First, a scale of hard sci-fi:
http://www.kheper.net/topics/scifi/grading.html
Generally speaking, everything I want to do falls into the "Very Hard SF" or harder categories. No FTL travel, no warp bubbles, no time travel, no wormhole travel (sure, wormholes might be a real thing, but you almost certainly wouldn't want to enter one), no teleportation, no handwavium, no cloaking devices (you can't hide life support systems or engines in space), no icy doom when spaced without a suit (you die from no air and no pressure, not by freezing), etc., etc., etc.
Just looking for any kind of advice, info, links, etc., you want to give. I'm probably going to roll my own system, but I'm still open to reviewing good medium-crunch stuff; even if I won't use it wholesale, I'll pillage it for systems and ideas. I was looking at Savage Worlds, until I realized that SW isn't OGL; for some reason I'd rather roll my own than use a generic system that isn't OGL.
I'm especially interested in tools for building space habitats, star systems, planets, ecologies, societies, critters, etc.
I posted a thread some time back at some shitty forum where I was subsequently banned for not being a complete, total, abject soy boy, or for not being wrong about the definition of hard SF...I'm not really sure. In any event, here is a roundup of the systems/settings that were suggested to me:
Jovian Chronicles
Blue Planet
Cyberpunk 2020 (Near Orbit and When Gravity Fails)(Deep Space)
Classic Traveller (3 core books plus Supplement 4: Citizens of the Imperium)
Diaspora
Spacemaster Privateers
Star Cluster 3
Traveller (Orbital Setting)
GURPS Terradyne
GURPS Transhuman Space
Cyberpunk 2020
2300AD
Traveller 2300
Orbital 2100
Shadows Over Sol
Eclipse Phase
Mindjammer
Albedo RPG (Platinum Catalyst edition)
The Expanse (upcoming)
Previous or subsequent searches have revealed a few more:
Coriolis
Stars Without Number
Fading Suns
Thousand Suns
M-Space
Savage Worlds - Interface Zero
Savage Worlds - Seven Worlds
(I really have to give Seven Worlds a shout-out for their dedication to writing a hard SF RPG; they took time to do their research and write scientific explanations of their choices, which I really appreciated)
Traveller, 2300 AD, Eclipse Phase, and Coriolis all involve FTL and/or other elements you are trying to avoid.
I always liked Heavy Gear. Reasonable mecha (small, lightly armored). FTL exists but is extremely rare and expensive as hell. And a deadly system.
Happy, yeah, but this is as much about mining a system for good stuff as it is about choosing a system to run. Moreso, really.
Lord, yeah Heavy Gear always gets mentioned in sci-fi system threads, I'll have to take a look.
What kind of system do you really like playing? What do you find the most exciting about a system?
Why OGL? You want to publish this? SWADE has a content creator program on DTRPG. So does HERO now. Cypher system, Gumshoe, Torg... If you want to publish under a known property you should check out all the programs on DTRPG.
You'll want to look at 1st or 2nd ed. 3rd ed they tried to take it d20 and that just ruined it.
HG is the same company (Dream Pod 9) as Jovian Chronicles.
I've seen Classic Traveller used well for "very hard scifi" because one of the major elements between "hard scifi" and "space fantasy" is what happens when a human body gets hit with higher tech weapons. In Traveller, those bodies mostly go splat.
Also, Traveller's chargen works well to simulate the randomness of human learning and development. It's not perfect, but its a great system if you are looking for a system that takes back seat to the setting you are designing. In fact, I am 100% sure there are published Traveller settings that might be "very hard" enough for you. IIRC, there was one called ORBITAL.
I'm a space horror fan. I've run Traveller campaigns stripping down the tech to "realistic", keeping everything in our solar system, and enforcing the laws of physics and biology, and then adding Mythos nightmares into the "realism."
So, simple Hard Traveller patch. There is no jump drive or antigravity, this volume is now wings and thrust vectoring and higher G worlds tend to have thicker atmospheres so it all works out. Ships that don't enter atmospher trade in the jump drive for an ion drive that puts out, 1/10 G and is ten times more efficient than the maneuver drive. The fuel tankage is 1 G-hour per 10% of the ship's volume. Sure mass would be more realistic but this is a simple patch.
All hard sci-fi really means is that space helmets are required.
Cepheus Engine is OGL Traveller and may be dialed in quite hard for Sci-Fi. You already mentioned the Orbital and Orbital 2100 settings which are for Mongoose Traveller 1e and Cepheus Engine respectively. To really get the Hard Science feel, I'd suggest getting the Spacecraft Design Guide for Cepheus Engine which will allow you to design spacecraft with chemical rockets, solid rockets, NERVA drives, and realistic fusion rockets that do not use grav plating but spin habitats to avoid the effects of prolonged lack of gravity (the Vehicle Design Guide for Cepheus Engine is also not too shabby). The only drawback that I can think of is the lack of some of the wackier but plausible spacecraft drive types, like Robert Zubrin's Nuclear Saltwater Rocket (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_salt-water_rocket).
As a general reference work for you, I highly recommend the Atomic Rockets (http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/) website. Chock full of some of the best material you could ever want about the science in science fiction space travel.
Have fun!
You should check out Stellar Wind (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/112165/Stellar-Wind-2nd-Edition) . The basic system is nothing to write home about (somebody's homebrewed d20) but the spacecraft construction and travel rules will be right up your street. Somebody has basically already done the work for you of turning Atomic Rockets into gameable rules.
If you can find it, Cthulhu Rising, a hardish-SF setting for (you guessed it...) Call of Cthulhu. There is FTL but you could easily ignore it - there is a wealth of setting detail just about the Solar System. The same author later did River of Heaven using OpenQuest rules (a slightly simplified BRP/d100 system), which is very Alastair Reynolds in feel.
Speaking of which, you've heard of Eclipse Phase, right?
Traveller: The New Era is much harder SF than Classic. Oh the joys of calculating Bingo Fuel...
Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;1120256All hard sci-fi really means is that space helmets are required.
Nah, it means heat sinks are required.
We had a similar thread a few weeks ago.
So once more. Personal Go-Tos for hard SF RPGs.
Star Frontiers+Knight Hawks: No artificial gravity. No psionics. Alien races are few and some are the product of past seeding of the area by beings unknown. Just pretend Zebulons Guide never existed. Thats what 90% of the SF fanbase does. Has a hyperspace. But its mildly unsafe.
Albedo: Even harder SF than Star Frontiers. No lasers. No anti gravity. No aliens. Practically no alien fauna even. No lasers. There is a psi power but it exists so rare only less than a handfull of NPCs have it. Combat is brutal and war is hell. Has a hyperspace. But its VERY unsafe.
Others I like being
CP2020 Near orbit: Not a bad little expansion to CP2020 out into the solar system. The second book takes it out into the galaxy and is less hard SF.
Wayyyy back Dragon Magazine did some space themed articles for Top Secret. Hard SF overall.
Quote from: trechriron;1120229Why OGL?
Probably because he has his own setting in mind that he doesn't want to have locked up behind a restrictive Community Content license. With Genesys and possibly Hero Game being exceptions.
Stars without Number has a default setting that would not qualify as hard sci-fi but is full of tables and tools for building any type of sci-fi setting. I'd highly recommend it for that reason even if you never plan to use the default setting or mechanics. All Crawford's games are like this. I use them to build settings of my own.
Gurps can do hard SF. Especially if you have some of the expansions.
Oddly enough the original BESM could handle it as well since its like GURPs and is a toolkit.
And if you can ignore the horror factor. Look up End Times for Call of Cthulhu. That is a hard fiction setting based on a struggling Mars colony. You could do whole sessions revolving around the mundane problems alone. I was a playtester for it wayyyyyy back.
Eclipse Phase requires their wormholes to exist because of that is how the TITANS left, if wormhole tech invented by post singularity AI is acceptable, then you are fine.
Nova Praxis gets called hard Sci-fi, but unlike in Eclipse Phase, people really do not understand why technology works anymore. A super AI invented a bunch of stuff and then turned off. This works great to keep technology more stagnant so your setting does not need rapid technological developments every year to make sense, but it veer's away from what you want in terms of scientific explanations for everything. The wormholes in this setting can be removed.
Psionics are a big part of the Stars Without Number canon, but that system is designed for maximum selectability, as in you can cut out what you do not want.
Quote from: Rhedyn;1120420Eclipse Phase requires their wormholes to exist because of that is how the TITANS left, if wormhole tech invented by post singularity AI is acceptable, then you are fine.
You also have tech that allows copying and transferring of "ego" to allow serial immortality. That's not exactly hard science, and neither are the psi-powers of the setting. Oh, and biological whale-like organisms (that can be PC bodies) designed to fly through the corona of the sun... yeah, not hard sci-fi.
Quote from: HappyDaze;1120428You also have tech that allows copying and transferring of "ego" to allow serial immortality. That's not exactly hard science, and neither are the psi-powers of the setting. Oh, and biological whale-like organisms (that can be PC bodies) designed to fly through the corona of the sun... yeah, not hard sci-fi.
Oh yeah the psionics.
Nova Praxis avoids it, so in my head Eclipse Phase must too because all the other super sci-fi tech should be interesting enough without adding space-magic right?
(IMO Nova Praxis is the better series, and I strongly disagree that "ego" transferring isn't hard sci-fi. If the mind is a scientific construct, then it can be simulated and replicated with advanced enough technology).
Quote from: HappyDaze;1120428You also have tech that allows copying and transferring of "ego" to allow serial immortality. That's not exactly hard science, and neither are the psi-powers of the setting. Oh, and biological whale-like organisms (that can be PC bodies) designed to fly through the corona of the sun... yeah, not hard sci-fi.
If you are going that way with Hard Sci-Fi biological sciences, then Star Frontiers is out because of extra large sentient insects (Vrusk) and extra large sentient single celled organisms (Dralasites).
EDIT: I have a personal bias against Stars Without Number because combat and character generation is based on D&D hit points and levels, so Actual Play doesn't feel like a unique game as much as it feels like D&D In Spaaaaace!
Quote from: jeff37923;1120433If you are going that way with Hard Sci-Fi biological sciences, then Star Frontiers is out because of extra large sentient insects (Vrusk) and extra large sentient single celled organisms (Dralasites).
