How would you reboot THS?

[mukibear]

if THS is a retrofuture, how could it be rebooted to a setting more germane for our zeitgeist? i think first, ditch space, make it a dystopia, but one with bright spots. the evolution of transhumanity isn't nice and pretty.....but it is happening.

[Phil Masters]

TS was never about the zeitgeist; it's about a sort of fast-forward provisionally highly optimistic futurism. There are plenty of cyberpunk and post-cyberpunk settings out there; TS needs to explore the adventuring possibilities of things going more (but far from totally) right. And ripping the space part out of a game with that specific title would just be stupid.

And as I said elsewhere, the real problem with such a project would be building a plausible future history that wasn't out of date before the book came back from the printers. But one could partially dodge that problem by setting things 150-200 years ahead, rather than the original 100, which is a good idea anyway. It allows more time for some of the developments in biotech and space colonisation, which are inherently slow in the absence of handwaved superscience, as well as providing some scope for handwaved "things settle out this way, eventually" treatments of the geopolitics.

[mukibear]

i don't see how space and transhumanism are joined. in canon THS, 99.9999% of sapient being live on Earth, but what % of the books are about space? expansion into space was an excuse to explore transhumanism and push the boundaries. i thought it would be interesting to explore some of the not-so-futurist possibilities of transhumanism. consider the challenges of the future - west/islam clash, environmental degradation, energy shortages, etc and the possibilities of biotech. emphasize the cultural clashes that would be involved in genetically altering humans. and throw in some unexpected developments, because a proper future should be *weird*. anyway, how about a biotech setting? realistically, the tech will be used on everything BUT humans. i was just letting my mind wander, anyway.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by mukibear

if THS is a retrofuture, how could it be rebooted to a setting more germane for our zeitgeist? i think first, ditch space, make it a dystopia, but one with bright spots. the evolution of transhumanity isn't nice and pretty.....but it is happening.

What you describe wouldn't be THS. If anything, THS is very disappointing regarding its title: for a game named Transhuman Space, it is very tame in the way of transhumanism and has a very small space population. If anything, Eclipse Phase is a setting that could call itself 'transhuman space' with a straight face!

Also, dystopias are dime a dozen, whether the Nth variation of cyberpunk (as Phil Masters mentioned), or something more low-tech like Game of Thrones. Dystopias are overused. Everyone is monkeying DarkerAndEdgier without adding to the uniqueness and not necessarily increasing the actual fun ratio.

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That being said, some ways I would think THS could/should be changed in case of a reboot:

• Make the focus point 2200, not 2100.
• Moore's Law hit a pillow cushion at some point in the 2050s, so while the emergence of AIs is a thing and it does make some biosophonts obsolete, it still isn't economically competitive to keep AI-housing-capable computers mobile on the same level as bioroids and parahumans.
• No terraformed Mars. But maybe add some curious stuff under Mars' surface, making exotic material mining viable (kinda like He3 mining for Luna).
• Add a HEDM discovery early, and make it reasonably cheap to produce and safe to use, unlike THS' recent, dangerous and expensive HEDM. This is largely needed as a way to make reaching orbit more affordable.
• Bring the SPACE back into Transhuman Space. Find more reasons to make space profitable and accessible. Maybe finally finish the African beanstalk by 2121.
• Make TSA into a faction that isn't a cheaper knockoff of the Red Threat in 2100!!11. As in, make them not as poor, not as weak, and, very importantly, make them not as designated-villainous, by reducing the number of authoritarian/dictatorial régimes within TSA and adding a few into USA, EU, and PRA.
• Raise the Duncanites into a full-fledged faction of their own. Sure, they'll be a small faction, but with an edge in biotechnology, space technologies and space logistics. Probably the newest kid on the block of the big nuclear states.
• Put the Transhuman back in Transhuman Space. Make at least 50% of the people Upgrades or otherwise non-baselines and more than genefixes. (If 50% of all Terra is too much, at least make near-everyone in Fourth and Fifth Wave regions to compensate.)
• Ditch the Sino-American dominance that is largely a product of 19-20-century thinking. It's 2200, and the politics should be as unexpected as both the formation and the dissolution of USSR were to those who predated it.

[Phil Masters]

Originally Posted by mukibear

i don't see how space and transhumanism are joined.

What is the full title of the game setting?

[mukibear]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

What is the full title of the game setting?

i was rather thinking, 'how can you take these rules/tools and use them differently'?

also, 'space' could refer to virtual space. have you read 'Living Next Door to the God of Love'? it's transhuman, it's in space and it has virtual worlds that are *real*. actually, the world of 'Natural History' would make a fine new THS reboot.

We've grown used to thinking of ourselves as the pinnacle of evolution but, in the future Justina Robson envisions in Natural History, the massed ranks of humanity find themselves the Unevolved. No longer the greatest ape, they are mere Monkeys. Or so the Forged would have them believe.

The Forged are still human, at least technically, but they are also unequivocally other. Many are animal based: arachnids, hive-minded insectoids or avians (like viewpoint character Roc Handslicer Corvax). Others are vast spaceships. Between these are hybrids like the shuttle Ironhorse AnimaMekTek Aurora, "a smooth blue oval with a long, graceful tail like a gigantic airborne manta ray", and beyond even this are the Gaiaforms, unimaginably vast creatures who have rendered the Moon and Mars habitable.

Despite maintaining relatively cordial relations with the Unevolved, the Forged dream of Zion. They want self-determination so they can shake off their deterministic lives. Their bodies have been built for a purpose and to deviate from that purpose is to rebel against their own bodies. When Corvax dissents from his function and embraces a different life he is slowly eaten from the inside. The Gaiaforms have to be kept in stasis because they were designed for such vigorous lives that they would consume themselves within hours, if sedentary. This is the tyranny of Form and Function.

from SF Site review of Natural History

[whswhs]

I think the short answer is "I wouldn't."

There are properties that get rebooted and updated: Many superheroes, but also horror classics and Sherlock Holmes. Occasionally it's done well and even delightfully (as in Sherlock). Much of the time it's unsatisfactory. Batman works beautifully as a 1930s character; by the 1980s it was just past credence that he could keep his secrets against modern forensic methods.

On the other hand, there's a lot to be said for learning to read and enjoy classics as works of their period. And I think THS can be enjoyed in that spirit, just as Traveller can be enjoyed despite its retrograde tech.

I don't think the economic conditions exist currently to support the kind of game setting that THS provides, as an original creation from scratch. What seems to work for SJ Games now is series that focus not on setting, but on type of adventure—dungeon crawl, postapocalyptic survival, and so on. And I don't know how you could do a generic adventure in the spirit of THS. I'm not even sure what the generic THS adventure is!

[mukibear]

okay - how about using THS to do Natural History - has anyone else read this? it's more post-human than THS.

let me dig through my data - i have the e-book somewhere, i'll post descriptions of some of the characters

[Keiko]

Originally Posted by mukibear

okay - how about using THS to do Natural History - has anyone else read this? it's more post-human than THS.

let me dig through my data - i have the e-book somewhere, i'll post descriptions of some of the characters

Wouldn't you more be using GURPS to do Natural History than using THS?

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by mukibear

okay - how about using THS to do Natural History - has anyone else read this? it's more post-human than THS.

I would instead go first to GURPS Bio-Tech, I think. It's available for 4/e, and it covers all sorts of arcane biological possibilities.