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Yeah I wish more attention was paid to details like this, but I understand why it isn't when you have a setting that is handed off between countless writers and multiple owners for decades, and also that the payoff for spending that energy doing that level of organization and control is low in a practical sense. People generally watch or don't watch Star Trek, Star Wars, etc. for reasons other than continuity mistakes and unexamined inconsistencies in the setting. I feel like you should do it anyway, out of a sense of pride for your work and respect for the work that others did before you; it's just lazy to not care about and not bother to learn about key principles of the setting you're adding to, or conversely, to just add a throw-away line that will clearly have a profound implication on the whole setting without considering that. But like, here I am, still consuming Star Trek content, so it obviously doesn't bother me enough to not watch. Can't be that important.
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Sep 29, 2023 19:22
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I've not really been interested in anything Trek beyond DS9. Then again, I watch movies like Friday the 13th and wonder "okay, this was pretty well done and effective, but why did they make a franchise out of it?" So I'm probably not the audience for most things.
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Sep 29, 2023 19:32
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KingKalamari posted:Honestly, the heavily enforced species isolationism in most of their products is one of the major reasons I've never really gotten big into 40k. I obviously understand the purpose that serves in the wargame, since it differentiates the various different armies players are using, but it feels like almost every 40K spin-off product mechanically enforces the status quo of humans and xenos never ever working together, which I just find kind of limiting. It is very much an issue across scifi to this day, people were cheering on the bad guys in Avatar just because they were human, and human chauvinism is a big reason for people vouching for the Stat Wars Empire.
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Sep 29, 2023 19:38
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Leperflesh posted:How does Picard's vinyard attract people who want to pick grapes but somehow don't want to live in a fancy mansion situated on the estate or own their own vinyard with their family name on it Total Power Exchange 
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Sep 29, 2023 20:23
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Absurd Alhazred posted:I've not really been interested in anything Trek beyond DS9.  PoontifexMacksimus posted:It is very much an issue across scifi to this day, people were cheering on the bad guys in Avatar just because they were human, and human chauvinism is a big reason for people vouching for the Stat Wars Empire.
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Sep 29, 2023 20:37
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PoontifexMacksimus posted:the Stat Wars Empire. hmm can I play this game
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Sep 29, 2023 20:39
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Leperflesh posted:hmm Yes, it's called Aurora 4X.
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Sep 29, 2023 20:41
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Nessus posted:
I don't recall exactly, but wasn't there something from Bioware about how by their stats a big silent majority just went Paradon Maleshep with the most vanilla romance options (if any) in each game? Might explain going so basic with the final threat.
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Sep 29, 2023 20:46
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Renegade Shepard is extremely unpleasant, so paragon isn't terribly surprising and most people pick characters with their same gender identity.
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Sep 29, 2023 20:51
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PoontifexMacksimus posted:I don't recall exactly, but wasn't there something from Bioware about how by their stats a big silent majority just went Paradon Maleshep with the most vanilla romance options (if any) in each game? Might explain going so basic with the final threat. Yes. That's very common in games. Every bit of data I've ever seen says that the large majority of players go for default options, often the very first default option, and they usually pick humans over anything else when given the choice. They also rarely play multiplayer outside of games that are purely made for multiplayer. IIRC during the BG3 early access days, the devs jokingly complained that people had the most boring-rear end human characters for their PC.
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Sep 29, 2023 20:53
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disposablewords posted:This is a really easy one - since DS9 is only Federation-administered and not actually Federation space, the Starfleet crew present are likely given a stipend to participate in the local economy. Things like heritable estates like the Picard family vineyards are the harder ones to square, at least in casual conversation. This holds up until the Ferengi figure out that the Federation places no value on money, yes. I'm kind of a stick-in-the-mud in Trek conversations because I think DS9 sucks as both Star Trek and social commentary about the Realities of Star Trek. "Roughing it on the frontier on Backwater Station" in DS9 means that the magic food generator sometimes doesn't work, and the big re-examination of Star Trek is to make it a lame version of all other dystopian space sci-fi. I also get mad at anything involving the Prime Directive, because Star Trek constantly gets that wrong and is way behind the curve here, which I suppose would matter if the Prime Directive served any purpose but to be blown over by the needs of plot.
