What are the pros and cons of human only space opera?

I can't tell if this is sjw or reverse sjw.

It's probably sarcasm.

Pros
>you can substitute fantasy racism with real racism
>Humans can be as noble or terrible as you need them
>No room for shitty Dr. Who moments
>Your villain was going to be a human anyway

Cons
>Can't have shitty Dr. Who moments
>No blue skinned asain girls
>No creatures that only speak in growls, yet still completely understandable

seconded.

pros:
>not having to think of outlandish non-human based life forms
>can create small customs based on any culture, past or present, to enhance for the future
>able to pick and choose aspects from different government types to create something unique without being bound by current logic

cons:
>not having to think of outlandish non-human based life forms
>having to come up with reasons for humanity not killing itself outright
>coming up with reasons for self-sustainable colonies to continue being affiliated with each other

Con; Have you seen Firefly? You know how insufferable Firefly fans are?

I'm insufferable?

Pro: the game will be forced to focus more on the human condition than stereotypes passed off onto various rubber forehead races

Con: any furries in your group will be extra-annoying during character creation

Had this happen to me a couple of times running Traveller.

Yea. Fuck you man.

I'm also a Firefly fan (not Serenity though)

Can I have a little scorn?

Yea. Fuck you man.

user delivers

thanks

....moving on.

Firefly isn't that bad, you know. at least it was willing to explore how humanity, if left to its own devices, will endlessly exploit itself.

I can see it working if humans are stuck to Hyperplanes and the like to travel. If you're stuck going through the designated routes to travel, it's easy to understand why we haven't found another alien species in the whole galaxy.

Still, I prefer having Aliens.

Pro- no more filthy xenos to pollute your worlds.
Con- no more filthy xenos to murder with glee.

>The scale of the setting would have to be massive
Yeah, like it would have to take place in space or something.

>You know how insufferable Firefly fans are?
The thing I hate most about Firefly fans is how they bring up things they hate at random even when nobody else is talking about them. So insufferable.

I think you're underestimating the size of space and relative chances of recognizable alien life forming within 200 lightyears.

>200 lightyears.

...

The first season of Firefly was pretty good.
The other six seasons that the internet pretends exist were all terrible, though.
But yes, it's a good example of 'human-only' space opera that works.
(In theory, nu-BSG was also human-only, unless 'no robots either' is a rule we're going with.)

Characters created by humans are likely allowed under the humans-only rule, unless it's some bullshit like they're created by pushing a button on an alien spaceship that makes a creature completely of non-terran origin.

>No creatures that only speak in growls, yet still completely understandable
We already something like those. They're called Scotts.

pros
>you don't have to explain the ways aliens interact with each other
>it makes the setting less complicated overall
>no neckbeards whining about how a race is unrealistic or some shit

cons
>no aliens
>why would you even want a space game without aliens

You can make it darker. With no aliens you don't need to create an earth like planet for each one. You can have more societies on space stations orbiting gas giants that mine gas for fuel and the moons for material. You can have the planets and systems closer together, which means having a slower, and thereby more realistic, faster-than-light travel mechanism.
Also you don't need to create a need for having universal translators that translate brand new alien languages in real time (worst thing about star trek).
And you won't have to come up with alien races and the culture.
Humans only makes it darker.
Also less technobabble, technobabble is cool if it's consistent but many scifi stuff is ruined by too much of it and too inconsistent in it's use.

>radio waves travel at speed of light
>first wireless radio transmission was in the late 1890s
>200 light years in 110 years?

Rounding. Or the Fermi Approximation - if you're working on a big scale, everything is in powers of 10.

And thanks to the cubed-square law, the /effective/ range is pretty much 10LY, if that. Anywhere beyond that and even the loudest military radar is just background noise.

It literally says 200 light years in diameter. As in 100 light years in radius.

To be fair, both Firefly and nuBattlestar fans are both pretty insufferable about their particular flavor of wankery not having any aliums in it.

Pretty much agree with these anons.

Aliens in fiction will sadly always end up as just humans wearing funny makeup, pretending to be different and being really, really bad at it. Cut the crap and explore all the various ways humans could change and stay the same. We'd like to believe in the limitless potential of our imagination but ultimately fail when it comes time to really prove it.

Oh shit, you mean user didn't notice that?

That makes my explanation here even funnier.

thank you for making my point for me.

if anyone thinks that there's a recognizably intelligent alien species that close by, they're underestimating how big space is.

That doesn't have to be the case.

