This is about Mass Effect.
There's a lot of ways to portray science fiction. In most people's minds, you can split it into two categories - "hard" sci fi and "soft" sci fi. And they theoretically judge this based on whether the science in the fiction is sciencey enough.
In practice, the situation is not about how sciencey the science is, but about how much it overshadows the people.
"Hard" sci fi is usually about lives buried beneath machinery. The technology is typically shown to be big and clunky - obvious mechanical arms, giant ventilation systems, big explosions, death any time a machine hiccups. It's easy to be "sciencey" when the machines are so clunky, because you can dedicate so much of your story to them.
On the other hand, "soft" sci fi is usually about lives lifted up by machinery. The technology is typically almost invisible, appearing or disappearing at need. The stories that get told tend to be about how people live when they are allowed to be who they are.
Neither of these approaches is inherently more or less valid, more or less sciencey. And there are a lot of other variations that can be analyzed in this way, like the ever-more-popular military sci fi. It's not particularly realistic, but it does talk about people living lives buried beneath machinery.
Because of this, rather than "hard" and "soft", I might prefer "heavy" and "light".
Clearly, oldschool Star Trek is king of "light" sci fi. You need healing? Here's a smartphone and an injector the size of your thumb, all better. Need to go from A to B? Here's a patch of floor to send you wherever. Need an epic space battle? Turns out your house is armed with lasers and shakes delightfully when struck. While there are massive pieces of science, their impact on daily life is either invisible or entirely supportive: the cool space station lets people do super-cool science, but is otherwise basically an office building.
Mass Effect is a prince of "light" sci fi.
Well, no surprise. Mass Effect was an attempt to modernize 60s pulp, and it largely succeeded. Computers literally appear and disappear out of thin air. Space stations and ships all have artificial gravity and huge windows. Healing is even faster and easier than in Star Trek, and guns fire magic bullets.
The clean curves and crisp edges of the designs highlight this. While there is a lot of detailing, there's no clutter. This is true of interiors, exteriors, clothes, armor, even guns.
The stories are about people living lives enabled by technology. Sure, there are still desperate people, dangers and evils. The technology is used to highlight and isolate those stories so they can be told crisply and cleanly, unburdened by the expectations of the real world or the forced clutter of heavy science fiction.
Those things can be introduced. Whenever it'd be useful. But we can use the freedom of soft science fiction to tell the stories exactly as we want to.
Moreover, this affects the ambiance of the civilizations we find. Things like armor or even jackets are likely to be rare, and we're likely to meet a lot of people delving into their own interests instead of being desperate to make enough money to survive. There are still likely to be poor and desperate people, but those elements tend to be downplayed. In ME, even the destitute colonists are portrayed as hopefuls building a new life.
People usually live a rather minimalist lifestyle in soft sci fi. They don't need clutter, not unless the story demands it. They don't need pockets, not unless the story demands it. They don't need medical conditions, not unless the story demands it.
Whichever angle the devs choose, it's supported by the soft technologies. If we need the colonists to be worried about the power supply, here's a box they are fussing with, and here's the side quest where you help them in some arbitrary way. If there's monsters attacking, here's as many or as few automated defenses as the story needs. If someone is corrupt, here's a technology that highlights and enables that. If someone's sick, here's an arbitrarily convoluted technology for treating them.
And... this is something authors simply don't understand.
They inherit a great story, and they want to tell more stories in that universe. They want to punch it up a notch, even. So they take the supporting elements that people will remember, and they make them permanent. They begin to clutter up the stories even when they aren't needed. The whole series trends towards "harder" sci fi, more and more clutter, and the genre changes.
I call this "calcification". Turning "soft" sci fi into "hard" sci fi - or light into heavy, if you prefer.
This happens all the time. It happened in Star Trek, which gradually became military sci fi. Hell, it even happened with Batman and Superman.
It's happening right now with Mass Effect.
I think this is why science fiction IPs tend to become grimmer and grittier. Not because everyone thinks grimmer and grittier sells better, but because if you let your stories build up clutter, you have to start telling stories about people being crushed by that clutter.
Don't fall for it. You can keep your stories uncluttered. You can even tell grim and gritty stories.
Keeping soft sci fi light and flexible is difficult, but it's key. When your science fiction can't touch its own toes any more, you've calcified and need to limber up again.
Showing posts with label science fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label science fiction. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 08, 2016
Friday, September 12, 2014
Science Fiction Games are Different
When we look at tabletop RPGs, we see that fantasy is the most popular. Nearly everyone plays a fantasy RPG. Even famous science fiction games like Shadowrun aren't really that widespread. Plus, it's mostly a fantasy game anyway.
Why are science fiction RPGs less popular? It's not the genre itself - science fiction computer games, movies, and comics are at least as popular as fantasy.
I've thought about it, and I've come up with two big problems with science fiction tabletop games.
The first is that they aren't as easy to imagine. Science fiction games tend to have bigger, stranger things to think about. That means that the player has a harder time imagining them. It's easy to imagine a swordfight, trekking through a bog, sneaking through the dark, or looking out over a mountain range. At the very least, we've played at those things in real life. But it's much harder to imagine rescuing a stranded astronaut or saving the day with a piece of clever code.
These bigger, stranger images are the ones I prefer, and I think a lot of people feel the same way. Although most science fiction fare these days is basically action flick crap with a science fiction gloss, it still has big, powerful imagery. In computer games and movies, it's easy to show these images. An AI flickers into existence. A plague mutates the local wildlife. A gleeful coder hacks a mainframe while surrounded by massive screens. Biological cells bond to plastic, and your eyes reboot into Terminator-vision...
But when you look at a scrap of paper with words on it, those things are hard to portray. If I see a picture of a sword, I can immediately understand everything and imagine going to battle with or against the sword. If I see heavy armor has a speed penalty, I can immediately imagine a slow, armored knight against a fast, unarmored rogue. If I see a castle, I can imagine a siege. Etc.
If I see a robot... the images don't pop into my head nearly as fast. The robot looks cool, but there's no "AND THEN" going on. I don't automatically think about the scenarios the robot would be part of. Same with space ships, cybernetic enhancements, life support systems, computers...
Now, the first thought that popped into my head is that you simply need to be a lot more aggressive. When you describe a robot, lay out a fragment of a scene to give the player something to grip onto. When you describe cybernetics, have an NPC talk about something that happened to them because of the cyberware.
If it's hard to imagine, give the player a leg up. Easy enough!
But... this brings us to the second big problem with tabletop science fiction games.
...
Fantasy games can be thought of as running around in the back yard waving a stick around. Science fiction games can be thought of as running around the house with an armful of plastic toys making "whoosh" noises. As soon as you succeed in landing a plastic rocket on the couch and your action figure gets out to explore the surface of this alien world, you'll understand the appeal of science fiction.
