Forging Ahead (GURPS Interstellar Wars/Celestial Forge)

[Handlewithcare]

I think a large and very enjoyable part of tech wank/uplift fics are the reactions of the people. When the protag comes along and upends centuries old beliefs and shatters their worldviews, that's when things get spicy

That isn't really possible in this fic do to genius patrol and military secrecy.

Maybe she should have done the jump drive first and then a time skip to unveiling it to the public? Then show that the Vilani learn of it only years later because the voyage takes a while, terran travellers have stopped visiting, it made it's way up the bearaucracy and then they refused to believe primitives could build such a thing.

Finally they get confirmation. Cue panic, but by then Terra has already expanded massively away from them.

In the mean time the Protag has already developed new stuff that is now freaking out her own people.

 

[LordMelvin]

Damn fickle things, muses.

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The fickleness of muses is why techniques like the old pulp detective standby of 'when you get stuck, have a couple of goons (or just grandfather) rough up the main character and threaten further harm in a clue-and-motivation inducing fashion' work so well.
Or as Chandler is credited with phrasing it, "When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand." It may not work directly every single time, but it's usually at least a good way to kick your muse into figuring out who is showing up armed and which way they're pointing the gun...

 

[litaispe]

Instant mass-knowledge acquisition and retcon effects common in CYOA stuff is horribly toxic for story telling. It is ultra-hard mode for anything longer than a few thousand words.

My comfort zones, as near as I'm self-aware of them (which ain't 100%) seem to be adventure themed stories focused on small parties, and also PG-13 romance (at least if the reaction to my attempted otome draft snippets in my snippets thread or the MC/Amy Madison romance in my most recent Jumpchain on SB was any indicator). So, how the hell do I combine that with a tech-wank fic?

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Have you watched any of the Stargate tv series? It is 18 seasons of 20-22 episodes a season of basically what you are looking for.

Boiling it down to modern terms;
A small team of explorers use a non-reproducible portal device to explorer strange new worlds, gather allies and exotic resources And then return to mostly safe home to 'end' an adventure, and have downtime while the technological progress meter ticks away.

The portal mechanic provides character agency, as they can choose when to use it and where to go. It also frees the author from needing to consider geography, since each of the set-pieces is distinct.

The safe-zone mechanic is an important, and it gives an area to have guarantied downtime without requiring to explain why one geographical area is magically safe and yet so close to sources of danger. Characters can still bring trouble home, which provides a reason they don't just loot everything and travel light.

The non-reproducible part of the portal device is something of a critical detail as it reduces the need to give clarke-tech to the protagonists or any antagonists.

Stargate wasn't without its fault, but it had a robust mechanic for telling a large set of somewhat disconnected stories that can also support larger story arcs.

 

[drakensis]

Thank you for writing what you have so far and I look forward to seeing what you do next.

 

[Leafy503]

seem to be adventure themed stories focused on small parties, and also PG-13 romance

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Don't forget that said character has to be in the "Good alignment." Writing evil or even morally ambiguous MC's is.. well it's gonna be a rough time.

So, how the hell do I combine that with a tech-wank fic?

... without visiting a major superhero setting, because Marvel and DC invite endless fan arguments and I am not going back to Earth-Bet, that place drives me insane.

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Maybe something that is episodic in nature? Buffy the Vampire Slayer perhaps? That way you can sorta limit how fast the tech is introduced by going by the eventual baddie introductions.

 

[Hidden One]

What I'm doing now is brainstorming the same thing I was doing when I started "Forging Ahead"... figuring out what the fuck else to write to keep my creative juices from getting too flabby while I waited for a specific fic on long-term hiatus to hopefully rise from the dead.

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How about something silly? For example a crossover of two settings you like but were one has a lot less depth and basically would just add minimal plot, locations and characters to your options?
Otherwise... I often come back to attempting to put something together for a tv-series box set or book series that I own and enjoy. Sadly, there is much fail in those attempts for me.

 

[blackshadow111]

... I was going to post something, but this is steadily turning into a Celestial Forge discussion thread and that doesn't seem appropriate.

Which reminds me of what would be nice, ie: a Celestial Forge discussion thread. Does anyone know one? Not BCF, just one for the concept.

