Last time, we worked out the details to how robots function in Psi Wars, including their place in society, the nature of their neural nets, their role in the game, and how to put one together.
For this post, I'm going to put together some ready-made robots! These will use the rules and suggestions from the previous post, as well as the default bodies straight out of Ultra-Tech. I have chosen, where possible, for 150 point characters, as I suspect the final PC total for Psi Wars will be around 300, making these "50% point allies," which would be great additions to the existing templates.
Thursday, March 17, 2016
Thursday, March 10, 2016
Psi Wars: Robots
The computers from Star Wars (and thus Psi-Wars) herald from an older era of sci-fi: these gargantuan things lack interconnection or artificial intelligence. We have already discussed computers enough in the post regarding general technology. However, we have one exception to the "dumb computers" rule, and that is robots!
Star Wars brims with droids, in every movie, in nearly every scene. They form the backbone of society, literally working thanklessly behind the scenes to maintain the machinery of civilization. For Star Wars, however, robots lack the transformative themes that they often embody in transhuman science fiction and, let's be honest, throughout much of GURPS Ultra-Tech. While droids fundamentally change how the Empire and the Republic engage in both war and industry, they don't change what it means to be human, nor do they raise the question of what it means to be sapient.
Star Wars is space opera, and the term "space opera" comes from an era of exploitative fiction for young men. Publishing houses would release pulp serials that catered to the particular interests: Westerns for the kids who liked to read about cowboys, swashbuckling stories for kids who liked to read about pirates, and sci-fi for the kids who liked reading about rocketships. To save on cost, these publishing houses would kick out the same stories and/or comics, only with different window dressing. In the western, the cowboy rescues the school marm from injuns, in the swashbuckling story, the musketeer rescues the princess from pirates, and in the sci-fi story, the space captain rescues the space princess from aliens. The term "space opera" referred to this change of window dressing: they weren't really fiction about science, but adventure stories that happened to be cosmetically set in space.
Thus, the characters of a space opera tend to be stock characters, and Star Wars, which emulates that old space opera, uses the same sorts of stock characters. And since those early adventure stories stole liberally from the adventure stories of the 19th century, the stock characters tend to reflect late 19th, early 20th century sensibilities: The heroic European nobleman strides out to conquer a dark continent, along with his stalwart servant and his mysterious, foreign guide. In space opera, the stalwart servant becomes a robot, and the mysterious, foreign guide becomes an alien.
This explains why Star Wars treats its aliens and its droids the way it does (Note, for example, that only aliens have foreign languages). The droids, in particular, create this strange dissonance. On the one hand, they're "only droids," and so the story does not expect us to mourn the tragedy of the on-screen slaying of a dozen battle droids, or even the sad whimpering of some gonk droid. But, on the other hand, Star Wars treats R2-D2 and C3P0 as full characters, and generates suspense by throwing them into trouble. We are told that the light side values life, but droids evidently don't count (given the numerous times the Jedi Order criticizes Anakin for his fixation on his droids). We recoil horror when Leia is enslaved by Jabba, but we don't blink twice at the fact that C3P0 is similarly enslaved, and that he is never actually freed.
Are droids expendable minions, or are they fully realized characters, or are they both? What about the transformative or introspective elements that more sophisticated robot stories evoke? Do we want to borrow from them?
Star Wars brims with droids, in every movie, in nearly every scene. They form the backbone of society, literally working thanklessly behind the scenes to maintain the machinery of civilization. For Star Wars, however, robots lack the transformative themes that they often embody in transhuman science fiction and, let's be honest, throughout much of GURPS Ultra-Tech. While droids fundamentally change how the Empire and the Republic engage in both war and industry, they don't change what it means to be human, nor do they raise the question of what it means to be sapient.