That is, fantasy games are about your personal merits. Your strength. Your cunning. Your speed and willpower. You may use all sorts of equipment, but in the end it's about proving your mettle.
Science fiction games are mostly about STUFF.
Your space ship, your antigravity belt, your supercomputer, your robot arms. And of course, all the other stuff: that nebula, this space station, that mind-control laser, this ancient databank...
"Wait! Fantasy games have tons of STUFF in them!"
Definitely. But science fiction is fundamentally about how people behave when situations are different. The STUFF in these settings defines how people behave, what questions are being asked, and so on.
That said, it's definitely true that there is a vast amount of STUFF in a fantasy game. Massive amounts of stuff. In fact, most fantasy games have more stuff in them than most science fiction games!
Even the giant stack of guns in Shadowrun doesn't hold a candle to the array of weapons in D&D. And it's not just a matter of how old and widespread the systems are: D&D is fundamentally more stuff-heavy because it lets you arbitrarily augment or craft your own stuff. Enchanted swords, special potions, new spells, armors made of rare new materials. D&D has a literally infinite variety of swords. No matter how many different guns with different ammo types Shadowrun lists, they simply cannot keep up with that!
Hm. What the hell do I mean that science fiction is about "stuff", then?
Well, look, fantasy games are about personal merit. But there's not a lot of personal merits in them. There's a few stats, an alignment, maybe some personality traits, and a class. These things determine your personal merits. They determine who you are.
In turn, these merits serve as an anchor. The game has a vast statistical maelstrom of STUFF. This is the meat of the game, where all the players struggle and fight. The merits you have serve to anchor you within this maelstrom, so you can participate without getting swept away in confusion. You're a mage with a high speed? This is where you stand. A warrior with low charisma? This is where you stand. Your personal merits mean you'll approach the situation like such.
Most science fiction tabletops take this same approach. But that misunderstands a lot.
Because fantasy games are about your personal merits, they feature things which are easy to personally imagine. Even a dragon or a giant dwarven hold is something an individual can imagine pretty easily. They can hold their merits up against these challenges and see what kind of struggle would happen, what kind of standing they have. The vast array of statistical gear and spells and such allow them to grapple with these figments, pushing and pulling at the things they can do... but the things they can do are still rooted in their perception of who they are, their personal merits and traits.
Science fiction tabletops try to hold that same line, but the setting of a science fiction game is about STUFF. So you're a hacker, a smuggler, or a space princess - you have all these traits... but the setting is about a planet that's being colonized, or an ancient civilization, or a disease, or a robot rebellion. These are not things affected by your personal merits.
A smuggler or hacker can certainly get involved with all these scenarios, but the scenario is both larger and more lively than they are. A hero could imagine fighting a dragon... but a hero is of a lot less use when a radiation storm is inbound. A hero can imagine walking the ten thousand steps of fire... but those ten thousand steps are just a barrier to overcome, not a living thing like a space station full of refugees.
In the end, the setting sabotages the game. The game is built around individual merits, but the setting doesn't give a shit about your individual merits. The setting cares about STUFF.
Well, stuff isn't bad.
See, fantasy games can build this giant maelstrom of stuff on top of a setting that cares about personal merits. Science fiction cares about stuff, so it may be possible for us to build a giant maelstrom of personal merits.
This is really what science fiction is about. It's about a foundation of specific assumptions, and seeing how that affects the people. "What if space ships could travel faster than light?" "What if we were psychic?" "What would people do if aliens invaded?" "What happens when robots can do our jobs better than we can?" "What if our TVs were able to watch us?"
The STUFF here is very specific and limited. Robots that can do a specific kind of thing. A government that acts a particular way. A space ship that can move a specific way. There's not 10,000,000 different kinds of robots, each with their own stats - it's just a few kinds of robots to set the stage properly.
And from that foundation blooms an outpouring of human behavior. How do people behave? What do they do? How do they feel?
This is where the powerful imagery in science fiction tends to come from.
The images Roy Batty describes - "Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion... c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate" - these are not things with any clear image, but they can still make you shiver. They are mysteries to us - but Roy has been there. He's been there, and he remembers, and he's fighting to live.
Roy's life is defined by the stuff he's seen. Roy's struggle is defined by the stuff he's seen. Roy is defined by the stuff he's seen.
By stamping down a foundation of stuff, we can allow people to shine, both as individuals and as groups.
So why don't any science fiction games work like that?
Well, because nobody's written one yet.
...
I can't pretend to have a good set of mechanics in mind. I'm still thinking this through. But logically, a few things seem clear.
First, the stuff is less complex and the personal merits/beliefs are a lot more complex.
Second is that you would choose your stuff more carefully than your personal characteristics. You don't need to know if you have a strength of 14. You need to know that you have an antigravity belt or Jedi powers. Those will provide a foundation for interacting with the challenges in the game. The personal merits like strength can vary over time or be completely unimportant.
Third is that your personal merits/beliefs would not be concrete. For example, in a fantasy game you'd choose "self-confident" as a trait and it'd stay forever. In this game, the self-confidence comes in many forms. There are times when you'll lose confidence, times when you'll only have confidence in certain ways, and times where your confidence doesn't matter at all. Just like wielding a sword in a fantasy game: you can drop it, replace it, and sometimes you'll leave it sheathed.
Fourth is that combat cannot be the focus. Combat is fundamentally about personal merits, so it can't be the foundation mechanic. The foundation mechanic needs to be about stuff. You won't struggle to kill goblins: you'll struggle to push through a mind-control laser beam. You'll struggle to get robots accepted as people. You'll struggle to keep death at bay.
...
I hope I've been clear. Let me know if you understood what I was trying to say.
Why are science fiction RPGs less popular? It's not the genre itself - science fiction computer games, movies, and comics are at least as popular as fantasy.
I've thought about it, and I've come up with two big problems with science fiction tabletop games.
The first is that they aren't as easy to imagine. Science fiction games tend to have bigger, stranger things to think about. That means that the player has a harder time imagining them. It's easy to imagine a swordfight, trekking through a bog, sneaking through the dark, or looking out over a mountain range. At the very least, we've played at those things in real life. But it's much harder to imagine rescuing a stranded astronaut or saving the day with a piece of clever code.
These bigger, stranger images are the ones I prefer, and I think a lot of people feel the same way. Although most science fiction fare these days is basically action flick crap with a science fiction gloss, it still has big, powerful imagery. In computer games and movies, it's easy to show these images. An AI flickers into existence. A plague mutates the local wildlife. A gleeful coder hacks a mainframe while surrounded by massive screens. Biological cells bond to plastic, and your eyes reboot into Terminator-vision...