 

[ryune]

... I was going to post something, but this is steadily turning into a Celestial Forge discussion thread and that doesn't seem appropriate.

Which reminds me of what would be nice, ie: a Celestial Forge discussion thread. Does anyone know one? Not BCF, just one for the concept.

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Well, there is the Celestial Forge Discord. But on the subject of a CF thread... I am not familiar with one specifically for it.

 

[blackshadow111]

Well, there is the Celestial Forge Discord. But on the subject of a CF thread... I am not familiar with one specifically for it.

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The discord is kinda monofocused on the worst of the CF stories, though. That was why I left it.

 

[Tazered]

cliffc999 just throwing ideas out but how about a mix of ideas and rather than an abduction have an Eminence in Shadow poke poke the Vilani or some other alien races into a hostile posture as a way to see what Sophia would do with her CF. Kind of a Tanya the Evil situation. Alternatively you could go the route of a not-so-accidental jump-9 accident stranding the character and a team in another setting, the future or the past of the current one?

 

[Zerak]

So after I stalled on that I listened to the excellent suggestions that were being made after I pulled the failed chapter 8, and tried to implement them, but when I spent the past couple of days getting zero inspiration on so much as 'designing a regular NPC for Sophia to play off of' (it was going to be her new bodyguard, because she was getting to where a security detail for their new golden goose was a thing)... well, when you can't touch the slightest bit of inspiration for so much as creating a sidekick, that's when you know your muse is giving up.

Fuck it, I really want to make a tech-wank fic actually work sometime given that this is my third failed attempt after "A Ghost of a Chance" and "The Light of the Forge", but I am going to have to figure out how the hell I do that before I actually do that. And given that I am a classic seat-of-the-pants writer (every time I have attempted to create a full story outline before posting the first chapter online, I haven't come up with anything except such fragmentary puree of shit I never tried to post it at all), well, I'm going to need to figure out what kind of story best plays to my strengths instead of trying to write directly into my weaknesses.

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You could try your hand at writing a quest. Be it here or on https://fiction.live you don't even need to make it with a lot of roles or even give the readers that many choices. Just allow readers to decide a few aspects of the story.

Alternatively you can write a new story with zero quest elements on fiction live and the live chat might help your muse. Or write a story where the audience only gets to roll rather than make choices. Up to you what you do.

The discord is kinda monofocused on the worst of the CF stories, though. That was why I left it.

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Also all CF after v1 tend to be be too large and have things that ruin the whole point of being in another setting retuned than a jumpchain. Primarily the aspect of forge that gives you a lot of companions of the one that gives you in world recourses like factories. kind of defeats the point of building yourself up in a single world.

 

[TroyX]

Shame to hear, cliff But if you're stuck, then you're stuck.

Something that's worked for me is to deliberately write shorter stories. Either they cover a shorter span of narrative time, or I gloss over things to get to the end quickly. It might not be as good a story as otherwise, but it gets done.

Regardless, I hope you can find something that works for you. I know your difficulty with stories, particularly tech-wank stories, is frustrating to you, but I'm enjoying your explorations nonetheless.

 

[WaNoMatsuri]

There is also the option of doing something LordRoustabot termed "Trinkets and… Specialities(?)" where you can't buy anything costing more than 200 cp. so it's not as op.

 

[Vrenze]

There is also the option of doing something LordRoustabot termed "Trinkets and… Specialities(?)" where you can't buy anything costing more than 200 cp. so it's not as op.

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Problem there is that a lot of sub 200 choices are broken as fuck because some people couldn't understand scaling while writing jump docs. Or some settings were THAT broken.

 

[SemiSaneAuthor]

I'm not going to suggest anything, Cliff. Because that's probably annoying you at this point.

Instead, I'm just going to take my hat off to you this New Years Eve, and thank you for what you have given us. If you want suggestions you can ask, and the infinite amount of monkeys at typewriters that is my Imagination can probably suggest some stupid and pointless ideas.

But, thanks for the ride. And whatever you do next year and in the beyond? I'll have fun reading it.

 

[Vrenze]

So small team of adventurers that allows for tech talk. Three properties jump out to me, one if which has already been mentioned: Stargate, X-Com, and Ghostbusters.

