STL vs.
FTL in SF-RPGs
Jim Vassilakos (jimvassila@aol.com)
As I mentioned some time ago, I’ve
been slowly working on an SF-RPG
tentatively called “Ragamuffin” (for
lack of a decent name like Star
Warriors or Space Scum...
actually, come to
think of it, both of
those sound pretty cool). In A&E
#298 I introduced the basic gist behind
the setting, starting with an old internet
discussion on soft vs. hard science-
fiction and concluding with an
overview of humanity’s role in the
setting. In A&E #307 I replied to
comments and questions which had
accrued during the intervening issues.
In recent months, some folks on the net
have volunteered to help with the
development, however, there’s been a
little consternation regarding my
decision on what is perhaps the game’s
most fundamental feature: STL-travel
(STL being an acronym for slower-
than-light). I’ve backed this up w/ FTL-
communication (FTL being an acronym
for faster-than-light), and the purpose of
this essay is basically to explain my
reasoning behind these decisions.
The FTL Presumption
As most gamers know, FTL-travel is
one of the hallowed staples of science
fiction roleplaying. Actually, one
doesn’t have to be a gamer to know this.
Most popular SF genres abound in
various methods of FTL. In Star Trek
they call it warp speed. In Star Wars it’s
called hyperspace. Likewise with sf-
rpgs. In Traveller there is jumpspace,
and in Alternity there is drivespace. Not
every SF setting or SF game has FTL-
travel, but the majority of them
certainly do, and as for the minority,
only a precious few incorporate any
semblance of interstellar travel. In short,
STL seems to be viewed as being
wholly incompatible with interstellar
travel, and so if a game is to involve
more than a single star system, STL is
thrown out in favor of FTL before ever
being seriously considered.
Why is that? In a nutshell, I think the
two biggest reasons are Star Trek and
http://members.aol.com/jimvassila
Star Wars, the two
most popular SF settings.
While anecdotes certainly make for
poor arguments, I’ll share one with you.
About a year ago, I was visiting a friend
up north, and for some reason we were
at a bookstore. As to be expected, the
SF section was filled with shelves upon
shelves of Star Trek and Star Wars
novels. My friend made the comment
that he didn’t understand how there
could be so many books published
around a single setting. Were the fans
really buying and reading them all?
When would enough be enough? I
looked the shelf over, bemused, and for
some odd reason the strangest utterance
fell from my lips. “Where there’s
money, there’s more money.” And he
looked at me in awe and thought it the
most profound thing he’d heard since
somebody burped earlier that morning.
In retrospect, I have to agree that there
is something to it. RPG-slut that I am, I
can understand firsthand the fascination
people have with a particular subject
matter. I myself have purchased and
skimmed through more RPGs, new and
used, than I care to count.
So what is my point,
you ask.
Novelists like to
think of themselves
as bring original &
avant-garde... artists
as it were. And in
many ways they are.
But at the same
time, what they
write needs to be
marketable. It needs that
Star Trek or Star Wars
logo in order to sell. So
they jump on the big bandwagon and
console themselves with the knowledge
that at least they’re getting paid for their
troubles.
Game designers are just the same.
They like to tout their work as being
original & avant-garde, and in many
ways it often is. But at the same time, it
needs to be marketable. Otherwise it
won’t sell. Obviously, FTL has
proven itself in terms of
sales, so why take a chance
on it’s lesser cousin, STL?
With novels, the situation is
bad enough. STL causes obvious plot
constraints whereas FTL provides near
limitless freedom. In gaming the
situation is even more profound,
because these constraints are placed on
players themselves, dictating from the
start some very fundamental limitations
on their ability to “seek out new worlds,
new life, and new civilizations.”
Likewise, the history of the
marketplace has shown that FTL-based
games have clearly sold and continue to
do so. As for STL-based games, they
don’t seem to be as prevalent. Do such
games even work? Are they playable?
Or are they realistic to the point that
people would rather kill orcs instead?
Which, of course, brings us to the
gamers themselves. We gamers like to
think that through roleplaying we’re
exploring innovative settings with fresh,
new personalities, telling cooperative
stories, per se, which have never been
told before. But how much of this
newness is really fresh and new, and
how much is really just a switch in
terminology, a clever facade if
you will?
While FTL enables our intrepid
heroes to leap from one
episode/adventure to the next in a
relatively brief expanse of
game time, is also has the
effect of rendering interstellar
travel aboard a starship very
much like island hopping
aboard a boat. You have your
ports of call. You have your
aliens (the foreigners). You
might even get boarded by a
police boat every now and then. And, of
course, there are pirates to watch out
for. In short, the whole science-fiction
milieux translates quite easily
from real world stuff. That’s
good, right?!
In large part, yes, it is
good. It provides
players (and the
GM) with a ready
conceptual
foundation upon
which to build.
The game setting,
as a whole, will be
more recognizable
as a result. However,
a certain degree of
mystery is lost in the
process. The setting is
no longer quite so
unique. It is merely an adaptation of
things we are already familiar with.
So it really all depends on what you
want from roleplaying. If you’re just
looking to relax and have a good time,
the instant familiarity lent by FTL to
any given SF-RPG setting probably
overpowers any of the negative
consequences. In such a mode of
convenience, where the de facto goal is
to explore offshoots of analogous
situations, FTL becomes a plot device,
like transporters in Star Trek or “The
Force” in Star Wars.
The game designer essentially sets the
technology at whatever level is desired
and then explains the various gizmos in
terms of what they do, not in terms of
how they do it. Nobody can really scoff
at the gizmos, because first of all, it’s
just a game, and secondly, none of this
stuff has been invented yet. Certainly
there is going to be some manner of
technobabble handwaving to justify the
technology, and that’s both fine and
often quite useful for suspension of
disbelief. The only problem that creeps
up is when the stated technology
doesn’t meet the design goals of the
setting.
Design Goals in Science Fiction
This is a hard section to address,
because the design goals of various SF
settings tend to vary widely. In Star
Trek, the two primary design goals
seemed to be economic and plot flow.
Roddenberry didn’t have the money for
a lot of special effects, including shots
of starships and shuttlecraft landing on
planets, so transporters were invented as
a way of inexpensively expediting the
plot. The effect was cheap to
produce, and it certainly cut out a lot
of unnecessary scenes. In
short, it was sheer
genius.
Lucas, on the
other hand,
loved special
effects to the
point that
he’d
pioneered the
industry to new
levels of
sophistication. As a
result, we don’t see
transporters in Star Wars. What we do
see are cool looking light sabers and
other imponderables all bent on
conveying a sort of outer-space fairy
tale about a young knight rescuing a
princess from the clutches of an evil
sorcerer. It’s cool, and it worked
amazingly well. Again, sheer genius.
