Transhumanism and Traveller

[dragoner]

I think the salient points about what is problematic with "transhumanism" is that the definition is rather vague, and that many of the popular transhumanist games, like Eclipse Phase, have some very handwavy tech. The upside is that with various supplements, notably cybernetics, there can be transhumanism in a lot of ways. Not the swarms of nanites or downloading your mind into morphs, which are very questionable technologies. As much as I love Ian Banks' Culture series, he admits in an interview that it is very soft, as he is more focused on the characters rather than technology.

One thing you can do is make a list of what you want from the transhumanist side and the see if there are any analogs already extant in the current material.

 

[GypsyComet]

As I mentioned in to the Wish List thread, a lot of transhumanist settings in fiction are either dabbling in the huge definition pool, or are unplayable. Sometimes both.

Options for Traveller come in two flavors, I think:
-Do a black cover book for Mongoose that attempts to cover the topic broadly. I note that even SJG didn't take that option, and it is their default approach.
-Pick a subset of the options and tropes and do a setting book under the ATU license, and make it clear in the intro why this was done.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

There are a lot of ideas that can be taken from the Orion Arm setting, basically I use it as an encyclopedia of relatively hard science fiction ideas that could be used in Traveller, including superintelligent AIs, and megastructures like Banks orbitals, Dyson Spheres and wormholes, but throwing them all together and making all those things everyday and common place is hard to phantom, I'd rather dish it out in limited doses, take one idea at a time, don't create an an entire alien culture. Some of those ideas are quite scary, especially anything dealing with nanotechnology.

 

[Prime_Evil]

That's true for any far future game.

It's also true for any games where the protagonists can have mental capabilities greater than those of the player. It's very hard to effectively roleplay someone who is smarter than you are

For the most part, we impose our current culture on the games we play. It's all a bit rubber suited man as alien.

This is undoubtedly true, but the value of science fiction is that it allows you to explore new perspectives and ideas without committing to them. It may be very difficult to develop a genuinely alien or posthuman perspective, but that doesn't mean that there isn't value in the attempt. Science fiction sheds light on the real world by exploring unusual viewpoints. Problems arise when we project our own unspoken cultural assumptions on the future.

Here's a quote from William Gibson that may be relevant in this context:

It seemed to me that midcentury mainstream American science fiction had often been triumphalist and militaristic, a sort of folk propaganda for American exceptionalism. I was tired of America-as-the-future, the world as a white monoculture, the protagonist as a good guy from the middle class or above. I wanted there to be more elbow room. I wanted to make room for antiheroes.

I also wanted science fiction to be more naturalistic. There had been a poverty of description in much of it. The technology depicted was so slick and clean that it was practically invisible. What would any given SF favorite look like if we could crank up the resolution? As it was then, much of it was like video games before the invention of fractal dirt. I wanted to see dirt in the corners.

I also reckon that this quote from science fiction author Charles Stross might be relevant:

SF, at its best, is an exploration of the human condition under circumstances that we can conceive of existing, but which don't currently exist (either because the technology doesn't exist, or there are gaps in our scientific model of the universe, or just because we're short of big meteoroids on a collision course with the Sea of Japan — the situation is improbable but not implausible).

There's an implicit feedback between such a situation and the characters who are floundering around in it, trying to survive. For example: You want to deflect that civilization-killing asteroid? You need to find some way of getting there. It's going to be expensive and difficult, and there's plenty of scope for human drama arising from it. Lo: that's one possible movie in a nutshell. You've got the drama — just add protagonists.

I use a somewhat more complex process to develop SF. I start by trying to draw a cognitive map of a culture, and then establish a handful of characters who are products of (and producers of) that culture. The culture in question differs from our own: there will be knowledge or techniques or tools that we don't have, and these have social effects and the social effects have second order effects — much as integrated circuits are useful and allow the mobile phone industry to exist and to add cheap camera chips to phones: and cheap camera chips in phones lead to happy slapping or sexting and other forms of behaviour that, thirty years ago, would have sounded science fictional. And then I have to work with characters who arise naturally from this culture and take this stuff for granted, and try and think myself inside their heads. Then I start looking for a source of conflict, and work out what cognitive or technological tools my protagonists will likely turn to to deal with it.

I think that's a good approach to adopt whether you are writing SF or playing in an SF RPG.

That's my issue with a Culture style setting, it's too far beyond us to really get our heads around.

I would argue that the most valuable thing in the Culture novels is the sociological extrapolation rather than the technological extrapoltation - Banks depicts a post-scarcity society run along anarchist (or maybe demarchist) lines without turning it into a utopia or a dystopia. It's easy to create a galaxy-spanning interstellar state with a feudal government similar to the Third Imperium, but it's quite difficult to depict an interstellar civilization in which the social and political structures are not based upon past models. That's not intended as a knock against the OTU - many respected SF writers construct future societies using analogies with the past.

