What SF influenced YTU?

[jatay3]

And the navy is called the High Guard, and all the season 1 tech is right about TL12-16..... and you need a living navigator.

Except Andromeda has sapient ships. I thought that a cool gimmick even though I don't normally like oversmart robots(they get to dominate a setting until you wonder what in the world is there for our big darned heroes to do). But the sapient ship thing was cool.

Having Rommie be the only sapient ship in the setting because of tech regress allowed having one's cake and eating it too.

 

[jatay3]

I think this is the hard part of a question like this. We quickly think of the titles but in point of fact other stuff has had an influence even though we do not think of it right away.

Some of the non-SciFi has had as much influence as the sciFi stuff for me. I can not imagine how much of my stuff has been drawn from Police and Spy genre films and books. Even westerns have had an impact as well.

Daniel

Not westerns for me. The "border of civilization" idea is great but there have been plenty of borders of civilization in history and I always found a lot of frontier zones more interesting. Central Asia for instance.

One idea that intrigued me was the idea of having Space Cossacks; ethnic groups which have as their back story a migration away from advancing empires and now live on the border lands keeping a precarious independence.

 

[jatay3]

One thing I appreciated about B5 was that Mira Furlan really could convince you that she was a Space Princess(well a Satai which isn't hereditary apparently), a Space Priestess, and a Space Joan of Arc. She had presence and she was obviously a high status member of another culture-not just a twenty-first century American with a boney head. When she was angry she was imperious(while princess Leia was just sassy). And when she was sweet, which was more common, she was still regal.

She did a good job showing what an Imperial Noblewoman would act like if you wish to use one as a character.

 

[aramis]

Except Andromeda has sapient ships. I thought that a cool gimmick even though I don't normally like oversmart robots(they get to dominate a setting until you wonder what in the world is there for our big darned heroes to do). But the sapient ship thing was cool.

Having Rommie be the only sapient ship in the setting because of tech regress allowed having one's cake and eating it too.

AI is only TL16.

 

[RainOfSteel]

Interestingly, Andromeda reminds me a little of Traveller. The situation is like the Long Night, the Eureka Maru is of course a Free Trader, and conceivably one could do a campaign based on a Terran battleship that got frozen in time and wants to restore the Second Imperium.

A Second Imperium battleship gets transported to an unspecified time in the Third Imperium and wants to restore the Second Imperium? I cannot conceive of any point during the Third Imperium, including the rebellion, where going back to the Second Imperium would be an improvement.

It would be like Captain Hunt and the Andromeda showed up and decided to restore, oh, I don't know, it's hard to think of an example I can match to the Second Imperium, but the point is, the Second Imperium just would not be my choice.

Maybe you were talking about the time of Traveller: The New Era. The Second Imperium might have appeared to be an improvement over that, but you have to remember that the beginning of The Long Night was pretty bad itself, so maybe the Second Imperium isn't the best parallel to Andromeda.

A much closer parallel would be a Tigress-class dreadnought from 1110 emerging in the time of Traveller: The New Era.

 

[rancke]

A Second Imperium battleship gets transported to an unspecified time in the Third Imperium and wants to restore the Second Imperium? I cannot conceive of any point during the Third Imperium, including the rebellion, where going back to the Second Imperium would be an improvement.

[...]

A much closer parallel would be a Tigress-class dreadnought from 1110 emerging in the time of Traveller: The New Era.

A Second Imperium battleship that was transported to some time in the latter half of the Long Night might work too.


Hans

 

[Blue Ghost]

G'day!

I have been very interested in several discussions of what SF influenced the OTU. I think it must have been very important that I never read any EC Tubb.