But as we all know, RPGs are not
cinema. This means that special effects
present a special sort of dilemma. The
GM can’t very adequately convey a
brightly lit starscape unless he slams a
player’s head on the pointy-end of a d4:
“As you break through the upper
atmosphere, you begin to see stars.”
(WHAP!) “Do you see stars yet?”
“Uh... yeah. Ooh... I feel woozy.”
“Great, here’s a band-aid. What are
the rest of you doing?”
“Anything except looking out the
window.”
At the same time, there is no limit on
what a good GM can describe or what a
good player can visually imagine. So
the whole issue of building the
technology around a budget becomes
wholly irrelevant. What we are then left
with are the fundamentals. In no special
order, they are:
1. Internal Consistency
2. Scientific Plausibility
3. Funness & Originality
Internal Consistency
In the discussion on soft vs. hard
science-fiction which I included in my
article of issue #298, the yearning for
internal consistency was a recurring
theme. Many people mentioned that
while they might be able to swallow a
lot of bull, all the bull had to fit together
logically, like some grand jigsaw
puzzle, to form a complete and self-
consistent picture. If there are gaping
holes caused by pieces which just don’t
fit, then the RPG designers didn’t do
their job right, and the end result is that
players will either have to ignore these
holes (for the good of the game), or they
may instead seek to exploit them (much
to the consternation of the GM).
Over the years, all of this has made
game designers think harder about SF-
RPG design and the potential
inconsistencies that are endemic to the
process. I’ll fire off just two of the most
famous to acquaint you with the subject
matter.
(1) Explosive Colonization: Space is
big, forming a natural though not
impenetrable barrier to exploration and
colonization. This barrier can be further
enhanced by making certain
assumptions about the structure of the
local interstellar medium (I’ll talk more
about this in a future essay). However,
FTL tends to break this barrier, creating
a situation where a single species could
explode across the galaxy in a relatively
brief time-scale.
For example, in Star Trek, isn’t it odd
that Klingons, Romulans, Humans,
Vulcans, etc... all attained FTL at
around the same time? What if the
Klingons got it a few thousand years
ahead of everyone else? The answer is
that Captain Kirk would have been (at
best) red-shirted, fodderous, Thrall
Kirk, working for Captain Koloth and
speaking Klingonese to boot.
In evolutionary terms, a few thousand
years is an incredibly short expanse of
time. The odds against even two
neighboring races attaining FTL within
such a short expanse are astronomical.
So, at first glance, Star Trek fails on this
first basic test of internal consistency.
In Traveller we have much the same
problem with it’s huge star-spanning
empire. Miller apparently tried to
explain the humanocentric nature of the
setting by positing “The Ancients” as a
race which abducted hundreds or
thousands of Terrans 300,000 years ago
and left them scattered on numerous
worlds in their wake. But why humans?
What’s so special about us? And what
about the odds against several of these
human colonies all attaining space
faring technology within several
thousand years of one another? And
given the capabilities of FTL, why did it
take so long for them to expand and
explore?
Of course, all these questions arise in
a setting where FTL didn’t begin in this
neighborhood but 300,000 years ago
and the current empire hasn’t existed
for but a thousand of those years. What
about predecessors to the Ancients?
And, for that matter, what will the
Imperium logically look like in 200
million years?
In a universe which is billions of years
ago, we’d have to conclude that FTL
would result in a setting where known
space has been completely overrun,
many, many times, and that we are
emerging into a neighborhood which is
just packed with a multitude of races
from across the galaxy, many of whom
have been around, starfaring, for
millions or even billions of years. Their
history (and technology) would likely
be on a level which we can’t even begin
to imagine (technology ceiling
permitting). STL helps to save us from
this cacophony by proposing that space
travel is difficult and time-consuming
enough that we had a chance to develop
before the aliens got here in force.
Fortunately, absent the technology for
time travel, this isn’t an exploitable
inconsistency. But smart players will
realize the problem exists as soon as
they spot it, leading the GM to make up
some off-the-cuff excuse which
damages the entire suspension of
disbelief. For most players, this isn’t a
big deal. They’re not really there to
suspend their disbelief. They’re there to
eat pizza and roll dice! But for a
precious few, it’s a thorn in the side of
reason, something overlooked that
should have been addressed.
(2) Near-C Rocks & Other Planet
Killers: In much of contemporary
science fiction, individual ship captains
may be nothing more than the lowliest
scum of space (Han Solo and his fellow
cantena patrons might qualify under this
description, and Harry Mudd and his
Ferengi ilk in Star Trek are yet another
example). And yet, the very act of
controlling a starship affords them great
power. This is driven home in Traveller,
where it is not altogether impossible to
utilize a large starship to accelerate a
couple hundred tons of asteroid up to why we have not one but five frontier
relativistic speeds (or just build the wars not to mention countless civil wars
maneuver drives onto the asteroid, and the various interstellar wars around
provide it with a really big fuel tank, Terra. So where are all the worlds
and point it in the right direction). It’ll which have been dutifully converted
take some time and effort, but it can be into asteroid belts by the Imperial
done. Navy? We just don’t see them, and
Now, in both Star Trek and Star Wars, because of this, many of those on the
presumably inner-system defenses Traveller Mailing List have agreed that
could deploy quickly enough to deal it’s a glaring inconsistency (although
with the potential threat of a near-c rock mentioning near-c anything on the TML
striking a heavily populated world (and is usually enough to start a protracted
thereby generating an explosion of such flame war).
magnitude that the 1908 Tunguska
SF-RPGs by Fastest Mode of Travel & Communication
FTL-Travel STL-Travel
Aeon/Trinity, Alternity,
Babylon Project, Cooperation,
Fading Suns, Legionnaire, Ragamuffin (still in
FTL-Comm Manhunter, Mechwarrior, development)
Other Suns, Space Master,
Space Opera, Star Frontiers,
Star Trek, Star Wars, Universe
2300AD, Albedo, Amazing
Engine/Galactos Barrier, Blue Buck Rogers XXVc,
STL-Comm Planet, FTL:2448, Guildspace, High Colonies, Jovian
Justifiers, Raven Star, Reich Chronicles
Star, Shatterzone, Traveller
event would by comparison seem like Having addressed these two potential
Lenin rolling over in bed to break inconsistencies, it is interesting to note
wind). However, in Traveller this that the first kicks in under FTL-travel
couldn’t happen, mainly because in while the second kicks in under STL-
Traveller there’s a speed limit on communication. Traveller, of course,
communications (communication and has both, and hence suffers from both
sensors are strictly STL). This means, inconsistencies. So do many other SF-
of course, that the planet could get hit RPGs. It was only after recognizing this
before it even realizes that it’s under that I decided that perhaps the best
attack. No time for countermeasures. solution toward avoiding both of these
Several billion people could get wiped problems would be to take the exact
out by one loony with a starship. opposite position from Traveller,
The fact that there aren’t scores of presupposing STL-travel and FTL-
desecrated worlds in Traveller communication. At first I was under the
leaves the impression that impression that no SF-RPG had ever
starship captains have too done this, and as I checked through the
much moral fiber ever to literature, my suspicions were
conduct themselves (and their wars and confirmed. The reason, I suppose,
political causes) in such a way. Indeed, should be obvious. Of those few SF-
that may be true for 99.9% of ship RPGs which have supposed STL-travel,
captains, but as the number of ships their designers have placed the entire
rise, the potential for loonydom game within a single star system, and so
increases until you are almost assured there was no need to include FTL-
that these sorts of incidents will happen communication. However, I want
just because of the number of people Ragamuffin to be a game which
who have the power to commit them. includes both STL-travel as well as an
Indeed, the history of the Traveller interstellar society. The trick, of course,
universe is replete with interstellar would be to justify the technology with
warfare (GDW was initially a real-world science, giving it some form
wargaming company, after all). That is of basis and yet at the same time
structuring it so as to maximize the fun
& originality of the setting.
