Why are SPACE RPGs so uncommon?

[Nooneatall]

I reject the common notion that games are escapism.
I say games are for transmission of stories, ideas, culture, etc.,

I would be a much different person without Gary Gygax transmitting his ideas in the form of a game.

I'm not saying games are just mere escapism, they can certainly serve several purposes...but there is no point in creating a game (just to transmit stories, ideas, culture, etc) if there are no plans to take advantage of an interactive medium that can serve as a respite/diversion from daily life.

I use it 100% as escapism and usually something to keep my hands and mind busy as I listen to podcasts. I don't see it as art or really usually care about the story outside of a few very specific games. I would much rather read a book if I'm interested in a story and it's easier to find genres and stories that target my particular tastes whereas games are usually just what's popular at the time (souls like, dark fantasy, roguelike over and over again forever)

[aimlesshealer]

However something like a "Turian" from Mass Effect requires it's own loredump so you get what their deal is. A toddler probably knows what a dwarf is but a "Kaleeshi" is a bit dubious. You have to find a way to get people immediately interested but also comfortable in your world without having to overload them with a bunch of wikipedia codex articles about **** they have no reason to be invested in enough to bother reading yet.

This is where good visual design can do wonders. With it, the player can tell what a race/culture is all about without reading a single word. Of course the specifics require exposition, but with the right cover the book can be judged instantly. Though sometimes an enigmatic race makes an enticing puzzle, tying into the theme of "exploration of the unknown" quite nicely.

Space exploration does seem stale nowadays, so I'm glad to be mildly ****** about it. I believe a good chunk of the things we think we know about space are flat-out wrong. Both Maxwell and Tesla espoused ether, and relativity is flagrant jewish ********, being one of the pillars of soyience (contradictory, dogmatic, and in open defiance of truth). If that sounds crazy, check out Herbert Dingle's "Science at the Crossroads" to see how his refutation of Einstein was mocked, ignored, and finally blacklisted from scientific journals. The refutation is dead simple, too: Dingle emphasizes that it's perfectly understandable to a layman. He had to publish a book just to get his response out to the public. The man was shocked to see how scientists had abandoned integrity and pursuit of truth, exchanging them for dogma and consensus. And this was in 1972. If only he could see how bad things got...

Basically, what sci-fi needs is to throw out 20-21st century soyience and to Make Space Great Again.

[UltraFan123]

I have been thinking about it for a while, and I think one of the core reasons for why sci-fi isn't as popular as medieval fantasy could be because sci-fi still doesn't has its own version of Tolkien.

Pretty much most of modern fantasy tropes can be traced back to Tolkien; elves, dwarves, dragons, orcs, high magic, etc. Which in turn directly inspired Gygax to expand upon those tropes in his wargame.

Before Tolkien the fantasy genre was stuff like Conan the Barbarian where none of the aforementioned tropes were common.

I could be wrong, but I can't think of any particular sci-fi setting that had a huge enough impact to be considered a source of everpresent tropes in many sci-fi settings that came after it.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

sci-fi still doesn't has its own version of Tolkien

It does! It just doesn't have one single work, but multiple. Star Wars and Star Trek exploded the sci fi genre aesthetic as we know it today, with pacific WW2 battles and submarine battles. Star Trek popularized the idea of some sort of multi world federation in the future and teleporters. Starship Troopers, Warhammer 40k, Halo, and Starcraft have popularized the idea of space marines. Alien popularized the idea of some sort of horrifying alien species that devours all and consumes worlds. The Matrix popularized the dream within a dream/world within a world idea. Gundam popularized mechs in space being used against other people. And so on.

[Norfleet]

Even if you completely transfer all the kinetic energy from the crash to the moon, then beneficiate the ore and smelt the metal on the moon, there is STILL an appreciable amount of heat, enough to seriously affect the ecosystem over the long term, inherently produced just from moving a significant mass of metal - say a million tons a day - from lunar orbit to Earth's surface where people can actually use it.