Stargate I think makes for an interesting mechanic to play with, that being the 'Gate itself. It could be used as the method of activating whatever ability you want to play with a la you previous CF MC actively having to meditate to access the CF gift giver. So maybe going through the gate triggers a 1 in X roll every so often to see if they trigger an II charge or connect to the forge or access some gamer/jumpchain menu. The setting already has high INT people like Carter and Rodney so your technobabble won't be too far out and the Ori are a sufficiently deity level threat to have as a late game antagonist to say nothing of what the Ancients would bitch and moan and "totes not interfere" about.

X-com is similar -ish in that it allows for a reasoned escalation of threat. Psi-chambered could be a one off power up/recharge. For example you start with the usual 10 charges of Inspired Inventor but they don't recharge at all until roughly "mid-late game" where the MC undergoes psi testing where they get 10 more, never to recharge again and "psichambers have been tested to be 100% fatal on re-use as far as we can tell, we can't risk you under current circumstances"

Ghostbusters is fun, monster of the week but easily scaled to big threats on arcs. Potential world spanning or just local team of OCs handling local legends and working with the tech.

All three allow for interesting, reasoned individuals to interact with each other.


Oh also Star Trek which until recently has been "reasonable mature people deal with things reasonably unless the other side really doesn't want to in which blow that MF up" the show. It practically codified if not invented the phrase "technobabble". Also let's say you went with an Insert with Inventor. 10 charges, outside spiking into a speciality, using the original(?) Non-worm interpretation of 1 charge being 1 year study/practical use, 7-10 charges would get you to just above baseline Fed education cadet. Granted you'd have to deal with issues like their phobia of "enhanced humans" and either pop into DS9 or VOY to not get immediately S31'd away. Even then VOY would have temptation to drop you on a "suitable world" with Q backed "this is a test of humanity, you cannot maroon this one and in reward I'll smooth/shorten your trip a touch"

Are you familiar with the well done xcom/Stargate cross XSGCOM , Cliff? One of the few well done and considered fusions I've seen.

 

[SemiSaneAuthor]

X-Com

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If we're really going to talk ideas that are never going to happen, of a setting that needs to be broken with tech powers?

Cliff, you can ignore this. But I need to get it out of my head.

X-Com/Nu-X-Com Fusion. That is, it's the World and Setting of the Original X-Com Games, but with the Characters and backstories of Nu-X-Com just moved back to the 90s. Because the original X-Com was a meatgrinder from hell due to a few programming oops on the hardness settings. While, if you use Nu-X-Com for characters?

Well, regardless of whether you used it for tech powers or not, say using some other power mechanic to break the sheer, "WE'RE SCREWED!" Chorus in Latin? An X-Com/Nu-X-Com Fusion allows for such a setting.

 

[cliffc999]

There's a lot of settings I don't know well enough to write, and people are naming many of them.

 

[Domino]

Krogan Inspired Inventor mercenary in Mass Effect. Build yourself up a team of space misfits and explore the galaxy in an era before the reaper threat exists.

Or, you could write a human MC and set the story post-reaper war, letting you be instrumental in picking up the pieces of the galaxy and giving you largely a free hand when it comes to world building.

Edit - hell, you can just grab Atlas from Power Creator Xenon, I know you love that variant of Inspired Inventor

 

[Webzayne]

There's just something about these types of fics that don't want to be written, I suppose. Powerwanks will always eclipse the setting, and then it becomes about what's left. CFv2 is too powerful to make a cohesive story with, v3 did come and it cleaned up a bit... But, CF has serious scaling issues and only works with settings that also scale up. You're really only left with a handful of large settings, with Star Wars being the only one I haven't seen a CF tried in I believe. Empire building is nice in theory, but good luck juggling that with the instability something like CF offers, while trying to juggle sociopolitical affairs of foreign intergalactic civilizations(whilst giving the MC and gang enough screen time). One man isn't a mountain and all that. I wouldn't even say it's a failure of your 'muse', there's just little that can be done sufficiently without monumental planning, and even then it's a question of if it'd still be fun to write. A story like this isn't an exercise, I'd say it's a massive commitment that you definitely made a good choice in dropping.


