 May 9, 2011 - 1:02pm | I enjoyed this book, tons of great seeds in here for Star Frontiers. You can get a copy of your local library or for $3.00 online. After reflecting on the story I noticed the SF universe does not easily allow for certain plot lines or adventures. For example, if you want anything "old" you have to turn to the tetrarchs or a long lost alien species that visited the frontier. If you want a Babylon5 setting you have to expand the frontier and start including lots of races (like Deryn_Rys and others have done). (hrm... ideas for sub-races as player characters).... I've been kicking around ideas for computer and robotic languages, it always intrigued me that manufactures would have different dialects of computer languages. Would be fun to throw that in the mix. What if your yazirian never learned Pan-Gal? No poly-vox? Fun role-playing! |
May 9, 2011 - 1:08pm | Err, forgot to mention something, a neat idea is the Bullox/Max robot. It's actually two droids, one has no movement capability and is toted by the other. You could make one a level 3, the other level 5 but don't allow the l5 to order the l3 around, they make decisions together. You could have some fun with the way they talk to each-other and sentients. :-) |
 May 9, 2011 - 3:09pm | I consider such mono-linguistic individuals to be common on most worlds, and the totalpercentage of Pan-Gal speakers in the frontier estimated to be between 33% and 66%, (aptitude is not counted, other than to say, this is not including polyglot borrowing, and street-savvy recognition). Total population of Pan-Gal L1 native speakers is only around 16% of those, and concentrated mostly on the most cosmopolitan worlds. Keep in mind, this is still good enough for Tri-D stations to blare recognizable adverts in Pan-Gal to people on the street, but not enough for those people to carry a meaningful conversation in the language. Just my centi-credit: value adjustable based on commensurate incurrences of deficit, by the supporting mutual social faction. YMMV Oh humans!!  We discover a galactic community filled with multiple species of aliens, and the first thing we think about is "how can we have sex with them?".~ anymoose, somewhere on the net... so... if you square a square it becomes a cube... if you square a cube does it become an octoid? |
May 9, 2011 - 7:05pm | IMO, different languages makes for a living-frontier. If I want to talk to Briz'ak in yazirian, I expect non-yazirians in the party to not understand (unless they have a means to understand, whether via language skill or gear). However I understand where poly-voxs can speed up a story arc. Talked to the jedion (lefty brother of jedioff) tonight, he said his character always has a poly-vox so really maybe it's a moot point... ?!? Understand?  |
May 9, 2011 - 7:32pm | yes, I think we both said the same thing, just in divergent dialects...  [slaps his vox, and fiddles with a few knobs...] "darn it, void-brained thing is to farkoid into 'the standard' to cover w00tinsanian... shiznit k'rap't ti'ki'n bou'gus hbvourrdai'k'aent own our deerstand? k'aenai git'ta train salivator hop grenade in air? Corn Blaster!!! Near Miner!!"... [slaps vox, box and punts it...] Oh humans!! We discover a galactic community filled with multiple species of aliens, and the first thing we think about is "how can we have sex with them?".~ anymoose, somewhere on the net... so... if you square a square it becomes a cube... if you square a cube does it become an octoid? |
 May 19, 2011 - 8:51pm | I just uncovered a slew of novels from my high school/college days while rummaging through my garage. I started reading Space Angel (John Maddox Roberts), which I never read before...along with the sequel Spacer: Window of the Mind. The Vivers from those stories would make for an interesting NPC race... A couple of Hammer's Slammers books will follow those. |
