What do you want in a Transhuman Space game (as a player)?

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

What I want in a Transhuman Space campaign ...

• A wide variety in the types of PCs. "A raccoon who happens to be a childrens' books writer, an Elf Kitten news anchorwoman, and a 3D-printer factory on vacation, walk into a bar . . ." (There was the latter PC; I played a Ghost/ex-Bioroid; there was a parahuman and two human PCs.)

I'm less insistent on this than you. My characters have been mildly upgraded humans in both campaigns I've played. In the first, this was a question of having a character I found easy to play while getting to grips with the setting. For the second, it was a strategic decision: we were the EU consular services mobile team on Mars, and having someone in the team who was definitely a person everywhere on Mars without any PSR arguments was clearly worthwhile.

Other PCs in those campaigns included more humans, one heavily upgraded, three SAIs, one fragment (believed to be a ghost who'd got careless with his backups), one bioroid, one ghost in a bioshell (our first scenario with him was the investigation of his murder) and an uplifted dog who carried a one of the SAIs around, because that player liked weirdness.

• Pan-Sapient Rights issues showing up in the campaign. (It almost didn't.)

We had plenty of those on Mars. They were mostly a question of coping with the varying status of team members and our clients, without upsetting people too much (we were meant to be diplomats). In the first campaign, Vacuum Cleaning in cislunar space, on an EU-registered ship, we helped an astropus who'd escaped from Columbia Station, but spent more of the time coping with fallout from the Pacific War, and various plots by a terrorist organisation who liked using freelance hauliers as cut-outs.

• All sorts of THS-canon stuff (e.g. tech facts, geopolitics facts, legal facts) playing important roles in the plot, many of them naturally rather than by being deliberately pulled into the plot by the GM. (I'm quite happy on that account regarding the past campaign.)

I'd summarise this as "feeling that you're in an authentically complex world, with lots of other stuff going on, and a plausible level of connections between places and organisations." THS is good for that, and at not making you feel as if you're the only people of interest in the world.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by johndallman

I'd summarise this as "feeling that you're in an authentically complex world, with lots of other stuff going on, and a plausible level of connections between places and organisations." THS is good for that, and at not making you feel as if you're the only people of interest in the world.

I approve of the things you say, but I'm not sure that we're talking about the same nuances of an authentically complex world with plausible connections. The importance is not in the mere existence of these connections, but in the fact that they can be used to solve quests without being deliberately left in a visible place. Examples:

When I encountered a bunch of Avatar workers in trouble, and managed to quickly get past their initial mistrust when offering my help, thanks to Euphrates/Avatar close connections. This wasn't planned by advance, it just happened 'naturally'.

We're investigating stuff committed by a doc's Infomorph assistance, supposedly a Shadow. Then one of the people involved drops a hint about the assistant being subverted through hacking into his dreams, thus it dawns on us that the assistant is not a Shadow, but is supposed to be an actual Ghost; it can't be a Ghost because the bio-original is alive; so we conclude it's a partial Fragment, giving us sufficient data to confirm that the doc had part of his brain ghosted immediately when a different brain surgery was botched.

A story about nearly falling into Jupiter then managing to pull out was proven false by comparing the delta-V's of the crafts of the setting to the (vague) description of the orbits.

I'm a bit fuzzy on the details now, but one connection to the Gypsy Angels was figured thanks to knowing that there's a monolith on Iapetus in Transhuman Space.

The important bit is that we weren't fed Mr. Exposition's lecture prior to the conclusions - we made the conclusions based on our knowledge of the setting.

[Keiko]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

[*]Pan-Sapient Rights issues showing up in the campaign. (It almost didn't.)

Not quite sure what you mean here.

[*]All sorts of THS-canon stuff (e.g. tech facts, geopolitics facts, legal facts) playing important roles in the plot, many of them naturally rather than by being deliberately pulled into the plot by the GM. (I'm quite happy on that account regarding the past campaign.)[/list]

What do you mean by "naturally"?

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

I approve of the things you say, but I'm not sure that we're talking about the same nuances of an authentically complex world with plausible connections. The importance is not in the mere existence of these connections, but in the fact that they can be used to solve quests without being deliberately left in a visible place.

