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Old 08-23-2019, 07:14 AM   #1
Prince Charon
 
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Default [Psionics] [Space] Psi Trek - Worldbuilding

This thread is one of several ideas I have (partly because I have the Distractible and Imaginative quirks in real life) that were inspired by what Mailanka has been doing with Star Wars in his Psi Wars setting: Don't Convert, Create! Rather than trying to faithfully convert the setting into GURPS (and most likely failing, especially in the eyes of anyone who views the setting differently than you do), create a setting that both fits the system, and the sort of game you might want to run or play in, inspired by the existing source material. As I'm not totally confident in my ability to do this all on my own, and I do have many other time-sinks as well, this is a fairly open thread for this work. As you might guess, this one is inspired by Star Trek. It might or might not turn out to be closer to the source material than Psi Wars is to Star Wars, but I suspect the result will be more like 'closer in some ways, further in others.'


A core conceit of this (Psi Trek) setting is that all of the 'normal' superscience tech is psychotronics (and some of the weird drugs are probably psi drugs), and the 'strangely advanced and powerful organic technology' that some races have or had is psi-based bio-tech; likewise, a lot of the weird superpowers that some races have are psionic. This is mostly consistent with the various ST series and movies that I've seen, so that's good. If we assume that psychotronics work better with sapient operators, and that some don't work at all, or fail fairly soon, without them, it allows us to justify following Ken Burnside's Zeroth Law of Space Combat in a way that makes sense in-setting. Missiles are still possible because they don't have to last all that long, but probes depend on how much psychotronics they use, and how long you need them to work.

In 'A Piece of the Action,' Kirk says that the transtator is 'the basis for every important piece of technology we have,' so in this setting as in my Spice from Skylab setting (which is a different worldline from this one, but could perhaps be in the same skerry), the transtator is the simplest, most basic psychotronic component, from which all others are developed: it converts electricity into psionic energy, and vice versa. The transtator could plausibly be invented at TL6, or even TL5 as an outlier (a society with a mostly lower TL that is advanced in chemistry and knows how to produce electricity could also potentially invent it, though it would be incredibly difficult to do so with stone knives and bear skins). In this setting, though, I would say that it's invented on Earth no earlier than the transition point between TL7 and TL8^ (or TL(7+1)^, depending on how you look at it), and no later than the transition point between TL8 and TL9^ (note '^' and lack thereof).

Looking at GURPS Psionic Campaigns, I'm going to say that Universal Latency is true for any sapient species that doesn't universally have psi powers. The range of powers and abilities available is quite wide, though most races have a short list of universal or common abilities, usually from one or two powers (and may have a racial Talent or Talents in those powers), and the list of powers and abilities in GURPS Psionic Powers are relatively common among the races of Known Space. Terran humanity in this setting is a mostly latent race, which is part of why it took so long for psi-tech to be invented. Looking at 'Frequency' (pp15-16), people with just psi perks or very low level and cost abilities, or just psi talents and disadvantages without perks or abilities, are Uncommon, those with a net 5-25 points in psi abilities, talents, and disadvantages are Rare, and those with a net of more than 25 points in psi abilities, talents, and disadvantages are Very Rare. The most common psi powers among humans are ESP and Probability Alteration, but no psi power is actually unheard-of for humans. In terms of Public Awareness (pp16-18), psi is Acknowledged in most civilizations that have made interstellar contact, though Public Reaction (pp18-19) to natural psi varies widely. On Earth, and in the Federation (or whatever we end up calling the Federation equivalent), Acceptance is the rule, though there are exceptions. Even societies that react badly to natural psi usually accept psychotronics, though, for much the same reason that societies on modern Earth are generally inclined to accept electricity and electronics - the exceptions survive if no-one with the ability to wants to conquer or seriously attack them. Some races only consider specific powers and/or abilities acceptable (natural, artificial, or both), or only consider one or two powers (or specific abilities) taboo/unclean/wrong.

