29 Friday Dec 2023
Posted in Uncategorized
Below is the GAFT Season 1 Episode guide, an Excel file you can download and open at your leisure.
If you worry about downloading such things, I don’t know what to tell you. This is what WordPress lets me do. Either take the risk or live with not knowing.
Here it is:
21 Thursday Sep 2023
Posted in Other TV shows, Science vs Fiction, Time Travel theory
Tags
12 Monkeys, Can't Fight the Future, Dystopian futures, Episodic time-travel shows, series continuity, Travelers, TV shows
Episodic TV shows about time travel generally fall into two branches:
The first is more common, with every show from the Time Tunnel to Timeless trying to preserve our precious present.
Somewhere between the two is Doctor Who – and that is actually a central theme of the show. That is a really complicated discussion we’re not having in this article.
We are talking about the second branch, a relatively recent concept, where agents from the future are mucking in our present trying to prevent their inevitable dystopia. One of these shows was Continuum, which we have talked about earlier.
We have two more, (as the title implies), but first let me declare some metaphysical biases:
Well, let me qualify that. I believe this is a dystopian future.
But I am not so worked up and certain about this that I would go back and try to change to past to make these things happen. That did not work out the last time I tried it.
In their defense, the futures the protagonists of both Travelers and Twelve Monkeys have come to the past to try and prevent are much, much worse. In both series the protagonists wander about the present (the twenty-teens for both) marveling about how much easier life is here in the glorious past.
We never see this future in Travelers. Most of the action takes place in the present day, as current events are manipulated by unseen forces from the future while our heroes scramble about to react to it all.
In Travelers, only consciousness travels in time. Personalities from the future are inserted into people who are about to die in the present, replacing that doomed personality with their own. They are then tasked with resuming that life – without actually remembering it, and thus generating a constant stream of B-plots while unintentionally parodying the McFly Paradox.
Fortunately, the travelers, known officially only by number, have been well trained in the future for their trip to the past. They know their new lives through research, though that is often incomplete. They possess an array of skills crucial to daring-do in the murky past.
The main hero takes over Grant Maclaren (played by Eric McCormack) an FBI agent who would have fallen to his death in a rather dumb accident until he was taken over. Traveler 3468, the new personality, is as well trained or better than Agent Maclaren and has little trouble pursuing the FBI case-of-the-week around his Traveler duties. And an FBI badge makes a lot of traveler chores that much easier.
Grant’s problem is that he has been married for ten years – and still is. He is not the only member of the five-person team up to their eyeballs in troublesome relationships with temporal locals. These assorted B-plots create most of the actual drama in season 1, and much of the drama in season two. It isn’t until the series is already doomed (for network reasons) that the A -plot, the fracturing future, begins to drive most of the narrative.
For Twelve Monkeys, the core setting defaults to the future, 2043 or thereabouts, where a secret project has built a time machine in the post-apocalyptic wastes.
So -yes. The TV series departs almost immediately from the Hollywood movie on which it is based, much less the French Film which inspired the bigger picture. Only the names of some of the characters seemed to have survived.
Both of those movies are prime examples of how you can create a compelling time-travel story even when time is fixed. Can this be done over an episodic TV series? We don’t know. The TV Twelve Monkeys abandons this almost right away.
Cole, our protagonist (played by Aaron Stanford, admirably resisting the impulse the channel Bruce Willis). (Do I have to state that Bruce Willis played the role in the film? I guess I do. He did.) and his partner Ramses (a character original to the series)(played by sci-fi veteran Kirk Acevedo) stumble into the secret project while scavenging about – as they do – and are recruited to travel in time because they have no better prospects.
Some movie notes get hit in the first season: Cole encounters and falls in love with Dr Railly – though here she is a virologist with the CDC, and meets the crazy Goines character [Jennifer Goines, that is, played by Emily Hampshire and very much not Bradd Pitt).
Those characters and a bunch of others bounce around in time trying to prevent the Army of the Twelve Monkeys from destroying the world and later, as the plot spirals out of control, all time itself.
Here, our blog branches.
What impresses me about travelers is how plausible (by time travel standards) the premise is. Through the first season, the show even kinda stays in-bound of TV cop shows.
The travelers have rules, numbered Protocols, and circumstances increasingly force them to skirt and then violate these protocols in order to accomplish a larger goal, or survive, or see that their loved ones survive. And these compromises form part of the reason the future becomes compromised.
One of the characters has memorized the outcomes of sports competitions, and bets on these to finance the travelers (who do not all have jobs). These become increasingly unreliable. Then instructions from the future become increasingly disturbing, until the heroes conclude that their AI Director has become The Problem.
We have rival travelers sent by some Alt Director, the mysterious Traveler 001 who has kept himself from being killed by staying completely out of history, off of cell-phones and recording cameras, because if the Director ever find him it will fry him.
Here we find the best aspect of both shows, but this one in particular, fighting against a foe that not only knows the future but can project actions into the past. That is a big and novel problem that had our travelers running scared until their true enemy, the network, pulled the plug after season 3.
The ending left hope for a season four. The ratings did not.
Or someone from the future did not want a season 4. We will never know.
UPDATE: There is talk of a season 4.
12 Monkeys
There is a recurring trope in past-apocalypse shows where a cocky, brilliant bandit inserts himself into the protagonist’s situation, usually because he feels the protagonist owes him something, and becomes an unreliable ally. Until near the end when he shows his true heart right before his heroic death.
Those moments are the worst of Twelve Monkeys, and that puts the show ahead of the curve for post-civilization shows. But its worst moments always happen 30-50 years from now.
