Note that site membership here is not the same as site membership there. However, I've set up a "secret code" for membership so that I don't have to approve everyone one at a time. Many of you probably already know it:

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—Colin

For fonts, I don't really want to use Optima, which is a bit too classic (it reminds Classic Traveller).
I'd like something stylish, possibly with nice ligatures… I'm still making tests.

Titles are still not translated, the main font is temporary, et the text still need several editions.
Still one or two months before it's ready….

Actually, that would give the Stardwellers and possibly the Spacers a pretty important place. They control most of the interstellar vehicles, so, trade in ansible pairs would be a major source of income.

Now, since the colonies have been going for centuries, and possibly a couple of millenia, they might have lots of bandwidth, so it's possible to send a replicant or a Stored, just fantastically expensive. At a younger colony, it would be out of the question.

The idea floating around in my brain right now is that the PC's will be spending a great deal of time at relativistic speeds, so, huge amounts of time will pass between adventures, even if subjectively, they only spend months or a couple of years. This will allow a couple of things - advancement through advancing professions, and the ability to have very long term plans for the players.

Right now I'm thinking of having about a dozen (give or take) main scenarios related to the central campaign. Stuck at various intervals between them will be sessions that deal with player goals and storylines. I'm thinking of using a chargen method that I've used before to great effect that will hopefully spur some ideas.

The chargen method works something like this. You take many CCG cards and lay them out on the table. When a player takes a card, they must work something about that card into their character - could be the picture, the flavour text, the artists name, whatever. If it appears on the image, you're good to go. I'd likely do several rounds of this - I was thinking the first four relate to your core values (the player doesn't pick a civ yet). Then two rounds for NPC contacts. Then maybe a seventh card as a "wild card" that has to be worked in some way that is chosen by another player. After that, you have two rounds of trades. Trade one card with one other player. That card must appear in both of your backgrounds and represent how the two PC's know each other. I'd probably limit it to trading like with like - core value cards with core value cards, NPC's with NPC's, that sort of thing.

I've used this before and I had very good luck with it.

My current problem is finding a CCG that has images that work. :) Magic works great for D&D, but not so well here.

It helps a lot if (unlike with SA wormholes) the far end of an ansible has to be carried into place rather than just appearing there. I assume that's how your setup works.

Note that ansible communications allow wormhole-equivalent travel for the Stored and for Replicants, as both of them tend to travel in data form. On the other hand, without the ansible, you cannot send information about the wave fast enough to escape it (or even react to it), so you sort of need it. The Stored and Replicants become much more powerful civilizations because of this; either that or the infosphere becomes the primary form of interaction. Very few people would travel personally between the stars when they could send a small probe with sensors and ansible attached for much less money and with much greater delta-V capabilities than something that has to carry a living person.

If anyone is familiar with both Alistair Reynolds and Greg Egan, then a lot of this will be pretty obvious where I'm coming from.

Campaign Background

In Greg Egan's Quarantine, he has the idea that humanity has developed the ability to collapse quantum wave forms as an evolutionary advantage. A conscious mind is capable of looking at all the possible futures and has a tiny ability to collapse that wave form into one that benefits him. The species then, collectively works to collapse the waveform in such a way that the universe is best suited for that species. ((I'm probably very badly explaining this, but, that's the gist that I get)) Note, that no conscious decision is being made, everything is done automatically. And there is no guarantee at an individual level, after all, nudging the dice .0001% only helps you once in ten thousand tries. But, over the course of a species, that nudge provides a very strong advantage.

This also explains Fermi's paradox. The reason we don't see aliens is because as our bubble of space time propagates outwards from Earth, we nudge the dice to the point where aliens don't exist.

I want to take this a bit further.

In the early days of the universe, an intelligent species arose. I haven't named them yet, so we'll just call them the Elders. The Elders, as all intelligent species can, collapsed the waveform to help the species and they expanded throughout the universe. However, because there was a time before they came into being, their bubble of spacetime did not encompass the entire universe and they realized that it would be possible that a competing species could arise out on the edge of space/time. They also realized that while a single planet could collapse the wave form, a single planet would never really be a threat. There simply would never be enough minds on that planet to collapse the wave beyond a small area which would allow that species to live and survive, but never expand.

