More Dancing On The Edge
Jan. 2nd, 2019 03:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gridloreIn preparation for possibly running a hybrid D&D/Earthdawn game, I've been immersing myself in all the background material for the Barsaive setting, and I've discovered the thing that put me off Earthdawn in the first place.
It's all too settled. Advertised as a game of exploring a brave new world after the siege of the Horrors had lifted, what we get are well-established empires and kingdoms, regular trade, and in essence, a mature multi-state civilization. Which totally sucks, as far as I'm concerned.
I've often gone on about the concept of the Edge. The Edge is where adventures happen. The edge of civilization, the edge of the law, the edge of sanity . . . anyplace that is away from the comforts of civilization. Because a good adventure, either in gaming or fiction, has to take place in a setting where phoning the cops or running the local imperial garrison for help isn't an option. It needs to be a place where the heroes are forced to take action.
The funny thing is that historically speaking, Edges appear and vanish rather quickly. Take the classic Old West so beloved by dime novels and Hollywood. That panorama of bank robbers, sheriffs leading posses and showdowns at high noon did exist. For about twenty years at the most. The classic "Wild West" period is usually thought of lasting from about 1870 to 1890. That when you had thousands of Civil War vets moving west, railroads extending the reach of civilization, and the precipitous decline of the Native American nations due to war and disease opening up new territories for settlers.
This era brought with it men who had survived the horrors of the War Between the States and knew how to use guns. It brought fights over water rights, county seats, grazing rights, and of course, all that gold and silver coming out of California and Nevada just waiting to be taken. It was a heady, chaotic time. For about ten minutes in most places. Because humans are social animals and we crave safety. Towns screamed for the right to elect a sheriff or to have a US Marshal assigned to them. Vigilante groups sprung up across the Southwest, sometimes no better than the rustlers they were chasing. And very quickly, law and order took control.
Remember the famous gunfight at the OK Corral? Did you ever hear what set it off? Town Marshal Virgil Earp, his brothers Wyatt and Morgan Earp, and Doc Holliday were investigating that the "Cowboys" were in violation of a Tombstone town law requiring all firearms be checking at the Marshal's office. After the shootout, townspeople were so enraged that they put the Earps and Doc Holliday on trial for murder! (The charges were dismissed when no one could determine who fired first.)
That was in 1881. By 1890, the idea of gunslinging lawmen was nearly dead, as were most of the bandits. Things had become settled. The Edge was dulled.
Which is why setting the theme is so important in creating your Edge. Anything that upsets the world of your characters can do it. Yes, an invasion of orcs into the Kingdom of Competent Leadership and Low Tax Rates can create an edge. But so can discovering that a race of evil snake people live in the sewers, and have corrupt the entire court. Whit Wolf's World of Darkness games played with the latter sort of Edge; having all sorts of supernatural and magical creatures existing just below the surface of our mundane world.
So yeah, I'm rolling back the Earthdawn setting to a point where the Kaers (the fortified cities that withstood the assault of the Horrors. Mostly) are just opening, and the map is centuries out of date. Where history has become myth, and brave young adventurers are needed to reach out and learn about this new world, make contact with other opened Kaers, and boldly go where no man has gone . . .
Sorry. Couldn't help myself. But you see my point. This is one thing that has driven me nuts about Traveller's Third Imperium setting for years; there is no frontier to explore! Give me mysteries and unexplored places, strange new worlds and lost cities that have really been lost. Give me the Edge, take me out of the comfortable middle and make me think. That's what I ask of authors and game writers, and it is what I try to give as a Game Master. Hopefully, I will make a good job of it and entertain some players sometime soon.
It's all too settled. Advertised as a game of exploring a brave new world after the siege of the Horrors had lifted, what we get are well-established empires and kingdoms, regular trade, and in essence, a mature multi-state civilization. Which totally sucks, as far as I'm concerned.
I've often gone on about the concept of the Edge. The Edge is where adventures happen. The edge of civilization, the edge of the law, the edge of sanity . . . anyplace that is away from the comforts of civilization. Because a good adventure, either in gaming or fiction, has to take place in a setting where phoning the cops or running the local imperial garrison for help isn't an option. It needs to be a place where the heroes are forced to take action.
The funny thing is that historically speaking, Edges appear and vanish rather quickly. Take the classic Old West so beloved by dime novels and Hollywood. That panorama of bank robbers, sheriffs leading posses and showdowns at high noon did exist. For about twenty years at the most. The classic "Wild West" period is usually thought of lasting from about 1870 to 1890. That when you had thousands of Civil War vets moving west, railroads extending the reach of civilization, and the precipitous decline of the Native American nations due to war and disease opening up new territories for settlers.
This era brought with it men who had survived the horrors of the War Between the States and knew how to use guns. It brought fights over water rights, county seats, grazing rights, and of course, all that gold and silver coming out of California and Nevada just waiting to be taken. It was a heady, chaotic time. For about ten minutes in most places. Because humans are social animals and we crave safety. Towns screamed for the right to elect a sheriff or to have a US Marshal assigned to them. Vigilante groups sprung up across the Southwest, sometimes no better than the rustlers they were chasing. And very quickly, law and order took control.
