"I realised why sci-fi rules are not sci-fi enough for me" Topic

"Now it has to be the social effect of science on the human condition, be it personal or cultural."

Clarke's 3rd kind of science fiction story (the first two being gadget and adventure styles. Summarised as: 1 Gadget SF: Man invents car, gives lecture about inventing car. 2 Adventure SF: man invents car and mechanised high-speed chase with villain. 3 Social SF: man invents car, gets stuck in traffic in suburbs.)

" [e.g. Assume a species of energy creatures that live in the heart of stars. Their lifespan is measured in geological terms rather than our mere years. They might be unable to perceive humans as life. Quite likely, since they need an extremely high-energy environment, they'd ignore planets as utterly useless, so they'd not interact with humans unless we develop technologies which could effect stars or them.]"

Also rather too fantastical and not very gameable.

Hamster,

The concept of energy beings living geologic ages and having trouble even realizing humans exist was explored by E.E.'Doc' Smith with 'The Vortex Blasters'. Well done -both you and 'Doc' Smith!-:^))

Also rather too fantastical and not very gameable.

Perhaps I wasn't clear in my previous post. That's part of the point. Why write about a species or put it in a game if humanity can't interact with it meaningfully? Thus most aliens or fantasy humanoids are just humans in rubber suits. They use the same resources and live on the same types of planets, therefore humans can visit, trade, or wage war with them.

Thanks for the bit about Clarke's 3rd kind of science fiction story. That's new to me and a good summation of things.

@dilettante: Thank you for the praise, and thanks for the reference: I need something new to read!

"That's new to me "

That may also be because I flamingoed up and typed "Clarke" instead of "Asimov".

link

Standard TVTropes warning applies.

When it comes to Sci-fi, we all have to suspend our beliefs somewhat … it just depends how much … What one thinks is "good" Sci-fi or what is over-the-top (OTT) … For me Hammer's Slammers is "good", WH40K = OTT, Star Trek = works for me, Star Wars = a bit OTT, Stargate = , SyFy Channel made monster movies = way, way, way OTT !!!!!!, etc. … We all have personal tastes and predilections, etc., in all things not just what we like in Sci-fi … Selma Heyak & Sofia Vergara = x 10 !!!

OVER-THE-TOP

NOT OTT [to me anyway !]

Ultimately, all game rules are simply a set of mechanisms for moving pieces around and removing the other guy's pieces, until one of you satisfies some pre-determined victory condition. You could boil down everything from Napoleonic sea battles to 40K skirmish into a set of common elements.

After that, it's just a matter of window dressing -- this piece can move over here because of its [charge on horseback/teleport/submerge/swing on vines/open a Hellgate/infiltration] movement ability, and this piece can remove that opposing piece from play because of its [ballista/muskets/particle cannon/6 pdr guns/psionics/plasma torpedo] attack capability.

Some good and interesting posts here.
We have deviated a bit from my initial point (which is cool) but to get back to the question in hand…

Do people feel that the rules mechanics for sci-fi games reflect the difference between them and ancients/historical games well enough?
Or do they feel they could play any period with their rules simply by changing names and so on.

I feel my current rules are suitable for sci-fi as they allow for instant real time reactions to battlefield events.

I feel however that most of the historical games rules are not good enough as they too allow instant real time reactions to battlefield events, rather than having messengers running up with information that is already out of date and thus making no distinction between how wars were fought then and now/in the future.

I think as noted the key difference in how the games should play is based around battlefield information, the more modern the game the more up to date the info and the more eye of god the player has.

As for what is real sci-fi, soft vs. hard, that I am not interested in, well not yet…

I recently took up the sci fi skirmish game Infinity, It includes hacking, EM, Post Humans moving between proxy bodies and quite a lot of other very sci fi concepts, It definitely wouldn't work in a modern setting.

If you drop/ignore the hacking, drones, powered armor, mecha, and posthumans, Infinity works quite well for gaming pretty much any combat post-WW1, where each individual trooper could have a different weapon (as opposed to WW1 and earlier where all the riflemen carried rifles and machine guns and artillery were too big to carry).

Because the core of the game is humans fighting other humans roughly 175 years from now.

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I think as noted the key difference in how the games should play is based around battlefield information, the more modern the game the more up to date the info and the more eye of god the player has.

I agree that many games don't do a good job restricting the player's ability to react. The problem is that restricting the speed of messages can really complicate a game (Anyone played or tried to play Legacy of Glory?)