Ah, we are not talking about quite the same thing. While having the specific facts from the background come up from time to time is just fine, I'd be worried if they were the usual means of solving problems: at that point, the GM seems to be only running the published setting, and not making it their own.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Keiko

Not quite sure what you mean here.

Difference is legal personhood/nonpersonhood being relevant to the events within the campaign, which can include things like the ones johndallman mentioned, characters (both PC and NPC) defending various PSR positions etc.

Originally Posted by Keiko

What do you mean by "naturally"?

You are correct to put 'naturally' in quotes; I should've done so too.
I mean lines of inquiries, consequences, conclusions etc. that come up not due to being deliberately placed there by the GM with the expectation that the PCs/players will walk along them (in extreme cases from start to end), but rather as an outcome that is logical but not planned, i.e. with the players pleasantly surprising the GM with their inventiveness/observation/etc.
I like Bill Stoddard's comparison of this to humour, where the punchline is a logical extension of the premise, but still something the listener wasn't expecting.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Ah, we are not talking about quite the same thing. While having the specific facts from the background come up from time to time is just fine, I'd be worried if they were the usual means of solving problems: at that point, the GM seems to be only running the published setting, and not making it their own.

Oh, I'm all for the GM coming up with his/her/its own details in addition to the published ones. But it's awesome when they interact with the published facts.
In fact, it doesn't matter whether the details that become relevant are those from the published part of the setting, or from the GM's additions; the awesome part is that they interact in new ways, not thought of before.

[Keiko]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Difference is legal personhood/nonpersonhood being relevant to the events within the campaign, which can include things like the ones johndallman mentioned, characters (both PC and NPC) defending various PSR positions etc.

I see. I don't think that topic will be coming up very much.

You are correct to put 'naturally' in quotes; I should've done so too.
I mean lines of inquiries, consequences, conclusions etc. that come up not due to being deliberately placed there by the GM with the expectation that the PCs/players will walk along them (in extreme cases from start to end), but rather as an outcome that is logical but not planned, i.e. with the players pleasantly surprising the GM with their inventiveness/observation/etc.
I like Bill Stoddard's comparison of this to humour, where the punchline is a logical extension of the premise, but still something the listener wasn't expecting.

I'm still not sure I understand. Any nominal clues and avenues of action and inquiry are pretty much lain down by GM, informed by the setting material unless they're using a pre written scenario chosen without taking their PCs into account.

[RogerBW]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Oh, I'm all for the GM coming up with his/her/its own details in addition to the published ones. But it's awesome when they interact with the published facts.
In fact, it doesn't matter whether the details that become relevant are those from the published part of the setting, or from the GM's additions; the awesome part is that they interact in new ways, not thought of before.

Quite close to this, harking back a little, is that if I'm playing TS I want to be in stories that could only happen in TS. Plenty of the exciting things that happen today can still happen in TS, but if I could be playing a modern game instead I'm not getting the TS feel. (As a GM I've tried to do this; absorbing the setting can be very dispiriting at first, "what do you mean I can't hide a spaceship", and writing adventures can be quite challenging, but when one succeeds it's very satisfying.)

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Keiko

I'm still not sure I understand. Any nominal clues and avenues of action and inquiry are pretty much lain down by GM, informed by the setting material unless they're using a pre written scenario chosen without taking their PCs into account.

Well, depending on in what sense you mean it. If you mean that all the events in a campaign are, one way or another, the consequences of the GM starting the campaign with so-and-so premises/etc., then I am forced to agree with you.
But that's the sense I was referring to.

I'm referring to situation where, the GM lays down a situation/problem to solve, and thought of solutions A,B,C for it; the players/PCs think up solutions E and F (that the GM didn't think of), but which are logically consistent with the situation and the setting. I find it awesome when those E and F (or whatever) are the logical outcome of knowing how some details of the setting interact with the details of the situation presented by the GM (whether or not the GM thought of those interactions).

[Keiko]

Originally Posted by RogerBW

Quite close to this, harking back a little, is that if I'm playing TS I want to be in stories that could only happen in TS. Plenty of the exciting things that happen today can still happen in TS, but if I could be playing a modern game instead I'm not getting the TS feel. (As a GM I've tried to do this; absorbing the setting can be very dispiriting at first, "what do you mean I can't hide a spaceship", and writing adventures can be quite challenging, but when one succeeds it's very satisfying.)

What would be an example of a story that could only happen in the Transhuman Space?