Its’ best moments come as the heroes bounce around the past trying to compensate for the poor decisions they made in the future. Those consequences are compounded by the titular army, a gang of crazies working to end all of time itself, and with the apparent means to do so, acting to stop the heroes – whose actions they can reliably predict. Because history.
The last season will seem like it is all flying apart, but it is not. The heroes pull things out of their parts that were actually set up first season, and the inexplicable luck that seemed to save them in the early seasons turns out to be timey-wimey chicanery.
Sure, it all ends in tears, except for the branch of the timeline where it doesn’t. More importantly, they knew this was the last season when they wrote it – so the payoffs have some value.
You can’t fight the future. Because math.
But these shows certainly had some fun trying.
27 Wednesday Jul 2022
Posted in Go Action Fun Time, Stuff I make up
A continuation that starts here. This is part 3 of 3.
I have completed all 36 characters for the Sample Cast. Here they are, for record and reference by character type, and then alphabetically by name.
These are the complicated ones.
All illustrations by me unless noted.
Multi’s
I can’t use “multi-class” because Go Action Fun Time does not really have classes. The closest we have a Focus, and multi-focii comes out as wrong – and inaccurate.
They are really multi-types, falling across more than one of the other five types.
Aria
Cyber pop Diva
You might suspect, especially in the late cyber era, that someone sooo perfect for this role was created somehow. But Aria was born to famous musicians possessing a mutant, inhuman amount of charisma on top of extraordinary talent. With all that beauty and talent (and opportunity) everything has always come easily for Aria, and that has left her somewhat shallow. She means well, and genuinely wants the best for everybody, but she has never personally suffered, and this shows, especially outside of the spotlight.
Greycloak
Elven fighter/magic-user/thief
A multi-classed elf from Ys. C’mon – you’ve played this sort before. Specifically, Greycloak is a professional athlete – the sport is essentially Hide-and-Seek. Also fond of card games and any other game of chance. Since elves are forever young, Greycloak, like his people, struggles with change: growing up, learning new things, healing.
Princess Moonfire
Every magical princess trope combined
Beloved daughter of a petty noble family deep in the Lastocene, Moonfire has chosen a life of adventure to harden her up for the day she must eventually rule. Given how gooey-sweet her personality defaults to, this is a daunting task. She does not come unprepared: she knows some magic, has a wicked sword, and her adorable dress is better than most armor.
Rubia LaRouche
Pirate Princess
Rubia is the daughter of a infamous pirate and a sea goddess, though she does not have a close relationship with either. Though she has neither ship nor crew, she believes herself to be the future Queen of All Pirates, and she does have some skill to back this up.
Shamus McGuffin
Magic Hobo
Shamus was raised among the Leprechauns who stole him as a baby. Rescued, he’s been told from abusive humans who soon died in the Troubles.
Having literally outgrown his hometown, Shamus set out to wander the world by ship and train, but mostly train since he reached the United States.
Tom Swift
Public domain boy inventor
Yes, that Tom Swift – the original circa 1910 who has fallen into public domain. The son of an inventor, Tom seeks to follow in his father’s footsteps only with more adventure and less caution. When he stumbles upon the mass of Miracle Molecule, as he calls it, his life strays quite far from his father – and the source material.
The Miracle Molecule is a blob of alien nano-technology that can transmute into whatever the young inventor imagines – and that’s a lot.
Wizards
We use this term for those who would bend the rules of reality by wit or magic or both.
Cypher
Historian from the far future
Cypher is one of the Monitors of the Lastocene who is curious about Earth’s distant past. She visits with super-human perception, the highest of technology, and a fear of altering the timeline she knows so little about.
Doctor Junior
Super-genius in a wheelchair
Raised by famous research scientists, Junior may eclipse them all due to super-human intellect and driving ambition. At 15, Dr. Jr. has an MD and a doctorate in Physics.
A lab accident has left him mostly paralyzed from the waste down. He plans to move his brain into a robot body of his own design, but needs to wait until he finishes puberty.
Ember
The last Aziza (Sprite)
Ember awoke from hibernation to fins that she was the only Aziza (a variant of Sprite) remaining in her isolated African canyon, and that canyon was about to be over-run by civilization.
Sometime before, perhaps centuries before, Ember was a great hero, but she barely remembers any of that now, though she still has her powers. Once she used those powers to help the sad and lost and exploited – but now she finds she is all three of those things herself.
Felicity Moore
Sit-com witch
Daughter of an ad executive and a witch. Trying to decide between witch college or a mortal university, or just trying her luck in show business. Writes songs, wants to act. Has a cat familiar.
Timm
Atlantean wizard in training
A student at the University of Atlantis, where wizardry is taught like a science. He’s a mediocre student but has outstanding natural ability and has shown great promise in blowing stuff up.
Eccentric and given to hyperbole. Prone to blather. May or may not be a younger version of a Monty Python character.
Verity Grimoire
Gothic witch
Her mother – who she has never met – made a deal with Dark Forces to have a child, and then made a deal with a barren witch to get away with it. Verity has been raised by a witch in the woods and educated by nuns.
She is very proper and extremely strange all in the same.
27 Wednesday Jul 2022
Posted in Go Action Fun Time, Stuff I make up
A continuation that starts here. This is part 2 of 3.
I have completed all 36 characters for the Sample Cast. Here they are, for record and reference by character type, and then alphabetically by name.
All illustrations by me unless noted.
Stealth
These are your rogues and thieves and other sneaky types.
Alex Kitt
Kid spy
PHOTO NOT AVAILABLE
A student at an upper-class high school is also the top operative for a super-secret spy organization.
You are not authorized to know why this would make any sense.
