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

[Savage Wombat]

Try this:

If you had an oven, and a Neanderthal who was the cook for his tribe, and a way to talk to him, you could teach him to understand the oven. Once he understands the relationship between the temperature settings on the dial, and the heat of the fires he's used to, he could cook a roast (or whatever) just fine.

Give him a microwave oven, however, and it has no relation to anything he understands. You put food in, and somehow it magically cooks. No heat, no lights, nothing but newly-cooked food.

Your argument also brings to mind the corollary to Clarke's law: "Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology."

 

[Calico_Jack73]

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

So far, no luck.

-The Gneech

I agree with you there but that is for gaming in any genre.

 

[two]

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 don't think your position is at all supportable. Are you "awed" by Einstein? He's a great scientiest. I'm extremly impressed with his achievements, as I am by JS Bach, V. Nabokov, etc.

I am impressed by Einstein's efforts and results; but not by "Einstein" the man, as some sort of totemic creature. Do I feel "awe" of Einstein? I'm in awe of his scientific achivements, yes; do I think Einstein in somehow tapped into divine or otherwordly knowledge? Is he a seer, or guru? Naw.

Magic in "primitive societies" = technology in "modern?"

Utter bunk, even if you attempt to explain "primitive" without coming across as a rube. So what if an African (presumably not a Ph.D from Zimbabwe or another country) calls a plane "magic of the white man?" What does that prove?

I'm not trying to say that people don't attempt to explain the "inexplicable" in ways that reference "magic," I'm saying that to do so with technology is fundamentally unhelpful. Because technology is EXPLICAPLE. One can explain it's workings, however complicated. So, one day the "primivite african" calls it white man's magic; ten years later he's a pilot of a Cessna. It's not white man's magic in the same way, surely.

The fact that technology can ALWAYS be explained is what differentiates it from other stuff, like magic or whatever. Comparing technology to magic is either paradoxical or shallow (taking "magic" to mean "golly gee whiz, incredible!").

 

[two]

Perfect Example

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.

This is absolutely PERFECT. THIS IS PRECISELY the point.

If Captain Kirk and co. disappeared in front of me, or if a wizard did so, they would both be INCREDIBLE. Gee whiz bang wow! I can't tell if it's science or magic! How did it happen?

So, I then talk with Captain Kirk and co., learn it's done through a machine, learn something about the theory of it, and boom. It's just a machine, however advanced. Big deal. Complicated, but I could presumably spend 10 years of my life studying it and understand it.

This is the POINT of technology/science. YOU CAN understand a part of it eventually, to some degree (perhaps not Ph.D. level, but grade-school level). Is it explicable. That's what it means to do science.

I then talk with el Wizard, and learn it's some sort of teleportation spell. I try to figure out how it works. The wizard can't help much, it has to do with words, motions, energy, etc. It's inexplicable. I probably won't ever be able to learn how to do it; the underlying theory is impossible. Wow! I'm amazed.

Now, if Clarke's statement simply means "when you see something incredible, you can't be initially sure if it's high-tech or magic" then yeah, duh. True. Same for any performing magician (sleight-of-hand artist). This is trivially true. Is it "magic" or is he using a trick deck of cards? Who knows initially?

If Clarke is trying to say something more interesting/complicated, please let me know what it is. I don't see a useful link between magic and high-tech, except in trivial sorts of ways ("uh, sometimes, they look the same, you know... like, is the voice in the other end of the wire simply a human taking into a phone (high tech circa 19th century) or is it a voice from hell (could be) or is it GOD himself (maybe)").

 

[two]

Try this:

If you had an oven, and a Neanderthal who was the cook for his tribe, and a way to talk to him, you could teach him to understand the oven. Once he understands the relationship between the temperature settings on the dial, and the heat of the fires he's used to, he could cook a roast (or whatever) just fine.

Give him a microwave oven, however, and it has no relation to anything he understands. You put food in, and somehow it magically cooks. No heat, no lights, nothing but newly-cooked food.

Your argument also brings to mind the corollary to Clarke's law: "Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology."

To be fair, let's not use Neanderthals, ok? How about "primitive human?"

Do you not see the spuriousness of your own argument, which you have poked holes in yourself?

If you can teach the primitive how the conventional oven works (turn here, gets hot here, fire there) high-tech moves from inexplicable to explicable in a few days.

Now, wow! Teach the primitive how to use the microwave oven, and also describe over the course of a few years the theory of its working. Inexplicable to explicable in a longer period of time, but not that long. He'll probably be popping popcorn within a week.

Are you just saying that the microwave "seems" magical, as in "gee whiz wow!" to the primitive for a few hours until he learns how to use it - learns it's just another machine, like the conventional oven, simply more esoteric? I won't argue that. Anything can look magical for a while -- even first love, eh? But some things, like microwave ovens, can be explained -- unlike first love, eh? Technology can ALWAYS be explained -- unlike, for example, that fetish you have, eh?

"Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology" -- what the hell is that supposed to mean? They are fundamentally different processes, unless you are talking about a system of "magic" that is repeatable, explicable, testable, and teachable. In which case it's not indistinguishable from technology, it is (in fact) technology itself. Same rules, same laws, same. Just another name for the same thing ("this wand of magic missiles uses a trigger mechanism striking this powder which explodes..."). i.e. Clarke spouts a circular truism.

 

[Turanil]

Because technology is EXPLICAPLE. One can explain it's workings, however complicated.

