GURPS - Space Opera?

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Mr_Sandman

Thinking about it, you're right; I wouldn't necessarily call Star Trek, Vorkosigan or Foundation archetypical examples of space opera. They all have some traditional elements of space opera: action/adventure (Foundation less so than the others), space travel, large scope (Foundation to the greatest extent and Vorkosigan to the least), war/military, but they use those elements to frame primarily social science fiction. I think that Star Trek certainly does have larger than life characters (TOS at least), and has featured some relatively large space battles, if not on the scale of millions of ships.

I think if someone want to produce GURPS Space Opera, whether it was a series, book or Pyramid article, the first step would be defining what the important elements of space opera are, in a way that a large portion of the potential market could agree with.

My take on space opera would include:

• focus on action and adventure,
• large scale setting and action (not confined to one planet, usually not to one system, unless it is a highly populated system with lots of inhabited worlds/moons/stations, such as TSP or Firefly),
• high stakes (entire populations of worlds or even galactic empires are threatened or affected),
• larger than life heroes and villains,
• usually an optimistic tone,
• often dealing with war, military action, space piracy, or armed conflict of some type, on a scale larger than individual fights.

Anyone else have other ideas of what 'space opera' is?

I think it would be summed up in the word "Epic". It would have to have a grand theme to it with characters and circumstances that behave in a, well, operatic way. That is it should be what Homer or Virgil or Snorri would have done if they had been dealing with space instead of Bronze Age or Iron Age. Aral and Gregor are just to competent of rulers for it to be operatic. Vorkoverse is in fact to optimistic to be space opera in a sense; the characters have the right and proper goal of making a quiet world for the Emperor's subjects to live in and achieve it rightly and properly. There is little tragedy or eucatastrophe. The most operatic elements of it take place before the lives of most of the characters; if it was set in the Cetagandan Occupation it might conceivably be a space opera. The Cetagandans are strange enough to be almost alien and the war for Barrayaran national survival was certainly epic enough.

Vorkoverse is more a deconstruction of heroism then a heroic tale. Or rather it is a tale of a form of heroism that goes uneasily with epic style. Finally Vorkoverse is paradoxically mundane. While there is plenty of moralizing, some of it almost Christian if you squint a bit, there is no real hint of metaphysical screwing around of the sort that is typical of space opera. Neither are there aliens. Those last two are not conclusive of course but they are a hint.

Star Trek does have the elements described. It was slow to mature because the franchise developed when episodic programs were the vogue. But all through the franchise they had scenes that were not just "exciting"(in the sense that a Hong Kong gangster movie is exciting) but magnificent. Worf and the Jem'hadder captain might have been like Hector and Achiles. And Star Trek did do all the metaphysical mind-screwing that is not necessarily "scientific" but gives the intellectual exercise peculiar to speculative fiction.

Technic History I am more familiar with then Foundation and I would call it Space Opera. The individual stories are not necessarily operatic and both Van Rjn and Flandry are-at first glance-not heroic characters. They are larger-then-life but in a rather grotesque way at first glance though there is greatness in both. But the beautiful descriptions of settings, and the high drama often found can certainly be called operatic. And tracing the rise and fall of two succeeding empires as a framing device is a splendid feat. While the metaphysical part of space opera is downplayed it is not nonexistent. And there is certainly a sense of wonder about it all.
Technic History is not so much "Optimistic" as cyclic. It goes from hope to despair and back again and that is probably more fit for a Space Opera then simple optimism.

[Theros]

This is interesting thread. I would like to have space opera setting too. GURPS Space gives tool kit for that, Spaceships gives needed ships. Now I need some ready made planets, cities, races and aliens to kill / investigate / trade with etc.

What I think to be very close to interesting space opera setting is Fantasy Flight Games Twilight Imperium setting. Star Wars is kind of nice setting idea (a lot of different playable alien races, also FTL, blasters/laser weapons, artificial gravity, robots, vast cities, old cultures + forgotten cultures, dangerous aliens and species to.meet).

[David Johansen]

Originally Posted by Mr_Sandman

My take on space opera would include:

• focus on action and adventure,
• large scale setting and action (not confined to one planet, usually not to one system, unless it is a highly populated system with lots of inhabited worlds/moons/stations, such as TSP or Firefly),
• high stakes (entire populations of worlds or even galactic empires are threatened or affected),
• larger than life heroes and villains,
• usually an optimistic tone,
• often dealing with war, military action, space piracy, or armed conflict of some type, on a scale larger than individual fights.

I think this list is a really good starting point but I'd add, from a roleplaying standpoint it needs to be open enough to support a wide range of adventures. I'm going to point at Spacemaster Privateers setting as an example of what not to do. There's this area of space where these seven races have been seeded on multiple worlds and two nations form and go to war but the setting explicitly states there is not more intelligent life beyond a certain boundary. So exploration is right out, new races are right out, in fact, while trying to create a setting that gives the PCs something to do (privateering) they've created a setting that the GM can't do anything with.

We've got Star Wars and Star Trek and Babylon 5 and Alien roleplaying games already. We already have GURPS Lensman, Planet of Adventure, Vorkosigian, and Traveller. If we're talking about a box like Dungeon Fantasy, I think the setting needs to be broadly recognizable but distinctive enough that it offers something of its own.

Personally, the implied setting of GURPS Aliens might be a good place to start. You might want a big bad empire but I think an alliance of the bad guys might be a good backdrop. The Kaa and the Kronin and those human mercenaries who carved out their own empire a generation ago have united and worlds are falling. I like the idea of balkanized space because it gives you more places to go and you can always throw in another little space nation. Space is really big, after all.

