Replaying System Shocks 1 and 2 for god knows which time now (SS1 is EE though!) Felt like wanting to check out something in the /tg/ world that's like System Shock's "cyberpunk with more advanced sci fi tech" and Transhuman Space caught my eye.
Getting 4th edition GURPS stuff including this at the moment. How is it? Does its rules work well with GURPS seeing as every other Cyberpunk system has at least one glaring flaw?
I dont know about transhuman space, but Gurps is pretty meaty. Youll probably have to do a lot of sifting through rules but dont worry, life sucks.
>>44184301
What glaring flaw?
>>44184301
Well, THS was written for GURPS, naturally it works well with GURPS. As for cyberpunk - it works well with GURPS as long as you can't buy a whole new cool body for cash only, because it fucks up with GUPRS principle: "Character points for character abilities, money for equipment".
>>44187715
But a body is equipment.
>>44187884
Not in GURPS.
>>44187912
That's a bit misleading.
The *default* option is to say that a body is a set of advantages and disadvantages, and to acquire a new one you need to pay the character point cost and the monetary cost.
BUT, that's just the default. It's right in the core that you can of course do it differently.
It comes down to how the GM chooses to run with it - but it's pretty typical for them to go for "body as equipment", as it's simpler and flows better with these kinds of settings. You just have to make sure everyone's Wealth is in order, but that's normal.
However, as it's simpler, it doesn't usually get more than a few notes on how to do it.
>>44184301
It's fantastic, and would work pretty well for something like System Shock.
It works fine with 4E - they've just finished putting out extensive update documents, and the new Bio-Tech 2100 (which I'm actually in the middle of reading) has a lot of background and explanation of their technological means.
>>44187715
>>44187884
>>44187912
This is inaccurate. You have three options:
1) Character points for physical improvements: In other words, the GM has to award you sufficient XP to be able to buy things like cyberlimbs. The cash then just becomes the in-game justification.
2) Cash for physical improvements. You pay the price, get the limb installed surgically, and you're done.
3) Track CP but don't charge CP. In this case, it works like #2 except that you do track the total points value of the character for balancing/GM-planning purposes.
GMs who do option 1 have to award more XP than usual to keep up, and usually apply disadvantages or limitations on their cyberware which the player can gradually buy off. Stuff like Debt for stuff you bought, Duty for stuff awarded in exchange for favors, Maintenance or Dependence for post-installation drugs or therapy, etc. Try Unreliable, which you gradually buy down to make your new power more easily activated, to reflect you learning how to use your new abilities.
THS offers both as options and you can pick whichever you want. The rules don't have a default. Both have pros and cons.
>>44184301
>Getting 4th edition GURPS stuff including this at the moment. How is it? Does its rules work well with GURPS seeing as every other Cyberpunk system has at least one glaring flaw?
THS is written for 3rd edition, so there's a little conversion required (It's all done for you in Changing Times.)
That's the bad news. The good news is that THS *defines* TL10 in fourth edition, and so Ultra Tech and Bio Tech were written with THS in mind. GURPS Spaceships has a cheap PDF supplement that converts all the THS spaceships into fourth edition rules, and is a way way way better system than the default in the core book.
Basically, the best way to run THS is in fourth edition. 90% of the supplements you can still use. The other 10% requires minor conversion, which becomes major conversion if you don't buy the upgrade PDFs but are persnickety about getting point totals perfect.
It's probably the best sci fi rpg ever written. No magic, no psi, no superpowers. The science is pretty damn hard by RPG standards but it's an interesting, action-filled, and weird setting. Some very impressive writers, including futurist Jamais Cascio, transhumanist luminary Anders Sandberg, and a planetary science PhD writing under a pseudonym.
>>44184301
One critique: like GURPS itself, there's so much to the setting that it's a little intimidating to get into. You really have to decide in advance what you're including (will the adventure take place in the TSA, Mars, the Deep Beyond, etc).
It's not like D&D where there's kind of a default story arc already assumed for you to play with or subvert at your will. There's dozens of possible storylines, each very fun and interesting, that you have to actively decide to use or not.
>>44189562
Yeah, the sheer size and freedom can be off-putting. Aside from the location books themselves, which are brimming with plot hooks...
There're a few prewritten adventures - Polyhymnia (Entertainment Industry Murder Mystery), Singapore Sling (memetic attack on a diplomatic convention to incite warfare), and Orbital Decay (Biowarfare Lab full of supersoldier zombies - generally considered a bit off-theme).
Transhuman Mysteries has a *lot* of great stuff about running a game and how Fifth Wave adventures work, and I'd say that's fairly important - plausibly applied technology puts a huge spin on traditional plot devices.
Toxic Memes gets into what people think, and it's a great source of ideas.
The 5 Personnel Files pdfs have distinct and ready-made teams of PCs, and a campaign seed.
Cities on the Edge has a pretty neat scenario regarding arcology murders.
>>44184301
Still better than shitstain phase.
>>44187443
Shadowrun has too many unnecessary rules flooding it similar to DnD 3.x
Cyberpunk 2020 is aged as fuck so even though it has some top tier netrunner rules the rest leaves something to be desired.
Eclipse Phase is just meh overall I don't see the hype behind it.
Interface Zero is actually pretty cool considering I generally love Savage Worlds but things can become more CoD Black Ops 3 than Deus Ex.
Have yet to read through and experiment with Ex Machina so I can't say.
What I have read of THS so far has been brilliant! All you guys talking about its hard Sci Fi aspects are right; this is THE hard Sci fi inspired setting I have been looking for.
The memetic side of THS was hard for me to get into. It's in the uncanny valley of too much power but not enough power, which hurt realism IMO.