"Science Fiction" is itself a rather oxy-moronic term, coined as a convienience by a previous culture. It is also a generic term for many mutually exclusive genre or 'sub genre'… This semantic debate has the been the source of many such arguments here on TMP and elsewhere…
The bottom line for me is: IS IT INTERNALLY CONSISTENT?
Since it is FICTION, as long as it is internally consistent I feel that is acceptable as such. "Genre" tastes are another matter, and purely subjective.
This having been said, the 'WWII in space' approach to universes and rules is very very tired………

@Lion in the Stars, yes you could do modern if you dropped those rules but the fact remains that they're well integrated into the basic rules and add to the gaming experience, if you cut that out your playing a WWII game based on the Infinity mechanics not Infinity so my point still stands (as other posters have commented there's only so much variation in fitting a war).

Robert

"… I feel however that most of the historical games rules are not good enough as they too allow instant real time reactions to battlefield events, rather than having messengers running up with information that is already out of date and thus making no distinction between how wars were fought then and now/in the future…"

Some games do that with varying levels of success.

To reflect on your question –

Given factors as the length of a turn (minutes/hours?) the era (runners, horse messengers, bugles/drums, telephone lines,) and the size of the battle/game (platoon, Battalion or Corps) it might be suitable to have the representation of the possibility of changing orders by various mechanics in a war game (key word game) though some games (IIRC Tactica?) locked you pretty much into your deployment plan for ancients.

1) It is a game, not a simulation in most cases YMMV

2) It has to appeal to people having fun (or at least not a drudge) experience

3) It has to have flexible but not fluid ability (in any game) to allow a player to feel (repeat, feel,) he has some level of control of his own fate as commander. As an extreme example – If the psionic humanoids can move anywhere instantly with no danger or play "cost" any any time in any players turn without limit and attack by surprise flawlessly than the games will be few and short

Gracias,

Glenn

@Toaster: You must not play against Ariadna very often. Nothing to (electronically) hack, no post-humans, very little battlefield electronic warfare.

Legion 4

Selma Heyak & Sofia Vergara

When I saw them last they both asked how come you hadn't called in ages?

You're all spot on. In the future (assuming it's not unremittingly grim and dark) computers, AI and stealth and other military tech will have reduced the actual time spent on the battlefield to the briefest interplay of furious measures and countermeasures.

On that basis I have two new sets of rules in the pipeline: a near future set (about 30 years over the horizon) and a far future set (aimed at gaming in the next century).

In the near future set two players set a budget – a real world budget, mind you – to spend on models. The only restriction being they have to be the same scale: other than that they can be whatever the players fancy.

Then the players set up a table with whatever terrain they have to hand.

Lastly, when they've spent their cash on toys and their time in prep and set up, they play "rock, paper scissors" and the winner buys the beers.

For the advanced rules, they make it the best of three (allows for more ECM / ECCM to-ing and fro-ing).

For the "far future" variant I mentioned earlier, "rock, paper scissors" is replaced with "rock, paper, scissors, lizard Spock" and the results become both more interesting and even more SF…

This is a very interesting thread but I do believe that SF gaming – like books, TV and films – needs to be relatable to its audience for it to work.

There's a reason why so much classic SF illustration was – and is – the current day's tech with bigger knobs on (victorian space ships look like flying steam ships, 30s one look like locomotives and zeppelins, 50s ones all look like V2s etc etc).

It has to be relatable or we – the audience – loses interest.

John T

stenicplus … I'll have them give them both a call tonight ! Thanks for the update !

Agree with you JT, and what is "sci-fi" in many cases is in the eye of the beholder …

Imagine in 1964 I'd written a set of rules for combat in 2014 and correctly predicted every major technological advance/improvement, in the last 50 years. Nothing in my rules would be a technological paradigm shift to my players but all who played it, or watched the game, would call them a set of sci-fi rules.

They could relate to the human experience, morale rolls and levels of training, but a JADAM dropped by a drone, or a platoon of networked MBT's deploying active counter measures, would clearly be in the realms of science fiction. They could possibly imagine scenarios that we now take for granted, but they would obviously have no experience of how the systems operated and crucially how they interacted. Therefore it would be classified as science fiction.

As for story lines, there are only a finite number and that has not changed since man first wrote them down.

Yes … for example, when Drake started writing Hammer's Slammers in the late '70s, he based a lot on the tech that was precieved that may be in the future or near future. Plus some of his experiences in Vietnam with the 11th ACR …

My sci-fi games aren't exactly sci-fi either (humans only, advanced slugthrowers instead of lasers). However, my games are set in the near future, so rules for modern warfare work just fine.

My approach to making the games sci-fi is to choose which technology is to be used in the game and extrapolate any advances made.

My thoughts on many things … is Do What Works For You … not Me … Even though if you play 40K, I'll make fun of you …