When creating such a system, I feel it's important to have a solid idea of the flavor you're shooting for. In the case of scifi, there are two opposing schools of thought, one which feels that scifi should be very scientific and technically accurate, and one which feels that scifi should basically just be fantasy in space and not care at all about realism (e.g., Star Wars). Both have good points, but each side tends to regard the other as "wrong," which I feel is misguided. I think both methods can be (and have been) used to create fun settings and stories. I also think that the best settings and stories use the best elements from both viewpoints rather than focusing exclusively on one.
To elaborate, I think the idea that good scifi is somehow obligated to be fully realistic and scientifically accurate is absurd. By that logic, stories set in the contemporary world should be even more obligated to be entirely realistic and scientific, since we have more data about our immediate experiences. Yet this is clearly not the case, since many stories set in the modern world use unscientific elements (ghosts, monsters, psionics, magic, supernatural events, etc.) to excellent effect. It is also nonsensical to assume that the fundamental state of scientific theory will be exactly the same 500 or 5,000 years in the future as it is now. Anyone who knows anything about the history of science is aware that scientific knowledge undergoes continuous paradigm shifts and is constantly making mistakes and corrections. Over and over again, science has discovered that previous assumptions were completely wrong (Aristotle, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Einstein, et al ad infinitum) and created more accurate models to better reflect how reality works as we understand it. It is both arrogant and naive to believe that modern scientific theory is the "final" stage of scientific progress and that we will not experience more -- perhaps many, many more -- evolutions of scientific thought as we come ever closer to an understanding of reality as it truly works. This is particularly true because even on the Earth of today, there are many everyday phenomena that are not fully explained by our current scientific understanding even in its most cutting-edge forms (e.g, quantum physics), or which only have speculative theories to explain them, such as (just to cite a couple examples out of many) the source of gravity (gravitons? possibly, but unproven -- and even if true, how does a graviton exert a force of attraction?) or light (particle? wave? photon? nothing definitively proven). How much greater would our ignorance be of phenomena in foreign solar systems, with environments we can hardly even conceive of! It is more feasible to assume that (so long as human civilization is not destroyed or retarded) scientific understanding will be far more advanced several hundred or thousand years in the future. But because it is impossible to know what scientific breakthroughs will be in advance, a scifi author has no choice but to imagine a fictional superior science that will exist in the future and extrapolate new societies and inventions based on it -- unless said author bases virtually all the technology in his story on existing scientific theory, which can be quite interesting but is no more realistic than "making up" scientific advances to fill the gap. As for inserting supernatural creatures or events and other "unscientific" phenomena -- why not! As long as it improves the story.
On the other hand, the idea that scifi settings should shy completely away from adhering to known scientific principles is equally flawed. Some individuals almost seem to have a phobia of using real science in fiction as though it will somehow hurt the story. Quite to the contrary -- although a scifi author can and (in my opinion) often should "make up" science to simulate more advanced technology, a setting can be made much richer if, wherever possible, the author does base his technologies on science as we understand it. For example, you can equip all your ships with ray cannons or just call all your beam weaponry "lasers" regardless of whether they actually behave like lasers or not... or, you can take real-life concepts used by modern scientists and engineers such as railguns (which fire slugs using electromagnetic acceleration instead of chemical propellents), particle cannons (which fire beams of supercharged particles which do not travel at light speed), and scientifically accurate lasers (which travel at light speed and burn through targets rather than exploding since they are, after all, extremely condensed beams of light -- not explosive projectiles!). And you can equip all your spaceships with shields that block incoming attacks with no real explanation, which is fine, but you might make your setting a little richer if you, for instance, give some sort of reference to the fact that your ships generate electromagnetic fields that deflect incoming particles of certain characteristics (e.g., a given electric charge) since it has been demonstrated in laboratory experiments that electromagnetic fields can do exactly that. Sure, you might or might not be able to create effective shields this way, but at least an explanation like this is semi-plausible and gives a nod to real-life science. Having a rudimentary knowledge of gravity, orbits (tangential velocity, the fact that so-called weightlessness is actually continuous freefall, etc.), interplanetary navigation (you can't just go in a straight line from one planet to another!), and so on also helps you not seem like an idiot and lends a little credibility since a lot of stories really screw up these basic concepts. If you can use science without hurting your story, why not do it! After all, the genre is called science fiction.
That's why, rather than adhering to one mindset or the other, when I make up scifi settings, I use real science when I can, make up fake science when I can't, and throw in unscientific, unrealistic things, places, and events whenever I feel like it will improve the story. While "hard" scifi and sci-fantasy can both be used to construct fun and engaging settings, I feel that a hybrid approach allows for the most potential and creativity.
And that's what my scifi RPG system aims for. I draw on real science when creating rules for things such as falling (this gets a lot more involved than "d6 damage per 10 feet fallen" when you have to deal with variable gravity and factor in continuous acceleration and terminal velocity), atmospheric pressure, temperature extremes, and so on. Obviously the rules for a game have to be greatly simplified compared to actual scientific models (most people wouldn't find it fun to do 30 minutes of calculations just to work out the damage from a 4-meter fall), but they are both more plausible and more useful as good rules when the numbers are based on real theories and formulas. And I haven't made my weapons list yet, but when I do, you can be sure it will draw heavily from cutting-edge experimental and theoretical weapons of modern times. At the same time, I'm not shy about making up fantastic equipment, vehicles, and weapons if they're cool enough to justify it (giant robots and laser swords ahoy!), and I don't feel constrained by the known laws of reality if they stand in the way of integrating good ideas. Who doesn't like malignant races of alien spirit demons showing up and ruining humanity's day?
That covers the flavor aspect of the system's fiction and setting -- but what about the flavor of the mechanics? There are more issues to be considered here as well, like the issue of "rules-heavy" vs. "rules-light," which could also be phrased as "crunchy" vs. "free-form" rules. As usual, there are merits on both sides of the argument, as well as flaws. But this post is already very long, so I'll leave that discussion for next time.
- Satellite Observatory (James)