Star Wars is space opera, and the term "space opera" comes from an era of exploitative fiction for young men. Publishing houses would release pulp serials that catered to the particular interests: Westerns for the kids who liked to read about cowboys, swashbuckling stories for kids who liked to read about pirates, and sci-fi for the kids who liked reading about rocketships. To save on cost, these publishing houses would kick out the same stories and/or comics, only with different window dressing. In the western, the cowboy rescues the school marm from injuns, in the swashbuckling story, the musketeer rescues the princess from pirates, and in the sci-fi story, the space captain rescues the space princess from aliens. The term "space opera" referred to this change of window dressing: they weren't really fiction about science, but adventure stories that happened to be cosmetically set in space.
Thus, the characters of a space opera tend to be stock characters, and Star Wars, which emulates that old space opera, uses the same sorts of stock characters. And since those early adventure stories stole liberally from the adventure stories of the 19th century, the stock characters tend to reflect late 19th, early 20th century sensibilities: The heroic European nobleman strides out to conquer a dark continent, along with his stalwart servant and his mysterious, foreign guide. In space opera, the stalwart servant becomes a robot, and the mysterious, foreign guide becomes an alien.
This explains why Star Wars treats its aliens and its droids the way it does (Note, for example, that only aliens have foreign languages). The droids, in particular, create this strange dissonance. On the one hand, they're "only droids," and so the story does not expect us to mourn the tragedy of the on-screen slaying of a dozen battle droids, or even the sad whimpering of some gonk droid. But, on the other hand, Star Wars treats R2-D2 and C3P0 as full characters, and generates suspense by throwing them into trouble. We are told that the light side values life, but droids evidently don't count (given the numerous times the Jedi Order criticizes Anakin for his fixation on his droids). We recoil horror when Leia is enslaved by Jabba, but we don't blink twice at the fact that C3P0 is similarly enslaved, and that he is never actually freed.
Are droids expendable minions, or are they fully realized characters, or are they both? What about the transformative or introspective elements that more sophisticated robot stories evoke? Do we want to borrow from them?
Bonus Post: Modifying Robots
Ultra-Tech gives us plenty of robot templates, but what if you don't like any of those templates? Where
are the vibro-clawed assassin-bots, or the elegantly chromed and
exquisitely crafted androids? We have no “robot design system”
in the sense of being able to put together advantages and getting a
cost out of it. However, we can
use Ultra-Tech's gadget modification system to at least tinker with
existing robots!
Friday, March 4, 2016
Psi Wars: Weapons and Armor
Cinematic space opera thrives on the spectacle of dramatic combat. Lasers flash, armor gleams and grenades punctuate the conflict with fiery explosions! But we need to be careful with Ultra-Tech weapons if we want to build up the right sort of combat scenario. In low-tech or high-tech conflict, we emulate existing weaponry and we use them in scenarios where they face logical. If we open the ultra-tech book, however, we are faced with a smorgasbord of options that don't all work perfectly well together. Bullets will zip through reflective armor, and lasers will cut through ballistic armor. Disintegrators ignore armor completely, and battesuits can shrug off most small-arms fire. When we choose our weapons and armor, we must carefully consider how they interact with one another, so that we get both a consistent, believable universe, and the sort of gameplay that we want.
And we want swashbuckling heroics, where heroes use beam and blade to defeat their opponents in face-to-face combat. We have, thus, two golden standards around which we can build our combat paradigm: the force blade, and the blaster pistol. The former represents the lightsaber, without which we do not evoke the imagery of Star Wars, and the latter has similar armor penetration capabilities and fits into the right TL. For armor, our golden standard is the combat hardsuit, as it resembles the white plastoid armor of the storm trooper. Finally, we know that we need to create combat that captures both the feeling of World War 1-2 era combat, and also allows us to have our leaping space-samurai having dramatic duels with one another.
Thursday, March 3, 2016
Psi Wars: the Gear List
GURPS Action 1 includes a catalog of items available to its heroes, starting on page 26. Psi Wars should include a similar list, allowing player to select non-combat items appropriate for their characters. By having such a catalog, we can trim the inappropriate options from Ultra-Tech, and customize anything that we include to be specific to our particular setting. So, all we need to do is go through the items, one for one, in the Action list, and replace them with appropriate Ultra-Tech items.
