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

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

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.

"Physical damage" isn't a binary variable either. I mean, suppose your kid wants to go out for soccer? Carol's niece played soccer in high school, and she damaged her legs and had to have surgery on both knees. Should her parents have deducted the cost of that medical treatment and physical therapy from her allowance?

I suppose you'll want to say that playing soccer is a valuable activity. But that's a subjective opinion; not everyone values sports. And on the other hand, a lot of people value the social coolness of smoking (note that Constanza was taking a course in hardedge dance that her father paid for!) and/or the neurochemical effects; that's a subjective value judgment, but no more subjective than thinking a winning soccer season is a good thing, worth risking lasting injury and lifelong health issues for.

There are health issues for a lot of things other than smoking. Do you want to say that children should never have ice cream? Or the caffeine in cola? Or, for that matter, watered wine, in the Mediterranean style?

I don't think it's an inevitable assumption that the future is going to share present-day expectations that children will be shielded from every possible risk. THS has the European Union if you like that sort of thing; societies with lower CR can plausibly have different customs, and people with different attitudes.

[Flyndaran]

I also fully understand modifying a setting to cater to players' and/or GM's quirks, squeamishness, etc.
Like a hypothetical player that moved from Haiti just not wanting anything to do with slavery in any form.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

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.

Consistency is good. But either the fact in a previous PDF was an error, in which case it should be errat'ed, or it isn't an error, in which case adding a contradicting statement in a newer PDF reduces consistency. I'm not sure if I'm in the minority opinion, but I find it bad if I read a PDF, get a fact from it, base a concept or action or investigative conclusion around it, and then get told that I am wrong and the fact is false by someone who has read a newer PDF (possibly after a game-relevant choice has already been made and cannot be rolled back without butterfly effects).

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

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.

OK, I guess canonicity of Pyramids is something fuzzy, even judging by this paragraph. But:

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

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

You have a point there regarding this specific article that I brought up.

[Phil Masters]

As you seem to be obsessed with the horrors of that particular article, it was clearly worth mentioning.

But anyway, the whole question of "canon" in TS is a little more fuzzy than with some game lines. This is not Original World of Darkness. There is no metaplot. Frankly, I assume that everyone's campaign will wander a little bit away from the kernel of the books, sooner or later. Like the game rules, the published setting data is ultimately a toolkit for GMs. But I want it to be a toolkit where the tools all fit in the box together, and where none of them make my head hurt to look at them.

(A bit of recent history: I was, to be honest, a little bit uncertain about Wings of the Rising Sun when David pitched it, because it involved adding a whole significant organisation to the setting that hadn't been mentioned before, complete with a large number of space stations in LEO. Not inconsistent, but a bit ... out of the blue. But then I decided that it was too cool to turn down.)

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

As you seem to be obsessed with the horrors of that particular article, it was clearly worth mentioning.

I brought it up as one of the more prominent examples recently discussed, plus because I don't like TL10 stuff being just TL(less than 10) stuff with technobabble terminology thrown in but no sensofwonder-inspiring improvement.
If I'm obsessed with anything, it's the biotechnology of all sorts; and yes, I feel that Bioroid Bazaar / the other related thing are more biotech-pessimistic than e.g. Broken Dreams or In the Well, in overall tone.

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

But anyway, the whole question of "canon" in TS is a little more fuzzy than with some game lines. This is not Original World of Darkness. There is no metaplot. Frankly, I assume that everyone's campaign will wander a little bit away from the kernel of the books, sooner or later. Like the game rules, the published setting data is ultimately a toolkit for GMs. But I want it to be a toolkit where the tools all fit in the box together, and where none of them make my head hurt to look at them.

TS is definitely metaplotless; I don't see that as either a flaw nor a reason for the canon to be fuzzy. It's essentially a snapshot of the setting during New Year's Eve for 2100, plus a history of what happened before that. If I want to find out how things are in Netherlands in 2100, I can open FW89 and read it, and get as much of an answer as is reasonably possible to fit into a book like Fifth Wave. Sure, there aren't answers to everything I might be curious about, but the answers are concrete and reasonably unambiguous.

I see the setting books of TS as the toolkit for campaign-building, not worldbuilding. Say there's two campaigns, one about weird memes in the High Frontier and Deep Beyond, another about criminal investigations in USA/Mars. It's reasonable for one of those campaign to include Xenocop and Valkyrie PCs and NPCs 'on the stage' and for the other not to; but it's highly weird for the setting to include or not include Xenocop and Valkyrie designs depending on the campaign being run if* the setting is taken 'by the book'. If the setting is taken in modified form instead, then of course it's OK, but that's different.
Now, different books contradicting each other, or book saying something like 'well, book 1 said C, but who knows, any one of A, B, C, D, E might be true' make it hard to achieve a single 'by the book' variant of a setting.

I like having the option to play the Default Variant (Unmodified) setting, because it allows cleaner integration of setting facts into the lives of PCs.

