Setting Strengths and Weaknesses

Summary:

The good, the bad, and random assorted stuff about the setting

Setting Strengths and Weaknesses

John_Kahane 01 Jun 2008 15:25

Hullo, folks,

As a relative newcomer to the universe and gaming world of Sufficiently Advanced, I was pondering something… What do folks who've run the game and played in it consider to be the real strengths and weaknesses of the setting itself?

Part of the reason I ask is because I want to have an idea of what sort of pitfalls can be found within the setting aspect of the game that I need to be aware of. Looking forward to hearing from folks about this… :)

Re: Setting Strengths and Weaknesses

Colin_Fredericks 01 Jun 2008 16:31

I, too, am very interested in hearing about this.

One weaknesses I've run into myself is that there might be a bit too much setting for some folks; there's definitely more than one can quickly explain for a one-shot. Related to this is that the technology is very strongly tied to the setting. Many civilizations simply cannot exist without certain technologies, and it's important to understand how some of them work (meshes especially). Whether that's strength or weakness depends on your preferences. I feel that it's a strength for long-running games, but not for shorter ones.

Re: Setting Strengths and Weaknesses

John_Kahane 04 Jun 2008 15:25

Hullo, Colin,

Having finished reading the Sufficiently Advanced rulebook this past couple of days (the guys at Modern Myth delivered really fast! :)), I have to say that I don't consider the fact that there is so much setting to be that much of a weakness. To me, this is one of the game's strengths.

If this were a fantasy roleplaying game with the space devoted to setting being about the countries or nations on a landmass where the characters can start, it would be the same sort of situation. RPGs that provide a good deal of setting material are ones that are stronger for it, not weaker; while not necessarily suitable to a one-shot game (although I am curious how much you explain about the game to a group playing at a convention or demo?), they are what many gamers look for in campaign games. The more detail the setting has in terms of the various places found in the game world/universde, the better. This material can be fleshed out in world supplements for the game (and I could certainly see an encyclopaedia of that sort for Sufficiently Advanced as being something that would be useful), but that may not be desireable.

I find that there is enough material in the SA book coveirng the basic civilizations and socieites that are included to allow me to run the game and be competent at it. Sure, there are a few more details that could have been included in the sections on the various civilizations and all, but the game setting is rich enough as is.

As for the connection of the technology to the setting, this is something that I certainly appreciate. Too often in science fiction rpgs, there is a tendency to have technology that doesn't so much not "match" the type of civilization and society depicted, so much as it is a hodgepodge culled from various sf works and made to "fit" the mould of the game in question. Sufficiently Advanced does not seem to take that approach, for which I am grateful, and to be honest, I thought that the technology found in the rulebook was consistent with the setting, and was more than I had expected. Another plus in the game's favour, methinks.

That said, your comment raises an interesting question: Do you consider Sufficiently Advanced to be a game better suited to long-term or short-term games?

Re: Setting Strengths and Weaknesses

TauCeti 02 Jun 2008 18:19

I like to have my plots driven by the characters, not by any GM-controlled force. I was never much one for people handing out quests or mission orders or whatnot. If anything I avoid railroading overmuch.

Given all of that, SA is… strange for me. The Ts hand out missions like any quest giver, except that they rarely give useful information. More interestingly, they don't even have the additional information you need (which helps fix those irritating oracles that talk in riddles because its fun to talk in riddles). Moreover, they can give exactly the information the GM needs to be given. Have a mission planned where you're worried that the players will think that it's over before it's begun? Have the T tell them something like “make sure the such-and-such happens” and leave them trying to figure it out. Concerned that the players will cut through your plot too quickly? Have the T hand them a semi-red-herring like “resolve the diplomatic incident” when there are numerous apparent diplomatic incidents going on, and none of them are related to the real problem (which can be viewed as a diplomatic incident… in hindsight).

The Core Values system also creates powerful hooks. You can write plot around them directly, so the Ts just send the characters into a situation, and their CVs carry them through it (this requires players who actually role play, but if you don't have that this isn't the game for you).

In the end, I removed the Ts from the equation in my campaign anyway. I wanted the players to decide what was important too much.

Critiques? Well, OK. The Darwinists are too shallow. They're the setting's generic bad-guys, and they're OK as that, but if you use them as campaign-long villains you'll need to flesh them out a great deal. Can't really sympathize with someone who blows things up because “killing people is good for humanity”. And if you can't sympathize with your villain, they aren't much good.

