Quote:
Originally Posted by Mailanka
So, if you want to keep the more personal, human elements of your space opera while using the accurate and consistent technology found within Ultra-Tech and GURPS Spaceships, you need switches, optional rules, and a carefully selected set of technologies to empower this sort of thing. We can't afford the flimsy excuses of a movie. We need firmer, consistent excuses, enough to convince players that these elements exist for a reason, and that they can exploit them without ruining the narrative. I'm asking for people's input and experience with said options.
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Make a list of hypothetical countermeasures ahead of time, complete with technobabble, but don't bring them up until necessary.
Ultrascanners? Sure, we've got them. So does everyone else. Any interstellar crime syndicate worth it's salt will have a high energy wave scrambler though, so we're not going to be able to see anything until we get in real close.
Reprogram a captured drone? Yeah, we could do that if we had access to a subgravitational computer matrix, but the closest one is fifty parsecs from here!
Why haven't we built our own army of drones? Well, as it turns out their bodies are built from a composite duranium nanoweave, and the Evil Alliance have managed to take hold of the only planet we know of with a natural duranium supply.
And so on. Both the nice thing and the difficult thing about sci-fi from the GM's perspective is the incredible complexity of the setting. It's nice because you can always add information that the characters knew the whole time, though the players may have not. But it's difficult as well, for all the reasons you mentioned.
If you're talking star wars in particular, I imagine that as a world that's been TL10-11^ for so long, people just accept it without understanding all of the technology. For example, maybe every droid has some basic programming that was done so long ago no one can reproduce it; they simply use the same old existing programming as a template whenever it's time to build a new droid (which may explain why AI is so rampant, existing even in devices that don't seem to require it).