Author: Patrick Riley (---.pacbell.net)
Date: 06-19-2000 11:59
No engines, no warpdrives, just the human mind powering the folding of space. I'll buy that.
Do not forget
1) Folding requires spice, lots of spice.
2) The art of folding is strictly controlled by the Navigators
3) 1+2 create an economic dependency upon spice that was the driving political factor in the entire novel.
I believe TSR tried something like this in the highly unsuccessful "SpellJammer." Oh well.
Spelljammer is not even close to the same idea. In spelljammer, practically any spell caster could pilot a ship. Spelljammers did not fold or warp space -- they just flew through space as any traditional sub-light spacecraft would.
What Herbet does is take a new twist on the psionic of teleportation.
Folding is a very large-scale event, not really the same thing as individual teleportation the way we think of it in fantasy and Star Trek.
Anybody that can fold space is going to be highly prized and valued.
See #2 above.
Perhaps one of your Player Characters can take this role, or all of them. Or perhaps they have to save one who has been kidnapped.
The problem with PCs-as-Navigators that exists in both Dune and Spelljammer is that the person doing the driving has nothing to do and is essentially taken out of the action.
What if wizards are the only ones who can teleport. There's an art and science to teleportation and only wizards have this arcane knowledge.
When did this Science Fiction column slide into fantasy? Not that I think the two are mutually exclusive, but it does seem an odd way to end a SF column.
-- Patrick Riley
http://users.aol.com/chaospuppy
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