The civilizations have very different ideas of right and wrong. Before you start running them, you should familiarize yourself with their ideals until you can agree with them. You can't NPC a Replicant unless you can imagine seeing many clones of oneself as the same person, and replication as not death but eternal life. You can't NPC a Unionist until you can imagine the Union as a true utopia. I'd recommend starting small and working your way up, introducing more societies as you go.

As in all good games, it pays to understand the setting and the physics better than the players. If you don't, they'll be able to talk circles around you.

Re: Setting Strengths and Weaknesses

Tantavalist 07 Jun 2008 01:38

The weaknesses of the setting? Where to start- I honestly have trouble thinking of anything I'd consider a strength in the background.

The Transcendentals are annoying to me on so many levels. They are too perfect. Altruistic AND omniscient. They have, in my opinion, no place in any story, either literary or RPG, and including them is a sign of poor plotting skills. Sorry, Colin, but they're a Deus Ex Machina in the original sense of the term, a divine being lowered onto the stage to wield a mighty Plot Hammer and make things happen the way the author wants with a minimum of fuss. While I accept that powerful AIs are going to almost inevitably appear at some point in a Sufficiently Advanced game universe, they should lose the transtemporal knowledge. They should be more fallible, and/or more indifferent to humans. NPCs who know everything, have the PCs best interests at heart, and show up ALL THE TIME are the worst possible way to run an RPG. Personally, I'd use the AIs from "A Fire in the Deep" or the Archailects of the Orion's Arm setting as my model- almost unknowable by human standards, and whole civilisations are changed by casual involvement on the periphery of their affairs.

Secondly, the setting is… Insufficiently Advanced. I found every level of technology to be well below what I'd anticipated when I heard of the game. Stringtech was the exception, so I suspect that Colin has done the classic SF thing of shoving all the things that excite him about his own field of scientific knowledge (physics) that seem vaguely plausible, while ignoring the full potential of other areas, especially Biotech, as people working in those fields today imagine them. The main case in point for me is aging- as several geneticists have stated it, people should have indefinite lifespans by Biotech 6, possibly earlier- certainly Biotech 8+ societies should have practical immortality. Yes, arguments can be raised about why there's real-world scientific reasons that this can't happen, but the same can be said for all those superpowered Stringtech applications the setting brims with.

On a point related to the above, it becomes clear that, despite claims to the contrary, the author is NOT a fan Transhumanism. Oh, there's the surface gloss, and a handful societies that embrace it in a limited manner, but on the whole Baseline humans are the norm in the setting. And people who try to change more than just their appearance are strongly hinted as being WRONG. "They can do this, but it's wrong, and the GM must make the players see that". Why NOT copy yourself repeatedly? Why NOT have mind altered so you're happy with your life rather than changing your life so you're happy? Transhumanism should be about a near infinite number of philosophies which people have suddenly gained the ability to fully embrace, with no one point of view, ESPECIALLY that of modern western societies, shown as the "right" one.

The setting as it stands basically reminds me of all Star Trek after the original series. It has the surface gloss of Sci-Fi, the gadgets and so on, but it's all just special effects and glamour. The setting basically tells us that modern ideals and morals are right, and any technology which fundamentally changes society is shown to be somehow flawed and dangerous.

To say I was disappointed with the setting is an understatement. I was, however, not in the least bit disappointed by the rules (aside from the tech definitions, which are easy enough to change), which are a masterpiece- Sci-Fi with lots of tech but no equipment lists.

When I do get around to running the game I'll use my own setting for it.

Re: Setting Strengths and Weaknesses

John_Kahane 07 Jun 2008 15:25

Hullo, Tan,

Well, you certainly didn't mince words, did you? :) Should be interesting to see what Colin and the others have to say about your comments and thoughts here…

For my part…

The Transcendentals are annoying to me on so many levels. They are too perfect. Altruistic AND omniscient. They have, in my opinion, no place in any story, either literary or RPG, and including them is a sign of poor plotting skills.

I have to say that, for my part, the Transcendentals remind me a lot of the Inheritors from Continuum, except for the fact that it's established right from the get go that the Ts are good guys and nice guys. I can see where this is coming from, in that Colin wanted a game that has a positive spin on it in terms of the basics - man did not destroy himself with all this god-like power, something that goes against the grain in rpging (let alone fiction and media). For me, I have to say that I don't like the idea that this transtemporal element of the game is so…positive. As Patent Officers, how do the characters truly know that the Ts have humanity's best interests at heart?

On the subject of the setting, and without quoting your text, I do find that there is a bit of a game bias going on in the written material. This sort of thing was something that I encountered in the Blue Planet RPG as well, in terms of the environmentalist approach taken to that game, and I was somewhat disappointed to see a form of bias about some of the civilizations in SA. Having not run the game as yet (other than character generation with my players last night), I can't say whether I consider the tech to be sufficiently advanced as yet; that will come with practical experience running the game. That said, however, I agree with some of your comments and statements about the various portrayals of some of the civilizations. I look at stuff like the Cognitive Union, and rather like the basics for the culture, but it *is* portrayed in a negative manner. Same thing with the Replicants. (And no matter what anyone else says, I still see them as being fascinating in terms of playing one, despite the almost abhoring of doing so.)

Still, it will be fascinating to see what Colin and some of the other SA afficionados have to say on the subject… :)

Last edited on 07 Jun 2008 15:29 by John_Kahane Show more

Re: Setting Strengths and Weaknesses

Pneumonica 08 Jun 2008 20:19

My major issue with what you (Tantavalist) have to say is that you're constantly issuing a Whole Fruit Paradox. For instance, the setting puts the Union as being wrong, therefore it is anti-Transhumanist (never mind the Stored, the Replicants, the Rationalists, and nearly every other society being called "right", and the Old Earthers being called "wrong"). Also, there are major good guys in the setting - therefore, it must be a "glittery right" world. The average PC has the processing power of any fifty human brains linked into (impossibly) perfect coprocessing, is made of fundamental substances other than anything normal to organic life (even if it is still carbon-based), and has a chemosensitive touch at a range of several feet due to symbiotic nanoprobes.

Group Minds aren't the bad guys in the setting, either, I would point out. And if you want to be a starship, the Stored are a single phone-call away. You can also make a completely synthetic being composed of bioanalogous inorganic substances with a semiconductive nervous system. Exactly how isn't this Transhuman? Or should the default PC have tentacles?

Also, the Transcendentals don't show up all the time and aren't helping the PCs. The PCs work for them, and they don't actually know what's going on - they know what iterations of thier possible futures are telling them. They are literally incapable of providing you everything you need, either in terms of knowledge or in terms of tangible resource.

No one point of view is shown as the right one - they're all shown with strengths and flaws. Including the modern one.

Last edited on 08 Jun 2008 20:19 by Pneumonica Show more

Re: Setting Strengths and Weaknesses

narfanator 09 Jun 2008 01:04

I agree on some things, but disagree on most. I'm attempting, and mostly succeeding, in writing this response from the perspective of "Ah, well, I think you're looking at it wrong. Try thinking about these aspects and viewpoints, and I think you'll see what we're excited about." rather than "No, you're wrong, here's why."

Agree; I'd like to see more tech levels. I suspect we'll see more in Travelogue, but I also think that you missed the emphasis Colin placed on the transitory state of the setting - your campaigns are supposed to alter large swaths of it, if not the entire thing, including the tech levels. I don't think that comes across enough in the SA book, but it's certainly the impression I've got from interactions here, directly with Colin, and via Tau's game. I am biased because Tau very much takes this view.

I would say that the Union is presented with rather a lot of polarity; I do agree that the description is way to harsh, but it has a few places it where it describes the merits of the Union. Also, all of the stories featuring Unionites portray both them and the Union not only positively, but often times addressing some of the concerns everyone else has about them. My favorite quote is almost certainly: "…what it comes down to is this: you don't trust your leaders - or even one person around you - to do what's right if they're given access to your brain. In the Union, we have that amount of trust. Think about it."

As for the Replicants, only the first few paragraphs portray them badly; ie, from the perspective of everyone else. After that, it's just dandy.

Colin - I would change the Union and Replicator descriptions to portray them as good things (IE, the internal perspective), first, rather than last. First impressions and all that.

Going a bit more methodically down your list…

AIs that are non-transtemporal and indifferent to humanity? That's the Aia. Are you working from the Demo? There's a lot missing from it.

I'd agree that using a Deus Ex Machina is generally a sign of poor literary skills. I'd disagree that the SA setting suffers from that, but that's not why I'm bringing this up. This is going to sound a little mean, but if your GM has the Ts popping up all over the place doing Deus Ex Mechanica, then isn't your GM who's showing the signs of poor literary skills?

Non-transhumanist? I'm going to mostly disagree. The "mostly" part comes because there are civs that aren't transhumanist; but I think that all of them are there to explore other things than transhumanism. For example, the Masquerade: What happens to privacy and identity when you can change your appearance at will, trivially, and can know most everything there is to know about someone else? Not transhumanism, but that's not the point of the Masquerade. They're modern humans with SA tech.
By my count 6 out of 12 civs aren't clearly transhumanist, but some debate is possible depending on what you consider the "human" to be in trans-humanism. I'm not counting Cargo Cults as "clearly non-transhumanism" because Cargo Cults can be that. There are even examples of it in the sample cults. And most transhumanists are portrayed favorably, not to mention all the transhumanist Societies.

If you're still not happy, look at what we have under the "New ___ Contest" stuff. A lot of those are going to be in Travelogue, so maybe you'll like the setting better at that point.

Here's what I think happened: I think you came to the book with a strong idea of what you were expecting and didn't find it. Only, I think a lot of the reason you didn't find it was because you didn't read the stories, which I think are where the real descriptions of the setting can be found. I also think you're faulting the entire setting based upon the flaws you see in some of it. Don't like the portrayal of the Union? Doesn't mean you should ditch the Stardwellers.

Re: Setting Strengths and Weaknesses

Colin_Fredericks 09 Jun 2008 03:15

Hi, Tantavalist.

Thanks for the commentary, it's very helpful. Let's see what I can usefully address.

Some of the limitations on transhumanism were created from a game-balance point of view, and if I can manage to rebalance them properly, the limitation will go away come Sufficiently Advanced II (sorry, not in Travelogue). The prohibition against copying without an appropriate Theme comes from that. Others you're reading too much into - you can play a member of the Union, and I've worked hard to preserve that from day one. The only thing I intentionally present as out-and-out wrong is selling out your character's heritage. Humanity is the focus of the game, but I think the Stardwellers, Mechanicans, Stored, and Heterolinguists spend a lot of time stretching the borders of what "human" means.

I am indeed a physicist, which is why I was able to reach farther in Stringtech than in other areas. Hopefully in the next few years I'll be able to revise the other techs somewhat to bring them more into line with what is or isn't possible. The idea of the setting's technology is this: anything you can reduce to an engineering problem can be solved. I'm not sure whether that's the case with disease, aging, crosslinked minds, and so forth. I picked those I liked at the time. If you know of any good arguments for or against aging being an engineering problem, please point me to them. Most of the anti-aging stuff online is clearly propaganda and I'm not about to spend months teasing out what is and isn't crap.

As for the Transcendentals, I honestly believe they're possible to create: that information transfer from the future is not impossible, and that one can build algorithms to take advantage of them. Assuming some sort of consciousness arises, it will arrive almost immediately after the computer is constructed. Given how they work, there are three possibilities:

1. They don't care about human beings, and thus leave the setting immediately. This is basically what happened with the Aia, only they're not trans-temporal.
2. They like human beings or see potential in them, and therefore hang around to help out. This is the Transcendentals as written.
3. They dislike human beings or see them as a possible danger, and thus wipe them out. I see no plausible resistance.

If you see another possibility, let me know. This does present them as a somewhat monolithic voting bloc, but I'd rather not have my PCs as pawns between near-omniscient warring factions, because that's been done to death before.

Also, there are lots of good ways to keep the Transcendentals from showing up all the time, from being accessible all the time, or from even having any useful information. Most of the time, in most people's games, they provide only the barest skeleton of a mission outline. If they're providing anything with a "minimum amount of fuss," they're not being used as intended, and I should probably rewrite the information about them to indicate that.

If you have any other questions or comments, please let me know. I love to hear what people think about the game in all different ways.

Re: Setting Strengths and Weaknesses

Tantavalist 09 Jun 2008 15:47

I'm not an expert in any branch of science, so debating the issue of possible and not possible in terms of "Engineering Problems" is rather beyond me on the level you seem to demand. I'm a little curious about how you define Stringtech 10 allowing someone to survive exposure to the Sun's core with no aid beyond internal implants as a "Hard Science Engineering Problem" though.

As for aging- at high Biotech ratings people can regenerate without external assistance any body part, no matter how complex, and are immune to radiation sickness. I'm at a loss to think of any way of doing this that wouldn't also make someone biliogically immortal. Exactly how does the setting assume aging to work anyway?

A lot of things are being put into the setting purely for the purposes of Play Balance, and it seems to me that the Aging rules are one of them. My advice- which I'll be following myself when I finally run a game using the SA rules- is to forget play balance at this sort of power level, and just worry about an internally consistent setting which the players enjoy. The sort of Munchkin Powergamer that makes play balance a problem probably isn't going to fit in a game of SA anyway.

Re: Setting Strengths and Weaknesses

narfanator 09 Jun 2008 17:21

From our games, from the "play balance" perspective, it's about making sure different "levels" of characters have stuff to do. I wouldn't ditch the capabilities/Import trade-off, because then low-capability players really don't have anything to do.

Re: Setting Strengths and Weaknesses

TauCeti 09 Jun 2008 17:48

Your concerns are three fold (technology, Ts, and the book defining ethics), so I'll go over my views in each field the same way.

With respect to biotech, specifically aging, yeah, you're right. Immortality is probably Bio 8 at most. If you want to patch it in, I'd recommend something like “if your calculated life expectancy is 500+, you are effectively immortal (barring accidents)” (tune the number as desired). At those levels, it makes very little balance difference (at good Cog and 500+ years you can quite a few professions at 10). I didn't bother changing it in my campaign because it makes little difference to society and no difference in the span of a single campaign. Generally, I figure any character who's going to live for another 100 years will live to see immortality invented, even in the base setting (Bio 11).

I've seen settings that go too far the other way. Orion's Arm comes to mind, with their appearant (from my perspective) insistence on solving all problems using biotech or hybridized biotech, regardless of relative costs. I figure that that setting's biotech simply outstripped its other technologies, so perhaps it really is cost and time effective to grow one's road networks there, rather that just have stone / rubber / plastic roads and microbots do continuous repairs on the off hours.

That said, I haven't seen any other setting, RPG or book, that has anything similar to metatech (I.e. hard science sociology and psychology), except Asmov's Foundation. And even Foundation didn't go to this level. It's far too easy to think of human advancement as purely scientific, and forget that the arts and society itself has been improving as well.

On the Ts… I disagree with your assessment. The Ts are certainly well meaning for humanity, but not for you, the inspectors. You are pawns of the Ts, and my players have the tendency to feel used after any session where my T has had a large part (although it rarely shows up in those sessions being the silent hand that puts the pieces into place and presses “play”). Inspectors die for the Patent Office. If my inspectors made a habit of requesting T intervention (especially direct intervention), they'd get their week's notice right fast. The Ts suffer from the strong observer effect, so direct intervention cripples them.

Also, the T's aren't omniscient. Differently-iscient certainly, but they only know the few fragments of the future that were important to send back. If a planet is at risk of being destroyed they might know a name and a date, and which inspectors to send. Nothing else. Because more information than that didn't change the outcome, so the bandwidth wasn't wasted on it.

On the book defining what is right and wrong in the rules? Yeah, it rubbed me the wrong way too a bit. There are only three places where I can see an issue though. The rule that walking into a replicator is death, the tendency to put the Union in a bad light, and the themes being stronger for baseline humans (this last one bothers me not at all).

The replicator = death is something I take a bit of issue with. Personally, if a non-replicant walked into a replicator, I'd ask for their character sheet. If a replicant wanted too, I'd charge their bank account for the cost of replication. I don't consider the replicant clones to be too bad for balance (not much worse than a group mind, except that the group mind doesn't want to lose any members). That said, I'd still ask the player to have the Plot Immunity “Send in the Clones” (or something similar), even if they don't have to spend twists on routine replication.

The Union's “slave matrix” thing I generally treat as a combination of utopia = distopia from outside, and general bigotry against the Union. We have a Union PC in our current campaign, and he deals with that bigotry all of the time (from the world and from the other PCs). The Union world of Sunset is almost a supporting character at this point, and has always been portrayed in a good light. If I'm trying to make them creepy, I do it by making the light they are portrayed in be almost too sterling perfect.

The more-themes-for-baseline-humans is something I see as simple game balance. Not from the “we want everyone to be on an even footing” perspective, but that we don't want the oldworlder to have to sit around in the truck all session because he can't go anywhere near a fight, communicate with anyone, or understand anything. I'd bore the player out of its mind. So… the plot favors him, even if his own skills don't.

The choice between high import for low capability characters and no balance there is a simple one. Do you want a simulation of a high tech environment, or a good story (in a high tech environment)? Draw the line where you will and adjust the rules to fit.

The few oldworlder NPCs I've had in campaign have been very minor characters, except Ezekiel the old worlder inspector. He mostly existed to show that a fresh, simple perspective can cut through all sorts of problems. That, and because having a farm with lots of dogs within sight of mile-high skyscrapers is just hilarious.

If there are any other cases of the rules dictating morality, I missed them.

So, yeah. You bring up good points. And yeah, editing the setting to your heart's content is probably the way to go for you. I've certainly done my fair share of editing.

Last edited on 09 Jun 2008 18:38 by TauCeti Show more

Re: Setting Strengths and Weaknesses

John_Kahane 04 Jun 2008 15:46

Hullo, Tau,

You raise a couple of points that I want to ask about…

I like to have my plots driven by the characters, not by any GM-controlled force. I was never much one for people handing out quests or mission orders or whatnot. If anything I avoid railroading overmuch.

This is definitely one of the sticking points for me in the game to some extent. It strikes me that the game is constantly about the missions that the characters are assigned by the Transcendentals, and this to me, is a form of railroading. (Not in the manner that is traditionally associated with railroading one's players in rpgs, but…) As you say, the missions tend to have a bit less rigidity to them, because of the lack of specifics that one can give the player characters about their assgned jobs, but I have to wonder if there are ways to run scenarios and adventures in the game that merely involve the player characters becoming involved in some situation other than a problem the Transcendentals want them to deal with. While one can scenarios and plots with all sorts of galaxy-wide ramifications and the like, it strikes me that personal stories (with a few exceptions) don't necessarily work well in Sufficiently Advanced.

The Core Values system also creates powerful hooks. You can write plot around them directly, so the Ts just send the characters into a situation, and their CVs carry them through it (this requires players who actually role play, but if you don't have that this isn't the game for you).

This is an excellent observation, and one which I had not really considered too thoroughly. Perhaps this will work for making the situations the characters find themselves in more…personal?

The civilizations have very different ideas of right and wrong. Before you start running them, you should familiarize yourself with their ideals until you can agree with them. You can't NPC a Replicant unless you can imagine seeing many clones of oneself as the same person, and replication as not death but eternal life. You can't NPC a Unionist until you can imagine the Union as a true utopia. I'd recommend starting small and working your way up, introducing more societies as you go.

This is certainly something that I think bears remembering. While true for most rpgs out there, regardless of whether they are fantasy or science fiction, being familiar with the cultures that one is trying to bring to life in the campaign is very important. The business with the Replicants is one that really strikes me as having parallels to the situation of players playing past or future versions of themselves (what the game calls Elders and Juniors) in the Continuum rpg. It has the added complexity of the clones having new, different life experiences from the Primus of the character after the replication, but that's no more difficult than players in Continuum having to deal with the fact that their Elder knows things that they don't know. Not quite the same kettle of fish, of course, but still… As for the Cognitive Union, well… I rather like that civilization, and want to see if I can figure out a way in my campaign to make them a bit more sympathetic. Need to work on that a bit when I get the chance.

In any event, thanks for your observations here. Much appreciated. :)

Last edited on 04 Jun 2008 15:49 by John_Kahane Show more

Re: Setting Strengths and Weaknesses

TauCeti 04 Jun 2008 21:40

It strikes me that the game is constantly about the missions that the characters are assigned by the Transcendentals, and this to me, is a form of railroading.

Well, the briefing generator can produce the following:
T - “You must take a vacation on Aurora at your convenience. If you observe anything, use your best judgment.”

Other than that, you can cut the players off from the Ts for a while (this is tricky, as they'll try to re-establish contact, since the Ts represent a certain degree of grounding), or you can just run a game while the players are on a non-mandated vacation. Or you can run a completely different game in the same universe. Also, there's no reason all of the PCs have to work for the patent office. In my game we had a late add: Rem-8. For several sessions, he was an out of work Mechanican (brain in a jar “race car” driver) who followed the investigators because it was an easy way off planet (and an excuse to do something important)… and they kept him around because he was extremely useful (and, when you're working for trans temporal entities, you don't question beneficial coincidences too often). Later he joined the Patent Office, but that needn't have happened.

The other option is to run a campaign where no one is an inspector. You'll need to come up with excuses for people of different Civilizations to work together, and why they're hopping from planet to planet so often (or else lose those bits of the game). I ran a Darwinist one-shot a few months ago (it was one of those “… wacky hijinks ensue” games; ended with a not-quite-dead planet, several of the PCs without their memories, one of the PCs in love with a now-amnesiac inspector, and two stuck in a rapidly devolving cargo cult; one as a god-of-plague-and-death, the other as a madman-of-the-wilderness).

The Core Values system also creates powerful hooks. You can write plot around them directly, so the Ts just send the characters into a situation, and their CVs carry them through it (this requires players who actually role play, but if you don't have that this isn't the game for you).

This is an excellent observation, and one which I had not really considered too thoroughly. Perhaps this will work for making the situations the characters find themselves in more…personal?

I have a Stored PC with very high Life and Identity. He finds himself interacting with Aia more often than is healthy (especially now that they have their very own Scout Familiar). At one point, the campaign villain tried to convince them all to leave it alone (I'm oversimplifying here). The arguments were carefully tailored to the CVs.

