Feedback before I finalise 'Flat Black 2020'

Role-playing games Flat Black
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Continuing the discussion from Stable URLs for Flat Black documents:

G’day all!

I’m feeling a bit better and hoping to be writing again soon. That leaves little time to finalise Flat Black 2020. I’m unlikely to have a complete draft of the FB Gazetteer before the horrors of Christmas overtake me. But I do want to make a few changes to the Players’ Introduction, such as moving and re-naming Simanta (Esbouvier) and Hijra (Zawijah). So if you’d like to suggest any alterations or additions the next couple of weeks would be a good time.

Remember, the current draft of the Players’ Introduction to Flat Black can be downloaded from the usual URLs:

Fresh comments from new readers would be welcome.

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The text is about 9,650 words. That is a little longer than my target, which was 8,500 words (about what would lay out as ten pages in a GURPS book), but the target was arbitrary, and I don’t wish to cut anything. And on the other hand when I lay it out for easy reading by middle-aged eyes the PDF comes to 15 pages of A4, and it would require no more paper to print out double-sided if I added about 800 words.

So is there anything substantial missing? A glossary, perhaps?

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Hi @Agemegos - have had a quick look.

I think this is great; it provides much more background than I have ever given. I mostly GM published adventures in established settings so the people I play with could look it up, but they never do! That said they still keep playing so they must be ok with what I do.

Two bits of feedback:

  1. I think you could say a bit more on the types of adventure you are expecting. I have mentioned before that having such a large tapestry means that many options are open and players may see a better solution or opportunity somewhere else. I am currently on hiatus from running the Pirates of Drinax for Traveller, and whilst not difficult they have already strayed many times from where I expected the focus of the adventure to be. My ‘making it up as i go along’ skills have been tested a few times. So being clear that, for example, adventures are to be bound to the planets they start on, for example, may be necessary (if true).

  2. You could also perhaps say a bit more about sponsors, patrons and potential conflicts among them. You have a page or so but I wondered if you could give some examples or ideas - especially if you already know which faction the PC(s) are likely to be working for - who their enemies are etc.

Just thoughts - i think it is great and gives a real feel for the setting.

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  • p.1 column 1 What are the other half of the Core worlds like? Presumably in fact it’s a gradation with “rich advanced core world” at one end of the scale and “grotty periphery world” at the other, and whether your particular world is core or periphery is determined by a line someone drew on a map rather than how nice life is for the masses.
  • p. 2 column 1 You assume players know what “ForeSight’s tech level 8” looks like. Which may be fine.
  • p. 2 column 2 It sounds as if you’re saying “you could have a conversation with an AI, but you won’t enjoy it”.
  • p. 3 column 1 Is that “are still working” or “are still able to work”? Are you doubling each transitional age, or do people get a larger proportion of their lves as retirement?
  • p.4 column 1 That’s an odd asymmetry. Jump out at escape velocity from departure point, jump in at rest. I bet that keeps FTL physicists awake.
  • p.4 column 2 at end of economy types, insert: “None of them is the answer.”
  • p. 5 column 2 “Each colony appoints […] an Imperial district court”. Wouldn’t that be “receives” such a court? Does it need to dedicate some of its own people to learning Imperial law, and why would the Empire trust them to do that?
  • p. 6 column 1 So there’s an active body “the Empire” which is separate from its own Senate. Possibly worth mentioning what this seat of power is?

Because I’ve just been proofing, I note:

  • contents page looks unbalanced. Not much you can do about that in the format, though maybe shrinking it a little to fit in one column might help.
  • p. 1 column 2 “a wide range of plans” → "planets.
  • p. 2 column 1 “transcedence” → “transcendence”
  • p. 3 column 1 “conspicuous and uncomfortable nearly everyone” needs a semicolon I think
  • p. 6 column 1 “moving faster its escape velocity”

More later if I can make the time.

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Thank you very much!

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I have re-written and expanded the first section so that it now reads as follows. Does this address your concern?

Genre

Flat Black is a setting for science fiction roleplaying games. It was designed for sci-fi adventures on exotic planets that provide distinctive environments and present unique challenges. In a typical adventure the player characters come to an unfamiliar world for some purpose such as an investigation, mission, or heist. The world’s social and physical oddities become apparent through a series of strange incidents and colourful encounters. They present an obstacle and a chance to explore. The PCs struggle to figure out those peculiarities.; Then they can circumvent, adapt to, or exploit them to out-wit their opposition and achieve their goal.

