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

[Keiko]

Originally Posted by Owen Smith

Oh absolutely. Only two people? I reckon an entire group can read the same thing and all come away with different impressions.

Any two people. IOW, different people might get different impressions from the same text.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by whswhs

...

This can take place in all sorts of ways. For example, toward the end of my first THS campaign, one of the PCs got a message from the Montréal child welfare authority, which contained street camera footage of his eleven-year-old daughter smoking a cigarette—and it didn't look like her first. The accompanying message said that he was allowed to exercise his own discretion on such behavior, but it was government policy to advise parents of behavior that might be of concern. So then he called in the team's hacker and asked her to help him figure out why his daughter's recently acquired virtual interface implant hadn't notified him of this. And the implant's response was that he had set it to maintain his daughter's privacy; did he want a different setting? Did he want moderate privacy, or zero privacy, or did he want a customized setting? Did he want to know . . . followed by some items from a long list of possibly questionable behaviors; at one point the other player had the hacker say, "Gianni, I masturbate!" while Gianni was boggling.
...

Who on earth would set privacy settings for their kid to cover up when they harm themselves? Would it also hide evidence of cutting, or running head first into walls?
The masturbation aspect is more interesting as it obviously causes no overt harm, but conservative religious people may consider it sinful and worthy of punishment.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

A tangent from the other thread that I feel is more at home here:

I like THS as is, but 'as is' means 'actually as stated in the books, with no retcons, catbacks or canon-incompatible additions'.
....

I guess that's what I wrote, but not quite what I meant.
No one plays without any modification, and of course what counts as minor and what counts as drastic modification is different to different people.
But THS seems to get more extreme modification than say, DF. Other than only one or two posters around here that like to modify that line into more generic nuanced fantasy.

[Keiko]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

A tangent from the other thread that I feel is more at home here:


I like THS as is, but 'as is' means 'actually as stated in the books, with no retcons, catbacks or canon-incompatible additions'.

catbacks?

No Felicias in backless dresses in any campaign you'll ever play in? :)

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Keiko

catbacks?

Not Felicias in backless dresses in any campaign you'll ever play in? :)

Weird, I misread that as callbacks, and no, I have no idea what that means either.
Now I just see fat-backs and imagine a delicacy involving feline bacon.

[vicky_molokh]

Funny typo fixed in order to add clarity to the post.

Originally Posted by Owen Smith

Well I'm a player not a GM so I get what I'm given in a campaign except for what I do with my own PC. However, my only THS campaign has had as GM the current line editor Phil Masters so if he says it's canon any of the players need a strong case to claim otherwise. Of course Phil is trying to tone down memetics or at least give people the option (same with pheromones) so then we get into "canon as current line editor sees it" vs. "canon as originally written". Which gets silly real fast.

I understand that anything new that comes up in a book line is by definition approved by the line editor current for the publication date. But my point is that I'm getting an impression (BTW, I think I already said this) that the setting was deemed 'too cool', and so cool stuff is being either semi-removed or reduced. Some of it is in the various modified versions of the setting, which tends to include less transhumanism, less radical hard SF, less space, or less bio-tech and cybernetic advancement.
Then there are official ones, such things in Big Media Memetics that essentially make TL10 memetics incapable of doing stuff that TL2 memetics did. Or bioroid templates that got changed (and the change had nothing to do with the edition shift). Or the sudden recommendation to change the 2100-society's attitude towards pheromones, even though books like High Frontier and Cities on the Edge have shown that they're not treated a particularly low-LC thing.

I'm not restricting my wishes for THS campaign to only the facts stated in Pulver-era books. But I'm of the preference for the following principle: You can add facts, but not retcon facts; all new books should be consistent with the old books' facts; an exception can be made if and only if an official erratum has been published about a given fact.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Who on earth would set privacy settings for their kid to cover up when they harm themselves? Would it also hide evidence of cutting, or running head first into walls?
The masturbation aspect is more interesting as it obviously causes no overt harm, but conservative religious people may consider it sinful and worthy of punishment.

"Harm" vs. "nonharm" is not a binary variable. There are degrees of harm, and degrees of probability of harm. And there are also values on the other side: Conveying to your kids that you trust them rather than constantly monitoring them; letting them develop a measure of autonomy rather than having every action performed under adult supervision; letting them choose to take some risks or inflict some harms on themselves, even. Those values have to be traded off against harm and risk, but it is a tradeoff; you can't avoid all harm and all risk without a level of behavioral control that verges on totalitarianism.

I figure that there's going to be a range of behavior in this. Parents who want self-reliant kids, or who put a high value on respect for their kids, will allow them a lot of autonomy, including some bad choices. Parents who care a lot about their kids' safety will insulate them from any risks of bad choices. Most parents will be somewhere in between.

[Keiko]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Why buy a setting if it so doesn't fit one's gaming preferences?

Because the setting fits some of your preferences and not others.

Because you don't feel the additions destroys it or what makes it unique and fun, perhaps add to it and enhances those aspects.

Because you value fun more than setting adherence to canon.

Because its often easier to tinker with something than build from the ground up

Because there's nothing published that exactly fits what you want but by adding and mixing different things you can create something that scratches your particular itch.

Because you like the spice and creative challenge of adding something new and different to a setting.

Because you've grown tired of the established canon and want to try something new.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by whswhs

..
I figure that there's going to be a range of behavior in this. Parents who want self-reliant kids, or who put a high value on respect for their kids, will allow them a lot of autonomy, including some bad choices. Parents who care a lot about their kids' safety will insulate them from any risks of bad choices. Most parents will be somewhere in between.

Of course. But requiring an AI to alert you when your child ingests dangerous toxins seems pretty basic. Physical damage, even if nearly everything can be fixed via medical technology, is quite different to purely subjective opinions on bad behavior.
At the very least I would like proof that lung cancer was likely my kid's fault so I could legitimately force them to pay for the treatment out of allowance money.

Though I do believe we all psychologically need to occasionally get away with rule breaking now and then. I don't know of any studies to that effect, but it's my personal opinion.

[Phil Masters]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

But my point is that I'm getting an impression (BTW, I think I already said this) that the setting was deemed 'too cool', and so cool stuff is being either semi-removed or reduced.

I'd never modify the line because it was "too cool". That would be stupid.

I might apply some editorial refinements where things appeared to be inconsistent with other elements of the line or its general design brief - and if that meant pruning things that had gone into past supplements because the author was trying too hard to be "cool" and not hard enough to be consistent, well, c'est la vie.

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Then there are official ones, such things in Big Media Memetics that essentially make TL10 memetics incapable of doing stuff that TL2 memetics did.

As I recall, "Big Media Memetics" was a Pyramid article. Pyramid articles aren't automatically considered any sort of GURPS canon; on the contrary, the magazine is frequently a place for exploring variants and variations, in TS as in other GURPS-related areas. In fact, the relevant line editor doesn't necessarily get involved in those things. Which is not to say that a lot of Pyramid articles aren't very good and worthy to be treated as canon, of course.

(And note that "Big Media Memetics" is specifically labelled in the issue description as "a set of optional rules".)