Too much Science?

[-Daniel-]

I sometimes feel there is almost too much Science in our attempts to make sure the SciFi game is "true" to science.

In order to have a good Fiction part, I think we sometimes have to put the science aside. Now I am not saying ignore all science, but sometimes set it aside for the game and the story.

People have pointed out many subjects where Traveller is less then accurate with the science. I am slowing getting to the point I want to say "Who Cares". All the good sci-fi I on has elements that are less then realistic. Even the "hard Sci-Fi" is that way.

At some point we need to accept the lack of 100% accuracy and enjoy the game.

Daniel

 

[EDG]

I have to ask, what specifically has made you think there's "too much science"?

 

[Sturn]

I completey agree with you for the Traveller universe. We are playing with dog-men, cat-men, and floating baseball palaces. Traveller is not hard-sci.

I was never a fan of FFE when it came to Traveller for example. Give me something like that for a harder setting, sure, I will take it. Just not for Traveller. I prefer "C" Power Plants, not a powerplant of "per 1 MW of power - 3.5 meters cubed volume, 2.1 tons mass, 1.33 MCr, 1.2 meters squared surface radiators".

I'm hoping that MGT High Guard gives a more detailed starship construction system NOT in the sense of FFE, but just with more options. Fuel cells, varying tech-levels of fusion, Heplar drives, etc. all rated with a letter-code like CT and now MGT core. Heck, even vehicle and small craft parts could be rated thus with a small-cased "c" fusion+ power plant, "d" thruster plates, etc.

Simplicity is great for an RPG. Even the mighty d20 (which I don't prefer) has taken a step back to simplicity. Suspend my disbelief with rules that tend to mimic science, but keep it fun and simple. If I wanted to retake Analytical Geometry and Calculus III, I would go back to college for it. Keep my RPG rules fun and simple even at the cost of bending a few scientific rules here and there.

 

[Silvereye]

I had a discussion with the owner of my LGS a long time ago about the difficulty in running a sci-fi game over a fantasy game. What we came up with was basically you have to make the game universe believable to your players.

Now in most fantasy game,s it is easy to suspend your players disbelief with "Magic". In a sci-fi game you tend to have them ask the awkward questions (such as how...?)

For example, in a fantasy game your players may use a crystal ball to snoop on a location, and they wont question how the crystal ball gets the image. In a sci-fi game, if they snoop at a location, they'll likely ask what is supplying the feed. And they'll expect an answer.

From your statement, there is an attempt too use too much science in the game, but that is needed to keep the players believing.

 

[captainjack23]

I had a discussion with the owner of my LGS a long time ago about the difficulty in running a sci-fi game over a fantasy game. What we came up with was basically you have to make the game universe believable to your players.

Now in most fantasy game,s it is easy to suspend your players disbelief with "Magic". In a sci-fi game you tend to have them ask the awkward questions (such as how...?)

For example, in a fantasy game your players may use a crystal ball to snoop on a location, and they wont question how the crystal ball gets the image. In a sci-fi game, if they snoop at a location, they'll likely ask what is supplying the feed. And they'll expect an answer.

From your statement, there is an attempt too use too much science in the game, but that is needed to keep the players believing.

I've come to the question that not only is it a matter of degree (I've seen too much tech detail stifle a game, and too little leave it undefined as other than fantasy in fishbowl helmets) but even moreso, the GM has to be comfortable with where the balance is set - as the one behind the curtain, the GM sees all the patches and kludges - and if uncomfortable with them, it'll show, and thus make it harder for the players to make their "suspend disbelief" roll.

 

[EDG]

I'd actually say that making it accurate and scientific can give you a lot more interesting and playable ideas than ignoring the science. Look at the oceanography thread for example - I think the OP didn't realise that you could get massive hurricanes on water worlds, and he wouldn't have known that if he didn't try to make his world more realistic.

Also, I just did a bit of work on the Avenger boards for someone who wanted to get info on the star Canopus. If you just ignore the science and plonk planets around it then you can do that, but knowing it's a very rare yellow supergiant that can't have planets and that's going to be Really Damn Bright in the sky for the other worlds in its subsector adds so much colour that wouldn't have otherwise been there.

If you're talking about ship design and so on, well, I think that's more an issue with "amount of detail" than "realism". But personally I don't buy the logic of "Traveller has some unrealistic elements in, so therefore everything can be unrealistic".

 

[-Daniel-]

I'd actually say that making it accurate and scientific can give you a lot more interesting and playable ideas than ignoring the science.

EDG,
It does not always have to be an all or nothing thing though. I never said to ignore science.

I do find there are some moments when a statement is enough. I do not need to understand all of the math etc behind the idea that a pure water world would/could have some massive hurricanes to accept this as an element to place in the game for realism.

