365... Tech

Of course, you're even better off talking to the biologists who study the human brain. How about a philospher who has done exactly that ? Paul K.

: I think maybe my disbelief is harder to suspend than most peoples'.  For : example, in your extension of David's engine example, you had transmission : fluid running through hoses, which would have me questioning what kind of : hose could take the fluid pressures that are generated in a transmission. The answer is, any. Just because a hose delivers oil doesn't mean that it is under any greater pressure than the delivery system pump is generating. Pistons produce high pressures. They are lubricated. The hoses which carry the oil to the engine are not under the same pressure as generated by the piston. Yet, this detail would set off your SOD alarm. I once had an argument with a friend trying to convince him that water pressure, although great, is delivered evenly across a volume of reasonable size, from all directions (yes, there is a slight difference along the vertical axis, if you want to do the calculus and figure it, but it's a small variation over reasonable lengths), and would not string a body out like the gravitational field of a black hole. That's why a sphere is such a good shape for withstanding underwater pressures. Now, he just wouldn't buy it, and it really bothered him. Now I don't know what 'transmission fluid' is, but synthetic oils are sometimes green. I have no clue if the dilvery system for oil to a transmission is generally separate from that used for the rest of the engine. I would expect that loss of oil to a transmission would be signaled by increasing grinding sounds when attempting to switch gears, or maybe a stall in an automatic transmission, and possibly worse with a CVT (if they are even being produced yet). Do I wish to look up anything more to handle engines in a more realistic fashion in my games? No. I have other things I would rather do with my limited time. Do I care if a p_layer_ gets bunged up because I'm not using a mechanics manual when describing these problems? Not really. Maybe that makes me a bad GM, but I like the detail, so I'll live with the monicker. David

: I go home, leaving the entire matter behind me. Happens all the time. Has yet to bother me. Certainly doesn't throw a plot in the trash. I almost count on it. David

: : Not quite.  It, at least for me, harms SOD if I know that : : the source of the detail is just making it up. : : Then almost all rule systems would blow my SOD. : I'm not sure what you are trying to say here except : to try and make a general unsupported slam against : rule systems (other than Theatrix . What I'm saying is that the charts, tables, odds, etc., in rule systems are mostly made up. They are what sounds and feels right. Most systems give a single result distribution for all skills outside of combat. How can that be realistic? How do you accurately measure skill level and task difficulty, and collect research... O.K. That stuff is done, but for specific tasks, mostly by companies interested in time/motion studies, and hiring measures. Even looking at long jump distances, gun accuracy tests, and car performance measures, does you no good. That all condences down to some simple, single, easy distribution, that can be reproduced on a few dice with a modifier or two, that works for all areas of expertise. No way, I just don't buy it. It's bogus. Even the combat stuff is mostly bogus. It feels O.K., and roughly represents the genre. That's all it needs to do to be useable, that's all it does. : Can you even support the claim that almost all rule : systems just make up details without regard to reality? Yeah, I think so. Think of a way to test any of them against reality. It's pretty difficult to actual design and do such tests. I don't think RPG companies are in the position to be doing that research. Often, they would be hard hypothesis to even test. So how'd they come up with the numbers? : And even if you could, then why not just use a good : game system rather than abondon all hope of details : that actually add to the sense that you character is : really there? I don't wish to abandon all hope of details. The game systems have to. The only way to get easy distributions you can apply to a broad range of skills is to hopelessly abstract. You have to make up the details no matter what you do, diced or diceless, if you're going to use them. So what do the dice do? They provide an _object_ive basic result decision. By randomizing one. The one thing I can do easiest on my own, in the way I lest want it done. That's why I don't use most of them. David

I've just started going back to the advocacy group recently and so I haven't read the entire thread on this, but a courious question comes to my head.  Why have any FTL at all?  Do you need to have FTL in a Hard SF? To answer that you have to ask and answer the question of why you need to go faster than light in the first place.  A photon can travel the entire universe in presisely 0 time. (According to the photon.)  Although it is possible to view relativity in numerous ways, (space contracts or time slows) given a high enough velocity near c, it is possible to cross, a galaxy, even a galaxy cluster, in a lifetime.  On the other hand, it takes a lot of energy to do this. The problem, as Tolken's Frodo, would point out, is There and Back Again.  True, you can visit a star 100 light years in a day, and then a day back but slightly over 200 years have passed for the planet you left.  Considering Hard SF, I don't think that this is a major problem, one at least we have to stretch or break the Hard boundary to reach. An even more interesting problem, (one which I would have gleefully done the math fifteen years ago when I was in college) is without artificial gravity, and baring a race of space fairing dwarves, a one G acceleration is needed to maintain sutiable gravity.  Long term exposure of higher gravity does a body just as much harm as the long term exposure of no gravity. Then there is the simple method pf power.  The most extreme hard core SF starship to date, which used atomic bombs as a power source had a potential of 0.10c.  That speed is still mostly eculudian, and on a stellar scale a crawl. Thus it can also be said that FTL represents not as much a problem in speed, but as a magic solution at the energy problem.  It tries to re-create relativy without the nasty twins paradox problems at a fraction of the energy involved.

: If no one has it, and no one's bothered to get it, I can't see : that guestimating's going to ruin anything. : : To be honest it really doesn't ruin anything.  But simply making : up details that everyone knows to be _base_less adds nothing to the : SOD and just takes up time. If no one has them, and no one cares, then how does anyone know they are _base_less? And would that really matter? Magic systems are all _base_less (appologies to those wiccans and neo-pagans reading this), yet we have fun with their bogosity.         Hmmm.  I'm not a wiccan or a neo-pagan, but I don't think that all magic systems are _base_less.  I've spent a fair amount of time in research on magic systems.  The T'ang dynasty China games, for example, were run by someone who was at the time working on his PhD in ancient Chinese conceptions of magic.           (cf. _Witchcraft_, by the way, which was written in heavy consultation with Wiccans).           I agree that most published RPG magic systems are _base_less, made up by the game designer on nothing in particular.  However, I have a preference for one's which are _base_d in an understanding of real-world beliefs.  (The *beliefs* are real, even if you don't believe in the phenomena themselves).  And even if I'm not an expert in the field, I can tell fairly well the difference between _base_less magic systems and researched magic systems.