So I'm interested in ways that people think about how they portray future tech items or the very weird tech kinds of things that pop up in scifi and superscience plots and settings. As a person in the IT field, I find that sometimes my technojargon gets a little too dense and I confess that I have a difficult time figuring out how to write about tech in an accessible way that doesn't involve a pseudo-science lesson. So I thought I'd raise the questions here and take the community's temperature on how best to describe tech. Here's a few questions I thought of myself, but basically how do you portray the tech well?

•   Do you describe it as magic, like it does x and is powered by y.
•   Do you bite the bullet and get crunchy with your technical details to help justify its weirdness and try to immerse your players in it?
•   Is it usually just your literal Deux Ex Machina (it does whatever is needed for your story)?

As a purveyor of technobabble myself, I am super guilty of way-too-dense box text.  But in a sci-fi universe of the Star Trek style, sometimes it's important to set the standards of technology and how they work so the PCs can get into the technobabble.

One thing I have tried to do is limit each relevant fact about a device to one sentence.  Most devices can be broken down into three facts.  What it is, what it does, and a vague sense of how it does it.

For instance, the Phaser

• It is a weapon.
• It can stun or kill an enemy, or disintegrate an object.
• It uses an exotic particle beam.

Players should recognize a weapon, be it a magic spell or a sword or a gun.  Players need to know its uses, through interaction or character knowledge.  The means by which it operates is what separates fantasy and science fiction.  Knowing something is shooting a laser or a particle beam or a packet of antimatter, rather than just being abstractly dangerous colors your players' experience.  It doesn't have to make sense, per se, but it does have to feel like it makes sense.  In doing so, it evokess a different emotional response than magic.

This can run into issues where you need to differentiate between, say phasers and disruptors, but this deep in the weeds you can spare a few more words.  It can also be difficult to handle with crazily fictional technologies, like force fields.

For me, it depends on story needs. What do the characters/players need to know to formulate their actions? If the characters need to figure out how to modify or disrupt the technology, you might want to give more detail.

The story rarely requires any more explanation than you'd get in a typical TV show, which is just enough for flavor.  When the captain says "Engage warp drive." Engineering says "Aye-aye, sir" and the ship shoots off into space. At most the response is "The dilithium crystals are depleted." No one ever said "Let me tell you how dilithium crystals were discovered and where they're mined and how they're processed and how the reaction works." Just not relevant.

Just like when I'm in someone's car and I say "Must go faster" I don't expect a lesson about how crude oil is converted to gasoline and shipped to the local gas station and how it explodes in the engine to push us along. Just step on the gas.

In general, the answer is to just fall back to a higher level of narrative.  Focus on what things do, not how they do it.  Focus on purpose over trying to justify a technology's usefulness.  Even the most well grounded speculative technology is still speculative.

In play, you can fall back on narration to handle spots where technical information would exist.  You don't have to explain how an engine works, but you can say "you read the manual and understand how the engine works".  If nothing else, this prevents arguments between players with different levels of scientific knowledge (which are especially bad when the player with the lesser degree of knowledge is the one with the character that would actually know the things - leaving an IC/OOC split).

If I missed it I'm sorry, but I didn't see any reference to how familiar the characters are with the technology.  If they are 'from the country' in whatever sense, maybe the 'bright light' or similar would be appropriate, if they are well-versed in tech, then a more detailed description would be the one.

Good points everyone. I try hard to keep it realistic, but sometimes that doesn't mean fun. So I do find myself second guessing my descriptions and I've had a few people talk about my technical jargon as too dry. So thanks everyone, lots of good input. So this is the takeaway that I'm seeing: Limit the facts about each, focus on purpose, tv style descriptions, and keep in mind how familiar the character is with tech. Anything else anyone can think of?

One thing I'd like to add is that properly rationing your technobabble can reinstill a sense of wonder in players (and characters) accustomed to the wonders of the far future.

If you're careful to call out plasma bolts and laser beams and ion sprays, when a silent coruscating lightning bolt spirals out of some alien tech, vaporizing everything it touches, you add back in the element of the unknown.  When you carefully portray robots as limited entities, only capable of following orders, then when a sentient and sophisticated android shows up, he is highlighted even more by the contrast.