I think you're overestimating how much energy is involved: The Earth is already being constantly blasted with a 173,000 TW deathray at all times. The amount of energy that is involved with dropping a million tons of mass from LEO can be roughly estimated as ~mgh = 1B kgs * 10m/s^2 * 100000m = 1,000,000 TJ. Averaged out of the course of a day (86400s), that works out to only 11.5 TW, which is a completely insignificant fraction of 173,000 TW.

[TKVNC]

Even if you completely transfer all the kinetic energy from the crash to the moon, then beneficiate the ore and smelt the metal on the moon, there is STILL an appreciable amount of heat, enough to seriously affect the ecosystem over the long term, inherently produced just from moving a significant mass of metal - say a million tons a day - from lunar orbit to Earth's surface where people can actually use it.

I think you're overestimating how much energy is involved: The Earth is already being constantly blasted with a 173,000 TW deathray at all times. The amount of energy that is involved with dropping a million tons of mass from LEO can be roughly estimated as ~mgh = 1B kgs * 10m/s^2 * 100000m = 1,000,000 TJ. Averaged out of the course of a day (86400s), that works out to only 11.5 TW, which is a completely insignificant fraction of 173,000 TW.

Well the Dinosaur's meteor was something like 1 trillion tons, which still wasn't enough to destroy the Earth.

So other than killing a lot of swarthoids, I can't really imagine it being too much of a problem.

[Norfleet]

So other than killing a lot of swarthoids, I can't really imagine it being too much of a problem.

It's not gonna kill anything. The amount of energy involved does not even really register, because it cannot compete against the fact that THE SUN IS A DEADLY LAZOR.

[Stack of Turtles]

Even if you completely transfer all the kinetic energy from the crash to the moon, then beneficiate the ore and smelt the metal on the moon, there is STILL an appreciable amount of heat, enough to seriously affect the ecosystem over the long term, inherently produced just from moving a significant mass of metal - say a million tons a day - from lunar orbit to Earth's surface where people can actually use it.

I think you're overestimating how much energy is involved: The Earth is already being constantly blasted with a 173,000 TW deathray at all times. The amount of energy that is involved with dropping a million tons of mass from LEO can be roughly estimated as ~mgh = 1B kgs * 10m/s^2 * 100000m = 1,000,000 TJ. Averaged out of the course of a day (86400s), that works out to only 11.5 TW, which is a completely insignificant fraction of 173,000 TW.

You're dropping it from lunar orbit, not from LEO. Well, either that, or you're braking it into LEO, which is its own energy expenditure we still can't afford.

Even if you completely transfer all the kinetic energy from the crash to the moon, then beneficiate the ore and smelt the metal on the moon, there is STILL an appreciable amount of heat, enough to seriously affect the ecosystem over the long term, inherently produced just from moving a significant mass of metal - say a million tons a day - from lunar orbit to Earth's surface where people can actually use it.

I think you're overestimating how much energy is involved: The Earth is already being constantly blasted with a 173,000 TW deathray at all times. The amount of energy that is involved with dropping a million tons of mass from LEO can be roughly estimated as ~mgh = 1B kgs * 10m/s^2 * 100000m = 1,000,000 TJ. Averaged out of the course of a day (86400s), that works out to only 11.5 TW, which is a completely insignificant fraction of 173,000 TW.

Well the Dinosaur's meteor was something like 1 trillion tons, which still wasn't enough to destroy the Earth.

So other than killing a lot of swarthoids, I can't really imagine it being too much of a problem.

It's definitely not going to destroy the Earth, nothing of any reasonable size would destroy the Earth. It may still give you a hard time. It's been a long time since I ran the numbers (accounting for Norfleet's mistake above), but I recall that it would basically amount to making global warming real. Not catastrophic, probably, but a bit troublesome for everyone.

[Norfleet]

You're dropping it from lunar orbit, not from LEO.

The escape velocity of the Earth is 11 km/s. Dropping a million tons from infinity and beyond (0.5 * 1B kg * 11000^2) / 86400 a day yields 700 TW. Again, not enough. You can't drop it any faster than this because then it won't stop when you drop it by the Earth and will just escape back into space. If you want to deliver cargo any faster than this, you're either going to have to expend effort to stop it before it reaches the Earth, or it's going to violently crash into the Earth as a weapon instead, which is outside the scope of this conversation.

