Some of that stuff is going to work much better as one-off scenarios, rather than ongoing campaigns.
I'm a lot less picky buying in to something that's just for a session or two... knowing it has a set endpoint. In those cases I'm also fine with being given pre-gens with defined goals.

Quote from: Simlasa;984914Some of that stuff is going to work much better as one-off scenarios, rather than ongoing campaigns.
I'm a lot less picky buying in to something that's just for a session or two... knowing it has a set endpoint. In those cases I'm also fine with being given pre-gens with defined goals.

Sure however the fly in the ointment is that the sci-fi stories are about the process of discovery. Of course in the Black Mirror discovery is more on the on the line of "Oh shit what I gotten myself into" than the sense of wonder that Arrival evokes. So the referee has to be savvy enough to come up with something that the players don't know about.

Quote from: Vile Jester;984913The developers are obnoxious ideologues who can't run a forum like thinking adults, but what about Eclipse Phase?

I don't think what mechanics one uses is the issue. It like Call of Cthulu in this regard, it heavily reliant on the referee creating a situation and evoking the right atmosphere during the session for it to work.

Quote from: estar;984915So the referee has to be savvy enough to come up with something that the players don't know about.

That's why I think it would go over better if it's declared to be finite. I think I'd be fine with a GM tossing a surprise setting/game... or pulling bait-n-switch on us if I knew it was finite.
If I trust the GM (and if I don't why would I be playing in his group?) then I'm willing to trust he has a cool idea to try out. I'm not going to throw a tantrum because I want a (yet another) dungeon crawl and he wants to try out 'advent of worldwide public teleportation' (flashcrowds!) for the next month or so.

Sci fi rpgs are great but to explore deeper things you have to have a group that is into having a massive curve ball thrown at them.  I remember a lot of this post Renraku Shutdown but before published books covering the crash.  The Expanse is a great example since that was originally an RPG before it was novelized -- big twists!

I haven't seen Arrival, but I have read the story it is based on, "Story of Your Life". Assuming the movie hasn't changed things, it might be one of the worse candidates for an RPG adaptation I can think of.

Spoiler

It's a story where the main character studies an alien language and gains a perspective outside time, seeing everything that will happen in her life and its inevitability. Given that RPGs are about the players being able to decide what to do, I can't see any way to make this work without it being terrible. It is a fantastic story, but not suitable for an RPG.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;984856The thing is, a lot of space travel is relegated to 'Space Opera' or even 'Space Fantasy', and a LOT of people think of near future when they think Sci-Fi.  Simply because they don't want to 'What if...?' too hard to the point where it might seem like fantasy elements.  Like is there life out there?  What would they be like.

Also, this just hit me, very few of us have the scientific backgrounds to make it believable anyway, so a lot of the time, they don't even try.

I've actually got a heretical take on this.  I don't think you need... in fact it may even hinder in some respects... a sound scientific background to do Sci-fi right, not beyond the basics.  One thing that the last few hundred years of scientific progress has revealed is just how little we actually know, and how very eager we are to believe we've got it all 'right'... until the next paradigm change, that is.  Heavier than Air flight was an impossible dream 150 years ago, now its so remarkably commonplace that hobbyists build flying motor-scooters in their garage to buzz the local park. Its not quite flying cars, but its up there.  One day some scientist will finally figure out Gravity (how does it work?!) and what happens to technology after that?  Trying to 'accurately' speculate is as futile as asking a 16th century Alchemist to explain Super-Criticality of Uranium.

The key to good science fiction, or rather the Two Keys (cue inevitable Spanish Inquisition gag....)

A: What does this technology say about the Human Condition?   Note that the sci-fi story Canticle for Leibowitz doesn't actually introduce any new technology at all, it's about how revealing forgotten knowledge of the past changes perceptions.

B: Does the technology of the setting follow the basic ground rules of science. This I have to unpack a little, since it seems to contradict my earlier point.  I'm tempted to go to a classic point of contention, the FTL drive, for Sci-fi nerds, but it would only imperfectly explain, so I'll try to stick to the abstract fundamentals.

We, the audience (and writers), don't have to know how a piece of technology works from a classic physics point of view, but the characters in the setting should... obviously.   We don't need to know if Warp Drive technology involves fourteenth dimensional super-string theory or what have you... if you've got the theoretical physics background to explain your loophole, great... go for it, but otherwise...

What we DO need to know is that its not space-magic, that it follows understandable rules and is replicable... three rules (SI gag... sigh...)

Does the technology follow understandable, consistent rules?

Is it replicable, or is it some sort of one of a kind macguffin?

Does the technology impact the setting in understandable ways?


Just last night I wrote how Killjoys is not really Science Fiction at all, its Space Fantasy, and I can explain that using those three (I'm sticking with three damnit!) rules very easily, though this post is already too long and I may be drifting off topic.

Quote from: Baulderstone;984925I haven't seen Arrival, but I have read the story it is based on, "Story of Your Life". Assuming the movie hasn't changed things, it might be one of the worse candidates for an RPG adaptation I can think of.

Spoiler

It's a story where the main character studies an alien language and gains a perspective outside time, seeing everything that will happen in her life and its inevitability. Given that RPGs are about the players being able to decide what to do, I can't see any way to make this work without it being terrible. It is a fantastic story, but not suitable for an RPG.

Predestination is a helluva drug.

So it sounds like you're interested in a game that involves various sci fi themes about the effects of future situations (tech, aliens, living away from earth, etc) on people and society etc., and bemoaning that most Sci Fi RPGs seems to be about how you can have combat-oriented adventures in sci fi settings.