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Sep 29, 2023 21:20
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If DS9 sucks you're getting to only a very tiny amount of what could be termed good Star Trek.
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Sep 29, 2023 21:41
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Just rewatching B5 and I'd completely forgotten there was a whole episode about a dockworkers strike and a directive by the government to break it
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Sep 29, 2023 21:50
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DS9 had one too. Called Bar Association. Turns out forming a union is against ferengi law and they will absolutely send out the assassin's.
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Sep 29, 2023 21:58
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G1mby posted:Just rewatching B5 and I'd completely forgotten there was a whole episode about a dockworkers strike and a directive by the government to break it I really enjoyed the resolution to that episode. Sadly it just showed that B5 is a fantasy setting rather than science fiction.
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Sep 29, 2023 22:01
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FMguru posted:Trying to build an RPG publishing empire on top of strange and largely unwanted licenses is giving me strong late-era West End Games vibes (which gave us can't-miss adaptations like Species and Tank Girl and Necroscope) I think it went okay for Mongoose Publishing for a little while.
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Sep 29, 2023 22:34
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Randalor posted:I really enjoyed the resolution to that episode. Sadly it just showed that B5 is a fantasy setting rather than science fiction. I didn't like the resolution. Big Plot Important Man Finds Novel Trick to Bypass Conflict, Leaving Workers in Awe of His Skills.
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Sep 29, 2023 22:39
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The B5 episode where the crew knows best and use their superior medicine over the wishes of a child's family was pure  .The family repeatedly pleads to be left alone because their culture rejects the procedure, but the doctor does it anyway. The child is healed, but the "primitive religion-havers" don't come around and learn that Our Way is Best. Instead, the child is euthanized off-screen because the unwanted, unsolicited procedure destroyed his soul. A lot of B5 is better Star Trek than a lot of Star Trek is.
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Sep 29, 2023 23:10
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moths posted:The B5 episode where the crew knows best and use their superior medicine over the wishes of a child's family was pure That episode was written with the explicit intent to distinguish the show from Star Trek, I have been told.
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Sep 29, 2023 23:20
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Leperflesh posted:Yeah, like that's the superficial answer that goes unexamined, like what do you do when there's a shortage of volunteers to wait tables at your restaurant, or who decides how to allocate restaurant space in the french quarter of new orleans, is it a lottery? How does Picard's vinyard attract people who want to pick grapes but somehow don't want to live in a fancy mansion situated on the estate or own their own vinyard with their family name on it But a lot of poo poo jobs are poo poo because of the pay and being locked into them by capitalism. Why be a server when you can run the restaurant? Because what you want out of a hobby is to spend a few hours every other day meeting new people and chatting to them briefly about gumbo, then loving off home to get banged raw by holograms. There's no lovely customers because there's no incentive to put up with lovely customers. There's no poo poo pay because there's no pay. You have unlimited stick leave. The absolute worst thing that can happen to you is that you do such a terrible job that you're told to stay home and get banged raw by holograms all the time for exactly the same pay. Same for being a vineyard worker - you set your own hours to wander around in the outdoors poking grapes and a long as you don't smoosh the grapes or goof off too much you get to keep your slot. How, exactly, did Sisko’s dad send up in charge of the restaurant? How did Picard's brother get to be vineyard King? I don't know, I'm not a future sociologist. How is it decided that someone is too bad at running a restaurant to keep doing it and how is that enforced? I don't know either, but the reason sisko senior and the picards get to keep doing it is because they're good at it and are willing to put the time in to do a good job, same as any volunteer position in a perfect world. It literally is because they're willing to commit to the bit. Splicer fucked around with this message at 23:57 on Sep 29, 2023 |
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Sep 29, 2023 23:51
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The real problem with the nitty-gritty specifics of Picard's winery is that it's canonically in Burgundy, but all the wine we see in TNG and Picard is clearly Bordeaux
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Sep 30, 2023 00:10
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Oh, also, the Federation doesn't use money but they absolutely have politics. Money isn't the only form of privilege. "Why does the Picard family get perpetual first dibs on the job of living in a fancy house being vineyard king" could be as simple as them slipping bottles of post-nuclear wine to the right people during the transition from apocalyptic hellhole to post scarcity economy.
