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(TFT) Sci-Fi TFT

    Sci-Fi  TFT

    Is there a camouflage talent?
    I was asked this questions once.
    Here is the answer.
It's a hard sell, a long post, and it takes a winding route. I have had trouble explaining this before. This first part may seem unrelated but I have to get it out first. We'll come back to it later. I dont really know how else to explain this, so let me start here.
I have done some work on TFT looking at the Half-Breed rules. I was surprised to find that many of the monsters fit. A centaur is almost exactly the half breed between a Horse and a Human. If one cross breeds a Roc and a Lion the result is almost exactly a Gryphon. I dont know if Steve Jackson did this on purpose or if it was a happy coincidence of his solid game design. TFT doesnt list any statistics on a Demi-god. But I read a passage in the old testament about the sons of god taking the daughters of man and the children being the ``Giants of old, men of renown.'' So I figured I could take a Human, a Giant and work the Half-Breed rules backwards to get the stats for a Demi-god. Doing this results in a Demi-god that has an IQ of six. It goes contrary to popular opinion. Most people think that a Demi-god should have an IQ of something like 370. So they can have all skills and talents. The half breed rules dont bear that out. A Human has a starting IQ of 8, and a Giant a starting IQ of 7. The only thing that averages with IQ 8 to get IQ 7 is an IQ of 6. I think it is better that a Demi-god has an IQ of 6. That means they dont qualify for any talents or spells. We'll come back to this later.
I play tested a very high tech far future version of TFT called ``Reality Scape.'' I ran the campaign for years. Anyone who played in that game got a character of extreme power. Monty-hall like powers. I found that players in a campaign with planet building technology and almost limitless resources wind up doing something big. Like end the world. In fact I found that high level players with characters of limitless power like to end the world. They seem develop a taste for it. Now for most GMs having their campaign, or world, ended by players also ends the game. The GM can't deal with it very well, or maintain any continuity afterwards. I developed some simple tools to make it easier. I was forced to by necessity. I looked at ending the world like a social revolution or a major change in society. Any character in the game was a member of one of these four cultures. 

    PRE: The radicals of coming change.  After
         the end these are the guys who wind up
         in charge.

 CLIMAX: The powers that be.  Those in control
         or those who willingly endorse them.

   POST: The old fashioned type.  They used to
         be in charge, before the current
         climax culture took over.

   ANTI: These guys are against all of it.
         They dont want anyone to be in charge.
When revolution would come the guys who used to be PRE culture would find themselves as the new CLIMAX culture. The changes they were clamoring for have finally come to pass. The old CLIMAX culture would find themselves as the new POST culture. They used to be in charge, but things have changed, and now they find themselves pining for the ``good ole days.''
What happens during first contact with aliens, the invention of eugenics (live for ever), or $20,000 space craft (affordable to the middle class) is that the culture undergoes a revolution. characters move down one position on the list, and the ANTI cultural types find themselves in the position of being PRE culture to the next change. Some of their strange Ideas having been proved true, and more yet to come. Using this method I could move civilization forward or backwards. Instead of an advance it could be a civil war, collapse of civilization, or world wide catastrophe causing every one to move up on the list. This way the cycle could move forward or backwards. Of course I kept all of this secret from the players. It added a lot of continuity to my games and they were quite impressed with my ability to roll with any major change they tried to drop on me. It also allowed me to give them extream freedom of action. They probably had no Idea how simple the method was. I print it here for the first time. 

    Specific Limited Imagination Machine
Now let me move a step close to Sci-Fi TFT. There is a tradition that science and magic are at odd with one another. Where science makes advances magic recedes, and when science fails magic grows. I ran a campaign based in the current day using this as the events of pre and post culture. Let me use this example of my campaign from the modern day. The game is called ``Against the Drug Lords.'' In this campaign there is a number called the Planetary Sobriety Level (PSL). It starts at 10.5. This means that half the population is sober, and half of any NPCs are on something. Any NPC encountered just roll 3D. A roll of eleven or greater and they are on something. Even cough syrup. The actions the players take can change this number. If the PSL is raised to 16 then trains stop wrecking, planes dont crash, and real space exploration becomes possible. The campaign moves to the next highest tech level and everyone rotates down the culture table. If, on the other hand, the PSL drops to 5 then civilization collapses, magic re-enters the world, and monsters come crawling out of the underworld. Move to the next lowest tech level and rotate everyone up the cultural table. The whole scheme fits into one continuous linking of campaigns shown below. 

0     Age of creation

1     God Kings
      Sticks & Stones

2     Ancients
      Mass miniature conflicts

3     Holy Avenger
      D&D, AD&D, C&S, T&T, TFT

4     Renaissance Colony
      Call of Cthulu, Steam Punk

5     Against The Drug Lords
      The current day

6     Building a New Civilization
      The collapse of the Solar System civilization
      Aftermath, The Morow project, Twighlight 2000, Cyberpunk

7     The Machine
      Traveler, Star Trek, Star Wars

8     Super races vs. Super Men
      V&V, Champions, Supers

9     The Edges of Time / Reality Scape
If a group of adventurers get to the ninth age and progress forward then they loop back to the beginning. Sort of. They become Mnoren and get to create their own world. Thus the tenth age, and age zero are the same. 


    The Fantasy Ubiquitous
So the standard TFT talents and spells apply. At least in the third Age they do. The third age is called the ``Holy Avenger'' campaign. The classic knight in shining armor vs. the forces of evil. So lets start with the tech level for that age. In TFT the highest listed talent is IQ 14. If civilization is advanced it will go from Holy Avenger to Renaissance Colony. Technology will progress and magic will recede.
Now the new talents that represent the increase in technology come from the spells list. The IQ 8 spells become talents of IQ 15. Things like ``light'', and ``blur'' (this is the camouflage talent). The new higher IQ talents come off the bottom of the spell list. I have found that in a very high tech world that high IQ spells are still believable. Even in modern Sci-Fi stories things like ``possession'' or ``zombie'' are still believable. So the Talents come off the bottom of the spell list. Only IQ 9 and above spells are still available. If technology progresses unabated then the IQ 20 spells will eventually become the IQ 27 talents. The new talents, the ones that used to be spells, are manufacturing talents. Like light, or Image (with its audio and visual components.) In this way they are like the ``armorer'' and ``shipbuilder'' talents.
If, on the other hand, technology recedes and magic gains in standing then some of the talents become spells. If magic progresses then new IQ 21 spells are introduced. These come off of the BOTTOM of the talent list. Or, the IQ 7 talents become the IQ 21 spells. These are interpreted as psychic abilities. Since all the IQ 7 talents are weapons these become psychic body weaponry. The wizard can cast sword and use their hands as a sword. Eventually, if magic progresses enough, a wizard can make a ship by casting ``shipbuilding'' spell, or a suit of armor by casting ``armorer'' spell.
The important thing is that the new talents come off the bottom IQ of the spell list, and the new spells come off the bottom IQ of the talent list. In this way IQ 6 and below is never affected. This is the realm of the divine. I submit that the IQ 1-6 abilities are the sole domain of the divine. They represent things like sky, land, water, life, and such. The fundamentals that existence is built on. This is also the reason that it is a good thing that Demi-gods dont have an IQ higher than 6. Every ability they have is their sole domain. It is not given to the creations and creatures of their world. All the abilities they have given us are lost to them. If they ever did progress to IQ 7 then all the basic weapons skills would be lost to the characters. They would become the sole domain of the divine.
In conclusion, I dont have any supporting evidence for this. I'm not too sure it will be well received either. Lastly I regret if it was too theological and too vague. 

    David Michael Grouchy II


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