From the article archive
World As Story: Do Not Person the Starships
We are not yet equal to the stars. Possibly our imaginations will whimper in the face of that awful immensity named a Solar System, but we shall try. An intro to a generic star system is offered as an example because I fear the weight of Terra's history too much to attempt the Sol System right now.
In line with my column description, I'll try to make this easy to use. There are too many burdens being layed on others in modern gaming.
First, let's shoot a few quarnxles in a microgravity free-drifting aquarium sphere.
Jungle planet, ice planet, dessert planet are slung around the galaxy with little understanding of how varied the big blue marble it all comes from really is. Sure you could make a planet of jungle with quadruple-canopies of lush green, and continents of matted roots resting on semi-mobile mire, and herds of dinosaur herbivores, and gazillions of diseases, but is that what is being done? Not often, to be sure, is my answer.
Faced with the problem of populating a galaxy, writers and gamemasters outline. Instead of trying to eat the cow, why not be content with a nice steak? (Amused apologies are extended to those from the star Vega. Fell free to insert garden row of vegetable of your choice and vegetable plate,respectively.) Lawrence Watt-Evans in the series? The Reign of the Brown Magician created a Galactic Empire where the ten thousand planets were mostly smaller than Earth but still habitable, had one climate, one small imperial base, and were totally ridiculous which was his point.
The truth of the crossroads is what drives city formation. The closer I am to another person the more likely I can make a deal with her. As more people get in contact new opportunities blossom in an exponential fashion. Costs rise too, but only geometrically. Unless telepresence repeals this law which possibility I'm voting against then the future is going to be more of the same. Crowded cities and relatively empty countrysides are the future.
The New York Stock Exchange floor is the future. But the floor is going to be removed to make it a space. The future stock exchange will be in orbit because more people can crowd into a furball as the fighter pilots call it than a standing room only concert.
The largest cities will be in orbit because people can crowd each other better.
This crowding and resulting complexity makes for an incredibly difficult job of description for the poor gamemaster. Imagine trying to describe ahuge open-air market of seventy-stories height. Now go take some aspirin. People who live there may have the same response, and thus may choose to live in a series of small rooms in order to reduce stimuli.
But there will still be unprotected moments when the future howls around you like a hurricane. What does the trainer in GM relaxing suggest? Ah, try Random Encounter and Scenery Charts. A 9, 14, and a 3 means a gengineered giant/ selling letters of marque to acquire/ Plutonian robot convoys. And then keep rolling because there is a bunch of people in the area(but you only need to describe the closest because after the first time the players ask for the description of everybody in the area they will never do it again.) Try LOTS of Random Charts, or get a pal to program something like this for you.
And the economic benefits of crowding is a big reason why most of the people would never leave the star system even if a half-decent FTL drive worked. As a side note, I do recommend either a short-range FTL drive; inter-planetary jump rings in orbit, or very fast normal space drives. Taking six months to go from Jupiter to Earth is boring, most of the time.
Then how do we get from here to there(our generic star system)? The superpower of the century decides that given how some people are mouthing off about using starcrackers that having some humans outside the Solar System is a good thing. So a hundred thousand SCA members are sent elsewhere to establish the monarchies of their dreams(sounds like a fun book there). One hundred twenty years later after a bit of a rocky start the populace is above four hundred million due to a massive growth rate because a new human society in a solar system will believe in population growth, and people will live much longer and have more children while doing their living.
We will come back to the Medieval System another day. Good day, my friends.
Eric R. Ashley(Tadeusz)
In line with my column description, I'll try to make this easy to use. There are too many burdens being layed on others in modern gaming.
First, let's shoot a few quarnxles in a microgravity free-drifting aquarium sphere.
Jungle planet, ice planet, dessert planet are slung around the galaxy with little understanding of how varied the big blue marble it all comes from really is. Sure you could make a planet of jungle with quadruple-canopies of lush green, and continents of matted roots resting on semi-mobile mire, and herds of dinosaur herbivores, and gazillions of diseases, but is that what is being done? Not often, to be sure, is my answer.
Faced with the problem of populating a galaxy, writers and gamemasters outline. Instead of trying to eat the cow, why not be content with a nice steak? (Amused apologies are extended to those from the star Vega. Fell free to insert garden row of vegetable of your choice and vegetable plate,respectively.) Lawrence Watt-Evans in the series? The Reign of the Brown Magician created a Galactic Empire where the ten thousand planets were mostly smaller than Earth but still habitable, had one climate, one small imperial base, and were totally ridiculous which was his point.
The truth of the crossroads is what drives city formation. The closer I am to another person the more likely I can make a deal with her. As more people get in contact new opportunities blossom in an exponential fashion. Costs rise too, but only geometrically. Unless telepresence repeals this law which possibility I'm voting against then the future is going to be more of the same. Crowded cities and relatively empty countrysides are the future.
The New York Stock Exchange floor is the future. But the floor is going to be removed to make it a space. The future stock exchange will be in orbit because more people can crowd into a furball as the fighter pilots call it than a standing room only concert.
The largest cities will be in orbit because people can crowd each other better.
This crowding and resulting complexity makes for an incredibly difficult job of description for the poor gamemaster. Imagine trying to describe ahuge open-air market of seventy-stories height. Now go take some aspirin. People who live there may have the same response, and thus may choose to live in a series of small rooms in order to reduce stimuli.
But there will still be unprotected moments when the future howls around you like a hurricane. What does the trainer in GM relaxing suggest? Ah, try Random Encounter and Scenery Charts. A 9, 14, and a 3 means a gengineered giant/ selling letters of marque to acquire/ Plutonian robot convoys. And then keep rolling because there is a bunch of people in the area(but you only need to describe the closest because after the first time the players ask for the description of everybody in the area they will never do it again.) Try LOTS of Random Charts, or get a pal to program something like this for you.
And the economic benefits of crowding is a big reason why most of the people would never leave the star system even if a half-decent FTL drive worked. As a side note, I do recommend either a short-range FTL drive; inter-planetary jump rings in orbit, or very fast normal space drives. Taking six months to go from Jupiter to Earth is boring, most of the time.
Then how do we get from here to there(our generic star system)? The superpower of the century decides that given how some people are mouthing off about using starcrackers that having some humans outside the Solar System is a good thing. So a hundred thousand SCA members are sent elsewhere to establish the monarchies of their dreams(sounds like a fun book there). One hundred twenty years later after a bit of a rocky start the populace is above four hundred million due to a massive growth rate because a new human society in a solar system will believe in population growth, and people will live much longer and have more children while doing their living.
We will come back to the Medieval System another day. Good day, my friends.
Eric R. Ashley(Tadeusz)
Recovered from the Gaming Outpost database backup. Original wording is preserved; damaged punctuation and presentation markup have been repaired. Historical links without a local match point to the Internet Archive.