Problems running a hard sci-fi game

[Roger]

Sounds like you had a cool game, John. Thanks for your insights about how you handled the sf-technical aspects.


Cheers,
Roger

 

[takyris]

I've been interested in running a hard sci-fi game for some time, but I've never been able to figure out how to get around this problem: the players don't know any science. That makes it difficult to base adventures and campaigns on specific scientific and technical issues, and makes technical problem solving on their part all but impossible. Does anyone have any experience getting around this problem?

Not exactly, but I did run a heist caper recently at a con -- a pick-up game made up of people I couldn't assume knew anything about running heists, beating security, or conning people. I didn't want to just tell them to make a Bluff check, so here's what I did. It took more work for me, but hey, it's my game, right?

I had them make Knowledge or Research or Gather Information checks, whatever was appropriate, and I had a bunch of printed strips of paper ready (with more time, I'd have used 3x5 cards) with things like:

DC 15: The bank itself sounds too hard to hit, but you might be able to run something on the guy who transports the money from the hideout to the bank itself.
DC 20: You've got enough solid info on what kind of case the carrier uses to come up with a fake case.
DC 25: The guy who transports the money grew up on these streets, and he can't resist showing off for the kids. A rigged game of some sort might lure him in and distract him enough to switch cases
DC 30: One easy type of rigged game is the three-card monte. In this case, the dealer runs the game poorly, so the guy transporting the money can win the game a few times. The dealer then attacks the carrier in anger at being beaten, and while the carrier beats himi down (which the dealer lets happen), one of the onlookers switches the cases.

When the PC made his check, I just gave them as much information as the check merited. Then they got to feel smart for coming up with a way to con the carrier out of his big case full of money.

I could see you doing the same thing on a technical level. The higher the Knowledge or Research check, the more information you give them. You never give them all the information necessary to solve the technical puzzle, but you lay out enough information so that they can solve the technical puzzle themselves using combined information nuggets on the cards.

Like I said, more work for you, but it lets them feel smart, and you get to run a hard SF game without scientist players.

 

[TheNovaLord]

Also as there is some much more options available than in a fantasy game i end up making much more use my GM screen.

The party also seem to shop more

JohnD

 

[BigCat]

<snip>

When the PC made his check, I just gave them as much information as the check merited. Then they got to feel smart for coming up with a way to con the carrier out of his big case full of money.

I could see you doing the same thing on a technical level. The higher the Knowledge or Research check, the more information you give them. You never give them all the information necessary to solve the technical puzzle, but you lay out enough information so that they can solve the technical puzzle themselves using combined information nuggets on the cards.

That's extremely helpful, thanks! That sounds very much like my problem - I want the players to feel like they can do something with their character's expertise without me just narrating all their actions. As you say, the only problem will be anticipating likely places where this will be necessary, but I can probably handle that.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I've been interested in running a hard sci-fi game for some time, but I've never been able to figure out how to get around this problem: the players don't know any science. That makes it difficult to base adventures and campaigns on specific scientific and technical issues, and makes technical problem solving on their part all but impossible. Does anyone have any experience getting around this problem?

In many ways a hard-scifi setting isn't much different from a Modern setting (arguably depending upon whether it was a near future hard sf or far future hard sf, but the further you go into the future the harder it becomes to be truly 'hard sf' about it, I'd think).

If you wanted a specific adventure to revolve around a particular technical issue, the best thing to do is to set up a conundrum for the PCs in which they recieve an explanation of how the technology works, but then are presented with a situation where it apparently doesn't. Asimov isn't a sci-fi author that I particularly enjoyed, but he did do a good series of 'tech mysteries', as has Larry Niven (thinking of Gil the ARM here). Reading some of those stories can give you some good ideas.

 

[Pbartender]

That's extremely helpful, thanks! That sounds very much like my problem - I want the players to feel like they can do something with their character's expertise without me just narrating all their actions. As you say, the only problem will be anticipating likely places where this will be necessary, but I can probably handle that.

Even then, if YOU know what's going on, you don't necessarily need to anticipate... You can do a fair job of winging it as you go along. For example...

"Where can we find someone who can show us the way to ruins where the Fizbin of Misfortune is kept?"

"Roll a Gather Information or Knowledge (local) check..."

