Psychohistory, Transhumanism, and Imperial Conservatism

[Iracundus]

It occurred to me a few weeks ago that Psychohistory would be a way to give PCs a meaningful role through the Rebellion or Hard Times, which would address one of the major criticisms of those metaplots. They could be assigned missions intended to bend the curve of history: the Hard Times cannot be prevented, but PC actions could help reduce the length and severity of the turmoil.

The difficulty is showing or giving the PCs a sense they are making a difference beyond their psychohistorian boss telling them so. It is part of human psychology that prevented bad outcomes are harder to intuitively grasp than undoing bad outcomes that have already happened, hence why it is still so hard to get people to practice preventative medicine. If everything works out, nothing bad happens.

So PCs deliver critical life support parts or medicine to a dying world, that allows them to keep going for a few more months. Unless the PCs keep up the stream of deliveries and unless they are dealing with tiny populations it is difficult to see how they will make a long term difference beyond delaying the end. Maybe in that time, the dying world ships a bit more of its mineral output to an industrial world but again why would one more shipment make a lasting difference?

The way I see it, the PCs may postpone the death through a delivery, but then the harder task is setting up the business deals and logistics necessary to keep dying worlds from dying as soon as the PCs wander away.

Now a GM could be bleak and say that postponing the death of a world for a few more weeks or months so a few more people can get away is already a victory and bending history. Maybe but too many such bleak victories can be pretty draining for players and it may feel like their efforts are totally futile in the bigger scheme.

 

[Chris Barlow]

The difficulty is showing or giving the PCs a sense they are making a difference beyond their psychohistorian boss telling them so. It is part of human psychology that prevented bad outcomes are harder to intuitively grasp than undoing bad outcomes that have already happened, hence why it is still so hard to get people to practice preventative medicine. If everything works out, nothing bad happens.

So PCs deliver critical life support parts or medicine to a dying world, that allows them to keep going for a few more months. Unless the PCs keep up the stream of deliveries and unless they are dealing with tiny populations it is difficult to see how they will make a long term difference beyond delaying the end. Maybe in that time, the dying world ships a bit more of its mineral output to an industrial world but again why would one more shipment make a lasting difference?

The way I see it, the PCs may postpone the death through a delivery, but then the harder task is setting up the business deals and logistics necessary to keep dying worlds from dying as soon as the PCs wander away.

Now a GM could be bleak and say that postponing the death of a world for a few more weeks or months so a few more people can get away is already a victory and bending history. Maybe but too many such bleak victories can be pretty draining for players and it may feel like their efforts are totally futile in the bigger scheme.

Depends what sort of "medicines" the PCs are delivering. If its say vaccines against major killers such as Polio/Smallpox/Flu, one Free/Far Trader could include enough vaccine to immunize a whole planet's population for several years.

 

[Iracundus]

Depends what sort of "medicines" the PCs are delivering. If its say vaccines against major killers such as Polio/Smallpox/Flu, one Free/Far Trader could include enough vaccine to immunize a whole planet's population for several years.

Ok, you've immunized them against polio...Meanwhile they are dying from lack of clean water due to broken water treatment plants. Deliver parts for the treatment plant...they're dying from lack of food. Deliver survival rations...How many mouths can the cargo of a Free Trader feed and for how long? How long can the PCs keep that up? The needs of any reasonably populated yet still dying world would be enormous.

That's the problem. Many of they dying worlds would be the worlds that were never really that inhabitable in the first place, and which were reliant on either direct imports of consumables or the necessary technical equipment to enable local production. Unless the PCs can organize some form of ongoing delivery service or trade, they will have an endless black hole to fill. I think it would be a rare case where a world is just missing one critical delivery and then things would be just like the Golden Age.

The high value critical worlds have already been saved by each faction. What's left are those worlds that were lower priority due to lower yield for effort or which are too far from a faction's safe.

 

[Whipsnade]

What you both are talking about has been detailed very extensively in MT's "Survival Margin".

 

[BwapTED]

RE The Ziru Sirka and stagnation


Orbital bombardments and frustrating walls of red tape aside, if I were magically transported to the time of the Interstellar Wars (I have that GURPS book), I would be tempted to argue the Ziru Sirka was a basically good thing.


It brought the benefits of advanced technology to hundreds of worlds, kept the peace between star systems, and provided for sustainable long-term development.

One argument you see the Terrans, and later the Solomani , make is that the old Imperium was technologically stagnant and scientifically incurious.

And how much has technology and applied science actually advanced since the First Imperium?

Longer jumps

Frankenstein/Doctor Moreau type Solomani projects to create subject races

Some new ways to kill people and blow stuff up.

Faster computers?


I'm guessing the Solomani couldn't have made their animal uplifts and modified humans without some truly impressive medical advances, so there's that.

I don't have all the books in front of me, so I may be missing some major items...


RE Psychohistory

I like the idea that the Zirui Sirka was socially engineered.





Asimov's psychohistory might not work well with all the aliens running about. But of course, that might not matter as much if the Vilani were also masters of alien psychology--though this seems less plausible, considering the increased complexity of calculations added by multiple species.

I might consider having it be linguistically engineered (and just the humans--but they were by far the majority, no?) instead of rigged by Asimovian physics-of-gas style psychohistory.I hesitate to give spoilers, but I have a certain sci fi novel in mind when I suggest linguistics.

 

[BwapTED]

http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showthread.php?t=36571

The first post provides some answers to one of my questions.
Yay!