So, they seeded the universe, which, at that time was much smaller than now, with bombs. Each bomb is a planet sized computing machine, similar to an Aia planet, camouflaged to appear as a normal planet. The AI embedded within the planets would remain dormant until the camouflage was pierced. At that time the AI would activate and the trillions of minds within the planet would collapse the waveform into a single future. That waveform would then propagate outwards at the speed of light, to encompass a large section of a galaxy, theoretically large enough to encompass whatever species had pierced the camouflage in the first place.

Then the second part of the Elder's plan would come into play. As the waveform passes, it activates nano-manufactories placed in various points in interstellar space. These factories would begin building beserker ships which would travel to points within the englobed spacetime and eradicate all threats. The Elders, situated in a far corner of the universe would just sit back and watch the threat disappear.

Because the wavefront is collapsed, the Trancendentals would be prevented from traveling within that bubble and would also be incapable of seeing anything inside as well. They would know that the bubble is expanding as they lose contact with place after place, but, from their position in the future, they would not be able to enter or leave that bubble. It would not exist for them.

Changes to the SA Setting

This campaign requires, so far, a single change to the SA setting - no wormholes. I want Einstein to be right again. All travel would be limited to sublight speeds. I like the idea of Ansible communication - that's not a huge problem as it stands right now. But, I don't want civilizations to be able to just press the eject button and move to another galaxy. And, I want the threat to be contained to a single galaxy. This will change the setting somewhat. Planets and systems will be closer together, although time between stars will be significantly longer.

One of the themes I want to explore here is a sort of Joe Haldeman's Forever War. So, between scenarios, you could easily have centuries passing. For that, I have to scrap wormholes. :)

As I said, this is just the beginning. As I work out more details I'll post them. I have a wiki, so, I'll be doing that as well. But, I'm 99% sure my players never come here, so, posting the campaign details for others to give insight should be pretty safe.

Whatcha think?

I managed to get a fairly lengthy thread going using SA as an example over at Enworld. If you're interested, take a look:

The link is to the first page. The SA bits come in about page five or six. :)

http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/267716-why-we-like-plot-our-job-dms.html

I'll look up the Maptools stuff as soon as I have time. Finals are coming up for us, so I (as always) am a little swamped.

Accouncements: Travelogue Beta

I'll also let folks know when the final version becomes ready.

Bill

Went very well. I ran a nested extended skill test. The party was manhunting a killer, while an enemy group was also hunting the killer and could possibly stumble across the party. The killer was running Hide and Seek with the party (since manhunt didn't seem to make sense for her to run while trying to evade the party). Very cool system. Pretty exciting actually. Back and forth really seemed to work well.

My resident Maptools Guru is now on Version 1.2 of the framework. O.O OMG it's sweet. You gotta see this.

The content is all there. I want to have more graphics (and better ones in some cases) for the final, and I need to get a professional edit done.

I've seen bits and pieces of Travelogue here, and I'm wondering if it's now available in its complete form? If so, where can it be obtained?

Thanks,
Bill aka Starfarer

The minimum CV for a +2 bonus should be 6. Thanks for the catch.

It's not nearly as cool (or dangerous) as it sounds, but it is cool.

Abstract: Traditionally, a black hole is a region of space with huge gravitational field in the means of general relativity, which absorbs everything hitting it including the light. In general relativity, the presence of matter-energy densities results in the motion of matter propagating in a curved spacetime1, which is similar to the electromagnetic-wave propagation in a curved space and in an inhomogeneous metamaterial2. Hence one can simulate the black hole using electromagnetic fields and metamaterials. In a recent theoretical work, an optical black hole has been proposed based on metamaterials, in which the numerical simulations showed a highly efficient light absorption3. Here we report the first experimental demonstration of electromagnetic black hole in the microwave frequencies. The proposed black hole is composed of non-resonant and resonant metamaterial structures, which can absorb electromagnetic waves efficiently coming from all directions due to the local control of electromagnetic fields. Hence the electromagnetic black hole could be used as the thermal emitting source and to harvest the solar light.

