What do you like or don't like in sci-fi rpg

[two]

aaarrrgghghh!!

Clarke's Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

This is the sort of thing that drives me batty; a pithy little phrase that, like most pithy little phrases, neatly condenses some earth-shattering banality.

Send a man with a phonograph into the deepest jungle. Meet "primitive" tribe. Wind up phonograph. Play. Result: the "natives" are awe-struck -- the phonograph seems like "magic." Golly gee, maybe Clarke is onto something!

Fast forward a week: the natives have figured out it's a machine, and wait for the explorer to turn it on.

2 weeks: one of the natives asks to turn it on him/herself.

3 weeks: they can wind/play/swap records.

1 year: they ask for different records.

15 years: one of the natives travels to the local capital; set up a recording studio; lays down tracks of groovy recordings of native songs/with native instruments.

In other words, high-tech quickly is seen for what it is -- technology. And like all technology, it's explicable, repeatable, trainable. It's only amazing for a very short period of time.

Note that this is exactly what magic is NOT like. It's never really explicable; "trainable" only through luck or great skill, and oft-not repeatable. In fact, most people think of "magic" as defining precisely that which is not subject to the rules of "science."

So, when Clarke says "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" it is no different than saying "Any sufficiently advanced technology looks gee-whiz bang cool for a little while, until you get used to it."

Which is, really, utterly banal. I should not blame Clarke; perhaps it was a trashy throw-away line of his that somehow gained cultural currency. I CAN blame those who repeat it, however, as they apparantly think it represents a revelation worth wasting bandwidth upon.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

You read my mind. That's the closest thing I know to the game I want. I'd play it if it had multiple star systems.

I'm vaguely thinking about taking G:TS, adding a stutterwarp FTL drive (handwave), and reducing the (IMHO fanciful) nano-transhumanism. Push it to about the year 2150, add 10 colony worlds, and you have a post-cyberpunk but pre-transhuman interstellar RPG.

Buying "GURPS Traveller - First In" would be a great start. Of course, you could also let the civilization of TS discover a wormhole to the Serpentis system - the world of Blue Planet - and a few other wormholes left over by the Ancients that created the aborigies of Poseidon...

Blue Planet is also quite hard SF, especially in its portrayal of the alien environment, and thus a must-buy for SF fans. And it has a couple of nods towards Transhumanism as well.

And David Pulver has also mentioned that he was considering a "successor setting" to TS that takes place in 2200 and features other star systems... but I don't know if anything ever comes from it.

 

[WayneLigon]

Which is, really, utterly banal. I should not blame Clarke; perhaps it was a trashy throw-away line of his that somehow gained cultural currency. I CAN blame those who repeat it, however, as they apparantly think it represents a revelation worth wasting bandwidth upon.

It's 'somehow' gained cultural currency because it's literally true. After you pass a certain point of technological progress, it becomes very much like magic: you appear to break physical laws (and a very advanced form of technology would probably be able to bend and break even those laws), and it's performed without your personal knowledge of how said thing works.

Sure, the tribe can figure out the record player. Will they ever figure out the MP3 player? No. They'll figure out what can be done with it, eventually, but as far as what makes it work? They'll forever be in the dark about that unless someone tells them about electricity, and electrical theory, and engineering, etc etc.

Classically, magic produces results without you, the person, knowing or caring how that process came about. You do what you've been taught - mutter words, throw around some herbs, whatever - and zap! Some effect happens. Or it doesn't. If it doesn't, you have no real idea what went wrong; you did or said something wrong, your materials were not pure, the stars were not right, etc. You try it again, and sometimes it works, and other times not. Sometimes, someone invents a new spell, or gets such knowledge from a demon or angel. Only in modern sitcoms does magic work with total disregard to surroundings; classically, there were lots of rules to follow, and a lot of deep learning that went along with it. It was born out of the first fumblings of people to discover what their world was like without resorting to 'the spirits say it's like that', but all they knew is 'you do X and Y happens - sometimes it doesn't, and we're not sure why it doesn't happen. If Y doesn't happen, you did X incorrectly, or some outside force is preventing Y from happening.'

How many people, right now, do you know that approach their PC or some other complex device in that exact same manner? They know how to do their work, but only in a certain limited framework. They touch things in a certain order, hope nothing goes wrong, and zap! Work gets done. Pages are written. Information is collated and compiled, without them knowing one single thing about logic gates, electronics theory, microcircuitry design, etc. When something goes wrong, they call the local shaman, um, tech guy, who Does Things to it, and fixes it.

To them the computer is, in effect, magical. Tech Guy can take one of them aside, show them how to clear the registry and do some things... and poof, he's created an Apprentice Magic User. He has effectively taken a tribesman into his cave and taught him to be a shaman. Some people can't be taught this; they can be taught to do certain things, but they'll never really 'get it'; they just don't have a talent for it and no amount of training will ever pound it into them. Or, as we'd say in GURPS, they don't possess the Mage Advantage.

