I've seen some hard sci-fi shows and enjoyed them quite a bit. I want to know what you guys think of Traveller. It has been around a while but I've never played it. Are there others that might do a better job? If so, give me some names.

Quote from: ChrisGunter;854637I've seen some hard sci-fi shows and enjoyed them quite a bit. I want to know what you guys think of Traveller. It has been around a while but I've never played it. Are there others that might do a better job? If so, give me some names.

It has a very narrow focus: You play middle-aged military vets in a relatively low-tech (Think Firefly) galactic empire. When I was younger I saw this tight focus as a flaw, but now that I'm older I find it's specificity and groundedness sorta refreshing. It's about what it's about, and it does that one thing beautifully.

The 2d6-based system is exquisite in it's simplicity.  

Even moreso than D&D it really shines when used for "Here's the map... now what do you want to do?"-style open-ended sandbox games.

EDIT: I should note that I'm talking about old-school Traveller. I'm only vaguely familiar with the more recent editions.

Quote from: Just Another Snake Cult;854641It has a very narrow focus: You play middle-aged military vets in a relatively low-tech (Think Firefly) galactic empire.

Military veterans aren't the only career. Merchant is available and very popular since you can start play with a ship which is larger than the small scoutship that you may get as an ex-Scout.

I concur with the rest of your comments.

Quote from: Bren;854645Military veterans aren't the only career. Merchant is available .

LOL forgot about merchants. Around these parts back in the day it was all scouts and marines, scouts and marines... nobody ever played anything else unless they were drafted.

And who needs blasters or lightsabers? Double-barreled sawed-off shotguns and cutlasses were the weapons of our future. Good times, good times.

Back when I was in high school Classic Traveller was our got generic system for everything. It is a very flexible set of rules.

Computers and energy weapons stand out as being clunky and low tech feeling.

It is a great game.

Merchants are actually one of the best careers with a low 5+ survival roll and 4+ commission, promotions are 10+, the navy is 10+ commission, and 8+ promotion.  Since commissions and promotions provide additional skills the merchants are a great way to build a mature character with lots of skill levels.

Scouts are 7+ just to survive but they always get two skills per term.  Army is relatively safe at 5+ and good or promotions 6+ and commissions 5+.

Really, Navy and Marines might provide a few more combat skills but fewer skills in general.

Quote from: ChrisGunter;854637I've seen some hard sci-fi shows and enjoyed them quite a bit. I want to know what you guys think of Traveller. It has been around a while but I've never played it. Are there others that might do a better job? If so, give me some names.

What is hard sci-fi?

Hard sci-fi is usually sci-fi where the technology itself is both part of the subject matter used to express the theme of a story as well as accurate or plausible science.  The tech and it's implications matter.  Softer sci-fi often has the tech just be a trapping or flavour or it matters, but is far less central.  People have started to strangely apply the hard scifi label to any sci-fi that is either militaristic or has comparatively familiar technology (as it is at least more likely that the science that's familiar to us will be more accurate) even if it's not a concern in a given piece of fiction, so people may also just mean that.  Usually a good test is whether or not the tech and its implications are central and accurate (hard) or secondary and relaxed (soft).

Quote from: NathanIW;854683Hard sci-fi is usually sci-fi where the technology itself is part of the subject matter used to express the theme of a story.  The tech and it's implications matter.  Softer sci-fi often has the tech just be a trapping or flavour or it matters, but is far less central.  People have started to strangely apply the label to any sci-fi that is either militaristic or has comparatively familiar technology, so people may also mean that.

So which shows would have hard sci-fi?

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;854684So which shows would have hard sci-fi?

I'm not a big TV watcher.  I'd go with recommending the novel Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson if someone is looking for a real exemplar of hard sci-fi.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;854684So which shows would have hard' sci-fi?

Not many. Most are space opera (Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica), or have truly nonsensical science (Dr. Who, Stargate, Quantum Leap).

Firefly probably counts, although some might say that the tech is kinda window-dressing. Space: Above and Beyond would count. The Aliens movie franchise might, if you just accept that FTL travel is acceptably plausible.

Traveller: there have been 5 or 6 editions of traveller, not counting ports to GURPS, Hero System, and D20 (T20 in this case). Classic Traveller and Mongoose Traveller are as close as 1st and 2nd edition AD&D (which is to say the specifics might be different, but the game plays out in much the same way). There is a new edition, T5, competing with Mongoose as a ''current" edition. It still looks like it could eventually be revised into a truly good system in a couple of years, if anyone is still interested in it at that point. Too bad, Marc Miller is one of the few old school designers who is still supporting a still widely played game he invented in the 70s.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;854684So which shows would have hard sci-fi?

None come to mind.

For books: Add Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and Larry Niven as three older authors. CJ Cherryh's Downbelow Station and the other Alliance-Union and Chanur stories, and James Hogan a bit less old. And Davin Brin somewhat more recent.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;854684So which shows would have hard sci-fi?

Moon, The Martian, Gravity, Contact, 2001, 2010, some of the Cyberpunk stuff like Johnny Memmonic but not Total Recall (as long as we assume Arnold isn't just trapped in the machine for the whole movie) or Minority report (which has psychics and prescience).

Quote from: Bren;854693None come to mind.

For books: Add Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and Larry Niven as three older authors. CJ Cherryh's Downbelow Station and the other Alliance-Union and Chanur stories, and James Hogan a bit less old. And Davin Brin somewhat more recent.

Brin gets softer as he goes along.  It gets touch and go with older authors as psionics were still getting some serious research back when they were writing.  The "fiction" in "science fiction" does permit us to experiment with impossible concepts, but you quickly get into edge case territory if you don't have a very good reason.  For instance you could use telepathy as a catalyst for a story exploring sociological concepts of privacy if the story was mainly about the sociological concepts and not about how cool telepathy makes everything.  It's a fuzzy line but, in the end, at least with modern works, psionics are a disproven pseudo science that don't have a place in hard science fiction.

But a device that can scan and decrypt brainwaves at a distance and transmit them into the user's mind is probably hard science fiction.  And it might be possible to genetically engineer an organism with that capacity.  So even that line is pretty fuzzy.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;854692The Aliens movie franchise might, if you just accept that FTL travel is acceptably plausible.

The FTL drive in Alien/s is pretty slow. It still takes months or years to get anywhere. Aside from that it is mostly hard sci-fi if you stop before things start drifing into magic cloning and predators with viable FTL and the like.

For other hard SF shows you tend to need to get away from standard hollywood fare.