 

[Prime_Evil]

As I mentioned in to the Wish List thread, a lot of transhumanist settings in fiction are either dabbling in the huge definition pool, or are unplayable. Sometimes both.

I think this is true of many science fictional subgenres - either you provide a toolkit that people can use to construct their own vision of the future or you provide a specific playable instantiation of the concepts embodied by the subgenre.

Traveller started out with the first approach, but as the OTU became popular it leaned further and further towards the latter. Part of the problem is that each person's expectations about what a future society might be like will differ. And having a shared setting can make it easy to bring newcomers up to speed quickly.

The OTU cobbles together concepts drawn from classic SF works to create a universe that plays to the expectations of many SF fans at the time when it was written. In many ways it's a very conservative vision of the future, but there's nothing inherently wrong with that - nostalgia for a forgotten future definitely has its place. And feudal space empires have that cool retro thing going for them, even if they aren't even remotely plausible in any realistic setting.

It's much easier to communicate genre expectations in a fantasy setting where you are playing with mythic archetypes such as knights, dragons, and dangerous underworld settings where monstrous forces dwell. With science fiction, you have to offer the audience landmarks that they can use to orient themselves in the narrative. Transhumanism makes this more difficult in most respects because the most reliable landmark of all - the human condition - is mutable. This difficulty is not insurmountable, but it should be acknowledged. This is why games like Eclipse Phase place traditional espionage genre plot elements on top of a transhuman setting - it gives players something to cling to while they come to grips with the alien nature of the setting.

 

[TrippyHippy]

I think the salient points about what is problematic with "transhumanism" is that the definition is rather vague, and that many of the popular transhumanist games, like Eclipse Phase, have some very handwavy tech. The upside is that with various supplements, notably cybernetics, there can be transhumanism in a lot of ways. Not the swarms of nanites or downloading your mind into morphs, which are very questionable technologies. As much as I love Ian Banks' Culture series, he admits in an interview that it is very soft, as he is more focused on the characters rather than technology.

One thing you can do is make a list of what you want from the transhumanist side and the see if there are any analogs already extant in the current material.

Faster than Light travel is soft science. Psionics are soft science. We are talking about science fiction here after all - and as I say, if we want a generic science fiction game, then allowing people to pick and choose the technologies they feel comfortable with in their games is reasonable. Moreover, trying to fix the science fiction tropes of a game within a certain paradigm only stagnates the game. If people want to bring in Culture ideas into their game, who is anybody here to deny them?

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

And where are all the scores of transhuman adventure modules for role-playing games? How do players get past the initial shock of reading through a transhuman setting that is the core for an RPG system their group plans on playing?

On the watered-down side of transhumanism, there is Eclipse Phase and CthulhuTech and Shadowrun. Do players role-play the transhuman parts of these games? Or are they just coping with the sci-fi magic tech, while trying to play a space D&D game session? Many players will confess that there isn't enough "fantasy" in these games, whatever that means. And so the books go back on the shelves.

 

[Infojunky]

And no one plays an RPG for the philosophical discussions.

Man, you would be so lost in my Traveller Group then....

Ok the rest of my my 2 credits.

1st off everytime I hear someone spouting off about Transhuman anything, it feels a lot like my Mother's Millennialist Evangelical Christianity. I really don't need to hear about how it's going to be after the Singularity/Rapture or the like unless it involves Mutants, Fast cars and blasted wasteland with lots of technological dungeons to raid to keep my village/garage/vault running for another generation.

Yet, I am a Digital Punk, the idea of upgrading one's self through technological means is some serious Neato shit. As is the philosophy of the post-human individualist ideal. And as I have said numerous times here on this forum Mongoose and others have provided us with the basic tools. Do we really need specific rules for computers that are smarter than us? Well, actually it would be nice then we could that good old fashioned Robot Uprising... (Hint both the robots book and 13Mann's Robots have rules for emergent intelligences).

Really what I am trying to say is don't get hooked on the semantics of a "Genre", if the pieces you need aren't there Tell us about what you think is missing. Or better yet Toss out a fix that you think will work, just because we are knuckleheads and tear it down to look at the parts, doesn't mean its bad, just we want to see how it works with our conception of the game. Or to put it a Post Human frame, Hack the game Dude.

 

[TrippyHippy]

And where are all the scores of transhuman adventure modules for role-playing games? How do players get past the initial shock of reading through a transhuman setting that is the core for an RPG system their group plans on playing?