I mention Terran humanity above, because another conceit of the setting is that there are lots of humanoid aliens, as well as 'aliens' who basically are human. The concept of ancient aliens taking humans from Earth to other worlds was used in TOS (as well as other, non-ST settings, like Johnny1A.2's Orichalcum Universe), and I see no particular reason not to use it here. Some of the ancient humans and other hominids are genetically engineered to better survive on their worlds, others were left to evolve naturally, and some are a mix of both. Which psi abilities are the most common varies from race to race, even without getting into the sapient descendants of non-hominids taken from Earth (e.g. the Caitians), much less the really alien aliens.


Thoughts?

Table of Contents:

The Eugenics Wars question
The Eugenics Wars answer

On Teleporters

Faster-Than-Light Drives

Antimatter and Technological Progression

Solar Cooperative

Beings of 'pure energy' options

Alien Races

First Contact question
First Contact answer

Phasers and other energy weapons question
Phasers
Other Energy Weapons

Personal Force Fields and GURPS Action

Romulan War or equivalent
Romulan War - modified canon specifics

The Federation, or something else?

Grenades

Melee Weapons

Earliest 'Preserver' Activity
Dinosaurs and Earliest 'Preserver' Activity, revised
Most Recent 'Preserver' Activity
How many distinct 'waves of settlement' have the Preservers set down?
How many different groups of Preservers have there been?

How many important conflicts was the Solar Cooperative in before the Romulan War?
Who did the Solar Cooperative have wars with before the Romulan War?
On the War with the Crystal Computers in the Psi Trek setting.
On the Kzin, and their wars with the Solar Cooperative.
Should I make the war that started in 2179 longer (which also helps with the Orions), or should I reduce the penalties that the Kzin are under?

Ranks and Organization of the Solar Cooperative Space Patrol

T'Kon Curse Ray and Probability Shield

Cloaking device question and answer

On fighters, missiles, and probes
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Five Earths, All in a Row. Updated 12/17/2022: Apocrypha: Bridges out of Time, Part I has been posted.

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Old 08-23-2019, 07:16 AM   #2
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Default Re: [Psionics][Space] Psi Trek - Worldbuilding

Table of Contents, continued:

Ranks of the Space Forces question
Ranks of the Space Forces answer

United Space Authority: Commands of the Space Forces

Landing Party/Away Team Loadouts question
Landing Party/Away Team Loadouts answer

First Klingons/thlIngans question
Second Klingons/thlIngans question
Third Klingons/thlIngans question
Third Klingons/thlIngans question, revised; Part 1: Appearance
Third Klingons/thlIngans question, revised; Part 2: Culture

Vote to determine a new worldbuilding question, I

Cidi first contact, question 1
Cidi first contact, question 2
Cidi government question I
Cidi government question II
Cidi government question III

Shapeshifters question

Tholians question I
Tholians question II
Tholians question III
Tholians question IV
Tholians answer IV

Caitian/Felinoid races question I

Sparrials question I
Sparrials question II
Sparrials question III
Sparrials question IV

Orions question I
Orions question II
Orions question III

United Space Authority Space Forces Academy question I
United Space Authority Space Forces Academy question II

FTL Communications question I
FTL Communications question II
FTL Communications question III

SC Interstellar Survey Service question I
SC Interstellar Survey Service question II

Betazoid Template
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Warning, I have the Distractible and Imaginative quirks in real life.

"The more corrupt a government, the more it legislates."
-- Tacitus

Five Earths, All in a Row. Updated 12/17/2022: Apocrypha: Bridges out of Time, Part I has been posted.

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Old 08-23-2019, 12:45 PM   #3
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Default Re: [Psionics] [Space] Psi Trek - Worldbuilding

Quote:
Originally Posted by Prince Charon View Post
This thread is one of several ideas I have (partly because I have the Distractible and Imaginative quirks in real life) that were inspired by what Mailanka has been doing with Star Wars in his Psi Wars setting: Don't Convert, Create! Rather than trying to faithfully convert the setting into GURPS (and most likely failing, especially in the eyes of anyone who views the setting differently than you do), create a setting that both fits the system, and the sort of game you might want to run or play in, inspired by the existing source material.
I am aware of Psi-Wars, but I haven't read the "create, don't convert" thing. I wholeheartedly agree. It's not something a lot of GURPS people talk about, but it's very much how GURPS was designed. (It was never "Play in the world of Greyhawk"; it was always "Play in a fantasy setting with all those recognizable fantasy elements.")