Dopple
Shape-shifting footpad
An alien raised by a gang of thieves on the mean streets of Victorian London, Dopple has no idea where he might have actually come from. Taking the form of a human boy, he learned the art of petty crime and scrounging, taking care to hide his inhumanity whenever possible.
Jack Ent-Bana
The boy who climbed the beanstalk
The boy who climbed the Beanstalk, and who was briefly an apprentice of Taliesin now wanders through time. Jack means none harm, and cannot abide suffering when he can help it, particularly his own, and is not above redistributing wealth by his own hand to alleviate such.
Phaze
Techno-ghost
A clone servitor on a secret asteroid laboratory, Phaze was transformed into ectoplasm when commandos stormed the place and disrupted a dangerous experiment. Phaze anchored himself inside the armor of a vaporized commando, though he does not know how.
Phaze can walk through walls with or without the suit, but he cannot control it without the suit.
Shadow-Cat
Cybernetic cat-burglar
Shadow Cat was made from genetic splicing and cybernetics and then, for reasons unknown, dumped onto the streets of the future Sprawl. That may seem dark, but she is actually well designed for just such an environment.
Shadow Cat is her name. If she had some other, that was wiped out long ago.
Valorie Keene
Girl Detective
Just a normal girl from the 1950’s who solves crime in her spare time. Her father put himself through law school by working as a cop, so Val has a keen interest in solving crimes; especially after she solved who murdered her mother.
Support
Not all of these characters are healers, but they do the important things around the edges that can keep the cast alive.
Able
Exploration Android.
Able is designed to go where no living human being would want to go. Able has male features but no functional gender. Able is physically remarkable and an excellent recorder but cannot develop far beyond the current configuration. Does not have emotions, and does not want any.
Brother Mu
Psionic monk
Initiate of a secret order called the Brotherhood of the Overmind, Mu has been trained in martial arts and psionics. He has also been trained to seek balance in all things. Strict Ascetic in many areas. Also a committed pacifist.
Cam Cruz
Designated Driver
Born and raised in a cyber-era junkyard, machines talk to Cam. They don’t mock him for being a short little punk who lives in garbage. In return, he takes care of them.
While his physical skin is armored, his emotional shell is thin, and he is hyper-competitive to boot. But once he’s on your side, he’s on your side forever. He insists on driving, but that’s OK. He’ll get you there – and he’ll get you there first.
Rigel Watson
Space Cadet
Top of his class at Space Academy (a real thing in the 26th century), Cadet Watson will make a fine officer once he grows up and falls into line.
That hasn’t happened yet. Rigel is still a loose cannon, but he always means well.
Rose Red
Fairy-tale Princess
Twin sister to Snow White. When a huntsman refused to kill her on orders of their (evil) Queen of a mother, Rose was left to be raised by an old woman in the woods – a powerful Druid. The day came, though, when Queen realized she had been tricked. In the chaos that followed, Snow White was rescued by dwarves, but Rose Red was rescued by a crack in time.
Rose has the power of Kindness – and cannot be targeted by attacks.
Seba
Priestess of Ma’at
With her gift of astounding faith, Parsebanma’at (The star of Ma’at) was the name given to this soon to be a priestess of Ma’at (basically a prosecuting attorney in the Egyptian legal system), until her temple was razed during Pharoah Ahkenaten’s attempt to remake Egyptian religion. Without a home, but not without a cause, Seba, as she calls herself, with the help of the goddess she yet serves, seeks truth and justice (and propriety) wherever she wanders.
Next: Multi’s and Wizards
27 Wednesday Jul 2022
Posted in Go Action Fun Time, Stuff I make up
1 of 3 parts.
I have completed all 36 characters for the Sample Cast. Here they are, for record and reference by character type, and then alphabetically by name.
All illustrations by me unless noted.
Part I – Fighter-types
Fighters – type A
Type A refers to characters who are trained combatants.
Brass the Huntress
Daughter of Zeus
Daughter of an Amazon warrior and the God Zeus – but since Amazons are sworn to chastity, she is an outcast from her own people – despite being an Obvious Hero.
Brass hunts monsters.
Galahad
Just who you think he is.
Galahad is, by design, the embodiment of everything that is good and noble about chivalric Knighthood, and literally Too Good to be True.
Gideon Gunn
Mutant gun-slinger
When his father, a Texas ranger, failed to return, young Gideon quit punching cows and took up his father’s old pistols to go find him. He did, and after burying his father, wore the ranger badge as he hunted and gunned down those ambushed who ambushed poor dad. Then Gideon, with his super-human, mutant endurance, just kept going.
Okinushi
Cyber-Samurai
Sponsored into a cybernetic warrior by a prominent Seattle street gang, Okinushi was the only survivor of the terrible battle that destroyed that gang. In re-thinking his life and purpose, he has adopted Bushido, and become a self-styled samurai – even if a Ronin – defending the weak and dealing justice to the wicked as he encounters them.
Sabre
Living weapon
Impatient with evolution, military contractors tried to improve upon the human form artificially – with mixed results. Sabre was designed (and trained) to kill people, but she really likes puppies and flowers and dancing to sugary pop music. She can’t stand still and eats like three adults, never been to public school (and can kill you) but other than that she’s just a normal teenage girl.
Sparrow
Super-hero sidekick
Rescued from the mean, mean streets by millionaire Max Manly, she discovered his secret identity as the costumed vigilante Gangbuster. She began following him around until he eventually started training her, leaving her in place to take up the war when he finally died in a blaze of gunfire.
Fighters – Type B
Type B fighters may not be trained combatants , but possess powers or skills that make them capable combatants.
