Are there any RPGs out there that are or at least try to stick close to being based on hard sci-fi and realism rather than science fantasy or quantum technobabble?
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Hard Sci-Fi systems?
Are there any RPGs out there that are or at least try to stick close to being based on hard sci-fi and realism rather than science fantasy or quantum technobabble?
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Traveller is relatively hard sci-fi.
Hero System would be good for hard sci-fi.
Part of the problem is that by being science fiction it's inherently going to have some fantasy elements. The other problem is that hard sci-fi appeals to only a small subsection of nerds.
As our irl understanding marches forward you're doomed to zeerust too.
Diaspora does so with FATE of all things. The cluster creation mechanics are top-tier.
I don't mind some fantastical things, but most of the options out there tend to have a lot of fantastical things, I mean, traveller uses star wars style gravity doesn't it? I haven't read the books for it but I was under the impression that trav was relatively soft
Depends on the techlevel, in Traveller the higher TLs do have artificial gravity and could eaisly be Star Wars, the lower TLs (8-9) do not.
However, you might be more interested in Traveller 2300 (or the modern version) which are much more hard and the only real fantastical element is FTL drive. That's a good system.
>has FTL
>hard scifi
Bruh
Watch and learn https://youtu.be/-2c0P2CEU9A
It must be cold in that room, you could cut glass on those bad boys.
>normally I wouldn't click a link
Thanks for the recommendation anon
>le warp drive
If scientists can spend 50 years and billions of dollars without finding dark matter, then a game maker can make up hypothetical FTL.
>billions of dollars without finding dark matter
2 things. First off what IS dark matter? Growing up we watched a lot of star trek and more generic science fiction so to me dark matter has always been one of those scifi buzzwords
Secondly I guarantee the majority of those billions didn't go into research, like how things cost 2-3x as much for the DoD
just like how olde astronomers predicted the presence of planets by observing the motion of objects/effects of gravity in a region, the observations of astronomers in deep space and regarding the expansion of the universe implies there is a lot of matter around exerting a gravitation pull - but we can't seem to see it, hence, dark matter.
Really? Interesting but anticlimactic
It is kind of mysterious that something would account for 27% of the mass-energy composition of the universe (while visible matter accounts for 5%) but not interact with the electromagnetic spectrum, but sci fi needs to jump on that dark energy as well
We don't know. But it's presence is evident. We actually have more proof of dark matter than the centre of the Earth. The most likely candidate is some kind of weakly interacting particle like Sterile Neutrons that doesn't react to ANY force but gravity.
We have no idea what dark matter is, other than it’s some source of gravity that is completely invisible but exerts way more pull that all of the regular matter, more than all of the stars, all of the gas, all of the black holes…unless dark matter is black holes, then black holes are most of everything. Dark matter constitutes 80% or so of the mass in the universe, which means even our Milky Way galaxy is mostly a vast ball of dark matter that happens to have attracted a relative sprinkling of baryons—atoms in the form of gas, which lit up as starry glitter spinning in the middle of this invisible gravitational well.
But for all of dark matter’s mysteriousness, it’s remarkably simple stuff in terms of its behavior. Or at least so we have long thought. The mainstream model for dark matter is called Cold Dark Matter, or CDM. This type of dark matter is described as a fluid of particles that don’t interact with each other or anything else except by gravity, and that have pretty low speeds, making them cold. If a universe starts out full of such a fluid, any tiny lumps in density of that fluid tend to attract more dark matter and grow. We can now do these incredible supercomputer simulations of this process, and based on the CDM model, this type of dark matter seems to lead to exactly the types of giant structures—galaxies, galaxy clusters, etc—that we see in the universe today.
Although we don’t know what this “CDM” might be made of, there are some seemingly very plausible types of particle that could do the job. Broadly, we have weakly interacting massive particles or WIMPs, which are predicted by various extensions to the Standard Model of particle physics. Or there's another exotic particle, the Axion, or even the frozen Planck-scale relics of evaporated black holes all behave like cold dark matter.
The most likely candidate is some kind of particle that doesn't interact with electromagnetism, nor with the nuclear strong or weak forces, only with gravity. This makes it virtually undetectable and a single particle could pass through entire planets without noticing the planet is even there, like a ghost.
>science fiction it's inherently going to have some fantasy elements
I disagree. Nowadays there are plenty of technologies or scientific discoveries that, if stretched a little bit or pushed to its logical conclusion, will get you to wildly strange places.
Peter Watts is great for this kind of stuff.
Pic related, too.
A good chunk of the tech in Cyberpunk 2020 -or even in a good chunk of classic cyberpunk literature- are perfectly plausible.
Define hard scifi gay. You've got a problem, science is slipping into quantum babble. Multiple whistleblowers have pointed this out at this stage.
This is the first time I've seen someone post anything related to Bruce Sterling's work on /tg/ apart from me.