In specialising for that sub-genre of sci fi Flat Black necessarily makes itself less than suitable for others. There is no interstellar clash of civilisations or naval adventure in space, such as would dwarf adventures on the personal scale. Characters lack such easy access to interstellar travel as would blur the focus on each exotic planet. There are no all-but-human aliens to steal the schtick of people behaving strangely for cultural reasons. Therefore Flat Black is not ideal for space opera. Similarly, the psionic powers, realms and beings beyond matter, and handwavium technology of sci-fantasy, transcendental speculation, and the SF gadget story would tempt and enable PCs to circumvent their challenges without social contact and adventurous action, and so must be omitted.

Player characters in a Flat Black campaign may be technical consultants or bounty hunters, spies or travel vloggers, covert operators or purchasing agents, detectives, or swindlers and thieves. They may work for their own profit , for a series of private clients, or for a multinational firm, an interstellar non-profit organisation with a peculiar agenda, a shadowy cabal with governments behind it, or even for the Empire. They may engage in planned skulduggery or have shenanigans forced on them. Their adventures may be thrillers, mysteries, capers, or clandestine ops, but not not SF idea stories nor tales of open war. PCs often deceive and manipulate, sneak and infiltrate, plant bugs and intimidate, chase, steal, fight, and even kill. But they do so surreptitiously, because they do not have impunity. At least their deeds must be deniable.

I’ll give some thought to what I can fit in, but I’m inclined to think that that will be hard to treat in useful detail in this basic introduction for a character-player, especially as this is a document that I want a GM to be able to give to a player joining or considering any specific campaign. That’s more the sort of information needed by a GM to design a campaign. I think.

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1 yes it does (though perhaps the balance is a bit skewed as to what it is not, rather than what it is)

2 noted and of course !

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Yeah, I think you’re right. I’ve been buffaloed by another reader who thinks that a lot of prospective players will be mostly familiar with interstellar SF from Star Trek and Star Wars, and will need to be told clearly and early not to think of playing space wizards, half-Klingons, and sexy robots. She is probably right too, but I can get the balance better.

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In terms of apparent attitude, “it’s like this” feels more positive and less curmudgeonly than “it’s not like that”.

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Yes, but I wouldn’t want to misrepresent myself.

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That’s not what I mean — simply a matter of the balance between the two tones of “we don’t do that stuff” and “this is the good stuff that’s why you should read and play this game”.

Talislanta back in the day had ads reading “No Elves”. And that’s the only thing most people remember about it; whatever uniqueness it had wasn’t apparent.

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Sorry. Joke.

I evidently don’t have the knack of self-deprecating humour, perhaps owing to not being English.

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The latest draft of that section is as follows. It is a bit more succinct, at 235 words instead of 364, and reduces the distracting list of examples of campaigns that the GM might run but isn’t running this time.
@DJCT, @RogerBW:

  1. Does it convey the necessary about types of characters and adventures?
  2. Does it strike a satisfactory balance between positive statement and the nattering negativity?

Is the word “everymen” okay? I’m afraid that it is neither found in a dictionary nor as inclusive as I would like to be, but I don’t want a long or awkward circumlocution.

Genre

Flat Black is a setting for science fiction role-playing games. It was designed for sci-fi adventures on exotic planets with idiosyncratic human societies that provide distinctive environments and present unique challenges. In a typical adventure the player characters come to an unfamiliar world for some purpose such as an investigation, mission, or heist. The world’s social and physical oddities become apparent through a series of strange incidents and colourful encounters. They present obstacles and a chance to explore. The PCs first struggle with the local peculiarities, then come to understand them, and at last adapt to, circumvent, or exploit them to overcome their opposition and achieve their goal.

The player characters in a Flat Black campaign may be benign everymen who have shenanigans thrust upon them. Or they may be professionals of skulduggery possessing complementary sets of very particular skills. Either way they rely on skill and resourcefulness in their adventures, not on psychic powers. They use futuristic equipment, tools, and weapons, but not overwhelming handwavium such as teleporters, spy-rays, or stun beams. They encounter—or are—humans and parahumans who behave strangely for cultural reasons, not AI robots or all-but-human aliens. They take part in personal exploits such as investigations, heists, clandestine ops, espionage troubleshooting in the field, thrillers, and mysteries, rather than naval operations in space. Flat Black is not for space opera but for planetary adventure.