Barkely “Bear” Dickson
Good ‘Ol Wear-bear
While hunting with his father, Bear, a product of good ol’ backwoods upbringing, survived the encounter with the bear that kjlled his father – but at a price. The bear that bit him was a lycanthrope, and now, so is Barkley.
Captain Victory
Cloned super-athlete
Captain Victory is a clone of a famous athlete created by a sports marketing company, because the actual athlete grew old and difficult to work with. Unsurprisingly he is an astonishing athlete, and a serious competitor, at least within the game. Outside of a game, he struggles to take things seriously – though he will try to make a game out of anything.
Cosmic Kid
Accidental super-hero
Cory should have been killed by the meteor strike, but miraculously survived. Now, an otherwise average, uninspiring high school student has been filled with the Power Cosmic and the superhuman abilities that come with it.
Kromag
Stone-age super-hero
Kromag actually live in cave with others of tribe. Kromag not dumb, but never grasp personal pronoun or complex verb tenses. Kromag no like civilization and want no part of it. Kromag very strong and can break anything. Kromag actually nice guy from brutal world. Kromag no much good at throwing spear, which makes Kromag sad. Kromag can kill a mastodon with club, though, and that make Kromag happy.
Lunk
Actor/singer/dancer man-monster
Loauno “Lunk” Konu came to Earth with his family as a tourist, and found it very different from the heavy gravity, icy temperatures and toxic atmosphere of Arcturus 7. While technically human, his people have been heavily genetically modified to survive on their harsh home-world. His knowledge of ancestral Earth is rudimentary.
Lunk is of average size and strength among his people, but an above average theatrical performer, which is his true passion.
Xinji
Girl in a robot body
Xinji was injured in a near fatal accident, and as her family did not qualify for full reconstruction, her scientist father inserted her brain and spinal column into a military adroid he was working on. He powered it down because she was just learning how to use it, and then had to flee, because what he was doing was highly illegal.
Next post: Stealth and Support
04 Thursday Nov 2021
Posted in Integrated MultiFantastiVerse, RPG settings
Tags
Kilingons, Romulans, Space Elves, Star Fleet Battles, Star Trek, Star Trek into Traveller, Traveller, Villani, Warp Drive
Adding Star Trek into the Multi-Fantastiverse [MFV hereafter] is both easier and harder than I thought. In terms of history and politics, it is surprisingly easy. It is, as always, the technical details that get us lost in the lens flairs.
Let’s stop to note this is about setting. It is not about rules. See last post for that whole rant.
One of the reasons we want to include Star Trek is the depth of background material available for the setting in various media. That is also one of the drawbacks – because it tends to run right over other canon. However, because so much of late 20th century SF and SF-like material is derived, consciously or otherwise, from Star Trek, (including Traveller) the transition back and forth is not as jarring as you might fear.
Let’s clear this up first: by Star Trek, we mean the Star Fleet Battles. In this setting, the original series and the animated series are full canon. That is definitely In.
With some flexibility, we can accommodate the movies and Next Generation/Deep Space Nine/Voyager, even though SFB could not by license.
We are ignoring the mirror universes and the Chrono-wars. Not saying they can’t be canon (this would be a fine over-all setting for a time-travel game); just saying I can’t bother with that nonsense in this blog. You are also on your own with Q or anything like him.
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What Traveller calls the Solomani [insert political designation here] began, in the MFV as the United Federation of Planets. Strike all Traveller references to the Terran Confederation. This is now the UFP.
Yes, this means The Map would reflect Star Trek names and characteristics for systems within or adjacent to the traditional UPF range. This includes all the sectors in what 3rd era maps call the Solomani Sphere, plus the row of sectors core-ward from Reaver’s deep to the Hinterworlds.
I’m using this: https://www.enworld.org/threads/fasa-star-trek-maps.334672/
For wider Traveller, I’m using this: travellermap.com
Star Fleet Battles, and the RPG derived from it, is premised on a 6-way war between the Federations and various factions and coalitions of its neighbors. All of these polities achieved warp drive at about the same time. Then greed and fear overcome curiosity and goodwill, and It Is On.
Traveller has a period of time called the n-wars, when the Solmanni empire was at war with its neighbors and the larger alt-human Villani empire was content to watch as they threw whatever their analogue for popcorn was into their fat faces.
The n-Wars according to Traveller canon occur from 2283 to 2296 ce. In Star Trek canon nothing happened in that range except movies and novels, which are hardly a complete account.
So what happened, in our canon, was Star Fleet Battles.
The game universe history tells of the ISC Pacification campaign – you can translate that to Villani. Or you can ignore it.
We are flat out ignoring the Andromedean invasion.
At the conclusion of this last war, the Villani have lost all their buffer zones (meaning the Romulans – see below) between themselves and their rimward cousins, and the bad neighborhood they now dominate. Normally this would be little concern, as the Villani had a 100:1 resource advantage, even if the Fed had not been depleted by constant warfare.
But the Vilanni Emperor of the day was both corrupt and incompetent and went out of the way to ostracize the more rimward viceroys, to the point where the viceroys considered the continued reign of the current emperor to be an existential threat.
So they let the Federation through (with some guarantees). And an Imperial military infrastructure built around jump drives had no idea how to counter warp drives.
We now defer to established Traveller canon for names and dates. Whatever their core values about egalitarian democracy, the Federation was an Empire now, and within a generation, it behaved like one.
The Federation proper persisted in and around its core systems throughout the Rule of Man and into the Twilight that followed its collapse. They retained nominal independence and the two polities became increasingly disconnected over time. So much so, that the larger empire would be hardly mentioned by the officers of TNG era Star Fleet.