There are plenty of Eclipse Phase and other transhuman rpg scenarios available on the various associated pages, or to buy on drivethrurpg and the like.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

And where are all the scores of transhuman adventure modules for role-playing games? How do players get past the initial shock of reading through a transhuman setting that is the core for an RPG system their group plans on playing?

There are plenty of Eclipse Phase and other transhuman rpg scenarios available on the various associated pages, or to buy on drivethrurpg and the like.

Their focus isn't on transhumanism though. It's just something that's in the game setting's background mostly. Modules still deal with plots of Train Murder Mysteries, Bank/Data Robbing, House Party Guests/Spys, Secret Service Rogues, Personal Identity Crises. All with the knowledge that one can just simply reboot if they die. Not very transhuman deep. Just more human digital dungeon crawling at the most.

 

[TrippyHippy]

And where are all the scores of transhuman adventure modules for role-playing games? How do players get past the initial shock of reading through a transhuman setting that is the core for an RPG system their group plans on playing?

There are plenty of Eclipse Phase and other transhuman rpg scenarios available on the various associated pages, or to buy on drivethrurpg and the like.

Their focus isn't on transhumanism though. It's just something that's in the game setting's background mostly. Modules still deal with plots of Train Murder Mysteries, Bank/Data Robbing, House Party Guests/Spys, Secret Service Rogues, Personal Identity Crises. All with the knowledge that one can just simply reboot if they die. Not very transhuman deep. Just more human digital dungeon crawling at the most.

Well, to the people who wrote them and play them, presumably they were transhuman enough. Different people get different things from the games they play - and for some a heist style plot may still be resonant with themes and moods in the nuance of the text that you may not be picking up on. You are applying a measure that is entirely subjective.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

Well, to the people who wrote them and play them, presumably they were transhuman enough. Different people get different things from the games they play - and for some a heist style plot may still be resonant with themes and moods in the nuance of the text that you may not be picking up on. You are applying a measure that is entirely subjective.

That is true.

 

[GypsyComet]

Which is why I suggest providing enough of a separate setting to allow both dedicated and casual Transhumanists room to work in, the rules frameworks that aren't already in place, and then stand back and let them play. Traveller is already a different thing to every group, to every player, and to every fan.

So why the difficulty that Shawn describes? As already noted, it is a *very* broad term. If I had to place the games already mentioned on a scale of 1 to 10, with "Humanist" at zero and "Post-Humanist" starting at ten, the standard cyberpunk settings, including Shadowrun, sit at the low (which is to say, Early) end. Traveller has the tools to sit in about the same spot, but the 3I doesn't make much use of them. Parts of CthulhuTech and the CyberGeneration books for Cyberpunk sit slightly higher due to themes of transformation, while other parts are not on the TH part of the scale. Eclipse Phase and GURPS THS are a bit higher on the scale than CthulhuTech because of the societal structures that have appeared.

IMO, of course.

The problem is that a lot of Transhumanism assumes that a social and/or brute force technological Singularity occurs somewhere on the TH timetable. Where on the scale is hard to tell because of the definition of Singularity. We really have NO IDEA what happens beyond it, so figuring out where Transhumanism ends and PostHumanism begins is essentially impossible for us. The resulting hopes, dreams, and speculation smack of religion in some cases, which is why I urge caution when dabbling in the high end of the TH range. Traveller's Principals avoid overt religious speculation or discussion for good reason.

So yes, we play at the shallow end of the pool. It is what we can comprehend.

 

[Reynard]

"So why the difficulty that Shawn describes? As already noted, it is a *very* broad term."

And there's part of the problem. Traveller has augmentation rules and a cybernetic book which is dipping into the TH pool and is still part of OTU and, from this topic, people are not satisfied. To create a Transhuman source book would satisfy few people because the subject is vague, broad and subjective and a lot will feel THEIR Transhuman material is underrepresented or left out. It sounds like an unwieldy project.

What Traveller has always been good at is introducing bits and pieces officially and through fans. When enough comes out and there's enough demand, it gets consolidated and published. Otherwise you dig out the article and make it part of your game.

Start uploading articles and game mechanics for various aspects to Transhumanism so we can try it and discuss it instead of waiting for the encyclopedia of sourcebooks.

 

[dragoner]

I think the salient points about what is problematic with "transhumanism" is that the definition is rather vague, and that many of the popular transhumanist games, like Eclipse Phase, have some very handwavy tech. The upside is that with various supplements, notably cybernetics, there can be transhumanism in a lot of ways. Not the swarms of nanites or downloading your mind into morphs, which are very questionable technologies. As much as I love Ian Banks' Culture series, he admits in an interview that it is very soft, as he is more focused on the characters rather than technology.

