08-31-2022, 10:45 AM | #21 |
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Central Europe
|
Re: Depicting the SF sandbox
One of the most repeatable forms of sandbox campaign is "your characters get off the stagecoach at this newly founded town." As they try to make a living or pursue character goals, the GM introduces local actors, conflicts, and opportunities. It could be adopted to sci fi fairly easily with a setting on a space station or new settlement.
__________________
"It is easier to banish a habit of thought than a piece of knowledge." H. Beam Piper This forum got less aggravating when I started using the ignore feature |
08-31-2022, 11:46 AM | #22 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: traveller
|
Re: Depicting the SF sandbox
Quote:
It's the difference between Deep Space Nine and the other, ship-based Star Trek shows. Stargate SG-1 straddles both categories, since the characters venture out quite extensively but ultimately return to base. Both DSN and SG1 arranged to give the characters more mobility as the story progressed, however, presumably to keep from getting stale. |
|
08-31-2022, 12:25 PM | #23 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: traveller
|
Re: Depicting the SF sandbox
Quote:
Traders visiting Earth in AD 250 would be better served visiting Luoyang, Ctesiphon, and maybe Teotihuacan as well, rather than establishing just one port near Rome and counting on the Romans to have all the trade goods they might want. |
|
08-31-2022, 05:44 PM | #24 |
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Oz
|
Re: Depicting the SF sandbox
On the other hand, it also suggests that local surface transport might be expensive, so that the cost advantage of landing spaceships near the consumers and suppliers is greater.
__________________
Decay is inherent in all composite things. Nod head. Get treat. |
08-31-2022, 06:09 PM | #25 | |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
|
Re: Depicting the SF sandbox
Quote:
|
|
08-31-2022, 09:22 PM | #26 | |
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Oz
|
Re: Depicting the SF sandbox
Quote:
I am not proficient enough with programming and computer graphics to do this, but it seems within the capabilities of a keen amateur to augment such a database with an anaglyphic or rotatable display in which the user gets to specify on the fly which objects from the database are included and which data about nodes and links are displayed and how they are represented (with size, shape, colour, captions etc.).
__________________
Decay is inherent in all composite things. Nod head. Get treat. |
|
09-03-2022, 08:56 AM | #27 |
Join Date: Feb 2020
|
Re: Depicting the SF sandbox
Have you encountered the video game Outer Wilds?
It has exactly this problem: it's a sandbox game (at least to start with), with adventure locations spread across a solar system. It does a few things to help players find them
Many of these require a very interconnected world to work, but I could imagine, say, a pattern of precursor artifacts cropping up on different worlds — you find them in spaceport markets, but the sellers can lead you to minor ruins, which have maps of major precursor sites. |
09-04-2022, 07:29 AM | #28 |
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: West Virginia
|
Re: Depicting the SF sandbox
Looking at both recent world history and highly likely scenarios for the later 21st century, I suggest that many worlds wouldn't have planet wide Tech Levels. Maybe one group who settled a given world embraced high tech. But other cultures on a world might be anarcho primitists, or simply embrace cultural norms that restrict technological development. In the historical past Hinduism restricted learning to read to the highest castes. There are still Brahmins that reject mass literacy as actively evil.
Only one culture on a world might be able to host a spaceport or be worth the effort to trade with. Conversely, the societies on a planet, again for cultural reasons, might not tolerate sharing a space port. One more category. What is tolerable at a space port would vary by culture. One culture might be far more tolerant of criminal activity that didn't happen in or near their port facilities than another. While the competing port might have more advanced facilities, more comfortable accommodations, better medical services, and less volatile people, the efficient legal authorities could be a drawback. Or a plus.
__________________
Per Ardua Per Astra! Ancora Imparo Last edited by Astromancer; 09-04-2022 at 07:38 AM. |
09-04-2022, 10:24 AM | #29 | |
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Central Europe
|
Re: Depicting the SF sandbox
Quote:
__________________
"It is easier to banish a habit of thought than a piece of knowledge." H. Beam Piper This forum got less aggravating when I started using the ignore feature Last edited by Polydamas; 09-04-2022 at 01:54 PM. |
|
09-04-2022, 11:07 AM | #30 |
Join Date: Aug 2007
|
Re: Depicting the SF sandbox
To address one of the early questions, if you give the players a map it needs to be a selective map. As fun as the Universe map is to look at it has a lot of "Condition Anthony" stars on it (poke at them and they're uninteresting).
So the last "sector" map I provided to players in a space game showed almost no M class red dwarves. Because of the jumpline formation rules you almost always ouldn't get ot them even if you wanted to. Putting them on a map just added clutter without adding useful information. Then I omitted binary stars as a usual thing. Their astrographics tangled the jumplines and the fact that close biaries wouldn't have planets anyway was a bonus. On the other hand, the map did show big type A stars even if they wouldn't have any planets because they formed long jumplines and made "hubs". The jumplines were long enough that most "A"s linked to at leasty one other "A". This even created campaign slang. Taking long journeys by following the linked "A"S was "Taking the A Train". So perfectly simulationist maps are not useful. You need a selective map that filters out the least interesting items but also shows ways to get to areas of interest.
__________________
Fred Brackin |
|
|