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Sep 30, 2023 00:54
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wizzardstaff posted:That episode was written with the explicit intent to distinguish the show from Star Trek, I have been told. I can think of at least... two star trek episodes that play with the same idea and don't have a "And then everyone was enlightened" happy ending.
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Sep 30, 2023 01:47
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wizzardstaff posted:That episode was written with the explicit intent to distinguish the show from Star Trek, I have been told. JMS had David Gerrold write that one. Gerrold is personally responsible of much of what TNG was, but in his own fiction he's willing to get very far away from Star Trek. It was a good fit.
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Sep 30, 2023 02:37
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For the folks interested in the concept of post-scarcity "larping an occupation," track ye down a copy of Freemarket, which is all about the social politics of that exact scenario. It's essentially Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, but on a transhumanist space station run by a benevolent AI who distributes the station's resources on the basis of "who is doing the most cool poo poo with these molecules?" Nobody truly wants, but everyone is in competition - sometimes quite cutthroat, but non-violent competition - for the social capital necessary to do their dream projects.
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Sep 30, 2023 02:42
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Splicer posted:How is it decided that someone is too bad at running a restaurant to keep doing it and how is that enforced?
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Sep 30, 2023 02:54
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My theory is that places like the Picard vineyard and the Sisko restaurant don't have very many people working there. There are shots in Picard of drones doing stuff, I expect most of the labor is automated. I imagine most of the people working in those places are sort of apprentices learning the ropes so they can run their own vineyard on Rigel VII or whatever. A bunch of them probably get bored and wander off.
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Sep 30, 2023 03:08
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How much do IKs and mods get paid?
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Sep 30, 2023 03:42
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Kestral posted:For the folks interested in the concept of post-scarcity "larping an occupation," track ye down a copy of Freemarket, which is all about the social politics of that exact scenario.
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Sep 30, 2023 04:06
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Cool Dad posted:My theory is that places like the Picard vineyard and the Sisko restaurant don't have very many people working there. There are shots in Picard of drones doing stuff, I expect most of the labor is automated. I imagine most of the people working in those places are sort of apprentices learning the ropes so they can run their own vineyard on Rigel VII or whatever. A bunch of them probably get bored and wander off. Wasn't Sisko's explicitly a one-man operation? At the very least, I don't recall them showing anyone but Sisko working there, and he was shown filling both server and cook roles. I imagine you can cut a fair amount of roles if you don't need, say, a dishwasher when you can just replicate plates and utensils on the fly.
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Sep 30, 2023 04:24
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Randalor posted:Wasn't Sisko's explicitly a one-man operation? At the very least, I don't recall them showing anyone but Sisko working there, and he was shown filling both server and cook roles. I imagine you can cut a fair amount of roles if you don't need, say, a dishwasher when you can just replicate plates and utensils on the fly. Also did we ever see much of the interior? If it’s a tiny place with a long wait list and he serves a few tables at once it’s a completely plausible one person operation with all the future tech simplifying things.
