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<blockquote data-quote="meltdownpass" data-source="post: 8257813" data-attributes="member: 7029921">Don't want to get too deep in the weeds at risk of derailing the topic, but any kind of sci-fi setting that has even present-day level technology is going to have to grapple with what life looks like in a world of omnipresent surveillance &amp; tracking of virtually all financial activity. Even in near-future this is dumped into central databases pored over by ML/AI of state-corporate entitities monitoring and even predicting behavior using that data.These things are all designed to make life more manageable from a certain perspective, which could also be described from another (storytelling) perspective as removing adventure.Star Trek, which traditionally assumes a moral evolution of humanity such that the dystopian implications are no longer relevant, -- Even Star Trek tends to operate on the fringes of the Federation where the usual rules don't apply. Firefly, which is less fantastical in its treatment of human nature, explicitly has to put its heroes and adventures on the fringe of the tyrannical Alliance.While I can imagine stories set inside an honestly-treated sci-fi setting, they generally tend more towards P.K. Dick's Minority Report or Kafka's The Trial. I certainly don't want to discourage anyone from playing such games if they are capable, but in my experience a social experience like RPG gaming is heavily weighted to lighter adventure games and not deep social commentary.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="meltdownpass, post: 8257813, member: 7029921"] Don't want to get too deep in the weeds at risk of derailing the topic, but any kind of sci-fi setting that has even present-day level technology is going to have to grapple with what life looks like in a world of omnipresent surveillance & tracking of virtually all financial activity. Even in near-future this is dumped into central databases pored over by ML/AI of state-corporate entitities monitoring and even predicting behavior using that data. These things are all designed to make life more [I]manageable [/I]from a certain perspective, which could also be described from another (storytelling) perspective as removing [I]adventure[/I]. Star Trek, which traditionally assumes a moral evolution of humanity such that the dystopian implications are no longer relevant, -- Even Star Trek tends to operate on the fringes of the Federation where the usual rules don't apply. Firefly, which is less fantastical in its treatment of human nature, explicitly has to put its heroes and [I]adventures[/I] on the fringe of the tyrannical Alliance. While I can imagine stories set inside an honestly-treated sci-fi setting, they generally tend more towards P.K. Dick's [I]Minority Report[/I] or Kafka's [I]The Trial.[/I] I certainly don't want to discourage anyone from playing such games if they are capable, but in my experience a social experience like RPG gaming is heavily weighted to lighter adventure games and not deep social commentary. [/QUOTE]

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