310vas - Stl Vs Ftl In Sf-rpgs

STL vs. FTL in SF-RPGs Jim Vassilakos ([email protected]) http://members.aol.com/jimvassila As I mentioned some time ago, I’ve been slowly working on an SF-RPG tentatively called “Ragamuffin” (for lack of a decent name like Star Warriors or Space Scum... actually, come to think of it, both of those sound pretty cool). In A&E #298 I introduced the basic gist behind the setting, starting with an old internet discussion on soft vs. hard sciencefiction and concluding with an overview of humanity’s role in the setting. In A&E #307 I replied to comments and questions which had accrued during the intervening issues. In recent months, some folks on the net have volunteered to help with the development, however, there’s been a little consternation regarding my decision on what is perhaps the game’s most fundamental feature: STL-travel (STL being an acronym for slowerthan-light). I’ve backed this up w/ FTLcommunication (FTL being an acronym for faster-than-light), and the purpose of this essay is basically to explain my reasoning behind these decisions.

The FTL Presumption As most gamers know, FTL-travel is one of the hallowed staples of science fiction roleplaying. Actually, one doesn’t have to be a gamer to know this. Most popular SF genres abound in various methods of FTL. In Star Trek they call it warp speed. In Star Wars it’s called hyperspace. Likewise with sfrpgs. In Traveller there is jumpspace, and in Alternity there is drivespace. Not every SF setting or SF game has FTLtravel, but the majority of them certainly do, and as for the minority, only a precious few incorporate any semblance of interstellar travel. In short, STL seems to be viewed as being wholly incompatible with interstellar travel, and so if a game is to involve more than a single star system, STL is thrown out in favor of FTL before ever being seriously considered. Why is that? In a nutshell, I think the two biggest reasons are Star Trek and

Star Wars, the two most popular SF settings. While anecdotes certainly make for poor arguments, I’ll share one with you. About a year ago, I was visiting a friend up north, and for some reason we were at a bookstore. As to be expected, the SF section was filled with shelves upon shelves of Star Trek and Star Wars novels. My friend made the comment that he didn’t understand how there could be so many books published around a single setting. Were the fans really buying and reading them all? When would enough be enough? I looked the shelf over, bemused, and for some odd reason the strangest utterance fell from my lips. “Where there’s money, there’s more money.” And he looked at me in awe and thought it the most profound thing he’d heard since somebody burped earlier that morning. In retrospect, I have to agree that there is something to it. RPG-slut that I am, I can understand firsthand the fascination people have with a particular subject matter. I myself have purchased and skimmed through more RPGs, new and used, than I care to count. So what is my point, you ask. Novelists like to think of themselves as bring original & avant-garde... artists as it were. And in many ways they are. But at the same time, what they write needs to be marketable. It needs that Star Trek or Star Wars logo in order to sell. So they jump on the big bandwagon and console themselves with the knowledge that at least they’re getting paid for their

troubles. Game designers are just the same. They like to tout their work as being original & avant-garde, and in many ways it often is. But at the same time, it needs to be marketable. Otherwise it won’t sell. Obviously, FTL has proven itself in terms of sales, so why take a chance on it’s lesser cousin, STL? With novels, the situation is bad enough. STL causes obvious plot constraints whereas FTL provides near limitless freedom. In gaming the situation is even more profound, because these constraints are placed on players themselves, dictating from the start some very fundamental limitations on their ability to “seek out new worlds, new life, and new civilizations.” Likewise, the history of the marketplace has shown that FTL-based games have clearly sold and continue to do so. As for STL-based games, they don’t seem to be as prevalent. Do such games even work? Are they playable? Or are they realistic to the point that people would rather kill orcs instead? Which, of course, brings us to the gamers themselves. We gamers like to think that through roleplaying we’re exploring innovative settings with fresh, new personalities, telling cooperative stories, per se, which have never been told before. But how much of this newness is really fresh and new, and how much is really just a switch in terminology, a clever facade if you will? While FTL enables our intrepid heroes to leap from one episode/adventure to the next in a relatively brief expanse of game time, is also has the effect of rendering interstellar travel aboard a starship very much like island hopping aboard a boat. You have your ports of call. You have your aliens (the foreigners). You might even get boarded by a police boat every now and then. And, of course, there are pirates to watch out for. In short, the whole science-fiction

milieux translates quite easily from real world stuff. That’s good, right?! In large part, yes, it is good. It provides players (and the GM) with a ready conceptual foundation upon which to build. The game setting, as a whole, will be more recognizable as a result. However, a certain degree of mystery is lost in the process. The setting is no longer quite so unique. It is merely an adaptation of things we are already familiar with. So it really all depends on what you want from roleplaying. If you’re just looking to relax and have a good time, the instant familiarity lent by FTL to any given SF-RPG setting probably overpowers any of the negative consequences. In such a mode of convenience, where the de facto goal is to explore offshoots of analogous situations, FTL becomes a plot device, like transporters in Star Trek or “The Force” in Star Wars. The game designer essentially sets the technology at whatever level is desired and then explains the various gizmos in terms of what they do, not in terms of how they do it. Nobody can really scoff at the gizmos, because first of all, it’s just a game, and secondly, none of this stuff has been invented yet. Certainly there is going to be some manner of technobabble handwaving to justify the technology, and that’s both fine and often quite useful for suspension of disbelief. The only problem that creeps up is when the stated technology doesn’t meet the design goals of the setting.

plot. The effect was cheap to produce, and it certainly cut out a lot of unnecessary scenes. In short, it was sheer genius. Lucas, on the other hand, loved special effects to the point that he’d pioneered the industry to new levels of sophistication. As a result, we don’t see transporters in Star Wars. What we do see are cool looking light sabers and other imponderables all bent on conveying a sort of outer-space fairy tale about a young knight rescuing a princess from the clutches of an evil sorcerer. It’s cool, and it worked amazingly well. Again, sheer genius. But as we all know, RPGs are not cinema. This means that special effects present a special sort of dilemma. The GM can’t very adequately convey a brightly lit starscape unless he slams a player’s head on the pointy-end of a d4:

Design Goals in Science Fiction

1. Internal Consistency 2. Scientific Plausibility 3. Funness & Originality

This is a hard section to address, because the design goals of various SF settings tend to vary widely. In Star Trek, the two primary design goals seemed to be economic and plot flow. Roddenberry didn’t have the money for a lot of special effects, including shots of starships and shuttlecraft landing on planets, so transporters were invented as a way of inexpensively expediting the

“As you break through the upper atmosphere, you begin to see stars.” (WHAP!) “Do you see stars yet?” “Uh... yeah. Ooh... I feel woozy.” “Great, here’s a band-aid. What are the rest of you doing?” “Anything except looking out the window.” At the same time, there is no limit on what a good GM can describe or what a good player can visually imagine. So the whole issue of building the technology around a budget becomes wholly irrelevant. What we are then left with are the fundamentals. In no special order, they are:

Internal Consistency In the discussion on soft vs. hard science-fiction which I included in my article of issue #298, the yearning for internal consistency was a recurring theme. Many people mentioned that while they might be able to swallow a

lot of bull, all the bull had to fit together logically, like some grand jigsaw puzzle, to form a complete and selfconsistent picture. If there are gaping holes caused by pieces which just don’t fit, then the RPG designers didn’t do their job right, and the end result is that players will either have to ignore these holes (for the good of the game), or they may instead seek to exploit them (much to the consternation of the GM). Over the years, all of this has made game designers think harder about SFRPG design and the potential inconsistencies that are endemic to the process. I’ll fire off just two of the most famous to acquaint you with the subject matter. (1) Explosive Colonization: Space is big, forming a natural though not impenetrable barrier to exploration and colonization. This barrier can be further enhanced by making certain assumptions about the structure of the local interstellar medium (I’ll talk more about this in a future essay). However, FTL tends to break this barrier, creating a situation where a single species could explode across the galaxy in a relatively brief time-scale. For example, in Star Trek, isn’t it odd that Klingons, Romulans, Humans, Vulcans, etc... all attained FTL at around the same time? What if the Klingons got it a few thousand years ahead of everyone else? The answer is that Captain Kirk would have been (at best) red-shirted, fodderous, Thrall Kirk, working for Captain Koloth and speaking Klingonese to boot. In evolutionary terms, a few thousand years is an incredibly short expanse of time. The odds against even two neighboring races attaining FTL within such a short expanse are astronomical. So, at first glance, Star Trek fails on this first basic test of internal consistency. In Traveller we have much the same problem with it’s huge star-spanning empire. Miller apparently tried to explain the humanocentric nature of the setting by positing “The Ancients” as a race which abducted hundreds or thousands of Terrans 300,000 years ago and left them scattered on numerous worlds in their wake. But why humans? What’s so special about us? And what about the odds against several of these human colonies all attaining space faring technology within several

thousand years of one another? And given the capabilities of FTL, why did it take so long for them to expand and explore? Of course, all these questions arise in a setting where FTL didn’t begin in this neighborhood but 300,000 years ago and the current empire hasn’t existed for but a thousand of those years. What about predecessors to the Ancients? And, for that matter, what will the Imperium logically look like in 200 million years? In a universe which is billions of years ago, we’d have to conclude that FTL would result in a setting where known space has been completely overrun, many, many times, and that we are emerging into a neighborhood which is just packed with a multitude of races from across the galaxy, many of whom have been around, starfaring, for millions or even billions of years. Their history (and technology) would likely be on a level which we can’t even begin to imagine (technology ceiling permitting). STL helps to save us from this cacophony by proposing that space travel is difficult and time-consuming enough that we had a chance to develop before the aliens got here in force. Fortunately, absent the technology for time travel, this isn’t an exploitable inconsistency. But smart players will realize the problem exists as soon as they spot it, leading the GM to make up some off-the-cuff excuse which damages the entire suspension of disbelief. For most players, this isn’t a big deal. They’re not really there to suspend their disbelief. They’re there to eat pizza and roll dice! But for a precious few, it’s a thorn in the side of reason, something overlooked that should have been addressed.

(2) Near-C Rocks & Other Planet Killers: In much of contemporary science fiction, individual ship captains may be nothing more than the lowliest scum of space (Han Solo and his fellow cantena patrons might qualify under this description, and Harry Mudd and his Ferengi ilk in Star Trek are yet another example). And yet, the very act of controlling a starship affords them great power. This is driven home in Traveller, where it is not altogether impossible to utilize a large starship to accelerate a

couple hundred tons of asteroid up to relativistic speeds (or just build the maneuver drives onto the asteroid, provide it with a really big fuel tank, and point it in the right direction). It’ll take some time and effort, but it can be done. Now, in both Star Trek and Star Wars, presumably inner-system defenses could deploy quickly enough to deal with the potential threat of a near-c rock striking a heavily populated world (and thereby generating an explosion of such magnitude that the 1908 Tunguska

why we have not one but five frontier wars not to mention countless civil wars and the various interstellar wars around Terra. So where are all the worlds which have been dutifully converted into asteroid belts by the Imperial Navy? We just don’t see them, and because of this, many of those on the Traveller Mailing List have agreed that it’s a glaring inconsistency (although mentioning near-c anything on the TML is usually enough to start a protracted flame war).

SF-RPGs by Fastest Mode of Travel & Communication

FTL-Comm

STL-Comm

FTL-Travel Aeon/Trinity, Alternity, Babylon Project, Cooperation, Fading Suns, Legionnaire, Manhunter, Mechwarrior, Other Suns, Space Master, Space Opera, Star Frontiers, Star Trek, Star Wars, Universe 2300AD, Albedo, Amazing Engine/Galactos Barrier, Blue Planet, FTL:2448, Guildspace, Justifiers, Raven Star, Reich Star, Shatterzone, Traveller

event would by comparison seem like Lenin rolling over in bed to break wind). However, in Traveller this couldn’t happen, mainly because in Traveller there’s a speed limit on communications (communication and sensors are strictly STL). This means, of course, that the planet could get hit before it even realizes that it’s under attack. No time for countermeasures. Several billion people could get wiped out by one loony with a starship. The fact that there aren’t scores of desecrated worlds in Traveller leaves the impression that starship captains have too much moral fiber ever to conduct themselves (and their wars and political causes) in such a way. Indeed, that may be true for 99.9% of ship captains, but as the number of ships rise, the potential for loonydom increases until you are almost assured that these sorts of incidents will happen just because of the number of people who have the power to commit them. Indeed, the history of the Traveller universe is replete with interstellar warfare (GDW was initially a wargaming company, after all). That is

