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<blockquote data-quote="eris404" data-source="post: 2302871" data-attributes="member: 5338"><p>Agreed. Not to mention that humans, being human, like to see other humans doing cool, scary, and/or heroic things. Watching a robot kill the aliens, regardless of how cool the robot is, is just not the same thing and it can seem like a cop-out. </p><p></p><p>True story: we were playing a scifi game and our characters were investigating a crime. After several sessions of intrigue, detective work, and attacks by assassins, the crime was solved not by the heroes, but by what amounted to one character's PDA simply blurting out the answer. :\ Now, one could just dismiss that as lousy game mastering, but the truth of it is that the computer in terms of the game rules was simply smarter than the characters. And while that may be more plausible, it certainly wasn't more fun.</p><p></p><p>I don't think that Aliens was necessarily terrible SciFi either (though the alien itself stretches belief in some ways), but I think that the creators of the film purposely wanted the film to be gritty and feel real (oh dear, that sounds dangerously close to another topic). So rather than giving the marines weapons that would seem farfetched to the average slob or going with SciFi cliches (laserguns, etc), they opted for machine guns and lots of explosions. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin :D" data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /></p><p></p><p>In SciFi RPGs, technology is a huge stumbling block for me. In fantasy RPGs, certain things can exist because they are magic; they only have to make sense to a certain extent. In SciFi games, I have a harder time "hand-waving" how the technology works.</p><p></p><p>(Going waaaay off topic, this also why I hated the "midichlorian explanation" of the Force in Episode I. The Force went from being a mystical to biological entity and it wasn't even a plausible explanation.)</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="eris404, post: 2302871, member: 5338"] Agreed. Not to mention that humans, being human, like to see other humans doing cool, scary, and/or heroic things. Watching a robot kill the aliens, regardless of how cool the robot is, is just not the same thing and it can seem like a cop-out. True story: we were playing a scifi game and our characters were investigating a crime. After several sessions of intrigue, detective work, and attacks by assassins, the crime was solved not by the heroes, but by what amounted to one character's PDA simply blurting out the answer. :\ Now, one could just dismiss that as lousy game mastering, but the truth of it is that the computer in terms of the game rules was simply smarter than the characters. And while that may be more plausible, it certainly wasn't more fun. I don't think that Aliens was necessarily terrible SciFi either (though the alien itself stretches belief in some ways), but I think that the creators of the film purposely wanted the film to be gritty and feel real (oh dear, that sounds dangerously close to another topic). So rather than giving the marines weapons that would seem farfetched to the average slob or going with SciFi cliches (laserguns, etc), they opted for machine guns and lots of explosions. :D In SciFi RPGs, technology is a huge stumbling block for me. In fantasy RPGs, certain things can exist because they are magic; they only have to make sense to a certain extent. In SciFi games, I have a harder time "hand-waving" how the technology works. (Going waaaay off topic, this also why I hated the "midichlorian explanation" of the Force in Episode I. The Force went from being a mystical to biological entity and it wasn't even a plausible explanation.) [/QUOTE]
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