Mike asked: > How many are done for totally alien intelligent life forms? > > How many can be or are easy to modify for special use (hot roded or like), > as well as 1000 years from being made, and landed on an alien planet, how > will they look and act or ..
Very few. But then, how do you define totally alien? * A different body mass is easily handled by the VXi22 rules. Biped, quadruped, hexapod, that doesn't really affect the stats. * A totally different biochemistry might be a free special effect. * If the alien requires a significantly heavier environment, like water, the rules in Uplift might help. But that doesn't make the occupants totally alien, just guys in fancy rubber costumes. Totally alien could be a different mindset, but how does that affect vehicles? Consider the Knnn from C.J.Cherryh's Alliance/Union universe. Everybody agrees that they're seriously weird, and their tech is better than everybody else, but they're still playing in the same league, so to speak, even if they're living in a methane atmosphere. Perhaps one or two TLs higher. Or take the K'kree from Traveller. Their mindset forces them to travel in large ships for their herds, but again the tech isn't anything special. Other aliens might be completely incapable of teamwork, but how does that differ from a small and cheap scoutship for a single human? BTW, please don't cross-post this. Hal wrote: > If I were to try and build vehicles today for a campaign, it would be for > something like a CYBERPUNK 2020 port over to GURPS or maybe try to > replicate the feel of BLADERUNNER style vehicles. Imagine trying to do up > something akin to the 5th ELEMENT vehicles *amused grin*. 4E would do that much better than 3E, with the improved handling of TLs and superscience options. > I am even more > disappointed to the point of almost ANGER, and the new concepts for vehicles > in > GURPS 4e. It all boils down to the handling of ST and HP, which isn't just a vehicles concept. > In all fairness, it is possible that some of the attempts to > simulate real life vehicles is going to run into issues, not because of bad > research per se, but for rules that just don't mesh well with the reality that > is involved. That, too. You can't press a few millenia of technology into 200 pages of a game book. > None the less, being able to design vehicles for campaigns, and being able > to determine what is or is not possible within the game construct itself, > is fun. Yes. I write vehicles when we can't organize a game :-) > I'd have more fun working on building near future space craft and > launch systems - and then build a space colony based on the limitations of > said vehicles - to be MORE fun than just pulling numbers out of thin air > and moving a story along by fiat. Why? Because it forces the players (and > GM!) to work within a frame work and apply ingenuity for problem solving > rather than just tossing numbers and concepts together in what amounts to a > tossed salad approach. Just as importantly, many players approach the a fictional world with a rational mindset, and when things don't match you run into trouble. Before you GM a game on a newly settled colony world, you should know the cost of shipping one ton of cargo, or one colonist. > In short? I would say that you might want to create a series of standards > for the "Mythical" game world, then work off of that world as you design > vehicles for it. Who needs a cab? No one until they spot that the cab is > already done and available ;) Well, there is Traveller. Our campaign has been running for a decade, give or take. > So Onno - what Game UNIVERSE do you have in mind? I'm playing Traveller. I'm thinking about something with seriously high TLs and restricted AI/robotics, to keep humans in play, but that hasn't come together yet. Regards, Onno _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