But when you look at a scrap of paper with words on it, those things are hard to portray. If I see a picture of a sword, I can immediately understand everything and imagine going to battle with or against the sword. If I see heavy armor has a speed penalty, I can immediately imagine a slow, armored knight against a fast, unarmored rogue. If I see a castle, I can imagine a siege. Etc.
If I see a robot... the images don't pop into my head nearly as fast. The robot looks cool, but there's no "AND THEN" going on. I don't automatically think about the scenarios the robot would be part of. Same with space ships, cybernetic enhancements, life support systems, computers...
Now, the first thought that popped into my head is that you simply need to be a lot more aggressive. When you describe a robot, lay out a fragment of a scene to give the player something to grip onto. When you describe cybernetics, have an NPC talk about something that happened to them because of the cyberware.
If it's hard to imagine, give the player a leg up. Easy enough!
But... this brings us to the second big problem with tabletop science fiction games.
...
Fantasy games can be thought of as running around in the back yard waving a stick around. Science fiction games can be thought of as running around the house with an armful of plastic toys making "whoosh" noises. As soon as you succeed in landing a plastic rocket on the couch and your action figure gets out to explore the surface of this alien world, you'll understand the appeal of science fiction.
That is, fantasy games are about your personal merits. Your strength. Your cunning. Your speed and willpower. You may use all sorts of equipment, but in the end it's about proving your mettle.
Science fiction games are mostly about STUFF.
Your space ship, your antigravity belt, your supercomputer, your robot arms. And of course, all the other stuff: that nebula, this space station, that mind-control laser, this ancient databank...
"Wait! Fantasy games have tons of STUFF in them!"
Definitely. But science fiction is fundamentally about how people behave when situations are different. The STUFF in these settings defines how people behave, what questions are being asked, and so on.
That said, it's definitely true that there is a vast amount of STUFF in a fantasy game. Massive amounts of stuff. In fact, most fantasy games have more stuff in them than most science fiction games!
Even the giant stack of guns in Shadowrun doesn't hold a candle to the array of weapons in D&D. And it's not just a matter of how old and widespread the systems are: D&D is fundamentally more stuff-heavy because it lets you arbitrarily augment or craft your own stuff. Enchanted swords, special potions, new spells, armors made of rare new materials. D&D has a literally infinite variety of swords. No matter how many different guns with different ammo types Shadowrun lists, they simply cannot keep up with that!
Hm. What the hell do I mean that science fiction is about "stuff", then?
Well, look, fantasy games are about personal merit. But there's not a lot of personal merits in them. There's a few stats, an alignment, maybe some personality traits, and a class. These things determine your personal merits. They determine who you are.
In turn, these merits serve as an anchor. The game has a vast statistical maelstrom of STUFF. This is the meat of the game, where all the players struggle and fight. The merits you have serve to anchor you within this maelstrom, so you can participate without getting swept away in confusion. You're a mage with a high speed? This is where you stand. A warrior with low charisma? This is where you stand. Your personal merits mean you'll approach the situation like such.
Most science fiction tabletops take this same approach. But that misunderstands a lot.
Because fantasy games are about your personal merits, they feature things which are easy to personally imagine. Even a dragon or a giant dwarven hold is something an individual can imagine pretty easily. They can hold their merits up against these challenges and see what kind of struggle would happen, what kind of standing they have. The vast array of statistical gear and spells and such allow them to grapple with these figments, pushing and pulling at the things they can do... but the things they can do are still rooted in their perception of who they are, their personal merits and traits.
Science fiction tabletops try to hold that same line, but the setting of a science fiction game is about STUFF. So you're a hacker, a smuggler, or a space princess - you have all these traits... but the setting is about a planet that's being colonized, or an ancient civilization, or a disease, or a robot rebellion. These are not things affected by your personal merits.
A smuggler or hacker can certainly get involved with all these scenarios, but the scenario is both larger and more lively than they are. A hero could imagine fighting a dragon... but a hero is of a lot less use when a radiation storm is inbound. A hero can imagine walking the ten thousand steps of fire... but those ten thousand steps are just a barrier to overcome, not a living thing like a space station full of refugees.
In the end, the setting sabotages the game. The game is built around individual merits, but the setting doesn't give a shit about your individual merits. The setting cares about STUFF.
Well, stuff isn't bad.
See, fantasy games can build this giant maelstrom of stuff on top of a setting that cares about personal merits. Science fiction cares about stuff, so it may be possible for us to build a giant maelstrom of personal merits.
This is really what science fiction is about. It's about a foundation of specific assumptions, and seeing how that affects the people. "What if space ships could travel faster than light?" "What if we were psychic?" "What would people do if aliens invaded?" "What happens when robots can do our jobs better than we can?" "What if our TVs were able to watch us?"
The STUFF here is very specific and limited. Robots that can do a specific kind of thing. A government that acts a particular way. A space ship that can move a specific way. There's not 10,000,000 different kinds of robots, each with their own stats - it's just a few kinds of robots to set the stage properly.
And from that foundation blooms an outpouring of human behavior. How do people behave? What do they do? How do they feel?
This is where the powerful imagery in science fiction tends to come from.
The images Roy Batty describes - "Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion... c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate" - these are not things with any clear image, but they can still make you shiver. They are mysteries to us - but Roy has been there. He's been there, and he remembers, and he's fighting to live.
Roy's life is defined by the stuff he's seen. Roy's struggle is defined by the stuff he's seen. Roy is defined by the stuff he's seen.
By stamping down a foundation of stuff, we can allow people to shine, both as individuals and as groups.
So why don't any science fiction games work like that?
Well, because nobody's written one yet.
...
I can't pretend to have a good set of mechanics in mind. I'm still thinking this through. But logically, a few things seem clear.
First, the stuff is less complex and the personal merits/beliefs are a lot more complex.
Second is that you would choose your stuff more carefully than your personal characteristics. You don't need to know if you have a strength of 14. You need to know that you have an antigravity belt or Jedi powers. Those will provide a foundation for interacting with the challenges in the game. The personal merits like strength can vary over time or be completely unimportant.
Third is that your personal merits/beliefs would not be concrete. For example, in a fantasy game you'd choose "self-confident" as a trait and it'd stay forever. In this game, the self-confidence comes in many forms. There are times when you'll lose confidence, times when you'll only have confidence in certain ways, and times where your confidence doesn't matter at all. Just like wielding a sword in a fantasy game: you can drop it, replace it, and sometimes you'll leave it sheathed.
Fourth is that combat cannot be the focus. Combat is fundamentally about personal merits, so it can't be the foundation mechanic. The foundation mechanic needs to be about stuff. You won't struggle to kill goblins: you'll struggle to push through a mind-control laser beam. You'll struggle to get robots accepted as people. You'll struggle to keep death at bay.