DC 10: The Rotgut Saloon is where all the backwoods frontiersmen hang out when they come into town.
DC 15: Ask for Crazy Zeke. He won't admit it, but he's the only one who's actually been to the Fizbon ruins... All the others are liars.
DC 20: Crazy Zeke is very fond of Roe Beer, give him enough of it and he'll talk your ear off.
DC 25: Crazy Zeke is an crotchety old man, who takes delight in disproving doubters.

And so on... The better the roll, the better hints and clues you give them. I can't recommend this appraoch enough. I use it a often in the games I run.

 

[Morgenstern]

I want to officially coin the term 'Brittle Sci-fi' - as in such slavish adhearance to the technical aspects and rejections of what isn't set in accepted stone today (which pretty much makes you wonder how it counts as sci-fi at all...) that you paralyze the both the writer and the reader (or game master and players).

Conversely I'm having good fun writing 'firm Sci-fi' material these days .

 

[Johnny Angel]

Although I don't have a firm answer as to how to deliver a certain 'hardness' to sci-fi, I have been mulling it over for some time. But what I think is probably premium is to have both the technical and the concrete available to talk about. The technical is the science or technology of how the equipment works, or what the phenomenon is. The concrete is the visual, descriptive form that shows what's it's like to interact with something.

Say you have a PL 7 gravitic piton --
How does it work? It doesn't get hammered into the rock, it creates a localised gravitational geodesic that gives it an effective 100 newtons of pull against the surface it's placed on.
What's it like? It's a puck-shaped object five centimeters thick with a solid ring mounted on one flat side -- the other is covered with a yellow-and-black aplique saftety warning sticker. You activate it by pressing in a sunken depression switch after the switch cap has been removed, so that it can be placed by one outstretched hand, but won't likely be triggered accidentally in your pack. It will move slightly but suddenly, *CHUNK*, as it establishes its plane, and an amber light tells you it's active.

You want even the spazz-tastic scientific gadgets to seem like objects in the world. If the players can feel that *CHUNK* and that sudden solidity, then you've sold them on the science. Without it, the technical explanation is just hand-waving.

In literature you have what is know as the 'objective correlative.' You don't provoke an emotion by simply naming it, otherwise we'd walk into bars to find people chanting "Lust, lust, lust..." Instead, you have to find an objective correlative -- objects, situations or events that when properly presented invoke the emotion without it having to be named. It's the lights of the train taking your baby away from you, or the glass you dropped when beyond all expectation she walked back through your door. What I'm suggesting is that scientific concepts, too, should have some objective correlative if they're to be part of a story.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Look at it this way: You and your players already live in a sci-fi world. Unless you're all a bunch of engineers or scientists (which you probably aren't, based on your post), you're surrounded by tech you use but do not understand. Generally speaking, you don't have the technical skills to fix or even diagnose much of the tech that surrounds you- you use your phone to find people who do.

If your car breaks, you call an auto mechanic.

If your computer breaks, you call a tech or replace the part that died if you can ID it- you don't fix the individual chip.

You probably use pros to fix your plumbing or install sophisticated electronic suites...

Your sci-fi PCs will probably be much the same as you and your pals, but moreso. They'll navigate the social/action side of things, but they'll probably be in the service of someone much smarter, or have contacts who fit that description.

Look at your hard sci-fi protagonists. Some are policemen or detectives, some are soldiers, some are couriers, historians, priests, longshoremen, dilletantes, cab drivers and other kinds of regular joes. Very few are actual scientists.

In FRPGs, the only ones that need to understand magic are PC mages and certain NPCs, not the whole party. In hard sci-fi, the only ones who need to understand the tech are PCs who deal with it directly, PC or NPC.

A lack of scientific/engineering knowledge will make certain archetypes unplayable for most players- imagine playing Angus MacGyver without knowing something of science- but shouldn't affect the overall playability of the game.

 

[buzz]

Look at it this way: You and your players already live in a sci-fi world. Unless you're all a bunch of engineers or scientists (which you probably aren't, based on your post), you're surrounded by tech you use but do not understand. Generally speaking, you don't have the technical skills to fix or even diagnose much of the tech that surrounds you- you use your phone to find people who do.

Danny, that is 100%, Grade-A brilliant advice.