D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[pemerton]

As far as light in the ship if you think that's a problem you really don't understand the theory of relativity.

If the speed of light in a vacuum is constant in all frames, then acceleration to or beyond light speed is impossible. At least, that's my understanding of special relativity.

But in Star Trek, acceleration to and beyond the speed of light is possible, hence some premise of special relativity is false. One premise that might be false is that the speed of light in a vacuum is constant in all frames. But in that case, illumination in the ship would be weird.

Star Trek uses an explanation that maybe, just possibly, might work. They don't accelerate in the same sense that we accelerate in our car when we press the accelerator, they warp the space-time continuum by expanding the area behind it and contracting the area in front.

<snip>

Star Trek uses technology that may be impossible but it does follow the laws of physics as we understand them.

My special relativity is that of an informed amateur, and my general relativity is that of someone who has never learned tenser calculus (ie none). So I don't really know what the warping is supposed to involve, or how it is supposed to be different from motion. When I watch Star Trek, it certainly seems to depict the Enterprise in motion.

 

[Umbran]

Don't you think you are implying not doing it your way is immature?

There will always be exceptions, of course. It is a broad generalization..

But, I believe I didn't just imply it - I think I said it pretty directly in another post.

Is that really good?

I think it stands up about as well as most other broad generalizations out there.

You like long tedious rules debates. My group does not.

1) What?
Are you trying to imply that someone's approach to discussion on an internet messageboard (the only place you have ever seen me, afaik) has squat all to do with how they approach gaming sessions?

I don't know about you, but I understand that people can, and should, behave differently in different contexts. EN World is not my gaming table. Don't extrapolate one to the other.

2) What?
Are you trying to imply that "talking through issues" is engaging in long rules debates? Because that's not what I am thinking of when I speak about talking through problems like mature adults.

3) What?
I think you'll find that on this site, I don't engage in many debates of actual game rules - I'm more a playstyle and philosophy guy. And when I do discuss specific rules, I typically say my piece and then leave in relatively short order.

In the case of leaving a game, I don't consider leaving a game as antagonistic.

"Antagonism" is your word, not mine. Since it is not mine, I don't know why you feel it is relevant to this sub-thread of discussion.

 

[Maxperson]

Sure it does.

A monarch that has to actually listen to their vassals isn't an absolute monarch. That's literally why we have the distinction between an "absolute monarchy", where the monarch rules by pure divine right (or whatever other theory) and their vassals must simply obey. Absolute monarchy was relatively rare in the medieval period, but began to appear more frequently in the late Renaissance, and reached its zenith in the 16th and 17th century, typified by rulers like Louis XIV of France. Even feudalism actually did have restrictions on the monarch's power; they were not absolute rulers, but rather had a contractual arrangement between themselves and their vassals. Louis XIV and others like him rejected this notion and claimed truly absolute authority, unbound by any restrictions.

This is actually historical fact. Absolute power means being unconstrained by anything, doing whatever you want, whenever you want, because you want it and for no other reason. Indeed, there are even historians who question whether any monarch--even ol' Louie 14--was truly absolute or not, because they note that even monarchs who openly ascribed to such a theory often could not actually extract the wealth they needed for their programs, and this inability demonstrated that their power wasn't actually absolute.

"Absolute power" means you never need to discuss. You just declare.

That very specific thing is precisely why I spent so much time, easily half a dozen posts, trying to convince you otherwise. Trying to get you to accept anything else, anything less than "absolute power". But you insisted! You would not accept anything less. Now you have to deal with the consequences of that choice.

You really think that absolute monarchs never talked about anything with vassals? That they never did anything a vassal wanted?

 

[The Firebird]

There were no problems in my MHRP/Cortex+ Fantasy game. The players interacted with the runes, and the process of play led us to answers.

But what answers are going to be offered in the case of Star Trek and special relativity?

This is why I don't see any resemblance. There is no contradiction or even tension in a dungeon having strange runes that, when properly deciphered, indicate or explain a way out. No law of nature or physical principle is violated.