I think Stern’s example of the Power Plants is a good one. I am not saying to ignore all science and have power plants the size of match books that can drive a million ton starship. I am saying that sometimes in the drive to put “science” too much into the mix it ends up causing as many problems as it “solves”.

Now let me say again for the few who seem to have missed it, I am not saying ignore all science. If I wanted to do that I would play 4th ed D&D. But I do believe we sometimes take the drive to “match” science too far.


Daniel

 

[captainjack23]

I'd actually say that making it accurate and scientific can give you a lot more interesting and playable ideas than ignoring the science. Look at the oceanography thread for example - I think the OP didn't realise that you could get massive hurricanes on water worlds, and he wouldn't have known that if he didn't try to make his world more realistic.

On the whole, I agree. The problem, though, is doing that at a level beyond ones interests, really. I don't think demanding or denying absolute accuracy here is the goal, but rather noting that its a problem when it becomes more than the GM wants to deal with. A bored or overwhelmed GM is also a poor GM. A bored or overwhelmed player is also a problem.
[/quote]

Also, I just did a bit of work on the Avenger boards for someone who wanted to get info on the star Canopus. If you just ignore the science and plonk planets around it then you can do that, but knowing it's a very rare yellow supergiant that can't have planets and that's going to be Really Damn Bright in the sky for the other worlds in its subsector adds so much colour that wouldn't have otherwise been there.

Obviously the interested or at least willing will always attempt to rise to their comfort level of accuracy - and resources are part of that. You have the luck to be trained, interested and able to explain some of the core traveller issues in planetology -which is great.

That's it, just a complement.....

If you're talking about ship design and so on, well, I think that's more an issue with "amount of detail" than "realism". But personally I don't buy the logic of "Traveller has some unrealistic elements in, so therefore everything can be unrealistic".

I'm not sure that anyone here is claiming that any inaccuracy equals no accuracy needed; I would suggest that to many, though, and this is pehaps the point of the original poster, such issues as spectral classes are just as much an annoying detail as megawatts in ship designs.

 

[-Daniel-]

From your statement, there is an attempt too use too much science in the game, but that is needed to keep the players believing.

I thik it is needed to have some science. But I disagree "too much" is needed to allow the players to believe.

Use your example, they ask how they are receiving the feed. I answer they have hacked into the local security system and are watching one of the security cameras. They smile and we move on. I did not have to explain what frequency they were using to hack the 25th century version of WiFi was for them to accept the answer.

I just have noticed we sometimes spend a lot of energy winding up over "science" when in the end it will produce a +1DM etc. Not I said we. I too find I sometimes get too caught up in it. I too want it all to make 100% sense. But it is a game and it will not make 100% sense all of the time IMO.

Daniel

 

[-Daniel-]

I've come to the question that not only is it a matter of degree (I've seen too much tech detail stifle a game, and too little leave it undefined as other than fantasy in fishbowl helmets) but even moreso, the GM has to be comfortable with where the balance is set - as the one behind the curtain, the GM sees all the patches and kludges - and if uncomfortable with them, it'll show, and thus make it harder for the players to make their "suspend disbelief" roll.

Good point. It is not just degree, but the comfort of the GM. I think this is an important point. Thanks!

Daniel

 

[-Daniel-]

I'm not sure that anyone here is claiming that any inaccuracy equals no accuracy needed; I would suggest that to many, though, and this is pehaps the point of the original poster, such issues as spectral classes are just as much an annoying detail as megawatts in ship designs.

Yes, too much information does overwhelm.

I think I am also thinking of a little trust. Back when EDG was working on his version of the world generation system I read most of his posts, kept his work on my hard drive, and loved that he was trying to give me a system that was as “realistic” as it could be based on what we know today. But I admit to not always understanding way he said it should be the way it was. I just trusted him and rolled up some systems. Then, if something seemed odd, I just made it up from there. I did not let the science overwhelm me.

I liked that his system was based in science, but I used it as a tool for my fictional setting and moved on. I did not need to understand it all nor did my lack of understanding make a large difference in the game. His system gave me some great systems and my group is exploring them.

Daniel

 

[Dyrewulf]

I completely agree Daniel,

A long time ago on these boards, during the playtest, there was a rather heated thread about world generation...to the point where people were saying that if the things broken in the rules for world gen were not fixed, they couldn't see themselves playing...I was completely floored.

Yes, world gen is a big part of the game, but its not a deal breaker...use your imagination...lets try it together...

"Your ship exits jumpspace and you find yourselves on the edge of a binary system. After completing your scans you can see that there are 3 gas giants, mid system, an asteroid belt in the first AU and 2 green zone planets. As you focus your scans you determine that the closer of the two is a water world, looks to be 68% water, while the other one approximately 30%. You are being hailed by the system navy, the communication is coming from the rather large naval station between the two green zone planets."