I disagree with this. For one thing you could explain that if things fall on earth, it's because of gravity, but you can't explain how gravity works, why it exists at all. Science is about causes and effects, not about "why". Then, what I wanted to say in my precedent post, is for people who believe in magic (because it's fully part of their culture), magic is perfectly explicable! Read about Castaneda books (a real crook but almost a genius when it comes to write compelling shamans' stories): magic is perfectly explained. When we say that magic cannot be explained, is because we are biased by the fact that we know (or believe to know, I don't want to start another side argument) that magic don't exist. As such, in a game we say "it's beyond comprehension". But for those who deeply believe in it, it's totally explicable as much as gravity is explicable.

Now the second point:
How to integrate / explain some magic (ala Cthulhu) in a sci-fi game, so it doesn't look totally weird, kitsh, or what not? Ideas?

 

[WayneLigon]

Now the second point:How to integrate / explain some magic (ala Cthulhu) in a sci-fi game, so it doesn't look totally weird, kitsh, or what not? Ideas?

Well, actually there is no 'magic' in the core Mythos stories; it's all just science so alien that human minds are incapable of understanding it, and they have to distance themselves from it to keep from going totally nuts (thus the incantations, the material componants, and such; all that is window dressing to put what is happening into terms a human mind is capable of understanding).

Many science-fiction writers have novels and stories about 'magic' grounded in science. The Lord Darcey series is probably the most famous; it uses several laws of magic (Law of Similarity, Law of Contagion, etc) .

That, in itself, is one way: 'Magic' in an SF game can be science so complex and capable of so much that there is no effective difference between it and magic. Kind of like a Star Trek replicator. In GURPS 3rd ed, once you get to the super-science levels (about TL 16+?) the entries for 'War' and 'Medicine' just say 'Poof, you're dead!/healed!'.

This especially works in the classic Star Trek original series where a group of people lose their knowledge of technology and regress, but still have their scientific wonder machines from a previous era. The machines still work, but the people accept what they do as miracles.

Psionics is another way of going about it. Psionics generally involves purely mental control of your surroundings, generally through some form of energy control (which gets you matter control; they're the same thing after all). A very powerful telekinetic is going to be almost indistinquishable from a magician: they could control the weather, kill people with lightning, change lead to gold, teleport by ripping open wormholes, manipulation of the Higgs field to fly or otherwise counter gravity, etc. Make them powerful enough, though, and you practically go into superhero levels of power. Thing Ironheart from Babylon 5; he was manipulating atomic structures, basic energy forms, etc.

Another way of going about this placing someone in contact with the first few fematoseconds of the Big Bang, or a singularity (controlling the singularity is your problem); the laws of physics had not completely formed yet, so really anything is possible to them. They can go faster than light, make heat go to hotter regions rather than colder ones, etc etc. Manipulating quantum field effects like this places you firmly in the realm of super powers; look at the Wild Cards series for a Sci-Fi take on supers.

The only thing you have to do, like in any other genre, is establish your ground rules and never break them.

 

[Savage Wombat]

No, I disagree.

You could just as easily say that a magic spell, once you show someone how to use it, is no longer "magic". They don't know how the spell does what it does, but if they can make popcorn with it, it's not magic any more.

 

[Goodsport]

Another great sci-fi RPG (though sadly, it's been out-of-print for several years now ), was GDW's 2300AD, which was a cleaned-up, beefed-up Second Edition to Traveller: 2300 (which actually had absolutely no relation to the Traveller/MegaTraveller/Traveller: The New Era universe, but was instead set in the same universe as Twilight: 2000, only set 300 years later).

While it certainly leaned more toward hard sci-fi than space opera, it wasn't nearly as entrenched in the former as Traveller was. As a matter of fact, a pseudo-Cyberpunk aspect was later added to the game for the more developed worlds such as Earth and Alpha Centauri.

The alien races in the game were some of the most detailed and realistic I'd seen in RPG's, yet contact between the various nations of Earth and the aliens were generally in the farthest reaches of one of the three arms of exploration (French, Chinese and American) - you generally wouldn't see a Kafer or a Pentapod (to take two examples) walking on the streets of Earth, for example.

Speaking of those arms of exploration: each one had its own unique problems. The French Arm (the largest, as France had pretty much emerged from World War III, or the Twilight War, of Twilight: 2000 as Earth's superpower precisely because it didn't partake in the war) consisted of a massive war with the Kafers which would eventually make its way to Earth; the Chinese Arm was riddled with pirates and smugglers; the American Arm eventually reached an impasse in that after a while, the available stars close enough to each other for available starship engines to discharge their stutterwarp drives became scarce.

And of course, the game had its corporations, megacorporations and the like.

Oh man, was that a cool game! It's unfortunate that GDW closed down in early-1996.


-G

 

[Bloodstone Press]

The Science of Magic

I don't want to stir the pot on the science Vs magic argument, but I do feel the need to point out that to a wizard, spells make total sense. They are like science to him. That is why he studies and memorizes and so on. If you ask a wizard how teleportation works, he could probably explain it in basic terms. Just as you can explain the basics of how a car works.

I think Clark's point is simply that technology can become so advanced that its workings are beyond the comprehension of an average person. At that point it might as well be "magic."

I agree that it isn't a very profound observation, except for those who are writing or creating fictional universes and pondering the relationships between magic and science.