Hard Science setting

[Drifter]

In discussions that point out the shortcomings of the OTU in regards to observed reality, the point is often made that we should just chuck Traveller and play a game based on hard SF.

IMO the success of Traveller is that it ofered the GM and players a universe that was easily explain and adapted to. The world of the SF novel published in the mid 20th century. While everyone might not have read Dune or Foundation, everyone read something similar enough that if you were a SF fan you could identify with what was being described in a Traveller game. Jump drive, aliens, shotguns and lasers.

But...

What does today's SF fan have in common. I just got my recommended best SF and Fantasy from a megacorp, and none of the books were SF, much less hard SF.

Does today's potential player have a common background to be able to play any version of Traveller? Pulp or opera or hard SF? Is there any assumption that can be made by GMs that 'everyone will know'? Or do we all expect lightsabers and all aliens to be noble warriors or evil insectoids/reptilians? Or does hard SF mean bioengineered cat-people?

[Malenfant]

Originally Posted by Drifter

Does today's potential player have a common background to be able to play any version of Traveller? Pulp or opera or hard SF? Is there any assumption that can be made by GMs that 'everyone will know'? Or do we all expect lightsabers and all aliens to be noble warriors or evil insectoids/reptilians? Or does hard SF mean bioengineered cat-people?

We may all know "lightsabers and noble warrior aliens" and there are probably a lot of people who just want to watch or play Star Wars or Star Trek and not much else because they're pretty mainstream and accessible to everyone - but someone who actually considers themselves a scifi fan would most likely have a wider reading/watching base than that, and I'd imagine that most people who play SF RPGs have more than a casual interest in scifi.

The OTU's tropes are pretty dated and cliched by modern standards - I think the closest thing around today is probably the military SF stuff (which admittedly is fairly popular). Otherwise I think scifi has moved on beyond the tropes of the 1940s-60s. I think people expect more technology, more transhumanism, more realism, and less "people in funny suit" aliens nowadays.

I'd consider the great current/recent 'hard SF' authors to include Alastair Reynolds, Greg Bear, Gregory Benford, Iain M Banks, Charles Stross, Stephen Baxter and Jack McDevitt (who is probably the most "Travellerish" of those). In fact, the likes of Alastair Reynolds is what is now referred to as the "New Space Opera", which seems to actually be hard SF with a epic/galactic scope, rather than gonzo SF that doesn't care about the science.

But there's a few really good harder SF games out there too - Eclipse Phase has a fantastically detailed and really cool setting with conspiracy and alien mystery, there's Transhuman Space of course, and Blue Planet. On the smaller scale there are games like Stellar Wind and the just-released "Orbital" setting for MGT.

[johndallman]

The SF that (nearly) everyone knows is movies and TV. And none of those are "hard science".

There are still plenty of people who read SF books, but there are so many more books published these days that finding something everyone has read is much harder than it was in the seventies. There also seems to be less "generic" SF; LOTR-influenced fantasy has made world-building compulsory. So, for example, I'd happily play in an SF game set in The Culture, or the Revelation Space universe. But the two can't reasonably fit into the same game.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Drifter

In discussions that point out the shortcomings of the OTU in regards to observed reality, the point is often made that we should just chuck Traveller and play a game based on hard SF.

Well, at the risk of complaining about the fit of a garment that wasn't made for me, that isn't what I have been suggesting.

• I suggest that people who are happy with the OTU the way it is ought to keep right on playing it.
  
• I suggest that people who are not happy with the OTU ought to stop griefing the happy Traveller players on forums dedicated to Traveller, because that is trolling.
  
• What is suggest is not replacing Traveller with a game based on hard SF, but with one adapted for similar adventures but with better geometry, astronomy, planetology, physics, biology, demography, anthropology, sociology, economics, and political science. And with technology at least as good as I can buy today in a discount electronics shop.
  • This is not to say that a game based on contemporary hard SF might not be awesome. It's just that that is not what I suggest to malcontent Traveller fans.

"Hard SF" is more than just SF with better science than usual. It is SF in which science, technological change, are the point of the story, in which the science is not only accurate but central to the appeal.

And while we're in the district, "hard SF" is not a synonym for "good SF". You can have great adventure stories in SF settings without much attention on what exactly the gadgets do, or any at all on how they do it. For example, Jack Vance's Oikumene, Gaean Reach, and Alastor Cluster novels are among my favourites, but they spare very little attention for technical detail. That's the sort of material that I would like to run in a setting just like the OTU but different in every way.