Scientific Plausibility
As one might expect, STL-travel is not
particularly hard to justify. After all, we
do it every time we walk to the corner
drugstore. We are literally walking
slower-than-light. That’s all that STL is.
However, if you were to walk
particularly fast, strange things would
begin to happen. That’s why there are
really two types of STL worth
considering. The first is slow-STL;
we’re all pretty familiar with that. The
other is fast-STL, which involves
various relativistic effects.
To me, the most interesting of these
effects is time dilation, and although
time dilation has been experimentally
verified, exactly why it occurs is
still a subject of some debate,
probably in no small part due to
the counter-intuitive nature of the
prevailing theory. Popular
sentiment places Einstein at the
center of relativity. It was, after
all, his general and special theories
of relativity that, according to most
writers of the subject, revolutionized the
world of physics. However, there are
also those who say that Einstein, while
a great thinker, built his work on the
backs of others who are less known, and
committed egregious errors, the
repercussions of which are still felt
today.
H.E. Retic has written much on this
topic in “The Einstein Hoax: The
Disastrous Intellectual War on
Common Sense” (http://www.members.
home.net/retiche/hoax.htm). According
to Retic, is was J.J. Thompson who first
derived mass-energy equivalency
(E=mc^2) in 1888, long before Einstein
made his mark on physics. Likewise,
prior to Einsteinian Relativity, there was
the Lorentz Contraction-Aether
Relativity theory of 1903 which came
about mainly due to the unexpected
results of the Michelson-Morley
experiment of 1887 which showed that
light travels at the same speed
regardless of its source, much like a
sound wave travelling through some
conducting medium (such as air) and
not anything like a bullet. According to
Retic, Einstein’s primary contribution
was to show that the aether wasn’t
mathematically necessary to explain the
Michelson-Morley results, and hence it
could be dispensed with, leading to his
own relativity theories. However, in
constructing his theories, he used tensor
calculus, leading to an error which
could only be corrected if he abandoned
the principles of three-dimensional
Euclidian space. In what was perhaps
the most fateful decision of his career,
rather than backtrack, he decided to just
go with it, leading to the whole curved
space ideology which every physicist
has been talking about ever sense.
Michelson & Morley’s continuing
failure to detect the aether led to
Einstein’s theories gaining increasing
favor.
Regardless of
whether or not this
is a fair history of what was
undoubtedly a much more convoluted
series of events, the vast majority of
physicists currently subscribe to
Einstein’s views. Michael Fowler of the
University of Virginia has a lecture
index for a course on “Galileo &
Einstein” available on the web at
http://www.phys.virginia.edu/classes/
109N/lectures/lecturelist.html which
seems to reconcile some of the key
paradoxes which were initially raised by
Einstein’s theories.
It is important to note, however, that
whether one subscribes to Einsteinian
Relativity or Aether Relativity, time
dilation is still a fundamental outcome
of the equations, as, I believe, are length
contraction and mass increase, still
other relativistic effects. Instead of
trying to explain why they occur (a
topic in which I’m not yet well enough
versed to make a decent stab), I’ll just
explain what they do.
The basic gist of time dilation is that
as an object travels really fast, time
onboard the object slows down, until at
light speed the march of time stops cold
(many people argue that this works both
ways resulting in paradox, but Fowler
contends that the paradox is solvable).
The easiest way to visualize this is to
imagine that you leave home aboard a
fast ship. When you return, you will
have experienced less time than the
people you left behind. If you have a
twin, you will have aged less than him
or her.
How can this be? I don’t want to get
into the math (which tends to make my
head hurt), but here’s an easy (although
probably inaccurate) way to think about
it. The whole process of time is just a
mechanism of things on the very
smallest scales. Quantum theory argues
that matter uses the exchange of virtual
photons to control its parameters. If one
believes in a universal reference frame,
then one might argue that particles at
rest can put all their energy into this
photon exchange, but that while in
motion (particularly high speeds), this
mechanism slows down, slowing
down everything about them. So every
chemical reaction and every electrical
event takes place more slowly.
People onboard a fast ship don’t
see things happening any more
slowly because they themselves are
moving more slowly. Everything
onboard is happening more slowly.
However, like I said, this is probably
erroneous. An aether relativist would
simply say that the slowing of the
passage of time occurs from the effect
of a time measuring system moving
through the stationary aether. And an
Einsteinian relativist would say, “just
look at the math, it all makes perfect
sense.”
Moving on to the other relativistic
effects, length contraction asserts that
the distance units in the direction of
motion contract, and mass increase (or
mass dilation) asserts that as one gets
closer to the speed of light, it becomes
increasingly harder to accelerate, such
that it is impossible for a physical object
to reach the speed of light. Perhaps
these two effects are really one and the
same. I’m no expert.
All I know is that relativity plays an
important role in fast-STL. But, of
course, the next big question is, how do
we attain fast-STL? How does one
accelerate a ship to such an incredibly
high velocity? Our current rocket
technology doesn’t even begin to cut
the mustard. You’d have to carry so
much propellant that acceleration to
even a minuscule fraction of light speed
is essentially impossible. Some people
have proposed burning hydrogen in a
fusion reaction, or carrying antimatter
for total mass conversion, but in each
case, the ship would still be too big due
to the amount of propellant it would
have to carry. The bigger the ship, the
harder it is to accelerate. Only a
reactionless thruster would do the trick,
but such a thing can’t exist (as far as we
know), so, in short, a starship just can’t
carry the amount of propellant it would
need for a fast-STL interstellar voyage.
