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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Laslo Tremaine" data-source="post: 1400776" data-attributes="member: 330">My gaming group has found anything on the hard side of science fiction to be completely unplayable.Pretty much all of us are avid amatuer science buffs (some more than others).  So when we are playing an SF game any faults that might lie in the science of the game come glaringly to the forefront (and trust me, you DO NOT want to watch an SF movie or series with any of us).I have three examples of how this causes problems for us.1) Way back in the late 80's we were doing a campaign based on Larry Niven's Known Space books.  The GM was the one member of our group who had a lesser science background than the rest of us.  In one scenario we came into a system that had an asteroid belt that when investigated turned out to be quite interesting.  All of the "asteroids" were various geometric solids in very unusual orbital patterns.  We spent a significant ammount of time investigating the "asteroid belt", asking questions about whether the "asteroids" emited any energy, wether we could detect and outside power source somewhere else in the system, etc, etc.  The GM couldn't figure out why we were asking all these questions and why we were spending so much time on what he had intended as just some window dressing.  What he did not realize is that the orbits of the asteroids were completely unnatural, and could not be sustained without some kind of internal or external force acting on them to maintain their unusual orbits. Our willing-suspension-of-disbelief was completely shattered and he was frustrated because we were (in his opinion) wasting time with trivial crap.2) In a later campaign that was a near-future Mars exploration and pre-colonization campaign.  One player was spending an innordinate ammount of time asking the GM (a different one this time) very detailed geological questions.  He wanted precise information on rock types, strata, etc, etc.  The GM (who was more of a physics nut and not a geology buff) was answering questions to the best of his ability, but the geologist player was getting frustrated because the GM was unwittingly giving him conflicting answers.  The main problem here was that in this case the GM had made the geology an intergral part of the scenario, but had screwed it up...3) The last example was with a separate group that I was a part of.  It was a WWII superheroes game.  We had been given a dirigible that was filled with a gas that was "better" than helium.  I took that to mean that it was some pseudo-science gas that was somehow more bouyant than helium or something (I knew better than to ask questions).  At one point were were chasing a villian through the interior of the dirigible, and my character went running directly in to the interior of the super-structure.  Everyone in the group was horrified that I had not put on my anti-static booties.  I boggled back at them.  "Why the hell would I need antistatic booties, this thing wasn't filled with hydrogen".  "Yes but I could still set off a spark" they warned.  "So what," I countered, "the gas this thing is filled with is 'better' than helium."  "That's correct," they said. "So," I continued, "that means it should be inert."  Blank stares all around. With patience I went on, "Helium is inert, non-flamable, won't catch on fire, therefore I don't need little booties".  The GM just looked at me and said with a straight face, "well this gas is still somewhat flamable, but less so than hydrogen."  Now it was my turn for the blank stare, "So how the hell is it 'better' than helium, and why the hell aren't we using helium?!"  I finally agreed to let it go, but once again my willing-suspension-of-disbelief was completely shattered...Our group has pretty much agreed that we are incapable of anything approaching hard SF.  We seem to be OK with space-opera, and science-fantasy.  And, super-heroes are fine as long as no one is playing a Super-Scientist.  But other than that, hard SF is off limits.Oh, and by the way, SF elitists (of which I know many), will tell you that sci-fi is the plural of scum-fum... <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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