I don't know if it helps, but the actual physical structure of the mesh is a network of wires throughout the entire brain.

So far, we're preparing the French demo text, which we hope to finish in December.
We still have issues over a few translations (we've finally chosen "prisme" for "lens", but we're still debating about "mesh").

Fan Friggin Tastic. Loved it. The idea of shared GMing is pretty new to me and my players, but, wow, did it work.

They decided that the whole thing was a hoax, a memetic attack on the Star Dwellers. The session ended with the Disciple player using an Intrigue twist to overhear a coded conversation between the Logician diplomatic delegation aboard the ship. She has to decide, next session what she overheard. Very cool.

Here's the Session 1 Transcript transcript of the session. Search down for "Starting Session" and you'll skip all the blather at the beginning.

Plus, you have GOT to see the framework for Maptool my player has come up with for this game. O.O Wow.

Framework 1.0

Colin, can I suggest that you head over to the Maptools boards and do a bit of flogging of your game. With this framework you can play SA over maptools very, very easily. It's still a bit rough in places, but, damn. SCHWEET.

Even if the reality is simply a macro level averaging of random events, if you had a device that empirically proved that there was no free will involved, would it really matter if there were quantum level random effects?

In a random universe, you still could have free will, since it's the choices you make which determine the average result.

However, either way, random or deterministic, or completely free will, having empirical proof one way or another would have a very strong psychological effect. At least, that's the tack the story took. Psychologists argued that the device actually hadn't changed anything, only given a visible proof. Your level of free will is the same today as it was yesterday, but, it was the conscious recognition of the lack of free will that causes the malaise.

I don't know if that helps or just confuses the issue. :)

Colin, could you explain that probabilistic vs deterministic bit a bit more? It might help in the game.

Side note: One interesting facet of the free will / predestination issue is that most people forget that the universe is probabilistic rather than deterministic.

We'll be playing over Maptools - an online Virtual Tabletop for those who don't know. My group has been D&D junkies for years, so, this will be a radical shift to the left. Tomorrow was supposed to be our first session, but, unfortunately, work calls. :'(

My first scenario is taken from a short story (actually, all my scenarios are lifted pretty much wholesale from various short stories and SF podcasts like Escape Pod and StarShipSofa) whose name I totally cannot recall. In the story, a small toy is invented. A simple toy with a button and a light. The twist is, the light always turns on one second before the button is pushed. The light is an time device of sorts and no matter what, one second after the light turns on, the button is pushed.

In the story, the toy causes widespread depression and social paralysis because it is the first empirical evidence of the lack of free will. It proves empirically that no one has free will and society begins to crumble at the edges because people cannot deal with it.

In the scenario, I placed the toy on a Stardweller ship traveling to the Great Convention. The ship is having massive problems, similar to the story and the players are called in to investigate. Also on the ship are various diplomats, including a Rationalist group which may or may not have something to do with the toy.

Mechanically, I'm having the toy make a sort of memetic attack on the players if they use it. Each time you play, it will run you lower and lower on reserve, until such time as you collapse into depression. The toy uses Metatech to attack the user. Interestingly enough, my players have mostly chosen religious types of characters. It will be interesting to see how the Worship core value interacts with this.

I'll keep you posted.

Minor Alterations

1. Rolls are still multiplication.
2. Every point of difference in Force score changes Reserve damage by one. Old-Worlders no longer harm Mechanicans; Mechanicans trounce Old-Worlders on the first or second shot.
3. Extra damage for double or triple rolls still in effect. Two points of damage for each multiple.
4. Each roll needs a description. Your description should not include accomplishing your goal until after everything's over.
5. To have a shorter conflict, restrict it to a best-of-three setup.

Ok, I like this, even though it makes low Capability characters have a much tougher time of things. Is there a way around this?