Others have proposed magnetically
scooping the necessary hydrogen from
deep space, but exactly how this would
work has yet to be explained. In order to
be drawn in by a magnetic field, the
hydrogen atoms would have to be
ionized. How this would occur is still a
subject of speculation. The idea of using
a laser to strip the electrons from free
floating hydrogen in front of the ship
seems more like magic than science.
Another proposal is that the ship’s own
velocity would generate a shockwave
in front of the vessel, causing this
much needed ionization. However,
as fortuitous as this would be, I still
don’t see how it would work.
Even if a method could be found
to generate the necessary
acceleration, there’s still another
problem to consider (at least
from the perspective of plot
and game flow). This is the
problem of inertia. As objects
accelerate, they undergo inertial
stress. That goes for people as well. A
pilot can take only so many G’s of
thrust before blacking out. Most
hypothetical starship designs have the
ship accelerating at 1 G (earth’s own
gravity), so that the crew would feel
right at home. However, accelerating so
slowly means that months or years may
go by during even the shortest of
interstellar voyages. To go a distance of
4 light years at 1 G thrust, the ship
would have to accelerate for 2 years,
turn around, and then decelerate for 2
years. Taking time dilation into account,
the subjective time experienced by the
crew would be over 3.4 years. That’s a
long time for the characters to be
twiddling their thumbs waiting to get
from point A to point B.
What we really need is some method
to suppress inertia so that the ship might
be able to accelerate much faster than 1
G and take much greater advantage of
time dilation’s effect on subjective
(shipboard) time. In issue #307 I briefly
discussed one possible method which
was brought to mind by an article in
issue #2276 (3-Feb-2001) of New
Scientist. The article, by Marcus
Chown, is entitled “Mass Medium”, and
to recap, it discusses an idea put forth
by quantum physicist Bernard Haisch
on the nature of gravity and inertia. As I
mentioned earlier, quantum theory
posits the notion of virtual photons.
Under this theory, these ghostlike
particles pop in and out of existence
over extremely small timescales,
rendering the vacuum (and all of space)
into a “choppy sea of randomly
fluctuating electromagnetic waves”. In
the macroworld, we can’t see what’s
going on, because we’re too damn big,
but if we were the size of atoms, then
maybe we’d have a glimpse into this
unseen universe.
In any case, the argument goes that
these virtual photons can sometimes
break free from the cycle of birth and
destruction, essentially becoming real,
but that this only happens due to gravity
or acceleration (which according to
Einstein’s theory of general relativity
are indistinguishable). Hence,
accelerating objects (including objects
in a field of gravity) would become
bathed in these particles, and
cumulatively they would act as a
retarding force by bouncing off
electrical fields within the object.
Hence, these virtual photons would
momentarily play the role of inertia. In
short, in Haisch’s view, inertia is just
electromagnetic drag.
Likewise, he argues, these virtual
photons may also play the role of
gravity. To quote Chown’s take on the
theory, “oscillating charges in a chunk
of matter affect the charged virtual
particles in the vacuum. This polarized
vacuum then exerts a force on the
charges in another chunk of matter.”
However, Haisch himself seems to
discount this direct relationship, stating
that “one mass does not pull directly on
another mass but only through the
intermediary of the vacuum. This might
explain why gravity is so weak.” If such
a theory were to prove true, then
Einsteinian relativity might be likened
to a geometric description of this whole
state of affairs. In Haisch’s words, “the
warpage of space might be equivalent to
a variation in the refractive index of the
vacuum. In this way, all the
mathematics of general relativity would
stay intact, since space-time would look
as if it were warped.”
Of course, all of this makes me
wonder if these virtual photons are the
aether than Michelson and Morley
were searching for. If so, then
aether relativity may yet make a
comeback, with Einsteinian
relativity being a geometric way
of thinking about the whole mess
and quantum physics holding
ultimate reign. Of course, I’m not a
physicist, so all this idle speculation is
just me talking out my ass. Feel free to
completely disregard everything I’ve
said.
The important thing here is how it
applies to science fiction. Most SF-
RPGs posit some form of gravity
manipulation technology (or gravitics),
and many go a step further and posit
inertial suppression (also called inertial
dampening). How these technologies
work is, of course, never spelled out. In
recent years, physicists have
investigated gravity in the hopes of
finding some means to counter it.
Charles Platt covers the curious case
of Russian scientist Eugene Podkletnov
in the March 1998 issue of Wired
(http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6
.03/antigravity.html). Podkletnov
apparently claimed to have suppressed
gravity (to the tune of 2%) with a
spinning superconductor, and Platt went
to take an interview and personally
verify the story as well as witness the
experiment in action. Despite the very
slight effect, one would think that if his
process actually worked, it would be
front-page news all over the world and a
hundred labs would have replicated the
experiment, however, apparently that
hasn’t happened, leading me to
conclude that the whole thing is a bunch
of hogwash. Nonetheless, it seems odd
that this whole story came and went
without so much as a blip from the
mainstream media (perhaps they’ve
been scared off such stories by the cold
fusion fiasco several years ago).
Regardless, this whole episode serves
to illustrate that gravity manipulation
and perhaps inertial suppression may be
within our grasp. Perhaps Podkletnov’s
method (or another one like it) may in
some way generate a quantum effect
which disturbs the incomprehensibly
small world of virtual photons. No
doubt, some would argue that this is
quite impossible, but the verdict isn’t in
yet either mathematically or
experimentally. We don’t even know
that virtual photons even exist. We
know so little about this whole field that
it’s impossible to say what’s just around
the corner much less what will be
possible 20, 50, or even 100 years down
the road.
I like the idea of including inertial
suppression technology in SF-RPG
design because, first of all, it would
seem from a quantum physics
perspective to go hand-in-hand with
gravity manipulation (a long-time staple
of SF), so if you’re going to have one, it
only makes sense to include the other.
However, there’s an even more pressing
reason why I like it. Inertial suppression
makes fast STL much more attainable
and much easier from a plot-flow
perspective.
I mentioned earlier that traveling 4
light years at 1 G would take 3.4
subjective years (assuming that the ship
accelerates during the first half of the
trip and then turns around and
decelerates for the second half).
However, if you can pump your thrust
up to 10 G’s through inertial
suppression, then from the perspective
of the crew, the trip will take just over
266 days of subjective time. Pump the
thrust up to 20 G’s and we’re talking
157 days. At 50 G’s we talking just over
75 days. And, of course, the subjective
time continues to slope downward as
thrust (or inertial suppression)
increases. At 100 G’s, we’re talking
about only 42 days of subjective time.
At 500 G’s, it’s just under 11 days.
That’s the magic of time dilation. The
faster you go, the less you experience
the flow of time. Hence the less you
age, the less you eat, and the less you sit
around thumb-twiddling.