Except the vrusk arent terrestrial bugs and have an internal skeleton. And the dralasites are not single cell organisms.
Try again please.
Quote from: jeff37923;1120433EDIT: I have a personal bias against Stars Without Number because combat and character generation is based on D&D hit points and levels, so Actual Play doesn't feel like a unique game as much as it feels like D&D In Spaaaaace!
Huh for me games like Stars Without Number, Silent Legions, Godbound, and Golgotha helped me separate d20, levels, and hit points from D&D and instead see it as just a really robust core for lighter rule systems.
Quote from: Omega;1120443Except the vrusk arent terrestrial bugs and have an internal skeleton. And the dralasites are not single cell organisms.
Try again please.
'Vrusk are sometimes called "bugs".' 'They look like large insects' (https://starfrontiers.fandom.com/wiki/Vrusk)
'The internal structure of a Dralasite is very different from the other races. The Dralasite's central nerve bundle (brain), numerous small hearts and other internal organs float in a pudding-like mixture of protein and organic fluids. Dralasites breathe by absorbing oxygen directly through their skin, so they have no lungs. They are omnivores, but eat by surrounding their food and absorbing it, so they also have no digestive tract or intestines.' (https://starfrontiers.fandom.com/wiki/Dralasites)
Sounds like insects and single celled organisms to me.
They're more like a large slime mold with a thick outer coating.
Quote from: OmegaExcept the vrusk arent terrestrial bugs and have an internal skeleton. And the dralasites are not single cell organisms.
Try again please.
Quote from: jeff37923;1120460Sounds like insects and single celled organisms to me.
Omega is technically correct. Vrusk do have an internal skeleton, and Dralasites are definitely multi-cellular.
However, in general, Star Frontiers is definitely not hard sci-fi. It's mostly space opera, with FTL, artificial gravity, force-fields, tractor beams, ray guns, and outlandish creatures. Dralasites are not single-celled, but there's no explanation for how they can absorb enough oxygen for activity without lungs.
Quote from: jhkim;1120472Omega is technically correct. Vrusk do have an internal skeleton, and Dralasites are definitely multi-cellular.
Vrusk[ATTACH=CONFIG]4111[/ATTACH]
Dralasite[ATTACH=CONFIG]4112[/ATTACH]
Looks like insects and single celled organisms to me.
Quote from: jeff37923;1120592Looks like insects and single celled organisms to me.
I think we're all agreed that Vrusk look similar to insects. However, the Vrusk diagram that you quote shows at least part of the internal skeleton -- there's a ribcage showing at the base of the torso. According to their description, they have numerous differences from insects -- like having an internal skeleton, and having lungs. Here's a quote:
QuoteA Vrusk's body is covered by a carapace (hard shell). This shell is jointed at the Vrusk's elbows, hips, knees, etc. The carapace protects the Vrusk from bruises, cuts, scratches and other minor injuries. Unlike insects, Vrusk have an internal skeleton to support their bodies. Young Vrusk have a blue carapace with bright orange near the joints. As the Vrusk gets older, its carapace changes to dull green with yellow joints.
Vrusk have large eyes that are protected by a hard, clear covering. The mouth is surrounded by four eating mandibles. The two larger mandibles hold food while the small ones tear it apart and place it in the mouth. They are omnivores. Vrusk have lungs, and breathe through many small nostrils under their abdomens. This arrangement makes it difficult for Vrusk to swim.
Source: https://starfrontiers.fandom.com/wiki/Vrusk
The Vrusk, at least, have plausible biology. They might look similar to insects and share some external characteristics, but by their description, they're more like armadillos.
Dralasites don't work, however. There's no explanation of how they can get enough oxygen for respiration, or how their muscles can operate without a skeleton.
Quote from: jhkim;1120601I think we're all agreed that Vrusk look similar to insects. However, the Vrusk diagram that you quote shows at least part of the internal skeleton -- there's a ribcage showing at the base of the torso. According to their description, they have numerous differences from insects -- like having an internal skeleton, and having lungs. Here's a quote:
Source: https://starfrontiers.fandom.com/wiki/Vrusk
The Vrusk, at least, have plausible biology. They might look similar to insects and share some external characteristics, but by their description, they're more like armadillos.
Nope. Think about how the Vrusk are structured and what the weight of the carapace and internal skeleton combined would be, and now look at the legs. The legs are not positioned to support the weight. If the legs were correct biologically, then they would be underneath the center of mass for the body in order to provide support for all of that weight and not splayed out like an insect. For comparison, think about how the armadillo's or the rhino's legs are positioned relative to their centers of body mass.
Face it, some designer at TSR said "Ohmigod! We've got to make a science fiction RPG to remain relevant! Quick! Let's make The Herculoids and other Hanna Barbara cartoon characters into PC races! Gloop and Gleep can be Dralasites! Zorak's race can become Vrusk!" and Star Frontiers is what happened.
Quote from: jhkim;1120601don't work, however. There's no explanation of how they can get enough oxygen for respiration, or how their muscles can operate without a skeleton.
That is because Dralasites are humanoid shaped amoebas. The closest things that they could be compared to are prehistoric mitochondrial organisms before they became part of the biologically modern cellular structure.
Quote from: jeff37923;1120605Nope. Think about how the Vrusk are structured and what the weight of the carapace and internal skeleton combined would be, and now look at the legs. The legs are not positioned to support the weight. If the legs were correct biologically, then they would be underneath the center of mass for the body in order to provide support for all of that weight and not splayed out like an insect. For comparison, think about how the armadillo's or the rhino's legs are positioned relative to their centers of body mass.
That's not a disqualifier. Crocodiles have splayed legs, can move very quickly on land, and prehistoric examples with very similar body plans were the size of an elephant. Pretty much any giant land animal from prehistory that isn't a mammal or a dinosaur would also qualify, because the fully upright posture with legs directly under the body only appeared in those two lineages (I think... but even if there's another exception, it's still covers multiple animals that top out at couple tons). While the upright posture is a major advantage, after all it's one the features that made dinosaurs fast and allowed them to grow to unprecedented sizes, it's not a structural necessity at the human scale.
If you're interested in scale and biodynamics, McGowan wrote a couple of good, popular books on the subject. They're not recent books, but it's not one those subfields that goes out of date particularly quickly.
Though this is a rather silly argument. It's clear they wanted a space bug and a space amoeba, which is fundamentally
Science! out of a pulp serial. But it's also clear they tried to come up a more modern pseudo-plausible rationale for them both. So the implausibility isn't that they're insects or amoeba, because they're not; it's in how well those two forms are justified by scientific gobbledygook, and in the staggering coincidence that humans ran across multiple alien races that are roughly comparable to humans in size and physical capabilities, think enough like humans that they can smoothly integrate into human culture, and on top of all that they just happen to look like terrestrial bugs, amoeba, flying monkeys, and snakes.
Quote from: jeff37923;1120460
'Vrusk are sometimes called "bugs".' 'They look like large insects' (https://starfrontiers.fandom.com/wiki/Vrusk)
'The internal structure of a Dralasite is very different from the other races. The Dralasite's central nerve bundle (brain), numerous small hearts and other internal organs float in a pudding-like mixture of protein and organic fluids. Dralasites breathe by absorbing oxygen directly through their skin, so they have no lungs. They are omnivores, but eat by surrounding their food and absorbing it, so they also have no digestive tract or intestines.' (https://starfrontiers.fandom.com/wiki/Dralasites)
Sounds like insects and single celled organisms to me.
Except... you know... not.
But keep failing miserably though.
Quote from: jhkim;1120472Omega is technically correct. Vrusk do have an internal skeleton, and Dralasites are definitely multi-cellular.
However, in general, Star Frontiers is definitely not hard sci-fi. It's mostly space opera, with FTL, artificial gravity, force-fields, tractor beams, ray guns, and outlandish creatures. Dralasites are not single-celled, but there's no explanation for how they can absorb enough oxygen for activity without lungs.
Star Frontiers doesnt have artificial gravity. Ships, other than some shuttles, are towers. They ported that over to Buck Rogers even.
Me too. "I always liked Heavy Gear. Reasonable mecha (small, lightly armored). FTL exists but is extremely rare and expensive as hell. And a deadly system."
Quote from: Pat;1120616Though this is a rather silly argument. It's clear they wanted a space bug and a space amoeba, which is fundamentally Science! out of a pulp serial. But it's also clear they tried to come up a more modern pseudo-plausible rationale for them both. So the implausibility isn't that they're insects or amoeba, because they're not; it's in how well those two forms are justified by scientific gobbledygook, and in the staggering coincidence that humans ran across multiple alien races that are roughly comparable to humans in size and physical capabilities, think enough like humans that they can smoothly integrate into human culture, and on top of all that they just happen to look like terrestrial bugs, amoeba, flying monkeys, and snakes.
Yup. That's pretty much my take on it. (And I agree about the splayed legs as well.) As I said, they have a ton of space opera tropes - from force fields to FTL to sonic stunners. So I think we're mostly in agreement that Star Frontiers is space opera -- but in the particular complaint that Vrusk are insect and Dralasites are single-celled, they are not technically true.
Quote from: Omega;1120621Star Frontiers doesnt have artificial gravity. Ships, other than some shuttles, are towers. They ported that over to Buck Rogers even.
As I recall, not all ships had artificial gravity, but it was an option in Knight Hawks. And it seemed to be an assumption in the original game. The crashed spaceship in the basic game had a flat layout with stairs. That's what I see in the Knight Hawks PDF download, cf.
http://www.starfrontiers.us/files/Knighthawks01.pdf
Quote from: Vidgrip;1120355Stars without Number has a default setting that would not qualify as hard sci-fi but is full of tables and tools for building any type of sci-fi setting. I'd highly recommend it for that reason even if you never plan to use the default setting or mechanics. All Crawford's games are like this. I use them to build settings of my own.
SWN has a supplement called Engines of Babylon that covers harder-sci reaction engine powered spacecraft. Still no heatsinks though...
Quote from: Rhedyn;1120420Eclipse Phase requires their wormholes to exist because of that is how the TITANS left, if wormhole tech invented by post singularity AI is acceptable, then you are fine.
