Transhuman Space, Opinions? Options

[Black Isis]

Has anyone else looked at the Transhuman Space setting from SJG (it's for GURPS, but I don't intend to use the system, I just want the background material)? I am thinking about picking it up and wondering what people think of it. Recommendations on what books to get and which ones to skip, and overall impressions much appreciated.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you can look at the main site for Transhuman Space.

[Synner]

Tzeentch, get in here man...

[grimshear]

Put simply, TS is one of the best written, most comprehensive and detailed settings out there. Everything is detailed, and if you actually sit down and read through all the books, everything that gets mentioned in passing in one part ("Currently the rage in The Belt") gets detailed in the book dealing with that part of the setting.

And yes, they actually do need to have different books for the different parts of the setting, because it's just that detailed.

I consider the books one of the best investments I've ever made, and I've never even played GURPS.

Grim Shear
"So I don't like Troll Thrash Metal... if you argue with me, he's gonna kick your hoop."

[Black Isis]

Ah, okay, cool....that is what I was hoping to hear. Any suggestions for what books to look into getting first, after the main one?

[grimshear]

Any of them really, though I particularly liked "In the Well," "Deep Beyond," and "Fifth Wave"

[Mr Burns]

From a part time lurker, I thank you for bringing this game to my attention. I bought and read one book from the series (toxic memes) and now am sponging two more books (under pressure & deep beyond) into my brain and scouring Vancouver for the rest.

[Scarab]

I was thoroughly awed by TS. I picked the main book up on a whim, and went back to the FLGS the day after to buy Fifth Wave.

It is a joy to read the material. I can give it nothing but praise,

[otomik]

yeah i was ogling these books at the store, beautiful art and rich detailed prose. but i thought, what would i actually do in this setting? i didn't see a genre of adventure there to inspire stories, just a interesting setting. kind of reminded me of "Over the Edge" and other games where you just have mechanics and a setting but no genre.

[Mr Burns]

I can see why you have have this issue with it, I had the same sort of thing with trinity, funny enough another near future game. But then I realised that any corporate type of adventure I had seen in SR could apply here and that opened floodgates for me in trinity. I think its the same deal here. Off the top of my head here's what I would do in this setting.

-coorporate/national black ops squads(shadowrun)
-tracking down rogue AIs/sentiences (blade runner)
-cleaning up bio/nano experiments gone wrong at remote reserach sites (kind of like exploring kaers in earthdawn)
- military patrol/search and rescue


Not a very big list to be sure, but each has a lot of room to move in it. To be fair I have only read one source book so far and it was more of a culture book. lots of shadowrun books could be applied to this setting (ie cyberpirates or renraku arcology shutdown). I think that is is a vast array of things to do in this setting, but they do not tell you what types of characters are the main focus in the game and that makes it hard to see the forest thru the trees.

[Scarab]

That is my impression as well. Great setting, but I don't have the slightest idea how to run a game in it.

[Tzeentch]

-- First off, go buy Spacecraft of the Solar System and Under Pressure pronto ;)

-- More seriously, if you are having a problem figuring out what your characters do (beyond shadowrunning with bioroids instead of elves) I suggest Personnel Files which has many pregen characters and groups with ready-made background stories and plot hooks.
-- All the TS books are high quality, with the notable exception of the adventure Orbital Decay -- which was a generic zombie horror adventure "parachuted in" to the game line without much (read: any) input from the line developer or other authors.
-- For space-based games I recommend Deep Beyond as it's chock full of wierdness and In The Well. For earth-based games I recommend Broken Dreams and Fifth Wave. Broken Dreams in particular is ideal for playing games that are recognizable to the players (as "Third Wavers" while still having access to the wierder "Fifth Wave" technologies and social constructs.
-- Toxic Memes is good (it has a big selection of wierd ideas, cults and concepts), although I do think it goes a bit crazy with "memes as mind control" which was not the intent of those rules.
-- Under Pressure has the most complete set of aquatic adventuring material in any RPG that I'm aware of (certainly more then even Blue Planet) and is a much darker view of the optimistic outlook from Fifth Wave and the core book (at least regarding the environment). Lot of interesting research went into that book, heck it's referenced in a Phd thesis (seriously)! I'm one of the writers so I'm biased as hell ;)
-- In The Well presents the "default" extraterrestrial gaming area (a partly terraformed Mars) and plays up a bit of the wuxia elements of the setting.
-- High Frontier has a perfect campaign setup with the "vacuum cleaner" debris teams.
-- Most of the books are setting, although a few do have some GURPS crunch (the modular design systems primarily). GURPS handles the character types more readily then most game systems so it might be worth and least downloading the free GURPS Lite: Transhuman edition from SJG to get a feel for the rules.

-- The official TS website sucks monkey nads. I've tried for YEARS to get SJG moving with a decent web presence to no avail (I am/was the official volunteer coordinator for the TS webpage BTW). I finally said "screw it" and made my own page that's still more current then the official one despite the fact I haven't touched it in a while while working on 4e stuff. http://matrix.dumpshock.com/tzeentch/Transhuman/


-- To get in the TS "groove" I suggest watching GitS: Stand Alone Complex and PLANETES. GitS in particular is a BIG influence for TS. See my bibliography page for an extensive list of references culled from all the books and some new additions.

