Quote from: J ArcaneWhereas I remember the game got notihng but glowing praise over on RPGnet, but never a single bit of discussion about actually playing it, or how it plays . . .

Game Reviews without significant play experience are dubious at best.

Quote from: Caesar SlaadYeah, I've been putting up with the "if it has FTL, it's crap" pundits for a long time now... but I had no idea it was isolated to brits.

Gladly, it does seem to be limited to outspoken blowhards on the intarweb. I honestly can't say I've met anyone in meatspace who looked down on Traveller because it had FTL.

If either Mr A or I had said this I  suppose you might have had a point, even despite our posts praising Traveller which we're both fans of.

But my original post explicitly referred to ftl as something that I thought was an acceptable fudge.

I mean seriously dude, right there in the OP I talk about hard sf or mostly hard with a handful of elements like ftl, it's right there in the description of what I'm looking for.  You're reacting to something none of us actually said.

Quote from: Bradford C. WalkerHard SF can't be played cold or stupid.  Fantasy can played cold and stupid.  That's why Fantasy wins.

And this is why I follow Bradford's posts, he is very good on this stuff.

Spot on, concisely put and spot on.

But it's interesting WHY fantasy should be playable cold and stupid.

The setting of your standard fantasy game is no less complicated than that of Traveller.  This is why I suggested that the problem is that gamers are addicted to fantasy.  Fantasy is the default setting of all gaming.

QuoteBut it's interesting WHY fantasy should be playable cold and stupid.

Because it is easier to be nitpicked when you are trying to be accurate, or there is an expectation of accuracy. Fantasy implicitly has neither.

Quote from: blakkieGame Reviews without significant play experience are dubious at best.

Nonsense.  That's like saying that Shakespeare can't be analyzed and understood unless you've watched the West Berkeley Sunshine-Love Theatre Troupe performing it.

Fuck that, even if its the RSC, the act of watching the performance would do nothing to change the actual content of the play itself; it might even lead to misconceptions, if a troupe is particularly bad, or particularly good, or just ill-suited for the play.

Its the same with RPGs.  Playing it with a group, be it yours or some other, doesn't actually do anything for the objective analysis of what the game is like.  Not if you're a sufficiently capable reviewer.

For example, that problem with THS? I saw it, right in the book, no need whatsoever for me to have tried to play it to figure out "shit, this game has no direction for actual play!".

The problem isn't reviewers who don't play, its reviewers who aren't actually intellectually qualified to write reviews, or are just too lazy to do it well.

RPGPundit

Quote from: BalbinusIf either Mr A or I had said this I  suppose you might have had a point, even despite our posts praising Traveller which we're both fans of.

But my original post explicitly referred to ftl as something that I thought was an acceptable fudge.

I mean seriously dude, right there in the OP I talk about hard sf or mostly hard with a handful of elements like ftl, it's right there in the description of what I'm looking for.  You're reacting to something none of us actually said.

Whoa there, nelly. I wasn't responding directly to the OP, but rather, the thread drift that was happening later.

If I didn't quote your post, and it doesn't sound like it's talking about your post, then there's a good chance I wasn't.

Clash already retreated from his tangent and I decided not to pursue it any further.

Quote from: Mr. AnalyticalBut it's interesting WHY fantasy should be playable cold and stupid.

I think it's as simple as the fact that in D&D you don't have to act as though you're a member of Society (tm).

That's not to say you get to kill random people, but that your adventures take you outside of Society by default. Society is what you briefly return to in between two dragon slayings.

That's both what enables easy play and what makes D&D so popular, and all other fantasy RPGs not so much.

So, the divide isn't between sci-fi and fantasy. The divide is between games that immerse you in Society (which hard sci-fi games always do) and those which do not. That explains why Harnmaster is as popular as Traveller, i.e. not very.

Quote from: Mr. AnalyticalBut it's interesting WHY fantasy should be playable cold and stupid.

The setting of your standard fantasy game is no less complicated than that of Traveller.  This is why I suggested that the problem is that gamers are addicted to fantasy.  Fantasy is the default setting of all gaming.

I know, even though I hardly ever run fantasy games any more. I had no luck in getting my old 20 year group playing anything but AD&D, even though I was completely burned out. When I started the new group, I made sure to concentrate heavily on SF, Historical, and Modern games with new players. Some of my players have been with me for years, but none of them have the default Fantasy assumption because they never learned it. We play occasional Fantasy, but I'm very happy to say they are just as happy if not more so playing SF or Historical.

My advice if you want to play less Fantasy and more other stuff is to start with new gamers and let them appreciate all types of roleplaying.

-clash

Quote from: J ArcaneI'm reading the comments here, about THS, and what I'm getting is that it's full of interesting ideas, but that it's not actually all that gameable.

It's completely, 100% "gameable". This is fact.

It has all those things RPGsite posters seem to like and crave for:

-It's a very detailed setting, well fleshed out
-It's written by a knowledgeable veteran author who loves and respect the genre
-It's a consistent setting throughout the line
-It's not too "alien" a setting. No weird shit like Noumenon, Tekumel, Jorune, etc...
-It is (was) well supported
-It offers a lot of adventuring possibilities in sub-genres such as thriller, action, espionnage, horror, psychological drama, crime, military, etc...
-It's tweakable by gamers, so you can add elements, substract some, use another system
-Last but not least, it has the traditional feel many gamers love.

