Faster than the Speed of Light!

Carl Cravens wonders how to approach Faster-than-light travel in games.

I've been thinking about this from a gaming view point. One of the first questions most space setting planners try to answer is "what kind of FTL technology is there" because it drives a lot of other factors. But what if we just didn't ask or answer that question? Throw out the laws of physics, declare arbitrary distances between systems we want to be reachable (and untraversable distances for those we don't), and just pretend that everyone gets around in normal space under non-relativistic speeds. Could a game work that way, or would the ability of the audience to ask stupid questions about the world cause problems.

I see it as a genre issue; it's one of the big differences between (semi) Hard SF and Space Opera.

I don't recall Jack Vance ever telling us how FTL worked. In his Gaean Reach universe, ships just travel from A to B, and that's it. But space travel was never really the theme for any book; all the action takes place on planets, and spacecraft are nothing more than plot devices. Even on Planet of Adventure, where the hero struggles to build his own ship from pilfered spare parts, Vance doesn't tell us what all those components do or how they work. And he spins a good enough ripping yarn that we readers don't really care.

It's the approach I've taken for AEF, the Vancian space pirate game I run on Dreamlyrics. I inherited the game from another GM who never specified the mechanics of FTL travel either. I do something find myself having to define bits of the physics of the game universe as I go along, and then keep things consistent. Rigid Simulationist players will hate my game....