STL-Travel Ragamuffin (still in development)

Buck Rogers XXVc, High Colonies, Jovian Chronicles

Having addressed these two potential inconsistencies, it is interesting to note that the first kicks in under FTL-travel while the second kicks in under STLcommunication. Traveller, of course, has both, and hence suffers from both inconsistencies. So do many other SFRPGs. It was only after recognizing this that I decided that perhaps the best solution toward avoiding both of these problems would be to take the exact opposite position from Traveller, presupposing STL-travel and FTLcommunication. At first I was under the impression that no SF-RPG had ever done this, and as I checked through the literature, my suspicions were confirmed. The reason, I suppose, should be obvious. Of those few SFRPGs which have supposed STL-travel, their designers have placed the entire game within a single star system, and so there was no need to include FTLcommunication. However, I want Ragamuffin to be a game which includes both STL-travel as well as an interstellar society. The trick, of course, would be to justify the technology with real-world science, giving it some form of basis and yet at the same time

structuring it so as to maximize the fun & originality of the setting.

Scientific Plausibility As one might expect, STL-travel is not particularly hard to justify. After all, we do it every time we walk to the corner drugstore. We are literally walking slower-than-light. That’s all that STL is. However, if you were to walk particularly fast, strange things would begin to happen. That’s why there are really two types of STL worth considering. The first is slow-STL; we’re all pretty familiar with that. The other is fast-STL, which involves various relativistic effects. To me, the most interesting of these effects is time dilation, and although time dilation has been experimentally verified, exactly why it occurs is still a subject of some debate, probably in no small part due to the counter-intuitive nature of the prevailing theory. Popular sentiment places Einstein at the center of relativity. It was, after all, his general and special theories of relativity that, according to most writers of the subject, revolutionized the world of physics. However, there are also those who say that Einstein, while a great thinker, built his work on the backs of others who are less known, and committed egregious errors, the repercussions of which are still felt today. H.E. Retic has written much on this topic in “The Einstein Hoax: The Disastrous Intellectual War on Common Sense” (http://www.members. home.net/retiche/hoax.htm). According to Retic, is was J.J. Thompson who first derived mass-energy equivalency (E=mc^2) in 1888, long before Einstein made his mark on physics. Likewise, prior to Einsteinian Relativity, there was the Lorentz Contraction-Aether Relativity theory of 1903 which came about mainly due to the unexpected results of the Michelson-Morley experiment of 1887 which showed that light travels at the same speed regardless of its source, much like a sound wave travelling through some conducting medium (such as air) and not anything like a bullet. According to Retic, Einstein’s primary contribution was to show that the aether wasn’t mathematically necessary to explain the

Michelson-Morley results, and hence it could be dispensed with, leading to his own relativity theories. However, in constructing his theories, he used tensor calculus, leading to an error which could only be corrected if he abandoned the principles of three-dimensional Euclidian space. In what was perhaps the most fateful decision of his career, rather than backtrack, he decided to just go with it, leading to the whole curved space ideology which every physicist has been talking about ever sense. Michelson & Morley’s continuing failure to detect the aether led to Einstein’s theories gaining increasing favor.

Regardless of whether or not this is a fair history of what was undoubtedly a much more convoluted series of events, the vast majority of physicists currently subscribe to Einstein’s views. Michael Fowler of the University of Virginia has a lecture index for a course on “Galileo & Einstein” available on the web at http://www.phys.virginia.edu/classes/ 109N/lectures/lecturelist.html which seems to reconcile some of the key paradoxes which were initially raised by Einstein’s theories. It is important to note, however, that whether one subscribes to Einsteinian Relativity or Aether Relativity, time dilation is still a fundamental outcome of the equations, as, I believe, are length contraction and mass increase, still other relativistic effects. Instead of trying to explain why they occur (a topic in which I’m not yet well enough versed to make a decent stab), I’ll just explain what they do. The basic gist of time dilation is that as an object travels really fast, time

onboard the object slows down, until at light speed the march of time stops cold (many people argue that this works both ways resulting in paradox, but Fowler contends that the paradox is solvable). The easiest way to visualize this is to imagine that you leave home aboard a fast ship. When you return, you will have experienced less time than the people you left behind. If you have a twin, you will have aged less than him or her. How can this be? I don’t want to get into the math (which tends to make my head hurt), but here’s an easy (although probably inaccurate) way to think about it. The whole process of time is just a mechanism of things on the very smallest scales. Quantum theory argues that matter uses the exchange of virtual photons to control its parameters. If one believes in a universal reference frame, then one might argue that particles at rest can put all their energy into this photon exchange, but that while in motion (particularly high speeds), this mechanism slows down, slowing down everything about them. So every chemical reaction and every electrical event takes place more slowly. People onboard a fast ship don’t see things happening any more slowly because they themselves are moving more slowly. Everything onboard is happening more slowly. However, like I said, this is probably erroneous. An aether relativist would simply say that the slowing of the passage of time occurs from the effect of a time measuring system moving through the stationary aether. And an Einsteinian relativist would say, “just look at the math, it all makes perfect sense.” Moving on to the other relativistic effects, length contraction asserts that the distance units in the direction of motion contract, and mass increase (or mass dilation) asserts that as one gets closer to the speed of light, it becomes increasingly harder to accelerate, such that it is impossible for a physical object to reach the speed of light. Perhaps these two effects are really one and the same. I’m no expert. All I know is that relativity plays an important role in fast-STL. But, of course, the next big question is, how do we attain fast-STL? How does one accelerate a ship to such an incredibly high velocity? Our current rocket