I'd probably go with relatively fast FTL so you could cross the galaxy in a year, fast enough to make voyages of discovery but slow enough that you can detect the enemy fleet as its coming. Personal force fields that don't stop melee weapons, reactionless drives, and death rays. Habitable worlds would be rare enough to be worth fighting over, probably in proportion to ftl speed to make controling territory possible. Naturally this requires ftl sensors and communications. Artificial intelligence would exist but it would slow computers to the point where a human could keep up because story reasons.

The idea would be to have a setting that maps to natural geopolitics with lots of high tech toys but endless possibilities to discover.

[AlexanderHowl]

One issue that I have with most Space Operas is that the speed of communication ends up being too fast and the sensor range is too far. I enjoy the idea of light-lagged communications and sensors, as it gives an element of surprise. Courier spacecraft and spy spacecraft are fun opportunities for adventures in space.

If I was going to make a Space Opera setting, I would avoid FTL communications and sensors and have the standard hyperdrive with a velocity of 300 parsecs per day. Courier spacecraft would provide communications and spy spacecraft would provide sensors, both at the speed of the spaceship. With four hyperdrives, both be capable of traveling at 1200 parsecs per day and, since they would use fuel cells, they could maintain relative stealth.

A standard courier/spy spacecraft would have one control room, one extended array, one fuel tank, one habitat, one hanger bay, three armor, four reactionless engines, four fuel cells, and four hyperspace drives. It would also have stealth and chameleon. With an endurance of two days, it could travel 200 parsecs in 16 hours, spend 16 hours delivering its messages/map the system, and travel 200 parsecs in 16 hours to its home base for resupply. A SM+8 courier/spy spacecraft would have enough room for six crew, the perfect size for a party.

[dcarson]

In the Exordium series by Sherwood Smith and Dave Trowbridge you have FTL jumps including being able to do tactical ones in system but no FTL sensors or comms. So every time a warship jumps during a battle it drops a data pod that transmits encrypted all the sensor info the ship has collects so that other ships on that side can see what it knows from hours away. each ship builds the best fusion of what is currently happening form those.

[Inky]

Yes, quite. If everyone can see everyone from everywhere, it's not like being alone in space or going on long journeys at all. If there is FTL communication, it would work better if it wasn't instantaneous. Space captains SHOULD be able to be in the middle of nowhere knowing it'll be minutes, hours or days before they can contact their base and with only their wits to rely on until then.

Even Star Trek does this, for instance in "Balance of Terror", that TOS one where they're being chased by the Romulan ship - the message saying they're allowed to fire on the Romulans, treaty or no treaty, arrives only at the end of the episode after they've already done it.

Communications in Star Trek, of course, travel mostly at the speed of plot, which has its advantages and could be at least partly achieved by having communications done through a series of fixed relay stations. That way, how long it would take to call X would depend how close you and they happened to be to the nearest relay station (the signal travelling at light-speed up to that point) and whether somebody had already blown up said station.

But AlexanderHowl's messenger and scout ships sound promising, too - they'd each be an ideal vessel and job for a party of PCs to have an adventure in.

Are we talking about this being an actual specific setting, like IW or Dungeons and Dragons's Eberron? If so, presumably it'd have to come down on one side or the other about whether FTL communication is possible. But you could still have both options available by having it invented some time after FTL travel in the setting's history, and allowing for GMs to set their campaigns in the pre- or post-FTL communications era.

[Turhan's Bey Company]

I should mention that during the recent Fnordcon, Douglas Cole announced that he had permission to do a DFRPG-like GURPS-based SF game, which I think falls under the general heading of space opera without making the mistake of trying to be a comprehensive space opera game. It's going to be an "early days of expansion into the galaxy" sort of game inspired by things like X-Com and the Stargate franchise. He hasn't, last I heard, started actually writing it, but he has plans and is doing research (which is to say, binge-watching SG-1).

[Anders]

Douglas Cole is a solid writer. I would trust him with any project.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Inky

If there is FTL communication, it would work better if it wasn't instantaneous.

That might not be the only desirable quality..

For example, let's say that FTL communication is acomplished only by a "hyper-flasher". A hyper-flasher is a kilometers long particle acclerator that shoots particles into hyperspace and from there they re-emerge in a target system as bright flashes of energy. This of course takes huge amouints of enrgy as well as a big station.

So it's pretty literally an FTL semaphore and its' bandwidth is almost non-existent. You can send only the briefest of messages sent in telegraph-speak and unless there's another hyper-flasher in your system you can't send messages back.

So PCs can get messages that tell them 'Emergency! Go to 40 Eridani soonest!" and not much more. That's probably a useful trait for FTL communication from the GM's perspective.

[AlexanderHowl]

A similar thing could be a SM+4 emergency messenger pod. It would have one control room, one extended array, three armor, five MHD turbines, and ten hyperspace drives. It is capable of traveling at 3,000 parses per day, though its maximum range is 1500 parsecs, so it usually travels up to 750 parsecs, delivers a message, and then travels back with the reply. After it returns to its base, it needs to be picked up for resupply before it can be reused.

Come to think of it, military bases could use such a system for pretty rapid communications. A society could maintain a major starbase every 750 parsecs, allowing them to send an emergency message within six hours. While help would take a minimum of three days to arrive (12 hours before jump and 60 hours after jump), messages could be chained from one base to another. Word of an invasion could spread 3,000 parsecs per day.

The order to prevent massive sneak attacks, I would suggest a hyperspace shadow of 10 AU per Sol-Mass. In the Sol System, this would allow for fortresses around Saturn and Sol-Saturn L4/L5. It would also mean that fugitives would need to run to the edge of the hyperspace shadow to escape their enemies and/or the authorities.