POLL: Is Science Magic?
The last day of voting is 26 Oct 2024.
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| The Last Conformist writes: |
I don't do much in the way of sf gaming, but when I do it tends to be the sort which is pretty much fantasy with techy aesthetics (think Star Wars), so I guess the answer to the question is yes. There's no more real-world logic or consistency to how a blaster works than there is for a fireball. |
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| POLL DESCRIPTION |
 etotheipi  writes:
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
– Arthur C. Clarke
So, the short word "is" is in the short title. But I am asking in TTWG (and RPGs, if you want), do we treat advanced science like it is magic?
I see a trend to just assume advanced science can do anything. So we can just plop something in a SF setting by fiat. No build up to it. No legacy.
It reminds me of the alien apologists (I love watching George Tsoukalos. A communications major, who started in pro wrestling, I believe.) who say things like "microchips had to come from an alien chip because they just appeared from nowhere." (This is an actual argument from one of those Ancient Aliens-like shows.)
There's nothing fundamentally wrong with that. I can accept a conceit, like we're going to have FTL. But when you do too many assertions without a background, you end up with massive inconsistencies. This already happens in TTWG (I loved Murphy's Rules), but I think we end up with too many inconsistencies across the big picture.
What we end up with is, say, energy weapons that seem to follow radically different laws of physics depending on who is using them and what the target is. Of course you can backfit anything with an explanation, but that seems to make things diverge too much where they should converge.
Poll set up by  Editor in Chief Bill   , based on this pre-poll discussion. |
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