technology doesn’t even begin to cut the mustard. You’d have to carry so much propellant that acceleration to even a minuscule fraction of light speed is essentially impossible. Some people have proposed burning hydrogen in a fusion reaction, or carrying antimatter for total mass conversion, but in each case, the ship would still be too big due to the amount of propellant it would have to carry. The bigger the ship, the harder it is to accelerate. Only a reactionless thruster would do the trick, but such a thing can’t exist (as far as we know), so, in short, a starship just can’t carry the amount of propellant it would need for a fast-STL interstellar voyage. Others have proposed magnetically scooping the necessary hydrogen from deep space, but exactly how this would work has yet to be explained. In order to be drawn in by a magnetic field, the hydrogen atoms would have to be ionized. How this would occur is still a subject of speculation. The idea of using a laser to strip the electrons from free floating hydrogen in front of the ship seems more like magic than science. Another proposal is that the ship’s own velocity would generate a shockwave in front of the vessel, causing this much needed ionization. However, as fortuitous as this would be, I still don’t see how it would work. Even if a method could be found to generate the necessary acceleration, there’s still another problem to consider (at least from the perspective of plot and game flow). This is the problem of inertia. As objects accelerate, they undergo inertial stress. That goes for people as well. A pilot can take only so many G’s of thrust before blacking out. Most hypothetical starship designs have the ship accelerating at 1 G (earth’s own gravity), so that the crew would feel right at home. However, accelerating so slowly means that months or years may go by during even the shortest of interstellar voyages. To go a distance of 4 light years at 1 G thrust, the ship would have to accelerate for 2 years, turn around, and then decelerate for 2 years. Taking time dilation into account, the subjective time experienced by the crew would be over 3.4 years. That’s a long time for the characters to be twiddling their thumbs waiting to get from point A to point B.

What we really need is some method to suppress inertia so that the ship might be able to accelerate much faster than 1 G and take much greater advantage of time dilation’s effect on subjective (shipboard) time. In issue #307 I briefly discussed one possible method which was brought to mind by an article in issue #2276 (3-Feb-2001) of New Scientist. The article, by Marcus Chown, is entitled “Mass Medium”, and to recap, it discusses an idea put forth by quantum physicist Bernard Haisch on the nature of gravity and inertia. As I mentioned earlier, quantum theory posits the notion of virtual photons. Under this theory, these ghostlike particles pop in and out of existence over extremely small timescales, rendering the vacuum (and all of space) into a “choppy sea of randomly fluctuating electromagnetic waves”. In the macroworld, we can’t see what’s going on, because we’re too damn big, but if we were the size of atoms, then maybe we’d have a glimpse into this unseen universe.

In any case, the argument goes that these virtual photons can sometimes break free from the cycle of birth and destruction, essentially becoming real, but that this only happens due to gravity or acceleration (which according to Einstein’s theory of general relativity are indistinguishable). Hence, accelerating objects (including objects in a field of gravity) would become bathed in these particles, and cumulatively they would act as a retarding force by bouncing off electrical fields within the object.

Hence, these virtual photons would momentarily play the role of inertia. In short, in Haisch’s view, inertia is just electromagnetic drag. Likewise, he argues, these virtual photons may also play the role of gravity. To quote Chown’s take on the theory, “oscillating charges in a chunk of matter affect the charged virtual particles in the vacuum. This polarized vacuum then exerts a force on the charges in another chunk of matter.” However, Haisch himself seems to discount this direct relationship, stating that “one mass does not pull directly on another mass but only through the intermediary of the vacuum. This might explain why gravity is so weak.” If such a theory were to prove true, then Einsteinian relativity might be likened to a geometric description of this whole state of affairs. In Haisch’s words, “the warpage of space might be equivalent to a variation in the refractive index of the vacuum. In this way, all the mathematics of general relativity would stay intact, since space-time would look as if it were warped.” Of course, all of this makes me wonder if these virtual photons are the aether than Michelson and Morley were searching for. If so, then aether relativity may yet make a comeback, with Einsteinian relativity being a geometric way of thinking about the whole mess and quantum physics holding ultimate reign. Of course, I’m not a physicist, so all this idle speculation is just me talking out my ass. Feel free to completely disregard everything I’ve said. The important thing here is how it applies to science fiction. Most SFRPGs posit some form of gravity manipulation technology (or gravitics), and many go a step further and posit inertial suppression (also called inertial dampening). How these technologies work is, of course, never spelled out. In recent years, physicists have investigated gravity in the hopes of finding some means to counter it. Charles Platt covers the curious case of Russian scientist Eugene Podkletnov in the March 1998 issue of Wired (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6 .03/antigravity.html). Podkletnov apparently claimed to have suppressed gravity (to the tune of 2%) with a spinning superconductor, and Platt went

to take an interview and personally verify the story as well as witness the experiment in action. Despite the very slight effect, one would think that if his process actually worked, it would be front-page news all over the world and a hundred labs would have replicated the experiment, however, apparently that hasn’t happened, leading me to conclude that the whole thing is a bunch of hogwash. Nonetheless, it seems odd that this whole story came and went without so much as a blip from the mainstream media (perhaps they’ve been scared off such stories by the cold fusion fiasco several years ago). Regardless, this whole episode serves to illustrate that gravity manipulation and perhaps inertial suppression may be within our grasp. Perhaps Podkletnov’s method (or another one like it) may in some way generate a quantum effect which disturbs the incomprehensibly small world of virtual photons. No doubt, some would argue that this is quite impossible, but the verdict isn’t in yet either mathematically or experimentally. We don’t even know that virtual photons even exist. We know so little about this whole field that it’s impossible to say what’s just around the corner much less what will be possible 20, 50, or even 100 years down the road. I like the idea of including inertial suppression technology in SF-RPG design because, first of all, it would seem from a quantum physics perspective to go hand-in-hand with gravity manipulation (a long-time staple of SF), so if you’re going to have one, it only makes sense to include the other. However, there’s an even more pressing reason why I like it. Inertial suppression makes fast STL much more attainable and much easier from a plot-flow perspective. I mentioned earlier that traveling 4 light years at 1 G would take 3.4 subjective years (assuming that the ship accelerates during the first half of the trip and then turns around and decelerates for the second half). However, if you can pump your thrust up to 10 G’s through inertial suppression, then from the perspective of the crew, the trip will take just over 266 days of subjective time. Pump the thrust up to 20 G’s and we’re talking 157 days. At 50 G’s we talking just over 75 days. And, of course, the subjective

