Pyramid 4/3 Sci-Fi/Tech Review

 Last, but definitely not least, we have the Sci-Fi issue of the Kickstarted Pyramid Trio.  As usual, I'll give a TL;DR of my final thoughts first, and then a break down of each article.

Overview

Rating: 5 stars

Look, this shouldn't be a surprise; I like SF, so the SF pyramid gets the best score, right? Well, it's more than that.  First, there were several articles that spoke to precisely what I've been working on recently and so are directly relevant to me.  That's sort of unfair, as you're working on something else and so different things will be pertinent to you, but it's still relevant, because if one person is working on something, chances are more people are working on something similar.  Second, a lot of this stuff is just good.  There are two I've noted as NA.  Perhaps they should be one star, I don't know, but it feels more like a deep interest mismatch than necessarily a quality problem.  But in my opinion, this had the best material, and some of the most engrossing articles, of the three pyramids, so it's my favorite.

My only complaint is we FINALLY have a new tech pyramid with no new Ultra-Tech. What's up with that?

Article Breakdown

Putting the Science in your Science-Fiction, by Sean Punch

Rating: 4 Stars

This is actually familiar ground, as I explored this in my first attempt to tackle my Not-Star-Trek in the form of Heroes of the Galactic Frontier, so it was interesting to see what Kromm did with it.  The results are... fine. Essentially, he's borrowed the template of invention rules and used them as the basis for discoveries, and the results are a good step forward.

As I read the article, I couldn't help but think of iterative processes, how the next step results in a better product than the first step, but makes the next step after that more obvious.  This is like that.  This is definitely better than what we had before, but it leaves obvious holes: what does the Quick Gadgeteer of this look like? Is it really particularly playable to have hard requirements on Science skills like that? Are the rules for critical failures on hypothesis, letting the player continue to explore and dump lots of time and effort into "the wrong path" a very interesting way to play out science? Is it useful to have such vague results after a successful inquiry, and to only really reward the scientist on a critical success?

I'm not saying it's a bad article! It's a good mapping of the invention rules to the idea of scientific discovery, and a good argument for why this sort of thing is necessary.  But I will note that pretty much every campaign framework throws the invention rules out the window and uses Quick Gadgeteer instead because it's more playable. The next obvious step is a more playable version of these rules. So I find myself wanting those rules instead.

Why four stars? Well, five stars is for something I'd use right away, and this is something I'd use right away... but I'd probably tear it apart, look at it, and find some way to merge it with the mystery rules in Monster Hunters to create a more playable version for a more cinematic setting.  I think some notes on that would have helped this article, but I think it's bad form to ding an article for not being what I wanted it to be, or for not necessarily taking that next step.  It's good, you'll find a use for it, but when the next article comes along to make this obsolete, you'll appreciate that system more, and this article will serve as a template for that one.

Also, is it just me, or between this and Template Toolkits 3, is Kromm slowly tip-toeing towards a space opera framework?

The Divine Republic of Datastan, by Matt Riggsby

Rating: 3 Stars

This article took me by surprise.  I'll be honest, I only read it because I was forcing myself to read all the articles, but I really liked it!  It's a fascinating mixture of religion, sea-steading and grey market data services that feels profoundly cyberpunk, while being generic enough to fit just about anywhere.  That said, despite enjoying the article very much, it feels like something that will fade away. I suspect I won't use it.

More Options for Metatronic Generators, by Christopher Rice

Rating: 5 Stars

I love Metatronic Generators, because they're really Psychotronic Generators with more options, and I use Psychotronic Generators all the time. Thus, I will certainly be using this article, and I may use it to revisit some of my existing tech in Psi-Wars

I've noticed Chris often puts out what I would consider work-horse articles, where he does a bunch of stuff that's fairly obvious, and this feels like one of those articles, like obviously you can scale up or down devices, and obviously psychotronic ammunition (like psychotronic arrows) would be 1/5 the cost of a normal generator.  And yet... did I ever do that on my own? No!  He sees the need I didn't realize I had, and gave me such good answers that, in retrospect, they look obvious.  But they weren't.  Not really.

The only complaint is that he makes armor and shields extremely expensive. It's $2,000 per point, which means armor that provides +10 DR will run you $100,000.  I don't know if we take existing armor and layer this DR atop it (so if a normal, TL 10 hardsuit  with 75 DR is $20,000, is a psychotronic suit with DR 85 really worth $120,000? Would 100 DR really be $520,000?) or are we buying the DR from scratch? Like is a hardsuit with DR 75 $20,000, but a psychotronic hardsuit with DR 75 is $750,000? Like... why? And none of this assumes that it's self-powered.