It's also predicated on the idea that you simply entirely waste the energy by dissipating it into the Earth as heat, instead of recovering any of it to launch things into space via an orbital tether. But as we see, it just doesn't ******* matter because THE SUN IS A DEADLY LAZOR and you're competing against that for your environmental impact.

Well, either that, or you're braking it into LEO, which is its own energy expenditure we still can't afford.

I remind you that the sun is a deadly lazor, so you can just use that.

[Stack of Turtles]

You're dropping it from lunar orbit, not from LEO.

The escape velocity of the Earth is 11 km/s. Dropping a million tons from infinity and beyond (0.5 * 1B kg * 11000^2) / 86400 a day yields 700 TW. Again, not enough. You can't drop it any faster than this because then it won't stop when you drop it by the Earth and will just escape back into space. If you want to deliver cargo any faster than this, you're either going to have to expend effort to stop it before it reaches the Earth, or it's going to violently crash into the Earth as a weapon instead, which is outside the scope of this conversation.

It's also predicated on the idea that you simply entirely waste the energy by dissipating it into the Earth as heat, instead of recovering any of it to launch things into space via an orbital tether. But as we see, it just doesn't ******* matter because THE SUN IS A DEADLY LAZOR and you're competing against that for your environmental impact.

Well, either that, or you're braking it into LEO, which is its own energy expenditure we still can't afford.

I remind you that the sun is a deadly lazor, so you can just use that.

I was only talking about slamming it into the Earth at full speed because we don't have any practical way of braking a million tons of material to begin with. I'm saying it doesn't work by ANY means.

[Norfleet]

It's definitely not going to destroy the Earth, nothing of any reasonable size would destroy the Earth. It may still give you a hard time. It's been a long time since I ran the numbers (accounting for Norfleet's mistake above), but I recall that it would basically amount to making global warming real. Not catastrophic, probably, but a bit troublesome for everyone.

It's not a MISTAKE. I just figure you can figure out some sensible method of braking in space, like, I dunno, using the sun and a big metal umbrella, before finally crashing out of the sky. I also gave you the numbers for the worst way to crash out of the sky, which are also fine. And if global warming is bothering you, just, I dunno, big umbrella.

I was only talking about slamming it into the Earth at full speed because we don't have any practical way of braking a million tons of material to begin with. I'm saying it doesn't work by ANY means.

Well, those are your numbers for having a package deliver that simply screams through the atmosphere like a gasoline-soaked cat before plowing into the desert somewhere. Quite possibly the least efficient way to run a space delivery, but it's not going to do anything to the climate. The numbers only improve if you decrease the terribleness of your methods.

It's also predicated on the idea that we deliver most of this material to Earth's surface, as opposed to delivering to orbital industry. After all, our goal is to launch MORE THINGS INTO SPACE. If your net transfer balance from Earth-to-space is negative, you're not really into space. Don't get me started on what it would take to launch a meaningful number of PEOPLE into space. Evacuation of the Earth is basically logistically impossible.

[Kalarion]

sci-fi still doesn't has its own version of Tolkien

It does! It just doesn't have one single work, but multiple. Star Wars and Star Trek exploded the sci fi genre aesthetic as we know it today, with pacific WW2 battles and submarine battles. Star Trek popularized the idea of some sort of multi world federation in the future and teleporters. Starship Troopers, Warhammer 40k, Halo, and Starcraft have popularized the idea of space marines. Alien popularized the idea of some sort of horrifying alien species that devours all and consumes worlds. The Matrix popularized the dream within a dream/world within a world idea. Gundam popularized mechs in space being used against other people. And so on.

I thought of this too, but I don't think it's correct. Star Wars and Star Trek were both much smaller in their original imagination and implementation, and only expanded with the work of multiple dozens of authors, illustrators, nerd theoreticians and shitlib history creators. The results are pretty silly - basic logical questions destroy many of the canonical historical narratives, a lot of stuff makes no sense, there's no coherent aesthetic etc for everything. "Style guides!", you say; how many exist for each setting? How many different authorial intents? And this diversity is generally encouraged! The creators wanted people to burrow into those settings like ticks and create their own little story and setting pockets. The same thing with for instance Warhammer 40K; they're all a mess, and it's difficult to draw from them for derivative works that are instantly recognizable to a general audience (I don't want games targeted at a general audience but that's neither here nor there). You can make derivative work from this stuff, but it's not instantly recognizable to the entire world in the same way as Lord of the Rings.