time continues to slope downward as thrust (or inertial suppression) increases. At 100 G’s, we’re talking about only 42 days of subjective time. At 500 G’s, it’s just under 11 days. That’s the magic of time dilation. The faster you go, the less you experience the flow of time. Hence the less you age, the less you eat, and the less you sit around thumb-twiddling. Quite suddenly we’re no longer thinking about the stresses of long term voyages. Cryogenic technology is entirely circumvented. And who needs a generation ship? From the perspective of the crew, it doesn’t take all that long. In terms of writing starship design rules, the trick will be striking a balance between engines, propulsion mass, actual fuel (i.e. reaction mass), and the equipment and energy requirements for inertial suppression. All of these will be necessary, and there will need to be some sort of trade off dictating how the ship can maximize its thrust by having the right proportion of each. Now that I’ve yammered on at length about STL-travel, I’ll turn to FTLcommunication. In issue #307 I mentioned an article that caused a mild hiccup among SF-enthusiasts by maintaining that researchers had broken the light-barrier (http://www.sundaytimes.co.uk/news/pages/sti/2000/06/04/ stifgnusa01007.html). However, as I also mentioned, this story is discredited in a FAQ at the head researcher’s own homepage (http://www.neci.nj.nec.com/ homepages/lwan/faq.htm). Apparently, these sort of claims get published on a regular basis, then somebody cries “oops” and it’s back to business as usual. Nonetheless, I’m always on the lookout for these sorts of articles, and even more interesting are those which actually delve a little bit into the theory behind what the researchers are doing. In the current issue (#2288, 28-April2001) of New Scientist, there’s an article covering the theories of Houshang Ardavan of Cambridge, as well as the follow-up work of some Oxford physicists, including his son, Arzhang Ardavan and John Singleton of the Clarendon Laboratory. Inspired by the study of pulsars and Cerenkov radiation, and arguably verified in part by detailed observations of the Crab Nebula pulsar, the theory being proposed is that a lopsided pattern of charge (for instance, a magnetic field)

which is both rotating very quickly and accelerating in this rotation, can produce an FTL shockwave due to its waves piling up in a spiral pattern which crowd together and finally merge at the pattern’s cusp. Apparently according to the math, this shockwave not only would move at superluminal speeds, but it would decay proportionally with distance as opposed to the square of the distance which is what commonly happens with electromagnetic radiation. Such shockwaves could even, potentially, be tuned to terahertz radiation, perhaps advancing the speed of computer CPUs into previously uncharted realms. This means that as a means of communication, not only would it be faster than anything we’ve seen before, but it would be a lot more powerful and possibly more versatile as well. Over half a million dollars have already been spent on developing a device, the polarization synchrotron, to test the theory. Needless to say, if it works, it’ll be a major breakthrough. However, like all such theories, it has it’s detractors, and odds are that it will probably end up on the scrap heap of great ideas that never worked. Nonetheless, I think even the existence of this theory bodes well for the future of FTL-communication, because it means that we don’t yet know what we can’t do. And as a scientific justification for FTL-communication in an SF-RPG, it certainly does an admirable job of fitting the bill well enough to support a player’s suspension of disbelief.

Funness & Originality Since “funness & originality” are the final design goals, it would probably be apropos to state what they mean. By “funness”, I ask the questions, “Will the players and GM enjoy the game? Will it be exciting and interesting and thought provoking?” This, of course, segues into “originality”. In brief, “Is the game unique to the extent that it raises the possibility for stories and ideas that have gone neglected?” To be perfectly honest, I personally had a heck of a time accepting the notion that STL-travel wouldn’t “ruin the game” as it were. This was compounded by the fact that there was nobody talking me into it. In fact, everyone was trying to talk me out of it.

Even from the earliest discussions, the general consensus was that you’ve got to have FTL-travel. Otherwise, what sort of setting would you have? One that’s centered only around a single star system? And yet I’ve always felt that if you’re going to plead hard-sf as a design focus, then you’ve got to somehow minimize the handwaving, and FTL, as I’ve already demonstrated, is one big, huge handwave with serious though generally ignored consequences for the setting’s historical background as well as present configuration. Likewise, I also felt that the light-speed limitation would distinguish the setting in one very important sense, that being that nearly all the other SF-RPGs utilize some form of FTLtravel. In short, why do what’s already been done 20-30 times? “Uh, playability?” Actually, that’s exactly what somebody recently asked me. As I mentioned at the start of this essay, some folks on the net have volunteered to help develop the setting, however, they’ve been understandably reluctant to swallow the STL-pill without a little coaxing. So that’s what I’m trying to do here. I’m trying to explain why it is, in fact, playable. In fact, I’ll go a step further and say that not only is it playable but it’s highly playable precisely due to the fact that it’s been so neglected by SF-RPG designers. Everyone seems to feel that STLtravel would result in a setting so chaotic and diverse that an interstellar society wouldn’t be able to function. However, I would argue that coupled with FTL-communication, such a society could exist. Different cultures within the conglomerate might emerge. The society may begin to fragment resulting in a state of affairs much like modern Earth which is rich in social diversity. However, given that each star system is connected over a makeshift “subspace network”, it is no great leap to suppose that the society could stay intact. Whereas FTL-travel would tend to result in large-scale, highly organized societies, STL-travel coupled with FTL-

communication would, I think, result in a more disorganized society, somewhat akin to the Old West, where players can take advantage of the fact that “the powers that be” are usually a couple of steps behind them (hopefully). Sure, the Ikkadju might be able to field an impressive fleet, but can they find that lone tacship which has been raiding their deep space stations for parts and supplies? Likewise, there is the matter of history vs. current events to consider. Here we approach the whole question of background intelligibility as well as the present malleability of the setting under the delicate ministrations of the players. “What is he yakkin’ about?” you must be wondering. Just this. FTL-travel, I think, would tend to result in a stable universe over the character’s life but a highly chaotic one in terms of backstory whereas STL has the exact opposite effect, which, in fact, is what we want! In case that isn’t immediately intuitive, let me talk about it for a bit. In most SF-RPG settings, the designers create a situation where the players just happen to be living in “interesting times” (an old Chinese curse of which PCs seem to be perennial victims). You need some examples? How about the Fifth Frontier War (Traveller) or the Rebellion (Star Wars)? and yet the back-story is usually somewhat drab (nowhere near as exciting or turbulent or blatantly incomprehensible as our own history here on Earth). Why are RPG’s built this way? The answer should be obvious. The designers want things to be happening during the time of the PCs so as to make things interesting for them, and yet they don’t want to invest a great deal of time and effort into developing the backstory, which many players never bother to learn anyway. After all, the backstory is just so much artificial history which is designed to lead up the time of the campaign. Assuming that the characters aren’t going to be living this ancient history (a pretty safe assumption in most SF-RPGs), they can only read about it, so it’s always developed in very broad strokes.

