Interstellar Sophontarian Law ?
- Thread starter domingojs23
- Start date
ShawnDriscoll
Cosmic Mongoose
What are you talking about? Alien Race, human Race. Race meaning intelligent life form. Easy.Lord High Munchkin said:
Traveller has major and minor races all over the place. The other word "species" you used works great for describing a race.
None of this matters if your players don't role-play, and are just staring at their stats on a character sheet during a game, seeing how they can win. What player goes nuts and does a happy dance in your group when they get Sophontology as a skill?
Would you try to use Xenology on yourself? I didn't think so. I don't think a player would use Sophontology on them self. That's how popular the non-word is. I challenge anyone here to describe a scene that was role-played in a game session of theirs where "sophont" was mentioned and made use of.
The term "sophont" was coined by Karen Anderson around 1966dragoner said:
and used by, for example, Poul Anderson, David Brin, Joanna Russ
and Vernon Vinge in their science fiction stories - it is both older
and more widespread than Traveller.
We did us the term quite often, in a short campaign based on aShawnDriscoll said:
GURPS Traveller adventure about the first contact with a poten-
tially sophont species (I can look up the details if you really need
them).
ShawnDriscoll
Cosmic Mongoose
I'd like to know what the reaction of the players was when you used the term "sophont".rust said:
ShawnDriscoll
Cosmic Mongoose
So you're saying that the players all knew the term before you brought it up? Saying "sophont" was like saying "skateboard".rust said:
GypsyComet
Emperor Mongoose
May as well stop using "Gauss Rifle", since it was invented within Traveller.
ShawnDriscoll
Cosmic Mongoose
The Gauss unit for measuring has been around for awhile.GypsyComet said:
Isn't it from The Stainless Steel Rat?
Edit - many of these words seem to be a shibboleth for those not familiar with the era of sci-fi trav arose from, not that there is anything wrong with that. How many remember when every new technology was "space age", whereas now it is "i" this and "e" that as if ee cummings has become the great marketing instigator, with "smart" occasionally thrown in.
Edit - many of these words seem to be a shibboleth for those not familiar with the era of sci-fi trav arose from, not that there is anything wrong with that. How many remember when every new technology was "space age", whereas now it is "i" this and "e" that as if ee cummings has become the great marketing instigator, with "smart" occasionally thrown in.
Lord High Munchkin
Mongoose
Rather, the issue is that 'Traveller' has far outgrown it's 1970's origins and tropes... it's used for huge numbers of diverse other Sci-Fi types.
If your game setting is more like The Culture than H. Beam Piper then some aspects one takes from the mechanics are going to be radically different.
If your game setting is more like The Culture than H. Beam Piper then some aspects one takes from the mechanics are going to be radically different.
GypsyComet
Emperor Mongoose
The Stainless Steel Rat book that used "gauss pistols" was published in 1984. Book 4 Mercenary dates to 1978. It is not the concept that originates within Traveller, but the specific term "gauss rifle/pistol" as applied to a weapon.
Scientist's name attached to a weapon he didn't invent.
Cognate of a Greek word for "wisdom" applied to intelligent beings.
As a fair number of the sciences are named from the Greek roots, xenology is both imprecise and possibly pejorative, and sapient and sentient come from Latin and do not appear to come originally from Greek, I fail to see the problem with sophontology and thus sophont.
So its a recent word, barely 50 years old. The list of young words no one thinks twice about is a long one.
Scientist's name attached to a weapon he didn't invent.
Cognate of a Greek word for "wisdom" applied to intelligent beings.
As a fair number of the sciences are named from the Greek roots, xenology is both imprecise and possibly pejorative, and sapient and sentient come from Latin and do not appear to come originally from Greek, I fail to see the problem with sophontology and thus sophont.
So its a recent word, barely 50 years old. The list of young words no one thinks twice about is a long one.
GypsyComet
Emperor Mongoose
Aha. I knew there were later SSR books, so the 1984 date did not raise a question. Didn't occur to me that it might be a later printing.
The point stands, however. Term invented in SF and used in Traveller, and even younger than Sophont.
The point stands, however. Term invented in SF and used in Traveller, and even younger than Sophont.
Lord High Munchkin said:
The issue with the Culture, is that its tech paradigm is generally far higher than what is typically covered in trav, but for the most part, updating trav isn't too difficult, I have in my campaign. Tech and terminology is nice window dressing, but it is character driven story telling and the attendant ethos/pathos that drives the game.
GypsyComet said:
It's not that it was invented within Traveller. Gauss is a unit of magnetic field measurement, rifles are long-barrelled guns - it makes sense when put together that you're talking about a rifle that is based on magnetism.
"Sophont" on the other hand just isn't a word, and what's more it's using a made-up word when there are other perfectly applicable real words that could just be adapted instead (like sapient, sentient, etc). It's entirely unnecessary.
The only thing I can find in the dictionary is "sophic" which means 'having wisdom'. Sapient also means 'having wisdom', so it probably isn't a good word to use either, since having wisdom is merely a side-effect of being intelligent.
'Sentient' on the other hand means "having the power of sense perception or sensation; conscious" or even (rarely) "a sentient person or thing" ( http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sentient?s=ts ), which is exactly what we're after here - so why is there a need to use another word?
GypsyComet said:
True. Gauss Rifles are cool, and it makes trav that much cooler to have them, I have TL15 Advanced Gauss Rifles in my game. Sophont is also an elegant solution to what has already been mentioned as the slightly dodgy term of "race", I'm glad for its inclusion, I'll admit I wasn't the biggest fan in the beginning, but the term has grown on me instead of "people" that I had used before.
Lord High Munchkin
Mongoose
Personally I use a Tech Level scale of my own (as do a fair number of other GMs I know), so that isn't an issue. That also allows the "stripping out" of a lot of things I don't find useful from books like CSC.
The only major difference in a setting such as The Culture really would be AI, which is covered in detail in the two robots books, if required. Trade is less of an issue too, but, as you say, character driven stories dominate that game-style, so is not so prominent.
The only major difference in a setting such as The Culture really would be AI, which is covered in detail in the two robots books, if required. Trade is less of an issue too, but, as you say, character driven stories dominate that game-style, so is not so prominent.
ShawnDriscoll
Cosmic Mongoose
Wiki dictionary shorts out on the word Sophont. If it was meant to mean wisdom, then not all humans can be sophonts. That's for certain.Wil Mireu said:
