The Hoard Potato on Games: Complete Stranger Theory

[athelind]

Back in 1993, I ran a GURPS Space game for my local gaming group. A local BBS -- remember those? -- was the organizing center of our social activities in those days, and it was common practice to use it to schedule games and distribute material

Comments

[normanrafferty]

Dude, I'm already jonesing to play it. It sounds like Jack Vance's Gaean Reach, which assumes that outer space has been colonized by nutballs who hate Earth and went to make a "better" planet somewhere else.

[athelind]

Play it? You could PUBLISH it!

And, yeah, the "dozens of competing and contradictory utopias" element is part of the premise.

Honestly, though, Charlie Stross did the "Widespread Human Cultures Slammed Back Together" thing even better in Singularity Sky.

[cpxbrex]

And here you go, doing it to yourself. Charlie Stross has legitimacy due to the fact of his publication. You don't. It effects even artists. ;)

[athelind]

No, Charlie threw in a twist that REALLY made for a wide range of bizarre and wildly divergent cultures. I loved it, but as Daffy Duck once said, "It'th a great trick, but you can only do it ONTHE."

[iridium_wolf]

Perhaps the reason why people didn't read it is the opening lines, " This is actually going to be a little =more= knowledge than most 20th century Americans have about =real= history, so if your character didn't pick up the History skill, you have no cause to bitch." That'd be a bit insulting as a player for me to read and I'd come at the game with a bit of irritation and snarkiness. You already expect your players to be dumb, why work at it to be otherwise? Just my two cents, your premise is intriguing.

[cpxbrex]

My feeling is that it isn't that they were complete strangers, it's that being published lends legitimacy to the writer.

You're just Athelind, Our Obedient Serpent, they're *glee* published writers! SJG, or whomever, is able to confer legitimacy on those writers in a way that you don't have. It isn't that they know you, it's that you don't know Steve Jackson.

Or, at least, that's my take in that kind of situation, which I've been in not only as a GM but also as a writer, being mystified why my friends seem so eager to read utter crap but I have to engage in emotional manipulation to get them to read even brief pieces I've written.

[athelind]

...my friends seem so eager to read utter crap but I have to engage in emotional manipulation to get them to read even brief pieces I've written.

[[The dragon tries to look innocent, but fails miserably.]]

[cpxbrex]

*snickers* It used to bug me a whole lot but it does less so, now. It's happened everywhere I've been with everyone I've known. It's just really rare to have a friend who wants to read the things I've written, even tho' I'd gladly send it to them.

So, because it happens so damn often, I have concluded that it's not me. Which is why I developed the "confers legitimacy" hypothesis. I mean, if people read my stuff and didn't like it, well, that'd stink for me on a personal level because I would like validation from my friends and loved ones, of course, but I'd deal with it. The weird thing is that they just avoid it altogether (I suspect in part because, y'know, it must be hard for them, too; they'd be stuck saying, "Golly, Chris, your writing stinks" and that'd be difficult for them, too). And more broadly, I think that most people have trouble having artists as friends at all

And I feel fine!

[athelind]

The Flare was one thing I stole directly and shamelessly from Buck Godot. It was there, in part, as a "good thing we spread out, nyah nyah nyah Senator Proxmire" element; knowing my fondness for disaster novels and post-apocalyptic scenarios, I might have set it up to let me run adventures on a post-apoc Earth without invoking the depressimistic cliche of The Great Big War.

If I ever do dust this off and write it up for publication as an SF-RPG, I'd probably leave the Flare out. Shoot, I can get enough happy post-apoc weirdness just from environmental degradation.

I'm not sure I'd use this as my first choice for a published setting, though -- If I have mechanics that can handle nonhumans well, I'll want more possibilities for alien PCs.

[silussa]

That does make for a pretty neat background. And a more then surely confusing one....how many settled planets aren't even on the map?