So what RPG designers generally do is generate this history to bring the setting up to the moment of some great conflict. It may seem a bit contrived, but it’s workable in the sense that somebody is going to be alive during these “interesting times”, so why not the players? But eventually the conflict finds its resolution, so the designers suddenly have to invent another one. Welcome to Ye Olde RPG, 2nd edition. And so on and so forth, until the whole evolving history becomes so horribly contrived that the designers are forced to wipe the slate clean and start from scratch. Traveller is a perfect example of this. In Classic Traveller, GDW chronicles the events of the Fifth Frontier War. Then, to kick off MegaTraveller, they come up with the Rebellion, a big multi-factional civil war replete with heroes and villains for the player to love and hate. Then, once sales drop off again, they segue into the New Era by positing a computer virus which nearly wipes out civilization. However, while each of these steps is no doubt a wellcontrived marketing strategy, they end up losing about half their audience with each fateful transition, essentially fracturing their market until it’s no longer recognizable as a single purchasing entity. In the hopes of returning to the glory days, the next incarnation of Traveller was... you guessed it, Traveller 4th edition, wiping out the entire history of the Rebellion along with that pesky, annoying computer virus. The new designers basically wiped the slate clean in the hopes of re-uniting a fractured audience. With a little better editing and quality control, the plan might have actually worked, but as it stands, Miller ended up pulling the plug and licensing the rights to SJG which has the odd habit of actually proofreading it’s products. All’s well that ends well, I guess. My point in all this is not to denigrate Traveller, a game I happen to love! My point is that this whole entire episode was a symptom of FTL-travel. How is it that I can speak such blasphemy? It’s quite simple. Under FTL-travel, time in the campaign setting passes at whatever rate the PCs are experiencing it, meaning of course, that if the campaign is weekly for one year of real time, perhaps 2-3 years of campaign time

might pass, letting the overall setting evolve by 2-3 years. Generally speaking, not a great deal of stuff happens in 2-3 years, unless, of course, you live in interesting times. In short, the setting is not going to evolve a great deal, and so over the course of the campaign, it may begin to wear a bit thin. The players may yearn for something new and different: a new campaign with a different overall conflict or simply a different historical period to explore. Under STL-travel, these things fall into place quite naturally, because STLtravel stretches out the timespan of the campaign, so things continue to happen. In short, there’s a higher degree of perceived turbulence simply because the timespan of the campaign is so long. What do I mean by stretching the timespan? Consider the table at the top of this page. On the left hand side are the number of light years we are travelling. On the top are the number of G’s of acceleration we are applying (taking into account that we’ve got to turn around and decelerate at the halfway point). Each cell in the table represents the number of days of subjective time that the crew experiences due to time dilation. What about real time? Well, that’s on the left hand side. Distance and real time are nearly the same, because it takes at least x real years to travel x light years. At high G’s it might take only a brief while longer, but it will always take longer. There’s no getting around it. What this means, of course, is that if, for example, the voyage is 20 light years, and the ship is accelerating at 200 G’s, then the voyage takes roughly 29 subjective days from the crew’s point of view. Meanwhile, however, 20 years have gone by in the game’s setting. Planetary wars may have erupted. The ship’s world of destination could be much changed from how the crew remembers it. Loved ones may have passed on, leaving behind their children or grandchildren who are now all grown up. Societal customs may have evolved. In short, the campaign universe is in a constant state of flux! How different this is from the situation under FTL-travel where the players may never see the long-term consequences of their actions, and where the game setting, as a whole, tends to remain static unless awkwardly

Number of Days in Subjective Time by Distance & Acceleration 10 ly 20 ly 30 ly 40 ly 50 ly 60 ly 70 ly 80 ly 90 ly 100 ly

50 G’s 88 98 104 108 111 114 116 118 120 121

100 G’s 49 54 57 59 61 62 63 64 65 65

150 G’s 35 38 40 41 42 43 44 44 45 46

forced into motion by GM (or game designer) whim. For a moment, just consider the possibilities. Under STL-travel, the crew of a ship could start a colony in some remote asteroid belt, then go off on a few adventures. They could then come back 20 or 40 years later (depending on the length of their voyage), only to discover that the small colony is now fairly substantial, and many of the colonists (if still alive) now have extended families. Maybe the ship’s crew will be treated as returning heroes. A hundred years later, perhaps they’re more like legends, and some might be slightly afraid to identify themselves at the local pub. Fifty years beyond that the place has been wiped out by some alien incursion, or a disease, or whatever. Because the players were instrumental in starting this mini-society, and because it has honored them appropriately every time they’ve returned, they will be likely to have a genuine desire to find survivors and try to figure out what happened. In short, they’ve become invested in the plot as well as the NPCs and their extended families. These are suddenly their people... not just people they’ve met over the course of their journeys but people who are a part of their lives and vice-versa. None of this could happen in an FTL universe because time is so compressed, so STL opens up these interesting possibilities, and the designer isn’t forced to manufacture some sudden war or a series of implausible conflicts to spice things up. On this sort of time scale, wars would occur quite naturally. There is nothing forced about it. Likewise, the interstellar back-story would be less tumultuous simply