Everything's A Theme

1. No more rolls. Diceless system.
2. Capability scores now go 0-4.
3. Your Professions provide you with Reserve. Capabilities do not.
4. You normally act at your Capability level, and can use them as much as you like. Spending a Reserve adds +1 to your score.
5. When facing off against another person…
   1. If you're over by 2 points, you win without question. Describe your victory.
   2. If you're over by 1 point, you win with some trouble. Lose a Reserve and describe your victory. Your opponent can give you a level 1 Complication.
   3. If you're tied, both of you lose a Reserve and take a level 2 Complication. You can both narrate the stalemate.
   4. If you're under by 1 point, you lose, but not terribly. Lose two Reserve and narrate your loss. Your opponent can give you a level 3 Complication.
   5. If you're under by 2 points, you completely fail. Lose two Reserve and narrate your loss. Your opponent can give you a level 4 Complication.
6. All Complications should be appropriate to the type of conflict. Examples will be given, but this is a group judgement call.
7. To go down a timescale, spend a point of Reserve from the conflict type you're going to.

This I like as well, but I think the values for the Themes may be too compressed if you go this route. Still, I can see using it and having good fun. Could there be a way to combine element 5 with the Minor Alterations above?

The Game Is Your Enemy

1. Basic rolls work as before.
2. Each session starts with a Holy Crap point total (this name will change) that is like your opponent's reserve.
3. Pick a type of conflict for the session as a whole. This will be in the briefing.
4. You are always in one type of conflict or another.
5. Most of your time should be spent roleplaying.
6. Themes can be used to get you into a position to make a roll when you aren't, or to win a roll. This is a mechanical description of their narrative power, not a replacement of it.
7. You can only roll once per timeslice in any given conflict. Get into position to take advantage of some modifiers and roll well.

Side Note

There should be a good way to spontaneously generate a conflict type through a little negotiation and maybe a little Reserve expenditure to tweak the timescale. Guidelines for this strike me as pretty easy to write.
Comments are welcome, especially comments along the lines of "Colin, idea X is crap and here's why."

Sorry, I'm not sure its crap. But I do have a few thoughts - the game as your enemy strikes me as a very good way to try to run a solo or GM less game, but might drive more traditionally minded gamers straight out of their gourds.

The conflict system drives towards consensus, given how we've drifted things. Here's how it's working at the moment:
Before every roll there is a narration where the player states what action their character is taking. They then make their attack roll, and the person attacked rolls defence. If the attacker wins, the defender has to concede the point to a degree in their next narration (well - get blasted by lightning, thrown over the cliff … whatever - normally it's conceding the point) - the outcome of the attacker's specific attack within the extended conflict is reflected after the dice roll. This works very well, and generally gets rid of a lot of the problems complained about.

The problem is that this doesn't escalate conflicts - it de-escalates them. If we're in a furious argument and I'm forced to concede your point - my goals for the conflict might change entirely based on that. That's actually pretty great - the flow of the conflict works best when your goals can change halfway through. But because you just conceded, they tend to change to arguing for somewhat less intense things.

So at the moment we're working on a hack to introduce compels into conflicts, based on CVs. Our thinking at the moment is that you compel your enemy to do something that's in keeping with their CV, and they can refuse that compel by spending one reserve, which gives incentive for you to compel things that they don't want to happen. To tie it in with CV strength, we're thinking a 1d10 roll vs your CV, if you roll over your CV number you can dismiss it. This makes compels against stronger beliefs harder to dismiss.

Uh, anyway - the point of this post isn't the hack, but the 'problem' of the system driving towards consensus rather than greater conflicts when each roll strongly affects the fiction (the consensus thing isn't /that/ big a problem - it can actually be really cool. But it does kinda suck the life out of things when it happens every time).

I'm kinda in a 'major minor alterations' camp, I think - there are a lot of small things that could be changed to make the game better, and I don't think it would look like a complete overhaul at the end.

Me Likey

Everything's a Theme — thematically, this is a great path to pursue.
Minor Alterations, points 2–4
Everything, point 6 — oh hell yeah.
Enemy, point 5 — Well, duh! 8^>
Enemy, point 7 — Actually, I think this idea ties in well with the concept of Reserve and it's use as HP. One wide-focus conflict per timeslice, where you decide how much oomph you want to put into it and go for it. Is there a possiblity for a mulligan if things don't go the way you want them to?