One thing you can do is make a list of what you want from the transhumanist side and the see if there are any analogs already extant in the current material.

Faster than Light travel is soft science. Psionics are soft science. We are talking about science fiction here after all - and as I say, if we want a generic science fiction game, then allowing people to pick and choose the technologies they feel comfortable with in their games is reasonable. Moreover, trying to fix the science fiction tropes of a game within a certain paradigm only stagnates the game. If people want to bring in Culture ideas into their game, who is anybody here to deny them?

Nobody is here to stop anybody, or deny anybody anything. The thing about FTL and Psi, yes, handwaves; but if you don't want more handwavy tech, then don't necessarily use some of the stuff. Banks' termed his Culture series, "Space Opera", which it rather is, just updated a bit from the Campbellian golden age, which is the roots of where a lot of Traveller originally lies. I dig the Culture series, and have mentioned in the Pirates of Drinax that we're like the 'Clear Air Turbulence'. But the whole drones, effector fields, etc.; would be hard to emulate without turning it into a supers game, doable, but almost beyond what Traveller is built for.

 

[TrippyHippy]

Ahh....you've just reminded me to add a 'Supers' sourcebook to my Traveller Wishlist!

 

[sideranautae]

Faster than Light travel is soft science. Psionics are soft science.

FLT (Trav doesn't have it) is Fictional Science (Science Fiction). Psionics in Trav is magic as there is no attempt at even a fictional scientific explanation.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Faster than Light travel is soft science. Psionics are soft science.

FLT (Trav doesn't have it) is Fictional Science (Science Fiction). Psionics in Trav is magic as there is no attempt at even a fictional scientific explanation.

That gives me an idea, what if Psionics replaced the Jump Drive? What is there was a device which amplified the teleport power so a psion with the Teleport talent could teleport an entire ship over interstellar distances, basically turning the entire ship into a teleport suit, its psion drive consumes hydrogen, and converts it to psionic energy, thus amplifying the psion's talent.

 

[Rick]

Think that may already be in Psion.

 

[heron61]

And where are all the scores of transhuman adventure modules for role-playing games? How do players get past the initial shock of reading through a transhuman setting that is the core for an RPG system their group plans on playing?

There are plenty of Eclipse Phase and other transhuman rpg scenarios available on the various associated pages, or to buy on drivethrurpg and the like.

Their focus isn't on transhumanism though. It's just something that's in the game setting's background mostly. Modules still deal with plots of Train Murder Mysteries, Bank/Data Robbing, House Party Guests/Spys, Secret Service Rogues, Personal Identity Crises. All with the knowledge that one can just simply reboot if they die. Not very transhuman deep. Just more human digital dungeon crawling at the most.

I've written extensively for Eclipse Phase and there's definitely some truth too that, but there are also plenty of aspects of Eclipse Phase where transhumanism is foregrounded - weird experimentation with minds and morphs (for both good and ill) out around Uranus and Neptune, people forming voluntary hive minds...

However, much of EP is action-adventure in a transhuman setting. However, if you're looking for a straightforward exploration of a transhumanist setting, it's hard to do better than GURPs: Transhuman Space - issues like bioroid rights, the fact that uploading is new and only for the rich, the differences between Fifth Wave nations and less advanced ones, AI rights...

Taking things back to Traveller - much of the tech already exists in the Cybernetics & Robots book, a bit more would be useful, but you on't necessarily need uploading for Transhumanism - as long as you've got significant human enhancement (including enhanced intelligence), greatly impoved longevity, and a setting where these things matter and are taking into account, you're got a transhumanist RPG - the awesome BESM II supplement Centauri Knights is a transhumanist game w/o uploading & I think a Traveller transhumanist supplement might be more interesting if it didn't include uploading (although it could).

What I'd want to see in such a book is some more tech (maybe 35-50% of the book) and the rest of the book talking about how to actually integrate this tech into a setting and what it would mean for the setting to have (for example) most people be at least mildly enhanced with (for example, for a fairly mild transhumanist setting) lifespans of 200+ years and where almost everyone had an implant that allowed them to access data from the planetary network at will and to upload and store any or all of their sensory impressions, all the way up to discussions of what more obviously transhuman settings would be like.

For example what would a society be like if everyone could determine their emotional state at will, where skills as mental or physical tasks can be placed on chips or downloaded from the planetary data network, and where characters can share surface thoughts and emotional states either as recordings or in real-time.

Basically, I'd like to see a book that was a toolkit describing several levels of transhumanist tech, as discussions of what effects that technology would have on the setting if it was in common use. Hmm, now I'm halfway tempted to put together a proposal to write this book myself...