Is hard sci-fi really appropriate as a rpg genre?

[Campbell]

If you can get ahold of them, the Starship Troopers series of books are a good source of inspiration for semi-hard scifi games. They provide a decent jumping ground for determining how a spacefarring military might operate. Although they do suffer at times due to their insistance on using a united human race.

 

[Turanil]

There is plenty of things to think about in all your responses. Nice! Thanks to all and don't stop commenting and adding to the discussion!

For one thing, I think I will have to revise my judgment about safety and efficiency...

 

[Harold as a Verb]

I think it was Stephen Barnes (is that the right name?) who wrote a rather extensive article at one point about how he came up with the future setting of one of his series of sci-fi books. I forget which books ... my memory is really letting me down today vis-a-vis details.

Anyway, the guts of his hypothesis (as best I recall) :

- Assumption 1: Pre FTL-travel, colonisation is messy and vastly uneconomic. It doesn't really "work".
- Assumption 2: The technological breakthrough that yields FTL-travel has far reaching socio-economic consequences. In a nutshell, the very nature of the FTL technological breakthrough means one or both of the following has been mastered (even if only in an embryonic form) : (a) manipulation of energy to such an extent that all former means of energy production are rendered utterly outdated (nuclear power to the "new thing" as wood-fire is to nuclear power) ; (b) manipulation of matter to a whole new level (quantum physics gone spooky wild).
- Consequences 1: Either way (or with a combination of both) the new technology renders traditional methods of manufacture and production completely obselete. As such, trade (as we know it) no longer exists. The new tech means that any society with access to it can produce whatever they want/need through a mixture of the mastery over energy/matter. Who needs purple widgets from Norway when they can make them just as easily on Ganymede?
- Consequences 2: Now he lets this run for a while in time and tries to imagine what happens to human society. What he ends up with is a possible future which I find extremely interesting. With no need to trade in goods and services, a new trade evolves: in cultures and ideas. The overpopulated earth becomes subsumed into a massive, bland meta-culture where most spend a large portion of their lives hooked up in Virtual Realities to escape the boredom (they're probably playing D&D in there ) and the new colonies which are founded out in space are created along cultural lines: the French-Quebec colony, the Sikh planet, the reinvented Aztec cultural world, etc etc. (Naturally all this is perfect turf for an author to play in.) And the "new trade" takes the form of cultural exchanges, and conflict arise from the clash of ideas and creeds between the (largely) independently evolving cultural groups and between them and the Earth's shallow meta-culture.

... sounds like a terrific setting for Planescape-In-Space, don't you think? You can have your hard-SF but largely ignore the intricate rule-making required for the physics and the hardware of such a setting and concentrate on the conflict of ideas in a 'fantastic' yet largely plausible (at least to me) possible future. (Add aliens in bad makeup if you wish, but they don't strike me as immediately necessary with so much else to "play" with in such a setting.)

 

[Zappo]

Dark factions, incomprehensible aliens with superior technology, corrupting magic?

Sounds like Warhammer 40000 to me. Except that wh40k isn't hard sci-fi - but it isn't totally incompatible with it, so it could be a mighty good source of inspiration. There's all the adventure you could want and more, with no real concerns for safety, and the reasons for this are pretty solid.

 

[Steverooo]

I have to agree with Shady, on this one. 2300AD is a great "harder" Sci-Fi game! Earth is the high-tech, bureaucratic cyberpunkin' morass, while the three "frontiers" are more Outlandish, with either the best or NO tech, as provided by the colonizers. FTL exists, but is the ONLY form of communication. Troubleshooters are needed to go out and solve problems, as AIs aren't perfected and "go insane" after a while, and probes can't handle the unexpected. Remote Piloting is a skill, but you're doubly limited (both by what you know HOW to do, and what the MACHINE is CAPABLE of doing). Mecha don't exist, but Combat Walkers do (as a form of heavy infantry).

If the Nostromo was an exploration vessel, and the crew was awakened to go into orbit about Zeta Reticulae II and investigate the "distress signal", they could run scans. They would get a general map of the solar system from Deep System Scan, masses of bodies in the system from Gravitational Scanners (and repeated scans, over time, would give orbital info), they might or might not be able to locate the alien ship via Cartographic Sensors (depending upon the quality they had, and whether or not someone could upgrade them... and thought to try). Then again, the atmosphere might block any/most/all of the Carto scans. The Comm. Officer could probably triangulate the source of the signal, giving the crew a location to go down to. Probes might or might not be able to locate the ship, in the pea-soup atmosphere, which might or might not cause enough RF Interferrance to block any transmissions to/from the planet... In either case, the probe could perform a pre-programmed search grid. Have the PCs set one up, and adjudicate the results, based upon that.