It's /tricky/ to do, but I've done it. Pic related. But I'd be lying if I said it was easy. Prep work was easily 30hrs per session.

Space be big. At least the light from the first human's campfire will have covered the entire galaxy by now, and is well on the way to covering the first tenth of the distance to Andromeda.

Yes, but light without context is just photos.

We could have been hit by a photon from the first All-Silicon Casserole Contest on Omicron Theta. Doesn't /mean/ anything.

You can have aliens in a work and still have it be about Humanity.

You could have a bunch of inscrutable aliens acting as an outside existential threat to humanity, in order to examine how we would react.

I'm also a sucker for alien ruins

>I'm also a sucker for alien ruins

Alien archaeology is the best.

The meaning isn't on the receiving end. A camp-fire at 200000ly isn't even a photo, it's just a few lonely photons spread so unimaginably thin that no one will ever notice.

The meaning is on the other end. That going as fast as anything ever could for the entire extent of human existence just about gets you form one end of the galaxy to the other, and not a tenth of the way to the next major one over.

Space is big, we ain't.

Xeno-archaeology, mmm...so much fun.

Trying to identify a writing system without a single hint on their iconography.

You don't even need aliens.

Humans are fucked up enough to create any substitute you wanted.
>Sex bots replace hot alien chicks
>AI colony replaces hivemind alien species ( explaining how it doesn't just instantly win every conflict ever is another matter though )
If you really want to get fucked up
>Genetic engineering of slave/servant races
>Uplifting animals just for shits, giggles, and companionship
>Genetic engineering of MASTER races because some people just want direction
>Cybernetic implants along with the entire range from 100% organic to 99% machine

Pro: Less fetish-bait
Con: Less fetish-bait

Read Gurps - Biotech

Counterpoint: the specific statement is that the fans are bad. No judgement was passed on the show itself.

The limit I have on AI in my settings is that at Human-Level intelligence mental health becomes an issue, one which only gets worse at higher IQs. They aren't glitches, but actual issues and illnessess that arise from seemingly unpredictable sources.

The really advanced AI need near constant therapy to be effective for even small periods of time, so most are either number-crunchers or have pet-like intelligences.

point recognized.

but then why am I bad for liking a non-bad show? I don't go to conventions, and I acknowledge that not everybody likes the same type of entertainment.

Pros
>Avoids most cliches
>No rubber foreheads or furries in space
>No "We are the progenitor species!" Bullshit
>Opens the door to harder sci fi
>No HFY

Cons
>ALWAYS ends up with fucktarded space nobles
>Or "Noble Spess rebellion vs Spess Nazis"
>Tech is usually autistic, in either the anime space magic way, or written by a college Freshman masturbating to his physics book.

Speaking of Bionicle, what are the pros and cons of Robots only settings.

>
>The other six seasons that the internet pretends exist were all terrible, though.
???

I've no idea what fake six seasons they're talking about.

there was only one, and it was hilarious.

>first wireless radio transmission

Was HF, propagates via the ionosphere and won't 'leave' the earth.

That's the tone Mass Effect 2 & 3 should have had.

You and your players seem really smart. What do you all do?

You can have human problems like racism, greed and religion. Sure you could have these with aliens but if aliens are just as flawed as humans what purpose does having aliens serve in the story?

It's similar to cyberpunk in a way, it keeps things realistic and near future enough that the problems of today's world can still exist and be used as a story plot.

Thats why I personally prefer science fiction without any aliens or alien influence, I really hate the "ancient extinct super advanced alien race" cliche you see in things like mass effect.

That's funny, I actually find that sort of stuff more interesting than "Aliens are everywhere" sci-fi, to each his own I guess. Just out of curiosity, why do you dislike the extinct aliens trope?

not him, but the extinct hyper advanced alien thing is a relatively new trope in scifi. I suppose it just became very common very quickly.
At this point it's like having an alien/robot in the main cast

The only broadcasts that would be strong enough to be picked up would be the military broadcasts.

>The scale of the setting would have to be massive to have a high chance of encountering another alien race.
Life is not as rare as we used to think, we have found microbial life on Mars. Which isn't in our backyard, it's in our fucking bed.

Intelligent Life is more inevitable than ever.

>No blue skinned asain girls
Genetic Engineering and a society that approves of such.

>we've found microbial life on mars
Citation badly needed

The three examples that instantly jump to my mind are Dune, Hyperion and Foundation, so technology is going to have to be a big fucking theme.

