Quote from: flyingmiceSpike reads post:

"Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah DIE! Blah blah blah DIE! DIE!"

Oooh yeah!



-clash

Hell yah.  

Quote from: King of Old SchoolEvery one of those "old worlds" you mention was an utter commercial failure except Glorantha...

I wouldn't know whether they were commercial failures and don't really find that relevant. I just think THS is gameable and have even seen it happen.

Commercial success or not, I've seen Harn in action for two decades. It's still in use today by people I know, and I know that there's a community out there.

Anyway, I'm not here to debate old settings merit. My point is, I think THS would benefit from a more modern approach if it wants to win modern roleplayers. But that other than that, it's perfectly gameable.

Quote from: PaulChapmanGiven that almost 500 people have bought GURPS Transhuman Space: Changing Times, somebody's playing it.

Or perhaps like myself, they buy THS books because they're interesting SF reading entirely aside from the issue of whether or not we actually play the game.

KoOS

Quote from: Consonant DudeI wouldn't know whether they were commercial failures and don't really find that relevant.

How is popularity not relevant to a discussion about the popularity of a given genre in gaming?

KoOS

Quote from: BalbinusPossibly I don't, but as I recall it was basically a fairly straight hard sf game set in our own solar system.  The mecha weren't really, they were armoured vacc suits used in combat and were ultimately both reasonably credible in the setting and a small part of the game.  Calling them mecha was more marketing than anything else, but their presence caused people not to notice that it was actually a fairly hard hard sf game.

Yanno, this usually gets me slapped about quite a bit, but I really, really, don't understand what the fuck is so wrong with mecha.  Especially of the small scale variety.  

Maybe I'm just too "new school" or whatever, or have seen too many anime do mecha in a realistic way, but I just can't get this mindset that somehow armored suits automatically mean unrealistic, to the extent that here even you are trying to linguistically distance JC's suits from the term in order to justify them.  

There's nothing overtly wrong with the concept, and by reason of it's similarities to the human form, has cetain advantages.  We've even made a number of strides in recent years towards tech that could actually make this feasible within my lifetime.

I'm just sick and tired of the attitude, because I think it has less to do with actual logical considerations than it does knee-jerk elitism.

The problem is that essentially the inclusion of mechas adds nothing to any story that includes them.  They're just humanoid tanks.

However, despite this there are people who go out of their way to seek out things that include mecha.

Mecha fans are essentially like furries.  They get really excited about something that leaves everyone else completely cold.

See,  I likes me a good old fashioned suit of Powered Armor, be it Space Marines, Burning Empires Iron, or even Maddox...

Anything so big you don't really wear it so much as pilot it, however, starts to leave me cold quick.

Most Mecha falls into that catagory.  A huge part of it is simply engineering, it's just not efficient to have lumbering human shaped tanks. Hell, even the old battletech rules proved this, it was only a artificial decision on the part of the damage distribution mechanisms that made tanks a poor choice in that game (or maybe the fake limitations on 'slots' for gear, it's been a while).

Or the physics aspect.

I agree with you, Spike, in that the larger you get in scale, the more one starts to wander into the realms of impracticality.  I do think the mobility of a pair of legs has it's advantages in terms of maneuverability complex terrain though, but Battletech in particular is a poor representation of that, as those damn things are not maneuverable at all even on flat terrain.

I tihnk for me the main thing, regarding the practicality of humanoid mobile robots is directly connected to their manueverability, because manueverability is the main reason you'd want something that emulated the human form anyway.

So stuff like Battletech requires in me a significant suspension of disbelief, because the designs are next to worthless.  there were railroad guns in WWII more maneuverable than most Bmechs.  

But something actually as maneuverable as a human body, sure, I'll buy that.  I can see the advantages, even feel them.  

It DOES require a certain leap in assumptions regarding the improvement of technology level in things like robotics, haptics, and all sorts of other things.  but I can see it being possible.

I do not see why the simple presence of a humanoid combat machine immediately deserves derision.

Yanno, I got to thinking, after I just wrote that, that part of my considerations in seeing it as perhaps more realiztic than others might, were the awareness of technologies presently already in development that many people might not even be aware of.

There's some seriously crazy shit being worked on, in prototype, in labs all across the world.  I sometimes wonder if the problem that stems in these sorts of critical discussions of sci-fi is in a lack of awareness of what's really out there.

Off the top of my head I think of things like actual neural interfacing (still in primitve stages, but steps are being made), or holographic storage devices capable of archiving the entire internet in a prism the size of your present hard drive (though the reader drive is slow and the size of your refridgerator, or even stuff like quantum computing (which just got a bunch of press over a demonstration of a q-computer just yesterday).  

There's some crazy shit out there already in the works.  Shit I know is real, and yet I have a hard time believing as it is.  But I tend to be very open minded as well about these sorts of things because of the incredible things I've seen develop in my lifetime.

I wonder then, to what extent that that sort of disbelief affects the acceptances of technology in SF criticism . . .

The best SF is about those technologies.  Quantum computers have been in SF for ages, holographic storage devices even featured in Nigel Kneale's The Stone Tape back in the 70's.

I think you're right though, that a certain degree of familiarity with these ideas only helps.

Quote from: King of Old SchoolHow is popularity not relevant to a discussion about the popularity of a given genre in gaming?

Because I wasn't talking about popularity when you begun replying to me, and you'd know it if you pulled your head out of your ass and started replying in good faith.

As somebody who has his head up his arse as a result of a birth defect I find that incredibly offensive.  Personal attack!  Personal attack!

On mechs - I've never been able to figure what mechs actually add to a setting. As has been noted, they are just stupidly designed tanks. RPing a tank crew would also be bloody boring. Many moons ago our group helped playtest the Mongoose d20 mech game (the name of which eludes me). Every time the mechs came out the game devolved into a d20 version of the Battletech boardgame. It was a wargame with a thin coating of rpg.

On the topic at hand - "proper" sf (for want of a better word) is a minority interest within sf itself. Star Wars/Trek novels outsell Stross, Vinge or whoever the flavour of the moment is by an order of magnitude. I suspect that rpgs reflect the state of the geek market in microcosm - most geeks don't actually want intellectual, provocative fiction. They want tight outfits and explosions, and that's what they buy. Personally, I like both sorts.

Ned

Quote from: Ned the Lonely DonkeyIt was a wargame with a thin coating of rpg.

  Isn't that true of most mech games?  I always got the impression that they're a bit like Knightrider; sure people get out of their mechs and go and do stuff but the whole point of the game is long drawn out combat between silly tanks.

  I actually disagree that running a tank crew wouldn't be fun.  Taking part in tank battles would be dull but being a tank caught behind enemy lines and having to find your way back to HQ with limited ammo and fuel could be quite cool.

Quote from: Mr. AnalyticalTaking part in tank battles would be dull but being a tank caught behind enemy lines and having to find your way back to HQ with limited ammo and fuel could be quite cool.

One could say the same about mechs. But I take your point, it's the steak not the sizzle that makes a game.

Ned