On 2/5/2018 9:02 PM, Kurt Feltenberger wrote:
> On 2/5/2018 1:59 PM, Catherine Berry wrote:
>> Joss Whedon once said that spacecraft in "Firefly" travel at the speed
>> of plot. That to me captures perfectly the narrative approach to
>> role-playing. The GM decides how long the trip should take, within
>> broad parameters of plausibility and consistency, and the players take
>> that as a given and create their narrative within that framework.
>> "Gaming" players would instead start pulling out rulebooks and
>> calculators to second-guess the stated duration.
>
> While I tend to agree with this (despite despising Whedon), there must
> be some framework for future continuity or the "world" (i.e. the system,
> stellar arm, etc.) suddenly ceases to have any real form other than GM
> fiat.
>

I used to be a Whedon fan; now I'm not.
One of the reasons for this, though minor compared to some of the
others, is that he loves to throw in little teasing bits of accurate
detail about space travel... and then completely fudge and handwave the
other stuff, per the quote, resulting in a setting which is (to me) a
maddeningly inconsistent casserole of mildly hard SF and not-even-close.

According to what we presently know about astronomy and planetology, the
star system(s) in which Firefly takes place is about as realistic, and
requires as much divine fiat, as the Discworld.  And you know that
PTerry at least put some thought into the latter, and the implications,
rather than just "eh, whatever."

Oh look, we circled back around to "celestial configuration"...

ObTrav:  figure out what tone, level of hardness, etc etc you're going
for and /stick with it./

--
---------------
Kelly St. Clair
xxxxxx@efn.org