-- Also check out the Yahoogroup "transhuman_space" for interesting conversations.

[Scarab]

I do believe you've convinced me to attempt a campaign. :D

[Black Isis]

Thanks Tzeentch, that's an interesting take on things. ;) I'll probably be picking up Under Pressure soon, since I'm actually planning to run a Shadowrun game with the first "season" based on Lucien Soulban's Sub-Attica Cyberpunk adventure, and there's not a whole lot in Target: Wastelands to go off of (and some of the stuff there....well, I'm not sure I'll use it anyway). I'm definitely looking forward to getting the THS main book -- unfortunately, I have the feeling it's going to arrive at my doorstep the day I leave for Boston and Portland for a week, so I'm going to be out of luck for a while (damnable SoE, taking forever to come in). I'll be sure to check out your webpages.

[Maxxi]

Under Pressure was awsome. It seemed originally the most useless book, I mean so few people live underwater! But after reading the book, I was honestly blown away. It's great stuff.

In the Well, I got this at the same time I was reading Red Mars by Kim Robinson. It's funny how much was borrowed from Red Mars, even the idea for the campaign setting where the entire planet gets caught in a giant dust storm.

Broken Dreams is still my favorite though. It has a very Cyberpunk ambiance, especially the few pictures they had in Kazakstan. I never thought I could have a fun game in central Asia until I read that book.

Transhuman Space is the best.

[Tzeentch]

-- Useless? USELESS?!? Dear sir, your words wound me! ;)

[Maxxi]

Hey, I read it and it was good!

But too a new player my thoughts were "People live on the moon, what the **** is so cool about the Ocean?" The imagery of the Night Sea even creeped me out. I can hardly imagine a pitch black ocean so far away from the sun. It just seems creepy, prime place for Krakenism.

[Tzeentch]

-- Some people didn't like the aquatic vehicle design system (it was contractually mandated) but I had a LOT of fun tweaking Vehicles to get more realistic water vehicles (notably, the concept of hydrodynamic stall, concrete hulls, and other technological advances).
-- Consty and David were awesome co-authors, considering their credentials I felt sort of like the dunce third wheel :) It was funny during development, with Consty (as he's a planetary scientist) asking highly respected and famous scientists questions that came up during our writing for an RPG book -- almost surreal. Heck, as I did the tech chapter for GURPS Uplift I even got a "cool!" response from David Brin when I sent him my research on fluorohalide respiration :)

[mmu1]

I love the writing, the attention to detail, the great amount of verisimilitude and the fact that it tries to use hard science as much as possible.

But I have one BIG problem with Transhuman Space - actually finding players that are able to play the damn thing without the GM needing to hold their hand the whole time.

It is usually completely inaccessible to casual roleplayers, because it requires people to understand and think through the implications of a myriad of near-future technologies.

After the first three sessions I jokingly decided that before my next try at TS, in order to make everyone ready for the type of game I'd want to run I'd make them go through a required reading list of Gibson and Stephenson, watch Blade Runner, Ghost in the Shell, Strange Days and Blackhawk Down, take an introductory level genetics course, and go play paintball in an urban setting to disabuse them of stupid ideas about gunfights. ;)

[Scarab]

I just read a comic that instantly made me think of Transhuman Space: Global Frequency by Warren Ellis. Recommended for the TS feeling.

[Tzeentch]

-- For introducing players I *highly* suggest creating characters ahead of time based on a fairly simple concept "cops", "robbers", "private investigators" and base the plot on something fairly conventional ("there's a murder", "you're to steal the corporations prototype blender", "you're smuggling in drugs") then decide on a *handful* of Transhuman Space elements you want to introduce (ubiqituos information, AI assistants, surveillance everywhere) and make it clear those exist and hammer the players with them at every opportunity (not to kill them though, just make them distinctly aware of them).

-- For my first campaign the entire group were rogues from Exogenesis and the entire first adventure was them trying to get off Exogenesis Station while the new owners moved in to "clean house" of all the illegal xoxes and bioroids (read: shoot to kill). One of the players was a damaged ghost loaded into a too-low Complexity computer . . . in five seeker missiles. Each time they used a seeker he lost the ability to reconstruct a portion of his intellect. Another was a sex bioroid (in retrospect, not a good idea due to the juvenile player) who proved to be the group combat monster (no pain penalties, could slowly regenerate), another was a genefixed human (can't remember what his specific template was), and the last was a bush robot. Their main ally was an experimental sentient snack (read: edible miniature human, see Deep Beyond). The idea was pretty conventional: fight your way to a shuttle, but everyone got into it pretty well. I think the key is to give everyone a pretty strange, but recognizable character concept and NOT introduce TS concepts without a damn good reason at first. For example, I realized they would be screwed with the shuttle because it had a sapient AI guardian and there was no way they could hack it. I quickly decided this was something they could just make a roll for Electronics and bypass the AI controller and they patched in the seeker missile guy. "Realistically" that would probably never work as the controls would be coded for the AI using practically unbreakable encryption. But it got in the way of the story so off it went.

[Maxxi]

I'm thinking of running a game on Mars on www.rpol.net.

Well not thinking. I'm looking for players actually. Since many people here seem knowledgeable, I could deal with the extra input from seasoned players.