Star Trek is very amenable to this philosophy. What's important is not the exact stats of a phaser or whether there are Klingons. What's important is getting that final-frontier setting where the ship's crew works together and morally when confronted with hostile Otherness.



Quote:
A core conceit of the setting is that all of the 'normal' superscience tech is psychotronics (and some of the weird drugs are probably psi drugs), and the 'strangely advanced and powerful organic technology' that some races have or had is psi-based bio-tech; likewise, a lot of the weird superpowers that some races have are psionic. This is mostly consistent with the various ST series and movies that I've seen, so that's good.
Um.... wut?

Star Trek is not a particularly psi-heavy setting. Sure, some people have it, but it's usually a novelty to the characters. It's more a power of aliens that causes problems for the crew. What makes you think it's a consistent fit with Star Trek?

Quote:
If we assume that psychotronics work better with sapient operators, and that some don't work at all, or fail fairly soon, without them, it allows us to justify following Ken Burnside's Zeroth Law of Space Combat in a way that makes sense in-setting.
But you can justify this without resorting to psionics. Star Trek's technology just takes a different path than ours, and what we automate they do manually. This is a cultural issue, not a technological one. See every episode where Kirk destroys a computer or android. Whenever Star Trek technology gets too big for its britches, it goes haywire, and nobody wants that.

Quote:
Kirk: Machine over man, Spock? It was impressive. Might even be practical.

Spock: Practical, Captain? Perhaps. But not desirable. Computers make excellent and efficient servants; but I have no wish to serve under them. Captain, a starship also runs on loyalty to one man, and nothing can replace it, or him.
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Old 08-24-2019, 05:47 AM   #4
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Default Re: [Psionics] [Space] Psi Trek - Worldbuilding

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Um.... wut?

Star Trek is not a particularly psi-heavy setting. Sure, some people have it, but it's usually a novelty to the characters. It's more a power of aliens that causes problems for the crew. What makes you think it's a consistent fit with Star Trek?
I meant in the sense that where super-ish powers appear, they either clearly come from biology, or they look like something that could plausibly be psionics. Meanwhile, the superscience technology doesn't contradict the idea that they could be psychotronics. Maybe I should have said 'a core conceit of this setting,' instead of 'a core conceit of the setting?' If I'm reading you right, there's where the disconnect came in. Sorry. I'll edit it so that later readers don't get confused.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Stormcrow View Post
But you can justify this without resorting to psionics. Star Trek's technology just takes a different path than ours, and what we automate they do manually. This is a cultural issue, not a technological one. See every episode where Kirk destroys a computer or android. Whenever Star Trek technology gets too big for its britches, it goes haywire, and nobody wants that.
Yes, but it would be nice to have a reason for that. In this setting, the reason is that psychotronics work best when there's a sapient being present. Without that, you get a lot of arguments about how the civilizations who do a lot of automating would stomp all over the ones who don't. Anyway, as noted, this is a new setting inspired by and looking like Star Trek, and as you might have guessed from the title, it's more psi-focused than ST appears to be on the surface (and probably more than it is underneath).

I'm going to be posting some questions to help with worldbuilding. I've got one on the eugenics wars already written (it'll be in the next post, or if I've gone over the character limit again, the next two posts), and a few more that I've been thinking about, but don't have ready yet.
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Warning, I have the Distractible and Imaginative quirks in real life.

"The more corrupt a government, the more it legislates."
-- Tacitus

Five Earths, All in a Row. Updated 12/17/2022: Apocrypha: Bridges out of Time, Part I has been posted.
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Old 08-24-2019, 05:53 AM   #5
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The Eugenics Wars question

The Eugenics Wars are pretty important in Star Trek, because they give a cultural reason for at least humanity and the (strongly human-influenced) Federation to be a Safe-Tech setting. I'm fine with transhumanism in general, but I do want Psi Trek to look somewhat like Star Trek, which means it needs to be a mostly Safe-Tech setting. There are a few ways we might do this:

* TOS timeline: Take the dates given in TOS mostly at face value, and try to make sense of them when fitting something like the Eugenics Wars into the Psi Trek timeline (which isn't the same as using the exact dates, people, and events). (So, 'the eugenics experiments of the 1990s' can be taken as verbal shorthand for either 'experiments that became famous (and infamous) in the 1990s, but were started much earlier,' or 'the people (the 'young supermen') who were the results of those experiments.') I'm fairly fond of this one, mostly because I like alternate histories. See below for a possible timeline.