Once you get past how mundane some of this material seems, you start to realize there are some good ideas in here, like power amplifiers that act as mitigators, or prototype psychotronics vs mass-produced onces, or a suit with these emotional batteries that you can draw from, but you can only recharge when really ticked off. Some of it is subtle, such as Combination Devices.  Why would you even need a combination device? You just build a new metatronic generator that combines the functionality of all three!  But then, what if you want to combine several elements of different sizes, or you want to combine it with existing tech (a psychotronic strength amplifier in a combat hardsuit, for example), or even the power ring (which is perfect for a sorcerer).

This is not an article that will win awards. You're not going to rush out and talk about it excitedly to your friends, but I think you'll reference it a lot, and it'll inspire new metatronic items you might not have thought of before. It's one of those sorts of articles that I regularly use, a pocket ace article.

Space Zombies! by J. Edward Tremlett

Rating: 3 Stars

There were a few articles I had dismissed in my head before reading them, and this was one. It's not that I mind the concept of space zombies, because I use them all the time! It's that I know how to build a space zombie, so why would I need an article on it.  But this isn't what I thought it was.

This isn't a series of space zombies, it's three different contexts for space zombies, a hook and an origin story and a way to use them in a campaign.  This is more useful than generic space zombies, because we have GURPS Zombies.

It's not a perfect article, though.  While all three are interesting, at least in the sense that they make you think about space colonization (all three focus on colonists or people on generation ships), only the Hunters really spoke to me.  Zombie Zucchini is fun, and the D-generates are a great pun, but not a particularly inspiring set of zombies, but the Hunters very much tackle a topic I find interesting, though I would argue they're closer to ghouls than to zombies, at least as most people would think of them.  They're also playable!

I might actually use the Hunters, or a variation of the concept for the underbelly of Xen in Psi-Wars, thus it was a useful article to me, but it's not an amaaazing article.  Three stars!

Lord Kelvin's Icebox, by Mett Whemeier

Rating: NA

I tried.  It's not a bad article, I just find it hard to get into Infinite Earth stuff. It's an interesting enough a concept, as I was aware of the tension between Darwinism and Thermodynamics as understood during the time of Kelvin, but it just reads to me like "Ice world, only with weird justifications." I think it's an Infinite Worlds thing.

Mind over Time, by Aleksei Isachenko

Rating: 5 Stars

How much praise can I sing for this article?  I think the best way to explain it is this: I already created Chronokinesis for Psi-Wars.  I'm not suggesting Mr. Isachenko ripped off my work (he'd have to be a Patron to even know it existed). No, I bring this up to point out that psychic time manipulation is a concept I've already put a lot of thought into. It's something I tried to work out in detail, though mostly from the perspective of an NPC race rather than giving it to a PC, and Mr. Isachenko outdid me.  Not only did he create something I needed, he created something I had already worked on and did better at it than I did!  I'm especially impressed with the logic behind Timeline Alteration (for finding keys if you're excellent) and Time Stop.  In fact, I read a lot of this and thought "Oh, I knew that! Wait, then why didn't I do it?" so he really did his homework on this one. Some are impractical, though: Stasis is out of reach even on a budget of 100 points of powers. Ouch!

Ghost Planets by J. Edward Tremlett

Rating: 5 Stars

So, like most smartphone-addled people, I have attention span issues, so I generally have to force myself to go through these articles in detail, rather than skim them and start working with them, as is my wont, but I found myself lost in Ghost Planets.  It sucked me in and before I knew it, I was done.  It's rare for a pyramid article to engross me as much as this one did.

It's basically three abandoned planets, a desert planet, a lush eden, and a strange, manufactured world.  Each strikes a very different note and each has its own intriguing elements and mysteries.  Then Mr. Tremlett gives us several possible solutions to each mystery, which means that even if your players read this article, they still wouldn't know the truth of these ghost planets.

The obvious thing to do with these worlds is to make them a set piece for a campaign, or at least an extended arc of one, but one thing I think people forget is that navigation failure happens, and you might want to drop players on a rare, abandoned planet.  All three fit the bill here: you can just grab them and drop them in your sci-fi campaign if you need a bit of color or a few sessions of characters marooned on a strange world before the Space Patrol finds them.  Just be careful with that, because these worlds might be more interesting than your campaign.

