[Stormcrow]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

This thread is one of several ideas I have (partly because I have the Distractible and Imaginative quirks in real life) that were inspired by what Mailanka has been doing with Star Wars in his Psi Wars setting: Don't Convert, Create! Rather than trying to faithfully convert the setting into GURPS (and most likely failing, especially in the eyes of anyone who views the setting differently than you do), create a setting that both fits the system, and the sort of game you might want to run or play in, inspired by the existing source material.

I am aware of Psi-Wars, but I haven't read the "create, don't convert" thing. I wholeheartedly agree. It's not something a lot of GURPS people talk about, but it's very much how GURPS was designed. (It was never "Play in the world of Greyhawk"; it was always "Play in a fantasy setting with all those recognizable fantasy elements.")

Star Trek is very amenable to this philosophy. What's important is not the exact stats of a phaser or whether there are Klingons. What's important is getting that final-frontier setting where the ship's crew works together and morally when confronted with hostile Otherness.

A core conceit of the setting is that all of the 'normal' superscience tech is psychotronics (and some of the weird drugs are probably psi drugs), and the 'strangely advanced and powerful organic technology' that some races have or had is psi-based bio-tech; likewise, a lot of the weird superpowers that some races have are psionic. This is mostly consistent with the various ST series and movies that I've seen, so that's good.

Um.... wut?

Star Trek is not a particularly psi-heavy setting. Sure, some people have it, but it's usually a novelty to the characters. It's more a power of aliens that causes problems for the crew. What makes you think it's a consistent fit with Star Trek?

If we assume that psychotronics work better with sapient operators, and that some don't work at all, or fail fairly soon, without them, it allows us to justify following Ken Burnside's Zeroth Law of Space Combat in a way that makes sense in-setting.

But you can justify this without resorting to psionics. Star Trek's technology just takes a different path than ours, and what we automate they do manually. This is a cultural issue, not a technological one. See every episode where Kirk destroys a computer or android. Whenever Star Trek technology gets too big for its britches, it goes haywire, and nobody wants that.

Kirk: Machine over man, Spock? It was impressive. Might even be practical.

Spock: Practical, Captain? Perhaps. But not desirable. Computers make excellent and efficient servants; but I have no wish to serve under them. Captain, a starship also runs on loyalty to one man, and nothing can replace it, or him.