotechnology has only advanced to PL 5. And you'd want to have some items that represent synergies between two or more science areas . . . and it just keeps getting more and more out of hand.

Of course, it isn't that no one has thought of this before. But it's too big a project, and not enough people will buy it. So we fudge it -- we pay lip service to the science, throw action points at it, but we don't really try to make it an important part of the game experience -- and given the importance of science in science fiction, it really ought to at least be an option.

-rg

 

[Radiating Gnome]

I'm on a roll . . . or about to get fired for screwing around with this stuff at work . . .

It seems like the best model for that from regular d20 games might be spell domains. I'm envisioning a system of smart class talents, each one representing an engineering domain.

Each engineering domain would provide bonuses to computer use, craft, and repair checks related to that domain (some will probably overlap). And in each case we outline some typical uses for those skill checks -- basically outlining the types of tasks that might be attempted with that skill and domain. Some might be possible without the domain, but would be more difficult. Given the "smart plus" feat, even characters who are not using base classes would still be able to spend feats to gain access to engineering domains.

So, for instance, consider two engineering domains:

Communications
Grants +2 on Computer Use, Craft(electronics) and Repair checks made on Communications systems.
Typical Tasks
Build Voice transmitter - DC 15
Build Video transmitter - DC 20
Improvise tools or materials - +5 DC
Jam Transmissions - Opposed by sender (Domain bonus applies)
Intercept transmission - Opposed by sender (domain bonus applies)


Genetics Domain
Grants +2 on Computer Use, Craft(chemisty) and Repair checks made on Communications systems.
Typical Tasks
Identify Genetic Match - DC 20
Gene Therapy, minor - DC 25
Gene Therapy, Major - Dc 35
Improvised Materials/Tools - +20 DC

It's a weak start, but it might be a step in the right direction . . .

-rg

 

[fuindordm]

I agree that the lack of well-defined science is the great weakness of science fiction gaming. The challenge is to make it seem different from Fantasy In Space. I personally would buy a Science Grimoire if it were well done, but the science sections in existing games that I've seen don't go far enough. Even GT, for all its excellence, makes cyberware into a parallel magic item creation system. Science can't do everything, that's the role of magic. But it should be able to do a great many things, and it should encourage clever ideas on the player's part.

To this end, I would see a fictional scientist build something like a wizard or cleric with no spellcasting, only crafting. The domain idea is a good one; let them start with two specializations, and add more as they go up in levels. Each 'science domain' would define a fairly wide array of predefined tasks, but also give DCs for more general, creative goals. A fictional scientist should also be equally good in theory and practice within their specialization.

e. g.

Warp Field Technology

Faster-than-light travel is achieved by harnessing the immense energy output of antimatter power plants and exotic materials to manipulate the gravitational field around the ship. A bubble-shaped 'warp field' forms around the ship that propagates through space at virtually any speed while obeying the normal constraints of sublight speeds inside the bubble. Scientists specialized in this domain can make repairs to the power plants and exotic materials, perhaps jury-rigging a last burst of speed or maintaining minimal performance in damaged equipment. They can also modify the field configuration on the fly to improve the performance of the ship. Experienced warp engineers, given sufficient time and resources, can manipulate space-time in the vicinity of the ship to control gravity within the limits of the ship's energy output.

Sample Tasks (each should have a DC and PL requirement, and some of them should cause damage
to the ship or cost a lot in shipboard resources)

Extend Warp Bubble (giving smaller ships a piggyback ride, as it were)
Modify Ship's Gravity Field (increasing weight or turning it off altogether in selected areas of the ship,
rather than everywhere at once)
Displace Image (like the spell, but for the ship)
Produce Exotic Particle Beam (using the antimatter engines to produce the desired particles)
Produce Gravity Wave (causing knockback or loss of maneuverability in other ships)
Produce Gravity Shield (for passing through crowded space, e.g. a meteor swarm)
Mass Sensor (detect cloaked or otherwise invisible ships, planets, black holes, etc.)
Mass Driver (use small meteors or shipboard junk as a weapon)
Navigate Wormhole (with no damage to ship)
Induce Time Dilation (modifying the FTL travel so that you 'skip over' a certain period of time)
Gravity Whip Time Travel to Past (classic star trek plot device)
Controlled Time Travel to Past
Create Tachyon Signal (arrives before you send it)
Create Wormhole
Transcendence (bye-bye, Wesley)

The problem is, you need a scientist to judge what kinds of 'creative tasks' could possibly be done for each specialization.

Notice also that none of these can be done without access to your ship. This is why the 'ship as character' approach is such a good one--the ship contains all the resources you need to take advantage of your technological prowess. This is why science-fiction characters stay on their ship so much--they can do quite a lot with it.

Ben

 

[Committed Hero]

On a more personal level, how would you change the weapon design mechanic to reflect the existence of better ones in the future?

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

On a more personal level, how would you change the weapon design mechanic to reflect the existence of better ones in the future?

You talkin' to me?