* TNG timeline: Ignore or fudge most of the dates given in TOS, and use some of the dates given in TNG, which make more sense to us. (So, the 'eugenics' experiments (which probably had a lot more to do with genetic engineering than selective breeding) are remembered by history as having begun in the 1990s, or just the preliminaries for them did (the Human Genome Project formally began in 1990 in our history), the Eugenics Wars probably started in the 2040s, and transitioned into and were effectively ended by WWIII in the 2050s, leaving many parts of the earth still suffering from the Post-Atomic Horror decades later.) I'm reasonably fond of this one as well. See below for a possible timeline.

* New timeline: Ignore the dates from TOS and TNG, and develop the Eugenics Wars from more-or-less whole cloth. I don't really object to this, but it does mean rather more work, and there's a lot of other stuff to decide while developing this setting.

* No Eugenics Wars or equivalent: Self-explanatory, but it does mean that we'd need to come up with a different, preferably still plausible, explanation for Psi Trek being a Safe-Tech setting (saying 'well, it just is' can work, but is kind of unsatisfying). I'm least fond of this option.


Note that the two timelines below are preliminary suggestions, and while they could be used as-is, they're closer to Star Trek than I think Psi Trek is likely to end up as.
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Five Earths, All in a Row. Updated 12/17/2022: Apocrypha: Bridges out of Time, Part I has been posted.
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Old 08-24-2019, 05:53 AM   #6
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TOS-like timeline (Probably more detailed than it needs to be.)

1930s: A group of scientists receive funding for a series of eugenics experiments from the Nazi-lead government of Germany. The are far more successful than they should have been, due to one of the younger scientists being very talented in Probability Alteration. One of the more dangerous techniques they pioneer (which basically only gets particularly good results due to Probability Alteration) is chromosomal transference: moving chromosomes from one germ cell to another. Most of their early results are still disappointing, and in some cases, very disturbing.

1940s-'50s: First generation of successful enhanced children are born of the eugenics experiments.

1944: Several of the scientists running the eugenics experiments in Germany (specifically, those who are more interested in science than in political ideology) recognise that the Third Reich will lose the war, and likely sooner rather than later. Later in the year, they, along with some nurses and host mothers (there's some overlap in that) and one orderly, abscond to Switzerland (disguised as several families on vacation) with the most successful of their first-generation eugenic babies. They set off an explosion to disguise this, and to keep their colleagues from informing anyone of their plans. As with the experiments themselves, it would not have worked nearly so well if one of them hadn't been so talented in Probability Alteration. Whilst there, they quietly arrange to control a quantity of the gold and other valuables stolen by the Nazis, and located in Swiss banks.

1947: The scientists and their charges and helpers relocate to the newly-independent Republic of India, to continue their experiments.

1960s-'70s: The second generation of 'young supermen' are born.

1967: The boy who will be known as Khan Noonien Singh is born.

1980s and early '90s: The third generation of 'young supermen' are born.

1981: The transtator is invented by a group of 'child prodigies' (several of the second-generation 'young supermen') in India.

1989: The DY-100 class of space hibernation vessel ('sleeper ship') is invented. The design takes advantage of 'transtator-based inertia manipulation' (psychotronically-generated psychokinesis) to produce a robust artificial gravity system, including an early inertial dampening field, to improve the heat-radiating systems (with cryokinesis), and to significantly increase the exhaust velocity of the reaction mass. The launch configuration includes some quite impressive fairings, due to the size of the trapezoidal external modules (there are several images of DY-100 with modules mounted here, and three galleries for a more 'realistic' variant here, though none with the fairings or external boosters).

1990s: Scientists begin noticing a tendency for transtator-based equipment to fail with sufficient time and distance from human operators, even though the same devices can work for long periods unmaintained, when people are nearby. A few do not work at all without someone right there, willing them to work. Eugenics Wars begin, as many 'young supermen' seize power in various countries.

