tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2597492159243709780.post1435433182261956923..comments2023-09-30T14:40:17.514+01:00Comments on Little Odo's Grand Days Out: FTL travel in games, books and on the screenLittle Odohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16554557447121289551noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2597492159243709780.post-6024983093868521382011-02-25T21:44:10.765+00:002011-02-25T21:44:10.765+00:00Interesting points well made.
My gaming solution w...Interesting points well made.<br />My gaming solution was to not answer the scientific question, but to try to answer the question, “what makes for a better game?” Whether I managed that is, of course, another matter. For the kind of adventurous RPG I was playing, I concluded that freedom of movement was the most important thing. I considered that if ships, as in Traveller’s Hyperspace Jump, did not actually travel through space, they were only vulnerable to interception by pirates and others who would waylay them, during a very restricted area of space. These areas would be far easier to police than deep space. It does of course allow the type of last minute escape pulled off by the Millennium Falcon in Star Wars, all exciting stuff. A race to the Star Gate, pursued by hostile forces would be equally exciting, although you would have to consider why the pursuers don’t just have someone waiting at the gate to intercept, something that may be harder to justify if the pursuers also ran the gate. If all ships have to pass through the same point in space there may be far less little scope for sneaking about and evading security forces or anyone else whom the PCs would want to avoid. I went for what I considered a more adventure-facilitating Star Trek type travel.<br /> It is however my experience that players naturally don’t think of questioning any situation that works in their favour, so if they are on the run and the star gate is laughably policed, they will quite happily accept this, perhaps without ever realising the absurdity of the situation. The biggest problem I found to be is when players realise they can exploit a game’s assumptions to their advantage. What happens, for example, when a ship is made to drop out of hyperspace in the middle of a planet? Having to think theoretical science in real time to counter an idea a player has been working all week on is not everyone’s forte. Solutions that restrict freedom therefore do have their advantages.Arlonoreply@blogger.com