Meanwhile, Ash hatches his plots to get an alien on board, and Ellen Ripley is trying to decipher the alien signal... "It's not a distress signal... It sounds more like... a warning!"

Probes are great, but RPVs (Remote-Piloted Vehicles) are subject to commo failure, crashes, short fuel durations, ad nauseum. If the GM doesn't want them to work, they don't. Drones are pre-programmed, can operate relatively independently even under those circumstances, and return with their data... IF they make it back. They also handle the unexpected very poorly!

In 2300AD, Remote-Piloted Drones combine the best aspects of both, but are still limited (as all machines are). Even if one finds the alien ship, and reports back, it probably can't do something as simple as open the airlock and go in... Nope, some human is going to have to go up and do that! THEN you could send a probe in, if you wanted... but it's faster & easier (if not safer) to just do it yourself!

For more on the game, setting, and assumptions, see the web site in my .sig file. Here's a brief over-view of the game for folks who know nothing about the setting (and yes, I liked playing in this "harder" Sci-Fi setting, and think it's perfect for you... You can still buy the game in .PDFs from DriveThruRPG.com):

2300AD is the second edition of Traveller:2300 a "hard science" RPG (RolePlaying Game) produced in 1988 & 1986 by GDW (Game Designer's Workshop). Thanks to Dr. Emile Francois Jerome's "Stutterwarp" (an implementation on the macro-scale of the tunneling effect exhibited by electrons on the quantum level), mankind has reached the stars, colonized 29 planets, set up outposts on 26 more, and encountered at least seven other intelligent alien races. One of these, the Kafer, has decided to annihilate him.

Like in the 1800s, travel to the new colonies takes some time to accomplish, normally a period of several months as "Stutterwarp" ships go to their 7.7 Light-Year limit before requiring discharge into a gravity well of 0.1 G or more. Frontier life is an odd mix of technologies: If something was provided to a colony, it will generally be the latest that Earth had to offer at that time. If something wasn't provided to a colony, the inhabitants must make do with whatever they can rig for themselves. Still, in the cities of older colony worlds, one can find most of the "luxuries" of modern Earth life. Depending on which part of a colony world you live on, being a "Frontiersman" can still take true grit, and Law inforcement is sometimes as wild and wooly as the old west.

Earth is worse yet. National politics among the 120 or so nations are still as bad as ever, and several wars have been fought, beginning with the Twilight War that stagnated technology for nearly 200 years, while the world rebuilt. The discovery of the first habitable world, Tirane (Alpha Centauri I), led to the first construction of Interstellar Warships, and the first space combat (Argentina felt she had as much right to colonize Tirane as anyone else did, and enforced it). This led to the signing of The Melbourne Accords, which allowed any nation capable of it to establish colonies. Meanwhile, breakthroughs in other areas of technology gave better weapons (portable lasers, plasma guns, nuclear-detonation-pumped laser missles), and in later years even promised to help extend life indefinately, by slowing or
even preventing aging.

Technology isn't without its price, though. Earth & Tirane in 2300 are awesomely dependent upon the computers they've built. Besides taking away the freedom to drive yourself to work (for your own safety and convenience, of course!), as your car plots its route through traffic, its transponder also transmits your location, and security cameras record both you and your vehicle. MegaCorporations are even less careful of the privacy of their "Wage-Slaves". Citizens of most countries desiring to be "Blanks" (unrecorded, uncollated, unmonitored, and unknown) are treated as criminals, and must either be very, very smart & skillful, very, very rich (and hire the former), or move to the Frontier. Your only other choice is to hide in the shadows, and run through them, when need be.

If you're into the CyberPunk scene, though, Earth and Tirane ("The Core") are made to order for you. These are the only worlds where the cutting edge of Nanotechnology, Implants, and CyberDecking (the 24th Century's version of "Hacking") are anywhere near common. If you want to get "jacked", you'll have to make your way there, then find someone to fix you up, and meet their price(s).

Leaving Earth's Solar System, space is divided into three "Arms", each named for a dominating Earth nation. The "American Arm" is dominated by a joint effort between Australia, and America (note here that the America is not quite the same as it was, having lost some southern portions to "The United States of Mexico", and Texas having gained its independance, again). The "French Arm" is dominated mainly by France, due to its staying out of the Twilight War, but England, the reunited Germany, Japan, and even Azania have colonies there, as well. The "Chinese Arm" is dominated by China, although Canada, Latin-American countries, and Texas have their own "Fingers" radiating off this arm. Each arm holds numerous colonies, as well as many Outposts, Mining sites, etc. Along the Frontier, one very good career for PCs is as a "Troubleshooter", sent out to solve your Employer's problems.

