[Space] and [UT] for New Space Opera

[Agemegos]

In a thread in Geek Culture, doctorevilbrain asked:

• What is the difference between space opera and new space opera?
• How would you use GURPS Space and GURPS Ultra-Tech to run a new space opera campaign?

Unfortunately the discussion among the geeks in Geek Culture wasn't as specific to GURPS as doctorevilbrain would have liked, and I think a lot of the masters of doing stuff with GURPS missed it. Therefore, and because I'm interested in the question myself, I'm re-asking the second question here. What tools from the Space and Ultra-Tech trays of the toolbox are useful for new space opera gaming? What options, setting switches, tech paths, gadgets, generation procedures etc. from Space and Ultra-Tech would be good to use in a new space opera campaign?

As for the first question, the geeky discussion of subgenre boundaries is perhaps best left in the old thread, in Geek Culture.

[sir_pudding]

I'm going to start by addressing the heterogeneity here by defining what "new space opera" means to me and then address what bits of GURPS Ultra-Tech and GURPS Space apply to trying to run it GURPS (which I have actually done with Xia of The Empire of Heaven).

To me, the "new space opera" includes a lot of what was written with an interstellar or galactic scope and published after Star Wars, unless it is deliberately ultra-hard (Benford's Galactic Center books) or deliberately retro (Bujold's Vorkosigan books). It rejects the new wave's focus on smallish stories about the near-future on Earth, the dystopian pessimism of cyberpunk, and the rigid rules of high literary hard-sf, while still being heavily influenced by all of those. It is closely related and sometimes overlaps with radical hard-sf (Spin and Axis come to mind as fitting into that overlapping zone). To be (for me) "new space opera" it must:

1. Have an interstellar or galactic scope.
2. Be something of the epic in scale.
3. Have some attention to technology and science, even if it is just consistent technobabble.
4. Have technology with radical and transformative effects on daily life.
5. Not ignore or retrotech the information age. Usually means that AI needs to be addressed or at least lampshaded.

Some (heterogenous) examples: Banks' Culture, Simmon's Hyperion and Endymion, Williams' Dread Empire's Fall, Leckey's Ancillary Justice.

Now that's out of the way, GURPS stuff:
Ultra-Tech p. 8-11:

• Most examples should start with the Radical Hard SF path, but typically include some elements of Emergent Superscience most commonly some form of FTL (and most typically stable wormholes that don't permit closed time-like curves).
• Natotech Revolutions (and even singularities!) are common tropes.
• High-Biotech may exist. Especially for radical daughter cultures or aliens.
• Safe-Tech may exist in a limited way, such as in settings where AI volitional AI are heavily controlled in order to prevent a singularity.
• Retro-tech and Psi-tech are totally inappropriate.

[sir_pudding]

In GURPS Space:

• Settings aren't likely to be High Industrial, but are likely to be High Biotech, High Cybertech and High Nanotech all at the same time. pp. 50-51.
• Leisure Societies p. 183 and Macro-Life p. 191 are both common tropes.
• Machine Civilizations p.200 are common especially those which include humans and other biological creatures as partners (or pets) of the AIs.
• Modified Humans, Uplifted Animals, Robots and AIs, and Aliens pp. 216-218 are common characters. Aliens are as likely to be as modified as humans are. Psionic Mutants aren't common, though, as psi is definitely retro.

[Agemegos]

Retrotech is right out. What about safetech? My feeling is that it need not be a deal-breaker, but that there would have to be something to make the result new space opera rather than rationalised old space opera. Are there examples in the literature?

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

Retrotech is right out. What about safetech? My feeling is that it need not be a deal-breaker, but that there would have to be something to make the result new space opera rather than rationalised old space opera. Are there examples in the literature?

Dread Empire's Fall: AI is restricted by the former alien overlords who feared Singularity.
Barnes Thousand Worlds has AI restricted (although less so) for similar reasons.
If Mass Effect counts (for me it definitely is a borderline case; new with old sensibilities or old with new elements; not sure) it also restricts AI.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

Retrotech is right out. What about safetech? My feeling is that it need not be a deal-breaker, but that there would have to be something to make the result new space opera rather than rationalised old space opera. Are there examples in the literature?

Star Trek: TNG. It's an example of what I call NotSafeTech because whenever one of the SafeTech items comes up it goes Horribly Wrong.

Banning some item because of a rational assessment of risks wouldn't make a place SafeTech.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Star Trek: TNG. It's an example of what I call NotSafeTech because whenever one of the SafeTech items comes up it goes Horribly Wrong.

Star Trek is, IMO, definitely not new space opera, when it is space operatic at all it is old space opera.