Meh

Diceless — Lofty goal, but I haven't played diceless games, so I'm not sure how I stand on that one.
Minor Alterations, points 1 & 5

Gaaaah!

The Game Is Your Enemy — that seems like a complete reversal of game themes (er…motifs? Not to be confused with Themes).
Enemy, points 2–4 — On the surface, this makes SA seem like a board game. On the other hand, a mission is like a high timeslice conflict, so maybe… And what of multi-session missions?

Query

Enemy, point 6 — Not sure I see the distinction you are making…
Everything's a Theme — do we lose the traditional Themes. They aren't mentioned.
Everything, point 4 — How are the Capabilities used?
Everything, point 5 — what numbers are being compared? Cap + Prof?

The abstract from the actual article:

Much work has been devoted, during the past twenty years, to using complexity to protect elections from manipulation and control. Many results have been obtained showing NP-hardness shields, and recently there has been much focus on whether such worst-case hardness protections can be bypassed by frequently correct heuristics or by approximations. This paper takes a very different approach: We argue that when electorates follow the canonical political science model of societal preferences the complexity shield never existed in the first place. In particular, we show that for electorates having single-peaked preferences, many existing NP-hardness results on manipulation and control evaporate.

Minor Alterations

1. Rolls are still multiplication.
2. Every point of difference in Force score changes Reserve damage by one. Old-Worlders no longer harm Mechanicans; Mechanicans trounce Old-Worlders on the first or second shot.
3. Extra damage for double or triple rolls still in effect. Two points of damage for each multiple.
4. Each roll needs a description. Your description should not include accomplishing your goal until after everything's over.
5. To have a shorter conflict, restrict it to a best-of-three setup.

Everything's A Theme

1. No more rolls. Diceless system.
2. Capability scores now go 0-4.
3. Your Professions provide you with Reserve. Capabilities do not.
4. You normally act at your Capability level, and can use them as much as you like. Spending a Reserve adds +1 to your score.
5. When facing off against another person…
   1. If you're over by 2 points, you win without question. Describe your victory.
   2. If you're over by 1 point, you win with some trouble. Lose a Reserve and describe your victory. Your opponent can give you a level 1 Complication.
   3. If you're tied, both of you lose a Reserve and take a level 2 Complication. You can both narrate the stalemate.
   4. If you're under by 1 point, you lose, but not terribly. Lose two Reserve and narrate your loss. Your opponent can give you a level 3 Complication.
   5. If you're under by 2 points, you completely fail. Lose two Reserve and narrate your loss. Your opponent can give you a level 4 Complication.
6. All Complications should be appropriate to the type of conflict. Examples will be given, but this is a group judgement call.
7. To go down a timescale, spend a point of Reserve from the conflict type you're going to.

The Game Is Your Enemy

1. Basic rolls work as before.
2. Each session starts with a Holy Crap point total (this name will change) that is like your opponent's reserve.
3. Pick a type of conflict for the session as a whole. This will be in the briefing.
4. You are always in one type of conflict or another.
5. Most of your time should be spent roleplaying.
6. Themes can be used to get you into a position to make a roll when you aren't, or to win a roll. This is a mechanical description of their narrative power, not a replacement of it.
7. You can only roll once per timeslice in any given conflict. Get into position to take advantage of some modifiers and roll well.

Side Note

1. There should be a good way to spontaneously generate a conflict type through a little negotiation and maybe a little Reserve expenditure to tweak the timescale. Guidelines for this strike me as pretty easy to write.

Comments are welcome, especially comments along the lines of "Colin, idea X is crap and here's why."

He's starting with the quickstart and moving on from there.

Either way, show her some support, since we all love her arts.

Q

Abstract: Nanoplasmonics has recently experienced explosive development with many novel ideas and dramatic achievements in both fundamentals and applications. One of the greatest obstacles to even greater fundamental development and wider applications on the nanoplasmonics is absence of an active element-an ultrafast nanoscale generator and amplifier of local fields-an optical counterpart of the MOSFET. Here we show that the spaser, introduced and observed recently as a nanoscale counterpart of laser, can serve as such an active device. For the first time, we develop quantum theory of the spaser, find its threshold, intensity dependence, and spectrum. We show that the spaser can work in a regime as a nanoscale generator of local fields, and also a ultrafast, high-gain analog or logical amplifier, and memory cell. The spaser is shown to be three orders of magnitude faster than the MOSFET within the same geometric sizes on the order of 10 nm. These functions of spaser will further widen both the fundamental and applied horizons of nanoplasmonic science and technology.