In Science Fiction, more than fantasy, it's easier to set a narrative baseline, since it taps into our own understanding of the universe, both intuitive and scientific.  By presenting the known as known, not downplaying it, but portraying it in a way that seems like the characters understand it, you help create the context of their universe.  Little dribs of technobabble can ground the player and the character, making them feel like they understand, especially if it's kept brief and conversational rather than expository.

This makes it even more effective when you pull the Arthur C. Clarke rug out from under them and throw the real magical technology into the mix.  The teleporters, the sun-crushers, the massless disintegration rays.  Then, bust out the purple prose, the poetry, and shrug your shoulders helplessly when they ask how that could possibly work.
This message was last edited by the user at 22:21, Tue 22 Nov 2016.

In reply to GreyGriffin (msg # 7):

+1.

Well said.

Depending on the game, characters may not even care about the 'how'.  I'm in a sci-fi game where one character seems obsessed with developing 'upgraded' tech...like, the default weapon fires a projectile that carries an energy charge.  He keeps trying to come up with plasma weapons that are stable, don't require a massive energy supply, and won't be instantly detectable to anyone scanning for an active energy source.  He's the ONLY character in the game who cares about how this stuff works...the rest of the characters are content with the fact that they point the weapon, pull the trigger, and what they're aiming at typically goes 'boom' to a greater or lesser extent (depending on its composition and contents).

The GM 'shortcuts' descriptions of alien weapons, in many ways...we've faced 'plasma' grenades that look like ionized plasma...but behave in very specific ways that plasma typically wouldn't.  Or another alien weapons which, once again, 'looks like' plasma...but it's like a weird hybrid variety that clings to stuff and eats away at solid materials.  There's no 'how' to it...it's alien, and we haven't had a chance to thoroughly evaluate either one.  We just know what they do, not how they do it.  None of the PCs in the game (aside from the inventor mentioned above) is any sort of researcher of that sort...so, even though we know how to use the weapons (and some actually carry them, despite the concerns voiced by others), we don't know how they work, how often they can fire, how many shots you get out of a charged power cell, etc...

If your game doesn't have characters that would have a reason to know the hows and whys of the technology, it doesn't need to be explained, beyond the barest levels.  There's a reason, in Star Trek, that it's always Scotty (or LaForge, or O'Brien, or whoever happens to be the engineer-du-hour) who's giving the scant explanation that the dilithium crystals are depleted/cracked/out of alignment/whatever...they know, but they also know that 95% of the rest of the crew wouldn't understand the explanation, so don't bother with the full story unless someone specifically requests it.  And if one of your characters IS analogous to Scotty or his counterparts, you can give them all the gory details in a PM and let THEM boil it down to an explanation for everyone else.

Another example?  Firefly.  Kaylee would explain that a part was broken...nobody else got it, beyond the fact that something was broken and the ship wouldn't work.  We never got any explanations about HOW the drive system of a Firefly-class transport worked, they didn't address questions about how weapons worked in different atmospheric environments (aside from Vera needing to fire inside a spacesuit because the ammo required oxygen), they didn't explain how any of Simon's medical imaging equipment worked...the characters who needed that information had it, the rest didn't need it or care about it, they just wanted it to do what it was designed to do.  Unless your game is populated by tech-geek characters, most of them are in that, "What is it supposed to do, and how well does it do it?" school of thought.
This message was last edited by the user at 06:24, Wed 23 Nov 2016.

In reply to GreyGriffin (msg # 7):

 This, +1.

 One of the most important things about a science fiction RPG world (as opposed to a science fantasy one like Star Wars or most of Star Trek) is a rough sense of technical consistency because the players, irritating little buggers that they are will invariably head off into the long weeds else. Having a clear idea of how stuff more or less works - even in only the most general terms - can help handle this.

 If nothing else, figuring out why they can't just launch a relativistic strike or drop a Thorshot on anything they really, really hate before the game starts (or why they can and what will happen if they do) is probably a good idea. ^_^

To butcher a quote, any sufficiently interesting space drive is an insufficiently interesting weapon...