Quite suddenly we’re no longer
thinking about the stresses of long term
voyages. Cryogenic technology is
entirely circumvented. And who needs a
generation ship? From the perspective
of the crew, it doesn’t take all that long.
In terms of writing starship design
rules, the trick will be striking a balance
between engines, propulsion mass,
actual fuel (i.e. reaction mass), and the
equipment and energy requirements for
inertial suppression. All of these will be
necessary, and there will need to be
some sort of trade off dictating how the
ship can maximize its thrust by having
the right proportion of each.
Now that I’ve yammered on at length
about STL-travel, I’ll turn to FTL-
communication. In issue #307 I
mentioned an article that caused a mild
hiccup among SF-enthusiasts by
maintaining that researchers had broken
the light-barrier (http://www.sunday-
times.co.uk/news/pages/sti/2000/06/04/
stifgnusa01007.html). However, as I
also mentioned, this story is discredited
in a FAQ at the head researcher’s own
homepage (http://www.neci.nj.nec.com/
homepages/lwan/faq.htm). Apparently,
these sort of claims get published on a
regular basis, then somebody cries
“oops” and it’s back to business as
usual. Nonetheless, I’m always on the
lookout for these sorts of articles, and
even more interesting are those which
actually delve a little bit into the theory
behind what the researchers are doing.
In the current issue (#2288, 28-April-
2001) of New Scientist, there’s an
article covering the theories of
Houshang Ardavan of Cambridge, as
well as the follow-up work of some
Oxford physicists, including his son,
Arzhang Ardavan and John Singleton of
the Clarendon Laboratory. Inspired by
the study of pulsars and Cerenkov
radiation, and arguably verified in part
by detailed observations of the Crab
Nebula pulsar, the theory being
proposed is that a lopsided pattern of
charge (for instance, a magnetic field)
which is both rotating very quickly and
accelerating in this rotation, can
produce an FTL shockwave due to its
waves piling up in a spiral pattern
which crowd together and finally merge
at the pattern’s cusp. Apparently
according to the math, this shockwave
not only would move at superluminal
speeds, but it would decay
proportionally with distance as opposed
to the square of the distance which is
what commonly happens with
electromagnetic radiation. Such
shockwaves could even, potentially, be
tuned to terahertz radiation, perhaps
advancing the speed of computer CPUs
into previously uncharted realms. This
means that as a means of
communication, not only would it be
faster than anything we’ve seen before,
but it would be a lot more powerful and
possibly more versatile as well. Over
half a million dollars have already been
spent on developing a device, the
polarization synchrotron, to test the
theory. Needless to say, if it works, it’ll
be a major breakthrough.
However, like all such theories, it has
it’s detractors, and odds are that it will
probably end up on the scrap heap of
great ideas that never worked.
Nonetheless, I think even the existence
of this theory bodes well for the future
of FTL-communication, because it
means that we don’t yet know what we
can’t do. And as a scientific justification
for FTL-communication in an SF-RPG,
it certainly does an admirable job of
fitting the bill well enough to support a
player’s suspension of disbelief.
Funness & Originality
Since “funness & originality” are the
final design goals, it would probably be
apropos to state what they mean. By
“funness”, I ask the questions, “Will the
players and GM enjoy the game? Will it
be exciting and interesting and thought
provoking?” This, of course, segues into
“originality”. In brief, “Is the game
unique to the extent that it raises the
possibility for stories and ideas that
have gone neglected?”
To be perfectly honest, I personally
had a heck of a time accepting the
notion that STL-travel wouldn’t “ruin
the game” as it were. This was
compounded by the fact that there was
nobody talking me into it. In fact,
everyone was trying to talk me out of it.
Even from the earliest discussions, the
general consensus was that you’ve got
to have FTL-travel. Otherwise, what
sort of setting would you have? One
that’s centered only around a single star
system? And yet I’ve always felt that if
you’re going to plead hard-sf as a
design focus, then you’ve got to
somehow minimize the handwaving,
and FTL, as I’ve already
demonstrated, is one
big, huge
handwave
with serious
though
generally
ignored
consequences for the
setting’s historical background as
well as present configuration.
Likewise, I also felt that the
light-speed limitation would distinguish
the setting in one very important sense,
that being that nearly all the other
SF-RPGs utilize some form of FTL-
travel. In short, why do what’s already
been done 20-30 times?
“Uh, playability?”
Actually, that’s exactly what
somebody recently asked me. As I
mentioned at the start of this essay,
some folks on the net have volunteered
to help develop the setting, however,
they’ve been understandably reluctant
to swallow the STL-pill without a little
coaxing. So that’s what I’m trying to do
here. I’m trying to explain why it is, in
fact, playable. In fact, I’ll go a step
further and say that not only is it
playable but it’s highly playable
precisely due to the fact that it’s been so
neglected by SF-RPG designers.
Everyone seems to feel that STL-
travel would result in a setting so
chaotic and diverse that an interstellar
society wouldn’t be able to function.
However, I would argue that coupled
with FTL-communication, such a
society could exist. Different cultures
within the conglomerate might emerge.
The society may begin to fragment
resulting in a state of affairs much like
modern Earth which is rich in social
diversity. However, given that each star
system is connected over a makeshift
“subspace network”, it is no great leap
to suppose that the society could stay
intact.
Whereas FTL-travel would tend to
result in large-scale, highly organized
societies, STL-travel coupled with FTL-
communication would, I think, result in
a more disorganized society, somewhat
akin to the Old West, where players can
take advantage of the fact that “the
powers that be” are usually a couple of
steps behind them (hopefully). Sure, the
Ikkadju might be able to field an
impressive fleet, but can they find
that lone tacship which has been
raiding their deep space stations for
parts and supplies?
Likewise,
there is the
matter of
history vs.
current
events to
consider. Here we
approach the whole question of
background intelligibility as well as the
present malleability of the setting under
the delicate ministrations of the players.
“What is he yakkin’ about?” you must
be wondering. Just this. FTL-travel, I
think, would tend to result in a stable
universe over the character’s life but a
highly chaotic one in terms of back-
story whereas STL has the exact
opposite effect, which, in fact, is what
we want!
In case that isn’t immediately
intuitive, let me talk about it for a bit. In
most SF-RPG settings, the designers
create a situation where the players just
happen to be living in “interesting
times” (an old Chinese curse of which
PCs seem to be perennial victims). You
need some examples? How about the
Fifth Frontier War (Traveller) or the
Rebellion (Star Wars)? and yet the
back-story is usually somewhat drab
(nowhere near as exciting or turbulent
or blatantly incomprehensible as our
own history here on Earth).
