| Tom Kalbfus |
Tom Kalbfus wrote:So you like stuff that can never happen. Seems like science fiction is going more than halfway to meet fantasy, if you ask me. Why not have some contrast, have a realistic science fiction setting meet up with some unrealistic fantasy, otherwise why not play Spelljammer? Spelljammer is 100% fantasy set in a type of fantasy space called wildspace. Nothing in Spelljammer is scientific except perhaps the scale of the planets and the Solar Systems you explore. So you find it cool when the GM makes "screaming sound effect" out of his mouth when he holds the models of spaceships up in the air while he rolls he dice with his other hand to see what damage the weapon causes? ;)Sure, you could do that. Go and write it, someone might even like it. It's not what Starfinder is doing though. Starfinder is Guardians of the Galaxy unrealistic science fantasy meeting equally unrealistic heroic fantasy.
And I think you are being highly insulting to film-makers if you believe they truly don't know what it's actually like in space. There are even films like Gravity and The Martian that try to depict space travel realistically (although The Martian does get highly implausable at the end, and not just because Sean Bean doesn't die). They just don't make blockbuster action movies that way, because it's not very actiony. The space travel in Avatar is fairly realistic. There just isn't very much of it.
And yes, I know that everything moves in space with a massive orbital velocity. The slowness come from trying to match one unimaginably massive orbital velocity with a different unimaginably massive orbital velocity. Again, you seem to start from the assumption that everyone is an idiot but you.
I don't make those movies, they do, I do not know what they know or do not know, but they seem to be making those movies down to a lower level of audience expected knowledge. The next to latest Star Wars Movie "The Force Awakens" was very insulting to the audience if they expect an artificial planet to absorb the substance of a sun, fire a killer laser at faster than light speed and blowup a number of planets at once, and have it all visible to the main characters standing on the surface of another planet that was no selected for Destruction by the First Order. Now I don't know what the writers level of knowledge of physics is, but what they are giving us the audience is very insulting in the assumed level of knowledge they suppose we have. The only think I have to go on is the sort of movies they make, maybe they make those movies because they don't know any better or maybe they make those movies because they assume we don't know any better, either way its not a good assumption to make.
As for an action packed table top roll playing game, I have to admit, there is a difference between "game time" and "playing time", there is the elapsed time in the game world we are playing in and their is the actual amount of time we sit down at the table and actually play the game. For example, a combat round is 6 seconds, I challenge any GM to resolve a round of combat with 4 players in 6 seconds of actual playing time, that means all players and all GM controlled character most roll to hit or miss and determine damage within 6 seconds of playing time, and in most cases that can't be done! Not in a realistic space combat situation, a round could be 20 minutes long in Elapsed time in the game world. Now just because it takes 20 minutes of game time for each round doesn't mean it takes an actual 20 minutes of playing to resolve each round of combat at the table. You roll the dice for each player and opponent and when you done, you advance the game time by another 20 minutes, it doesn't take 20 minutes of sitting at the table to do that. A fast-paced role playing action game is lost on a group of players that take minutes to result each 6-second combat round. that is how I would make my case for realistic space combat. Action movies are good for a passive audience watching the movie, not for participants in a table top role playing game.