I know...not really to detailed but again...not a show stopper. It just amazed me how mad people were getting on that and all I could do was laugh...

 

[rust]

I sometimes feel there is almost too much Science in our attempts to make sure the SciFi game is "true" to science.
...
At some point we need to accept the lack of 100% accuracy and enjoy the game.

It depends a lot on the kind of players one is developing a setting for, I
think.

Players usually want some kind of verisimilitude (not realism) to support
their suspension of disbelief. With players who are neither interested in
science nor have any kind of scientific background, you can easily igno-
re much of the science in science fiction. However, with a bunch of play-
ers who have both some science education and some interest in science,
you have to work somewhat harder to make your setting acceptable.

Besides, as EDG already mentioned, a look at the science of a setting
can help a lot to develop both the atmosphere of the setting and inter-
esting adventures for the setting. At least in my experience, the more
I learned about a setting, the more good ideas came to my mind.

But of course the science is only a tool, not an end in itself. For example,
I would never seriously attempt to explain a contragrav or a jump drive.
They are like the crystal ball mentioned above: They just work.
And I am fully satisfied when I have developed a setting to the point whe-
re I feel that my players will "believe" it, I would never cross the line in-
to science for science's sake.

 

[captainjack23]

Yes, world gen is a big part of the game, but its not a deal breaker...use your imagination...lets try it together...

"Your ship exits jumpspace and you find yourselves on the edge of a binary system. After completing your scans you can see that there are 3 gas giants, mid system, an asteroid belt in the first AU and 2 green zone planets. As you focus your scans you determine that the closer of the two is a water world, looks to be 68% water, while the other one approximately 30%. You are being hailed by the system navy, the communication is coming from the rather large naval station between the two green zone planets."

I know...not really to detailed but again...not a show stopper. It just amazed me how mad people were getting on that and all I could do was laugh...

Well, it does raise the interesting point about which of the statements in that paragraph is going to grab the players attention and hold it. The naval station, especially if they are just passing thru.

 

[Klaus Kipling]

The thing is just to avoid the outright silly. At least in the OTU. You could potentially design a Hitchhiker's style satirically bonkers milieu to go with MGT. In fact, the mooted Strontium Dog Traveller game should be chock full of entertainingly stupid mutations. Or you could also quite easily design an MGT setting around only real hard science, maybe just in the Solar System or near Earth at sublight speeds.

This issue only of a concern within the OTU. The obvious macguffins notwithstanding, the OTU has a hardish feel. It's "Outland", not "John Carter of Mars". Even the walking talking dogs have a classic sci-fi rationale. The setting has been conservative in technology terms, so no Flash Gordon rayguns. But really almost anything else is fair game. It's up to the style of the ref or group. You could even set up almost any scenario in a place the size of the the 3I and come up with a rationale that keeps in the feel of the OTU.

It's only really an issue in worldgen. To the folk who like a style to which some scientific plausibility* isn't required it doesn't matter if the system frequently spits out nonsensical planets. But to those who do care it can be quite frustrating. And to the former it would not make any difference if the system was consistently plausible anyway. It makes sense in game design to attempt to please most of your players instead of frustrating in some way a portion of them. The variant rules in MGT cut out the worst of the silliness. It's just that most of the 3I has already been filled in using the old systems.

* this a nicely elastic term

Having said that, while it can be fun crunching some real data to get good ideas, it's shouldn't be necessary to do this. As long as planets are reasonably plausible everyone'll be happy. It's only those glaring impossibilities that have propagated across the OTU that niggle. A few good oddities is fine, but not that amount of impossible worlds. It would have been nice to take this opportunity of a fresh version of Trav to clean up some of these discrepancies, but, oh well. The word is we've got some good stuff coming to us anyway.

There is another reason why its better for a (hardish) sf game to err on the side of science. Most of us started playing as kids. I know I learned some real stuff from the sci fi games I used to play as a kid. At the very least being able to convert from metric to imperial in my head. If the stuff is presented like it is based on real science, as Traveller stuff often is (as opposed to Star Wars, say), then it probably shouldn't be total nonsense (not that it is total nonsense). There should be some kernels of truth in there.

In the case of using Mw or mass/velocity equation the, ugh, no thanks. If the numbers are abstract then the game doesn't date.

 

[captainjack23]

"mooted strontium dog "

Have I missed some bad news ?

 

[captainjack23]

frequently spits out nonsensical planets.

this is also a nicely elastic term...

Frequently and nonsensical are both in the eye of the beholder -and beware of the other seven eyes, and the big pointy teeth.....

 

[AKAramis]

The biggest problem with any design sequence ist that, if it converts to real-world units, the other units can be derived.