It's easy enough to chop out the non-hard bits of Eclipse Phase, including "egocasting". I guess aficionados would claim that guts the game of its USP but I don't care. I thought the Factor aliens were pretty good, genuinely alien. If, like Louis Armstrong, I had all the time in the world, I would love to reskin it for Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space setting.
Quote from: Omega;1120619But keep failing miserably though.
Like your claims of Star Frontiers as Hard Science Fiction?
Quote from: Pat;1120616That's not a disqualifier. Crocodiles have splayed legs, can move very quickly on land, and prehistoric examples with very similar body plans were the size of an elephant. Pretty much any giant land animal from prehistory that isn't a mammal or a dinosaur would also qualify, because the fully upright posture with legs directly under the body only appeared in those two lineages (I think... but even if there's another exception, it's still covers multiple animals that top out at couple tons). While the upright posture is a major advantage, after all it's one the features that made dinosaurs fast and allowed them to grow to unprecedented sizes, it's not a structural necessity at the human scale.
If you're interested in scale and biodynamics, McGowan wrote a couple of good, popular books on the subject. They're not recent books, but it's not one those subfields that goes out of date particularly quickly.
Though this is a rather silly argument. It's clear they wanted a space bug and a space amoeba, which is fundamentally Science! out of a pulp serial. But it's also clear they tried to come up a more modern pseudo-plausible rationale for them both. So the implausibility isn't that they're insects or amoeba, because they're not; it's in how well those two forms are justified by scientific gobbledygook, and in the staggering coincidence that humans ran across multiple alien races that are roughly comparable to humans in size and physical capabilities, think enough like humans that they can smoothly integrate into human culture, and on top of all that they just happen to look like terrestrial bugs, amoeba, flying monkeys, and snakes.
Bolding is mine.
Problem is that crocodiles do not have a carapace while Vrusk do, and that is a significant increase in weight on the human scale of things.
Quote from: jhkim;1120638That's what I see in the Knight Hawks PDF download, cf.
http://www.starfrontiers.us/files/Knighthawks01.pdf
I don't know where you found this PDF, but it isn't Knight Hawks for Star Frontiers. It looks like some Science Fiction Homemade Heartbreaker based on the game because the artwork on pages 54 and 81 are from Traveller: TNE; the artwork on pages 61 (taken from T20), 73, and 98 are all done by deceased Traveller artist Bryan Gibson; and the art on page 112 looks like it was from Jeff Dee.
Quote from: jeff37923;1120655Problem is that crocodiles do not have a carapace while Vrusk do, and that is a significant increase in weight on the human scale of things.
Depends on its composition. Vrusk look like bugs, but they're not bugs, so they're analogous rather than identical structures. And plenty of large animals with a splayed posture have armor of some kind, like a crocodile's osteoderms.
Quote from: Pat;1120659Depends on its composition. Vrusk look like bugs, but they're not bugs, so they're analogous rather than identical structures. And plenty of large animals with a splayed posture have armor of some kind, like a crocodile's osteoderms.
"A Vrusk's body is covered by a carapace (hard shell). This shell is jointed at the Vrusk's elbows, hips, knees, etc. The carapace protects the Vrusk from bruises, cuts, scratches and other minor injuries." (https://starfrontiers.fandom.com/wiki/Vrusk)
So in order for the carapace to be a hard shell and protect the Vrusk from "bruises, cuts, scratches and other minor injuries" it would have to have some hardness to it and thus weight. I'm not saying that it is steel or some kind of metal alloy, but even bone has weight to it. Even saying that the Vrusk exoskeleton is no more massive than the Vrusk endoskeleton, you are still increasing the weight of the body significantly. For added problems, there is the matter of the Vrusk upright torso - which requires more carapace and additional musculature and tendons to be able to exist and remain upright.
Two things:
A) if you find your grail game, let me know, because I've been looking for it too. I especially hate the way a lot of hard sci-fi rpgs feel the need to plug in an horror aspect just to be able to redo Alien. Ugh.
B) FTL travel with no time travel paradox could theoretically be possible through an Alcubierre drive. Our current knowledge makes building one "extremely unlikely" whereas before it was "straight out impossible". So, depending on your preferences, it could be acceptable.
Quote from: jeff37923;1120656I don't know where you found this PDF, but it isn't Knight Hawks for Star Frontiers. It looks like some Science Fiction Homemade Heartbreaker based on the game because the artwork on pages 54 and 81 are from Traveller: TNE; the artwork on pages 61 (taken from T20), 73, and 98 are all done by deceased Traveller artist Bryan Gibson; and the art on page 112 looks like it was from Jeff Dee.
Whoops! Sorry about that. I have seen a PDF of the complete original Knight Hawks online -- there was a project to make it available for free since for decades Star Frontiers wasn't reprinted or offered from anyone. However, there is now a legal PDF which is what I should link to.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/227734/Star-Frontiers-Knight-Hawks
I did find the original, though, and you're right that artificial gravity isn't in Knight Hawks. This isn't quite consistent with the deck plans in the original game, but that isn't explicit. Still, Knight Hawks has FTL, force fields, and other space opera features -- like being 2D and ships acting like aircraft - facing the direction of movement.
Quote from: Marchand;1120653It's easy enough to chop out the non-hard bits of Eclipse Phase, including "egocasting". I guess aficionados would claim that guts the game of its USP but I don't care. I thought the Factor aliens were pretty good, genuinely alien. If, like Louis Armstrong, I had all the time in the world, I would love to reskin it for Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space setting.
I don't get why "egocasting" is not considered hard sci-fi by some people.
My gut is guessing that the reason is bullshit and has little to do with science.
Quote from: jeff37923;1120665So in order for the carapace to be a hard shell and protect the Vrusk from "bruises, cuts, scratches and other minor injuries" it would have to have some hardness to it and thus weight. I'm not saying that it is steel or some kind of metal alloy, but even bone has weight to it. Even saying that the Vrusk exoskeleton is no more massive than the Vrusk endoskeleton, you are still increasing the weight of the body significantly. For added problems, there is the matter of the Vrusk upright torso - which requires more carapace and additional musculature and tendons to be able to exist and remain upright.
Some weight, certainly. We're not really near the physiological limits, though.
But your mention of their upright torso and tendons/musculature reminds me: For a long time, people assumed that dinosaurs dragged their tails on the ground, and the art reflected that. But the trackway evidence is indisputable: Dinosaur tails almost never touched the ground. They held their tails high, in a roughly horizontal position. If you think about it, that's a terrific feat of bioengineering. Stegosaurs and ankylosaurs even had heavy spikes or balls at the end of the their tails, and swung them for defense. And it was an even more impressive feat among sauropods, because they reached well over 100 feet in length, and most of that was neck and tail. Many paleontologists even believe they could raise their heads high in the air, to feed. This was aided by features that made the neck and tail lighter than expected (more neck and tail vertebrae, extensive pneumaticization/air sacs, etc.), and some theropods developed skeletal modifications that stiffened their tails and made them rigid, dinosaur necks and tails were primarily held in place through soft tissue.
One solution we know in living animals is the nuchal ligament, which is found in mammals and supports the weight of the head, making the horizontal or near horizontal pose the zero energy natural rest position. Sauropods have a trough in their bones that likely supported a similar ligament (https://peerj.com/articles/36/), and ossified stacks of tendons, like those in extant birds, also contributed. (https://svpow.com/2014/09/22/wheelbarrow-handles-for-vertebrae-the-cervical-rib-bundles-of-sauroposeidon-and-other-sauropods/) Something similar could explain the upright position of the vrusk torso.
Quote from: jhkim;1120674I did find the original, though, and you're right that artificial gravity isn't in Knight Hawks. This isn't quite consistent with the deck plans in the original game, but that isn't explicit. Still, Knight Hawks has FTL, force fields, and other space opera features -- like being 2D and ships acting like aircraft - facing the direction of movement.
Very inconsistent. The first part of SF0
Crash on Volturnus involves an escape from a spaceship that was about to crash, and it clearly has artificial gravity. And that's not some obscure module, it's everyone's first experience with the game because it came with the box set.
Quote from: Pat;1120697Some weight, certainly. We're not really near the physiological limits, though.
But your mention of their upright torso and tendons/musculature reminds me: For a long time, people assumed that dinosaurs dragged their tails on the ground, and the art reflected that. But the trackway evidence is indisputable: Dinosaur tails almost never touched the ground. They held their tails high, in a roughly horizontal position. If you think about it, that's a terrific feat of bioengineering. Stegosaurs and ankylosaurs even had heavy spikes or balls at the end of the their tails, and swung them for defense. And it was an even more impressive feat among sauropods, because they reached well over 100 feet in length, and most of that was neck and tail. Many paleontologists even believe they could raise their heads high in the air, to feed. This was aided by features that made the neck and tail lighter than expected (more neck and tail vertebrae, extensive pneumaticization/air sacs, etc.), and some theropods developed skeletal modifications that stiffened their tails and made them rigid, dinosaur necks and tails were primarily held in place through soft tissue.
One solution we know in living animals is the nuchal ligament, which is found in mammals and supports the weight of the head, making the horizontal or near horizontal pose the zero energy natural rest position. Sauropods have a trough in their bones that likely supported a similar ligament (https://peerj.com/articles/36/), and ossified stacks of tendons, like those in extant birds, also contributed. (https://svpow.com/2014/09/22/wheelbarrow-handles-for-vertebrae-the-cervical-rib-bundles-of-sauroposeidon-and-other-sauropods/) Something similar could explain the upright position of the vrusk torso.
I concede to your point after reading your links. I just can't get over their BEMness, I guess.
Quote from: Morlock;1120208First, a scale of hard sci-fi:
http://www.kheper.net/topics/scifi/grading.html
Interesting.
Quote from: Morlock;1120208Generally speaking, everything I want to do falls into the "Very Hard SF" or harder categories. No FTL travel, no warp bubbles, no time travel, no wormhole travel (sure, wormholes might be a real thing, but you almost certainly wouldn't want to enter one), no teleportation, no handwavium, no cloaking devices (you can't hide life support systems or engines in space), no icy doom when spaced without a suit (you die from no air and no pressure, not by freezing), etc., etc., etc.
Are you looking for sample rules or sample settings?
You can use almost any SciFi rulesets and ignore those rules that you don't want. So, if a game has FTL travel, just ignore those rules and don't have it. Traveller has a setting where FTL travel is embedded in its DNA, but you could ignore that and it works as a good set of SciFi rules.