...
I hope I've been clear. Let me know if you understood what I was trying to say.
Tuesday, August 05, 2014
Good and Bad Scifi
I realized that a lot of the things I have really negative reactions to, I hate because they are bad scifi. And, sure, there's a lot of bad scifi out there... but the ones I really hate are the ones that everyone else accepts blithely. Obvious examples include Bioshock Infinite, Serial Experiments Lain, Prometheus, and so on.
I realized that the issue is simply that I've read waaaaaaaaay more science fiction than most anybody else, and it's turned me into a snob. I've read literally thousands of science fiction stories. It was easy: back in Ye Olde Day, the best scifi was in short story and novelette form. You could read two or three a day just on the bus.
Because of that, I've become a bit of a scifi snob. So... I can't claim my opinions are "the only way to make good sci fi" or whatever, but I can say that most of the science fiction most people consume is trashy action flick scifi.
When you're done reading/watching/consuming good scifi, you can still feel its fingers around your neck for hours.
That's the kind of scifi most people haven't seen.
One thing to remember is that scifi appeals to different people at different times. There are good pieces of science fiction that do not appeal to me. And that's the problem with good scifi. It hits very hard against people who are in the right place. Trashy blockbuster scifi is much easier. It hits a much wider range of people.
But nobody is left stunned at the end. Nobody can feel it gripping their neck.
Things like Lain and Infinite fall very short as scifi goes... but people have been left gasping. The reason is because they have seen so little of substance that they have nothing to compare to. If the only photograph you've ever seen is a grainy, unlit photo of a penny, you're going to think it's amazing. That doesn't make it a good photograph.
Let's talk about the weaknesses of Lain, Infinite, and Prometheus, at least as I perceive them.
...
Secrets, mysteries, and gaps play a big role in science fiction. All three of our examples fail at this, misusing secrets. They use secrets like Lost uses secrets.
Let's talk about secrets.
One of the most fundamental practices in science fiction is to leave huge gaps unexplained in order to create large spaces.
For example, "Khan Noonien Singh was a general in the Eugenics Wars..." That's a powerful statement. It creates a massive block of "space" - these unexplained Eugenics Wars are interesting, and their name is extremely powerful. They are tied into the story, but left unexplained.
On a different scale, "Romulan blue ale". It serves no real purpose to the story, but it creates a vast expanse in your mind: the Romulans have a culinary culture and it's interesting and weird! A tiny detail that serves to create a world without actually cementing anything down.
It also goes the other direction. The internal life of characters is often left implied. Science Fiction rarely spells out motivations and emotions as clearly as other genres do. You're left with people who act a little inexplicably at times, stare a bit too long, covet something a bit too much. This creates a space inside their life, a space the reader can sense but not see. An easy example of this is Obi Wan Kenobi. Why does he live in the desert? Why does he let Darth kill him? How does he have all of these powers? What the hell are these powers?
Part of the draw of the original movies was that they doled out most of these answers in a trickle, so you kept watching to see more of them. But many of them were never really filled in until decades later, and fan theories were everywhere. Alternate explanations exist for virtually everything - for example, some people have proposed that the droids are actually hugely important 'shadow leaders' of the rebellion... and there are enough gaps that this explanation can weave through them fairly convincingly.
Secrets, mysteries, and gaps create life in these universes. They do so in a very powerful way because they let the audience fill those gaps at their leisure, as they see fit.
I think I'm understating that last bit, so let me harp on it:
The audience fills the gaps with whatever they can.
This is the primary tool used to make science fiction accessible to a wider range of people. When scifi has few gaps, the only people it can appeal to are the people who are in tune with the story as it is being told. If every aspect of the Eugenics Wars is explained, then only people who can accept the specific details of why the war happened and how it developed can be interested. Everyone else will say "oh, that's not very interesting" or "oh, that's not very likely".
By leaving it a mystery, each reader can presume it happened in a specific way according to their current... level? Place? The current way their brain works. The more they think about it on their own, the more it falls in tune with their own thinking, and the more interesting it becomes. Used wisely, this trick makes the best scifi twists rip you apart: they gave you space to imagine and assume. Then they kick that out from under you and show you just how feeble your imaginings were.
Now, this isn't the only thing scifi does. A lot of people would say that Star Trek and Star Wars aren't even proper scifi, just fantasy dolled up with technotrappings. Well, leaving that argument aside, this particular practice of creating gaps is commonplace and very powerful. The practice of subverting what the audience puts in those gaps is also a common technique, mostly used when you want to create "mindfuck" scifi.
...
Back to Lain, Prometheus, and Infinite. There will be spoilers, but who the hell cares?
All three of these attempt to use that last technique - the "create a gap, let the audience imagine what's inside, then subvert that" method.
Unfortunately, they do it clumsily.
First off, what's in the gap is rarely a mystery. They attempt to obfuscate something relatively simple, but burying something simple in a fog doesn't make it complicated. The only way that can work is if the audience is so inexperienced that they can't recognize the simple shape of a stumbling transhumanist singularity (Lain), interconnected multiverse anchor (Infinite), or villainous ancients (Prometheus). These stories are SUPER COMMON. I've read dozens of each.
Secondly, rather than create a legitimate gap, they simply drop fog everywhere to obfuscate it. For example, if I say the phrase "scie_ce F_ction", there's not much mystery as to what is underneath those underscores. Fogging them up doesn't make my writing more interesting, it just makes me annoying. And, yeah, I could reveal that it's actually "science FACTION", but it's like, whatever, okay, there were a few options and you chose one of the slightly less common ones. It's not interesting.
Compare this to Satoshi Kon's work, such as Paranoia Agent. Or the anime that blew my mind as a kid, Armitage the Third.
These create legitimate gaps. Paranoia Agent creates gaps by being batshit, leaving you grasping at straws in a maelstrom. It reveals the pattern near the end, just slowly enough that you can start to understand how it all works, and then it rushes ahead to extrapolate what that would actually mean. This overwhelming and powerful technique works because the idea is not common, and it's revealed fast enough that you aren't given time to extrapolate.
Armitage the Third seems like a typical robots and androids anime - they were common at the time. And you enjoy it on that level, but something feels just a touch off. The reveal might not surprise anyone who's seen a lot of scifi, but at the time it was not something that was written about in American science fiction. It really surprised me and left me thoughtful.
You can also talk about how these are also about real-world cultural issues. Paranoia Agent is arguably about the self-destructive hollowness of modern society, and Armitage is about racial purity. Those things matter. They matter a lot. Not only do they tie the story to your life, they also tie the story to the lives of the people in the story. They give incredible power to the characters, because the characters are moving through the same space. They give power to the scenes, because those scenes have happened in the real world.