The business with the Replicants is one that really strikes me as having parallels to the situation of players playing past or future versions of themselves (what the game calls Elders and Juniors) in the Continuum rpg.

While there is some similarity, you don't interact with your Elder/Junior very often, and when you do there are rules. Seriously, your Elder knows more than you. The Replicants are interacting with their varied selves all of the time, in a much less formal setting. That said, if you can even think of running a Cºntinuum game, you should have no problems adapting to Sufficiently Advanced. The few causal loops in the game are almost entirely GM controlled (unless you're like me and enjoy handing your players oracles… and letting them hang themselves because they don't understand how quantum information works).

P.S. If a Stored player asks to use the T's transtemporal communication to go back in time, my usual response is that this is a good way to die (Replicant style). If they persist, I remind them that there are many futures and only one present (from the current perspective; it'll change later of course). As such, they'll need a way to determine which Stored coming back in time survives, erasing the infinite other possibilities. It's a good idea to filter the data really well, or you'll have chunks of possible futures glued together.

P.P.S. I generally consider the SA universe to be a variant of the many-worlds paradigm, except that the worlds are in superposition with respect to each other. Information from the future is a blended superposition of all possible futures. Parallel presents are normally inaccessible, although there are work-arounds for this.

P.P.P.S. Remind me to share my advanced stratagems with you some day. Guaranteed to horrify any players who think that a single Narcissist can only do one thing in a span.

Last edited on 04 Jun 2008 21:42 by TauCeti Show more

Re: Setting Strengths and Weaknesses

Pneumonica 06 Jun 2008 18:42

All I can say is this - I knew my C^ontinuum group was composed of closet Narcissists when they did a group strike on a Narcissist attempting to frag one of them (I forget what that strategem is called), but not on the incident of Frag (which they'd already resolved). Instead, they did it on the moment he realized they'd Fragged him, thus nailing him with a time-on-target Cheshire Cat. All I could say at the time was "holy f***". I then described him devolving into a low-potential existence state - he got that much Frag.

As for Replicants, they're hardly a problem to me. Again, yes, this is from C^ontinuum experience. I will say this - the causal structure of the Transcendentals is fragile - they're sorting probable futures to get what can at best be limited data that is in the process of self-annihilation as it transmits (they're nullifying the possibility of thier own existence even as they transmit). From the Transcendental's perspective, it's entirely possible they never broadcast anything - they only receive transmissions that always terminate prematurely and, as nearly as they can tell, are never transmitted from anywhere, anywhen.

Reminds me of a Son of Ether I played once. He taught a fellow Etherite the Time rote to backpedal one round. The fellow Etherite was a little put off by its name: Suicide Pill.

Re: Setting Strengths and Weaknesses

TauCeti 06 Jun 2008 21:11

This is a quick attack from a high level narcissist (Onyx) on a group of inexperienced players (and even more inexperienced characters). There isn't a name for this stratagem. Onyx knows that the PCs are somewhere having a meeting, but he has no idea where. He also knows where their homes are.

From the player's perspective (first span of combat):
In everyone's age is riding in Bill's car (two days up).
Everyone shows up at the pre-assigned meeting and start discussing strategies. Then Onyx shows up, spanning in with a vast quantity of gasoline all over the place and a lit match. He vanishes a second later as the gas ignites. Usual strategem, nothing interesting, right? The PCs scatter of course. They're all immediately hit for 1 frag (technically starting time combat). Bill (who spanned home in his panic) discovers Onyx behind him, having stuck a dagger in Bill's gut. Onyx informs Bill that if he spans out, he'll die (technically a lie, but Bill believes him). He then forces Bill to tell him where and when the meeting was.

Onyx's perspective:
First, Onyx sets up recording devices around the various PC's homes. He then collects them and looks for the moment when one of the PCs shows up, burnt, obviously harried. Onyx spans over (a second after the footage he had seen, to avoid fraging himself) and asks Bill where and when the meeting is, because he hasn't a clue and needs to hit them hard. This all works because Onyx slipshanked the entire next maneuver (resolving the point of frag half an hour in his yet when he performs it).

Then, Onyx goes to Bill's car one day down with a vial of a chemical that will react explosively with gasoline. He opens the gas tank, lights a match, and holds the vial over the open tank. Then he spans to the meeting, taking the match, the fire, and the automobile's gasoline (but not the rest of the car) with him. He leaves behind the vial, which drops into the (now dry) gas tank and breaks open. Once at the meeting, Onyx spans away, leaving the match and the gas.

