The Factory Floor - 2017-12-11

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4:43 AM

42

Q: Why might wizards be unable to wear armour?

Inspired by this question, this question and this question, I, too have been thinking about typical RPG-style magic systems. It's a truism in RPGs (and fantasy in general) that armour and magic don't mix (fair warning: that's a TVTropes link) - that is, wizards are capable of astonishing feats o...

Your mission, should you choose to accept it: do any needed curation on the 32 answers to that question ^^^ (not counting already-deleted ones). Are there duplicates? Do some need to be expanded or clarified?

@MonicaCellio The question is very broad. It should have been left closed.

6 hours later…

Future Historian

11:13 AM

Hmmmmm.

I wonder why some of my stories, some people think, sound like something out of a Tom Clancy novel.

Except I did that.......(melodramatic voice) IN SPACE!!!!!!

11:27 AM

Space is a setting not a story

What if space were the story?

Future Historian

I know.

But still, I noticed that Stand at Carpo is basically Hunt for Red October in space anyway.

Which is part of the Planetverse.

2 hours later…

1:41 PM

@dot_Sp0T It would be long, boring and have not a lot going on. Space is mindbogglingly big and for any statistical purpose, completely empty.

2:03 PM

@dot_Sp0T You'd have a devil of a time overcoming the meaninglessness of a empty space to make it even halfway appealing for a human audience.

@Green I don't know. I could start the story with something like, Space: the final frontier...

@dot_Sp0T You could have space be a kind of character in the story; A person alone in space, with only the void to keep them company... But I don't know how space could be The Story

@dot_Sp0T but then you're not allowed to include spaceships or life.

@AndyD273 That would be such a weird relationship. Would the relationship be entirely in the head of the lonely person (some form of madness).....wait, wait. There instances where people kept in solitary confinement take on symptoms of insanity.

@Green That's kind of what I was thinking, but I wonder if there is a way to not have it end in complete gibbering madness

@AndyD273 Have your main character roll a natural 20 on a sanity test. They'll be really hurting but not completely nuts.

2:18 PM

And the bigger question is how to make a story like that interesting... Start out with some kind of radio link which slowly fades out, then they have to start facing their inner memories and demons, followed by bargaining with the void, which eventually answers, though is it just in their head?

@AndyD273 That sounds depressing. When can we read it?

@AndyD273 Add in some clues that the void is actually talking back to them (objects that shouldn't be there, are there.)

@sphennings When I can figure out a way to make it not depressing.

@AndyD273 sounds like he wants the depressing nihilistic version to me. :)

@AndyD273 It's not a happy story. Even if you ended it with a dream sequence of fantasy and wonder, that would be a melancholic sendoff of them descending irreversibly into space-madness

@dot_Sp0T Another option is just add space- to the front of every noun. I woke up in my space-bed, drank my space-coffee and went off to my space-job.

2:22 PM

@sphennings It took me all of one sentence of that to space-out.

@Green Shouldn't that be a space-sentence?

@Green Even the void isn't actually empty. You get particle/anti-particle pairs all the time which appear and annihilate each other all the time. Vacuum energy or something like that. Well, what if there was something that could cancel out the annihilation and make something...

@Green That has been done too many times.

space-dnd?

The twist would be that it doesn't end hopelessly

@dot_Sp0T You mean starfinder?

2:24 PM

@AndyD273 Be careful not end it with a space-deus ex machina.

@sphennings no

I made a kenku for my groups next campaign

2:47 PM

After a time I went peaceful inside. 'Void, what is the meaning of life?'
*don't ask me, i'm just an empty expanse*
'Fair enough. Is there any hope for me?'
*could be, turn around*
'What?'
*turn around*
I toggled just a small puff from my left thruster, and watched the stars slowly move past my vision. And coming up behind me was a dark shape. I snapped on my light, and out from the darkness sprang the shining shape of a life boat.
'huh, do you think that got thrown from the wreckage after me?'

4

Yet I knew it would be the end of my journey. Years later I died of malnutrition and loss of bonematter. I had never visited the void again.

@AndyD273 I know it's not quantumly empty, just effectively empty for anything a human would want to relate to.