The fact that Armitage is about racial purity is what gives many of its scenes so much more power than other campy blockbusters with the same basic premise. The sight of burning robot bodies piled high is devastating because it's not about robots.
This is something that only becomes clear near the end - same with Paranoia Agent. You could even say that the twist of these science fiction pieces is simply that they are ABOUT SOMETHING.
Lain, Prometheus, and Infinite not only have dull reveals, they aren't about anything. They just waddle through what someone thought was a cool scifi premise without breathing life into anything.
Sigh.
I really like science fiction.
But if it doesn't grab your neck and leave you breathless for hours afterwards, don't accept it. It's not good enough.
I realized that the issue is simply that I've read waaaaaaaaay more science fiction than most anybody else, and it's turned me into a snob. I've read literally thousands of science fiction stories. It was easy: back in Ye Olde Day, the best scifi was in short story and novelette form. You could read two or three a day just on the bus.
Because of that, I've become a bit of a scifi snob. So... I can't claim my opinions are "the only way to make good sci fi" or whatever, but I can say that most of the science fiction most people consume is trashy action flick scifi.
When you're done reading/watching/consuming good scifi, you can still feel its fingers around your neck for hours.
That's the kind of scifi most people haven't seen.
One thing to remember is that scifi appeals to different people at different times. There are good pieces of science fiction that do not appeal to me. And that's the problem with good scifi. It hits very hard against people who are in the right place. Trashy blockbuster scifi is much easier. It hits a much wider range of people.
But nobody is left stunned at the end. Nobody can feel it gripping their neck.
Things like Lain and Infinite fall very short as scifi goes... but people have been left gasping. The reason is because they have seen so little of substance that they have nothing to compare to. If the only photograph you've ever seen is a grainy, unlit photo of a penny, you're going to think it's amazing. That doesn't make it a good photograph.
Let's talk about the weaknesses of Lain, Infinite, and Prometheus, at least as I perceive them.
...
Secrets, mysteries, and gaps play a big role in science fiction. All three of our examples fail at this, misusing secrets. They use secrets like Lost uses secrets.
Let's talk about secrets.
One of the most fundamental practices in science fiction is to leave huge gaps unexplained in order to create large spaces.
For example, "Khan Noonien Singh was a general in the Eugenics Wars..." That's a powerful statement. It creates a massive block of "space" - these unexplained Eugenics Wars are interesting, and their name is extremely powerful. They are tied into the story, but left unexplained.
On a different scale, "Romulan blue ale". It serves no real purpose to the story, but it creates a vast expanse in your mind: the Romulans have a culinary culture and it's interesting and weird! A tiny detail that serves to create a world without actually cementing anything down.
It also goes the other direction. The internal life of characters is often left implied. Science Fiction rarely spells out motivations and emotions as clearly as other genres do. You're left with people who act a little inexplicably at times, stare a bit too long, covet something a bit too much. This creates a space inside their life, a space the reader can sense but not see. An easy example of this is Obi Wan Kenobi. Why does he live in the desert? Why does he let Darth kill him? How does he have all of these powers? What the hell are these powers?
Part of the draw of the original movies was that they doled out most of these answers in a trickle, so you kept watching to see more of them. But many of them were never really filled in until decades later, and fan theories were everywhere. Alternate explanations exist for virtually everything - for example, some people have proposed that the droids are actually hugely important 'shadow leaders' of the rebellion... and there are enough gaps that this explanation can weave through them fairly convincingly.
Secrets, mysteries, and gaps create life in these universes. They do so in a very powerful way because they let the audience fill those gaps at their leisure, as they see fit.
I think I'm understating that last bit, so let me harp on it:
The audience fills the gaps with whatever they can.
This is the primary tool used to make science fiction accessible to a wider range of people. When scifi has few gaps, the only people it can appeal to are the people who are in tune with the story as it is being told. If every aspect of the Eugenics Wars is explained, then only people who can accept the specific details of why the war happened and how it developed can be interested. Everyone else will say "oh, that's not very interesting" or "oh, that's not very likely".
By leaving it a mystery, each reader can presume it happened in a specific way according to their current... level? Place? The current way their brain works. The more they think about it on their own, the more it falls in tune with their own thinking, and the more interesting it becomes. Used wisely, this trick makes the best scifi twists rip you apart: they gave you space to imagine and assume. Then they kick that out from under you and show you just how feeble your imaginings were.
Now, this isn't the only thing scifi does. A lot of people would say that Star Trek and Star Wars aren't even proper scifi, just fantasy dolled up with technotrappings. Well, leaving that argument aside, this particular practice of creating gaps is commonplace and very powerful. The practice of subverting what the audience puts in those gaps is also a common technique, mostly used when you want to create "mindfuck" scifi.
...
Back to Lain, Prometheus, and Infinite. There will be spoilers, but who the hell cares?
All three of these attempt to use that last technique - the "create a gap, let the audience imagine what's inside, then subvert that" method.
Unfortunately, they do it clumsily.
First off, what's in the gap is rarely a mystery. They attempt to obfuscate something relatively simple, but burying something simple in a fog doesn't make it complicated. The only way that can work is if the audience is so inexperienced that they can't recognize the simple shape of a stumbling transhumanist singularity (Lain), interconnected multiverse anchor (Infinite), or villainous ancients (Prometheus). These stories are SUPER COMMON. I've read dozens of each.
Secondly, rather than create a legitimate gap, they simply drop fog everywhere to obfuscate it. For example, if I say the phrase "scie_ce F_ction", there's not much mystery as to what is underneath those underscores. Fogging them up doesn't make my writing more interesting, it just makes me annoying. And, yeah, I could reveal that it's actually "science FACTION", but it's like, whatever, okay, there were a few options and you chose one of the slightly less common ones. It's not interesting.
Compare this to Satoshi Kon's work, such as Paranoia Agent. Or the anime that blew my mind as a kid, Armitage the Third.
These create legitimate gaps. Paranoia Agent creates gaps by being batshit, leaving you grasping at straws in a maelstrom. It reveals the pattern near the end, just slowly enough that you can start to understand how it all works, and then it rushes ahead to extrapolate what that would actually mean. This overwhelming and powerful technique works because the idea is not common, and it's revealed fast enough that you aren't given time to extrapolate.
Armitage the Third seems like a typical robots and androids anime - they were common at the time. And you enjoy it on that level, but something feels just a touch off. The reveal might not surprise anyone who's seen a lot of scifi, but at the time it was not something that was written about in American science fiction. It really surprised me and left me thoughtful.