Pros:
>Freedom to really expand technology
>Can speculate on future much easier with no out of context problems and black swan events
>Don't have to disguise your real racism with fake racism
>Can talk about cultural shit

Cons:
>Can't disguise your real racism with fake racism
>Really boring if you don't like technology
>No blue boobs, unless you want to open the jar of snakes that is genetic engineering
>More difficult to came up with an interesting setting as people will expect more realism

There were things found in an asteroid which were thought to be bacteria fossils, but has been rejected to have been someting else.

There has been no other evidence of life on mars.

If we'd found signs of *LIFE* on another fucking planet, EVERYONE would know. That asking for citations was needed means that we still haven't.

There are no cons.
Only poor imagination.
>Have it be thousands of years after discovery of FTL
>Thousands of planets have been landed upon and fully colonized
>millions probed
>Yet no new life discovered other than that on Earth
>Introduce genetic engineering, steal Pandorum's "rapid evolution" stuff
>some systems humans have evolved into *not Quarians *not space elves *not hobbits *not ubermensch *not smart apes
>apes
>have intelligent Orangutans/bonobos (they are more peaceful) be a whole new race of hairy space hippies, formed from humans as test if rapid evolution works.

Now that I think of it, this no longer became Human only space opera
100% only human space opera is lame

No bull shit space races.

You can focus entirely on politics and societal issues spanning entire galaxies.

What's the point of playing space Opera if you're going to be realistic?

space operas are darker, grimy, full of drama. hopefully not melodrama.
Drama is better received the less suspension of belief there is.

What's the point of having aliens if they're just poorly thought out/written humans with a species wide gimmick?

PRO:
>Actually anthropocentric without worthless makeup

CON:
>Its somewhat empty
>No qt space elves like macha
but then again, elves are pointy faced and eared humans, so not that much of the differance

>pic-related

Well I mean, they may or may not be extinct, but there are super advanced (probably) aliens out there.
Though I haven't read the books and have only been spoiled up to the Ring/Gate thing, so I'm probably wrong

>we have found microbial life on Mars

Okay, one, that's completely wrong. Like, it's not like the difference between "we've found life" and "we've found signs of life", because we've found neither. That is just completely, wildly wrong. Jesus. As far as human science is able to tell, Earth is the only planet that has, or has ever had, living organisms originate on it.

Two, and concerning the "inevitable"ness of alien life in the universe, humanity has no real data to go from. Our sample size is one. We know that life happened at least once. We don't know how, and we don't know why. We have a rough idea of the conditions surrounding the origin of life on Earth, but we don't know what parts of that were necessary for the creation of life, and we don't know when exactly it happened. Not only have we not found life elsewhere, we don't know the recipe for it here. For all we know, the next planet we discover could have alien monkeys all over it. Or, we could travel the universe until our species goes extinct without ever finding it. We have no control group. Our sample size is one. There's no data.

Now let's assume there *is* life out there for a minute, because the real question isn't if there's life or not, it's if we'll ever get to see them. Life existing in the universe doesn't help our space opera setting if it's so far away we'll never become aware of its existence, and, considering that space is a pretty big place, it probably is.

(Continued)

(Continued) Additionally, if alien life does exist, and is near enough to interact with us, who's to say we're at the same technological level? The sheer amount of time the universe has been around (and will be around for) mean that, in all likelihood, our civilizations (if any) would not be on an even playing field. Human civilization sprung up in the last ten thousand years or so. The universe is over ten billion. It's difficult to comprehend how large that timescale is, and how small a part of it we are. Where are the aliens that got a two billion year head-start on us running around in their relativity-bending vehicles? Why haven't they found *us*? Furthermore, considering--again--how old space is, and how the only civilization we're aware of (us) has been shooting out signals into space pretty much constantly as soon as we learned how, why haven't we seen any of those? They've had potentially billions of years to travel to us, but we've seen zilch, nada, nothing.

So, there might not be aliens anywhere. If there are, the universe is huge (HUGE) enough that we may never encounter them. We can be pretty confident that, if there were any within a significant distance that were equally or more advanced than us, we would have seen some sign of them--which we have not.

The most likely kind of alien contact we make at this point is going to be finding primitive life on a planet by pure luck, and--even if that would be a huge deal for the scientific community--it doesn't make much of a difference in a space opera setting. Our dreams of joining some intergalactic community of thinking species are almost certainly never going to happen.