Settings are good for ideas, but with your preferences, anything that has multiple Solar systems wouldn't work, which excludes most settings.
Quote from: Morlock;1120208Just looking for any kind of advice, info, links, etc., you want to give. I'm probably going to roll my own system, but I'm still open to reviewing good medium-crunch stuff; even if I won't use it wholesale, I'll pillage it for systems and ideas. I was looking at Savage Worlds, until I realized that SW isn't OGL; for some reason I'd rather roll my own than use a generic system that isn't OGL.
Really, you can use any rule system for SciFi. You just have to adapt it to include what you want.
You just change equipment and weapons to do SciFi-style damage and effects. So, a Blaster is like a pistol but with more charges, for example. For equipment, you just say what you want something to do and decide whether that is reasonable for your setting. So, a comms device that allows you to have a video call with a number of people as well as show schematics of the ship you are in? Sure, why not? A device that has the schematics of all the known ship types in the palm of your hand? Yes, that is a smart phone with lots of PDFs. A device that allows you to control a ship remotely or diagnose faults? Again, just a smart phone.
Quote from: Morlock;1120208I'm especially interested in tools for building space habitats, star systems, planets, ecologies, societies, critters, etc.
Stars Without Number has excellent tables that can be used to generate all kinds of things.
Quote from: Rhedyn;1120693I don't get why "egocasting" is not considered hard sci-fi by some people.
My gut is guessing that the reason is bullshit and has little to do with science.
I think what you're getting at is some people may object on the grounds of mind-body dualism, i.e. some kind of "soul". And you're right, that would have little to do with science.
I concede it doesn't require fundamentally new physics (as I understand it). However, when you are talking about being able to model the structure and function of trillions of molecules, plus all their potential interactions, it busts my suspension of disbelief. That's before you get into the philosophical issues.
Quote from: jeff37923;1120702I just can't get over their BEMness, I guess.
I can certainly understand that. The races in Star Frontiers are bugtaurs, ameobas with eyespots, sneks, and flying monkeys; and they all act like humans with one exaggerated characteristic. So no matter how we try to justify their biology, they're still humans with bumpy foreheads, except the special effects are done in the theatre of the mind (aided by cheap line art), so they can mimic pulp aliens.
Quote from: Marchand;1120749I think what you're getting at is some people may object on the grounds of mind-body dualism, i.e. some kind of "soul". And you're right, that would have little to do with science.
I concede it doesn't require fundamentally new physics (as I understand it). However, when you are talking about being able to model the structure and function of trillions of molecules, plus all their potential interactions, it busts my suspension of disbelief. That's before you get into the philosophical issues.
Fair, but the premise of games like Nova Praxis, Eclipse Phase, or Transhuman Space is far far future tech.
It lines up with assumption.
I didn't see it mentioned, but High Colonies is on kickstarter, and its tagline is that it is hard sci-fi.
Quote from: Morlock;1120208Generally speaking, everything I want to do falls into the "Very Hard SF" or harder categories. [...] I was looking at Savage Worlds
You may need to rethink this approach.
Quote from: Kyle Aaron;1120784You may need to rethink this approach.
There no reason you can't use a cinematic action-based ruleset to run a hard science setting. It won't give edgy/gritty stories, but that's not a requirement of hard sci-fi even if it is fairly common to put the two together.
Quote from: HappyDaze;1120785There no reason you can't use a cinematic action-based ruleset to run a hard science setting. It won't give edgy/gritty stories, but that's not a requirement of hard sci-fi even if it is fairly common to put the two together.
What, do you think an RPG with an intuitive magic system (science) about regular humans doesn't need tons and tons of simulationist rules to be immersive with consistent rulings? /s
Well, if you want the game to largely feature hard sci fi situations as an element you can engage effectively as hard sci fi situations, as opposed to, say... abstract dice mechanics that aren't about modeling the details of that situation...
Quote from: Skarg;1120791Well, if you want the game to largely feature hard sci fi situations as an element you can engage effectively as hard sci fi situations, as opposed to, say... abstract dice mechanics that aren't about modeling the details of that situation...
Right, but Savage Worlds is a traditional RPG.
It's not like they were going to use FATE or PbtA for a hard Sci-fi campaign.
I see no reason you couldn't use OSR philosophy to run a hard Sci-fi campaign well.
Quote from: Rhedyn;1120813Right, but Savage Worlds is a traditional RPG.
Is it? I had the impression it's mainly about dice mechanics. Does it also have literal representations of things in the game situation, so play can revolve around those rather than abstractions?
Quote from: Skarg;1120820Is it? I had the impression it's mainly about dice mechanics. Does it also have literal representations of things in the game situation, so play can revolve around those rather than abstractions?
What do you mean by that? Seriously.
SW is about characters using skills to accomplish things by rolling dice to hit a target number. It has a metacurrency mechanic (Bennies) but they often are just bonuses to a roll not a narrative control. SW also uses cards for initiative, and while it is an odd thing to use both dice and cards, that still doesn't make it anything other than a traditional RPG.
Quote from: HappyDaze;1120832What do you mean by that? Seriously.
SW is about characters using skills to accomplish things by rolling dice to hit a target number. It has a metacurrency mechanic (Bennies) but they often are just bonuses to a roll not a narrative control. SW also uses cards for initiative, and while it is an odd thing to use both dice and cards, that still doesn't make it anything other than a traditional RPG.
Well, I mean if the game situation, is, say one or more PCs are in a space ship, and they are under attack by another space ship, I would expect the gameplay to be about where each ship is, what its information systems, movement abilities, weapons and defenses are like, as well as the crew using their skills and making choices about what to do. If it's "hard sci-fi", then I think the mass and thrust of the ships will matter, the ship equipment game stats will be based on what they're supposed to be and so on. Something like the Classic Traveller ship combat system, or GURPS Spaceships.
So dice to get target numbers (or
maybe cards, depending on how they work), and possibly even "Bennies"
might fit that, but what determines what you roll, when and how often? Are the ships' positions, systems, and movement and damage states part of play, or are they all just abstracted into dice modifiers?
Quote from: Skarg;1120863Well, I mean if the game situation, is, say one or more PCs are in a space ship, and they are under attack by another space ship, I would expect the gameplay to be about where each ship is, what its information systems, movement abilities, weapons and defenses are like, as well as the crew using their skills and making choices about what to do. If it's "hard sci-fi", then I think the mass and thrust of the ships will matter, the ship equipment game stats will be based on what they're supposed to be and so on. Something like the Classic Traveller ship combat system, or GURPS Spaceships.
So dice to get target numbers (or maybe cards, depending on how they work), and possibly even "Bennies" might fit that, but what determines what you roll, when and how often? Are the ships' positions, systems, and movement and damage states part of play, or are they all just abstracted into dice modifiers?
A hard sci-fi setting doesn't necessarily mean the game mechanics have to account for players knowing the in-depth physics of their characters flying a scientifically possible spaceship anymore than a modern day 'hard reality' setting requires players to know ballistics when their characters fire guns. In both cases, it's abstracted by the skill roll. Ship systems are likewise abstracted--a maneuverability/handling rating is far more useful to 99% of players than mass & acceleration equations.
The mechanics don't have to be super-detailed or equation-like, but I'd say the more they involve (or at least are based on) facts and concepts that are based in something that might be considered "hard sci fi", the "harder" they are.
I'm not saying the system can't boil effects of situations down to easily playable numbers.
But what's involved in decisions and the chances of certain outcomes? Is it going to take things like range, velocity, ship and weapon capabilities, such that the decisions are about the situation and can be reasoned about in logical ways? Or are decisions and calculations going to be about thinking about what die rolls you need to make, and whatever "Bennies" are? What would those numbers and the "Bennies" be based on, and can players interact with them in ways that are about the logic of the game situation, or is it mainly about playing the same generic abstract dice/cards game system that'd be used in any other situation, and the details of the situation are just what players are supposed to imagine the dice/cards/Bennies represent?
Quote from: Skarg;1120868The mechanics don't have to be super-detailed or equation-like, but I'd say the more they involve (or at least are based on) facts and concepts that are based in something that might be considered "hard sci fi", the "harder" they are.
I'm not saying the system can't boil effects of situations down to easily playable numbers.
But what's involved in decisions and the chances of certain outcomes? Is it going to take things like range, velocity, ship and weapon capabilities, such that the decisions are about the situation and can be reasoned about in logical ways? Or are decisions and calculations going to be about thinking about what die rolls you need to make, and whatever "Bennies" are? What would those numbers and the "Bennies" be based on, and can players interact with them in ways that are about the logic of the game situation, or is it mainly about playing the same generic abstract dice/cards game system that'd be used in any other situation, and the details of the situation are just what players are supposed to imagine the dice/cards/Bennies represent?
Much of that will depend on the GM. SW can be run with as much or as little flavor detail as the people at the table want. As for the mechanics, they are deliberately lighter on crunch than what
I believe you are looking for, but I'm not entirely sure (i.e., either you're not explaining yourself well, my comprehension of what you are saying is lacking, or--most likely--some mix of the two).
Does Savage Worlds have sci fi rules that suggest how you'd resolve sci fi situations based on any kind of "hard" content (e.g. how difficult is it to hit X type of target at Y distance with Z weapon?), or would it all up to the GM?
Would I be wrong to guess that Savage Worlds itself provides very little (if any) specific rules for resolving sci fi action, leaving it up to the GM to describe situations and assess numbers to roll against?
It sounds like you may be talking about how a GM can use his own understanding of "hard sci fi" to translate into generic SW mechanics, but I'm guessing there's no representative rule system in SW itself about how to play out such things that would take the situation, positions, floor plans, etc, into account except by telling the GM to think about the situation and then roll based on his own understanding of the situation?
Quote from: Omega;1120277Star Frontiers+Knight Hawks: No artificial gravity.
I don't own Knight Hawks, but I have heard the ships used the "skyscraper" approach, where a ship constantly accelerates to provide simulated gravity, then spins mid-journey and decelerates. Is this correct? And would it work, scientifically? What did they use for fuel?