You can also talk about how these are also about real-world cultural issues. Paranoia Agent is arguably about the self-destructive hollowness of modern society, and Armitage is about racial purity. Those things matter. They matter a lot. Not only do they tie the story to your life, they also tie the story to the lives of the people in the story. They give incredible power to the characters, because the characters are moving through the same space. They give power to the scenes, because those scenes have happened in the real world.
The fact that Armitage is about racial purity is what gives many of its scenes so much more power than other campy blockbusters with the same basic premise. The sight of burning robot bodies piled high is devastating because it's not about robots.
This is something that only becomes clear near the end - same with Paranoia Agent. You could even say that the twist of these science fiction pieces is simply that they are ABOUT SOMETHING.
Lain, Prometheus, and Infinite not only have dull reveals, they aren't about anything. They just waddle through what someone thought was a cool scifi premise without breathing life into anything.
Sigh.
I really like science fiction.
But if it doesn't grab your neck and leave you breathless for hours afterwards, don't accept it. It's not good enough.
Monday, July 07, 2014
Utopian Scifi and Families in Star Trek
I recently found a link to a slightly obnoxious Slate/Quora article about shipboard families in Star Trek. Feel free to not read it, I'm not a fan of Slate, Quora, or the specific essay. Link via @derekpost
The essay basically states that Roddenberry's ideas were half-baked and stupid, and that Star Fleet is clearly a military operation. What a thing to say!
At the time, Roddenberry's ideas were amazing. The steady drift of the series from a utopian future to a typical military sci-fi drama makes the ideas seem foolish in hindsight, but that's because the series became military sci-fi.
It didn't start that way, and it should not have drifted that way.
But Hollywood will be Hollywood: never enough guns, never enough explosions.
Families and non-military friendships have always been an important part of the heart of Star Trek. A lot of the unique flavor of Star Trek came from the way it dedicated itself to these relationships, and not to military camaraderie and competition. This was especially true in TNG: just think about how many episodes featured these kinds of nonmilitary relationships. Hell, Data's entire character was about "learning how to have normal social relationships", no matter how they cast it as "getting emotions".
The original series was a bit less obvious about it, but even there it was not militaristic. While the crew was not really friendly with each other, they were more about learning to get along and figuring out how to work together rather than approaching things as soldiers doing their job. It was intended, right from the start, to be about international cooperation. Not shooty-shooty murder.
The universe of Star Trek has become typical military science fiction since then. When we look at the universe, we see it overrun with threats that are met by military force. It is so generic that you can literally run simulations based on the known stats of the various ships. The games make this explicit: every recent Star Trek game is about killing shit more efficiently than shit kills you.
When the Borg were initially introduced, it was to show the hopelessness of military obsession. The borg were the "super-military". No weapons could threaten them. Resistance was futile. If you do try to resist them, they actively pursue you and incorporate you into their whole, turning whatever military strength you managed to obtain against you.
The only thing to do was to band together with everyone and try and find a nonmilitary solution. It was TNG's way to introduce the same impetus TOS had: international cooperation instead of shooty-shooty murder.
But Hollywood couldn't bear to let that stand, and so the Federation's military was upgraded and upgraded and upgraded and upgraded and upgraded and now the Federation can win a slugging match against the Borg. The Borg do not incorporate your military strength any more, either, because that doesn't fit into a summer blockbuster narrative. Their incorporation is now a weak point to be exploited, because obviously learning things is a weakness.
That is so wrong and stupid.
Roddenberry's "half-baked" ideas about the future were extremely compelling. In Science Fiction, "The Other" is usually met with force, with murder. That's a bad way to see the world. The idea that you can meet up with something alien and talk it out is much better. The universe is chaotic and confusing, but you can meet it halfway and still have a life, still have a family. That is a world worth living in.
I'm sorry Hollywood's obsession with explosions and murder has degraded Star Trek to the point where people think the original idea is incomprehensible.
The essay basically states that Roddenberry's ideas were half-baked and stupid, and that Star Fleet is clearly a military operation. What a thing to say!
At the time, Roddenberry's ideas were amazing. The steady drift of the series from a utopian future to a typical military sci-fi drama makes the ideas seem foolish in hindsight, but that's because the series became military sci-fi.
It didn't start that way, and it should not have drifted that way.
But Hollywood will be Hollywood: never enough guns, never enough explosions.
Families and non-military friendships have always been an important part of the heart of Star Trek. A lot of the unique flavor of Star Trek came from the way it dedicated itself to these relationships, and not to military camaraderie and competition. This was especially true in TNG: just think about how many episodes featured these kinds of nonmilitary relationships. Hell, Data's entire character was about "learning how to have normal social relationships", no matter how they cast it as "getting emotions".
The original series was a bit less obvious about it, but even there it was not militaristic. While the crew was not really friendly with each other, they were more about learning to get along and figuring out how to work together rather than approaching things as soldiers doing their job. It was intended, right from the start, to be about international cooperation. Not shooty-shooty murder.
The universe of Star Trek has become typical military science fiction since then. When we look at the universe, we see it overrun with threats that are met by military force. It is so generic that you can literally run simulations based on the known stats of the various ships. The games make this explicit: every recent Star Trek game is about killing shit more efficiently than shit kills you.
When the Borg were initially introduced, it was to show the hopelessness of military obsession. The borg were the "super-military". No weapons could threaten them. Resistance was futile. If you do try to resist them, they actively pursue you and incorporate you into their whole, turning whatever military strength you managed to obtain against you.
The only thing to do was to band together with everyone and try and find a nonmilitary solution. It was TNG's way to introduce the same impetus TOS had: international cooperation instead of shooty-shooty murder.
But Hollywood couldn't bear to let that stand, and so the Federation's military was upgraded and upgraded and upgraded and upgraded and upgraded and now the Federation can win a slugging match against the Borg. The Borg do not incorporate your military strength any more, either, because that doesn't fit into a summer blockbuster narrative. Their incorporation is now a weak point to be exploited, because obviously learning things is a weakness.
That is so wrong and stupid.
Roddenberry's "half-baked" ideas about the future were extremely compelling. In Science Fiction, "The Other" is usually met with force, with murder. That's a bad way to see the world. The idea that you can meet up with something alien and talk it out is much better. The universe is chaotic and confusing, but you can meet it halfway and still have a life, still have a family. That is a world worth living in.
I'm sorry Hollywood's obsession with explosions and murder has degraded Star Trek to the point where people think the original idea is incomprehensible.
Tuesday, December 03, 2013
Sci Fi Navy Terminology
One of the difficulties in creating science fiction worlds is creating a naval setting. Starships are incredibly critical in most science fiction settings, basically replacing trains, ships, and airplanes all in one go.