I'm sure there were not problems in your game...just as there are no problems in most fantasy games.

What you're talking about is the risks of a constructed world not "computing", so to say, of having internal errors or contradictions. These errors can be in the physics or they can be the internal history.

I don't see why one seems weird to you and the other doesn't.

 

[AlViking]

If the speed of light in a vacuum is constant in all frames, then acceleration to or beyond light speed is impossible. At least, that's my understanding of special relativity.

But in Star Trek, acceleration to and beyond the speed of light is possible, hence some premise of special relativity is false. One premise that might be false is that the speed of light in a vacuum is constant in all frames. But in that case, illumination in the ship would be weird.

But Einstein's insight into the speed of light and the very nature of what we consider space and time was that if you could travel close to the speed of light that everything would look perfectly normal to you because the speed of light is relative to the observer. I don't say I really get it, no matter how many explanations I see of it but it's really no different than throwing a ball while riding a fast-moving vehicle. Let's say you're on a spaceship going 500 MPH (typical for commercial jets). Everything on the ship still works like normal, everyone on the ship is standing still relative to you but still flying at that 500 MPH to anyone standing on the ground.

What changes, is that time is also relative to the people flying on that ship. If the spaceship could continue accelerating to some large fraction of the speed of light and zipped around the solar system for a year, time would pass normally for people on the ship and everything would still feel normal. But when you got back to Earth? Fifty years could have passed because time on the ship was compressed but not for people on Earth.

My special relativity is that of an informed amateur, and my general relativity is that of someone who has never learned tenser calculus (ie none). So I don't really know what the warping is supposed to involve, or how it is supposed to be different from motion. When I watch Star Trek, it certainly seems to depict the Enterprise in motion.

The ships in Star Trek are not moving faster than the speed of light, they are locally manipulating space and time 'Warp drives' may actually be possible someday, new study suggests. Star Trek gets around the time compression (and goes faster than light) because they are travelling in a warped bubble of space. The Enterprise is in motion, they've just found a way to cheat the normal space-time continuum that we experience.

Other sci-fi that even bothers to explain it typically imagine a way of bypassing the intervening space completely which some physicists believe could happen with worm holes, but that's a whole other can of worms. I don't think we'll ever come up with a way to travel faster than light, but there are hypothetical theories that might allow for loopholes if we had a better understanding of how the universe really works and had advanced enough technology.

 

[Maxperson]

Do you see players in a TTRPG group as advisors to the king-GM?

Because it seems quite obvious to me that they are subjects of the king-GM, nothing like "advisors".

They are quite literally never, ever subjects of the DM. If I commanded you to go to the store and bring me back 3 ribeye steaks, would you have to do it? If I commanded you to remake your peace wanting elf wizard as CE Murdery Smurf, would you have to do it? If you refused and I commanded one of the other players to execute you, do you think that would happen?

All the DM's absolute power means is that within the game what he decided to make happen happens. You don't have to follow his commands, and would probably get up along with everyone else in the group and leave if a DM started making the above demands. Further, a DM who isn't insane like that one isn't going to be making those demands. He's also going to discuss things with you and work with you to make the game enjoyable for everyone.

You are seriously off base with what absolute power means in D&D, but your error there explains why you've gotten my statements about DM authority so consistently wrong over the years.

To answer your question, the players are very much like those advisors to a king. They are a group of people who can speak up and advice the DM about gameplay. The DM will usually listen, but doesn't have to always listen. He can make rulings, and sometimes the players might not agree with one of them.

 

[Umbran]

If the speed of light in a vacuum is constant in all frames, then acceleration to or beyond light speed is impossible. At least, that's my understanding of special relativity.

Which is why we really should note the "Special" in special relativity. Special relativity is, as the name implies, a special, limited case, and does not give the whole story.

The limitation is that special relativity does not hold in literally all frames of reference, but holds in all "intertial frames" - meaning, the frames of reference are those of observers that are in uniform motion, not accelerating.