Ironically they overthought this and got it wrong.  Gunpowder and its modern descendants is self oxidizing, that's what the nitrates do in the formula.  There is no way to get enough oxygen for it to work efficiently inside a gun's chamber otherwise. A modern assault rifle will work just fine in the vacuum of space, and the early plans for Star Trek assumed the Enterprise would be fitted with machine guns.

This is one of those odd "real weapons work better than sci fi weapons" things, played up in both Star Trek and Buck Rogers when the lead characters pick up archaic machine guns and mow down opponents.

Though it is really hard to set an M-16 on "Stun".

*grin*  Yeah, I know...but for the average viewer who doesn't understand the chemistry of gunpowder, it was a vague nod at trying to keep some degree of plausibility involved (I mean...you're on a space platform that is constantly in danger of being showered with micro-meteors travelling several orders of magnitude faster than a bullet.  Wouldn't the viewports be armored against high-speed projectiles?  So, the longer you think about it, the less plausible it becomes, but that holds true for a great many stories in film or television or even novels...)

But one of the reasons they do that is because facts are boring and often get in the way of making a compelling story...and, to paraphrase my playwriting professor, you shouldn't let facts get in the way of a good story.  Which goes back to the OP...are the hows and whys going to make the game/story better?  Or just bog it down?  If they're going to get in the way, don't use them (keep them on a back burner, so if someone starts asking, you can answer them, or explain the functionality so they don't try to do something with their toys that can't be done...but they don't need to be explained in detail every time something comes along, and most characters (and even a lot of players) wouldn't understand all the technical stuff, anyway.  I mean, if you're playing a historically-based game and start a chain of events rolling with a single incident, you don't explain the socio-political ramifications of that event to everyone, do you?  Maybe, if there's a character who's studied such things...a historian, a military officer who's studied famous battles and campaigns and such, or a philosopher who's built his school of thought around observations of human behavior patterns...but for the average foot-soldier, merchant, peasant, etc, they likely won't understand how one missing Greek soldier will spell doom for the holding action at Thermopylae...they just think the guy chickened out and ran home.  So why would someone without an extensive technical background need to understand how a particular weapon system works, or the finer points of an anti-viral medication, or how an AI processes information to expand its awareness?)

Another good example?  James Bond.  He doesn't know how most of the gadgets work...he knows that you push this switch, and the car does this, or the watch does that, or...  But Q?  He knows all about it, and occasionally tries to explain it, only to have James shut him down because it's boring.

I agree that it's helpful for the GM to know this stuff...or at least have some idea.  But it doesn't all need to be spelled out for the PCs...unless they have training or experience that would make it plausible for them to either know it, extrapolate it from observations, or take some time to figure it out via testing/reverse-engineering.

And then you can techno-babble your heart out, and let them try to figure out how to make it less boring to the other PCs.

One of the Star Trek games had an interesting take on this. There was a random chart you could roll on to come up with the techno babble on an as needed basis.

 I think that it's the difference between finer points and general principles. You mention 'it's a laser' to most people and their mental image is something like Star Wars blaster rifles or maybe Martian heat rays. Deciding whether your guns go pew-pew or fzzzzap and whether or not they make things holey or hot is pretty low-end on the babble scale but it directly affects other stuff you could use them for (can we shoot our laser where we know the ship is way, way out of range from us like a morse signaller no-one else can pick up?)

 'Course, this runs into the odd problem in less stringently designed systems when you notice that say, for example Kevin Siembada has given you instant-jump space drives that can be detected from light-years away or gravity drives that take thousands of years to go between planets... And then put in rules for stealth ships that don't circumvent either problem.

 On the whole though, keep it light but consistent and don't be afraid to say 'I'll have to think about it' or 'sure you have +13 in circumvent hyperspace safety controls, but no-one in the galaxy actually knows how the magic hyperspace boxes really work so you can't take the cut-out off and kinetic-kill Coruscant.' ^_^

 Like Mark Twain said: Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.
This message was last edited by the user at 01:06, Thu 01 Dec 2016.