Now we've also got Tech Guy. Tech Guy really has no idea how the computer works other than what he's found out on his own and been taught. If a chip on the motherboard goes bad, Tech Guy knows the only thing to do is order a new one: he can't repair it. Indeed, nothing human at all can repair it: the scale is too small for people to perceive anymore. A machine (demon/angel) or chemical process (alchemy!) has to do it. Tech Guy has no idea how the actual gut of the machine works. And Superior Tech Guy really doesn't know all the parts. He knows his part well, and hopes it interacts well with other parts that others do.

Already, there is no one person that knows the entirity of the Windows operating system. It's too huge and complex; it's managed by committees of specialists, along with software that keeps track (hopefully) of changes. And we're still just in our first fumbling steps of technological progress.

And it keeps on going, until we finally reach a point where no human on Earth knows how their world operates. They know that if they do certain things, cash appears, or heat becomes cold. If something goes wrong, they hope the local shaman (tech) can fix it. Sometimes, he can't, for reasons he can't explain. He petitions a Daemon (calls into the local Expert System) for the information, who accesses the Akashic Memory (world data bank) for the info, gives it to the shaman for a dire price and a signed contract, and all is well once more.

 

[Calico_Jack73]

As a player I like freedom to go wherever I want in a ship that is owned/run by the PCs. Unfortunately that is usually a GM's worst nightmare since much improvising is usually required. Military campaigns get boring since they just devolve into mission after mission with no real choice from the PCs in where they go or what they do. I also dislike too many alien races that are in many ways superior to humans. This is probably why I'll run a Firefly based game the next time I pick up Traveller. Old West feel, freedom theme, and the only known race is human.

 

[two]

nope

It's 'somehow' gained cultural currency because it's literally true. After you pass a certain point of technological progress, it becomes very much like magic: you appear to break physical laws (and a very advanced form of technology would probably be able to bend and break even those laws), and it's performed without your personal knowledge of how said thing works.

Sure, the tribe can figure out the record player. Will they ever figure out the MP3 player? No. They'll figure out what can be done with it, eventually, but as far as what makes it work? They'll forever be in the dark about that unless someone tells them about electricity, and electrical theory, and engineering, etc etc.

Classically, magic produces results without you, the person, knowing or caring how that process came about. You do what you've been taught - mutter words, throw around some herbs, whatever - and zap! Some effect happens. Or it doesn't. If it doesn't, you have no real idea what went wrong; you did or said something wrong, your materials were not pure, the stars were not right, etc. You try it again, and sometimes it works, and other times not. Sometimes, someone invents a new spell, or gets such knowledge from a demon or angel. Only in modern sitcoms does magic work with total disregard to surroundings; classically, there were lots of rules to follow, and a lot of deep learning that went along with it. It was born out of the first fumblings of people to discover what their world was like without resorting to 'the spirits say it's like that', but all they knew is 'you do X and Y happens - sometimes it doesn't, and we're not sure why it doesn't happen. If Y doesn't happen, you did X incorrectly, or some outside force is preventing Y from happening.'

How many people, right now, do you know that approach their PC or some other complex device in that exact same manner? They know how to do their work, but only in a certain limited framework. They touch things in a certain order, hope nothing goes wrong, and zap! Work gets done. Pages are written. Information is collated and compiled, without them knowing one single thing about logic gates, electronics theory, microcircuitry design, etc. When something goes wrong, they call the local shaman, um, tech guy, who Does Things to it, and fixes it.

To them the computer is, in effect, magical. Tech Guy can take one of them aside, show them how to clear the registry and do some things... and poof, he's created an Apprentice Magic User. He has effectively taken a tribesman into his cave and taught him to be a shaman. Some people can't be taught this; they can be taught to do certain things, but they'll never really 'get it'; they just don't have a talent for it and no amount of training will ever pound it into them. Or, as we'd say in GURPS, they don't possess the Mage Advantage.

Now we've also got Tech Guy. Tech Guy really has no idea how the computer works other than what he's found out on his own and been taught. If a chip on the motherboard goes bad, Tech Guy knows the only thing to do is order a new one: he can't repair it. Indeed, nothing human at all can repair it: the scale is too small for people to perceive anymore. A machine (demon/angel) or chemical process (alchemy!) has to do it. Tech Guy has no idea how the actual gut of the machine works. And Superior Tech Guy really doesn't know all the parts. He knows his part well, and hopes it interacts well with other parts that others do.

Already, there is no one person that knows the entirity of the Windows operating system. It's too huge and complex; it's managed by committees of specialists, along with software that keeps track (hopefully) of changes. And we're still just in our first fumbling steps of technological progress.

And it keeps on going, until we finally reach a point where no human on Earth knows how their world operates. They know that if they do certain things, cash appears, or heat becomes cold. If something goes wrong, they hope the local shaman (tech) can fix it. Sometimes, he can't, for reasons he can't explain. He petitions a Daemon (calls into the local Expert System) for the information, who accesses the Akashic Memory (world data bank) for the info, gives it to the shaman for a dire price and a signed contract, and all is well once more.

There is just not a lot I can say. You simply make a terrible argument.