Let me pull the important item out of here: a transistor three orders of magnitude faster than a standard silicon-based transistor.

Though it is still tempting to have Wealth as a theme of some kind. Or maybe how money & wealth could be a descriptor for all the existing ones.

Prices were a way for the Transcendentals to control access to things whose danger levels are out of proportion to their size or difficulty of construction (e.g. atom bombs). They might as well be a multi-civ average "legality" rating. However, the way people ask about prices I suspect that some folks are still going shopping.

Edit: No pressure - your forum and literally your rules.

Of course, almost all of our extended conflicts so far have been arguments, so perhaps it's different for combat situations or the like?

Perhaps a limit or speed dial or something on lower-timescale conflicts would be a good option though - slamming straight into another extended conflict can start to feel draggish if we've been negotiating and you decide to start throwing punches.

I like the conflict system as it is, actually. It's not that flavourful, but it basically works perfectly for our purposes. If there were cool flavourful mechanics that you could engage in optionally to, say, try and bring down more reserve or get a bonus - that would be good.

A fairly simple solution to the multiplication problem: put a multiplication table on the character sheet.

Edit:
Oh, here's something we noticed as a problem: AFAIK, there's no rules for keeping separate pools of reserve for really long term conflicts. We had a conflict that lasted over about 5 or 6 sessions - obviously we couldn't use the same reserve as normal. I thought this was a really good use of the system - conflicts are normally very back-and-forth, but this issue persisted throughout the game because of how the conflict for it was done.

And another thing: why can't you roll offence to escape a conflict as well as defence? We immediately house-ruled it so that you could when we hit that one, because it just didn't seem to make any sense…

So that's good to hear that we're on the same page as far as that goes. I'll just repeat that I think that part of the game seriously needs to be firmed up. That can PROBABLY be handled via keywords or descriptors or whatever, like you've already started in the Technology chapter — stuff like supersymmetrical totally trumping anything that is itself not supersymmetrical, for example, needs to explicitly apply to Stringtech-powered conflicts. It may be that there's just no clear connection between the Capabilities chapter, the Technology chapter, and the extended conflict system. :-/

Professions: that's an interesting stance. I like it! But I'm not sure how to reconcile experience and technology. I mean, philosophically speaking, I think one could make a very persuasive argument that technology is just another means to overcome experience. In the case of Lenses, it's even literal! Your 164 years of experience? I can download that in a couple seconds and now it's about speed and creativity. But the Lens won't grant creativity, will it? That might be an interesting limiter to cook right into Cognitech's explanation.

I'm gonna think on the role of Professions some more. I think it raises all kinds of interesting questions.

One thing I want to make sure to build in is the effect of Professions. They're supposed to be pretty damn good. If you have String 8, Soldier 1, and you're facing someone with String 4, Soldier 9, you should still be worried. He has 164 years of experience on you. He's bad news. I'm not sure how to fold Professions in at this point; I don't think I want to do a simple "add together."

Aforementioned details: The Cognitech example you've given is pretty accurate. Statistically, in a simple roll-off, the Cog 7 guy wins over Cog 4 about 80% of the time before we take Reserve into account. The gun-vs-superhuman is built right into the Biotech description at Bio 9. A rule of thumb (that I can't currently find in the book) is that Bio is worth half as much when you substitute it for String.

Tech trumping tech: Totally not "complaining" or anything about the fact that Stringtech is just ultimately more powerful than Biotech. That's not what I was getting at. Rather, I think more overall guidance cooked right into the Capabilities section would go a long way toward identifying conflict-ending matchups. Like…let's say we decide that Cognitech 7 will simply not be challenged by a computer code cooked up way back at Cog4 (so therefore YOU WIN, and otherwise treat as a Theme outcome w/o complication) — I just made that up. Is it true? Could it be true? Who has the authority to enter that into the game fiction? That's the stuff I'm talking about.

