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Old 08-29-2019, 04:18 PM   #23
Prince Charon
 
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Join Date: Dec 2012
Default Re: [Psionics] [Space] Psi Trek - Worldbuilding

Quote:
Originally Posted by ericthered View Post
Ok, so you're more interested in the home front of your setting than in first contact missions.
I'm really not, I just needed something to start with, and I've been doing and reading a lot of alternate history stuff, so starting early in the timeline seemed like a good idea, the Eugenics Wars being a reasonably good point of divergence between our history and that of Star Trek. Most of the rest of what I've got nearly ready for posting is tech stuff, though I've been thinking about what's going on in the rest of the Sol System when the Genetics Wars are happening on and near Earth.

Quote:
Originally Posted by ericthered View Post
That's an interesting approach. May I ask why a super-human template is your starting point?
The superhuman template got written up on a whim because we were discussing the Genetics Wars, and I needed a template that was both something that I thought that scientists might come up with, and that would be capable of taking over various countries. That's pretty much my reasoning for most of the traits you ask about below.

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Originally Posted by ericthered View Post
And what the "default activities" for the setting are?
Being the officers and crew of an exploratory or general-purpose spacecraft. We haven't reached that point yet, though.

Quote:
Originally Posted by ericthered View Post
Voice and Appearance are natural inclusions, but they should probably have the"off the shelf" modifier, where people become resistant to the good looks and soothing voice because they see the engineered stuff so much. See basic page 21 "Off-the-shelf-looks"
Hadn't considered that. Might work, but it implies a degree of quality control that I'm not sure they have. These are in most cases designer babies that start with the genetics of the parents, and modify them to fit, which means that they should have some element of one or both of the parents' appearance.

Quote:
Originally Posted by ericthered View Post
The talents and disadvantages are weird. I'm not sure why there are specific point values of the lists.
For some reason, I've gotten into the habit of trying to have exact numbers for my templates. If you're talking about the Subtotals, that's just to aid my math, so I can get the total without trying to add up every item all in a row.

Quote:
Originally Posted by ericthered View Post
Smooth operator feels bad, but some of that is that it gives very little for being a 15 point talent and so the optimizer in me is nauseated every time I see it. I'd be happier with "most human 1.5's have 20 to 40 points in the following talents, and the following disadvantages are common among them". I'm surprised that charisma didn't make your list.
I thought about it, but chose Smooth Operator because Charisma is supposed to be 'force of personality' or something like that. I think I recall someone in another thread, or a Pyramid article, or something like that, suggesting that Smooth Operator made more sense for something that would be genetically engineered into someone. Maybe Charisma with some sort of limitation (would be cheaper than Smooth Operator for a fairly similar utility in this context), but I'm not sure what limitation would best fit. Might also replace Smooth Operator with a less expensive Talent that has the essential skills needed to seize power.

Quote:
Originally Posted by ericthered View Post
My greatest objection to the template is that as a player taking it doesn't give me any abilities I couldn't gain through being an awesome individual, and it demands I pay for some abilities that are a touch less than ideal.
Ouch! I don't really disagree with you, though. Luckily, this is a draft, rather than a final template. For that matter, there may be over a dozen different types of 'Enhanced Human' out there when the Genetics Wars start.
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