Quote from: Skarg;1120880Does Savage Worlds have sci fi rules that suggest how you'd resolve sci fi situations based on any kind of "hard" content (e.g. how difficult is it to hit X type of target at Y distance with Z weapon?), or would it all up to the GM?
Would I be wrong to guess that Savage Worlds itself provides very little (if any) specific rules for resolving sci fi action, leaving it up to the GM to describe situations and assess numbers to roll against?
It sounds like you may be talking about how a GM can use his own understanding of "hard sci fi" to translate into generic SW mechanics, but I'm guessing there's no representative rule system in SW itself about how to play out such things that would take the situation, positions, floor plans, etc, into account except by telling the GM to think about the situation and then roll based on his own understanding of the situation?
You would be wrong. The Sci-fi companion outlines building different kinds of ships and mechs that have defenses to different kinds of attacks (slope armor, deflectors, etc). While "dog-fight" abstraction is recommended for space-ship combat, our group preferred using the miniatures variant.
By your logic, Stars Without Number has the depth you requires and that is an overall light game than Savage Worlds. Though I can see the confusion with variant systems like "chase-rules" or "quick encounters" that can be use to abstract concepts to a greater degree. Savage Worlds, while a traditional game, also has more modern system that GMs can lean on if they want.
Quote from: Aglondir;1120912I don't own Knight Hawks, but I have heard the ships used the "skyscraper" approach, where a ship constantly accelerates to provide simulated gravity, then spins mid-journey and decelerates. Is this correct? And would it work, scientifically? What did they use for fuel?
If it uses fuel, you'll need multiple skyscrapers of fuel to get a paperclip anywhere. Also, steady acceleration would make tactical combat impossible in all but a few specialized cases, because the ships would be going at radically different speeds, and there would be no way to match courses or velocities.
Quote from: Rhedyn;1120913You would be wrong. The Sci-fi companion outlines building different kinds of ships and mechs that have defenses to different kinds of attacks (slope armor, deflectors, etc). While "dog-fight" abstraction is recommended for space-ship combat, our group preferred using the miniatures variant.
By your logic, Stars Without Number has the depth you requires and that is an overall light game than Savage Worlds. Though I can see the confusion with variant systems like "chase-rules" or "quick encounters" that can be use to abstract concepts to a greater degree. Savage Worlds, while a traditional game, also has more modern system that GMs can lean on if they want.
Ok, then I've just not learned enough about Savage Worlds. I see discussions of abstract dice/card mechanics and you saying that is the first sign I remember seeing that it had any non-abstract stats.
Quote from: Skarg;1120919Ok, then I've just not learned enough about Savage Worlds. I see discussions of abstract dice/card mechanics and you saying that is the first sign I remember seeing that it had any non-abstract stats.
I suggest you snag the core PDF for like $10 and give it a read. From how you talk about GURPS, it sounds like Savage Worlds may actually have most of what you want, and the overall Core+1-2 books per campaign lines up with your expectation that no GURPS game should have "every option on".
Some here can attest to the usefulness of the system for running OSR sandboxes.
Ok, thanks, I'll add it to my reading list.
Quote from: jeff37923;1120654Like your claims of Star Frontiers as Hard Science Fiction?
I love how you keep denying the evidence even when shown you were wrong. Bravo.
Quote from: Aglondir;1120912I don't own Knight Hawks, but I have heard the ships used the "skyscraper" approach, where a ship constantly accelerates to provide simulated gravity, then spins mid-journey and decelerates. Is this correct? And would it work, scientifically? What did they use for fuel?
Yep. Ships are towers and thrust for a simulation of gravity. Albedo and Buck Rogers used the same system overall. It works within the system. Even the jump element has a certain amount of weight to it even if it makes no sense without an obscure explanation. Even so it still takes alot of skill and calculations to get everything just right otherwise the chance of failure is pretty high.
If I recall right it takes about 22 hours to accellerate to jump and then 22 hours to decelerate at destination. Jump speed being 1% speed of light, which at 1g accelleration takes about 22 hours.
The ships use either an ion drive which converts matter to energy, slowly, but just enough to maintain speed to jump. Or atomic drives which can provide much more speed.
Crew during combat have to be strapped in otherwise theyd take damage from any high g maneuvers.
As said. The system was used to make the 2001 and 2010 Space Odyssey modules.
Buck Rogers removed the jump factor and keeps the setting within the solar system.
Quote from: Omega;1121067I love how you keep denying the evidence even when shown you were wrong. Bravo.
Aren't we being pissy today, cupcake.
Disagreeing with a conclusion is not denying the evidence. Star Frontiers is not hard science fiction by any stretch of the imagination.
You are just being butthurt because someone is picking on one of Your Favorite Games.
Quote from: Omega;1121069The ships use either an ion drive which converts matter to energy, slowly, but just enough to maintain speed to jump. Or atomic drives which can provide much more speed.
Instead of "speed", you should be using the term "thrust", and even then Star Frontiers is wrong. Ion drives measure thrust and acceleration in cm/sec of acceleration, but that can be kept up for long periods of time. Atomic engines (NERVA) can provide high thrust, but at the expenditure of a lot of reaction mass which limits the time which they can be used.
Ion drives do not convert matter to energy, except in a poorly written game. That is a Gross Conceptual Error.
Here, go learn you something about the subject. (http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/)
Re: Spaceship thrust/engines
If someone really wants HARD Sci-Fi first that someone needs to define the time of the setting, today Warp Drives and Teleporters are Theoretically possible the first and at least in particles possible the second. A 100 years from now? 500? 1000? More?
Now, even with said advances, you have a lot of work to do to keep it HARD :rolleyes:
Spaceships taking off from a planet can't use those systems, you'd need rockets still, probably a multitude of segments to get the ship away from the gravitational well of the solar/star system.
Do you want the equations on your setting/book? Or just a fictitious scientist whose work made it possible? Suspension of disbelief is a thing, and unless you're talking the next 50 years into the future you'll probably end up using some handwavium or unobtanium, the hardness;) of the Sci-Fi is measured by how much of it you need.
At the moment we're developing artificial eyes/limbs/organs and wombs, we have made clones, we can engineer multi-cellular organisms, we have (sorta, kinda) crystal HDDs that can store much more info than any other current tech.
We're trying to get true AI.
Add all this mix it with enough time/distance from the invention/homeworld and you could end with alien looking creatures that can interbreed with humans. Warp engines, teleporters, and yes, even laser guns (probably limited to one or two shots per power cell tho)
So you really only need a small amount of handwavium and unobtanium and time.
Now, if you're gonna use ion propulsion you better do some research or don't try and explain it at all. It's much better than to have a totally BS explanation.
As for space combat . . . It can't work like any movie/book you ever read, I remember an article (or was it a vid?) explaining the why and how it should work in reality.
With that all said, the system is an irrelevant question, assuming you can/are willing to create the rules your favorite system lacks and or house rule the shit out of it.
If not just take Cepheus Engine, remove what you don't like, add what you do and play away.
Quote from: GeekyBugle;1121138If someone really wants HARD Sci-Fi first that someone needs to define the time of the setting, today Warp Drives and Teleporters are Theoretically possible the first and at least in particles possible the second. A 100 years from now? 500? 1000? More?
I think what you're alluding to is important, but how you're trying to quantify it isn't. I don't think the number of years is all that important, because while we can draw curves of technological development, and talk about the Singularity, self-evolution, feedback loops, and how much automation or intelligent machines will help; we really don't have any idea how long it will take to develop anything except maybe the nearest technologies. It's mostly just a number pulled out of thin air.
But how far away we are from the practical realization of a theoretical technology, even if we can't precisely quantify it, is important. It's not just whether something is theoretically possible, but how many other things in between have to be assumed. That's one of the key things that affects our assessment of the hardness of a piece of science fiction.
Quote from: Pat;1121141I think what you're alluding to is important, but how you're trying to quantify it isn't. I don't think the number of years is all that important, because while we can draw curves of technological development, and talk about the Singularity, self-evolution, feedback loops, and how much automation or intelligent machines will help; we really don't have any idea how long it will take to develop anything except maybe the nearest technologies. It's mostly just a number pulled out of thin air.
But how far away we are from the practical realization of a theoretical technology, even if we can't precisely quantify it, is important. It's not just whether something is theoretically possible, but how many other things in between have to be assumed. That's one of the key things that affects our assessment of the hardness of a piece of science fiction.
Correct, you can't predict when something will be invented, but the farther away from our current technology advancement the more likely something currently theoretically possible is available.
Correct also in the number of assumptions needed as important, which is why I only cited stuff we currently do with but one exception, why aren't we currently trying to make superbabies? Morality. So you don't need to assume much to say in 1000 years humanity will be vastly different from now, investigating the causes and a cure for progeria could lead to extended life spans and to fast gestation times for clones. Investigation into how do lizards/frogs regenerate limbs could lead to humans being able to o so.
And while we can't predict when something will be invented we don't need to, this is a fictional setting, a Sci-Fi one, so I say in 1000 years Warp drives are a thing in MY Sci-Fi setting. Given we currently think it's theoretically possible who's to say it won't be? Who's to say it's not HARD :rolleyes: Sci-Fi? Energy? Cold Fission.
What I don't buy as HARD Sci-Fi is space combat as portrayed in all the media, for starters when you "see" an enemy approaching you're "seeing" the past, he's no longer there. Space ships don't act like planes or ships because there's no air/water. So all that would need to be reworked, together with the size of the ship and the number of the crew.
But that's because of what we DO know about space travel and space in general, I don't expect a discovery that allows ships to use black matter as if it were air/water. But hey, we know it does exist because we see it's effects, so who's to say it won't be possible to have spaceships that act like planes?
Quote from: GeekyBugle;1121145But that's because of what we DO know about space travel and space in general, I don't expect a discovery that allows ships to use black matter as if it were air/water. But hey, we know it does exist because we see it's effects, so who's to say it won't be possible to have spaceships that act like planes?
It's kind of unrelated, but one of the more entertaining bits of reverse justification I've seen is the attempt to explain why the crew of so many spaceships in film and TV bend at the knees as their ship turns, hear the sound of explosions in space, and seem to feel shockwaves from near misses. The real reason obviously has nothing to do with science, and everything to with adopting the elements from more familiar forms of travel. But that's just a form of conveying information to the audience using familiar metaphors, and the actual crews of actual spaceships will have even more demanding information needs than the audience of mass media.