I think it'd be a lot of authority overhead for the GM to have to make that call every time. It's also taking away the players' ability to cook up incredibly cool technology-based solutions to their problems, if it's a mother-may-I game at that point. In my gun-vs-Biotech thing up a couple posts, for example, I think I'd much rather the player be able to KNOW that his gun is not gonna do much to the self-repairing superman he's facing off with, than for the GM to dictate "mmmnope, sorry, I don't think your gun is gonna do much. You need to use a Theme to win this fight."

I hope that "make the fiction come first and make the fiction matter" isn't just a newfangled way to say "describe your actions." If the folks who are complaining about the conflict system being bland are just plain not roleplaying it…

The punch-in-the-face thing is pretty easy to figure out in my mind. If your goal in physical combat was "knock him out," "shut him up," or similar, then it ends a memetic assault. If all you do is bloody his nose, I think he's probably just going to get louder. :) It all depends on what you claim for your victory condition and whether the GM agrees that it's reasonable. All the conflict types have examples to help with this.

Writing Capabilities in terms of Themes is getting more and more attractive. Capabilities will never be set up to trump Themes under any conditions - but they'll be available all the time without Compilcation

Rather than the grid system, which I think would lead to lots of table lookup, I'm more inclined right now to open up the conflict system some to a little more variety. See the Wealth War comments below.

On a tangent: Stringtech trumping Biotech is just a fact of life as far as combat goes, and will remain so. No amount of biological reinforcement will let you shrug off an inversion beam; it's just unrealistic. Outside combat, Biotech for the win. Enhanced lifespan, perfect health, endless stamina, and efficient metabolism, not to mention being a walking biotech laboratory, are very nice things. Stringtech only really blows stuff up and gives you transportation.

Faster conflicts = possibly a worthy goal BUT MAYBE NOT. Hear me out. I think if I felt *engaged* throughout the conflict — really invested in each step of it — I'd care less if the conflict were faster. IMO it only needs to be fast if the stuff *after* the conflict is more interesting than the conflict itself.

Our going-forward policy in our current SA game (next turn this Thursday) is to a) make the fiction come first and b) make the fiction matter from roll to roll. This gets to your idea that nested conflicts can pre-empt the fiction of the larger conflict. Right now we have no guidelines for that, so we have to eyeball it: Does punching the guy in the nose keep him from Meme-Assaulting me or does it just break his concentration (and give me more Reserve)?

If I were rebuilding the system, I'd dig into how conflict victories lock into the game fiction, and how the game fiction limits/constrains each round's actions. I would also look at …. hm. This gets at treating Capabilities like Themes SOMETIMES. I would look at each Capability and determine breakpoints at which certain Capability effects effectively become always-trump-all-the-time themelike effects. Like…an Old Worlder stuck at Stringtech 4 (guns?) can probably pop someone at Biotech 5 or 6, but that gun simply WILL NOT KILL YOU if your Biotech is at 7 (at least not w/o a Theme to just wrap things up).

What is probably needed is a step at which you look at the actual tech being used on the attack and the defense: Your Capability tells you what's narratively possible, and your Profession tells you how well you did within that narrative possibility. Does that make sense?

So right now, there are some serious disconnects between various techs. Like, once you hit Stringtech 7 or so, that pretty much trumps Biotech all the way to the top: you've got the Supersymmetric descriptor available, after all, and there is no defensive equivalent over on the Biotech side. And that's just for the fighty-fighty stuff.

Probably what needs to be done is a full 5x5 grid of each tech and how it interacts at various points, and the points at which tech levels simply trump (i.e. instant-win like a Theme) each other. There may even be surprising interlocks, like if your Cognitech gets high enough that might trump lower Stringtechs because you'll be able to forecast trajectories and gently step aside of bullets.

Remapping all this crazy shit to the Infosphere is a whole 'nother kettle of fish. :-/ Or not! It might just be a matter of straight processing power (i.e. Cog) for everything other than social discourse (i.e. Meta).

Anyway, that would be my proposal moving forward.