The only option I think to get anything out of these types of wank fics, is to prevent omni-capability(perfect generalist, ultra-capable nonsense), it's when that point is reached that most of these fics die because it's functionally impossible to write. Perhaps a tech specialization that can't be breached and only worked around, the conflict of circumstance would definitely make things more interesting. CYOAs and such forth are all workable, they just shouldn't be overestimated or treated as powerful as they are at face value. The OP protag fics that survive all have a gimmick or downside around to keep things interesting, whether it be a time limit, social incapability, an incompatible setting, etc. But on the other hand, I also can't remember if I've ever read a fic based on a Cyoa meet an actual conclusion that wasn't dropping, hiatus, or that was anywhere near 'satisfactory'. Actually, it's been a long time since I've read anything with a 'good' conclusion, or a conclusion at all. Ah well, whatever, well wishes and all that jazz, happy new year's.

 

[Vrenze]

also can't remember if I've ever read a fic based on a Cyoa meet an actual conclusion that wasn't dropping, hiatus, or that was anywhere near 'satisfactory'. Actually, it's been a long time since I've read anything with a 'good' conclusion, or a conclusion at all. Ah well, whatever, well wishes and all that jazz, happy new year's.

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I cannot for the life of me remember the 2-3 names of the ones I've read that concluded at least semi-decently but atleast one of those was almost purely from various outside perspectives.

Also SW not having been touched is a little weird because some of the stories told about the Great Old Empires like the Rakata Empire almost sound like an amped up, renegade SI's empire that went to shit.

 

[Leafy503]

There's a lot of settings I don't know well enough to write, and people are naming many of them.

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That's to be expect since you don't have a definite list of settings put out that your are comfortable with doing.
Heck, even I'm just going by your Jumpchain chapters. Which include Buffy, Harry Potter, Mass Effect, Neverwinter Nights, Dahak Chronicles, Terminator, Fallout, Etc.

 

[SemiSaneAuthor]

Buffy

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You know, if you wanted to go with the classics? Halloween fic where someone dresses up as Tony Stark/Antonia Stark and we get a MCU Tony/Rule 63!MCU Tony.

That way you get tech wank, but not comic level bullshit, while you still have someone doing stuff. I mean, if you limited it to a point in the Early MCU for that Tony/Toni too? Like say Second Iron Man film, and the armour is the Briefcase armour that while cool is rather limited?

Then you can limit it. And depending on whether you want that version of The MCU to have it's own version of Buffy as a TV Program that a sick!Version of whatever Stark is picked who watched Buffy on a Episode Marathon? You can also have an outside point of view.

Say, if you want to be mean, Cordelia as Antonia Stark. While you can add in other tech and other threats from the Halloween Event just not being limited to empowering one person.

 

[kartal]

Some pretty good ideas being thrown out for cliff's next fic, but does anyone know if anyone has done a Dresden/Gamer fic? Cliff does power creep really well and in a way that doesn't ruin my immersion into his fics. I just want to see him do a Harry Dresden that got the gamer ability at a young age, is low-key and (unknown to everyone) one of the absolutely most powerful beings in his reality. A story like that interspersed with a lot of other people's point of view like cliff did with the genius patrol meeting would be a very entertaining read I bet!

 

[Leafy503]

Harry Dresden

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The problem here is that your throwing out fandoms that cliffc999 has a surface understanding in, so doing a whole setting in it would be moot.

 

[JKingSniper]

Sad but understandable.
Hope to see future tech wank fics though once you've prepared

 

[Bananacue123]

This should have the "female protagonist" tag, what a waste of time

 

[Vealie]

For a techwank fic you could try The Glow, the Intelligence ability to get the answer to any question (you might not like the answer or ask the right questions) with the example of a new theory of gravity...

Well it lets you go techwank without hitting the ridiculous setting breaking stuff of Tinker of Fiction, Celestial Forge etc. but you'd need more of an R&D cycle to get from fiat power to propositional knowledge to engineering to manufacturing.

e.g. Star Wars where you can learn the principles underlying the Star Forge, how to design more useful & autonomous droids that wont rebel etc but for whatever reason supcom fabrication techniques, massfab & energy generation methods don't work.