Why are RPG’s built this way? The
answer should be obvious. The
designers want things to be happening
during the time of the PCs so as to make
things interesting for them, and yet they
don’t want to invest a great deal of time
and effort into developing the back-
story, which many players never bother
to learn anyway. After all, the back-
story is just so much artificial history
which is designed to lead up the time of
the campaign. Assuming that the
characters aren’t going to be living this
ancient history (a pretty safe assumption
in most SF-RPGs), they can only read
about it, so it’s always developed in
very broad strokes.
So what RPG designers generally do
is generate this history to bring the
setting up to the moment of some great
conflict. It may seem a bit contrived,
but it’s workable in the sense that
somebody is going to be alive during
these “interesting times”, so why not the
players? But eventually the conflict
finds its resolution, so the designers
suddenly have to invent another one.
Welcome to Ye Olde RPG, 2nd edition.
And so on and so forth, until the whole
evolving history becomes so horribly
contrived that the designers are forced
to wipe the slate clean and start from
scratch.
Traveller is a perfect example of this.
In Classic Traveller, GDW chronicles
the events of the Fifth Frontier War.
Then, to kick off MegaTraveller, they
come up with the Rebellion, a big
multi-factional civil war replete with
heroes and villains for the player to love
and hate. Then, once sales drop off
again, they segue into the New Era by
positing a computer virus which nearly
wipes out civilization. However, while
each of these steps is no doubt a well-
contrived marketing strategy, they end
up losing about half their audience with
each fateful transition, essentially
fracturing their market until it’s no
longer recognizable as a single
purchasing entity. In the hopes of
returning to the glory days, the next
incarnation of Traveller was... you
guessed it, Traveller 4th edition, wiping
out the entire history of the Rebellion
along with that pesky, annoying
computer virus. The new designers
basically wiped the slate clean in the
hopes of re-uniting a fractured
audience. With a little better editing and
quality control, the plan might have
actually worked, but as it stands, Miller
ended up pulling the plug and licensing
the rights to SJG which has the odd
habit of actually proofreading it’s
products. All’s well that ends well, I
guess.
My point in all this is not to denigrate
Traveller, a game I happen to love! My
point is that this whole entire episode
was a symptom of FTL-travel. How is it
that I can speak such blasphemy? It’s
quite simple. Under FTL-travel, time in
the campaign setting passes at whatever
rate the PCs are experiencing it,
meaning of course, that if the campaign
is weekly for one year of real time,
perhaps 2-3 years of campaign time
might pass, letting the overall setting
evolve by 2-3 years. Generally
speaking, not a great deal of stuff
happens in 2-3 years, unless, of course,
you live in interesting times. In short,
the setting is not going to evolve a great
deal, and so over the course of the
campaign, it may begin to wear a bit
thin. The players may yearn for
something new and different: a new
campaign with a different overall
conflict or simply a different historical
period to explore.
Under STL-travel, these things fall
into place quite naturally, because STL-
travel stretches out the timespan of the
campaign, so things continue to happen.
In short, there’s a higher degree of
perceived turbulence simply because
the timespan of the campaign is so long.
What do I mean by stretching the
timespan? Consider the table at the top
of this page. On the left hand side are
the number of light years we are
travelling. On the top are the number of
G’s of acceleration we are applying
(taking into account that we’ve got to
turn around and decelerate at the half-
way point). Each cell in the table
represents the number of days of
subjective time that the crew
experiences due to time dilation. What
about real time? Well, that’s on the left
hand side. Distance and real time are
nearly the same, because it takes at least
x real years to travel x light years. At
high G’s it might take only a brief while
longer, but it will always take longer.
There’s no getting around it.
What this means, of course, is that if,
for example, the voyage is 20 light
years, and the ship is accelerating at 200
G’s, then the voyage takes roughly 29
subjective days from the crew’s point of
view. Meanwhile, however, 20 years
have gone by in the game’s setting.
Planetary wars may have erupted. The
ship’s world of destination could be
much changed from how the crew
remembers it. Loved ones may have
passed on, leaving behind their children
or grandchildren who are now all grown
up. Societal customs may have evolved.
In short, the campaign universe is in a
constant state of flux!
How different this is from the
situation under FTL-travel where the
players may never see the long-term
consequences of their actions, and
where the game setting, as a whole,
tends to remain static unless awkwardly
Number of Days in Subjective Time by Distance & Acceleration
50 G’s 100 G’s 150 G’s 200 G’s 250 G’s 300 G’s
10 ly 88 49 35 27 22 19
20 ly 98 54 38 29 24 21
30 ly 104 57 40 31 25 22
40 ly 108 59 41 32 26 22
50 ly 111 61 42 33 27 23
60 ly 114 62 43 33 27 23
70 ly 116 63 44 34 28 24
80 ly 118 64 44 34 28 24
90 ly 120 65 45 35 28 24
100 ly 121 65 46 35 29 24
forced into motion by GM (or game because it takes so long to get from
designer) whim. place to place. It would likely take
For a moment, just consider the hundreds of years to prosecute a sizable
possibilities. Under STL-travel, the interstellar war. Hence, the back-story
crew of a ship could start a colony in doesn’t have to be books in length in
some remote asteroid belt, then go off order to be realistic. It can be covered
on a few adventures. They could then fairly succinctly. The broad strokes
come back 20 or 40 years later become more natural, more realistic,
(depending on the length of their more easily digested and internally
voyage), only to discover that the small consistent. STL-travel does all this for
colony is now fairly substantial, and an interstellar SF-RPG setting. So why
many of the colonists (if still alive) now hasn’t it been tried? Why hasn’t
have extended families. Maybe the anybody really given it a fair shot?
ship’s crew will be treated as returning I think that part of the reason may be
heroes. A hundred years later, perhaps the perceived laziness of gamers. Game
they’re more like legends, and some designers want to provide enough
might be slightly afraid to identify stability to the setting that the GM
themselves at the local pub. Fifty years doesn’t have to reinvent a world every
beyond that the place has been wiped time the PCs come back to it. Their
out by some alien incursion, or a mechanism for this stability is FTL. Not
disease, or whatever. Because the that much time passes between visits, so
players were instrumental in starting things don’t change all that much. I
this mini-society, and because it has think change is seen as a sort of enemy,
honored them appropriately every time in this sense, because the designers look
they’ve returned, they will be likely to at our own world and marvel at the rate
have a genuine desire to find survivors of change that we are undergoing, and
and try to figure out what happened. In they come to the conclusion that
short, they’ve become invested in the making extrapolations based on trends
plot as well as the NPCs and their is a very complex task, and yet I don’t
extended families. These are suddenly think this is really a valid comparison.
their people... not just people they’ve One of the major things that has really
met over the course of their journeys contributed to change in our world
but people who are a part of their lives (especially in recent times) has been this
and vice-versa. lack of a technology ceiling. Scientific
None of this could happen in an FTL advances lead to technological
universe because time is so compressed, innovation which leads general
so STL opens up these interesting upheaval as everyone scrambles to
possibilities, and the designer isn’t maximize their advantage. This is
forced to manufacture some sudden war precisely where Bill Gates and his ilk
or a series of implausible conflicts to come in, and I’m not just talking about
spice things up. On this sort of time all the dot-coms racing to cash in on the
scale, wars would occur quite naturally. internet, but I’m talking about the
There is nothing forced about it. industrial revolution in general as well
Likewise, the interstellar back-story as the rail wars and the automobile wars
would be less tumultuous simply (not actual wars, but industrial
competitions driven by capitalism and
greed).