In this version of history, we have to note that the Romulan Star Empire, through most of it, floated coreward of Federation Territory, until the Empire reached a permanent peace with the Federation as a result of their alliances during the Dominion War.
The Romulans were compelled to expand rimward and spinward because the vast might of the Vilanni pushed upon them coreward, and the resilience of the Hivers prevented trailing expansion.
They had an understanding with the Hivers (my canon) who also valued them as a buffer zone.
The classic Romulan empire was centered in Traveller Old Expanses, Hinterworlds, Alpha Crucis and Spica. The current map represents what became of the area after the Romulan collapse, which is, conveniently canon with later Trek series like Picard.
The Space Elves – Romulans had a higher technology than their neighbors, save maybe the Hivers, but were always judicious about expansion, mindful of the resource requirements for sustained occupation (a lesson successive human empires would never seem to internalize).
The Vulcans – a break-away faction of Romulans, saw this conquest as inevitable, and did not want to return to the empire they had so painfully fled. So they gifted some promising local street gangs nescient star-faring civilizations with some technological boons.
This, of course, started and arms race that made the n-Wars inevitable, and surely the Vulcans foresaw that. And were not bothered by it, because logic is different than good.
The warp drive “warps” space around the vessel allowing it to move many times faster than it would in regular space under the same propulsion. This technology was originated by the proto-Romulans (before the civil war that forced the Vulcans to flee elsewhere, and reconsider everything about their warlike ways).
Vessels in Warp remain in the physical universe, though in their own warped little pocket of it. By the second generation of this technology, vessels can drop in and out of warp it will. The Federation (meaning the Vulcans) developed sensor technology that allowed them to scan space around them even in warp. Among many other things this allowed them to find and destroy Villani military depots in deep interstellar space that were otherwise reachable only if you knew the jump coordinates.
Surprisingly, Warp 6-8 is about Jump 3 or 4, depending on which reference you use. The Villani J-6 vessels could actually make better time – except that they needed to refuel between jumps.
The matter/anti-matter gravitic drives of the Federation could go years without needing to refuel. Their problem was the maintenance.
Warp drive depends upon Dilithium to regulate the warp core. This is not consumed in use, but it does wear out. Dilithium is rare but obtainable towards the galactic rim. It does not form as easily the further you move coreward; certainly not in enough quantities to fuel a fleet the size of the first or second Imperium’s. This economic reality forced the Second Imperium to adopt jump drives as the standard.
The Second Imperium kept a reserve fleet of warp vessels just in case (as they eyed the Zhodani) but the main fleet was all jump-drive. By the Twilight the warp fleet barely functioned. The Federation, still lingering around Sol, maintained a core of warp-vessels throughout its existence.
By most estimates Star Trek weighs in at Traveller TL 17-18, which is higher than the median.
While we have great admiration for the universe of Traveller, we tire quickly of how hard it works to prevent certain obvious SF technologies from being developed in pursuit of some nebulous game balance.
We don’t care. FTL communications does as much to explains the Federation’s triumph as any other factor including warp drive. And if you see the Romulan’s middle finger behind that well – they don’t actually use such gestures – but still, you are not wrong. (Even before the N-wars, the Romulans were totally done with the First Imperium.)
You can have routine interstellar phone calls and still have a good SF setting. It’s OK.
That rant dispensed with, it is ST canon the FTL communications required an infrastructure of relay stations. Outside of this system, the only way to communicate FTL was a comm torpedo, which is a drone x-ship with a Federation logo.
While transporters were a common technology throughout the Federation, they were restricted to the military soon within the Second Empire. Transporters have about the same range as a large laser. To transport living material with any degree of safety you need a platform at both ends. Transporting with only one platform was always a dangerous stunt reserved for the military.
Let us point out, with some meta-irony, that what they showed in the TV series was not what actually happened. Before the away team beams down to the surface, they first bean down a temp platform. When that platform has a stable synch, the away team materializes upon it.
In an emergency, an away team might be beamed up without a platform, but almost ever down without one.
We have already supposed that Klingons are a variant of Aslans, a major race in Traveller. To make this work on the map you have to swap wholesale the Klingon Empire with the Tholian Assembly. This makes is an Aslan Client state – though an important one.
While the Klingons were clearly inspired by the Mongolians as filtered through the Soviet Union, the Aslans were clearly inspired by Larry Niven’s Kzinti.
The Kzinti are kinda canon for Star trek. Niven included them in a few episodes he wrote for the Aminated Series. He kept the rights, of course, and they have never (directly) appeared anywhere else in Paramount produced works. There are species such as the Caitan that are clearly stand-ins.
In Traveller, the Aslans were late to the jump-drive party, not achieving it until well into the second Imperium (2519 ce). They developed this in peace, being separated from the rest of the quadrant by the Great Rift (this is a astrographic feature – not a political event). Perhaps the Klingons found them first? We don’t have to decide that here.
You could also leave the Klingons where they are, contracting their empire until they are out of Hiver space. This leaves them a minor race that has nothing to do with the Aslan.
Klingons might need their own article.
All the other races in Star Trek would be considered minor races.
Sure, you might have an empire dominated by Changelings – but not on the main map.
The Borg Collective made some incursions through Villani space into the Federation, but their core systems in the Delta quadrant are not on the map.
The Gorn are a Saurian variant (last post) but have been isolated from the main Saurian regimes for some time.
The Cardassians, Ferrengi, Tholians and the Breen all had their moments, but are really just pocket empires.
http://forum.mongoosepublishing.com/viewtopic.php?f=89&t=40367
https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Warp_factor
20 Monday Apr 2020
Posted in Integrated MultiFantastiVerse, Other Media, RPG settings
I have, partly through my own efforts, and partly from the efforts of friends who have lost the means or will to store such things, acquired shelves full of various RPG supplements. Many times I have stared at this wall of dead trees and for the most part abandoned projects and wondered if all of this could be combined into a single universe.
