Once more I'm confronted by the warring impulses aroused in me every time I read a full Transhuman Space supplement - do I rant about the detailed-to-the-point-of-uselessness mechanics related to the book's physical environment, or do I obsess to the point of distraction over the utter incomprehensibility of its politics. I can, of course, do both, and Under Pressure (David Morgan-Mar, Kenneth Peters, and Constantine Thomas) definitely gives me fodder for both, but it's still agonizing deciding which to do first.
"People with blocked sinuses or other air cavities such as decayed teeth will feel increasing discomfort and pain when compressed, even slowly, as the cavities are squeezed. Such pain causes a -1 penalty to DX and IQ-based rolls until it is relieved."
Now, I don't know a lot about diving. It never occurred to me that high ambient atmospheric pressure, such as you might find on a deep-sea habitat, could exacerbate dental pain. So that's a very interesting bit of setting texture. It makes descending into the stygian darkness of the ocean depths feel just a little bit more real to me. But a million people could play this rpg for a million years, and not one would ever apply that fucking penalty. Who the fuck are you trying to fool here? What is wrong with you?
PLAYER: All right! I've loaded up on supercaviating ammunition, taken a shot of Myelin Replacement Nanovirus to help with gas narcosis, and am ready to get in the pressure chamber for our transition to the deep parts of the Elandra colony.
GM: *Makes a roll behind the screen* Oh, sorry, but I've been tracking how many times you've mention brushing your teeth before taking a long rest and I'm afraid you have tooth decay. The pressure will impose a -1 DX and IQ penalty until you see a dentist.
I'm imagining this game. It probably also uses an adapted form of the seatbelt rules from Rigger 2 and the protein-percentage provisions rules from The Wilderness Survival Guide. What is the social contract? If you're playing in this game, do you get mad when the GM doesn't blindside you with some bit of extremely granular forced "realism." Like, you made a point of tracking on your character sheet exactly how many meters of fishing line you bothered to pack, so at some point the GM needs to make that matter. I won't say that I don't get it. Because a part of me, the part of me that enjoys hypothermia and food spoilage in my survival video games, that part of me understands the appeal. But what kind of mind do you need to run a game like that in a tabletop environment? To be harsh but fair, and more inconceivably, fair but harsh?
It's staggering to contemplate. Though I suspect that we were never meant to actually apply this rule. "A -1 penalty to DX and IQ-based rolls" is just GURPS' way of saying, "this is significant, but not 'stop the game' significant."
But don't let my complaining fool you. There are virtues to this sort of "every damned thing gets a rule" approach. It's rare for me to leave an rpg setting section feeling like I've learned something. But I definitely had my mind expanded by Under Pressure. A few fun facts that I found so surprising I had to verify them on the internet:
The Sun affects the tides. I guess it shouldn't have surprised me, but it did. I'd have thought the Sun was so far away that its gravitational influence could be considered uniform over the whole globe. Nope. The solar tides are about half the strength of the lunar tides. Wow.
Go deep enough underwater and you have to start breathing a mixture of oxygen and hydrogen. Apparently it's a real thing called hydrox . . . and man, those cookie guys really screwed up with their choice of name.
You can build a ship with a concrete hull. I mean, I work through this logically, thinking about water displacement, and the related but incidental fact that if I wanted to ship a bunch of concrete across the ocean, I'd trust a boat to get the job done, and it all seems to check out, but some part of my brain still rebels against it. I want my boat to not sink so why wouldn't I make it less like a stone? And yet, concrete boats have been a thing since the mid-19th century. You couldn't make this shit up. Literally. I would not believe you. I would say, "science fiction nonsense is one thing, but you have gone too far! Stay here while I look something up on wikipedia, I want to see your look of humiliation when I prove you're full of shit . . . "
But, of course, truth is stranger than fiction and now I'm the jackass here. Although I worry that maybe the existence of concrete ships was common knowledge and my harping on it is doing naught but reveal my ignorance.
So I guess, all told, Under Pressure's oceanic lore dump is probably worth the terrible burden of knowing that somewhere, there's an alternate universe where people are using the ballast rules for the ship construction system ("For added realism, multiply the time required to empty the tanks by the square root of the outside pressure in atmospheres times the percentage of the tank being emptied.")
Which means all that's left is to talk about the book's politics. Libertarian seasteading. Releasing GMOs into the wild. Lobotomizing an orca and fitting it with cybernetics so that it can be piloted around like a remote drone. Some people might complain about these things. But Under Pressure reserves the label of "terrorist" exclusively for those who would take up arms against these practices.