If you take away the rapid succession
of scientific advancements by imposing
a technology ceiling, I think things
would tend to stabilize quite a bit.
Society, of course, would continue to
mutate socially, but these trends occur
over generations. Likewise, wars and
other political conflicts would still
occur. Market competition would
continue to be a driving force in any
capitalistic economic framework.
However, the great upheaval which
we’ve witnessed during the last hundred
and some years would not continue at
the same rate. Hence, I don’t see this
awe-inspiring need to fear the march of
time which is so intertwined with STL-
travel. Clearly the universe would
evolve during the course of a thousand
year campaign, but it needn’t evolve
beyond all recognition.
There is also another reason why I
think game designer’s have been shy
about exploring the prospects of STL-
travel. I was talking on the phone to a
friend a few weeks ago, and he said that
perhaps STL just isn’t glamorous
enough. Sometimes this particular
friend of mine, though soft-spoken and
cautious with his opinions, can really
nail it on the head. I think that after Star
Trek and Star Wars, we want our
science fiction to mimic space
fantasy and all its glamour (with
tie-fighters roaring in the vacuum
of space and Captain Kirk
breathing quite easily on every
lifeless world he beams
down to).
It’s
not just
the
ignorance
of the
scientific realities that gets me. It’s the
ignorance of the possibilities inherent to
the scientific realities. Once upon a
time, authors used to write science
fiction as an exploration of those
possibilities. Some of the best science
fiction is based on “what if’s” along
with an extrapolation of the plots and
characters and social dynamics resulting
from whatever premise has been
proposed. So why hasn’t any SF-RPG
done this with STL? Are the designers
too lazy? Or are they simply worried
that it won’t sell... that it’ll be too
difficult for Joe Gamer to manage or not
glamorous enough to spark an interest?
Well, being hobbyists, myself and the
folks who are helping with the design of
Ragamuffin are in a position to say, “To
hell if it sells. We don’t even want to
sell the damn thing. Heck, we’re so
disinterested in that aspect of the hobby
that we’re giving it away for free!”
Hence, we don’t have to design the
game to be mass-market or whatever
we assume people will buy (based on
what has been put in the marketplace so
far). We can just say, “This is a new
idea (or rather an old idea that nobody
has attempted to really explore in
gaming), we’re
attempting to
explore it to its
fullest
potential,
and either
you like
it or you
don’t.”
If we
wanted mass-market,
we’d bring on those
flat, two-
dimensional maps
and we’d bring on
the light sabres
and psionics and
whatever else we
could dream up. But
we aren’t going for that. We’re not
aiming for popularity here. Instead,
we’re looking straight down the widest,
most obvious, most unexplored alley in
science fiction gaming, and we are not
flinching. We are unafraid, because we
see the possibilities for interesting,
naturally developing, internally
consistent stories, and they are
amazing!
Questions & Answers
Of course, I lie. There has been more
than just a little bit of flinching and
apprehension. I, myself, have been
flinching on this for years, and it’s only
been recently that I’ve finally made up
my mind with conviction that this is the
way to go. At least it’s worth a shot if
for no other reason than nobody has
ever done it before. Nobody has ever
combined STL-travel with time dilation
to produce an interstellar campaign
setting with a sprawling population of
alien societies. And yet, looking at
scientific research and pragmatic
speculations about the directions
technology may take, it all seems so
obvious.
Nonetheless, people in my own
design group have expressed
reservations, so I’m taking up the role
of cheerleader and diplomat, hoping to
drive the consensus toward my way
of thinking. That, in fact, is what this
essay is all about. In the hopes of
alleviating some of the more
common fears, here are a few
additional worries and replies
concerning what STL-travel will
likely mean for the setting.
Q1. Won’t STL raise the
price tag of interstellar
ventures such that exploration
and colonization will never
happen? And given the long
turn-around time, why would an
interplanetary government spend
the money to finance such a
mission which will only be of benefit
to future (and possibly opposing)
administrations? When has government
ever been this long-sighted?
A1. This is a good argument, but I think
that many races would go to the trouble
just because it’s possible. We also have
to assume that it’s not going to cost
their entire planetary GNP to build a
ship. But I think that if we, here on
Earth, could build one right now for the
cost of going to Mars, we would do so.
Let’s take it down even further and say
that perhaps it would only reach the cost
of going to the Moon again. Now it’s
much more likely that we would do so.
And if you continue to scale back the
cost until the price of building a starship
equals that of, say, building 5-10 jumbo
jets in year 2001 dollars, then I think
you’d definitely see several starships
being built. Perhaps not 100 of them,
but perhaps a dozen.
Q2. What about trade? Such long-term
voyages have got to have an adverse
impact on the bottom line. After all, a
merchant vessel is only worth what it
can make off the goods it can carry over
its life. If it can only make ten voyages
before it needs a major overhaul, it sure
as heck isn’t going to be carrying
oranges.
A2. The first thing to remember here is
that starships don’t age in real time
except when they are parked in orbit.
Starships, like their crews, age in
subjective time. That means that they
will be good for many, many voyages.
A typical starship’s term of service may
encompass hundreds or even thousands
of real years before it ever reaches its
overhaul age.
The second thing to consider is that
biologicals will likewise be easier to
transport due to time dilation. Just as the
crew ages less, so too will they age less.
Of course, a month is still a long time
for an orange, but perhaps not quite so
long for dehydrated, homogenized,
orange concentrate. Even so, if it’s
cheaper at the destination market
to produce agricultural products
than to import, then they’re
going to produce them locally,
and I imagine this will likely
be the case for most such
products. Nonetheless, there
will always be exotics which
will command a higher price
and consequently be worth
importing.
Naturally, all of the above
depends on the price tag associated
with starship construction. I realize
that in the early discussion archives,
there was talk about making starships
expensive to build. However, after
thinking this through, I’ve begun to take
the opposite position.
