12-14-2019, 10:48 PM | #1 |
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Idaho Falls, Idaho
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Reboot THS
How would you “Reboot” THS to update it for the unexpected technology changes in the last 17+ years since it was first published?
Would you redo the Mar “greening”, for being too optimistic? If the Martian exiles didn’t go to the belt, would you see it or out system habitats come into being later, or at all? What other things would you consider changing? Would you change the big powers? How does your vision of 2100 look different than David Pulver’s vision in the original THS settings? |
12-15-2019, 08:49 AM | #2 | |
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Re: Reboot THS
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For example, VII glasses anticipated the Google glass but those were much less than a fantastic success. There may have been a basic misreading of what many people wanted to use the Internet for. We're probably behind on genetic manipulation. 4e's revised TL system is more conservative on this too. The Felicia and Herakles genotypes that were achievable at TL10 in 3e have TL11 and even 12 features now as just a couple of examples. Then there are places where tech and politics intersect such as China's commitment to space which does not seem to have gone beyond a few press releases in our timeline. On the other hand you can join the Elon Musk cult of personality if you want to and extrapolate things from his press releases instead. He does have more launches to back them up than the Chinese ever came up with. He just doesn't have quite as many of those as he has press releases. An update of the beginning date of play from 2100 to 2120 would be the minimum but going to 2200 might be safer and not age so quickly or badly.
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Fred Brackin |
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12-15-2019, 10:03 AM | #3 |
Banned
Join Date: Aug 2004
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Re: Reboot THS
Ultra-tech (page 8) provides a variety of TL progressions:
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TL Accelerated Fast Medium Slow Retarded 9 2020 2025 2030 2040 2050 10 2050 2075 2120 2200 2500 11 2100 2200 2500 3000 7000 12 2200 2600 4000 8000 20000 |
12-15-2019, 10:14 AM | #4 | ||
GURPS FAQ Keeper
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
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Re: Reboot THS
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Instead, admit that THS is a divergent timeline, let go of presentism, and put in a blatant divergence point somewhere between 1960s (like Prey 2017 did) and 2000 (nice round date). Yes, it's been one of the most vulnerable weakpoints in the otherwise radical hard-sci-ness of THS. Quote:
Aside from putting more persons and bodies into space, this should involve further blurring the line between man and machine, possibly finally inventing nanite rewrites of biobrains, and making better safer space drives (barely-viable THS HEDM engine, I'm looking at you). Make Duncanites, Gypsy Angels, martian terraformers, and possibly some other space factions into great powers. Preferably rewrite Clarke-1 into yet another great power, and make its incompatibility with the EU more blatant and its values more alien. Generally make it so that the great powers are playing tug of war over space and not just over the old blue rock (see above). I'd say more that I'd want to steer THS back to the kind of brave radicalness that it seems to be losing as years go by (both due to radical HSF stuff not being added to newer books, and due to already-published radical stuff being retconned away by newer books [Bioroid Bazaar, I'm looking at you]). |
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12-15-2019, 04:35 PM | #5 | ||
Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: near London, UK
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Re: Reboot THS
Perhaps oddly, one of the things I find most dated is the armguns. They were very briefly being proposed as the Wave of the Future, but as far as I can see it came down to a couple of enthusiastic press releases. Just as to me H. Beam Piper's work is more dated by the universality of cocktail hour (600 years in the future, but only 40 years old when Piper was writing it) than it is by company structures that have been around for rather longer.
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I don't like the Eclipse Phase approach of taking away Earth. But I think that a more modern approach to the game design (one that starts with "you are X who do Y") could put the focus squarely on not-Earth.
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12-15-2019, 05:54 PM | #6 | |
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Re: Reboot THS
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Transhumanism by contrast is either bland (call it "nanovanilla") or some sort of not-very-mass-appeal taste ("trans-sushi"). The nanovanilla parts make sense mostly but don't necessarily lead to a path of adventure (Of course we want to make ourselves immune to to disease and lead a life of leisure forever"). The trans-sushi doesn't look very appealing to many people ("Why exactly did I have my brain run through a cuisinart to create a computer program in my image?"). The comment about "You are X and you do Y" looks very much on target. D&D has a default adventure, cyberpunk has one too and Traveller has a couple but Transhuman Space? Not so much.
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Fred Brackin |
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12-17-2019, 12:25 PM | #7 |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: Reboot THS
I like Transhuman Space a lot; I've run two campaigns in it and would run a third if I had the players (my old player population is 80 miles away and will be much further in a few months). But it did take me time to figure out a "you are X who do Y" for the setting.
On the other hand, I don't think that's necessarily a defect in a setting. Some settings only support one type of campaign; but others support multiple types of campaign. And the latter are richer. As sort of a limiting case, the ultimate in richly detailed settings, the real world, can support comedy, tragedy, romance, action/adventure, intrigue, horror, mystery, crime drama, caper, workplace drama, and a lot of other genres; "you are X" could be plastic surgeons or spies or rich tourists or many other things. On the gripping hand, I think Transhuman Space is a classic—but I don't find replicating a classic in the present world where things have moved on a straightforward task. Part of what makes it a classic is its wealth of detail, but a lot of that detail no longer is sustainable. Trying to reboot it would be like trying to modernize Dr. Moreau without the vivisection, when we now know about immunology and brain function at a level Wells didn't. You could do a creative reinvention, but i think such reinventions work better if they allude to the original rather than trying to reproduce it item by item.
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Bill Stoddard I don't think we're in Oz any more. |
12-17-2019, 02:31 PM | #8 | |
Join Date: Dec 2012
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Re: Reboot THS
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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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12-18-2019, 03:21 AM | #9 | |
Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: near London, UK
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Re: Reboot THS
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The other problem is that it's more preparatory work for the GM to convert that page of campaign outline into a GURPS campaign than to say "OK, this is an Airship Pirates game, everything in the book is available". For TS in particular, there are some specific restrictions: no stealthy spacecraft and near-universal surveillance make games about uncovering secrets difficult because it's hard plausibly to say "you have this information and can put it together, but for some reason the rest of the world doesn't or can't".
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12-18-2019, 09:49 AM | #10 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: Reboot THS
TL divisions aren't obvious in hindsight either, because TLs aren't really how technology works.
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