We have a lot of senses, so if we develop technologies to turn every square inch of a ship into a touch-sensitive display screen, to emit and absorb everything from liquid and garbage to odors, and so on, why not use them? An enormous amount of information can be conveyed non-verbally and non-visually. It won't resemble the cinematic effects, of course. It obviously makes no sense to actually throw the crew around like dolls, and even the lesser effects are likely to be coded like a learned language instead of attempts to truly replicate travel through a medium like air. But it's a highly plausible, in fact almost certain, that something along those lines will be developed. Or more properly, further developed, since we do have existing examples -- a trivial one I've always found very intriguing is how supermarkets started to use a thunder-like sound to signal that the produce is about to be sprayed with water. Without any training, we learn what it means quickly and intuitively.
Quote from: Pat;1121150It's kind of unrelated, but one of the more entertaining bits of reverse justification I've seen is the attempt to explain why the crew of so many spaceships in film and TV bend at the knees as their ship turns, hear the sound of explosions in space, and seem to feel shockwaves from near misses. The real reason obviously has nothing to do with science, and everything to with adopting the elements from more familiar forms of travel. But that's just a form of conveying information to the audience using familiar metaphors, and the actual crews of actual spaceships will have even more demanding information needs than the audience of mass media.
We have a lot of senses, so if we develop technologies to turn every square inch of a ship into a touch-sensitive display screen, to emit and absorb everything from liquid and garbage to odors, and so on, why not use them? An enormous amount of information can be conveyed non-verbally and non-visually. It won't resemble the cinematic effects, of course. It obviously makes no sense to actually throw the crew around like dolls, and even the lesser effects are likely to be coded like a learned language instead of attempts to truly replicate travel through a medium like air. But it's a highly plausible, in fact almost certain, that something along those lines will be developed. Or more properly, further developed, since we do have existing examples -- a trivial one I've always found very intriguing is how supermarkets started to use a thunder-like sound to signal that the produce is about to be sprayed with water. Without any training, we learn what it means quickly and intuitively.
Interesting bit that could add a lot of flavor to a setting tho. Have the spaceship crew trained to understand the signals from the ship without the need of something like written language. Colors and smells for instance, especially smell, we remember it for longer, so have the ship communicate with a combination of color/scent. Different time duration or intensity could have a meaning too. Vibrations through it's skin as a secondary system in case the other is down.
Quote from: jeff37923;1121120Instead of "speed", you should be using the term "thrust", and even then Star Frontiers is wrong. Ion drives measure thrust and acceleration in cm/sec of acceleration, but that can be kept up for long periods of time. Atomic engines (NERVA) can provide high thrust, but at the expenditure of a lot of reaction mass which limits the time which they can be used.
Ion drives do not convert matter to energy, except in a poorly written game. That is a Gross Conceptual Error.
Here, go learn you something about the subject. (http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/)
1. Ion drives now are low acceleration, if given enough energy to work with, then they could go much faster (after many many redesigns)
2. If mass is converted to energy and that energy powers more advanced ion drives, then effectively they convert mass into energy.
Why be the nerd that says things are impossible when you could be the bigger nerd that figures how things are possible?
Quote from: Rhedyn;1121155Why be the nerd that says things are impossible when you could be the bigger nerd that figures how things are possible?
First, please note that I didn't say that anything was impossible.
Second, I am busting Omega's chops because of his poor use of terminology which demonstrates his lack of understanding of the subject he is talking about. This is a personal pet peev of mine.
Third, in science fiction, the suspension of disbelief is much more important than in fantasy - so you must have either the trappings of science/engineering (science fantasy - Star Wars or Star Trek) or you must deal with science/technologies that are probable or at least possible (science fiction - The Martian or The Expanse). If I pulled some handwavium out of my ass to explain a high thrust ion drive capable of producing 1 G of acceleration, I'd be really stretching the suspension of disbelief far outside of the envelope for science fiction and into the realm of science fantasy. Sometimes it isn't a matter of being the bigger nerd or being the more correct nerd, it is knowing the subject matter well enough to craft a believable setting for a plausible version of the technology to exist (which doesn't snap the Players or Readers disbelief suspenders).
Quote from: Omega;1121069If I recall right it takes about 22 hours to accelerate to jump and then 22 hours to decelerate at destination. Jump speed being 1% speed of light, which at 1g acceleration takes about 22 hours.
Interesting. How long do jumps take? Are they a fixed duration, like Traveller, or is the duration of the jump based on distance?
Are there two types of engines (like Traveller's jump and maneuver) or just one engine for both?
When a ship jumps, is it in "hyperspace" or realspace?
I won't defend Star Frontiers as hard sci-fi, but hot damn, I've never encountered a space RPG with more fun to roleplay alien races. They're totally pulp sci-fi creations, but they really work awesome at the game table. I'm not exactly sure why. They are certainly quite different than humans, but still able to use our tech, and the one-dimensional racial personalities made it easy for new players to jump into them.
In talking about RPG systems for hard sci-fi, has anyone used STAR SIEGE from Troll Lords? AKA, the toolkit compatible with Castles & Crusades. I wasn't a big fan when it came out, but it seemed to have LOTS of knobs and dials to create your own specific setting hardness.
Quote from: Spinachcat;1121189I won't defend Star Frontiers as hard sci-fi, but hot damn, I've never encountered a space RPG with more fun to roleplay alien races. They're totally pulp sci-fi creations, but they really work awesome at the game table. I'm not exactly sure why. They are certainly quite different than humans, but still able to use our tech, and the one-dimensional racial personalities made it easy for new players to jump into them.
In talking about RPG systems for hard sci-fi, has anyone used STAR SIEGE from Troll Lords? AKA, the toolkit compatible with Castles & Crusades. I wasn't a big fan when it came out, but it seemed to have LOTS of knobs and dials to create your own specific setting hardness.
Pulp Sci-Fi is the best kind of Sci-Fi to play IMHO. Well honestly anything Pulp is the same thing. As long as you're not insisting that Pulp can only be in the 20's-30's.
Pulp sci-fi may be fun for people, but the OP was specifically asking for help with hard sci-fi.
Quote from: jeff37923;1121159First, please note that I didn't say that anything was impossible.
Second, I am busting Omega's chops because of his poor use of terminology which demonstrates his lack of understanding of the subject he is talking about. This is a personal pet peev of mine.
Third, in science fiction, the suspension of disbelief is much more important than in fantasy - so you must have either the trappings of science/engineering (science fantasy - Star Wars or Star Trek) or you must deal with science/technologies that are probable or at least possible (science fiction - The Martian or The Expanse). If I pulled some handwavium out of my ass to explain a high thrust ion drive capable of producing 1 G of acceleration, I'd be really stretching the suspension of disbelief far outside of the envelope for science fiction and into the realm of science fantasy. Sometimes it isn't a matter of being the bigger nerd or being the more correct nerd, it is knowing the subject matter well enough to craft a believable setting for a plausible version of the technology to exist (which doesn't snap the Players or Readers disbelief suspenders).
Dude, you are busting his chops about Star Frontiers not being hard sci-fi, and you list The Expanse as a counter-example? Talk about losing my suspension of disbelief...
Quote from: Eirikrautha;1121316Dude, you are busting his chops about Star Frontiers not being hard sci-fi, and you list The Expanse as a counter-example? Talk about losing my suspension of disbelief...
OK, why is my counter-example wrong?
For some, the use of a d100 skill die mechanic makes sci-fi RPGing hard. See High Colonies at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/columbiagames/high-colonies
Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;1121347For some, the use of a d100 skill die mechanic makes sci-fi RPGing hard. See High Colonies at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/columbiagames/high-colonies
I have no idea why any particular game mechanic would make someone consider a setting to be hard sci-fi as that should be entirely a function of the setting, not the game rules. You could certainly have an entirely narrative system and still have a very hard sci-fi setting.
Quote from: Morlock;1120208Generally speaking, everything I want to do falls into the "Very Hard SF" or harder categories.
Morlock, give us 3 movies or TV shows that exemplify the tone/feel you want for your campaign.
Quote from: Spinachcat;1121376Morlock, give us 3 movies or TV shows that exemplify the tone/feel you want for your campaign.
Sorry for the belated reply. Got really busy with RL stuff.
K, first is
2001: A Space Odyssey. Well, that SETTING, if you removed the alien stuff; not looking to tell the kind of stories that movie told.
The Martian; not so much the story, as how hard Weir tried to get the science right. Only flub I can think of is Mars' atmosphere isn't dense enough for the storm that marooned Watney.
Sans the FTL, I guess Battlestar Galactica reboot wasn't too bad.
I mean, I'm not exactly spoiled for choice here. The Expanse isn't all that bad, considering what we have to work with; mass media SF is really, really, really fuckin squishy.
But really I'm looking for something that can do a lot of different tones and feels, within the framework of the hard sci-fi genre. A toolkit for making settings and campaigns.
Quote from: jeff37923;1121120Instead of "speed", you should be using the term "thrust", and even then Star Frontiers is wrong. Ion drives measure thrust and acceleration in cm/sec of acceleration, but that can be kept up for long periods of time. Atomic engines (NERVA) can provide high thrust, but at the expenditure of a lot of reaction mass which limits the time which they can be used.
Ion drives do not convert matter to energy, except in a poorly written game. That is a Gross Conceptual Error.
Here, go learn you something about the subject. (http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/)
That's a great site. One thing I would love to see is a chapter on ships, shipbuilding, propulsion, etc., from someone really knowledgeable about the near- and middle-future of space flight and space propulsion, and with a keen futurist's eye (i.e., good judgement) as to a timeline of roughly when these things will be spinning off from design spaces into outer space. I read that stuff and it's all Greek to me. I'd love to have someone break it down with an appreciation of what an RPG designer/GM needs to know. Something intended for hard SF designers, where FTL and Albucierrewtfhowuspellit bubbles and folding space are off the table ("sure, it's theoretically possible, if you don't mind burning half the mass in the galaxy and dying on the way there"), where near term is ion drives, aerospikes, NERVA, long term is fusion, then antimatter engines,
maybe, and half of C (or whatever) is probably all we're ever gonna get.
I mean, sure, I can use the Traveller tables, or the tables from Game X, or whatever, but I want something that actually reflects real science, hard-nosed futurism, and cutting edge science.