Remember the famous gunfight at the OK Corral? Did you ever hear what set it off? Town Marshal Virgil Earp, his brothers Wyatt and Morgan Earp, and Doc Holliday were investigating that the "Cowboys" were in violation of a Tombstone town law requiring all firearms be checking at the Marshal's office. After the shootout, townspeople were so enraged that they put the Earps and Doc Holliday on trial for murder! (The charges were dismissed when no one could determine who fired first.)
That was in 1881. By 1890, the idea of gunslinging lawmen was nearly dead, as were most of the bandits. Things had become settled. The Edge was dulled.
Which is why setting the theme is so important in creating your Edge. Anything that upsets the world of your characters can do it. Yes, an invasion of orcs into the Kingdom of Competent Leadership and Low Tax Rates can create an edge. But so can discovering that a race of evil snake people live in the sewers, and have corrupt the entire court. Whit Wolf's World of Darkness games played with the latter sort of Edge; having all sorts of supernatural and magical creatures existing just below the surface of our mundane world.
So yeah, I'm rolling back the Earthdawn setting to a point where the Kaers (the fortified cities that withstood the assault of the Horrors. Mostly) are just opening, and the map is centuries out of date. Where history has become myth, and brave young adventurers are needed to reach out and learn about this new world, make contact with other opened Kaers, and boldly go where no man has gone . . .
Sorry. Couldn't help myself. But you see my point. This is one thing that has driven me nuts about Traveller's Third Imperium setting for years; there is no frontier to explore! Give me mysteries and unexplored places, strange new worlds and lost cities that have really been lost. Give me the Edge, take me out of the comfortable middle and make me think. That's what I ask of authors and game writers, and it is what I try to give as a Game Master. Hopefully, I will make a good job of it and entertain some players sometime soon.
The Final Frontier
Date: 3 Jan 2019 22:28 (UTC)As you say, that was indeed one of the biggest problems with Traveller. All these mature civilizations cheek-by-jowl, the only mode of transport a shoelaces-tied-together-and-jump drive - the only way to have Adventures™ was to break the law! I give them credit for trying to break out of that, first with the Civil War idea and then Traveller: The New Era.
[Had T:NE come out first, say AD 1978, wow. By the time it did, yawn. “Peak media” was affecting role-playing games also; what made a splash in 1978 was lost to view by 1999. It was with a sense of sweeping out the theatre when the intellectual property was assimilated into the GURPS Collective; here ya go, gerry-boomers, relive your high school days… TSR’s Star Frontiers exists now under the same “nostalgia” aegis.]
Larry Niven’s aphorism, “Change the technology and you change the society” applies here. In reality, FTL drive would produce an ungovernable diffusion of humanity out across the stars, that only the most vigorous Empire could even make an impression upon. [See David Gerrold’s ‘space skimmers.’] “Space, the Final Frontier” is exactly right. If the Traveller jump drive were not the lamest, most limited depiction since Jerry Pournelle’s utterly unimaginative “Alderson Drive,” if it had legs, this problem would not have been a problem at all!
[M Miller & Co recognized this; they said, “Do what you like, but if you change the jump drive don’t expect what you create to be recognized as canon.” Well, boo hoo. That stopped me for about the time it took to read it. In my setting, the jump drive was instantaneous - no “week” pulled out of a hat for story purposes - but only subjectively. Objectively it was one parsec per week, this being Traveller, but with no upper limit. Tau Ceti, 12 lyd? Pung-g-g - and a month has elapsed. Ditto the return. You could make a regular run, 6 times a year. But “space is big. Really, really big.” You want to see spectacular Beta Lyrae, 960 lyd? Set it up! Pung-g-g - you just traded five and a half years for it, but there you are! You want to “see attack ships burning off the shoulder of Orion”? That’ll be eight years, please, pung-g-g - have a nice day! Career spacers watched centuries go by… with no upper limit. “Lock on to the Andromeda Galaxy!” Pung-g-g… and 15,000 years hence you’ll finish that eyeblink.]
https://youtu.be/udAL48P5NJU
How would you ever find your way back to known space - and why would you try?
Re: The Final Frontier
Date: 4 Jan 2019 16:32 (UTC)The BS will the computer program they used to generate Core Sector was another problem, but T4 should have been about brave Scouts plunging into mysteries dark and vast, at least at first.
Re: The Final Frontier
Date: 4 Jan 2019 16:47 (UTC)That was one nice thing about Star Fleet Battles and its difficult-to-explain RPG Prime Directive: You could set campaigns anywhere along its timeline, from the Early Years (The Menagerie, with Laser pistols &c. - no stun setting!) on out to the end, the drop-off where the Star Trek revival and its universe made the TOS-based SFU irrelevant…
If you wanted to play the early days of Starfleet, with Daedalus exploration cruisers, go for it!
no subject
Date: 4 Jan 2019 03:02 (UTC)By the bye, it’s interesting to contrast what you spoke of about the Wild West, with the Canadian equivalent - which was the exact opposite. As a general rule, in the American West the railroad was a relative late-comer - by the time a rail line came through everything was settled and orderly, as you say. In the Canadian West, the railroad came first - vide G Lightfoot’s “Canadian Railroad Trilogy.” In combination with the RCMP, and lacking those ex-military veterans, there was just never that much lawlessness.
For obvious reasons this does not appeal to “Space Western” storytellers and is much less known.