Most items can be replaced directly with ultra-tech equivalents, but sometimes, we need to adjust them. Ultra-Tech is intended less as a catalog of items, and more as a gadget-design system. Thus, where I have had to alter, fiddle or redesign gadgets, I have included a full description (and perhaps a page reference to the original gadget I derived the new gadget from).
The list in Action includes weapons, clothing and armor, but we'll revisit that at a later time, as it is worthy of its own post.
Unlike the Action list, the following list includes legality class, a page reference and (if necessary) further discussion because, unlike in Action, we cannot take for granted that our players will automatically know these details.
Most items can be replaced directly with ultra-tech equivalents, but sometimes, we need to adjust them. Ultra-Tech is intended less as a catalog of items, and more as a gadget-design system. Thus, where I have had to alter, fiddle or redesign gadgets, I have included a full description (and perhaps a page reference to the original gadget I derived the new gadget from).
The list in Action includes weapons, clothing and armor, but we'll revisit that at a later time, as it is worthy of its own post.
Unlike the Action list, the following list includes legality class, a page reference and (if necessary) further discussion because, unlike in Action, we cannot take for granted that our players will automatically know these details.
Wednesday, March 2, 2016
Psi Wars: A Technological Setting Part 2 -- General Considerations
Last time, we looked at how hyperspace travel might work, and thus shape the universe in which the heroes of Psi Wars live. Now we'll take a look at how technology shapes the rest of the infrastructure of the Psi Wars universe. Specifically, we'll look at the larger picture: Industry, agriculture, trade, medicine.
While an action-oriented game like Psi Wars might not spend a great deal of time on, say, farming, the details of day-to-day life certainly inform a typical action adventure. In a GURPS Action game, terrorists might take over an oil refinery, and the heroes' government might send them in to take care of the problem. The players would intuitively understand why an oil refinery might be something of national interest, even if the specifics of global oil trade aren't interesting to the players. We need to understand how the world of Psi Wars works, so that we can create similarly believable and consistent adventures and descriptions, and we need to inform the players, so that they understand the context of their actions.
However, too much detail will bog down play. Psi Wars demands dynamic action, not slow exploration of sci-fi concepts. We don't want to ask our players to do homework to understand our setting, and so less is more. Our setting should resemble the real world (or, really, the world of the 1930s), only with cooler, more advanced technology.
This entry will discuss the core technologies of power generation, computers, industry, agriculture, medicine, security and transportation.
While an action-oriented game like Psi Wars might not spend a great deal of time on, say, farming, the details of day-to-day life certainly inform a typical action adventure. In a GURPS Action game, terrorists might take over an oil refinery, and the heroes' government might send them in to take care of the problem. The players would intuitively understand why an oil refinery might be something of national interest, even if the specifics of global oil trade aren't interesting to the players. We need to understand how the world of Psi Wars works, so that we can create similarly believable and consistent adventures and descriptions, and we need to inform the players, so that they understand the context of their actions.
However, too much detail will bog down play. Psi Wars demands dynamic action, not slow exploration of sci-fi concepts. We don't want to ask our players to do homework to understand our setting, and so less is more. Our setting should resemble the real world (or, really, the world of the 1930s), only with cooler, more advanced technology.
This entry will discuss the core technologies of power generation, computers, industry, agriculture, medicine, security and transportation.
Tuesday, March 1, 2016
Psi Wars: A Technological Setting Part 1 -- FTL Travel
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| Hyperspace Exit |
GURPS Space has an excellent section discussing the particulars of FTL travel on pages 37 to 42. In addition to discussing the possible options we have, it challenges us with a few specific questions:
- How reliable is FTL travel?
- How difficult is FTL navigation?
- How fast is FTL?
- How far can one expect to get in an FTL ship?
- How much fuel does it consume? What are the economics of FTL travel?
- What are the side-effects of FTL travel?
We need to answer these questions in a fashion that is not only true to our Star Wars inspiration, but that serve us well for our setting design.
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