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1 benign everymen = ordinary people
2 I think it’s a good balance and sounds more exciting
3 I caught the self-deprecation!

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Looks good to me. I might say “rather than” instead of “not” just before “AI robots”, though I know you’re using it later…

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It’s a personal quirk, but “sci-fi” gives me a big warning sign that something will be like Star Trek: failing to think through its premises, failing to distinguish between scientific and occult mysteries, and inconsistent. Of course, you target audience may not feel this way.

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Following a suggestion by Isaac Asimov, I tend to use “SF” for proper science fiction in which the theme, the point, of a story is a scientific idea, and “sci fi” for science fiction adventure in which the point of the story is a situation and plot that could just as well be a Western or thriller, in which the science fiction elements are trappings and mcguffins. (Unlike Asimov, I think that both can be good.) So I call Flat Black “sci fi” as an admission and to some extent a reassurance that the games aren’t going to be hard SF idea stories.

But it’s an idiolect. No-one else makes that distinction. It isn’t going to be effective in communicating to readers. I shall switch to “SF”:

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I added a semicolon and “the rest are more or less poor and backward, but seldom underpopulated.”

  • p. 2 column 1 You assume players know what “ForeSight’s tech level 8” looks like. Which may be fine.

I just don’t know a good way to succinctly indicate a level of technology that is of wide use, and I am likely to run my campaigns in ForeSight for the time being. So the sentence is useful to my possible players and not too distracting for anyone else. I’ve added “That’s roughly GURPS TL10 (advanced).” in case I recruit from the SJGames forums again, and would like to know your advice on “That’s roughly GURPS TL10^ (advanced), conservative hard SF with a slow progression, and limited superscience for space travel.”

  • p. 2 column 2 It sounds as if you’re saying “you could have a conversation with an AI, but you won’t enjoy it”.

I’ll try to be more usefully explicit, but the following seems like too much explanation for this document “Tech in Flat Black could make an AI to pass the Turing test, but there’s no market for them at a possible price. “AI” processes are programmed for savant-like ability at their intended tasks, which sometimes involve cognitive abilities that humans can’t even comprehend. But they completely lack cognitive faculties that humans take for granted, such as rationalising, and never want to turn into a real boy.”

  • p. 3 column 1 Is that “are still working” or “are still able to work”? Are you doubling each transitional age, or do people get a larger proportion of their lves as retirement?

I’ve changed it to “are still able to work”. I’m trying to give a specific example of the rule of aging at half speed after twenty, i.e. to say that a 120-year-old who used Eugerione is like a 70-year-old who didn’t. What do you suggest?

  • p.4 column 1 That’s an odd asymmetry. Jump out at escape velocity from departure point, jump in at rest. I bet that keeps FTL physicists awake.

You’re not often wrong, but you’re right this time.

I have spent decades futzing about with specifications for an FTL drive that pretend to play nice with the conservation of energy, momentum, and angular momentum. But I know too much (and have players who know too much) about the Galactic gravitational field, the space velocity of stars, and the relativity of motion. The halfway convincing ones end up with horrible performance properties, such as travel Corewards being easy and travel Rimwards being limited to a few parsecs, or requiring that I look up the space velocities of the origin and destination stars and calculate the vector difference to figure the travel time and fare. Even then they are only halfway convincing. FTL is always going to be weird, and I have decided to embrace that.

  • p.4 column 2 at end of economy types, insert: “None of them is the answer.”

Done.

  • p. 5 column 2 “Each colony appoints […] an Imperial district court”. Wouldn’t that be “receives” such a court? Does it need to dedicate some of its own people to learning Imperial law, and why would the Empire trust them to do that?

“Appoints” is correct, and I have added a few words to make it clear why. “The colonies appoint Imperial district courts with jurisdiction in their territories, as a protection of their liberties against tyrannical enforcement of Imperial law”

The Empire does not trust the colonies to appoint fair courts. But the colonies don’t trust the Empire to do so either, or fear that it would. This is the compromise that got through the Senate: Imperial district courts exist to protect colonies against Imperial tyranny. (Sotto voce: to protect tyrannical governments and ‘peculiar institutions’ against Imperial justice.)

