Welcome to the third installment of Tropes, where we examine various genres of fiction with an eye to identifying and deconstructing the various narrative devices employed for adaptation to tabletop gaming.

Last time, we discussed the Pulp Adventure magazines as a gaming genre, focusing on crusading crimefighters and adventurers set in the period between and around the World Wars and Great Depression.

In those same cheap and plentiful Pulp magazines were tales of brave and bold explorers and heroes taking to the stars in mankind's glorious future of exploration, discovery, and fighting off alien hordes. The combination of the young field of Science Fiction with a more pulp-sensibility sweeping scale led to the gameable sub-genre of Space Opera.

A group that wants to play a Space Opera campaign needs to understand the following tropes common to all subgenres.

IN SPAAAAAACE!!!!

In Tropes #2: Pulp, we delineated and examined a set of Tropes that apply to the adventure fiction stories common to the period surrounding the Great Depression. Space Opera stories not only shared the pages of those selfsame magazines, but every facet of the genre we examined last time also applies here.

Uses: The same antagonists, natural obstacles, pacing, and vistas that make a Pulp game work fit just wine with a glitzy coat of science fantasy paint. Nazis become Klingons, Hurricanes become Cosmic Whirlpools, the distant country is a distant (often one-climate, see Dune. Desert Planet. below) world, and the sports roadster becomes the Millennium Falcon.

Pitfalls: None, really. Space Operas are essentially Pulps... IN SPAAAAAACE!!!

Dune. Desert Planet.

In the Pulps, the heroes went to the jungle, the arctic, the desert, and other exotic locales. In Space Opera, they went to the Jungle Planet, the Arctic Planet, the Desert Planet, and other exotic worlds. Unlike Science Fiction proper, where planets are varied and ecosystems are at least trying to be realistic, Space Opera worlds are just an excuse to change the scenery and introduce environmental challenges.

Uses: The Pulp Trope of Location, Location, Location applies here too. No one should ever be able to track down a smuggler in the next town over, or even on the moon of the planet you found his name out on. Its time for a race across the galaxy! And don't forget to hit the players with a Cosmic Typhoon or a Supernova on the way.

Pitfalls: When you create a one-note world, make sure to put some local colour in. Something that makes the planet memorable. Pulp heroes talk about Casablanca, Rio, Cairo. Similarly, local colour, flavour, and customs should make Space Opera characters talk about Arrakis and Hoth instead of “That one Jungle place”.

Peoples Is Peoples. Even The Green Ones.

Uses: When you just need a criminal galactic underworld snitch, a helpless culture of helpless victims against the evil Space Nazis, or just need local colour, inventing weird aliens with weird alien biology and weird alien languages borne from weird alien psychology is often too much effort for one quick scene. Grab a unique set of (hopefully benign) cultural assumptions, and give them antenna, forehead ridges, or pastel skin.

Pitfalls: Similarly to the pulps, gentle cultural stereotypes can become ugly and offensive fast. Friends don't let friends Jar-Jar. Also, there is absolutely a place for extremely weird aliens, monsters, beasts, energy entities, godlike beings, and the like.

Stars On Thars

Uses: One of the core conceits of Space Opera is that much as any nation will have a sense of identity, planets all identify as a monoculture, or in some cases, entire coalitions of worlds share a culture where differences are less aliens struggling for coexistence and more like the regional difference between a New Yorker and a Californian. In many cases, these monocultural identities map neatly to historical nations and people.

Pitfalls: Now and again, remember to throw in the rebels against type. Or when introducing a culture based on a PC from that world, make it clear they are the misfit (if its OK with that player, of course). The Harry Mudds and Han Solos are the soul of the genre.

SCIENCE POLICE!

Or the Space Patrol. Or Starfleet. Or the Imperial Academy... Space Opera assumes at least one of, and possibly multiple, star-spanning peacekeeping explorers, frontier scientists, insane but gifted engineers, and really snazzy starships. These organizations make for excellent employers and excellent opponents. Sometimes, depending on the week.

Uses: Just watch Star Trek (original series), Star Wars (mind the structure in the imperial fleet), or read the Lensmen or Lucky Starr books. Fleet is everpresent, even if they never show up. They PCs can be members of the Fleet, they can be contractors, freelancers, bounty hunters.. or even criminals. The Fleet is the central body the PCs will most often deal with in their galaxy-spanning adventures.

Pitfalls: As everpresent as they are, don't be afraid to let them fade into the background. The rules of communication, like the ships themselves (see Are We There Yet?, below) move at the speed of plot. Sometimes, the nearest ship will get there just in time help mop up.. or to take credit.

Are We There Yet?

A starship blasts off from the port under heavy fire. It jumpwarps to transspeed and disappears into the hypervortex. The computer projects its course to one of three planets.. How long will it take the characters to get to each one? And will they catch their quarry on time? The answer, of course is, “one scene wipe per planet, unless there's an on-ship deal, and he'll be on the last one... oh, and they'll catch him in time for the fight.” The actual speeds, distances, and physics are of no consequence whatsoever.

Uses: The whole reason for travel time is to allow for shipboard scenes. Handwave the jump as necessary. Otherwise, the ship takes as long to get there as required to have the setting be at the state required for the arrival scene. And enough time will have passed in general for interesting complications to develop back home.

Pitfalls: You might have players who need more consistency in their science, or at least want to know what the actual numbers are. Its best to use a method of travel dependent on “subspacial currents” or “interstitial headwinds” to placate these sorts. Don't forget your Negative Space Wedgies while you're at it. A good Ion Storm, Gravitational Flux, or Spacetime Rupture helps slow or speed up the transit as required.

An Engineer Did It

Science in Space Opera is more or less magic with blinky lights and cool devices. While Technobabble is a valid choice, its equally valid to have a handful of buzzwords and catchphrases to throw in. For every time Geordi bounces a tachyon beam off the main deflector dish to instigate an anti-tachyon cascade resonance pulse, Chewie roars something, hits something, and welds something. Both work.

Uses: Science is magic with rules. Almost always. FTL, Energy Weapons, Supercomputers, Anti-Gravity, strange energy sources, and various other devices that don't so much violate physics as outright roll it up into a little ball and toss it in the wastebasket are all good Space Opera fixtures.

Pitfalls: Note above where it says science is magic.. with rules. Just because the “science” is Venusian Ur-Bat-Guano Insane, it still follows the instinctual rules of How Machines Work. A machine cannot do something it cannot do. Unless it does... but there better be some technobabble or at least a weird Interstitial Polarity Inversion to “explain” what went wrong.

Sources

That wraps up this installment of Tropes. Next time, we'll continue our journey through these very closely interrelated genres with another step backwards into the Gothic world of the Victorian Penny Dreadfuls. Meanwhile, here's a somewhat longer than usual list of some past and present published games that deal with Space Opera gaming. Gotta love those licensed settings. Look them up in