On Tue, 5 Nov 2013, Onno Meyer wrote:
Johannes replied to me:
Animal drawn vehicles of any kind would be purely recreational or vehicles in
a high tech setting i assume.
Recreational or ceremonial, and ceremonial can blend into propaganda
use.
If it's a vehicle for showing off, it likely is ditched as soon as
something dangerous happens, so most of the time it would not really take
part in an adventure.
It would be possible however, that it has to be drawn for ceremonial
purposes, but has an emergency setting where you ditch the animals and
operate it without.
Also in canon SG Goa'uld equipment looks like antique equipment (a spear)
but works as high tech (ray gun), even though it is not shaped optimally
for that purpose.
Looking into the setting and not just the set designs, why would the
Goa'uld do that?
* They have the old design and no designers to change them. Which is
not really an answer: why were old designs made that way?
* Most of the henchmen train and fight with low-tech weapons. Only a
few elite henchmen are issued the high-tech counterpart, and there
are not enough spare parts to "use them up" in training. So the
high-tech has to look and feel like the low-tech.
* The Jaffa don't fight other system lords all that often. Mostly
they are used to keep ignorant peasants in line. This calls for
weapons which inflict pain in a flashy way, not instant death. A
dead peasant is no economic asset.
* Many worlds have peasants and miners who haven't seen their lords
in decades or centuries. They should _recognize_ the weapon as a
threat so that the threat doesn't have to be used..
* The Goa'uld have better weapons, but they don't issue them to the
rank and file Jaffa. They prefer it that their henchmen are armed
with short-range weapons without proper sights. It wouldn't do if
snipers started to take out leaders at long range.
Assuming there are no missing link designs between spears and "Jaffa
riffles", which would be most likely happen if the tech was originally
imported, rather then developed, propably at first the Jaffa riffles were
scare and only a small portion of the Jaffa could get them, the other
Jaffa got ordinary spears. If Jaffa riffles were disguised as spears, then
gathering intelligence regarding how many riffles there are at all and
where the troops with them are gets harder.
The Goa'uld seem to be very set in their ways how things are supposed to
look. They might favour designs of new equipment, that looks like the old
one does. They find it irritating, if the Jaffa now carry equipment that
looks different, so if the advantages of that are not great, they avoid
that.
Though overall i would consider SG a setting, where how things are
supposed to look trumps internal consistency.
So IMHO a grav segway is what fits best for the look and feel of the
setting.
It would be less comfortable then a grav bike, with a higher chance of
falling off, but it would be more easy to cramp 3 or 4 people into the 2
spaces it normally has (or 2 people in the one space).
A segway or a "horseless wheelless chariot"?
A contragrav/reactionless flyer would require at least mechanical
controls. A rules loophole allows low-powered contragrav/ducted
fan flyers.
I use both segway and chariot loosely here, so a segway would be a
horseless chariot. As Goa'uld vehicle it should look more like a chariot,
then a segway, but i guess that would be beyond the scope of Vehicles.
I would give it electronic controls. They might be designed to look low
tech ("reins" that essentially are 2 connected flexible joysticks for
instance), but especially if you want them behave similiar to reins for
horse drawn chariots, you need electronics.
If you just like the look of slaves hanging on a harness on the chariot,
you still can do that, it would just be more that the system lord yanks
the slaves hanging on the chariot around, rather then the slaves pulling
the chariot.
Personally, I don't like that at all. For the sake of adventure
settings, I'm willing to discuss the ways of Evil Overlords and
Ladies :-)
The Goa'uld want to impress their peers and their subjects with
their power over technology and people. I would guess that a
working superscience thruster is more impressive than a slave.
The only exception would be if they want to punish or degrade a
specific victim (a captured player character or dependent?).
Regards,
Onno
Yes i was thinking of either punishment or showing around important
captured foes. Which also should increase the chances of pcs getting into
the harness.
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