So, if we have a drive which burns 2EP to move a massive ship of about 2000Mg (Megagrams, aka Tons Metric) at an acceleration of 10m/s/s, we can work out the joules for the impulse, and thus the wattage of the EP.

Further, we know that certain limits do exist on weapons; pretty much anything below 50MW isn't going to have sufficient energy to damage vehicles at ranges of a km+, and further, we also know that there are diffraction limits which result in knowing the ranges to be bunk. (The effective range of a CT laser turret was 1.66 LS...)

So... Traveller was never terribly realistic. It was, however, for a good long while the most realistic game going. (SJG's GURPS:THS is FAR more realistic. Not that I'd find that setting any fun. Likewise, T&I/Chessex's Albedo was more realistic in its ship and space combat systems... despite being a furries game.)

Traveller was "just realistic enough" to feel like hard sci-fi in overall tone, but was never really scientific until FF&S... at which point handwavium had to rear its ugly head in the rules. (Gravitic Focussing on Lasers to reduce the diffraction limit low enough to generate damage on target 30Mm (0.1LS))

 

[EDG]

frequently spits out nonsensical planets.

this is also a nicely elastic term...

Frequently and nonsensical are both in the eye of the beholder

It's not though. Whether something is actually nonsensical or not can only be accurately determined by people who know about the subject (where "accurately" means "based on our current understanding of the subject"). In the case of world design, I'm one of those people. Similarly an engineer would probably be able to tell you whether a ship design is nonsensical because there's nowhere to vent heat or whatever, but the point is, they understand enough about the theory of the subject to be able to tell you what is silly and what isn't. But the CT worldgen at least has been proven to generate too many crazy worlds that can't exist, so that covers "frequently" and "nonsensical" quite objectively.

Whether that nonsensical thing is acceptable to someone else is up to the person it's being presented to. They can either trust that the expert knows what he's talking about and has reason to declare something nonsensical, or you can say "phooey to that, I'm keeping it as it is". Both responses are fair enough, but all I ask personally is that people accept that the experts do actually know what they're talking about whether they agree with them or not. What's irked me a lot in these discussions in the past is when people who don't know much about a subject claim that people who do know about it are wrong. In fact, we're not wrong at all - what's really happening is that we're just saying something that doesn't gel with what they want their setting to be like (or, more extremely, what their own actual worldview is).

Either way though, in practise you need as much science and verisimilitude as you are comfortable with. All I'm saying is that when the experts (and I really don't mean just me here) have something to say, listen to what they say with an open mind, and then decide if that opens up new possibilities for you. Because while yes, being scientific and accurate can close a few doors, I've always found that it opens new doors in different places that can be explored for good adventure or background.

 

[captainjack23]

frequently spits out nonsensical planets.

this is also a nicely elastic term...

Frequently and nonsensical are both in the eye of the beholder

It's not though. Whether something is actually nonsensical or not can only be accurately determined by people who know about the subject (where "accurately" means "based on our current understanding of the subject").
<snippage>
Either way though, in practise you need as much science and verisimilitude as you are comfortable with. All I'm saying is that when the experts (and I really don't mean just me here) have something to say, listen to what they say with an open mind, and then decide if that opens up new possibilities for you. Because while yes, being scientific and accurate can close a few doors, I've always found that it opens new doors in different places that can be explored for good adventure or background.

Well, I suppose I could be a pest and say that I'm one of the experts on what "frequently" means -and we've had this discussion, in fact. My pet peeve is people saying things happen all the time, with absolutely no idea of the actual liklihood, or any willingness to consider that "frequent" is entirely a personal judgement based on one's tolerance for the event. But mostly people say "it happens all the time" just to make their point.

Thing is, we agree, except possibly about the intentions of those who like to do otherwise - It's possible that you've gotten a lot of "you don't know what you're talking about" flack on other lists - but I really haven't seen it here, aimed at you (when speaking about planet formation and mechanics) or at other specialists who play (except where two experts on the same subject are around, but that's academia for you). What I do see is people disagreeing and usually saying that they are okay with less rigor; sometimes less than politely, and occasionally worse than that. But, at least here (obvious trolls aside) I really can't think of the last time I've seen an outright denouncement of or hostility to the entire concept of having some level of scientific accuracy.


In any case, for me the real problem about nonsensicality being an absolute comes when experts use their cred to pontificate in areas that they really don't have any more expertese than the next educated person - and less than an expert by far. I've seen it happen here and on other lists, and it's a major cause of hate on experts - and, quite frankly deserved.

Being told I don't know what I'm talking about in terms of research and stats will (I think justifiably) get my back up - If I want to hold forth on physics or planetary science, with the expectation and attitude that I deserve to be treated as an expert, and able to determine what is nonsensical, and what isn't....well, that is another matter entirely.