Pros: Recognized professionals

Cons: Certified criminals

It was fun going on that journey with you user

>We can be pretty confident that, if there were any within a significant distance that were equally or more advanced than us, we would have seen some sign of them--which we have not.

What if we won the time wars and erased all the aliens from history?

What about monster aliens like the Xenomorph?

Pros
>we're alone out there
Cons
>we're alone out there

That is some extremely fucking good high concept.

I think what hasnt been explored is Human based space opera that had minor contact with trans-galactic life forms, but that isnt in constant contact with them (think of a early renaissance European and how he may have heard of a far away place called china, but may have no knowledge of it except that thats were silk comes from.)

>Cons:
>Unimaginative
I find a lot of unimaginative people use aliens as a creative crutch ie

>They're just like us but green!
or
>Check out these floating jellyfish!
>What are they like?
>They're jellyfish that float!

There are no cons.

Why are people so concerned about racism when it's clearly an element of every single human civilization so far? Even with the advent of genetic engineering, you will still have people deriding literal "normies" for not having huge dicks and eye lasers.

Racism, like any other problem, is something you can either implement as a good thing to show the players how dark-gray the world morality is, even moreso if in this setting the people being segregated are objectively inferior (going back to the GenEng concept). Or you can present it as a problem to solve. If you play with people with enough suspension of disbelief about human morality to believe someone wants to create a doomsday laser to destroy the galaxy because of money, why not remind them that people are asshole but at least you can laser them down if you don't like them in this setting.

>or written by a college Freshman masturbating to his physics book.
I think this is more of a problem with commitment and consistency. People with autistic universe rules are only annoying if they limit how far you can travel because "muh einstein" but then have no problem with glowing stream-of-red lasers and sound in space. At least keep your shit together, and solving problems will become more challenging and even fun.

>all those tropes
Oh yes, list your favorite books right now my man.

Neither, pretty obviously. It's obviously sarcasm, and I don't think anyone anywhere thinks cultures should be ignored when talking about a people in space. Maybe you're just a moron who sees things in black and white?

How prevalent space racism is is more a factor of how homogeneous colonies are.
If its a case that any fringe crazy cultural-revivalist movement can charter are colony ship to a virgin world, you're going to end up with a heterogeneous patchwork of individually homogeneous worlds.

>tech level is usually autistic

So what would a non-autistic technological base be?

Pro:
>You can create an in-game reason not to ERP
Con:
>People will ERP anyways as sexbots

Also speaking of Bionicle and aliens, am I the only one who really likes/would play in a campaign set during the Core War? I feel like I'm one of the only people I know who likes the Spherus/Bara Magna setting more than the original

>Where are the aliens that got a two billion year head-start on us running around in their relativity-bending vehicles? Why haven't they found *us*?
I never understood that argument. Everything else you wrote make sense to me but that one I've heard it many times and I simply don't get it. Well, actually I do get it, but I don't see how that would prove or disprove anything.
I mean, back in the Roman Empire days, Mayas never came to Europe, but it doesn't mean Maya didn't exist back then.
Maybe we are the most advanced civilization in our corner of space, or maybe in the whole universe. We have no way of knowing it. There's no reason why there should be a specie of "aliens that got a two billion year head-start on us". Maybe we are the aliens that got a two billion year head-start on the others.

>a heterogeneous patchwork of individually homogeneous worlds

desu that's a recipe for golden ages.

Diverse cultures that can communicate with each other boost advancement; but diverse cultures in physical proximity boost violence and decrease trust.

Uniformity is going to be very hard to maintain on the planetary scale.

I dont understands half of these words

Because of the proportions of time involved.

With diamond hard scifi like Orion ships, and centuries of time to VN them at the destinations, the galaxy could be totally colonized in under a million years.

It took life about half a billion years IIRC to hit the space travel stage on Earth.

The galaxy is about 13 billion years old.

So if aliens are common enough to have more than 1 species proc in a galaxy around the same time, and if even 1 of the species wanted to space travel, the galaxy would be completely swarmed before the first of our ancestral bacteria evolved.

I mean in the case that there are enough virgin worlds that it's easier to settle on one of them than already inhabited worlds. To be fair, planets tend to be big, so you could end up with a few fringe-groups per planet.

Well it's not just cultures, it's every fringe "utopian" idealist too. But still, it would probably be better for people who want change to settle somewhere new instead of imposing their beliefs on an extant society.
Could make said extant society kinda stagnant though

Hence why sci-fi settings should probably have limited real-estate, so there's conflict