The other problem with hard sci-fi is that it doesn't take long for it to become retrofuturism.
Honestly, I think the closest to real sci-fi is the setting where we barely get off earth, because nobody saw profit to be made in going anywhere else, fusion energy is still "Five years down the road" three centuries from now, all jobs that can be done by AI are now being done by AI run on supercomputers owned by only the 1% who reap the rewards, if the setting hasn't gone the Mad Max route instead.
The travelling the stars dream died a long time ago. The only thing that drives people is fear or money. Outside of satellites there was no profit to be made, and after the cold war no fear of being left behind to be had to drive progress.
So no, I can't think of any "Outpost RPG: produced with support by NASA"
The realistic future is Haiti, not the stars.
>Honestly, I think the closest to real sci-fi is the setting where we barely get off earth
I feel like you could go the other way with that idea and still end up with a hard-scifi setting.
The asteroid belt is fantastically rich in materials we need for industry and the real hard part of the whole hard scifi space travel thing is the immense cost of getting into space itself.
Once the basic infrastructure is up there you can probably make and manufacture most goods as you can on Earth. You also get to claim ecological recovery and 'not polluting our precious planet' which has got to be good for a few tax credits.
You can still have most of the earth based assets owned by the richest 1% who enjoy pristine parklands of safe, habitable, Earth while the orbitals cater to a wide range of industries and the 'new gold rush' is happening out on Ceres.
Gameplay wise I think you could get a few interesting stories in there, though given that no-one but the top 1% actually owns a spaceship (basically all owned by governments or corporations) the players would essentially be constrained to 'shipping lanes' that are profitable for the various carriers to fly.
The tedium of being an isolated tard wrangler for automated processes and getting stir crazy could be interesting, but it's also not a good story for TTRPGs.
There won't be space proles and big colonies. It's going to be handfuls of scientists with military backgrounds tard wrangling machines that do the mining, since supporting the human is the most expensive part.
We're sort of in end-game cynicism in the modern West, I feel like the next step can really be only be hard core ultrareactionary Kingdom of Heaven Zoomer Idealism that will result in a generation of Musks who are willing to waste trillions of dollars because they want to go to space for no fricking reason.
There WILL be massive insane absurd works of science and technology and architectural brilliance that will entrance future generations for their excessive pointlessness. Like every fricking county having a massive church with six basketball courts in America because for some reason white boomers who got rich asf back when America was cool got religion when they got old and left a shitton of money and got a huge new church named after them.
It'll be that except with space elevators and orbital skyhooks and shit. You just watch. It will never stop, it will never slow down, only accelerate faster and faster.
Cyberpunk base system was pretty realistic but I'm not sure if it ever got rules for space crafts.
In fact it did, many kinds of spaceship. I've read this book cover to cover multiple times and I love it but the space combat section is a nightmare to read, I still don't 100% get it
There's a The Expanse RPG isn't there?
Nope. You'll have to write it. Good thing too, someone else might get it wrong.
Orbital the RPG:
The one with the orbital mechanics and vector-based space combat - Traveller.
Anon posted the hard sci-fi version too, with no FTL, purely based in our solar system in the near future (a la The Expanse)
I've been running Eclipse Phase with the fantastical elements like gates (basically stargåte but eldritch abomination) and magic nanotech removed, setting works fine. It has extant aliens but I kinda feel like they aren't that bad sci-fi as they aren't rubberhead humans and they arrived to sol system at sub-light speeds, assumingly with sorta generational ships.
GURPS Space and Ultra-Tech
GURPS Transhuman Space, too.
It's basically what op is looking for.
>Hard Sci-Fi systems
So, sci-fi.
You can just say sci-fi, because if there's anything non-scientific, it's actually fantasy.
Battletech
The Expanse (AGE)
Obligatory GURPS
>Battletech
Get filtered homosexual
Battletech is powered by pure bullshit, numbers that make no sense and short sighted decisions in hope of quick cash to renovate toilets.
Battletech isn't plausible, which would be fine for most systems, but those decide to be fantastic, which battletech isn't either.
Battletech IS powered by pure bullshit, but it's more hard sci-fi than the standard sci-fi on this board, 40k and star wars and star trek. Compared to those it's fricking reality
SW and 40k are so soft that they get called science fantasy. It's all about Knights and wizards saving the day from evil lords.
That's like saying pure gold is a hard mineral because it's harder than soapstone.
You are technically right but no.
There's the 2300 ad setting for traveller. I haven't played it myself but it looks to be rather realistic
Unironicaly eclipse phase 1e
As opposed to ironically?
No
It has a few bullshit magic things, even if you don't count TITAN tech, but you can remove them easily without the setting falling apart.
eclipse phase has some magic nonsense but not so much
mind you I haven't looked at it since it came out, it might've changed
Traveller 2100, solar system only