Quote from: HappyDaze;1120428You also have tech that allows copying and transferring of "ego" to allow serial immortality. That's not exactly hard science, and neither are the psi-powers of the setting. Oh, and biological whale-like organisms (that can be PC bodies) designed to fly through the corona of the sun... yeah, not hard sci-fi.
Just as a mental exercise, I'll rate each on my Hardness scale:
Uploading: hard. It's purely speculative, but entirely straightforward; we even have a complete working prototype for storage, the human brain.
Psionics: soft, as the term is usually meant, but I could easily see an Arthur Clarke version passing a Hardness test.
Whales flying through suns: pudding.
"Uploading" a human brain doesn't mean what many people think it would mean. People who think that makes sense as a way to duplicate even human thinking, let alone behavior or actual understanding or emotions, let alone consciousness, mostly don't understand those things, or are avoiding thinking about them.
Quote from: Morlock;1121427But really I'm looking for something that can do a lot of different tones and feels, within the framework of the hard sci-fi genre. A toolkit for making settings and campaigns.
Have you looked at GURPS, GURPS Space, and Attack Vector: Tactical?
Quote from: Morlock;1121427But really I'm looking for something that can do a lot of different tones and feels, within the framework of the hard sci-fi genre. A toolkit for making settings and campaigns.
From what you said, essentially what you need is,
- a certain
feel in the game - that's the setting, which is conveyed by your words not by numbers on character sheets; so you want something lightish, on the RISUS-GURPS spectrum, closer to the left-hand side.
- attributes, whether random or point-buy, bound to a certain range
- a medium-sized (40-80) skill list; a short <40 skill list is effectively a character class, a longer >80 skill list leads to a lot of gaps in the party. Holden doesn't say, "so how does the drive work?" and Amos doesn't say, "look I'm skilled in the M-4350 rifle but not the M4350A."
- neither attributes nor skills improve quickly during play
- combat is dangerous and is best avoided, but if necessary it should be dominated by stealth, hiding in cover, favouring ambushes, etc
Classic Traveller, or some sort of percentile game like RuneQuest/Basic Roleplaying, will do that. But most of the feel of the game is going to be down to your words and any props - the setting.
It sounds like ORBITAL is a good choice. The author is Paul Elliott who is quite talented.
Here's the Book
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/193706/Orbital-2100
Here's a RPG.net review
https://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/15/15778.phtml
Here's the homepage
https://www.paulelliottbooks.com/orbital.html
As for other hard(ish) sci-fi movies, I suggest Gattaca, Moon, Minority Report, Sunshine, and my favorite Outland.
Quote from: Morlock;1121428I mean, sure, I can use the Traveller tables, or the tables from Game X, or whatever, but I want something that actually reflects real science, hard-nosed futurism, and cutting edge science.
The only game I know of that does this is Stellar Wind (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/112165/Stellar-Wind-2nd-Edition?manufacturers_id=3603). There is a free shipbuilder tool (excel). It has setting design tools as well (modern science compliant star system generation). You can use it to build an Orion or a Bussard ramjet (although mind there are some doubts about the feasibility of a ramjet).
Some other good options mentioned upthread, especially GURPS for realism. I think somebody mentioned the Cyberpunk 2020 supplement Deep Space. For example it has rules for things like radiation exposure and for health loss from prolonged exposure to micro gravity which are fairly simply in play.
I love 2300AD for the aliens and the Outland/Aliens feel and the wacky setting premise.
However... much as I love a bit of hard SF, the question for me is how do you make a game out of it without it turning into, "I made my Science roll" / "OK, you realise you can grow potatoes using your own poo"'; or having a table of actual PhD scientists responding to challenges set by another PhD scientist?
If it's just window dressing ("OK guys, think the Martian / the Expanse here, no artificial gravity so you have to be in a big spinning wheel if you want to stick to the floor, and you have to either be in a hab or have your space helmet on"), then to what extent does that need to be supported in the rules?
Quote from: GeekyBugle;1121138Re: Spaceship thrust/engines
If someone really wants HARD Sci-Fi first that someone needs to define the time of the setting, today Warp Drives and Teleporters are Theoretically possible the first and at least in particles possible the second. A 100 years from now? 500? 1000? More?
Now, even with said advances, you have a lot of work to do to keep it HARD :rolleyes:
Spaceships taking off from a planet can't use those systems, you'd need rockets still, probably a multitude of segments to get the ship away from the gravitational well of the solar/star system.
Do you want the equations on your setting/book? Or just a fictitious scientist whose work made it possible? Suspension of disbelief is a thing, and unless you're talking the next 50 years into the future you'll probably end up using some handwavium or unobtanium, the hardness;) of the Sci-Fi is measured by how much of it you need.
Also part of why I like Star Frontiers as it touches on alot of this in various ways. Ships past HS 5 (100m) cant land or take off from a planet for example. Chemical drives, standard rocket types, cant reach the speeds needed to hit that jump velocity due to the prohibitive amount of fuel needed. Im not happy with the fuel system in SF though for chem drives as it mostly glosses it over as you need X Creds in fuel per hull size per engine. For a trip. Unlike the other drives which are costs per fuel unit per ADF spent. The SF community has run various calculations on what the fuel factors are with varying results. Ion drives cant be used for takeoff or landing on planets and Atomic drives cant past HS 3 ships.
SF relies alot on the math of space travel and even combat. Heavy calculations are going on in the background. And sometimes the foreground depending on the players.
Quote from: Aglondir;1121160Interesting. How long do jumps take? Are they a fixed duration, like Traveller, or is the duration of the jump based on distance?
Are there two types of engines (like Traveller's jump and maneuver) or just one engine for both?
When a ship jumps, is it in "hyperspace" or realspace?
Looks like it takes about 10 hours per LY jumped to do the calculations. But taking into account the need for the astrogator to sleep, it takes a bit longer than that. And another day to accel and another to decel. So based on distance.
There are 3 types of drives. Chemical. Which cant accel to that jump speed but can land and take off from planets up to a hull size of 5. Ion, which cant be used for planet landings or takeoffs and are relatively slow. And Atomic drives which can land and take off on planets but only to a hull size of 3. But can provide alot more speed. Far as can tell the ships have maneuver jets but cant pin down what those are. Could be chem, could be by engine type. Probably engine type. Shuttles and landers are allmost allways chem drive. There was an article in some mgaming magazine I believe that added solar sails.
In SF its a bit weird. When a ship hits 1% the speed of light it enters "The Void". Some sort of dimension where distance and time seem to be very different. The ship drops out of the Void when it decelerates (and also probably if it accelerates). Gravity wells of stars seem to be the only thing that matters in the Void as jumps allways end near one. Even misjumps. It takes alot of precise calculations and timing to get where you want to go. Known routes are fairly safe. Unknown ones, or trying to speed up the process are increasingly not so safe and trying to jump without an astrogator doing the calculations is a guarantee not safe. A misjump seems to allways drop the ship out at a star system within the radius of the original planned jump.
But there are also system ships that just putter around a single star system. Usually using chem or ion drives. See comment in propr post on my slight irk with their chem drive ambiguity.
Quote from: Omega;1121990Also part of why I like Star Frontiers as it touches on alot of this in various ways. Ships past HS 5 (100m) cant land or take off from a planet for example. Chemical drives, standard rocket types, cant reach the speeds needed to hit that jump velocity due to the prohibitive amount of fuel needed. Im not happy with the fuel system in SF though for chem drives as it mostly glosses it over as you need X Creds in fuel per hull size per engine. For a trip. Unlike the other drives which are costs per fuel unit per ADF spent. The SF community has run various calculations on what the fuel factors are with varying results. May be wrong but believe Ion, and possibly Atomic, drives can not be used planet side.
SF relies alot on the math of space travel and even combat. Heavy calculations are going on in the background. And sometimes the foreground depending on the players.
One solution is to have rockets going to the moon, from there an atomic drive takes you out of the gravity well of the solar system where you're free to engage the FTL drive.
Part of the math needed are time related, how long until you reach the moon? how long until exiting the gravity well of the system? The second one is a very long time currently, and to solve that you need high G engines, in order to not kill the crew/passengers acceleration/deceleration needs to be very slow and only to a certain G level.
Unless you're adding more unobtanium/handwavium and artificial gravity, stasis fields or other means for the crew/passengers to survive the acceleration needed to speed that trip are provided.
As for the calculations . . . Book keeping, I fucking hate book keeping, as such the simplest solution is my go to. Of course really HARD SF needs to take those into account.
Unless you have unobtanium in the form of a fuel source compact enough that doesn't run out in a very long time under heavy use, this necessitates some form of nuclear power plant based on some fictional radioactive material. Because hydrogen rams can't reach FTL because at those speeds an atom could destroy your ship, so you need hyperspace.
Quote from: Morlock;1121427Sorry for the belated reply. Got really busy with RL stuff.
K, first is 2001: A Space Odyssey. Well, that SETTING, if you removed the alien stuff; not looking to tell the kind of stories that movie told.
The Martian; not so much the story, as how hard Weir tried to get the science right. Only flub I can think of is Mars' atmosphere isn't dense enough for the storm that marooned Watney.
Sans the FTL, I guess Battlestar Galactica reboot wasn't too bad.
I mean, I'm not exactly spoiled for choice here. The Expanse isn't all that bad, considering what we have to work with; mass media SF is really, really, really fuckin squishy.
But really I'm looking for something that can do a lot of different tones and feels, within the framework of the hard sci-fi genre. A toolkit for making settings and campaigns.
Quite a few space RPGs can handle some or all of the above to one degree or another.
As noted Star Frontiers has both 2001 and 2010 modules and everything from Gurps to Traveller can handle it too.
For doing something like The Martian I'd use the aforementioned End Times setting for Call of Cthulhu. Covers the harsh realities of Mars fairly well and if you leave out the alien aspects that pop up later its fine as a survival setting.
Lots of systems can handle nuBSG. Though the setting for me drifts a bit too far into the soft SF for my liking. That and I just did not like the "plain clothes in space" theme. Traveller or SF:KH though can handle the space battles to one degree or another. Though possibly SPI's Delta Vee game that plugged into Universe might fit better. Or even yanking out WEGs Star Wars ship combat.