Contrast to the Legendarium. It was an entire world, its history, its languages and cultures, its wars, the movements of its peoples, the zoom-in of the personal stories of its characters, all strictly curated and refined by a single mind. Combine that with a worldwide reception and an audience that universally loved (I mean really loved, in the sense that they became invested in knowing more about it and nurturing it) it, and you have what Vergil was talking about. Derivative works are their own thing, in their own setting, but because they derive from something so uniquely coherent and universal, they're instantly recognizable and understood, even if you're going to **** with the specifics in one way or another.

Star Wars and Star Trek are a Bob Ross painting of a tree. They're pretty, your mind can fill in the necessary details looking at it, the man behind the painting is obviously a phenom of some kind, but at the end of the day they're just brush strokes where your mind is expected to do most of the heavy lifting. The Legendarium is Niggle's tree. Every single leaf painstakingly placed and detailed just so, every strip of bark accounted for, every root burrowing into the earth in just the right spot.

Space needs a Tolkien. But how many Tolkiens has all of humanity gotten in its entire history?

EDIT: fixed Vergil's name since my ping didn't work correctly.

[TKVNC]

sci-fi still doesn't has its own version of Tolkien

It does! It just doesn't have one single work, but multiple. Star Wars and Star Trek exploded the sci fi genre aesthetic as we know it today, with pacific WW2 battles and submarine battles. Star Trek popularized the idea of some sort of multi world federation in the future and teleporters. Starship Troopers, Warhammer 40k, Halo, and Starcraft have popularized the idea of space marines. Alien popularized the idea of some sort of horrifying alien species that devours all and consumes worlds. The Matrix popularized the dream within a dream/world within a world idea. Gundam popularized mechs in space being used against other people. And so on.

I thought of this too, but I don't think it's correct. Star Wars and Star Trek were both much smaller in their original imagination and implementation, and only expanded with the work of multiple dozens of authors, illustrators, nerd theoreticians and shitlib history creators. The results are pretty silly - basic logical questions destroy many of the canonical historical narratives, a lot of stuff makes no sense, there's no coherent aesthetic etc for everything. "Style guides!", you say; how many exist for each setting? How many different authorial intents? And this diversity is generally encouraged! The creators wanted people to burrow into those settings like ticks and create their own little story and setting pockets. The same thing with for instance Warhammer 40K; they're all a mess, and it's difficult to draw from them for derivative works that are instantly recognizable to a general audience (I don't want games targeted at a general audience but that's neither here nor there). You can make derivative work from this stuff, but it's not instantly recognizable to the entire world in the same way as Lord of the Rings.

Contrast to the Legendarium. It was an entire world, its history, its languages and cultures, its wars, the movements of its peoples, the zoom-in of the personal stories of its characters, all strictly curated and refined by a single mind. Combine that with a worldwide reception and an audience that universally loved (I mean really loved, in the sense that they became invested in knowing more about it and nurturing it) it, and you have what Vergil was talking about. Derivative works are their own thing, in their own setting, but because they derive from something so uniquely coherent and universal, they're instantly recognizable and understood, even if you're going to **** with the specifics in one way or another.

Star Wars and Star Trek are a Bob Ross painting of a tree. They're pretty, your mind can fill in the necessary details looking at it, the man behind the painting is obviously a phenom of some kind, but at the end of the day they're just brush strokes where your mind is expected to do most of the heavy lifting. The Legendarium is Niggle's tree. Every single leaf painstakingly placed and detailed just so, every strip of bark accounted for, every root burrowing into the earth in just the right spot.

Space needs a Tolkien. But how many Tolkiens has all of humanity gotten in its entire history?

EDIT: fixed Vergil's name since my ping didn't work correctly.