Given the free labor of robots, the
near limitless materials of asteroid belts,
and the nearly free energy of fusion, I
have to wonder why starships would be
so difficult to build. Once you’ve got
the basic “factory” in place, you should
be able to produce a lot of anything
(cars, boats, airplanes, starships). Of
course, here on earth, robotics is still an
evolving technology, and it’s not yet at
the level where we can build boats and
airplanes in the kind of automated,
assembly line way that we build cars,
but if we did, you’d probably see prices
drop quite a bit. One has to wonder
what the future will bring as robotics
technology evolves.
All this discussion of robots reminds
me of something yet another friend of
mine once said. “What is money?” he
asked. “What does it really represent?”
In short, money is roughly equivalent to
man-hours. Skilled man-hours cost
more than unskilled man-hours, but
that’s mainly what you’re paying for in
nearly any product that you purchase
(with the possible exception of A&E
where you’re getting a really good
deal). Robotics, I think, will change the
value of money quite substantially and
in ways which we probably can’t even
imagine at the present time. In short,
assuming the technology continues to
progress at the rate it’s been going,
we’ll almost certainly be living in
interesting times.
Q3. Without FTL-travel, how is the
coalition and its high council going to
enforce any of their laws or decisions?
Consider that it may take decades to
mass a fleet against an outlaw
government, and it could take centuries
to prosecute a war. Who is going to go
to the trouble given these extreme time
lags? Even if the navy does make the
long journey, for instance, to suppress a
revolt on a distant colony, or to expel an
overly aggressive race out of the
territory of its neighbor, by the time
they arrive on scene, the whole situation
may have turned upside-down, and the
fleet may be urgently needed back
home. All this makes for a big logistical
mess where the enforcement of
interstellar law is basically a farce.
A3. These are all excellent points, and if
there were no FTL-communication, I’d
probably agree with all of this whole-
heartedly, which is why I made the
decision that FTL-communication must
be integral to the setting. Given that
technology, a central government could
put its representatives on various worlds
and then communicate their wishes via
FTL-radio. With local representatives
backed by local force as well as a much
greater offworld force perhaps only
twenty or thirty years away, the
population and its leaders would be
more likely to be law-abiding. Granted,
if people were planning to die of old
age in 20-30 years, the distant force
might not pose as great a threat, but if
you include non-age medical techniques
into the equation, then 20-30 years may
not seem like such a long time after all.
Of course, this raises the question
about what to do with criminals.
Q4. What about the political
prospects for Earth? By all
accounts, Earth is a lovely
garden world that most races
with a C/O2/H20
biochemistry would be eager
to absorb into their fold.
However, sentient natives
(i.e. humans) make the
process so much more
difficult. First they must be
screened, then the whole thing is
taken to the high council, then the
council must decide whether to offer
membership. If humans don’t qualify
for membership status, then the council
must decide which one of the bickering
races gets Earth, and there’s so much
red tape that wars are almost certain to
result.
A4. Yes, given the STL-travel
limitation (and depending on the speed
of FTL-communication), the whole
thing may likely end up decided before
the council has a chance to decide, and
that adds a whole extra layer of politics
and resulting chaos (which is cool).
Q5. How do we deal with the problem
of having to create a new set of NPCs
every time the PCs revisit a planet?
A5. That, I agree, will be
an extremely unusual
feature of the campaign, at
least until non-aging
technology is
developed or
appropriated
(which could be
an early
adventure). But
until that happens,
the setting will take
a lot of effort to get used to,
and even with anagathic
technology, there will still
be social repercussions for
spacers. For example, if
you left your girlfriend on
a world and said, “Don’t
worry, babe... I’ll be back in
50 years. You can wait for me,
can’t you?” she might get a bit
irked. If you left her and came
back (for you, the subjective time
might be only a few months or a
year), it wouldn’t be a great leap of
logic to discover that she’s now a
great-grandmother. That would make
for extremely unusual social dynamics,
as normally aging people would likely
treat space travellers as ghosts in a
way... they realize that once they are
gone, they will probably never be seen
again (at least until old age). And that’s
a scary thing to introduce into a setting
because it’s so beyond our realm of
experience. We can imagine what it
might be like, but having never
experienced anything like it ourselves,
how close we come to getting it right as
game designers is something we could
never know.
Q6. What about the risk that this STL-
travel doctrine may result in a game
where the players spend as much time
in a single star system as humanly
possible, because to leave that star
system would entail the hardship of
cutting themselves off from everyone
there for an extended duration? Here’s
the key problem. I’ve put a lot of work
into my aliens, and I want them to be
more than just rumors, or space
invaders, or Trekish stereotypes. That’s
what I’m afraid of. I want the work I’ve
done on this project to mean something.
A6. I don’t think that STL in any way potential players will turn their noses at
voids the aliens that you’ve created. it and think that it’s a stupid idea. But I
Yes, it makes them more difficult to can’t help but think, after really
reach. But the thing to remember considering this for several years, that it
about this setting is that is a good idea if given a fair chance and
humanity is a minor race. In executed correctly.
every other SF-RPG
setting, from Star Q7. One final question. Relativity and
Trek, to Star Wars, to time dilation involve a bit of
Babylon 5, to mathematics. While the gearheads
Traveller, we are a might enjoy it, most players may prefer
major race. Even to skip it. What about them?
Albedo, which tries
harder than any game A7. I’ll write some software to make it
before it to break from this all seem easy, and for those who don’t
stereotype, the characters are have access to a computer, I can put
arguably just humans in animal together some tables like the time
costumes. In all the other dilation table several pages back so they
games there are large won’t even have to yank out a
expanses of human calculator. Altogether, I don’t think it’ll
dominated space where most be too hard for the average player to
ships are crewed by humans cope. After all, it’s not like this stuff is
and most NPCs the players rocket science! Well, okay... so it is
might meet will be humans. rocket science.
However, in the Ragamuffin
setting, humans are extremely rare.
Most planets and ships visited by
the PCs will have lots of alien
NPCs and few to zero human
NPCs, and that in itself is a
stark contrast to everything
else that’s been done
before. It also means that
aliens and alien politics
will play a more
important role in this
game than in any SF-RPG
which has ever come before. That says
a great deal, and for that reason, I think
any aliens you create are not very likely
to find their way into the proverbial
dustbin. They will definitely be used.
Again, I realize that this whole thing
seems awfully strange. Believe me, it
took me several years to come to terms
with it myself, and it’s a process I’m
still undergoing. I’m so used to the way
that everyone else has been designing
SF-settings (i.e. with FTL-travel), that it
almost seems impossible to design one
which takes the opposite approach. But
after setting aside my personal biases
and carefully considering each of the
ramifications, I’ve come to the
conclusion that it could actually
improve the flow of the game.
Certainly, it would make it a lot
different from any other SF-RPG that
we’ve ever played. It will seem unusual
at first. Of that I have absolutely no
doubt. And I’m sure that the majority of