1996: Eugenics Wars end, as the young supermen were both too arrogant (biting off more than they can chew), and too lacking in numbers to maintain control of what they had. Several DY-100 class spacecraft are launched by the surviving young supermen, though most fail due to poor launch conditions. In the confusion, all are reported destroyed. A very few of the surviving second generation of 'young supermen,' and a larger number of the third generation, hide among humanity, some of them successfully contributing their genetics to the whole. Others are discovered, and either imprisoned, lynched, or executed. In many cases, those who are imprisoned are also sterilized, a war-crime for which later generations will condemn the perpetrators.

2009: First images of an Earth-like planet outside the Sol System received via transtator-based long-range sensors (psychotronic ESP), trained on the Alpha Centauri system.

2010: The planet orbiting Alpha Centauri is officially named 'Centaurus,' though the planet is sometimes referred to conversationally as 'Alpha Centauri.'

2010s: Psionic abilities are generally acknowledged as real by Terran scientists. The term 'psychotronics' begins to be applied to transtator technology by people other than kooks and parapsychologists. Colonel Shaun Geoffrey Christopher commands the first manned mission to Saturn, aboard the DY-147 class vessel Lewis and Clark.

2018: Fusion-impulse drive developed, making sleeper ships obsolete for interplanetary journeys (but not interstellar ones).

2019: Three DY-156 class sleeper ships (equipped with the new fusion-impulse drive) are sent to the Alpha Centauri system, in the hope that a colony can be founded, there; if the planet Centaurus is unsuitable for colonization, these craft and the unmanned cargo vessels sent with them are capable to being adapted into space habitats, and include asteroid mining equipment.

2032: Zefram Cochrane is born. He is only the third child to be born on Centaurus.

(WWIII occurs at an uncertain point in the twenty-first century, probably before the invention of warp drive.)

2063: Zefram Cochrane invents the first human-built warp drive (based on psychotronic teleportation).

2196 or later: SS Botany Bay, one of the sleeper ships launched in 1996, is discovered by USS Enterprise. (The actual dates of the Enterprise's adventures - apart from the past portion of some of the time travel incidents - were never given in the Gregorian calendar during TOS, but Kirk told Khan that Khan and the others had been asleep for '200 years.')


TNG-like timeline

1990s: A number of scientists working on the Human Genome Project begins making plans to uplift humanity, in what the New York Times will mistakenly call 'eugenics experiments' - a term that will unfortunately be entered into history (to be fair, the later actions of many of the young supermen did not exactly help the project's reputation).

2003: Human Genome Project declared complete.

2020s: Colonization of Mars begins. Transtator invented.

2030s: DY-100 class of space hibernation vessel ('sleeper ship') is invented. Colonization of Mars stepped up significantly, colonization of the asteroids and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn begins.

2040s: Eugenics Wars begin, as many 'young supermen' seize power in various countries.

2050s: WWIII occurs, overlapping with and effectively ending the Eugenics Wars.

2052-'53: Several DY-100 class spacecraft are launched by the surviving young supermen, though most fail due to poor launch conditions. All are reported destroyed. A few of the surviving second generation of 'young supermen,' and a larger number of the third generation, hide among humanity, some of them successfully contributing their genetics to the whole. The Post-Atomic Horror begins.

2063: Warp drive successfully tested. Sleeper ships become obsolete for interplanetary journeys, though most of Earth's humanity will not be aware of this for some time.

2080s: The Post-Atomic Horror ends, not with a bang, but a whimper.

2267: SS Botany Bay, one of the sleeper ships launched in 2053, is discovered by USS Enterprise. (The year is apparently canon or semi-canon as of TNG, and the difference between 2253 and 2267 is small enough for Kirk's '200 years' comment to be acceptable - Spock would have answered with more precision.)


Thoughts?
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Old 08-24-2019, 08:50 AM   #7
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Default Re: [Psionics] [Space] Psi Trek - Worldbuilding

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Thoughts?
You've lost your way at the start if the idea was not to convert. Psi Wars isn't Star Wars only now the Force uses Magic rules. It's just a setting evocative of Star Wars and keeping woo-woo powers and glowing swords. So if you wanted to do that with Star Trek you'd start from scratch by ditching the timeline. Which is a great idea because Star Trek's timeline blows chunks. There was a reason why Blish moved the setting 700 years farther into the future.

