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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Radiating Gnome" data-source="post: 2784909" data-attributes="member: 150">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</blockquote>

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