Realistically, better social tools redefine societies. Scientifically driven human-hacking tools with mass applications? That will redefine humanity. Old heuristics die. Personal vulnerability skyrockets in turn. It would be Bakker's semantic apocalypse or crash space (paper related).
Put that way, turning up the dials on memetics for a social-engineering game mite b cool.
>>44190491
Well, the memetics in THS isn't Snow Crash's babylonian root language and all that jazz.
Toxic Memes did a pretty good job looking presenting it as a rigorously scientific approach to propaganda - powerful and very influential to social structures, but not capable of full on Pontypool or mind hacking.
The 4E update documents actually toned it down somewhat as well, along with hacking and the Pheromone advantages, as being a bit too cinematic for what they wanted.
>>44190604
As a social scientist, I feel like they could have done more with it but what there is, is well done.
Oh wait never mind I don't have the OG Trashuman Space I have the one called Changing Times. So yeah 4th edition stuff. What else do I need to read THS wise? Other than Uktra Tech and Shell Tech.
>>44190743
Well, the Transhuman Space book, maybe? Since you don't have it.
>>44190743
You can buy the core book in hardcover (it's on Amazon). Or the PDF you want is "Transhuman Space Classic".
That's really all you need to get started. All the splatbooks are excellent and eventually you'll want them all.
>>44190803
True. Shit THS is awesome from what I have read so far. Like I don't even honestly like GURPS that much because it isn't as flexible and universal as I would like but fuck it I am adapting this setting to FATE and Savage Worlds.
>>44190919
Yeah i was pretty anti-GURPS before I found THS. I was going to run it using WoD because I like that style of play.
Once I got into it, the conversion became a pain in the ass so I decided to check out fourth edition. Surprise, surprise, it was a great game and now I'm trying to switch my group over to it for everything.
>>44191156
I recommend you checking out FATE and Savage Worlds in depth if you haven't yet. They are my favorite systems because they can adapt anything and everything.
>>44189905
>implying THS isn't good.
>>44191241
Those are good systems, too, but IMO not as good as GURPS 4e.
>>44190919
>>44191156
Same here. I don't like GURPS as a system, but Transhuman Space is easily the smartest, most thoughtful scifi/cyberpunk setting ever written, bar none.
>Some very impressive writers, including futurist Jamais Cascio, transhumanist luminary Anders Sandberg, and a planetary science PhD writing under a pseudonym.
This alone should sell people on it. It's depiction of politics, economics, ethnocultural relations and its painstaking extrapolation of certain historical trends are fantastic. THS predicted the return of the Caliphate (Islamic State), for example.
It's only weakness were the lack of strong adventures, but at this level of play you're kind of expected to make your own, and the setting provides a million things to do in a sandbox style.
>>44191871
>THS predicted the return of the Caliphate (Islamic State), for example.
What? They predicted fundamentalists Muslims would do tyrannical shit? Whoa, they must have been amazingly prescient to figure that out in the 1950s. That's when they wrote this, right? ' Cause if they wrote it after the 1960s it would just be the obvious path for the future to take.
>>44191871
>THS predicted the return of the Caliphate (Islamic State), for example.
Well, sortof. The THS Caliphate is a legitimate and stabilising influence over the middle-east, and not nearly as bloodthirsty or opposed to progress.
But yes, lots of their predictions are still pretty damn good even now - instead of the "wearable computing revolution" we had tablets and smartphones, for example.
>>44191936
>Cause if they wrote it after the 1960s it would just be the obvious path for the future to take.
It only looks obvious in hindsight. Nobody was predicting the return of a mid-eastern Caliphate in early 2001. None of the CIA 20-year assessments or CFR projections assumed anything of the kind. THS did, and got it right.
>>44191942
>not nearly as bloodthirsty
True, but ISIS is a formative entity, whereas THS is set in 2100 after they've settled down. More like Spain under Franco after the bloodletting of the Spanish Civil War was over.
>>44191871
>>44191936
>>44191942
Honestly, I find the future history a bit bogus now. Even the developers agree that like all near future settings it's had some serious stumbles. One (pulver? or bill stoddard?) mentioned that in 2000, the EU as the dominant power of the 21st century seemed likely, but now it seems ridiculous.
The thing is, you don't read it as future history. You play it as a setting that talks about the big issues in human development, the ones that ARE likely to be important, like mass customization and transhumanism. That stuff has been talked about since Toffler and even before, and it's still vital and relevant today. You don't have to be on the Kurzweil bandwagon to see that hte world is changing again.
>>44192150
>the EU as the dominant power of the 21st century seemed likely, but now it seems ridiculous.
Oh sure, there's plenty that doesn't seem realistic right now, in 2015, but keep in mind that Jeremy Rifkind was peddling the "EU as future superpower" meme as recently as 2011 (the 2008 great recession was supposed to have destroyed the US).
And who knows what will happen between now and 2100 that will make our 2015 ideas look ridiculous.
Even many of the macro ideas that have been talked about since Toffler's time have not happened (telecommuting is on the decline, recently, for example, and the rate of job change has not risen appreciably in 40 years).
>>44192150
>You don't have to be on the Kurzweil bandwagon to see that hte world is changing again.
True - but even THS isn't riding those rails. For one thing, it makes for difficult gaming - though a Peace War style thing where the players all wake up in an earth recently abandoned mysteriously by perhaps-post-singularity humanity could be amusing. A post-techno-Rapture thing.
>>44192083
Franco ran Spain into the ground, and was brutal military dictator. I don't think you could get anyone to say Franco was "settled down" after the Civil War.