@dot_Sp0T You'd like this one

The Cold Equations

"The Cold Equations" is a science fiction short story by American writer Tom Godwin, first published in Astounding Magazine in 1954. In 1970, the Science Fiction Writers of America selected it as one of the best science-fiction short stories published before 1965, and it was therefore included in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One, 1929–1964. The story has been widely anthologized and dramatized. == Summary == The story takes place entirely aboard an Emergency Dispatch Ship (EDS) headed for the frontier planet Woden with a load of desperately-needed medical supplies. The pilot, Barton...

I think we should do a go-around story (or whatever they're called). We'd start a meta question to get participants, then make a list in what order they will participate, then open a chat where each and every participant writes a single sentence in the order they were decided to write. Then we publish on the meta

5

Future Historian

3:16 PM

Hmmm. I wonder how you can give a Tom Clancy feel to a hard military science fiction series.

Because I feel I did that without knowing it to the Planetverse.

no

Future Historian

3:53 PM

What?

What do you mean "no"?

4:05 PM

@FutureHistorian A few of his later books got to be somewhat hard sci-fi

Tom Clancy's Net Force

Tom Clancy's Net Force is a novel series, created by Tom Clancy and Steve Pieczenik and originally written by Steve Perry. The original series ceased publication in 2006. Relaunched in 2013, and currently written by veteran Tom Clancy author Jerome Preisler, it is set in 2018 and charts the actions of Net Force: a special executive branch of the United States government set up to combat increasing crime and terrorist activity on the Internet. There was also a spin-off of young adult books called Net Force Explorers. == General == Tom Clancy's Net Force is aimed at an adult audience, while...

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six is a media franchise created by American author Tom Clancy about a fictional international counter-terrorist unit called "Rainbow". The franchise began with Clancy's novel Rainbow Six, which was adapted into a series of tactical first-person shooter video games. == Team Rainbow == Rainbow Six describes Rainbow as an international counter-terrorism operation hosted by NATO and funded by money funneled through the U.S. Department of the Interior. The base of operations for Rainbow is located in Hereford, England (at the time, home to the SAS), due to the United Kingdom being...

Both deal with near future tech that doesn't exist yet

Not as sci-fi as yours, but it can be done I think

Future Historian

:D

Well, at least I went hard science fiction.

So.......

4:37 PM

@FutureHistorian Going hard science doesn't necessarily add any value to the story. Some stories need to be hard to work, and some don't. I'd strongly suggest figuring out what you want to write, and let that dictate what genre you write in.

1 hour later…

5:41 PM

Buenosdiddlydingdongdias

6:05 PM

I kinda like the 90% hard sci-fi, where it's mostly possible, with very little space fantasy, BUT with a couple fantastical elements to improve the story if it really needs it, like a little salt on your food.

6:31 PM

@AndyD273 The big thing for me is to write a compelling story. There was a trilogy of movies about sword fighting space wizards and a movie about a disaster on the way to the moon that are on opposite ends of the hard-soft science spectrum. Both are excellent but Star Wars is better off for ignoring orbital mechanics and Apollo 13 is better off without the force.

2 hours later…

8:15 PM

@sphennings Very true. I'm just kind of thinking of some of my favorite stories that I've read (meaning the ones that stick around in my mind the longest). There is the Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson, which is hard sci-fi. The Expanse series by James S.A. Corey which is hard sci-fi except for a network of space gates that fit the "technology indistinguishable from magic" category.

But there are also a lot of books that aren't hard that I like; The Laundry Files by Charles Stross, The Ringworld books by Larry Niven, The JDATE series by David Wong. And Some that are straight up fantasy like Tolkien, the Eddie LaCrosse series by Alex Bledsoe, A lot of Brandon Sandersons books, etc.

@AndyD273 I guess my point is that I see a lot of people on this site that seem to think that somehow by making their work hard science it will somehow make it better.

@sphennings I agree with you that story should be more important, and if you need impossible plasma laser swords then put in impossible plasma laser swords. However, if you have the option to do what you need and keep inside known possibility, then the story will be a little stronger since people won't have to wonder if something stretches credibility.