This would give me a means to cover a wide range of scenarios in a relatively high level of detail. Different regions or cultures or time periods would just reference different game settings.
I have done this at the Fantasy level. When I used to run Atlantis in the ancient bc (before children) there were five different schools of magic, each drawing spells from a different fantasy RPG setting. (The common rule system was home-brew) (Not GAFT) I also used those setting to fill in various professions and equipment availability. But that was one place and one time and only about 5 different systems.
Can I do that on a cosmic scale – and use all of these books?
Can I create a detailed universe while making hardly anything up?
Let’s explore that for a while, because otherwise I would have to write about useful things.
Many worlds shoved into one box…
So first a few meta-assumptions:
What the far future looked light at the end of the 1970’s
The scaffolding onto which we construct the Multi-Fantasti-Verse [MFV from now on] will be Traveller. Which version? All of them. One of the best things about Traveller is its scope both in space and in time. Even given this scope, it has gone into remarkable detail, especially since it has been a living game, in various incarnations since 1977.
If you know nothing of this game, behold the Map: https://travellermap.com/
Most RPG settings have a fixed start time and are a snapshot of their world at that time. “It is year 1000 of the Imperial calendar, and dark forces loom on the horizon…”
Traveller has published several settings (under several different publishers) over the years, each set in a different time period. This works to our advantage as some of the settings I would put here would only make sense in one time period or another.
There is no other published product that comes close in either scope or detail. A few others get better detail (Star Frontiers comes to mind) and the GURPS supplements on this subject do not want for scope. But neither can touch the hoary old game where your characters can infamously die in character creation, and which Word unfailingly flags as misspelled.
Now that we’ve praised it, let’s kill it.
Traveller has a serious, hard-science tone that works for a small percentage of non-Traveller products out there. We will have to loosen it up considerably.
Traveller also has some underlying technology assumptions that we will simply abandon. Traveller supposes, for example, that FTL communication is not possible, but flight is. We can’t abide by that. There will be a portion of the setting where FTL communication is undiscovered – but other parts will have it. There’s a long list like this.
We are Canon!
Canon Traveller has five major races meaning distinct species that firmly control a hundred systems or more: Humans (three different branches) Hivers, Aslans, K-Kri (aka centaurs) and either the Vargr or the Droyne depending on where you draw the line and how. We are going to add at least two more.
Traveller proposes a version of Panspermia – a long -established SF trope that explains why the galaxy would be full of humanoids when that seems statistically impossible. I note here that I personally hate this trope, but many of the settings I want to include, including Traveller itself, rely upon it.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Panspermia
In particular, Humanity in Traveller is one of three distinct lines of human beings who achieved space conquest prior to ever meeting each other. This has some conveniences when plopping in other settings. It still makes my brain itch.
I am further adding, on my own, the general assumption that civilizations tend to become more advanced Coreward and less advanced Rimward. This is for off-the-map denizens. The various polities of Traveller are more-or-less on equal if shifting footings, as, on a galactic scale, they are still near neighbors.
Another assumption is that it is easier to modify species to fit a planet than to modify a planet to fit a species, and this is the approach of any space-faring species that considers ethics or (more reliably) economy. Thus you can have a lot of variations within a species depending upon which planet they adapted to.
A quick guide to the major factions on mainstream Traveller, and what I might add or change:
To which we add:
Traveller has a lot of Pocket Empires, polities that cover a dozen worlds or so, and a lot of settings fit into that.
We will add a category of Mauraders – predatory forces that conquer worlds, strip them of anything useful, and then move on.
Yes – I’m doing this. And when we come back, we’ll start with the big shiny lens-flare on the bridge – Star Trek.
24 Wednesday Apr 2019
Tags
Doc Smith, Ethereal Plane, Hyperspace, hyperspace shunt, Inertialess Drive, Inevitable galactic empire, Lensemen, Traveler RPG
This is 3rd in the series. The first part, which explains our premise, can be found here.
The same Star Wars graphic everyone else uses…
If what follows seems less scientifically documented, that’s because it is. We start scraping against fantasy past here.
Hyperspace Shunt
Many FTL schemes envision an alternate dimension within or adjacent to our own through which vehicles might pass through to arrive somewhere else in the universe in a much shorter time. This is your classic hyperspace. This is how ships move about in Star Wars and Traveler.
There is, to my understanding, no functional difference between Hyperspace and the Ethereal Plane of Dungeons and Dragons and all its derivatives. So Star Finder GM’s take note.
Hyperspace from a Liberal Arts perspective
The Hyperdrive (or Jump Drive or whatever) is whatever gizmo you use to port your shiny ship into Hyperspace. It may or may not be integral with your regular propulsion. Once in Hyperspace, how long you stay may be a function of how far you plan to travel, or a function of the plot.
The RPG Traveler takes the position that you always spend the same amount of time in “Jumpspace” – 150 hours – regardless of how far you jump. This seems like a compromise decision made by a committee in order to move on to the next thing.
How to enter the Ethereal Plane with “science”
The functional difference between hyperspace and Wormholes is mobility. The ships effectively make their own entrances and exits as they go. If they have to travel to fixed and charted jump-points you have wormhole with different architecture.
Like Warp Bubbles, you are either in the universe or you are outside of it. In my version of this, the big difference between hyperspace and simple extra-dimensional shunting is the possibility of encounters; strange and dangerous encounters.
