Reactions to Transhuman Space

[ericthered]

I've been aware of Transhuman Space without reading it for a long time. Something is the back of my brain told me that it was a little "out there", and that the learning curve involved a bunch of setting specific stuff. Then I causally ran a campaign idea past my players, and they said "You mean like Transhuman Space"? And so I went and actually read the book. My idea wasn't Transhuman Space, but it had enough overlap that I'd probably explain it in terms of THS now. And steal ideas from it.

So onto my reactions:

I was surprised what the phrase "Transhuman Space" means. I have always thought it meant that the setting was about transhumans who rule space. From reading the book, its seems it instead means that space is a haven for transhumans, and that's were all the truly new transhuman stuff happens.

I expected to see a world where the transhuman questions had been asked and the answers where all yes. I now see that the world has been engineered to ask as many of the meaningful questions at once.

Large portions of biotech have a lot more context for me now.

The setting handles AI very well. It hasn't taken over the world, but its not useless either. And it doesn't look like its threatening to take over the world either, though that fact may be up for debate.

I was wary of Memes before. Now that I've read the section, they make a lot more sense, particularly as the three 'P's limit their application.

VR and wealth issues are handled very elegantly.

I don't know that I'd ever actually use the transhuman space setting without tweaking, but it is something that I think would be lots and lots of fun to tweak.