I think many things can get in the way of that:

* The GM not being clear on how to run the type of game they think they're interested in.
* The players not expecting/knowing what the GM is interested in, and expecting action/adventure.
* The game system being based on other action/adventure games, and assuming everyone wants action/adventure.

I think others are right to say that mainly it's up to the GM having a strong vision and talent for providing what you're interested in, and also on the player to want and receive/appreciate that as well. (For example, in the case of _Arrival_, I'm pretty sure I know which characters most players would end up being: the rogue violent soldiers. And it might work best if the players were linguistics student/scholars... but could happen.)

However I also think the game system _can_ get in the way of your intent since many games focus a lot of their attention and detail on... adventure and combat.

A GM can certainly present a game universe, NPCs and situations where the sorts of themes you are interested in are there in abundance, even if there is also adventure and combat. I'd say even the first campaign ever GM'd by my oldest RPG pal succeeded in being full of Speculative Fiction situations about strange societies and the effects of magic, religion, corruption, environmental catastrophies, war, etc. But it was still heavy on action and adventure, too - the other stuff was just the way the world was and was the context for the adventures. The same could easily be done for a sci fi game, and I assume is, but it's up to the GM to bring that.

The settings and scenario examples for an RPG game could suggest that sort of thing to a GM, which isn't really about the game but the suggested contexts for adventures. If it's always just "find a patron who assigns a mission" or "track down a rumor to find adventure and reward" or "create a place to go kill everyone and steal stuff" then you've got standard adventures in space. But it could be other types of situation, or based on different types of characters with different types of interests and skills,

A game system could have more or less support or impediment (or just distraction and suggestion - if you've got piles of combat equipment tables and rules, players are liable to expect and orient to that) for non-combat situations.

Quote from: Itachi;984772I've experienced three very interesting sci-fi works in the last year. Black Mirror (tv series), Arrival (the movie) and SOMA (the videogame). And looking to the genre in the tabletop environment, it occurred to me there is no way this medium can translate in an effective manner the kind of experiences those works provide.

Then I tried to come up with an reasoning. Why is that? Well, I think a good sci-fi work is one that has the changing of humanity through technology in the center of the story. Black Mirror does it. Arrival does it. SOMA does it. And no RPG I've seen does it. What sci-fi RPGs they do is have sci-fi as a veneer, or coat of paint, for stories or situations mostly about action and combat. Perhaps the best shot the medium had at depicting the kind of (actual) sci-fi seen in the aforementioned works is the game Shock: Social Science Fiction. But honestly, it's a gaming style so far from usual RPGs that I dont know if have the interest to try it.  

So, thoughts? Are there genres the tabletop medium can't really do? If so, should we accept this fact and move on, or is worth trying to find a way to do it?

I am curious what you liked about Arrival? I found it to be one of the most depressing movies I have ever seen. It is a match IMO for some of the worst apocalyptic movies in having a completely pessimistic outlook.

Quote from: Crimhthan;984939I am curious what you liked about Arrival? I found it to be one of the most depressing movies I have ever seen. It is a match IMO for some of the worst apocalyptic movies in having a completely pessimistic outlook.

I'll say it again...


Predestination is a helluva drug.

What about something like Death Frost Doom... except that, instead of a vast horde of ravenous undead, your exploration into the alien ruins unleashes campaign changing information... a virus, nano-bot plague, AI... everything/everyone is altered in body/belief/understanding. Would most groups cry foul at that? Complain that they couldn't shoot it? Would they call it 'railroading' because the genii woudn't go back in the bottle?
'Cause no one I've played Death Frost Doom with complained about the bad stuff when it happened.

Of course, one might make the alternative argument that the presence of a sanity or humanity or morality mechanism actually prevents the discussion of the social impact of technology on humanity by defining it rigidly and making a proclamation rather than allowing the players to interact with the technology and come to their own conclusions.

The Arrival is specificly not predestined.  The whole movie loses its point if she couldn't change things.  She gave her past self information from the future specificly so she could affect things.  The aliens only show up to change their past.  She could have chosen not to have a daughter doomed to die.  Thats why her husband left her.  Not predestination at all.  

Oh by the way spoilers.  

Also it would make a terrible game.

I love the part of every thread on this site where the OP posts a problem.  And for about 3 pages everyone gang piles and says how stupid they are.  

Even though we essentially agree with them.  Its hard to have the kind of story he was asling about in Role playing.  You need the right group of players, and a Hellava DM.  

Its like saying you can't drive a screw with a hammer.  Well actully ypu can.  You either hit it harder or get the claw into the slot or if you have a good giuld hole and soft wood and strong fingers you can do it by hand.   YOU FUCKERS ARE MISSING THE POINT!

I've seen two episodes of Black Mirror but am unfamiliar with either Arrival or SOMA.

However, in general, I think a science fiction RPG can be a "what if" without predefined story or metagame mechanics. I'd agree that it isn't well-covered in published RPGs, but I think there is precedent. I ran several Star Trek campaigns which often had open-ended scenarios where the PCs encountered some runaway technology and had to deal with it. Star Trek can be pretty hokey compared to classic science fiction, but a number of the episodes still deal with a central "what if" premise.

The problem with Black Mirror as a model is that it is different characters every time, which doesn't work well for campaign play. It is suited for Shock, where setting up the world is part of the game. But in a traditional RPG, setting up the world, characters, and adventure each time is a heavy load on both the GM and the players.