Quote from: GeekyBugle;1122006One solution is to have rockets going to the moon, from there an atomic drive takes you out of the gravity well of the solar system where you're free to engage the FTL drive.
Unless you're adding more unobtanium/handwavium and artificial gravity, stasis fields or other means for the crew/passengers to survive the acceleration needed to speed that trip are provided.
As for the calculations . . . Book keeping, I fucking hate book keeping, as such the simplest solution is my go to. Of course really HARD SF needs to take those into account.
Unless you have unobtanium in the form of a fuel source compact enough that doesn't run out in a very long time under heavy use, this necessitates some form of nuclear power plant based on some fictional radioactive material. Because hydrogen rams can't reach FTL because at those speeds an atom could destroy your ship, so you need hyperspace.
1: Pretty sure in SF you can build hybrid ships. Though still the size limit and theres that fuel problem of it being way too being ambiguous. Usually though ships just have a shuttle for getting down and back from a planet.
2: In SF you need to be strapped in during combat as the high G maneuvers will otherwise likely smash people around. Same with liftoff from planet. 2d10 on liftoff. And 1d10/ ADF/MR during hard maneuvers every turn they arent secured. Otherwise SF assumes the ships when accelerating to jump keep it to 1g due to the various factors. You can speed it up. But that increases the risk.
Unrelated, but Universe had an option for characters to be surgically fitted with a network of reinforcement filaments to allow them to handle higher G maneuvers to some degree.
Least in SF the calculations are covered with a skill roll and you dont have to do the actual math. That would be Other Suns. :eek:
x: SF doesnt use any fictional fuels interestingly enough. Just more efficient uses of. Ion drive uses condensed hydrogen units and Atomic drives use 10cm spheres of plutoniom or uranium as fuel. States a single unit is enough for one interstellar trip to another system. (Though think they meant per engine) The engines are on struts due to the radiation and fighter pilots wear shielded suits as the drives right behind them. According to the rules a single unit can power a ship that is coasting for 1d5x20 days. Seems kind of short and a bit to variable to me. Maybee it gets used up more if you use the coffee machine alot? :rolleyes:
Does the system have some flaws and failures? Sure does. But its still leaning further into the Hard side of SF than many other RPGs. And it gives enough material to run a straight up single system centric harder SF campaign.
Quote from: Omega;11220171: Pretty sure in SF you can build hybrid ships. Though still the size limit and theres that fuel problem of it being way too being ambiguous. Usually though ships just have a shuttle for getting down and back from a planet.
2: In SF you need to be strapped in during combat as the high G maneuvers will otherwise likely smash people around. Same with liftoff from planet. 2d10 on liftoff. And 1d10/ ADF/MR during hard maneuvers every turn they arent secured. Otherwise SF assumes the ships when accelerating to jump keep it to 1g due to the various factors. You can speed it up. But that increases the risk.
Unrelated, but Universe had an option for characters to be surgically fitted with a network of reinforcement filaments to allow them to handle higher G maneuvers to some degree.
Least in SF the calculations are covered with a skill roll and you dont have to do the actual math. That would be Other Suns. :eek:
x: SF doesnt use any fictional fuels interestingly enough. Just more efficient uses of. Ion drive uses condensed hydrogen units and Atomic drives use 10cm spheres of plutoniom or uranium as fuel. States a single unit is enough for one interstellar trip to another system. (Though think they meant per engine) The engines are on struts due to the radiation and fighter pilots wear shielded suits as the drives right behind them. According to the rules a single unit can power a ship that is coasting for 1d5x20 days. Seems kind of short and a bit to variable to me. Maybee it gets used up more if you use the coffee machine alot? :rolleyes:
Does the system have some flaws and failures? Sure does. But its still leaning further into the Hard side of SF than many other RPGs. And it gives enough material to run a straight up single system centric harder SF campaign.
Wait, when you write SF you mean Star Frontiers? I thought we we're talking in general terms about Sci-Fi and that SF = Sci-Fi:confused:
Quote from: GeekyBugle;1122032Wait, when you write SF you mean Star Frontiers? I thought we we're talking in general terms about Sci-Fi and that SF = Sci-Fi:confused:
SF Star Frontiers since I did say Star Frontiers at the start. If I meant Sci-fi I try to say sci-fi to prevent (more) confusion.
Still cant find that article for solar sails for Star Frontiers.
Quote from: Omega;1122017Does the system have some flaws and failures? Sure does. But its still leaning further into the Hard side of SF than many other RPGs. And it gives enough material to run a straight up single system centric harder SF campaign.
Dude, you are the only one in this thread perpetuating the delusion that Star Frontiers is Hard Sci-Fi. It may be harder than Gamma World, but that's about it.
Quote from: jeff37923;1122110Dude, you are the only one in this thread perpetuating the delusion that Star Frontiers is Hard Sci-Fi. It may be harder than Gamma World, but that's about it.
To be fair, Sci-Fi hardness is a spectrum, and placing something on one point or another might spark debate against or in favor since we're subjective beings not perfectly rational ones.
As for building the perfectly hard Sci-Fi system/setting I think it's a pipe dream, each has to pick and choose how squishy you can tolerate it. And to achieve that you would do good to take whatever you can find of your subjective liking from whatever system/setting/game and put it on a blender (or better yet stitch it together very carefully).
Truth be told I think it's more a matter of suspension of disbelief, how squishy it can be before you're yanked out of the fiction? And this is different for each.
Quote from: jeff37923;1122110Dude, you are the only one in this thread perpetuating the delusion that Star Frontiers is Hard Sci-Fi. It may be harder than Gamma World, but that's about it.
You seem awfully obsessed with proving it isnt, Captain Ahab. :rolleyes:
Quote from: GeekyBugle;1122112To be fair, Sci-Fi hardness is a spectrum, and placing something on one point or another might spark debate against or in favor since we're subjective beings not perfectly rational ones.
Truth be told I think it's more a matter of suspension of disbelief, how squishy it can be before you're yanked out of the fiction? And this is different for each.
The Void is about the only thing that pushes my suspension. But it is needed for an interstellar setting that wants any form of connection. Otherwise you end up with a setting like Aliens where everything is disconnected. You go off on a job light years away and by the time you return your kids grown old and died. Another trip your grandkids grown old and died. Or any sort of space travel is a one way trip. In which case all the adventue is limited to one system even if theres a larger space.
Or you limit your setting to the solar system like Buck Rogers and the cyberpunk 2020 space setting did.
Albedo is another that pushes my edge for hard fiction. No aliens. Virtually no fauna. And relatively realistic weaponry at the modern NATO level. The jump drive is there, but its a very unhealthy dimension so it is acceptable. Same really with Star Frontiers void. It takes alot of prep to make a jump which lends it more weight than alot of other systems do. And its space drives are not fantastical. Albedo does have psi powers. But like in Mechwarrior, these powers are so rare that only a handfull in the whole interstellar populace have it.
For me what breaks me out of a hard sci-fi feel is artificial gravity to make linear ships. Probably my biggest irk really as it is so over over over over-used.
psi powers that are more than empathic or precog/postcog skills. They may not be psi after all. Just really good natural body/profile reading.
Over-abundance of aliens without a darn good reason. Star Frontiers at least has the explanation that some precursor race came through and seeded the area. And the aliens races are initially relatively few. Later modules add more. But thats something nearly every sci-fi setting gets. Fans sooner or later want to add more alien races.
Quote from: Omega;1122128You seem awfully obsessed with proving it isnt, Captain Ahab. :rolleyes:
Yeah, yeah. And you seem butthurt because I'm picking on your favorite game.
Quote from: Omega;1122129The Void is about the only thing that pushes my suspension.
If going FTL after just reach 0.01C is the only thing that strains your suspension of disbelief in Star Frontiers to the point that you advocate the game as Hard Sci-Fi, then you had a crappy science education.
Quote from: jeff37923;1122132If going FTL after just reach 0.01C is the only thing that strains your suspension of disbelief in Star Frontiers to the point that you advocate the game as Hard Sci-Fi, then you had a crappy science education.
Keep dancing that tune Ahab.
Quote from: Omega;1122237Keep dancing that tune Ahab.
Awww, don't be jealous. You still have your favorite game where, "an ion drive which converts matter to energy" is Hard Science.
Instead of "hard sci-fi", I'll sometimes say "hard-to-do sci-fi" when dealing with lower tech levels while in outer space using games like Outpost Mars, Orbital, and Chthonian Stars.
Not counting the Mars Colony phase of End Times I am surprised no one has done a more hard SF setting for BRP or CoC.
Quote from: Omega;1122250Not counting the Mars Colony phase of End Times I am surprised no one has done a more hard SF setting for BRP or CoC.
The Morrow Project 3rd edition revised comes to mind. But that was eons ago.
Quote from: Omega;1122250Not counting the Mars Colony phase of End Times I am surprised no one has done a more hard SF setting for BRP or CoC.
They did - it was called Cthulhu Rising (https://www.chaosium.com/cthulhu-rising-pdf/). Admittedly it has FTL, but essentially it's Aliens plus Mythos. You can ignore the Mythos pretty easily.
Also D101 games has done River of Heaven for OpenQuest, their slightly-simplified BRP. Strip out the wormholes and you are basically in Revelation Space the RPG (cited by the authors as an inspiration).
Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;1122311The Morrow Project 3rd edition revised comes to mind. But that was eons ago.
Morrow Project uses the BRP/CoC system? I thought it was its own thing? Apparently a 4th ed came out about 6 years ago?
Morrow Project still has its fans. I am not positive. But I think there was a fan made article for doing a Mars colony using Morrow Project.
Quote from: Marchand;1122345They did - it was called Cthulhu Rising (https://www.chaosium.com/cthulhu-rising-pdf/). Admittedly it has FTL, but essentially it's Aliens plus Mythos. You can ignore the Mythos pretty easily.
Also D101 games has done River of Heaven for OpenQuest, their slightly-simplified BRP. Strip out the wormholes and you are basically in Revelation Space the RPG (cited by the authors as an inspiration).
Interesting, but it sounds like its a less hard SF setting than End Times.
Quote from: Omega;1122395Morrow Project uses the BRP/CoC system? I thought it was its own thing?
3rd edition does. Other editions have their own thing.