After the last such discussion I began to think about some of the things that I have read that have made my SF RPG setting different from the OTU. Not all of it has been fiction at all: C. Northcote Parkinson's The History of Political Thought and James Frazer's The Golden Bough were major sources, for instance, as were various bits of ancient and mediaeval history. And I also borrowed some things from non-SF fiction, such as the TV show Edge of Darkness. The major SF influences on my GMing were as follows:

Isaac Asimov: Caves of Steel, The Naked Sun
Lloyd Biggle, Jnr: Monument
Arthur C. Clark: Imperial Earth, Rendezvous with Rama
Phillip K. Dick: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Gordon Dickson: Dorsai, ‘Soldier, Ask Not…’
Tom Godwin: The Cold Equations
Joe Haldeman: All My Sins Remembered, Forever War, Worlds, Worlds Apart
Robert Heinlein: Beyond This Horizon, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Starship Troopers, Space Patrol
Aldous Huxley: Brave New World
Ursula K. Le Guin: The Dispossessed, Rocannon’s World, The Word for World is Forest
Larry Niven: The Long Arm of Gil Hamilton
Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle: Footfall, The Mote in God’s Eye, Oath of Fealty
H. Beam Piper: Space Viking, Minister of Disturbance
Jerry Pournelle: The Mercenary, Prince David’s Spaceship, West of Honour
Robert Silverberg: The Tower of Glass
Cordwainer Smith: Norstrilia
Jack Vance: The Anome, Araminta Station, The Augmented Agent, Blue Planet, The Book of Dreams, The City of the Chasch, The Château d’If, The Dirdir, The Dragon Masters, Ecce and Old Earth, Emphyrio, The Face, The Gray Prince, The Killing Machine, The Languages of Pao, Lurulu, The Last Castle, To Live Forever, Marune, The Moon-moth, The Palace of Love, The Pnume, Ports of Call, The Servants of the Wankh, The Star King, Throy, Trullion, Whyst.
John Wyndham (John Beynon): Trouble with Lichen, Survival

Amazingly enough it's usually real world geo-politics that influences the story and plot. For the trappings, the visual flavor, I usually just pull on my imagination. If there's a fifty story high structure housing thirty-thousand beings with an army armed with LASER guns, then I describe it. A strange forest with moving trees? Describe it. A region of space where things are illuminated? Describe it.

Aliens influenced us some. But not the big franchises; SW nor ST. Maybe some Buck Rogers; the gambling and carousing, but not Battlestar Galactica. Visual media rather than the written page influenced our sessions.

 

[RainOfSteel]

A Second Imperium battleship that was transported to some time in the latter half of the Long Night might work too.

That is better, but since the Second Imperium's reign lacked the effectiveness and (IMO) the legitimacy of the Systems Commonwealth's reign, the crew would have to do some very fast talking to get people to listen to them.

 

[jatay3]

That is better, but since the Second Imperium's reign lacked the effectiveness and (IMO) the legitimacy of the Systems Commonwealth's reign, the crew would have to do some very fast talking to get people to listen to them.

Of course battleships have other means of getting people to listen to them...

That thought aside, it might not in fact be hard to get people in general to see the advantage over their current status. Both Imperiums would probably be a mythical golden age by then.

 

[Enoki]

I've always envisioned Traveller, at least as most players would be, as a combination of living precariously in a somewhat gritty world. My inspirations would be more like

Movies:
Dark Star
Zordoz
The Fifth Element
Heavy Metal
Farscape

or like Firefly/ Serenity

An anime like Vandread or, even more like a space version of Black Lagoon.

I would think Traveller is best played not in the more civilized parts of the Imperium but in areas where there is a great deal more variation and less regular government control.

 

[aramis]

While not Sci-Fi, a big influence was the classic BBC "Upstairs, Downstairs," and to a lesser extent, also "Are you being served?" and the stories of Dr. Herriot... for their portrayals of a stratified society have shaped strongly MTU as well.

I was just reminded of this as I watch the new "Upstairs, Downstairs" on PBS...

 

[su_liam]