The thing that you have to beware of, I think, is liking nothing about Traveller except the installed fan base, and therefore trying to leave and take the fanbase with you. That is doomed to failure. Most Traveller fans are Traveller fans because they like Traveller just fine the way it is.

[Malenfant]

Traveller is not just the OTU though. I know some people like to think that's the case, but that's just wrong and has been for years.

Personally I don't care if the people who like a strict interpretation of the OTU want to carry on playing it that way. I know I have no chance of changing the OTU, but I don't see anything wrong with putting out alternatives to solve the many problems that it has, and if those can be fixed while not making huge drastic changes to the canon then I don't see any harm in that either (which is what I'm trying to do here, even though I have no obligation to do so).

Maybe part of the issue is that it won't be "the OTU" anymore, but generally if people talk about "alternate traveller universes" then those threads don't seem to generate much interest, which is a shame. I want to see what happens when you make the OTU more physically realistic - and I remain unconvinced that the OTU would really change that drastically as a result. And most of what I talk about can be applied to non-OTU settings too.

Otherwise, Traveller is a SF roleplaying game, and you can make it as 'hard' or 'soft' as you like and there's nothing wrong with either option.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Malenfant

Traveller is not just the OTU though. I know some people like to think that's the case, but that's just wrong and has been for years.

No, not really. Sure, you can use Traveller as a generic science fiction RPG (unless you're talking licensed conversions, which are very specifically setting conversions), but as a practical issue almost no-one does, because the Traveller game system really isn't very good.

[Malenfant]

Originally Posted by Anthony

No, not really. Sure, you can use Traveller as a generic science fiction RPG (unless you're talking licensed conversions, which are very specifically setting conversions), but as a practical issue almost no-one does, because the Traveller game system really isn't very good.

I can think of a few original settings that use Traveller as a base. I know I made several of my own, but published settings include Outer Veil and now Orbital. And if the Traveller rules weren't very good, then why does it seem to be so popular and generally praised on rpg boards?

None of that makes a difference to what I said though. Traveller is not just the OTU, and hasn't been for a long time now - particularly since Mongoose have pushed for other settings that are based on its rules.

[Hans Rancke-Madsen]

Originally Posted by Malenfant

None of that makes a difference to what I said though. Traveller is not just the OTU, and hasn't been for a long time now - particularly since Mongoose have pushed for other settings that are based on its rules.

The OTU is the universe that I share with all the Traveller fans who share it with me. Any other setting may or may not be Traveller (just because Mongoose claims that Judge Dredd, Strontium Dog, and Hammer's Slammers are Traveller doesn't mean that I agree with them -- IMO none of them are), but whether they are or not is of very little interest to me, because I neither know of nor care about them. I care about other people's personal Traveller universes pretty much to the extent that they are familiar to me (which in practical terms means 'resembles the OTU') and I expect others to care about my Traveller universe no more than to the extent that it is familiar to them.

(The above statement is slightly too strong. There are things about other people's Traveller universes that I might be interested in. A nice set of deckplans for an X-boat with maneuver drives, a good writeup of a world with an uninspired canonical writeup, etc.) But adding the requisite weasel words made the sentences so convoluted.)


Hans

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Hans Rancke-Madsen

The OTU is the universe that I share with all the Traveller fans who share it with me. <snip> I care about other people's personal Traveller universes pretty much to the extent that they are familiar to me (which in practical terms means 'resembles the OTU') and I expect others to care about my Traveller universe no more than to the extent that it is familiar to them.

Just so. I don't think the vast majority of Traveller fans have any interest at all in replacing their existing copies of Rim of Fire, Sword Worlds, Behind the Claw with replacements that have better UWPs. On the other hand, the SF fans who do demand better UWPs also demand better astrography (e.g. a three-dimensional universe) and consistent, plausible interstellar institutions.

As for arguing that Universe, Space Opera, Star Patrol, ForeSight, GURPS Space, Diaspora, Stars Without Number, The Thousand Suns, and Starblazers Adventures campaigns not set in the OTU are really Traveller campaigns in disguise, that's some sort of unfalsifiable converse of the True Scotsman Fallacy.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Malenfant

I'd consider the great current/recent 'hard SF' authors to include Alastair Reynolds, Greg Bear, Gregory Benford, Iain M Banks, Charles Stross, Stephen Baxter and Jack McDevitt (who is probably the most "Travellerish" of those). .

Even I haven't read all of those and my reading tastes are far broader than those of my firends. Even though there are some decent readers in my current group they don't even go into modern/urban Fantasy farther than Harry Dresden.

So I'm not oin a position to start up a Hard SF game beyond saying "It's like Outland" and I doubt it's widely common for others to be.