So the tribe figures out the phonograph. You grant me that. But never a MP3! Well, maybe... actually, an MP3 works in much the same way (push button hear music) but... you claim the INTERNALS of the MP3 are not explained to them so it's still "like magic."

Which is how the rest of your post goes... I don't understand WINDOWS-NT so, well, it's "magic." A circuit board is "unrepairable" so it's "magical."

Rubbish.

Utter bunk.

I don't understand Windows-NT, but I feel no awe about it. I'm impressed with the technology; but that's it. Technology is a tool. I can use it, duplicate effects on it; read about it; learn about it; etc. I can learn how an MP3 player is put together;programmed;used. I don't, because it's boring to me. Let the experts do that stuff. That does not mean nobody can. Somebody did, in fact, make the MP3. So, it's not "magically" produced.

To sum: technology is not magical in any useful sense of the term "magic".

I don't understand how my stomach works either; yet I still don't have a magical sense of it. If I get stomach cancer, it's "unrepairable," but that's not pushing it into the realms of magic. Is it?

What is your point?

Lots of systems are complicated, and on the surface impossible to understand. But, technology (unlike the body) is extremeley easy to "teach" because the effects must/do always repeat.

How does the mind work? Dunno. That's closer to "magic" than any lousy technology system.

Technology has a very finite "huh? wow!" life. Humans are good at understanding things. This whole "high tech is like magic" junk just seems silly. Clarke's quote simply repeats common sense in a slightly different way. Wow. Thanks.

 

[Turanil]

The problem of this discussion is not the relation to technology, but the relation to magic. In our modern society magic is seen as mythology and fancy only. Now, for what little I know about it, magic (shamanism) is seen in primitive societies just as we see technology in ours. People may be awed by the tribe's shaman, but we are awed by Einstein. There is not much difference. I just remember long ago an African saying in an airplane (about the airplane) that "this was the magic of the white (people)" without seemingly being especially awed by it.

I'm vaguely thinking about taking G:TS, adding a stutterwarp FTL drive (handwave), and reducing the (IMHO fanciful) nano-transhumanism. Push it to about the year 2150, add 10 colony worlds, and you have a post-cyberpunk but pre-transhuman interstellar RPG.

Even as I continue with my homebrew Space Opera campaign, I think I will also buy OGL Cyberpunk (but only when Amazon gives 30% discount on it), d20 Future, Menace Manual, and Transhuman Space (which I will buy for ideas in any case), and get a perfect hard-sci-fi / cyberpunk setting ala Neuromancer.

 

[Calico_Jack73]

So the tribe figures out the phonograph. You grant me that. But never a MP3! Well, maybe... actually, an MP3 works in much the same way (push button hear music) but... you claim the INTERNALS of the MP3 are not explained to them so it's still "like magic."

The internals ARE totally different. A phonograph works on a purely mechanical principle. There is a moving part for every function. The record turns and moves under the needle which takes the sounds made from those vibrations and send them to a rudementary cone speaker. An MP3 Player has no moving parts so no action of the process can be witnessed to learn what "makes" the music. Pushing a button on the player would be seen the same as saying a command word to activate a magic item. No understanding is required to make it work but it would be impossible without that understanding to create a duplicate device.

Sorry... I just jumped in the middle without reading the previous posts.

 

[Calico_Jack73]

This is the sort of thing that drives me batty; a pithy little phrase that, like most pithy little phrases, neatly condenses some earth-shattering banality.

Honestly, if Captain Kirk and company were standing in front of you and just disappeared in little flickering lights would you be able to tell if it was science or magic? You would assume it was Science due to their garb, the way they talked, and the equipment they used. If some guy in a pointy hat wearing a robe and waving a wand did the same thing you'd be prone to say it was magic but in the end the two effects did the same thing. Teleportation by any other name is still Teleportation.

Edit: Oh, the point of this was to back up Clarke's Law. Science or magic, in the end if I can't understand how it was done it might as well be one or the other because in the end I still don't understand it no matter what it is.

 

[Arnwyn]

1) If you play sci-fi rpg, what do you especially like in your sci-fi adventures?, but also what you don't like and would like to see changed.

For me, I prefer two main things: high-speed mecha action, and futuristic cyberpunk dark-future stuff. Together. (E.g. Bubblegum Crisis, Ghost in the Shell) I don't particularly like old, ugly, clunky ships and sci-fi "magic". So, in essence, I prefer Japanese-influenced sci-fi (Ghost in the Shell, Macross, Dirty Pair, Cowboy Bebop, Appleseed, etc.) as opposed to American-influenced sci-fi (ugly ships, over-abundance of aliens, geriatrics in space). There are some exceptions, of course, but not many.

Other dislikes: any focus on "realism" or hard sci-fi. On the rules side of things, I dislike classes and poorly done, inappropriate auto-fire rules.

3) Whether you play or don't play in sci-fi rpg, what would be a very cool feature to absolutely have in a sci-fi campaign?

Mecha. I don't play sci-fi without mecha.

But that's just me.

 

[The_Gneech]

1) If you play sci-fi rpg, what do you especially like in your sci-fi adventures?

For somebody else to be the GM once in a while!

So far, no luck.

-The Gneech