Polesotechnic and Empire stories by Poul Anderson
The Dune books by Frank Herbert(I get the visuals for Soulless Imperial Splendor from the David Lynch movies and Imperial Noble Politics from The Godfather and The Sopranos)
H. Beam Piper's Terro-Human stuff(especially his history-with-the-serial-number-shaved-off approach; I also use Homicide: Ripped From the Headlines)
Humanx books by Alan Dean Foster
Peter Hamilton's Confederation(Free Traders pretty much have to break the law to survive in competition with big bully boys)
The Heritage Universe stories by Charles Sheffield
The Sixth Sun novels by Thomas Harlan(The Ancients, Precursors or whatever can be a few steps above Lovecraft on the Freaking Terrifying scale)
Isaac's Universe(good aliens other, than the bacon... especially Fossil by Hal Clement. Who likes Archaeology in Space? I do, I do!
David Brin's Uplift(More aliens, more archaeology)
CSI: Vegas, 'cause all of Hodges' GCMS magic gives you an idea of what's available to a backwoods sheriff at tech nine.
Blade Runner(back alley electron microscopy and broken down megacities of the future)
Fifth Element(more broken down megacities, Ancient powers, and corrupt decadence of the future)
Hong Kong, Shanghai and Detroit(especially the Walled City of Kowloon, raft cities and abandoned automobile factories for yet more broken down megacities. With extra-gleamy evil opulence looming overhead)
Snowcrash(weird cultures, decay and decadence, with all of the bloodiness of life on the bleeding edge of dubious technology)
Hornblower and Aubrey/Maturin adventures
Arnold Toynbee, Jared Diamond, Niccolo Machiavelli, Edward Gibbon, Bernard Shaw and Will Durant for history building and poly-ticks
I almost forgot A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge and, Oh God! How could I forget Psychohistorical Crisis by Donald Kingsbury(I've never read Courtship Rite!?!)
Dr. Who for the weirdness
24 for the cliffhangers

I'm skipping over a lot, but these are the most obvious and omnipresent inspirations.

 

[hariseldon]

I haven't played Traveller, but I was inspired to investigate it for the following novels/movies/tv series:
Asimov's Foundation Trilogy-Go Second Foundation-Preem Palver, First Speaker.
Frank Herbert's Dune series, The GodMakers.
Arthur C. Clarke's 2001, 2010, The Songs of a Distant Earth, Childhood's End.
Ursula K. Lequin's Earthsea stories, The Left Hand of Darkness(such prose), The Dispossesed, The Word for World is Forest, The Beginning Place, The Eye of the Heron,The Telling, Changing Planes.
Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers, Farmer in the Sky, The Cat that Walks Through Walls, The Puppetmasters, The Sixth Column, Friday.
John Steekly's Armor.
unknown author- A Law for the Stars.
Michael Stackpole-The BattleTech Clan trilogy, I, Jedi.
Starwars 1st film trilogy
StarTrek-all but Voyager, and Enterprise. By then the series had felt stale.
Firefly, and Serenity.
Blake's 7
Red Dwarf(smeg head)
another posting reminded me of Andromeda, which in turn reminded me of another Roddenberry series,whose title I can't remember(mission earth, conflict earth...)
BSG
Caprica
Buck Rogers( don't laugh, I was a kid then)
Blade Runner
Total Recall
Some Philip K Dick stories
Space 1999(again I was a kid)
The Forbidden Planet
and not sci fi, but...
Beowulf
The Song of Roland
Norwegin myths
Some Middle eastern myths
John Milton(better to rule in hell, than to serve in heaven.)
Longfellow
Frost
Pope Alexander
Thucycdides(those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it)
Xenophon
Roman History
Greek history, and plays
Shakespeare
Faust
A pretty exhaustive list, but not complete(I don't have my library before me). I'm sure I'm not alone in this. Chao.


post script: how about the Dark Tower saga by Stephen King, or The Silmarilion by J. R. R. Tolkien. Oh! John Le Carre, and the movie Sneakers

 

[Jame]

Yeah, Earth's Ea (earthsea) does have a VERY Traveller feel, even though low-tech fantasy. I would eagerly suggest it for Traveller fantasy-conversions as well.

 

[hariseldon]

I like Jared Diamond as one of the influences from a previous post. I've read Collapse, and while I disagree with some minor points, I feel that the author has made a good argument. Overall, it feels very Asimov in the context of psychohistory. A suggestion for future reading: The Limits of Power by Andrew Bocaviech(I hope I spelt this correctly). Also, very much in the vein of Collapse. Some of my aquaintances disliked it, but this is probably of the content of the book(A criticism of American foreign and military policy).

 

[jatay3]

TV Tropes gave some ideas.

Honor: a History by James Bowman. A history of honor as a social/ideological concept. It gives some ideas about how to structure a value system that is both strange and believable.

Myers-briggs/Kiersey psychological classification system was useful in character building.

 

[bubbacleese]

Authur C. Clarke

High School was not the best time in my life and Clarke's wonderful writings were the best part of those years. Reading Authur C. Clarke while in high school keeped me going.