200 G’s 27 29 31 32 33 33 34 34 35 35

250 G’s 22 24 25 26 27 27 28 28 28 29

300 G’s 19 21 22 22 23 23 24 24 24 24

because it takes so long to get from place to place. It would likely take hundreds of years to prosecute a sizable interstellar war. Hence, the back-story doesn’t have to be books in length in order to be realistic. It can be covered fairly succinctly. The broad strokes become more natural, more realistic, more easily digested and internally consistent. STL-travel does all this for an interstellar SF-RPG setting. So why hasn’t it been tried? Why hasn’t anybody really given it a fair shot? I think that part of the reason may be the perceived laziness of gamers. Game designers want to provide enough stability to the setting that the GM doesn’t have to reinvent a world every time the PCs come back to it. Their mechanism for this stability is FTL. Not that much time passes between visits, so things don’t change all that much. I think change is seen as a sort of enemy, in this sense, because the designers look at our own world and marvel at the rate of change that we are undergoing, and they come to the conclusion that making extrapolations based on trends is a very complex task, and yet I don’t think this is really a valid comparison. One of the major things that has really contributed to change in our world (especially in recent times) has been this lack of a technology ceiling. Scientific advances lead to technological innovation which leads general upheaval as everyone scrambles to maximize their advantage. This is precisely where Bill Gates and his ilk come in, and I’m not just talking about all the dot-coms racing to cash in on the internet, but I’m talking about the industrial revolution in general as well as the rail wars and the automobile wars (not actual wars, but industrial

competitions driven by capitalism and greed). If you take away the rapid succession of scientific advancements by imposing a technology ceiling, I think things would tend to stabilize quite a bit. Society, of course, would continue to mutate socially, but these trends occur over generations. Likewise, wars and other political conflicts would still occur. Market competition would continue to be a driving force in any capitalistic economic framework. However, the great upheaval which we’ve witnessed during the last hundred and some years would not continue at the same rate. Hence, I don’t see this awe-inspiring need to fear the march of time which is so intertwined with STLtravel. Clearly the universe would evolve during the course of a thousand year campaign, but it needn’t evolve beyond all recognition. There is also another reason why I think game designer’s have been shy about exploring the prospects of STLtravel. I was talking on the phone to a friend a few weeks ago, and he said that perhaps STL just isn’t glamorous enough. Sometimes this particular friend of mine, though soft-spoken and cautious with his opinions, can really nail it on the head. I think that after Star Trek and Star Wars, we want our science fiction to mimic space fantasy and all its glamour (with tie-fighters roaring in the vacuum of space and Captain Kirk breathing quite easily on every lifeless world he beams down to).

It’s not just the ignorance of the scientific realities that gets me. It’s the ignorance of the possibilities inherent to the scientific realities. Once upon a time, authors used to write science fiction as an exploration of those possibilities. Some of the best science fiction is based on “what if’s” along with an extrapolation of the plots and

characters and social dynamics resulting from whatever premise has been proposed. So why hasn’t any SF-RPG done this with STL? Are the designers too lazy? Or are they simply worried that it won’t sell... that it’ll be too difficult for Joe Gamer to manage or not glamorous enough to spark an interest? Well, being hobbyists, myself and the folks who are helping with the design of Ragamuffin are in a position to say, “To hell if it sells. We don’t even want to sell the damn thing. Heck, we’re so disinterested in that aspect of the hobby that we’re giving it away for free!” Hence, we don’t have to design the game to be mass-market or whatever we assume people will buy (based on what has been put in the marketplace so far). We can just say, “This is a new idea (or rather an old idea that nobody has attempted to really explore in gaming), we’re attempting to explore it to its fullest potential, and either you like it or you don’t.”

If we wanted mass-market, we’d bring on those flat, twodimensional maps and we’d bring on the light sabres and psionics and whatever else we could dream up. But we aren’t going for that. We’re not aiming for popularity here. Instead, we’re looking straight down the widest, most obvious, most unexplored alley in science fiction gaming, and we are not flinching. We are unafraid, because we see the possibilities for interesting, naturally developing, internally consistent stories, and they are amazing!

Questions & Answers Of course, I lie. There has been more than just a little bit of flinching and apprehension. I, myself, have been flinching on this for years, and it’s only been recently that I’ve finally made up my mind with conviction that this is the way to go. At least it’s worth a shot if for no other reason than nobody has ever done it before. Nobody has ever combined STL-travel with time dilation to produce an interstellar campaign setting with a sprawling population of alien societies. And yet, looking at scientific research and pragmatic speculations about the directions technology may take, it all seems so obvious. Nonetheless, people in my own design group have expressed reservations, so I’m taking up the role of cheerleader and diplomat, hoping to drive the consensus toward my way of thinking. That, in fact, is what this essay is all about. In the hopes of alleviating some of the more common fears, here are a few additional worries and replies concerning what STL-travel will likely mean for the setting. Q1. Won’t STL raise the price tag of interstellar ventures such that exploration and colonization will never happen? And given the long turn-around time, why would an interplanetary government spend the money to finance such a mission which will only be of benefit to future (and possibly opposing) administrations? When has government ever been this long-sighted? A1. This is a good argument, but I think that many races would go to the trouble just because it’s possible. We also have to assume that it’s not going to cost their entire planetary GNP to build a ship. But I think that if we, here on Earth, could build one right now for the cost of going to Mars, we would do so. Let’s take it down even further and say that perhaps it would only reach the cost of going to the Moon again. Now it’s much more likely that we would do so. And if you continue to scale back the cost until the price of building a starship equals that of, say, building 5-10 jumbo jets in year 2001 dollars, then I think

you’d definitely see several starships being built. Perhaps not 100 of them, but perhaps a dozen. Q2. What about trade? Such long-term voyages have got to have an adverse impact on the bottom line. After all, a merchant vessel is only worth what it can make off the goods it can carry over its life. If it can only make ten voyages before it needs a major overhaul, it sure as heck isn’t going to be carrying oranges. A2. The first thing to remember here is that starships don’t age in real time except when they are parked in orbit. Starships, like their crews, age in subjective time. That means that they will be good for many, many voyages. A typical starship’s term of service may encompass hundreds or even thousands of real years before it ever reaches its overhaul age. The second thing to consider is that biologicals will likewise be easier to transport due to time dilation. Just as the crew ages less, so too will they age less. Of course, a month is still a long time for an orange, but perhaps not quite so long for dehydrated, homogenized, orange concentrate. Even so, if it’s cheaper at the destination market to produce agricultural products than to import, then they’re going to produce them locally, and I imagine this will likely be the case for most such products. Nonetheless, there will always be exotics which will command a higher price and consequently be worth importing. Naturally, all of the above depends on the price tag associated with starship construction. I realize that in the early discussion archives, there was talk about making starships expensive to build. However, after thinking this through, I’ve begun to take the opposite position. Given the free labor of robots, the near limitless materials of asteroid belts, and the nearly free energy of fusion, I have to wonder why starships would be so difficult to build. Once you’ve got the basic “factory” in place, you should be able to produce a lot of anything (cars, boats, airplanes, starships). Of course, here on earth, robotics is still an evolving technology, and it’s not yet at

the level where we can build boats and airplanes in the kind of automated, assembly line way that we build cars, but if we did, you’d probably see prices drop quite a bit. One has to wonder what the future will bring as robotics technology evolves. All this discussion of robots reminds me of something yet another friend of mine once said. “What is money?” he asked. “What does it really represent?” In short, money is roughly equivalent to man-hours. Skilled man-hours cost more than unskilled man-hours, but that’s mainly what you’re paying for in nearly any product that you purchase (with the possible exception of A&E where you’re getting a really good deal). Robotics, I think, will change the value of money quite substantially and in ways which we probably can’t even imagine at the present time. In short, assuming the technology continues to progress at the rate it’s been going, we’ll almost certainly be living in interesting times.