Actually if you wanted a good model for that kind of thing you couldn't do better than than the first season of Andromeda.
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Old 08-24-2019, 11:02 AM   #8
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Originally Posted by Prince Charon View Post
I meant in the sense that where super-ish powers appear, they either clearly come from biology, or they look like something that could plausibly be psionics. Meanwhile, the superscience technology doesn't contradict the idea that they could be psychotronics. Maybe I should have said 'a core conceit of this setting,' instead of 'a core conceit of the setting?' If I'm reading you right, there's where the disconnect came in. Sorry. I'll edit it so that later readers don't get confused.
Gotcha. Well, I agree that psychic powers in Star Trek tend to be biological rather than technological in origin, even if they can be technologically created in biology (e.g., "Plato's Stepchildren").

I still don't see that you'd get particularly close to Star Trek by including psionics (in the sense of psychic-power-inducing technology).

Quote:
Yes, but it would be nice to have a reason for that. In this setting, the reason is that psychotronics work best when there's a sapient being present. Without that, you get a lot of arguments about how the civilizations who do a lot of automating would stomp all over the ones who don't.
Except the civilizations who do a lot of automating would run into the same technology-run-amok problem that humans do. It's a basic philosophy of Star Trek that technology is never better than people.

I don't mean to say you shouldn't be doing this. I just don't think it's quite the fit you seem to think it is.

Quote:
Originally Posted by David Johnston2 View Post
There was a reason why Blish moved the setting 700 years farther into the future.
Yeah, it was because in "The Squire of Gothos" Trelane tried to replicate the 19th century and Kirk said it was 900 years past.

Which century or year Star Trek took place in was not solidly established until the movies. During the series individual writers just picked numbers they liked.
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Old 08-25-2019, 01:09 PM   #9
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Originally Posted by Stormcrow View Post
Gotcha. Well, I agree that psychic powers in Star Trek tend to be biological rather than technological in origin, even if they can be technologically created in biology (e.g., "Plato's Stepchildren").

I still don't see that you'd get particularly close to Star Trek by including psionics (in the sense of psychic-power-inducing technology).
What reasonably important tech in Star Trek can you think of that can't be simulated by adapting psychotronics? The only one I can come up with that has significant problems is warp drive, but even that just requires fudging the definitions in a couple of different ways depending on which version you prefer (it's one of the other questions that I'm working on, probably the next one).

If the above suggests to you that I'm misunderstanding what you're saying, please clarify.


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I don't mean to say you shouldn't be doing this. I just don't think it's quite the fit you seem to think it is.
I think this is one of those 'different people see things differently' things that happen all the time on the internet, like two people reading the exact same story and coming up with completely unrelated views of an important character.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Stormcrow View Post
Yeah, it was because in "The Squire of Gothos" Trelane tried to replicate the 19th century and Kirk said it was 900 years past.

Which century or year Star Trek took place in was not solidly established until the movies. During the series individual writers just picked numbers they liked.
I think Trelane was trying to simulate the eighteen century rather than the nineteenth, but that's still way off from 900 years ago, so that point stands. I think it was intentional on Gene Roddenberry's part that the real date would not be established, and they only made a firm statement in the movies because someone else wanted it.

So, is that one vote or two votes to use the Eugenics Wars (or something similar with a more accurate name, since this was not simply a matter of selective breeding of humans) with a totally new timeline? If we do do that, we'd need to work out more of the details when building the timeline.
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Old 08-25-2019, 08:12 PM   #10
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What reasonably important tech in Star Trek can you think of that can't be simulated by adapting psychotronics?
My point is not that you can't find a way to include psionic technology in Star Trek; it's that there's no sign that such technology exists. I think most people would find such technology to be too jarring to exist in a setting that is supposed to emulate Star Trek. "But I don't need a psychic connection to my phaser!"

Quote:
I think Trelane was trying to simulate the eighteen century rather than the nineteenth,
Trelane makes a point of admiring Napoleon, and Napoleon did most of his thing in the 19th century. Trelane thinks that Napoleon is relatively contemporary.
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