In most cases, I'll have some idea of how the universe works - a specific set of technologies, a specific kind of culture, that sort of thing. But when I was a bit younger, I had a really hard time putting things into a reasonable military (or pseudo-military) structure. This is because whenever anyone talks about navies, they talk in exceedingly specific terms and concrete examples. I needed general information, and they were drowning me in trivia.
It came up again this month, with a new setting I developed, so I figured I'd go ahead and write a bit about the naval terminology and structures I tend to use.
These aren't really based around any real-world navy, but they are feasible enough and flexible enough to form a scaffold. Obviously, if your starships are so rare that they never form into fleets or task forces, this isn't necessary.
First off, I start with a very quick overview of how shipping works. The reason for this is because military vessels will usually have the same spectrum of sizes as shipping vessels. This is for two reasons. The first is because you build the space frame sizes you're comfortable with, and the second is because it's hard to supply ships that are larger than your supply ships.
If your planets are largely self-sufficient, then there won't be any ultra-heavy space trucks. In turn, that means there won't be any death stars. On the other hand, if you need to ship massive quantities of food and metal, you're going to have massive military vessels. The bigger the freight requirement, the bigger the biggest military ship.
Similarly on the small end. "Space fighter" is a pleasant thought to most science fiction authors, but it only makes sense in settings where there are civilian uses for a tiny interstellar ship. Because of this, I tend to only use fighters in settings where there is no FTL radio - the small ships are essentially messengers. Obviously, you can go against this rule if you like, but I find it makes more sense to follow it.
Similarly on the fast versus slow. Do you have "jet liners" for people to travel from star to star, or are they more like "ocean liners", taking weeks or months? Well, the military's gonna have the same kind of preference, taking into account their additional need to keep an active presence in a given theater for months at a time.
With that out of the way, you can begin to think about the kinds of combat encounters that might crop up, and begin to think about the kinds of ships which fit the role. In general, the terms used by real-world navies are pretty adaptable. You might get looked at a bit funny initially, but once it becomes clear that the role is warped by the technology, the players will accept that the real-world name still fits okay.
Now, I can list a bunch of kinds of military operations you might want to have - for example, orbital domination (requires a vehicle that can deploy and control thousands of satellites) or blockade running (requires vehicles that can stealth and vehicles that can detect that). However, the encounters you want in your world will shape the world you build.
Not every setting has blockade running. Not every setting has orbital domination. Not every setting has mines. Or drop-pods. Or interdiction. Or even carriers. It all comes down to the kinds of battles you want to happen in your setting. You can always retroactively add more if you feel the need.
The key is to identify the kinds of scenes you want. Do you picture marines rushing out of a smoking drop pod? Do you picture bombers harassing a burning supercarrier? Do you picture a destroyer floating above a frigate, pulling it in with tractor beams? The vivid imagery you have in mind will immediately tell you the kinds of ships you need.
Then it's just a matter of giving that class of ship a vaguely suitable name. For this, you can read up on military classes like "destroyer" and "battleship" and so on, but remember that those are typically roles not sizes. For example, a "destroyer" isn't defined by its size, but by its role as an anti-submarine escort to larger ships. A "cruiser" isn't "bigger" or "smaller" than a "destroyer" - it's a vehicle that's built to operate for a long time unaccompanied.
By these rules, the Enterprise of Star Trek fame is a cruiser. See?
You could also just invent your own names, of course. Don't know what class the psychic vortex ship is? Just call it "psych-class" or whatever.
Anyway, that's how I do starship design in scifi settings.
In most cases, I'll have some idea of how the universe works - a specific set of technologies, a specific kind of culture, that sort of thing. But when I was a bit younger, I had a really hard time putting things into a reasonable military (or pseudo-military) structure. This is because whenever anyone talks about navies, they talk in exceedingly specific terms and concrete examples. I needed general information, and they were drowning me in trivia.
It came up again this month, with a new setting I developed, so I figured I'd go ahead and write a bit about the naval terminology and structures I tend to use.
These aren't really based around any real-world navy, but they are feasible enough and flexible enough to form a scaffold. Obviously, if your starships are so rare that they never form into fleets or task forces, this isn't necessary.
First off, I start with a very quick overview of how shipping works. The reason for this is because military vessels will usually have the same spectrum of sizes as shipping vessels. This is for two reasons. The first is because you build the space frame sizes you're comfortable with, and the second is because it's hard to supply ships that are larger than your supply ships.
If your planets are largely self-sufficient, then there won't be any ultra-heavy space trucks. In turn, that means there won't be any death stars. On the other hand, if you need to ship massive quantities of food and metal, you're going to have massive military vessels. The bigger the freight requirement, the bigger the biggest military ship.
Similarly on the small end. "Space fighter" is a pleasant thought to most science fiction authors, but it only makes sense in settings where there are civilian uses for a tiny interstellar ship. Because of this, I tend to only use fighters in settings where there is no FTL radio - the small ships are essentially messengers. Obviously, you can go against this rule if you like, but I find it makes more sense to follow it.
Similarly on the fast versus slow. Do you have "jet liners" for people to travel from star to star, or are they more like "ocean liners", taking weeks or months? Well, the military's gonna have the same kind of preference, taking into account their additional need to keep an active presence in a given theater for months at a time.
With that out of the way, you can begin to think about the kinds of combat encounters that might crop up, and begin to think about the kinds of ships which fit the role. In general, the terms used by real-world navies are pretty adaptable. You might get looked at a bit funny initially, but once it becomes clear that the role is warped by the technology, the players will accept that the real-world name still fits okay.
Now, I can list a bunch of kinds of military operations you might want to have - for example, orbital domination (requires a vehicle that can deploy and control thousands of satellites) or blockade running (requires vehicles that can stealth and vehicles that can detect that). However, the encounters you want in your world will shape the world you build.
Not every setting has blockade running. Not every setting has orbital domination. Not every setting has mines. Or drop-pods. Or interdiction. Or even carriers. It all comes down to the kinds of battles you want to happen in your setting. You can always retroactively add more if you feel the need.
The key is to identify the kinds of scenes you want. Do you picture marines rushing out of a smoking drop pod? Do you picture bombers harassing a burning supercarrier? Do you picture a destroyer floating above a frigate, pulling it in with tractor beams? The vivid imagery you have in mind will immediately tell you the kinds of ships you need.
Then it's just a matter of giving that class of ship a vaguely suitable name. For this, you can read up on military classes like "destroyer" and "battleship" and so on, but remember that those are typically roles not sizes. For example, a "destroyer" isn't defined by its size, but by its role as an anti-submarine escort to larger ships. A "cruiser" isn't "bigger" or "smaller" than a "destroyer" - it's a vehicle that's built to operate for a long time unaccompanied.
By these rules, the Enterprise of Star Trek fame is a cruiser. See?
