Drake Equation and SF

[subplotkudzu]

While the votes are still no where near being in, I am noodling with what I might do with a 'start from scratch' Traveller game. One idea that came to mind is how one could model various SF series based on where they weight the Drake Equation. (an additional factor might be added for those who have obtaoed FTL travel).

The Foundation Series, for example, effectively zeroes out the number of planets other than Earth develop intelligent life.

Pournelle's CoDominion, what I know if it, is very close to that, with only one other sentient species (the Moties) appearing.

Known Space, on the other hand, has moderately high numbers across the board, with several communcation-capable intelligent species, but several more habitable but non-sentient race worlds for those species to colonize. 

Stephen Baxter's Xeelee stories keep the "viable planets that will develop life" at 100%, but greatly expands the definition of 'viable' so there are living ice creatures in the ice on pluto and elsewhere across the Sol system.
 
Jack McDevit's Priscilla Hutchens novels, while they have a low number of habitable worlds per star, focus on the low length of time any civilization survives to send messages into space, so our heroes find several artifact rich dead worlds or peoples collapsed back to a pre-gasoline tech level.

This is just me playing with an idea, but has anyone ever seen this discussed in an RPG context.

Comments

[notthebuddha.livejournal.com]

ISTR The Traveller Book mentioned alien-less games as possibilities to suit the refree's preferences, along with religion-less settings or more medieval-toned feudalism.

[mylescorcoran]

I can't think of any games that address it explicitly or implicitly. Licensed properties, like GURPS Vorkosigan say, absorb the assumptions of the original work, like the all human setting of the Vorkosigan novels.

I'm fascinated by SF outworkings of the Fermi Paradox, like Alastair Reynolds Revelation Space or Karl Schroeder's Permanence but most SFRPGs seem to assume that a multiplicity of alien species is a good thing, and treat them much like 'races' in D&D.

[(Anonymous)]

It's also interesting how very few, if any, SF writers adopt the "rare life" position. There are always tons of planets with basically Earthlike environments and even native life people can eat, even if humans are the only intelligent (or technological) species.

I'd like to see a setting in which _life_ is common but _multicellular_ life is vanishingly rare. So there are plenty of worlds where the oceans are a soup of single-celled organisms but the land is barren and erosion-scarred. Humans could move right in, but they'd have to do a lot of terraforming to make the place livable.

Cambias

[brianrogers.livejournal.com]

Having not read the Vorkosigan stories I didn't know to include them as another all human setting. Interesting.

As for the multiplicity of Aliens being D&D Races I expect you're right. Which is really a shame, since in a lot of SF (especially the SF that Traveller modeled itself on, and Star Trek for another thing with an RPG treatment) alien races aren't just collections of abilities. They're complex puzzles to be unravelled or (if a constant presence) a storytelling vehicle used to highlight fundamental commonalities and diffeerences between sentient species (or amongst humanity). The Integrated Bundle of Abilites option feels much more Scifi.

While I appreciate how the Star Trek RPGs have included stats on all the races so that the players could do, say, an all Klingon or all Ferrengi crew with a single off race outlier to mirror the source material I suspect that a lot of game groups apply either strategic considerations ("we need at least one telepathic race...") or personal dramtic ones (everyone wants to be the outlier) that produce menagerie crews.

[brianrogers.livejournal.com]

Agreed. I don't know how much of that is not wanting to get into seeding and terraforming and what not.

The setting you describe does lend itself to some options (of course, I'm now looking at it from a Traveller lens), though rather than vanishingly rare I'd go with just rare, so that prospecting starships could look for the mother load of non-eroded worlds they could claim and sell to terraformers at huge profits.

[mylescorcoran]

Reading James Maliszewski's blog today (http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2010/12/retrospective-universe.html) I was reminded of SPI's Universe RPG. It didn't take a 'rare life' stance, but it was unusual for having only humans as spacefarers, as far as I remember, and no other intelligent life hardcoded into the setting.

[brianrogers.livejournal.com]

And there's no real reason why we need it, other than to feel extra science-fictiony.

As an aside, what were the defaults on Blue Planet? I know there were intelligent marine life, but I don't recall if they were native or engineered terran species.

This is an aside from the basic query, however - with several generic SF games out there (Traveller in its original form was, if not generic, open eneded enough it its assumptions for IMTU to become a stock phrase, Star HERO and GURPS Space at the very least) I don't remember how much discussion there's actually been on thinking about life in the universe prior to rolling up characters.

[mylescorcoran]

Blue Planet! How could I forget that one. It's got engineered sentient species from Earth (dolphins, orcas and hybrid human species) and the house keeping species of intelligent manta rays left behind by the progenitor race hinted to be responsible for both Earth and Poseidon intelligence.

On the original point I can't think of any SF RPG that addresses the evolution of intelligent species, or life in general, across the galaxy, prior to the immediate era of play. There's the common trope of a progenitor race responsible for uplifting some or all of the intelligent species in the setting, and Ringworld did have the Niven idea of the Builders and the Thrinth/Tnuctipun backstory, but nothing else springs to mind.

How's your own addition to the galactic mind doing? I hope mother and son are doing well.

[(Anonymous)]

Universe! I thought I was the only person on Earth who bought that game. It had a star system and planet generation system much more scientific than Traveller -- and it came with a cool poster-size map of all the stars within 30 light-years of Earth; I think I still have mine.

The character-creation rules were nearly incomprehensible, and I never tried to do ground combat. Space combat was a separate game, and I don't even know if it ever was released.

Spaceships were kind of neat -- you had a basic "spine" which you could customize by adding modules. I thought that was quite simple and flexible.

The big problem was the game failed to make it clear what you were supposed to DO. The sample adventure was a deeply boring science puzzle which read like an episode of Lost In Space.

Now I'll have to go dig my copy out of the closet and reread it.

Cambias

[mylescorcoran]

Now you've got me thinking about a SF game where the story revolves around a group of seeders, people out in space streaking near light between the stars seeding worlds with life and arcing round on million and billion year timescales to see how things develop. You get to change parameters in the Drake equation as a consequence of play.

[brianrogers.livejournal.com]

Doing fine, thanks. If all goes to plan we'll be home from hopsital tomorrow.

[mylescorcoran]

I'm sad that I have lost the foldout map of local space from Universe. It was a lovely piece of work and adorned my bedroom wall for a while in the 80's. I also loved the environmental matrix that showed how you adapted to heavier or lighter gravity than your home gravity. I thought that was neat.

Like many early 80's games the rules did a very poor job of making it clear what you were supposed to do. It really was a time when every game needed a GM in the box.

[brianrogers.livejournal.com]

As an aside, _Stars_Without_Number_, a consciously retro SF game, is available for free download from RPGNow. I haven't read it yet, and I don't think it addresses my points, but here's the link.

http://sinenomine-pub.com/

It's so IMTU it glows.

[(Anonymous)]

I think I know someone who worked on an early version of that game. The setting looks very familiar. And if this is the one I'm thinking of, it was pretty much conceived from start to finish as "Traveller with real science."

JLC