I liked Cathedral the best, but all three were very good, and I could see myself using any of them.

Reign of Action by Roger Burton West

Rating: 5 Stars

Ahhh.  So, when Mr West gave us Read the Sky, I complained about how it felt like Action, and how we really needed to integrate Action with Reign of Steel.  I stand by that: Reign of Steel, as written, is a depressing world where you'd just watch your buddies get hunted down and killed, one by one, by the implacable machine.  Not really the sort of place the average player, in my experience, wants to visit.  There are some, of course, who want to see how they'd fair in a hopelessly depressing situation.  But most people I know would rather be big damn heroes saving the day.  And, at last, we can do it!

A lot of this article, like the More Metatronic Generator Options article, reads as obvious. Of course a martial artist is a dumb idea.  Of course a shooter is a typical Resistance Fighter.  But I think that sells it short: it also includes a Resistance Fighter background, adds a fascinating new specialty of Savoir-Faire, and some new gear.  And, look, people weren't doing this before, not that I was aware of, so the advice involved is useful, even if in retrospect it looks obvious (that just usually means it's correct).

This makes me want to play Reign of Steel. It feels like I have the last piece necessary to run what I'd want to run out of that setting.  I probably won't anytime soon, so it probably shouldn't have my 5-star rating, but it made me giddy, so I say it's 5 stars.

The Toughest Race in the Solar System, by Carolyn Ivy Stein and Steve Stein

Rating: 3 Stars

When they said "race" I was thinking "alien race" not "foot race." I don't know how I missed that.  This is an article about doing an "adventure race" across the Solar System, which is an interesting concept.  It has limited utility for me, but I found myself thinking "Actually, this sort of concept would fit well into Psi-Wars."  It could be the basis of a campaign, though probably only a THS one, but I think it's more likely to become a cultural element in the background, like something people might talk about, or a background for a character ("My reputation comes from winning the Solar System Race three years running!").  So it's good, and more interesting than I thought, and I'll probably use some elements from it.

It is missing basic mechanics on how the race would be resolved (Quick contest? Regular Contest? What skills?) but it's not hard to figure that out on my own. They do do a nice job pointing out the typica hazards you might face, though!

The Murrinres Portals, by Jason Brick

Rating: NA

Alright, I tried, again. More Infinite Earths.  If you like it, that's cool.  But I just find it hard to get into.  This reminds me a bit of the Company, in that its an indepth explanation for a thing in a game that I didn't really need. "How do people get around?" "Portals." "Okay, cool, so I..." "The Murrienres Portals." "Right, nice, well I..." "They have resonance!"

It's fine, it's not bad, it has some neat hooks, it has some interesting discussions, but I couldn't make myself finish it.

Play Stupid Games, Win Stupid Prizes, by Sean Punch

Rating: 4 Stars

Space sports! This is, surprisingly, very useful for me! This might be one of those things that you think don't really matter.  Like who cares what sports they play in Not-Star-Wars, right? But then you realize it's something people would talk about, have opinions on, etc.  And it might be something that you end up playing in the game yourself.  Then you need to know.  You wouldn't need to know much: it'd be a sports specialty, and maybe you'd roll it as a quick contest, or maybe you'd have it as a fully detailed encounter, and you'd need a few basic ideas tossed in, right? Addressing those exact question is what the article does.  So good job!

It's a little too generic, though, so it pushed into uselessness.  A few worked examples might have been nice (though I suppose we have Deathball...).  That's the only thing holding it back from the golden, five star rating though.

Gone by Not Forgotten, by Steven Marsh

Rating: 3 Stars

Steven originally discusses the concept of abandoned structures, so I thought this had to do with exploring wreckages, but this is really about information. He notes that most games assume uncharted territory, like exploring an unexplored dungeon.  But there are other possibilities.  He doesn't note it, but people who do heists regularly expect to have completely accurate floor plants, and they have fun with that too.  Having the knowledge can create as fun a scenario as not having the knowledge.  But the he goes further and explores the possibilities of only having partial knowledge, incorrect knowledge, or more knowledge than everyone else.

I think it's classic Marsh, in that it's a fairly mundane observation ("Sometimes you know where you're going and sometimes you don't!) but made in a way I don't usually think about.  We gamers just tend to assume maps.  Imagine writing up a map of your fantasy world and presenting it to the players, and it's wrong. They think they know what they're getting into, and they don't.  Then you have a mystery: why is the map wrong? And you have a puzzle: how are you going to deal with it.  It s concept I'll have to reflect on.