In Space No One Can Hear You Game

If you know me well as a gamer, you know that my gaming preferences lean away from sci-fi gaming.  This goes not only for tabletop rpg’s, but also video games.  Sure, I’ve played some Mass Effect.  I’ve played most of the Halo games (though I am considering trading them in… GASP!).  I’ve played Dead Space.  I’ve loved me some Fallout 3.  When I was younger… okay, much younger, I played a tabletop rpg called Gamma World.  Does anybody remember Gamma World?  I think WotC did a 3E/D20 remake of the game that never really took off (there were actually 5 editions of the game), then it was lumped in as a campaign type for D20 Future.  Now, they’re actually re-booting the game again for an October, 2010 launch.

Also, if you know me well as a gamer, you know that my above mentioned discrimination against the sci-fi genre actually bothers me.  I’ve explored it numerous times, prodding it with sharp sticks.  Picking at it like a scabbed-over, weeks-old sore.  I’ve squeezed the icky pus out of it.  I’ve tried to figure it out.  I have conclusions.  I’m not sure if they’re final conclusions.  But they’re what I have at this point.  I’ll still keep prodding at it.

What brings me to write about this today, you ask?  Okay, so you didn’t actually ask.  Actually, my last few in-post questions have gone unanswered.  But I’m stubborn.  I’m a persistent bastard.  I’m going to keep at it, because that’s what I do.  What brings me to write about this today is a short post over at Gameplaywright where Will Hindmarch asks a seemingly simple question.

“Why don’t sci-fi games sell like fantasy games do?”

There it is.

Will got me picking at that scab again.

Will has a good point.  In order to try to sell sci-fi games, especially of the tabletop rpg variety, the designer mixes in strong elements of fantasy.  Gamma World did it.  Warhammer 40K is an excellent example of the phenomenon.  D20 Modern/D20 Future were redolent with fantasy elements (doesn’t help that they were WotC products).

There are some excellent comments on Will’s short post.  Rob Donoghue mentions the lack of a “shared shorthand” akin to fantasy’s “Tolkien standard.”  Several others talk about the fragmentation of the sci-fi fan base.  There are several other great ones to read if you click the link.

For me, the conclusion I have come up with thus far is fairly simple.  It’s space that does me in.  There’s just too damn much of it.  Justin Alexander writes that “Sci-fi games are often guilty of selling the setting instead of selling a game.”  He’s right.  The infinite boundaries of space are an attractive selling point.  The writers plug in some cool weapons and some neat looking alien races.  They throw in some spaceships and a backstory for the world that is supposed to draw the consumer in and give them plenty of room to customize the setting, bt then they drop the ball.

The truth is, there’s just too damn much space to fill in… well, in space.

If you look at the sci-fi games I’ve played and enjoyed, video or otherwise, most of them are pretty tightly focused.  They aren’t concerned with the infinite expanse of space, but rather with the human (or inhuman) drama of fairly tight locational boundaries.  Whether they are a single spaceship (Dead Space‘s Ishimura), a single city (Fallout 3‘s DC Wasteland), or a single planet (as in Gamma World or Borderlands), the focus is tight enough to provide a large enough setting to encourage diverse encounters and scenarios, but small enough to provide boundaries.

Sometimes, a canvas can be too large.

Giant empty swaths of blank space to fill can be intimidating and stifle creativity.  Sure, we love Star Wars and Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica, but we aren’t creating those settings as we play.  We’re just partaking in someone else’s creation as we watch the movies, or expanding on it slightly as we play the games (but gaming in those settings is still too limitless for me).

An example of a focused sci-fi game (so far as I’ve seen it) is David Hill’s Maschine Zeit.  I’ve written a bit about it here previously.  It does feature a setting where space travel is a given.  But it concentrates that setting on the human and inhuman dramas that play out in focused, if not confined, locations.  David has done a good job of setting specific areas of exploration and interest and encouraging play in manageable bits.

My idea for a sci-fi game?  Take sci-fi back to its roots.  Focus on a single planetary system.  Make space travel limited.  Short distances are possible, but the longer the voyage, the riskier it is.  Exponentially.  The traveling fleet is old and unreliable.  Something happened in the past that has taken away the money or incentive to build new ships.  Maybe this is a somewhat post-apocalyptic game.  The characters are in an outpost system, far from the space traveling civilization to which they once belonged.  Some war or other catastrophe has caused most, if not all, of the military and space-worthy crews and vessels to have been long since redeployed.  Now, this small outpost is cobbling together some ships for bold adventurers to take huge risks to attempt to explore nearby planets and learn what happened, or just gather resources and pool knowledge.  Star Trek was once described as “Wagon Train to the stars.” I think that this brings us back to a limited, focused setting that feels more true to that concept.  We’re in a lawless frontier.  Scope is manageable.  As characters become more accomplished, enterprising GM’s may wish to introduce technology that can expand the world.  It’s like a space western.  I like it.

Damn.  Now I have more ideas on my plate.

What do you think?  Feel free to post your thoughts about any of this.