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Sep 30, 2023 05:15
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When Ben and Jake visit they are generally immediately put to work in the kitchen, but it's not clear that this is because the restaurant is short-handed vs. grandpa's strong feelings that getting to work builds character or is therapeutic. There do appear to be waitstaff, though. Thanks to the obsessive nerds who build wikis for making it easy to find out: https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Sisko%27s_Creole_Kitchen_visitors#Waitstaff From the same resource, there are shots of Chateau Picard that seem to show human workers, for example https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/m...&path-prefix=en Dunno what they're doing and there's definitely machines or robots or something also doing work when Jean-Luc is shown in Picard. Picard's brother is also often pissed off at him for going off to be a captain instead of staying home to make wine, implying that they needed his work somehow, although the guy just seems really bitter and nasty so maybe that's bullshit. That said, quote:Jean-Luc Picard grew up in the Picard family home on the estate. His father, Maurice Picard, maintained the house and vineyard in a traditional fashion, without advanced technology. Maurice and his wife Yvette had frequent discussions about installing a replicator in the house; Maurice felt that such conveniences were a threat to important values. His son Robert succeeded him, and maintained his traditions; the house still did not have a replicator as of 2367. (TNG: "Family") Of course this is a wiki, but it seems to be pretty well sourced, and if choosing to not use advanced tech Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 05:25 on Sep 30, 2023 |
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Sep 30, 2023 05:21
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Picard season 2 had several flashbacks to picard's childhood at chateau picard and his mother.. to.. mixed effect.
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Sep 30, 2023 05:48
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dwarf74 posted:Like.... It explains where they got their money, at least. But I've legit never heard of them either, which leads me to believe nobody is probably buying their books or playing their games. Rich Redman is credited on the original d20 Modern game, and d20 Modern was maybe the best thing to come out of 3e, so they’re not without pedigree. This is not to say their business model is good.
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Sep 30, 2023 05:49
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Sindai posted:Can I get an author? That title is not amenable to search Jared Sorensen and Luke Crane. The original version was produced in a physical boxed set in 2010 that is now virtually impossible to find, but there are digital editions available for cheap on DrivethruRPG (Instruction Manual and Play Aids, both are required). If you have the instruction manual you can also run it on a Tabletop Simulator module, which isn't as crazy as it sounds: Freemarket is an intensely physical game with lots of cards and tokens flying around between players, it's one of the very few RPGs I would ever consider running on Tabletop Sim over something like Roll20. Hopefully those links work properly, DTRPG has shunted me into some kind of preview of their new UI and it's running like garbage.
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Sep 30, 2023 06:06
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People are also adding in layers of new shows on top of old ones and trying to create some kind of coherent continuity. I'm reasonably sure the original series rarely goes into the specifics of Federation society beyond the fact that there was a really nasty series of wars and humans have since moved past that so completely that a black woman is 3rd in command of a starship, which is piloted by a Japanese man and has a Russian as bridge crew, and also works peacefully side by side with strange aliens. The entire thing was kind of a pushback to the tropes of "alien invaders" and racial and world politics at the time the show was created. TNG is where the "gay space communism" stuff really starts showing up, where everyone brings their families onto the ship, and the entire ship is same evenly lit carpeted hallway with everyone living in exactly the same size quarters. That's where I think you first start hearing about there being no money, no illness, and no strife. Apparently healthcare is good enough that people don't even get headaches, much less have mental health issues, or serious congenital diseases. In the world of TNG humanity had reached a kind of Zen peace with itself and all strife came from without. Stuff like the Picard vineyard makes sense because that kind of thing would be appreciated and probably preserved as an important part of human culture and history, and people would work on it because it's fun. My wife loves to break her back gardening, it's not easy but she takes a lot of pride in doing it. If my wife didn't have to go to work everyday, I'm reasonably sure she'd be happy to go to some kind of gardening co-op everyday and just grow vegetables that would be passed out for free to everyone in town just because she enjoys it. DS9 is where poo poo gets saucy, since it was created as an intentional dig at TNG. That show pushed really hard back at the idea of a post-racial utopia society being a single beige-carpeted hallway going on forever. Benjamin Sisko is black, and in the society of the Federation his being black has not hampered him in any way, but he is still black and he carries with him the culture and unique aspects of his forefathers. Sisko cooks because his father taught him how to cook, and his father learned from his father and so on, and Sisko cooking is the same manifestation of his cultural heritage as the very visible Afro-art in his quarters, etc. In fact, DS9 as a whole basically takes all of the TNG species and decides to give them more nuanced culture. There are opera singing Klingon chefs, Ferengi engineers and labor strikers, Cardassian well *points to all the Cardassians in the series*, and so on. Basically the series takes the kind of homogenous gay space communism of TNG and says, "Actually, all these cultures can survive and thrive and keep humans interesting without conflict." And despite all of that, Sisko and his dad don't get along, because there's no medical cure for humans just not being able to agree with each other and for dads and their sons butting heads.