You could also just invent your own names, of course. Don't know what class the psychic vortex ship is? Just call it "psych-class" or whatever.
Anyway, that's how I do starship design in scifi settings.
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Exploratory Games
I'm reading a few threads about the new Mage setting (the only White Wolf setting I liked). A lot of people seem to dislike it because the new mage traditions don't have the same "bite" to them. They're all carefully explained in detail, but they don't have the same pull as the original traditions. Which were basically real-world stereotypes.
I can't speak to this personally - I haven't read the new Mage setting at all. But I can say that the original traditions were opportunities to explore facets of belief that you normally wouldn't have much chance to explore. Sure, I had an unreasonable love for the Sons of Ether. It let me explore the nature of mad science and the line between genius and insanity. It was interesting, when I was college-age.
But other players preferred other traditions. They had other things they wanted to explore, like the relationship between death and life, or the nature of truth. And the original traditions were set up to allow that.
This was the one thing White Wolf did well. Their rules were shit, their writing was stuffy and stilted, but they built factions which allowed every player to explore the part of humanity they felt like exploring. In all their systems, that was the real focus. That was why you would pick Malkavian, or whatever - you felt like exploring that facet of humanity.
I'd like to talk about this concept a bit more.
It's commonly understood that science fiction is actually highlighting the time it was written. So we get Metropolis (1927) which was about factories and unions. And we get The Matrix, which was about the internet. And we get District 9, which was about faltering socioeconomic structures... these things were commentary on their time. And they packed a punch because of it.
Sometimes you get something like Ghost in the Shell, which is a bit more visionary. But, by and large, science fiction is about pulling out the thorns that are poking us today and holding them up to the light.
This is very similar to what mage traditions allowed you to do. Essentially, roll-your-own science fiction. Minus the science.
So it got me thinking.
One of the things I do when I design a game is I try to make sure it highlights a nugget of human condition. I want every game to have, at its core, something with a feel to it. Like looking across an expanse of gray-tone rules and seeing a bright red or blue blotch. Nothing explicit, just something that the players will automatically incorporate into their game without even realizing it.
This is very similar to what White Wolf used to do.
You can't do it quite as aggressively as science fiction can. You can't do a District 9 or Ghost in the Shell game. Well, you can, but you'd have to be very, very careful, because the thing they want to say is mired in the actions characters happen to take.
To make it a proper game, you'd have to pull those things out of the realm of scripted interactions and into the realm of incentives. You can't simply have bad guys that pound on the idea that humans are not as inviolable as they think. You need to have the players participate in that same conversation.
For example, Solid State Society has a conspiracy where a gifted hacker works with the elderly to forcibly adopt abused children, wipe their memory, and replace those memories with happier memories involving their new grandma or grandpa. The ideas explored with this plot are complex and there is no simple answer, no simple right or wrong. It's a fairly compelling bit of science fiction.
But it's not a very compelling RPG setting. The whole thing is plot, is script. You can't just port it over.
Instead, you need to create a rule set or setting where the same kind of philosophical explorations can be made by the players. Don't force them to do it... just allow them to do it.
And that's where the difficulty comes. How do you design such a thing? Is it possible to design such a thing on purpose?
Well, it doesn't have to be a masterpiece. None of White Wolf's games were masterpieces - in fact, they were all total shit. But they have that kernel of depth to them - they let the player explore a part of humanity. Whatever part is currently poking their mind. So they are rightfully popular.
You could do the same thing with a Ghost in the Shell game. Allow the players to pick memory manipulation as a skill. And if they go crazy with power, fine - that's part of the game. That's part of exploring what it all means.
Hm!
I can't speak to this personally - I haven't read the new Mage setting at all. But I can say that the original traditions were opportunities to explore facets of belief that you normally wouldn't have much chance to explore. Sure, I had an unreasonable love for the Sons of Ether. It let me explore the nature of mad science and the line between genius and insanity. It was interesting, when I was college-age.
But other players preferred other traditions. They had other things they wanted to explore, like the relationship between death and life, or the nature of truth. And the original traditions were set up to allow that.
This was the one thing White Wolf did well. Their rules were shit, their writing was stuffy and stilted, but they built factions which allowed every player to explore the part of humanity they felt like exploring. In all their systems, that was the real focus. That was why you would pick Malkavian, or whatever - you felt like exploring that facet of humanity.
I'd like to talk about this concept a bit more.
It's commonly understood that science fiction is actually highlighting the time it was written. So we get Metropolis (1927) which was about factories and unions. And we get The Matrix, which was about the internet. And we get District 9, which was about faltering socioeconomic structures... these things were commentary on their time. And they packed a punch because of it.
Sometimes you get something like Ghost in the Shell, which is a bit more visionary. But, by and large, science fiction is about pulling out the thorns that are poking us today and holding them up to the light.
This is very similar to what mage traditions allowed you to do. Essentially, roll-your-own science fiction. Minus the science.
So it got me thinking.
One of the things I do when I design a game is I try to make sure it highlights a nugget of human condition. I want every game to have, at its core, something with a feel to it. Like looking across an expanse of gray-tone rules and seeing a bright red or blue blotch. Nothing explicit, just something that the players will automatically incorporate into their game without even realizing it.
This is very similar to what White Wolf used to do.
You can't do it quite as aggressively as science fiction can. You can't do a District 9 or Ghost in the Shell game. Well, you can, but you'd have to be very, very careful, because the thing they want to say is mired in the actions characters happen to take.
To make it a proper game, you'd have to pull those things out of the realm of scripted interactions and into the realm of incentives. You can't simply have bad guys that pound on the idea that humans are not as inviolable as they think. You need to have the players participate in that same conversation.
For example, Solid State Society has a conspiracy where a gifted hacker works with the elderly to forcibly adopt abused children, wipe their memory, and replace those memories with happier memories involving their new grandma or grandpa. The ideas explored with this plot are complex and there is no simple answer, no simple right or wrong. It's a fairly compelling bit of science fiction.
But it's not a very compelling RPG setting. The whole thing is plot, is script. You can't just port it over.
Instead, you need to create a rule set or setting where the same kind of philosophical explorations can be made by the players. Don't force them to do it... just allow them to do it.
And that's where the difficulty comes. How do you design such a thing? Is it possible to design such a thing on purpose?
Well, it doesn't have to be a masterpiece. None of White Wolf's games were masterpieces - in fact, they were all total shit. But they have that kernel of depth to them - they let the player explore a part of humanity. Whatever part is currently poking their mind. So they are rightfully popular.
You could do the same thing with a Ghost in the Shell game. Allow the players to pick memory manipulation as a skill. And if they go crazy with power, fine - that's part of the game. That's part of exploring what it all means.
Hm!
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