Using an abstract rules system to explain the multitude of possibilities in a fantastical setting is a difficult, and striving for realism, while admirable, makes for a very, very uninteresting gaming session. Compounding that with firearms tends bog down each round of action with superfluous die rolling and chart checking.

When you’ve got guns, or blasters or whatever, you’ve also got rate of fire, ammo consumed and carried, as well as range, damage, damage versus materials (armor, flesh, etc.), special ammo types (exploding, magical, filled with acid or poison), reliability and a whole slew of other problems I’m purposefully neglecting to mention.

I’ve recently begun running a Dark Heresy game (from Fantasy Flight Games), based on Games Workshop’s epically popular Warhammer 40,000 setting. As with any new rules system, it takes some time to learn, sometimes to work through the errata and establish a flow with characters, skills and combat. However, Dark Heresy, an impressive book with a rather high price point, is perhaps one of the most poorly organized books I’ve seen in a long time. The core rules are spread over what feels like dozens of chapters, and the answers to simple questions lead you on a whirlwind of page flipping and index referencing (sorry – but at my age, I refuse to commit anymore RPG rules to memory, after THAC0 and Saves from AD&D 2e, I’ve had enough).

But the game – the game itself is so strong, the setting is so rich and fleshy, the expansion of the typical science fiction genre, the gothic superstition and rampant forces of chaos, the galaxy spanning quests against an invisible evil – it’s a Game Master’s dream. But for the core rules book.

Against my better judgment, I purchased a copy of Rogue Trader, the new Warhammer 40,000 game from Fantasy Flight. The price point on this beast is astounding. As I fork over my sixty kuatloos for my copy of the book, I page through it and see that much of the book is a reprint of rules from Dark Heresy. By now, I’m getting cranky, wondering who their target audience is, where the colony of 15-year olds with disposable income are coming from to purchase these products.

Then, I notice something that lightens my heart; this book is well organized. It’s not only good looking, filled with tasty fluff content, but it’s easier to understand, easier to use. The differences are subtle, but significant. I began to use Rogue Trader as my reference book immediately for my Dark heresy game, considering it the 2^nd Edition of the DH core rules. The starship rules are a spectacular addition, the new classes are great and the expanded armory and equipment guides makes players “thank the Golden Throne” for this book.

My only criticism is the republishing of core rules. White Wolf, I think, has really tapped into something with their World of Darkness core rules book. Personally, I’d rather spend the extra cash on expanded materials, and rely on one core rulebook that every player can afford.

Will Fantasy Flight Games release another core rule book for Space Marines? And another for Xenos? Why not just keep the core lean and the materials rich and flowing?

In my writing career I stumble across writers and readers who wrinkle their little noses at the mere mention of science fiction, as if writing a gut-spilling tell all piece about how you can’t reconcile your feelings of abandonment and resentment towards your dead mother somehow projects your writing into the realm of literature. Personally, if I want to read about people suffering, I’ll pick up the newspaper.

For me, the appeal of science fiction is the constant conflict between our need for technology, our desire to master our environment through technology and what those factors do to our humanity.

A quick side note – because I know some folks are reading this saying well, “What’s His Name” is more widely read than “Sci-fi author.” This is true. But widely read translates to “easily understood.”
That’s right, I said it. Popular equates simple. I digress.

I started a fantasy story some months ago and one of my readers said to me “You just didn’t believe it, did you?”

I thought, what an interesting comment from Mr. Dungeons & Dragons Two Nights A Week. But, in retrospect, he was right. I didn’t buy my own snake oil. As I hacked out this convoluted story, I found I was falling back on my sci-fi tropes of time-location-distortion, expanding lexicons, invention. It made the fantasy setting feel muddled, like a veneer of dragons painted over the hull of an ancient galactic warship, in an attempt to hide the pitting and scars it had suffered in its centuries-long life of almost constant warfare.

I am not comfortable in the fantasy genre. I’m not it, it’s not me. My readers can detect that, and it becomes a constant battle with my inner editor, as well as my sense of story to complete a fantasy tale. It’s good to experience and try out many genres. But for most of us, one or another becomes like a second home, and we tend to find our focus there.

As with all things, humans want to attempt to push their need for order as far as it will go, categorizing and sub categorizing, entire catalogues of data. Indexing and cross –referencing until nothing makes sense.

Then again, critics need something to talk about, and if it couldn’t be described as a sub-genre or a trendy Rom-Com, Dramedy, Thrimedy or whatever, I suppose they’d just say they hated it and leave it at that.

In college, sci-fi always got a hard wrap, I’m not sure why. Stories about unresolved child-parent relationships and unrequited love seem to be the hallmark of literature, or an overly lengthy tale about growing up in some urban shit-hole without enough supervision and the inability to judge danger…

I think it was primarily because sci-fi is not only hard to write, but it’s hard to read and understand. Let’s face it, sci-fi fans tend to have a better understanding of science than say, Dan Brown’s audience, who seem to have a better understanding of Fairies and Angels. So, imagine a novice writer attempting to hack out a sci-fi tale – take his inaccurate understanding of say, quantum tunneling, compound that with his learning status as a writer, and perhaps even his bad taste, and you’ve got a story that’s going to suck something fierce.

During one of my screenwriting classes, a classmate turned in a full-length script about the space-battleship Velvet. I was polite in class, but the second I was out of earshot, safely on the train, I laughed like a lunatic all the way to the bar.

His poor understanding of military structure (seems like his knowledge of the army and navy was based on Star Trek – which we all love, but we know to senior office in any outfit is going to land on a hostile planet, even if he might get laid in the bargain), novice writing style and bad taste made for a tale that was nothing short of hilarious.

I never read his whole script, but can you imagine being in deep space, the ranking office on a behemoth, so powerful it might as well have a star for heart, so vast it cannot be traversed by foot, so grim and ominous that whole worlds have surrendered to it’s mere mention…

And then the Battleship Velvet drops of our warp space. It’s high and proud hull painted with rainbow stripes…and does what? Offers to do your nails?

This, is why most sci-fi sucks.