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Sep 30, 2023 06:18
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Anonymous Zebra posted:People are also adding in layers of new shows on top of old ones and trying to create some kind of coherent continuity. I'm reasonably sure the original series rarely goes into the specifics of Federation society beyond the fact that there was a really nasty series of wars and humans have since moved past that so completely that a black woman is 3rd in command of a starship, which is piloted by a Japanese man and has a Russian as bridge crew, and also works peacefully side by side with strange aliens. The entire thing was kind of a pushback to the tropes of "alien invaders" and racial and world politics at the time the show was created. TNG is where the "gay space communism" stuff really starts showing up, where everyone brings their families onto the ship, and the entire ship is same evenly lit carpeted hallway with everyone living in exactly the same size quarters. That's where I think you first start hearing about there being no money, no illness, and no strife. Apparently healthcare is good enough that people don't even get headaches, much less have mental health issues, or serious congenital diseases. In the world of TNG humanity had reached a kind of Zen peace with itself and all strife came from without. Stuff like the Picard vineyard makes sense because that kind of thing would be appreciated and probably preserved as an important part of human culture and history, and people would work on it because it's fun. My wife loves to break her back gardening, it's not easy but she takes a lot of pride in doing it. If my wife didn't have to go to work everyday, I'm reasonably sure she'd be happy to go to some kind of gardening co-op everyday and just grow vegetables that would be passed out for free to everyone in town just because she enjoys it. The earliest I know of money being mentioned as emphatically Not a Thing is Star Trek IV. TOS has lots of mentions of money and smuggling. I think the last it is really mentioned to my recollection and brief study is in First Contact, where Picard (ever the Federation optimist) declares with great certainty that money does not exist. So to a large extent it feels like a late-era Roddenberry thing that's been pushed aside, since Gene loved to make stories about interpersonal conflict impossible. (It was trip to reading the Memory Alpha article(s) on money. It struggles to describe the canonical state of money in Star Trek, since there really isn't one. Because, as mentioned, in reality it is layers of shows with layers of writers. Even just the period of Gene installing himself as story dictator before becoming too ill to control the property is worth its own side discussion.)
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Sep 30, 2023 06:54
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I thought Star Trek : lower decks is pretty much 100% “this universe is insane and we’re the guys who have to clean up the mess afterwards”. And pretty much every episode is pointing out how dumb it all is but at the same time having fun with AND telling good stories. THAT is what a good RPG would be.
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Sep 30, 2023 07:00
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Kurieg posted:Picard season 2 had several flashbacks to picard's childhood at chateau picard and his mother.. to.. mixed effect. Yeah, it turns out that their rejection of advanced tech extended to not taking advanrage of modern mental healthcare options, preferring traditional techniques like "locking mama away like the woman in the attic in a melodramatic Victorian novel".
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Sep 30, 2023 07:20
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Comstar posted:I thought Star Trek : lower decks is pretty much 100% “this universe is insane and we’re the guys who have to clean up the mess afterwards”. Or, you could do what every Star Trek writer from DS9 onward has utterly refused to do because they're all cynicism-poisoned, and embrace the concept of a post-scarcity utopia in a way that uses the collaborative nature of an RPG group to come up with an interpretation that makes sense for everyone at the table. God I am so tired of cynicism and irony.
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Sep 30, 2023 08:25
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