Q3. Without FTL-travel, how is the coalition and its high council going to enforce any of their laws or decisions? Consider that it may take decades to mass a fleet against an outlaw government, and it could take centuries to prosecute a war. Who is going to go to the trouble given these extreme time lags? Even if the navy does make the long journey, for instance, to suppress a revolt on a distant colony, or to expel an

overly aggressive race out of the territory of its neighbor, by the time they arrive on scene, the whole situation may have turned upside-down, and the fleet may be urgently needed back home. All this makes for a big logistical mess where the enforcement of interstellar law is basically a farce. A3. These are all excellent points, and if there were no FTL-communication, I’d probably agree with all of this wholeheartedly, which is why I made the decision that FTL-communication must be integral to the setting. Given that technology, a central government could put its representatives on various worlds and then communicate their wishes via FTL-radio. With local representatives backed by local force as well as a much greater offworld force perhaps only twenty or thirty years away, the population and its leaders would be more likely to be law-abiding. Granted, if people were planning to die of old age in 20-30 years, the distant force might not pose as great a threat, but if you include non-age medical techniques into the equation, then 20-30 years may not seem like such a long time after all. Of course, this raises the question about what to do with criminals. Q4. What about the political prospects for Earth? By all accounts, Earth is a lovely garden world that most races with a C/O2/H20 biochemistry would be eager to absorb into their fold. However, sentient natives (i.e. humans) make the process so much more difficult. First they must be screened, then the whole thing is taken to the high council, then the council must decide whether to offer membership. If humans don’t qualify for membership status, then the council must decide which one of the bickering races gets Earth, and there’s so much red tape that wars are almost certain to result. A4. Yes, given the STL-travel limitation (and depending on the speed of FTL-communication), the whole thing may likely end up decided before the council has a chance to decide, and that adds a whole extra layer of politics and resulting chaos (which is cool).

Q5. How do we deal with the problem of having to create a new set of NPCs every time the PCs revisit a planet? A5. That, I agree, will be an extremely unusual feature of the campaign, at least until non-aging technology is developed or appropriated (which could be an early adventure). But until that happens, the setting will take a lot of effort to get used to, and even with anagathic technology, there will still be social repercussions for spacers. For example, if you left your girlfriend on a world and said, “Don’t worry, babe... I’ll be back in 50 years. You can wait for me, can’t you?” she might get a bit irked. If you left her and came back (for you, the subjective time might be only a few months or a year), it wouldn’t be a great leap of logic to discover that she’s now a great-grandmother. That would make for extremely unusual social dynamics, as normally aging people would likely treat space travellers as ghosts in a way... they realize that once they are gone, they will probably never be seen again (at least until old age). And that’s a scary thing to introduce into a setting because it’s so beyond our realm of experience. We can imagine what it might be like, but having never experienced anything like it ourselves, how close we come to getting it right as game designers is something we could never know. Q6. What about the risk that this STLtravel doctrine may result in a game where the players spend as much time in a single star system as humanly possible, because to leave that star system would entail the hardship of cutting themselves off from everyone there for an extended duration? Here’s the key problem. I’ve put a lot of work into my aliens, and I want them to be more than just rumors, or space invaders, or Trekish stereotypes. That’s what I’m afraid of. I want the work I’ve done on this project to mean something.

A6. I don’t think that STL in any way voids the aliens that you’ve created. Yes, it makes them more difficult to reach. But the thing to remember about this setting is that humanity is a minor race. In every other SF-RPG setting, from Star Trek, to Star Wars, to Babylon 5, to Traveller, we are a major race. Even Albedo, which tries harder than any game before it to break from this stereotype, the characters are arguably just humans in animal costumes. In all the other games there are large expanses of human dominated space where most ships are crewed by humans and most NPCs the players might meet will be humans. However, in the Ragamuffin setting, humans are extremely rare. Most planets and ships visited by the PCs will have lots of alien NPCs and few to zero human NPCs, and that in itself is a stark contrast to everything else that’s been done before. It also means that aliens and alien politics will play a more important role in this game than in any SF-RPG which has ever come before. That says a great deal, and for that reason, I think any aliens you create are not very likely to find their way into the proverbial dustbin. They will definitely be used. Again, I realize that this whole thing seems awfully strange. Believe me, it took me several years to come to terms with it myself, and it’s a process I’m still undergoing. I’m so used to the way that everyone else has been designing SF-settings (i.e. with FTL-travel), that it almost seems impossible to design one which takes the opposite approach. But after setting aside my personal biases and carefully considering each of the ramifications, I’ve come to the conclusion that it could actually improve the flow of the game. Certainly, it would make it a lot different from any other SF-RPG that we’ve ever played. It will seem unusual at first. Of that I have absolutely no doubt. And I’m sure that the majority of

potential players will turn their noses at it and think that it’s a stupid idea. But I can’t help but think, after really considering this for several years, that it is a good idea if given a fair chance and executed correctly. Q7. One final question. Relativity and time dilation involve a bit of mathematics. While the gearheads might enjoy it, most players may prefer to skip it. What about them? A7. I’ll write some software to make it all seem easy, and for those who don’t have access to a computer, I can put together some tables like the time dilation table several pages back so they won’t even have to yank out a calculator. Altogether, I don’t think it’ll be too hard for the average player to cope. After all, it’s not like this stuff is rocket science! Well, okay... so it is rocket science.