It's possible that "ecoterrorist" is meant as a nonjudgemental, morally neutral term. One of the suggested campaigns is called "Taking a Stand," and it's about being a member of an ecoterrorist group . . . or infiltrating them on behalf of law enforcement. However, my gut tells me that any empathy extended to ecoterrorism is part of a deliberate effort to embrace a high-handed neutrality. The narration is rarely overtly judgmental, but there's a difference in tone between the way it treats activists - like they may do some good, despite their crimes - and the way it treats corporations - like they may commit crimes, despite being good.
The best example of this is from something we've discussed before, with the book Deep Beyond - The War Beneath the Ice.
To quickly recap - scientists discover that Europa has its own biosphere. A faction called the Green Duncanites moves to Europa to oxygenate the ocean enough to change its biochemistry and allow for the release of invasive species with the eventual goal of terraforming the planet enough to allow genetically modified transhumans to colonize. There is an organization called The Europa Defense Force that is set on stopping the Green Duncanites by any means necessary.
Even more than Deep Beyond, Under Pressure treats the War Beneath the Ice like it's a political controversy.
"While the Europan biosphere appears to be largely intact, the EDF claims that indigenous life near the Avatar (Ed: Green Duncanite) farms has been adversely affected by increased oxygen toxicity in the water and competition from imported Avatar bacteria. Avatar strenuously denies this, but it is enough justification for the EDF to step up their offensive."
Not stated: what's actually happening. I guess "appears to be largely intact" is close to an objective voice. But it's a really bland way of framing the conflict, one that obscures more than it reveals. "Largely intact?" So you mean "partially damaged." As in, the sort of state you might expect the biosphere to be in when Avatar has only made 5 years of progress on their thousand-year plan? It's "largely intact" after the EDF's efforts to constrain and thwart Avatar as much as possible?
It's clear to me that the author didn't really know how to make the EDF's case persuasively. The closest we get is the head researcher of Genesis station (the scientific mission sent to study Europa's biosphere, before Avatar or the EDF arrived) describing the Duncanites as engaged in "irresponsible tinkering with a virgin ecosystem."
That rather undersells the issue . . . by, like, a lot. Later we learn that the researcher guy "sympathized with the Preservationist view, [but] he could not condone the EDF's violent approach. As a result, he attempted to keep [the research station] out of the conflict."
And how do I put this? You're Giovanni Montaldo, the "fiery Italian microbiologist." They put you on a rocket ship and shot you 500 million miles across the solar system, with an opportunity to become the 22nd century's Charles Darwin. But when you get to the Galapagos, you find that pirates have beaten you there, and not only are they hunting the finches for sport, when they're done, they're going to bulldoze the islands and build a series of shopping malls.
Maybe you don't care for the EDF's methods. Maybe the thought of killing a fellow human being disgusts and horrifies you. I can certainly relate to that. But the nearest government is so far away that light itself would take a half hour to reach them. And for all the EDF's violence, they have still not found the minimum amount of force necessary to get the Duncanites to stop.
That's the reality of the situation. You either organize to recreate the state's monopoly on violence or you let the Duncanites keep doing what they're doing. There's no middle ground there. If you stay out of the conflict, you are siding with the Duncanites.
But it's unclear whether the authors of Under Pressure even realize that the Duncanites are committing a crime. It's established that an EU and a Chinese military vessel are each on their way to Europa . . . to apprehend the EDF. The Avatar group is actually looking forward to their arrival. Not sweating it at all. It seems like such an oversight. The EDF gets the scuffed-up villain treatment - they kidnapped a journalist and some of their members celebrate their kills with unseemly enthusiasm, but the Duncanites are completely normal.
Like, seriously, here's how the campaign section pitches a game where the PCs are outside law-enforcement, sent to resolve the situation on Europa - "They will have to judge the situation carefully, whether they come offering an olive branch to the EDF or bringing its destruction."
Not discussed: giving them a fucking medal and hanging those Duncanite bastards from the 21st-century space equivalent of a yardarm.
And maybe I'm getting a bit heated here, but what the Duncanites are doing, it would be like if a biotech corporation "had been releasing gengineered food fish into the wild, causing the decline of several natural species by competition for food sources." And the text's sort of casual acceptance of their activities would be like if they brought up the invasive frankenfish as an off-hand reference and then never mentioned them again . . .
Anyway, Transhuman Space as a whole is pretty hard to peg down ideologically. I don't think I've ever encountered a science-fiction setting so enamored with futurism while simultaneously being so reflexively solicitous of the status quo. It's like . . . the politics that eschew "politics." Right libertarianism fares better than most other points of view, but I think that's only because that's what the creators of the game genuinely believe and so they don't really notice it enough to scrub its influence.
It's fascinating, in its own way, but on the balance I have to call it a weakness.
Ukss Contribution: Finpants. They're pants that make you a mechanical mermaid. I trust I need not elaborate further.
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