Sign of the Times? (Sequel to UK Student Nationals post)

[Bismark]

Just saw the people who organize this year's tournament - it appears that my STAR HERO game will not be going ahead because there has been zero interest (and hence zero players) this year in SF games that are not Cyberpunk-type or Star Wars...

 

Oh well, all is not lost - STAR HERO's loss will be FANTASY HERO's gain; I will be running a game in the 'Open Fantasy' category (either Turakian Age or Valdorian Age - not decided yet).

 

A couple of my current fantasy players (including Shadowsoul - here's looking at YOU) have thrown down a gauntlet though. They reckon that part of the SF problem is perception - SF is seen as a very hard genre to run, demanding loads of GM preparation, and they have challenged me to run STAR HERO (rather than FH) as next year's campaign game.

 

I am seriously considering it - I like a challenge...

[Nolgroth]

Re: Sign of the Times? (Sequel to UK Student Nationals post)

 

SciFi is hard? Crud. I wish somebody told me that before I started running my campaign. Now that I know, I'll have to cancel it!

 

Or maybe not. I've found SciFi no more or less difficult than Fantasy in terms of genre. I see no expansive amounts of prep work involved. Like any Fantasy game, it depends on how much you do from scratch and how much you adapt and borrow from existing settings.

 

If I were to have completely created the Gemini Ascendant campaign from scratch, that would have been a monumental task. Instead I adapted an existing setting (the Frontier from Star Frontiers). Reduced the work load immensely in terms of building a place for the characters to move around and interact in.

 

Similarly, a completely home brew Fantasy campaign is a monumental task. By taking an existing setting (Forgotten Realms, Turakian Age Earth or whatever) it makes the prep work so much easier.

 

So I guess I don't get it.

 

In terms of you running a SciFi campaign, go for it! I can't tell you how much fun I've had with Gemini Ascendant. It's especially rewarding to have a successful campaign that isn't fantasy.

[Markdoc]

Re: Sign of the Times? (Sequel to UK Student Nationals post)

 

SciFi is hard? Crud. I wish somebody told me that before I started running my campaign. Now that I know' date=' I'll have to cancel it! [/quote']

 

Actually, unless you are using a well-defined background, plus fairly rubber science, I think Sci-Fi is harder than most genres.

 

If you are GM'ing supers or Pulp, you can say "The United States" or "Nazi Germany" and everyone has a rough idea of what you are talking about. political system, basic technology, location, language, general attitude of officials. Even in Fantasy when you say "Kingdom", you get less details, but you still get a basic image everybody can work with (knights, castles, a King or queen, the whole feudal shtick). Likewise "Dragon". The exact details may be different (A kingdom with no knights and a standing army of militia, a dragon that doesn't breathe fire, etc) but you are still starting on the same page. Everyone knows roughly what a sword is.

 

For Sci-Fi, though you're on you own. Saying "United planets of Gammorra" or "It's a ravenous bugblatter beast" means precisely zero. You have to supply all the details to your players. That's the appeal of cyberpunk or Starwars. You can say "NeoShanghai, 2045" or "He's strong in the force" and people automatically have a baseline to work from.

 

Not sayin' it can't be done, but I've done it a couple of times, and it' is hard work - regardless of the system.

 

cheers, Mark

[Vondy]

Re: Sign of the Times? (Sequel to UK Student Nationals post)

 

I think how hard it is depends on whether your plots and themes are actually science fiction, or whether your setting is science fiction. Another concerned is how fleshed out the setting is. The harder the science the more detailed your setting notes are going to have to be and the more your players are going to have to "get it" for the game to work. This is true both in terms of technology and culture because that's what hard science fiction depends on. That doesn't make it harder to run - It makes it harder to prepare for. On the other hand, if you have a well conceived world and your players have at least the basic feel for what you are going for, hard science fiction settings can be easy to run if you using espionage, military, space cops and robbers, or the like as your theme. If you want to run a gripping social commentary on the impact of technology on the human experience... you are going to have to be one hell of a GM and have a fairly unique bunch of players to sustain a campaign. The more rubbery the sciene the more its just fantasy with rivets and metal plates and stuff.