Not bashing on the fantasy thread, not ripping it off, just making a logical compliment to it.

What don't you like in your SF RPGs?

I'm not happy with inconsistent technology, like having one gadget that does wonderous function X, but does it in a way that should be applied to umpteen other things and isn't.

Consistent tech makes me quite happy, BTW.

Aliens that are just fantasy races with a new paintjob don't please me much. I like alien aliens, like traveller's hivers. Please, no orcs in space.

Too many old plot chiche's are bad in any setting, of course.

Also, if it's going to be scince fiction, try to keep some science in it if you can. You can have devices that operate in ways that may violate our current understanding of some laws of physics since they're obviously imcomplete or wrong, but try for at least some scientific credibility, and if you do have new sciences that are ahead of ours, allowing people to do things we don't think can be done today, try to keep them consistent and think thru the ramifications of them in advance.

Psionics or telekinetics  in hard SF games.

Star Trek aliens -- i.e. humans with seafood glued to their heads

Inconsistency -- to use a Traveller example, if you're going to publish High Guard with rules for gi-normous starships and enormous fleet budgets, you'd better have something better than a handwave for why small warships are would even still be built.

Recapitulating Earth history -- if I can tell in five minutes that your great stellar conqueror is Belisarius or Genghis Khan with a blaster, it falls flat.

Anachronisms -- too many references to modern Earth history thousands of years in the future (sorry, Koltar, I don't think Maggie Thatcher is even going to be a footnote in three thousand years). This includes survivor isolates -- nobody is going to export an Earth culture and then preserve it in amber for any length of time over a century.

Archetypal one-note races or cultures -- the "warrior" race, the "thinker" race, etc.


Really, most of these apply to SF fiction as well as RPGs.

Technology that would logically remove humans as heroes.

Technobabble weapons. This is the one thing that truly annoyed me about alternity.

2d starmaps. Yeah, I grew up with Traveller, but I want more.

Planets that couldn't exist. Star systems that couldn't exist.

Thermodynamic impossibilities. Don't be telling me how your world that should be as hot as Venus is inhabited because below the surface it's supposed to be cooler.

Settings stuck in one star system. Yeah, I know, most prevailing theories suggest that FTL will never be possible. I don't care. This flight of fancy I'll take.

When the science becomes more important than the people and their stories.

For "harder" science fiction:
* I'm also an "aliens that aren't alien" bugs me guy.

* The obvious applications of technology need to be considered.  A "transporter" is a fantastic weapon, and if you can use black holes as a power source then you can drop them on planets.

* Why is there zero transhuman elements in setting X?  Why do the AI suck?

For "softer" science fiction:
* Alien species that are simplistic and fit standard stereotypes without having anything new or interesting going on.  The spiritual warrior race, for instance.

Quote from: RockViperPsionics or telekinetics  in hard SF games.

  Truth Bruv...  Let's be honest... It's magic and magic has no place in SF.

Near as I can tell from Mr. A's discussion, I actually hate sci-fi.

I sure like stuff with plasma weapons and starships and robots in it, though.

I don't play much SF games, but I don't really like it, when SF games don't have a "big idea" in them. I mean I like Space Opera, which I consider fantasy in space (like most folks), but my SF games should have that "big idea" about anything tech, humanity, politics etc.

Regards,
David R

Yeah, it's funny, I find myself mildly turned off by the "Imperium" concept in Traveller because it upsets what I think of as an otherwise "retro-hard" SF feel in the game.

Yet if someone were to base a game on Legend of the Galactic Heroes, I'd think it was really cool. In fact I tried to steer a Burning Sands mini-campaign world-building session more or less in that direction, with one side as a pseudo-Prussian aristocratric empire, the other as a pseudo-leftist republic, and the third as a pseudo-feudal group of colonized natives.

Quote from: Mr. AnalyticalTruth Bruv...  Let's be honest... It's magic and magic has no place in SF.

Eh, it's a classic SF genre element, it doesn't fit hard sf sure, but for most sf it's pretty standard genre material.

Next you'll be saying you don't like ftl...

Quote from: Dominus NoxI'm not happy with inconsistent technology, like having one gadget that does wonderous function X, but does it in a way that should be applied to umpteen other things and isn't.

Consistent tech makes me quite happy, BTW.

Aliens that are just fantasy races with a new paintjob don't please me much. I like alien aliens, like traveller's hivers. Please, no orcs in space.

Too many old plot chiche's are bad in any setting, of course.

Also, if it's going to be scince fiction, try to keep some science in it if you can. You can have devices that operate in ways that may violate our current understanding of some laws of physics since they're obviously imcomplete or wrong, but try for at least some scientific credibility, and if you do have new sciences that are ahead of ours, allowing people to do things we don't think can be done today, try to keep them consistent and think thru the ramifications of them in advance.

That's not a bad list from my perspective actually.

Basically, I hate humans with funny foreheads, I don't like tech where the implications aren't thought through, I don't like tired retreads of our own history as someone else said.

Unless it's space opera, then I demand all these things.

And human scale, if it's not about the experience of being human still I cease to care.  That's true for any genre though, not just sf.

Quote from: Christmas ApeNear as I can tell from Mr. A's discussion, I actually hate sci-fi.

I sure like stuff with plasma weapons and starships and robots in it, though.

Fuckin' signed.

Quote from: Caesar SlaadTechnology that would logically remove humans as heroes.

Technobabble weapons. This is the one thing that truly annoyed me about alternity.

2d starmaps. Yeah, I grew up with Traveller, but I want more.

Planets that couldn't exist. Star systems that couldn't exist.

Thermodynamic impossibilities. Don't be telling me how your world that should be as hot as Venus is inhabited because below the surface it's supposed to be cooler.

Settings stuck in one star system. Yeah, I know, most prevailing theories suggest that FTL will never be possible. I don't care. This flight of fancy I'll take.

As to planets that couldn't exist, i agree. One of the many failing in that generally boring "Riddick" movie was that the planet crematoria had a breathable atmosphere.

No way. Impossible. A lifeless planet with an O2 atmosphere is extremely unlikely as on earth O2 is only produced by biological activity. There doesn't seem to be any way for an O2 atmosphere to exist sans life producing it.

Oxygen is just to unstable and bonds with too much for it to stay in a free form unless something producing it constantly.

Quote from: Elliot WilenYeah, it's funny, I find myself mildly turned off by the "Imperium" concept in Traveller because it upsets what I think of as an otherwise "retro-hard" SF feel in the game.

Yet if someone were to base a game on Legend of the Galactic Heroes, I'd think it was really cool. In fact I tried to steer a Burning Sands mini-campaign world-building session more or less in that direction, with one side as a pseudo-Prussian aristocratric empire, the other as a pseudo-leftist republic, and the third as a pseudo-feudal group of colonized natives.

Well, the idea of an "imperium" was based on the fact it could literally take months, or years, to get messages from the edge of the imperium to the core and back. So there had to be semi autonomous sections that could operate without direction from 'the throne' and deal with new situations aotunomously.

Now, I would have preferred a democratic form of government, with the local systems and such electing leaders rather than having the laughable concept of heridatary nobility, but the fuindamental idea of a government based on not getting instant word from the central power had to be enacted to make traveller's society work, and they did a decent job of it.

They also did a decent job of showing how fossilized and atrophiced such a system can become, and how it can be knocked down by aany duyanic infleunce from outside after it's had time to ossify for a few millennia.