Title: Personal and Technological Self-Sufficiency in RPGs
The motivation to play a particular role-playing game may stem from a felt lack of some desirable element of personal experience. A person who demonstrates empathy and personal social connectedness in a boring real life society may relish role-playing as a means of acting out more dramatic personal relationships and thus exercising his capacities for emotion.
I have noted that many technically skilled persons such as engineers play wizards in role-playing games. Wizards are like self-contained ammunition factories and infantry support weapons; they generate their ammunition by personal effort and can rain destruction at will, without appealing to patron deities, social groups, etc.
Some games encourage player characters to build up freeholds which are relatively self-sufficient. Other games may encourage player characters to climb a social hierarchy where they will have constant access to the services of minions -- but also constant responsibility to keep their minions in line. (Vampire is a notable example.) In such games, the character may be powerful, but primarily because of social connections, which may become the focus of the game.
The case of Traveller and its capacity to represent "Pocket Empires" is noteworthy.
The case of a Traveller campaign which allowed a party to create a self-sufficient colony by dint of the hard efforts and superior skills of the colonists is an interesting case.
Such a Traveller campaign would present a theme of self-sufficiency which seems to be anethema to Marc Miller's original vision of long, vulnerable interstellar supply lines which could cause a Long Night if they were to collapse, and highly complicated, decadent societies which could not preserve the skills that lifted them to a complex social state.
Traveller cannot model self-sufficient groups. I submit that it was designed to make such representations unlikely. Traveller has a vision of an empire with resemblances to Rome and to America. It is a somewhat authoritarian community, but it is profoundly communal -- it is difficult to tell stories about an entirely self-sufficient Traveller group. The party of player characters must necessarily interact with the community of (mostly Imperial) worlds, and it must be attentive to details such as legalities, cultures, and environments. It is a game that glorifies heroes who can adapt to existing communities rather than start new communities which enshrine their personal preferences.
If I were going to run a space opera campaign that allowed for the founding of new communities, or the possibility of technically self-sufficient communities, I would have to modify the Traveller rules beyond recognitiion, or else throw them out entirely and start over from scratch.
The motivation to play a particular role-playing game may stem from a felt lack of some desirable element of personal experience. A person who demonstrates empathy and personal social connectedness in a boring real life society may relish role-playing as a means of acting out more dramatic personal relationships and thus exercising his capacities for emotion.
I have noted that many technically skilled persons such as engineers play wizards in role-playing games. Wizards are like self-contained ammunition factories and infantry support weapons; they generate their ammunition by personal effort and can rain destruction at will, without appealing to patron deities, social groups, etc.
Some games encourage player characters to build up freeholds which are relatively self-sufficient. Other games may encourage player characters to climb a social hierarchy where they will have constant access to the services of minions -- but also constant responsibility to keep their minions in line. (Vampire is a notable example.) In such games, the character may be powerful, but primarily because of social connections, which may become the focus of the game.
The case of Traveller and its capacity to represent "Pocket Empires" is noteworthy.
The case of a Traveller campaign which allowed a party to create a self-sufficient colony by dint of the hard efforts and superior skills of the colonists is an interesting case.
Such a Traveller campaign would present a theme of self-sufficiency which seems to be anethema to Marc Miller's original vision of long, vulnerable interstellar supply lines which could cause a Long Night if they were to collapse, and highly complicated, decadent societies which could not preserve the skills that lifted them to a complex social state.
Traveller cannot model self-sufficient groups. I submit that it was designed to make such representations unlikely. Traveller has a vision of an empire with resemblances to Rome and to America. It is a somewhat authoritarian community, but it is profoundly communal -- it is difficult to tell stories about an entirely self-sufficient Traveller group. The party of player characters must necessarily interact with the community of (mostly Imperial) worlds, and it must be attentive to details such as legalities, cultures, and environments. It is a game that glorifies heroes who can adapt to existing communities rather than start new communities which enshrine their personal preferences.
If I were going to run a space opera campaign that allowed for the founding of new communities, or the possibility of technically self-sufficient communities, I would have to modify the Traveller rules beyond recognitiion, or else throw them out entirely and start over from scratch.