Pacific Rim was one of the more enjoyable movies I've seen in recent years. It's incredibly soft sci-fi because it needs to be to have a gigantic robot pick up a cargo ship and use it like a baseball bat.

@AndyD273 Your audience will buy a lot of handwaving if you sell them on it well enough.

@AndyD273 I think the important thing is that if you're going to have laser swords don't try to explain them, just let them be. There was a 90s sci-fi showruner who was asked how fast the space fighters flew in his world. The answer was "they fly at the speed of plot".

@sphennings Sure, but that part was technically possible. Not realistic really, but also not impossible, and very few people care enough to try to do the math. I like science based much more than hard science.

@AndyD273 I don't thing a oil tanker is structurally sound enough to be picked up from one end and swung.

8:23 PM

@sphennings Sure, I think the real danger is if you try to sell too much, and people start to see the holes in the plot armor

@AndyD273 Look at Rick and Morty for an example of how much an audience is willing to buy into on a flimsy premise.

I'm really not disagreeing with you. I think you're right.

"Rick's a super genius, there are alternative dimensions, don't think about it."

Though that might be a bad example. I think Rick and Morty actually does their homework on some of that stuff. And alternate dimensions isn't out of the realm of possibility.

@AndyD273 I'm pretty sure the phrase alternative dimensions automatically qualifies a work as soft sci-fi.

8:27 PM

hmmmm, anyone an idea how to get more views to this aside from bounties?

I don't think the primary expression of alternative dimensions in Rick and Morty, the portal gun, is in any way possible.

@sphennings bigthink.com/paul-ratner/…

@dot_Sp0T Make an edit to it.

The multiverse (or meta-universe) is the hypothetical set of possible universes, including the universe which we live in. Together, these universes comprise everything that exists: the entirety of space, time, matter, energy, and the physical laws and constants that describe them. The various universes within the multiverse are called "parallel universes", "other universes", or "alternative universes". == Origin of the concept == In Dublin in 1952, Erwin Schrödinger gave a lecture in which he jocularly warned his audience that what he was about to say might "seem lunatic". He said that, when his...

@AndyD273 I think that multiverse's exist they won't be anything close to like how they are portrayed in Rick and Morty.

@AndyD273 More to the point I don't think the people writing Rick and Morty care if their model of the multiverse is true to science or not.

@dot_Sp0T That will bring it back onto the front page. On a weekday it should get more attention.

8:32 PM

@sphennings ranker.com/list/hard-science-behind-rick-and-morty-stories/…

nautil.us/blog/how-science-makes-rick-and-morty-great

I think they also care more about story than getting the science right, But they do try to get the science right when they can.

@AndyD273 I don't think so. I think they have cool ideas based on their interest in science but I don't think they try to get it right.

I don't see the point of that ranker article you linked. It doesn't seem to understand what hard science means.

@AndyD273 They use a lot of up to date science but they aren't hard sci-fi, I don't think they are trying to be, and I think the show is better for them being willing to ignore science at the drop of a hat.

@AndyD273 I think they use a lot of up to date science because they want to explore these ideas and they see the potential comedy in exploring them. First episode of season 2 was genius, but it isn't hard sci-fi.

2 hours later…

10:16 PM

@sphennings I'm not really sure if you think I'm disagreeing with you, but it kinda seems like you're ignoring what I'm actually saying. I never said it was hard science. I never even implied it was hard science. Just that they do make an effort to make it believable, stick with science when they can, and focus on the story when they can't.

And I think that is the right way to do it. If you are writing sci-fi, stick with science if you can, make if fun if you can't.

You can sell people on a lot of stuff, but spend it wisely.

@AndyD273 The inverse is also true. Don't try to explain something that people have already bought.

You don't need to explain the biology behind the anthropomorphic animals flying spaceships and fighting tyranny among the stars.

@sphennings I never said you should. I think it's important for the author to have a general rough idea of how it might work, but only to make sure that they make it consistent every time it's used.

But never tell a reader anything that doesn't further the story

2

Anyway, gotta run

1 hour later…

11:50 PM

hey there @sphennings

Hey there Shalvenay

how're things going?

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Dec '1711

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