Unlike instantaneous jump drives (which we get to below) there is some travel time to be idled away on character development or whatever within hyperspace. This – for me – is what defines the approach.
Time spent in hyperspace in most fiction or generally tracks along with the passage of time in the regular universe. Meaning 150 hours ship time is 150 hours regular universe time. This does not need to be the case, however. You could still roll two sets of dice: one for subjective time in Hyperspace and one for objective time that passed in the actual universe.
The random time approach is as much in line with known physics as anything else about hyperspace – meaning none of it. It has as much scientific validity as the Ethereal Plane.
Among the many tropes that E.E. “Doc” Smith concocted for his Lensmen series was the Inertialess Drive. (Reasonably good summary of its first appearance here]. Applied gravitics cancel out the inertia quality of the mass. Then , assuming you start outside of a gravity well, there is nothing that will affect the speed of the mass except friction, which is negligible in outer space.
If you’re so advanced, how come your spaceship looks like a used Russian submarine?
By wiping out inertia and gravity you can ignore Einstein’s speed limit and go as fast as you can project yourself with your hand-wavium projector. You can’t use a thruster- or anything like that. Those rely on inertia.
You can make a case that you ignore the time-dilation effects as well, but many authors have had good fun claiming the opposite.
This assumes technological control of Gravitics, afterwards this is the next big leap.
If you want a ship that goes really fast (Doc Smith wrote about parsecs per hour) but stays in the universe, this is it.
As I wrote in an earlier post:
Every point in space/time resonates at a certain, distinct frequency. No – stop. If you argue this will take forever. Just accept for a while until we get to the bottom of the blog. Physical time travel, then, can be accomplished by changing the frequency of an object to match the frequency of a different point in space/time.
Jump Drives use this theory, or something equally absurd, to effectively teleport the ship, instantaneously, to another part of the universe.
[Maybe I should note hear that the Traveler “Jump drive” is a hypserspace drive as we discussed above. Nothing in the canon Traveler universe does anything like this.]
There is often some exotic resource required, some range limitations, and some time required to start (or spool -up as the new Battlestar Galactica would say) the jump. But the transport itself is instantaneous.
In my fiction, you have to find a way to change the vibrations of every single particle in the mass to be moved. Moving in just space, that resonance change can be permanent, assuming you do not collide with existing mass upon arrival. If you add time to the space equation, (or space to the time equation) the resonance shift is inherently unstable, and you will eventually snap back to your original harmonics.
How long will that take? Let me roll some dice…
With the three methods above, there are no choke points to concentrate your defenses on; an enemy could pop out of nowhere at any time. (OK – you might see Inertialess Drive coming – as they slow down). You can bop around the galaxy or even farther in the time it takes to clear the shipping dock.
That makes a coherent, centralized galactic empire almost inevitable.
I have a bookshelf full of RPG’s many of them space-opera. I sometimes imagine a sprawling space opera setting where all of the above are possible, depending on where you go, and who you go with. Because none of these schemes actually prohibit the other schemes. There is a (fictional) universe where they are all viable.
That’s a whole different series of posts though. Watch this space.
06 Wednesday Mar 2019
Tags
Alcubierre Drive, Bias Drive, FTL, FTL physics, Gravitic Lensing, Insane super science, Star Trek physics, Tau Zero Foundation, Warp Drive
This is part Two. Part one is here.
FTL methods explored in approximate order of plausibility.
Not copyrighted by Paramount.
Better known as the Alcubierre Drive, because Paramount can’t sue you for that. This gets a lot of press because there is some experimental, and a lot of mathematical validity to it, and because it seems a lot like Star Trek.
It’s not Star Trek Warp Drive, but that is a deep deep nerd discussion beyond this article. It has the same practical effect.
The Alcubbierre Drive creates a bubble around the vehicle that slips through space-time at hyper-luminal velocities from the point of view of a stationary observer. The ship doesn’t move; the bubble does all the moving.
Seriously, there is real math behind this.
Like the wormholes, creating such a bubble requires “exotic matter” in this case matter possessing negative energy density. There is a measurable quantum dynamic in a vacuum between two plates called the Casimir effect that demonstrates the distant possibility of such matter. But there’s a lot of steps between weird measurements in a lab, and a bubble of space-time around your shiny spaceship.
There are, actually, a lot of variants on this theme.
The Tau Zero Foundation keeps track of such things:
Warp drive and wormholes are two examples which rely on known solutions to the equations of General Relativity, but other concepts have been proposed that are much more speculative. A short list – Diametric, Bias, Disjunction and Pitch Drives, all of which involve creating a gradient in space-time that is mobile.
https://tauzero.aero/making-progress/propulsion-ideas/
Anyway, You make a magic bubble around the ship – somehow- and it moves, and the ship rides along inside of it. And because this bubble isn’t really part of the regular universe, it can go FTL without making Einstein cringe.
Can you engage the rest of the universe while inside your warped bubble? This happened all the time in early Star Trek – but that gets into the deeper nerd-hole that we don’t have time for.
Most plausibly – no. You are either in the bubble or out of the bubble – just like more recent Star Trek offerings would suggest.
But you don’t need no stinking gate. You don’t really even need a propulsion system (though you likely have one for when you turn the bubble off. You plot a course and make it so.
A starship I made up using a drive I made up.
Full disclosure, I made this up for my own fiction, and it is not based at all on popular or plausible FTL methods. The Tau Zero folks might call this a Bias Drive.
Using a configuration of powerful gravitic forces such as singularities (at the primitive stages) to gravitic generators, space/time is condensed or “warped” to the fore of the vehicle and left to expand to “normal” shape to the aft of the vehicle. The effect is a multiple of the vehicles regular velocity that is unrestricted by the lightspeed barrier.