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

(A bit of recent history: I was, to be honest, a little bit uncertain about Wings of the Rising Sun when David pitched it, because it involved adding a whole significant organisation to the setting that hadn't been mentioned before, complete with a large number of space stations in LEO. Not inconsistent, but a bit ... out of the blue. But then I decided that it was too cool to turn down.)

WotRS was certainly out of the blue, and certainly cool. And I am surprised that it did get published - precisely because it is so big on the Whoa! factor. The one disappointing big about those LEO stations is that I don't get to know in which LEOs they are; this makes it somewhat hard to figure deployment times and delta costs if it ever becomes relevant.

* == Please don't cut out this section when quoting, as that would misrepresent my post.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

I brought it up as one of the more prominent examples recently discussed, plus because I don't like TL10 stuff being just TL(less than 10) stuff with technobabble terminology thrown in but no sensofwonder-inspiring improvement.

Aren't you talking about "what I want in a book" rather than "what I want in a game"? They're not exactly the same question.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by whswhs

"Physical damage" isn't a binary variable either. I mean, suppose your kid wants to go out for soccer? Carol's niece played soccer in high school, and she damaged her legs and had to have surgery on both knees. Should her parents have deducted the cost of that medical treatment and physical therapy from her allowance?
...

There are health issues for a lot of things other than smoking. Do you want to say that children should never have ice cream? Or the caffeine in cola? Or, for that matter, watered wine, in the Mediterranean style?

I don't think it's an inevitable assumption that the future is going to share present-day expectations that children will be shielded from every possible risk. THS has the European Union if you like that sort of thing; societies with lower CR can plausibly have different customs, and people with different attitudes.

Are you being serious or going ultra pedantic on me? Ingesting major carcinogens is nothing like occasional candy. Moderate ingestion of caffeine and sugar is almost unavoidable in nature and perfectly harmless.
Of course any group of people can become paranoid about anything. That won't magically make it rational or scientifically defensible.

Soccer dangers are the same as for any sport or athletic activity. It's not as prone to TBI and sudden death like American football, rugby, or gymnastics.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

As you seem to be obsessed with the horrors of that particular article, it was clearly worth mentioning.

But anyway, the whole question of "canon" in TS is a little more fuzzy than with some game lines. This is not Original World of Darkness. There is no metaplot. Frankly, I assume that everyone's campaign will wander a little bit away from the kernel of the books, sooner or later. Like the game rules, the published setting data is ultimately a toolkit for GMs. But I want it to be a toolkit where the tools all fit in the box together, and where none of them make my head hurt to look at them.
...

I like to think of it as the books give one universe, while individual campaigns will be set in close or not so close parallels.
The moment anything is added or subtracted, even PCs, the setting changes from R.A.W. and what authors were thinking when writing them.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

...
WotRS was certainly out of the blue, and certainly cool. And I am surprised that it did get published - precisely because it is so big on the Whoa! factor. The one disappointing big about those LEO stations is that I don't get to know in which LEOs they are; this makes it somewhat hard to figure deployment times and delta costs if it ever becomes relevant.

* == Please don't cut out this section when quoting, as that would misrepresent my post.

Somehow I missed hearing about that supplement. They sound like the kids' show Rescue Heroes but set in the future.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Are you being serious or going ultra pedantic on me? Ingesting major carcinogens is nothing like occasional candy. Moderate ingestion of caffeine and sugar is almost unavoidable in nature and perfectly harmless.

Tell that about sugar to my diabetic friends.

Yes, smoking can kill you, or lead to horrifying debilities. But human beings do all sorts of things that lower their life expectancy or risk lasting bodily dysfunction or both. It's their bodies and they have a right to do it. For that matter, I'd say that they have a right to commit out and out suicide.

When you're talking about children, whose parents have to make decisions for them, I'd agree that the parents have an obligation not to kill them, not to deprive them of what they need so that they die of, say, starvation or cold, and not to allow them to do suicidal things. But "something that has a probability of killing you in the long run" (the CDC estimates a 10-year decrease in life expectancy) is not the same as "suicide." If an adult lights a cigarette, I don't think it's rational to treat them as if they were shoving the barrel of a .44 magnum into their mouth.

There are societies that practice the close supervision of parents and that require parents to prevent their children from doing anything that would impair health or decrease safety. We call that trait "high CR" in GURPS. In societies with lower CR, I figure a lot of things will be left to parental discretion. Montréal is CR2, which I figure is less regulatory than the current US.

Now, in fact, I gave the players a moment of creepiness with that initial notification, because it suggested that Big Brother was watching and was going to threaten to take away Gianni's custody of his daughter, which is way more controlling that American child welfare authorities currently would be about this; that is, I gave a hint of "you've fallen into an authoritarian panopticon state!" But then I reversed that by having them leave it up to Gianni what to do about the situation. . . .