So, the short version is that Trek warp drive is not operating in an inertial frame of reference, so special relativity does not apply.

A slightly longer version:

But in Star Trek, acceleration to and beyond the speed of light is possible, hence some premise of special relativity is false.

So, now we get into complication.

Gene Roddenberry new somewhere between diddly and squat about relativity. He took a hand-waved concept from the 1931 "Islands of Space" stories by John W. Campbell, in which space and time themselves are manipulated to produce effective faster-than-light travel. Exactly what "warp drive" entails was not explained in early Trek.

Much later (1994) a Mexican theoretical physicist, Miguel Alcubierre, was inspired by Trek (including Next Gen), and proposed a system that seems to fake the universe out.

It does so by shrinking space in front of the ship, and expanding it behind the ship. So, locally, the ship never violates the prohibition on moving faster than light, but it manages to reach its destination faster by effectively making the distance to it shorter than you measured it from your inertial frame of reference.

One premise that might be false is that the speed of light in a vacuum is constant in all frames. But in that case, illumination in the ship would be weird.

"Inside the ship" is all one frame by the way. Locally, within the ship, lighting is fine. It is when you look out the window, when you look at things in a different inertial frame, that things get weird.

 

[clearstream]

It seems to me that there are (at least) 3 ways of thinking about an episode of RPGing, or an approach to RPGing, as simulationist:

(1) The participants rely (and are able to rely) upon the mechanical system, without needing to inject their own concerns or judgemental opinions, to learn what happens in the fiction. Rolemaster, RuneQuest and GURPS are like this, or at least aspire to be.​

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(2) The fiction, during play, is generated via a process that doesn't have regard for what anyone hopes it might be. This might require the application of heuristics to support extrapolation from what is already known or mechanically established, but they should be "neutral" ones. This approach won't use techniques like "fail forward" or the approach to deciphering strange runes that I described upthread in the context of MHRP play.​

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(3) The players, during play, aim to receive the fiction from "outside" of themselves, rather than "inputting" into it (except by having the in-fiction causal consequences of their PCs' actions worked out). This approach does not similarly constrain the GM, who might - for instance - make decisions non-neutrally, eg, "for the good of the story". Many "event-based" modules will only work if this approach is adopted.​

I think that each approach is a special case of the approach(es) with a higher number than its own. That is, (2) is a special case of (3) - because it maintains the approach of (3) as far as players are concerned, but puts additional constrains on the GM. And then (1) is a special case of (2), as it aspires to drop all the non-mechanical heuristics and keep only the mechanics.

Taking that as right, then it must next be considered what the playful experiences of simulation are like?

Immersion is very often cited: the feeling of being character and inhabiting world​

Noetic satisfaction is sometimes cited: the feeling of a validated and enhanced appreciation of subject​

Exploration is often cited: the feeling of discovery within the imagined world for its own sake​

Historicity is occasionally cited: the above, but tied to real world epochs and cultures​

Political investigation is infrequently cited: the above, but focused on societal problems​

Seeing as subject is central to simulative play, that choice supplies a third axis along which games can vary. A game that presents a mythic bronze age world wonderfully will do nothing to satisfy an interest in a midst-climate apocalypse society. Here, there are too many to list... unlimited, probably.

 

[Maxperson]

Well, it would be weird for characters to demonstrate, via the special relativity thought experiments, that it is impossible for your vessel to accelerate to light speed, while at the same time being on a vessel that (everyone authoring the fiction agrees) has accelerated to, and beyond, light speed.

Unless the advanced technology found a work around to the physics. Even now scientists are discovering things, and some are theorizing other things, that could challenge some of what we "know" about physics. Will it turn out that those things do change what we know? I have no idea. The articles are interesting to read, though.

Perhaps one day we will find a way around that limitation.

 

[Micah Sweet]

You really think that absolute monarchs never talked about anything with vassals? That they never did anything a vassal wanted?

Maybe it doesn't count unless they are required to do what the vassal wants.