Artificial singularities, kept in stasis fields, anchored to the side of the ship. What could go wrong?
This is not an Alcubierre Drive. That method is less insane.
The ship requires some propulsion other than the gravitic lens, which distorts spacetime around the ship, but does not, by itself, move or cause movement.
Using the gravity lens technique keeps the vehicle in “normal” space, and can therefore collide with other objects, so using it inside areas with substantial mass densities (such as star systems) is suicidal. The vehicle is further subject to any time dilation associated with high velocity travel. Also, any malfunction could cause the gravitic lens to collapse in on itself, imploding the ship down to the subatomic level.
You must plot straight lines. You cannot turn these things.
Humans are the only race known to employ this method beyond the experimental level. All other races consider it far too dangerous, not just for the users, but it appears to scar spacetime itself.
When They stopped us, they said, “We are not certain which frightens us more: that fact that you thought of this, or the fact that you used it.”
Even after it was outlawed, humans kept a few of these around, because of course we did.
Because development was halted early, and perhaps because of real technical barriers, Humans never gained any speed faster than 240% lightspeed with this method. That’s still more almost two years to the nearest star.
Next: Hyperspace
06 Wednesday Feb 2019
Tags
exotic matter, Faster Than Light travel, FTL, FTL physics, space opera, space opera RPG, wormholes
There are three questions you have to answer to satisfaction in order to work out the future:
This is about question #3.
The same Star Wars image every other site uses
What this is not going to be is a deep discussion of the physics of pushing some poor dumb object faster than the absolute speed limit of the universe. Nor is this going to be about the various sub-light propulsion systems that exist in practice and theory.
This is about Faster Than Light schemes that we (mostly) made up, and how they influence your space opera or other science fictional universe.
Before we get to all of that, let us pause to consider the answer “No – it is NOT possible to exceed the speed of light in a vacuum either actually or practically.” If that is your answer, you are concocting what is called “Hard” science fiction. The answer “no” to question #3 informally defines the category.
You are in line with known physics, and there is, in truth, a lot of drama just in our own solar system and immediate stellar neighborhood. Enjoy.
But we are off to the ridiculously far horizon, and we are done with you now.
The stars you see in the sky are not the stars that are there now, but the light from stars from tens or hundreds or thousands or millions of years ago. As fast as light is [299 792 458 meters / second, just shy of 300k kilometers / second] it is still too slow to get around our vast cosmic neighborhood in any reasonable amount of time.
Not that you could anyway. By conventional known-physics propulsion, speeds nearing light speed require exponentially more energy.
Naw, if you want to get anywhere within your own lifetime, you are going to have to cheat.
It is – theoretically – possible to sneak around the light speed barrier, but you you have to hand wave over some accepted physics, and trust in some mad notions which are totally unproven.
Because the secret purpose of this article is to work out some canon for a loosely planned space opera RPG campaign, I have ordered these in easiest to most difficult for a GM to organize galactic empires around.
Fold a piece of paper and stick a pencil through it. Just that easy.
Wormholes in space top a lot of lists because they are a real things that exist. By wormhole we don’t mean Black Holes – which are totally real, along with their soul-crushing gravity that will stretch your already irradiated corpse out like an infinite noodle. By the time you have the tech to fly through one of those, you won’t need to.
Instead, a natural or artificially induced wormhole, an extra-dimensional tunnel connecting two otherwise distant locations in the universe, is utilized for transport. Forming the wormholes is a complex, resource-intensive endeavor generally beyond that of any individual vehicle. Because they can be stabilized, however, they are normally constructed as permanent facilities. Once in place, any vehicle is capable of using them.
To stabilize the wormhole at any reasonable size you need “exotic matter” which is theoretically possible in some versions of physics, but has not been shown to actually exist. Scientific American explains:
[quote]
That’s right: mass, but negative. A ring of negative-mass material could be used to construct a fully functional and useful wormhole. Since the exotic nature of negative mass warps spacetime in a unique way, it “inflates” the entrance to the wormhole outside the boundary of the event horizon, and stabilizes the throat of the wormhole against instabilities. It’s not an intuitive result but the math checks out.
Contrary to the depictions in fiction (including mine) These things are likely spherical and would glow with a halo of radiation (which I did get right).
I drew a glowy doughnut
Also, there is the problem of location.
Does the wormhole move with the rest of the galaxy? There is no reason to assume that it would. (We have given this matter some thought.) Eventually I decided that the mechanism holding the gate open was subject to local gravitational forces, and moved with the system.
The other question is how long are you in the wormhole? Sure, it looks like it has length in the illustrations, but those are illustrations. The distance you actually travel from Actual Point A to actual Point B may be zero, or a percentage of the objective distance, or random.
Instantaneous, zero distance is the coward’s way out, but supported by the math – of simplicity. Space divided by time might equal zero.
A percentage of the distance, say 1% is likewise easy to manage, but probably not real at all.
I tend towards random. One of the supposed methods of creating a wormhole is expanding and directing of the naturally occurring ones in the quantum foam. The quantum foam is the Platonic ideal of chaos. So I’d roll two sets of dice: one for how long they spent making the journey by objective universe time, and one for how long they spent on the journey by the ship’s clock.
Consider how this screws up more than GM accounting. Bad enough trying to manage shipping logistics with this sort of chaos; try coordinating an invasion. Not only is your target going to have all their guns pointed at the gate all the time, but there is zero guarantee that any of your ships will arrive together.
Maybe the more civilized portions of the galaxy have wormholes with regular durations.
Maybe.
Next: Warped Drivers
Curious Continuity 