Edgar Rice Burroughs with John Carter, or perhaps Frank Herbert with Dune were basically space Tolkien. The problem is the settings being in space necessarily create a situation where it becomes difficult to add another story.

Either it becomes universal, and competes with the original writers vision, or it is confined to a small area, and may as well not even be in space.

You know, actually, perhaps with the resurgence of DUNE through the new game, and the films, we might actually see space RPG's expanded

[Stack of Turtles]

By the way, if you guys were wondering, while the sun does release a shitload of energy, the net energy actually absorbed by the Earth is only under 500TW. So yeah, dropping hot steel from lunar orbit would be a big deal.

[Oyster Sauce]

By the way, if you guys were wondering, while the sun does release a shitload of energy, the net energy actually absorbed by the Earth is only under 500TW. So yeah, dropping hot steel from lunar orbit would be a bit deal.

I'm going to try it and see what happens

[Norfleet]

By the way, if you guys were wondering, while the sun does release a shitload of energy, the net energy actually absorbed by the Earth is only under 500TW.

ALL of the absorbed energy is ultimately re-radiated into space. That's how any object manages to maintain a temperature in the first place: Energy in => Energy out. If an object actually had net absorption, it would heat up until the energy it was radiating off caught up to what it was taking in. That's just basic physics.

Now if you mean the energy that ends up on the SURFACE, since most of the energy hitting the Earth from the sun gets deflected by the atmosphere, that similarly applies to catching incoming steel, as most of the braking action will similarly occur in the upper atmosphere.

And, of course, all this assumes you're doing it in the most hamfisted and brutish way possible. Incorporating basically ANY level of finesse rapidly reduces the amount of energy you're actually depositing onto the Earth this way: For instance, if you used electromagnetic braking, you'd actually be able to recover some of the energy and use it to generate power for electromagnetic launching as well.

Finally, it obviously doesn't make very much sense to drop a million tons of steel per day. Steel isn't a high-value commodity on Earth. The Earth doesn't exactly have a steel shortage. The things you'd be importing are lesser quantities of materials NOT trivially found on Earth, like gold. You would NOT be dropping a million tons of that per day. The steel manufactured in space would be used for space construction, not sent to Earth.

[J1M]

Even if you completely transfer all the kinetic energy from the crash to the moon, then beneficiate the ore and smelt the metal on the moon, there is STILL an appreciable amount of heat, enough to seriously affect the ecosystem over the long term, inherently produced just from moving a significant mass of metal - say a million tons a day - from lunar orbit to Earth's surface where people can actually use it.

I think you're overestimating how much energy is involved: The Earth is already being constantly blasted with a 173,000 TW deathray at all times. The amount of energy that is involved with dropping a million tons of mass from LEO can be roughly estimated as ~mgh = 1B kgs * 10m/s^2 * 100000m = 1,000,000 TJ. Averaged out of the course of a day (86400s), that works out to only 11.5 TW, which is a completely insignificant fraction of 173,000 TW.

You're dropping it from lunar orbit, not from LEO. Well, either that, or you're braking it into LEO, which is its own energy expenditure we still can't afford.

I think you're overestimating how much energy is involved: The Earth is already being constantly blasted with a 173,000 TW deathray at all times. The amount of energy that is involved with dropping a million tons of mass from LEO can be roughly estimated as ~mgh = 1B kgs * 10m/s^2 * 100000m = 1,000,000 TJ. Averaged out of the course of a day (86400s), that works out to only 11.5 TW, which is a completely insignificant fraction of 173,000 TW.

Well the Dinosaur's meteor was something like 1 trillion tons, which still wasn't enough to destroy the Earth.

So other than killing a lot of swarthoids, I can't really imagine it being too much of a problem.

It's definitely not going to destroy the Earth, nothing of any reasonable size would destroy the Earth. It may still give you a hard time. It's been a long time since I ran the numbers (accounting for Norfleet's mistake above), but I recall that it would basically amount to making global warming real. Not catastrophic, probably, but a bit troublesome for everyone.

The planet being warmer is a net benefit. History shows this. Coastal regions worth caring about are easily saved. Seattle did it over 100 years ago.