There are lots of other things to do, in 2300 AD, and lots of things to complicate your life. You can be a Scout making the very first visit to a previously unknown stellar system, a Contact specialist making historic First Contact with a new race, a Military Officer, a Decker, a Troubleshooter, an Academic (anything from an Anthropologist, through Comp. Sci., Doctor, Lawyer, to a Zoologist), Police Officer, Criminal, the Reporter who keeps track of all the rest, or most any other career you choose. Develop the skills that you think will allow you to make the best of your life in 2300 AD!

Current Status of the Game

The rights to these games are now held by Marc W. Miller's company, Far Future Enterprises. The Copyrights and Trademarks on the titles and logos used on these pages now belong to it, and were used by MPGN, the Multi-Player Gaming Network. Actually, Star Cruiser did make it to beta as an online game in December, 1993 or '4, but when the Win95 conversion to 32-bit occurred, it was considered too hard to port. 2300AD was never implemented, although it was planned. Much of the 2300AD material was scheduled to be republished circa October, 2002. At present, I understand that this includes the games, all GDW Modules and Sourcebooks, a selection of magazine articles, as well as 3W's (World Wide Wargames') Operation Overlord. Stay tuned to Marc's Web site for news. All but one of the original GDW products is now available (in .PDF) from DriveThruRPG.com.

The 2300AD Roleplaying and Star Cruiser Starship Combat games, in all forms, are owned by Far Future Enterprises. Copyright 1986 - 2005 by Far Future Enterprises. 2300AD is a registered trademark of Far Future Enterprises. Far Future permits Web sites and fanzines for these games, provided they contain this notice, that <A HREF="mailto:farfuture@aol.com?Subject=2300AD">Far Future is notified</A>, and subject to a withdrawal of permission on 90 days notice. This Web site is neither authorized, nor endorsed, by Far Future Enterprises. The contents of this site are for personal, non-commercial use, only. Any use of Far Future Enterprises' copyrighted material or trademarks anywhere on this Web site and its files should not be viewed as a challenge to those copyrights or trademarks. In addition, any articles/files/programs on this site cannot be republished or distributed without the consent of the author(s), who contributed it.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Regardless of the level of technology, people are stupid.

Regardless of the level of technology, there are things we aren't meant to know.

Take a soft sci-fi horror movie like Event Horizon. Not a lot there but heck, nothing to say it couldn't happen.

After all, there were fears that the accelorator they were building in New York would cause a black hole to be formed, and during atomic testing they feared that it would ignite the hydrogin in the air. See point 1.

the important thing is to have fun.

Hard science fiction is very hard to do if you thing things through all the way. Look at Minority Report. Despite the soft poitns of the movie, the retena scans and automiatcally controlled cars are probably a good look into the future, to say nothing of what DNA evidence will be like.

Use as much of it as you like but don't let it get in the way of the game.

 

[Pbartender]

After all, there were fears that the accelorator they were building in New York would cause a black hole to be formed, and during atomic testing they feared that it would ignite the hydrogin in the air. See point 1.

Heh... I work at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory over in Batavia, Il. You wouldn't believe some of the crazy stories I've heard about what we're really doing here behind the scenes.

 

[DMH]

You've just summed up why I hate hard sci-fi, especially for RPGs. To use personification, hard sci-fi is so uptight that if you shoved a lump of coal up its ass, in three weeks you'd have a diamond. Other genres are about fun, adventure, and intrigue; hard sci-fi stands at the edge of the playground with a miserable expression on its face, furious that the others are having so much badwrongfun.

Have you run a modern or past game without the supernatural (regardless of the system)? Those are hard sci-fi- they are fiction and they use real science. So why would they be more fun than THS?

Regardless of the level of technology, people are stupid.

The best rpg book I have ever read that included "human error" is GURPS Y2K. Especially the chapter on Murphy's Law.

 

[Von Ether]

If you can get ahold of them, the Starship Troopers series of books are a good source of inspiration for semi-hard scifi games. They provide a decent jumping ground for determining how a spacefarring military might operate. Although they do suffer at times due to their insistance on using a united human race.

Don't forget John Steckly's Armor. That's pretty hard SF complete with breaucratic snafus.

 

[DMScott]

I just wish people wouldn't automatically say no when the idea of an SF game with no laser pistols is put forth. I don't wanna play Star Wars alla time.

Laser pistols can be acceptable in hard sci-fi, it's blasters or pulpish ray guns that kind of hit the camp barrier. And laser rifles are kinda silly - what, exactly, is being "rifled"?

One of my favourite sources for near future, relatively hard sci-fi ideas is the Atomic Rockets section of Winchell Chung's website, Project Rho. But I might be biased just because I think the idea of a standard sidearm that looks like a camcorder is really cool .