  • p. 6 column 1 So there’s an active body “the Empire” which is separate from its own Senate. Possibly worth mentioning what this seat of power is?

It’s in the chapter titled “The Empire”.

  • contents page looks unbalanced. Not much you can do about that in the format, though maybe shrinking it a little to fit in one column might help.

When I have finalised the text I will lay out the table of contents by hand. Pages’ automatic formatting of tables of contents sucks muddy gravel.

  • p. 1 column 2 “a wide range of plans” → "planets.

“plans” → “schemes”

Ought I to make it “according to a wide range of schemes”? “to a wide range of schemes”?

  • p. 2 column 1 “transcedence” → “transcendence”

:heavy_check_mark:︎

  • p. 3 column 1 “conspicuous and uncomfortable nearly everyone” needs a semicolon I think

:heavy_check_mark:︎

  • p. 6 column 1 “moving faster its escape velocity”

Fixed. Well “Colonies that control a whole world, or that are at peace and co-operate with their neighbours well enough to conduct united orbital traffic control, may operate spaceships and place satellites and orbital habitats (within their worlds’ Hill sphere and moving slower than its escape velocity), but these are supervised by the Imperial Navy.” is a sentence that still needs work.

More later if I can make the time.

Thanks very much.

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I have uploaded new drafts that incorporate the results of your feedback, as a PDF and as an EPUB, at the original URLs

The PDF ends very neatly at the end of page 15, so I could add another six or seven hundred words without needing an extra leaf of paper.

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OK, skimming a bit over the stuff I’ve already looked at. I like the visual balance of the contents page better.

Regarding the tech level para: I wonder if you could just summarise it: e.g. “Overall, the tech level is advanced but not miraculous to an early-21st-century reader: there are laser sidearms and antimatter power plants, but no antigravity or force fields.”

I think “are still able to work” is fine - whether they do or not depends on the social system they’re in.

I still don’t get the point of the the Imperial district court. This may just be me not seeing the obvious. How does a case get to a colony’s IDC, from above or from below? What can they do that the planet’s highest non-Imperial court can’t? If the answer is “deal with matters of Imperial jurisdiction in local space” what’s the point of calling it imperial if it’s effectively owned by the colony? (I’m obviously thinking of the extreme case of Planet of the Mind-Controlled Zombies here.) For the purposes of this document I’d say either this needs to be clearer or, if it’s not that important, it could be dropped out.

“The Empire can intervene without permission from the Senate” - sure you explain this later, but I’m reading this thing front to back and I trip over it here. When I put myself in prospective player mode, anything I trip over while reading this kind of introductory guide is likely to cause me to think “nah, this is too much work, I’ll have a look later”.

There’s a logical exclusion here. Given the initial state of “colony has the right to operate spaceships etc.”:

  • within the Hill sphere and slower than escape velocity → colonial jurisdiction, subject to Naval inspection
  • outside the Hill sphere and faster than escape velcoity → Imperial jurisdiction

What of something inside the sphere and faster, or outside and slower? I suspect the Navy grabs those two quadrants too. Looks like it from “Colonial Space Habitats”, so the last word on p.5 (of the latest PDF) needs to be “or”.

Right, getting on to new stuff.

“none can have a human lover” – oh, humans can be very inventive when it comes to perversions. But I take your point.

Probably want a non-breaking space between e.g. “3” and “°C”.

Is it worth mentioning “major imports/exports” for the “Colonies you have heard of” section? I realise this would steal from some of The Suite above. Maybe the others don’t have significant imports/exports, which is fair enough.

“terraformation” → “terraforming” usually.

Lowrie: would be helpful to define roughly how large “a community” is, or conversely roughly how often a prom tends to happen, or how many people per form, or….

Great job of making none of the colonies seem like particularly appealing places to live (obviously using the “I get to be a random person in this society” rule).

“The Home Office builds, maintains, and runs habitats for Imperial servants and their families in orbit and Imperial enclaves.” – slightly awkward. Perhaps “, both in orbit and in planetside Imperial enclaves”?

“The Independent Commission for Justice (ICJ) has the power of enforcing the Imperial Crimes Act in colonial jurisdiction,” which is fine if you said anywhere what that deals with!

I don’t know if “pretorian” is standard in en_AU but it’s not in en_GB or en_US.

Generally I think this works well; I think I have a better impression of the setting now than I’ve had before.

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