Now everyone is fragged because the car they used 2 days up couldn't have started. The easy patch (putting gas into the tank) would instead blow up the car and the person performing the patch. This would frag everyone a second time (the car doesn't exist), besides likely killing the hapless PC. More importantly: that second point of frag wouldn't hit Onyx, since he doesn't need to know about it. And finally, the PCs are scattered to the wind without any plan or idea how to get back together.

As many as two points of frag on everyone, only one point on himself (for the car not starting), possibly killing a PC, and scattering them. All in the first sweep, before they realize that they're in combat.

Do not mess with Onyx.

Re: Setting Strengths and Weaknesses

TauCeti 06 Jun 2008 21:19

Earlier in the same oneshot, the PCs are on the wrong end of a group of (span 2, but experienced) Foxhorns. They show up at a time and place that the foxhorns were expecting a narcisist attack (Onyx really is a bastard). The two PCs who arrive are expecting a nice conversation. One arrives over a floor covered with marbles, the second gets hit in the clavicle (breaking it) with a baseball bat from behind. The guy on the floor is hit with a dart from the foxhorn who was measuring the incident (they believe in being well armed during a measure; that measure is why they knew where the PCs were going to show up and which way they'd be facing). The guy who was shot spans out. The guy with the broken clavicle is informed that if he spans out, his friend dies. See, the foxhorns don't know what was in that dart. It might be knock-out drugs. Or it could be a neurotoxin. They'll decide after they're done talking with the PC. Queue interrogation.

Re: Setting Strengths and Weaknesses

narfanator 07 Jun 2008 04:56

I love messing with causality

Re: Setting Strengths and Weaknesses

John_Kahane 07 Jun 2008 15:40

Hullo, Tau,

You make some excellent points about the Sufficiently Advanced stuff in your post above, such that there's really nothing there for me to address. If nothing else, it's given me some ideas for things I may want to do with the game down the road, once I've got a bit more experience with it. So my thanks for that.

As for the Continuum stuff, well…

While there is some similarity, you don't interact with your Elder/Junior very often, and when you do there are rules. Seriously, your Elder knows more than you. The Replicants are interacting with their varied selves all of the time, in a much less formal setting. That said, if you can even think of running a Cºntinuum game, you should have no problems adapting to Sufficiently Advanced. The few causal loops in the game are almost entirely GM controlled (unless you're like me and enjoy handing your players oracles… and letting them hang themselves because they don't understand how quantum information works).

Actually, I've been running a Continuum game on and off since the game first came out. I don't find myself having problems with the causality of the game universe or anything else in that rpg, although admittedly the players had to adjust their thinking when they began to play the game, and it took them awhile to do so. That said, one of the big differences between Continuum and Sufficiently Advanced is the fact that the player are learning to time travel along with their characters, and learning the game mechanics of time travel at the same time, in the former. SA, on the other hand, seems to throw players right into the middle of things. Perhaps another thread on this may well be relevant or necessary for GMs new to the SA game…

P.P.P.S. Remind me to share my advanced stratagems with you some day. Guaranteed to horrify any players who think that a single Narcissist can only do one thing in a span.

Would love to see this stuff, but not here. Maybe on the Continuum forums, or in personal e-mail. Out of curiosity, do I know you perhaps from the old Continuum list at Topica, or on the Aetherco forums?

Re: Setting Strengths and Weaknesses

John_Kahane 07 Jun 2008 15:47

Hullo, Tau,

I know this is off-topic for the SA discussions and all, but in the Continuum game, how did the player characters eventually defrag themselves and deal with Onyx? :)

Re: Setting Strengths and Weaknesses

narfanator 08 Jun 2008 05:11

Well, I had some help by setting up a way to slipshank information to myself.

Re: Setting Strengths and Weaknesses

TauCeti 09 Jun 2008 18:59

Yeah, my ego got ahead of me. Does anyone know if there is a way to branch this topic and throw the Continuum stuff I started into Random blather?

Well, it was a one-shot, so the threat level was much higher than what I'd do for a campaign. The idea wasn't to beat Onyx, just survive him and make contact with the Continuum. In neither run of the one-shot did the players defrag themselves (if they had blithely gone after the car, I'd have pulled one of my very-many available saves to keep them alive, and further plot). In both cases, they got ahold of allies and pulled themselves out. In the first run, they sent someone way up (I.e. several years) to get support from the spanners they would become. In the second, things got so bad that I had to send in the foxhorns to first try to kill them and (once they started talking) to save them. Most of the reason for the severe deadliness was to make survival challenging. If it's easy to survive, the player's won't be proud of themselves for making it.