Hi Dark, That is unfortunately all too common these days. It seems no matter what we do such as turn on the television, pick up a book, or play a new video game it seems like the authors lack any sense of originality and inspiration for something really new. Lacking some new and innovative story or concept they continue using cookie cutter characters, in cookie cutter plots, in increasingly similar situations until the general public just gets tired of it.
Take for example Deep Space 9. During seasons 5 and 6 it seemed like every single episode was about the Dominion War.The story ark kept going on and on about the same subject, and eventually I simply got board with it. When they killed off Jadzia Dax in season 6 and brought Ezry Dax in to season 7 I simply switched the show off. They simply ran the show into the ground and killed it. Especially, considering the way they ended the series in the final episode. The thing is that one of the biggest problems with Deep Space 9 all along is that the story took place on a fixed space station in Bajoran space, near a wormhole, with very little exploration to speak of. Week after week Sisco, Kira, Dax, and the rest were dealing with the Cardassians, Jemhadar, Bajorans, Romulans, Ferengi, and other well established alien races when they could have done a lot more to explore the Gamma Quadrant to bring more alien races and new stories into the show. They didn't. Now, compare that to Voyager when the Star Trek creative writers were constantly chucking out new ideas for aliens, planets, and so on. Obviously, to save time and money they had to recycle some of those new races such as the Kazon, Vidians, Species 8472, the Herogen, etc but they were not featured week after week. There were some one shot deals like the Swarm that were introduced to spice up the plot with a greater and more diverse universe. Which was why I think Voyager had a much larger audience than Deep Space 9. There was always a sense of surprise and perhaps expectation to get something really new rather than a rehashing of the same thing different show. Like you I always appreciated the exploration of the story's world, its universe, and its characters most. That is why Deep Space9 failed for me, because it became more of a soap opera rather than a story about daring space explorers who were there to seek out new life, new civilizations, and to go where no man has gone before. Deep Space 9 did none of those things because they were often caught up in some long drawn out story lines involving already existing alien races that killed the exploration driven ark that was the draw of the Original Series, Next Generation, and Voyager. Anyway, getting back on topic here, I think that any roll playing game should work from the premise of ordinary people in extra ordinary situations. One reason for that is a sense of reality that the player can understand. I personally feel we should try not to over do the aliens that the characters meet, and not come up with technologies that are in all likely impossible. Try and create aliens and technologies that could exist based on what we know about science. For instance, I personally don't think something like a transporter will ever be possible given what we know about the laws of physics. First,of all it would require a huge amount of energy to break the human body down into raw energy, and then beam it from point A to point B. Then, there would have to be just as much energy to convert it back into solid matter once it gets there. That's not even considering a living breathing organism like a human being could survive such a process of being converted from matter to energy and back again. That just seems beyond belief as far as I'm personally concerned. Something else that puzzles me about science fiction is the concept of cross-breeding between alien races. According to current genetic research human genes are incompatible with every other species on earth including: apes, monkeys, chimps, and other primates which are about 98%% compatible with us. Wouldn't mating with aliens in all likelyhood suffer the same kinds of incompatibilities with breeding unless it were forced via some genetic splicing in a lab? Apparently not if you watch something like Star Trek. There are all kinds of half-breeds that appears on the shows. Commander Spock's mother was a human and his father was a Vulcan. Counselor Deana Troi had a human father and a Betazoid mother. Lieutenant B'lanna Torres is half-Klingon and half-human. On and on we can go. These so-called half-breeds exist without any attempt to explain why human and alien genes are compatible. In fact, the only cross-breed in Star Trek that makes any kind of sense in a scientific point of view is Jadzia Dax. In her case she is fully human, but lives in a symbiotic union with the Trill inside her body. In this way the trill alien is using her body as a host the way many parasites on earth use the host body of an animal to survive. So in a strict sense Jadzia isn't a cross-breed but a host for an alien creature. That's a totally different subject than cross-breeding so to speak, but at least it is a concept science is familiar with. So in short, not only should we focus on creating ordinary characters in an extra ordinary situation I think we need to take care to make the storyline believable. There should be some logical and rational reason for why this or that technology works and explain the reasons why the alien races the player encounters is the way they are. We should do our best to explain things rather than just invent it and leave the player hanging on how it works or why things are the way they are. Cheers! --- Gamers mailing list __ [email protected] If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to [email protected]. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to [email protected].