It is lacking in one respect that many gamers crave for: It lacks strong character hooks built-in the setting, or very explicit premises to start with.

I'll go further, THS is very classic gaming. The way it is designed harkens back to the classic years of gaming where exploring a vast detailed world was very hip. It reminds me of Harn and all those old settings that were really cool canvas.

And I think the irony is that many people who don't find it gameable do so because it's not "forgey enough". It's very much the anti-Forge product and IMO, could benefit from a few more hooks and some focus. But you can work out some premises instantly.

-Characters are a bunch of high-tech thieves in the near future
-Classic cyberpunk-ish campaign. You are mercs.
-You can transpose a lot of shows from HBO, Fox, etc... into the near future. Whether it is straightforward stuff like "24" or less traditional gaming like "Six Feet"

You can also fuck up the setting as much as you need to and use the canvas for something else. A friend of mine wanted to run an "Alien" campaign badly. Except the movies don't really describe much and it was just too much work for him. So he went for Aliens in the THS setting.

There have been a lot of actual play threads on RPG.net as well as the GURPS forum dedicated to it.

How is it not gameable?

Quote from: J ArcaneAnd I miss Jovian Chronicles a lot.  1st Ed seemed like a really neat game, but a bit short on details.  I was hesitant about 2nd Ed. for some reason though, maybe it was the split rulebooks.

Second edition wrapped up a lot of stuff from the 1e sourcebooks and  cleaned some things up. In general I like it better. Hopefully if JC Blitz! takes off we'll see some new roleplaying material.

I've come to the conclusion lately that it has more to do familiarity and the amount of energy that goes into "decoding" setting elements (either in fiction, movies, television or games) than anything else. If a setting is not familiar or involves elements that are very unusual, there is a subset of people that get turned off to the setting. As a kind of extreme example, if spoons are called kralyta and every reference to something that people would think of as a spoon is always kralyta then the players or the audience has to mentally decode that into "spoon." Just like most mental constructs once you're used to it it's not that big of a deal. The closer the analog is to something we are familiar with (Heavy Gear's cawfee) the less time is needed to acclimate.

Fantasy elements are more familiar to a larger number of people - they are introduced at a very young age. Whereas science fiction elements normally don't become familiar until later. The more they diverge from most people's exposure (Star Wars and Star Trek), the more decoding they have to perform and the less likely they're willing to put in the effort to become acclimated. The same really holds true of "unique" or "original" fantasy settings. More decoding, less widespread love.

On a tangent, and related to something JimBob said, I'm also convinced that there are some great settings out there in RPG-land that are just not suited to most gameplay. The difference is that I think it depends solely on the playgroup and not anything that is necessarily lacking or present within the setting itself. Most people don't want to spend a lot of energy on their escapism. There's nothing wrong with it, it's just I've resigned myself to dividing my game collection into "cool to read" and "easier to get players" (with some overlap between the two categories).

I think a lot of hard sci-fi removes some of the things most players WANT from a sci-fi RPG.

Like space combat. Or the ability to just go EXPLORE (without taking decades to get where you're going or going into cryo for decades).

These are both things players actually like. Sniff and call them unrealistic all you want.

Dungeons are unrealistic too. But fantasy games without them will be less popular.

It's not really hard.

Quote from: blakkieYou know, now I'm getting this stiffness of Hard SF more and more. You have to spend so much time explaining the tech details to earn the cred that you run out of room for story...

Yup, you know what? I'm just the kind of guy that doesn't give a crap as long as you don't slap me in the face with things.

Likewise.  I wasn't trying to use hardness as some kind of barometer of quality either, or suggesting "if it's not hard, it's crap!"  My SF gaming preferences definitely tend more towards the mushy middle (just like Iron Empires).  In fact, as I get older I'm starting to realize more and more that there is no uniformity of genre in my gaming and reading preferences -- a lot of the stuff I like to read (i.e. hard SF) doesn't necessarily translate easily to the gaming table and conversely, a lot of the stuff that I enjoy RPing (medieval fantasy and modern occult/supernatural stuff, to name two) tends to make for crap literature IME.

KoOS

Quote from: Consonant DudeAnd I think the irony is that many people who don't find it gameable do so because it's not "forgey enough".

Uhhh... no.

(EDIT: Addendum because I have more time to respond.)

There's a world of difference between "here are some suggestions for fun ways to play this game" and "this game is meant to be played one way and only one way, and if you don't want to play it this way you're playing it wrong."  "Forgey" games are the latter, good games are the former... and THS follows neither model.  It includes a lot of technological and cultural assumptions that break all sorts of standard play models (as Balbinus very aptly points out below), and the corebook does absolutely nothing to help you get around this or provide alternatives.  That's a flaw.  More specifically, the only obvious solution to incorporating standard play models in the THS setting is to isolate your game in a small backwater corner of the setting that eliminates the very technological and cultural assumptions that make THS interesting in the first place.  What's the point, then?

I think it's telling that whenever a "sell me on THS" thread comes up, you get a lot of responses about what a cool and thought-provoking setting it is, or how you can play a "sentient octopus" or some other fringe shit, but not one person ever bothers to talk specifically about what characters actually do in the setting.

KoOS