Thought: If *we* don't have a specific list of what the Plot Devices can do...
...then maybe the characters shouldn't either.
"Gee. I wonder.... What would happen if we hooked one of them up to a blender?"
It does give you an excuse for Person X to have a nifty application of the Plot Device that Person Y doesn't know yet.
Also, if it's going to be a plot device of Many Blessings, then at least the handwaving should *vaguely* justify that.
Of course, this is the point where I immediately take the hard left at "any sufficiently advanced technology" and keep going out the other side, but I'm a fantasy geek by nature, and make up magic systems with my spare cycles just because. I do feel like we want to keep this one at least vaguely in the realm of science fiction.
Perhaps a crash-landed alien ship (or similar source) with a strange, adaptive alien biotech that is impossible to duplicate but relatively easy to breed? It's not quite the same as the original thought, but I don't think you sacrifice the feel all that much, and it lets you justify the enormous leaps in large numbers of technological fields without pushing society forward in time much at all.
On the other hand, do we want to hand the characters proof of extraterrestrial intelligence? Of course, there's always the Bizarre Archeological Find as a source for the stuff... with or without a message saying "gee, took you long enough" but that still requires that the Others have been here At Some Point. I dunno. I'm just throwing some stuff out there at this point. Thoughts?
Oh... one thing - since these *are* fen, it occurs to me that the likelihood that the name used for the stuff *by the characters hemselves* is pretty likely to be something like handwavium, unobtanium, or Plot Devices.
Oh, and just a thought on the feel on this... (if no one's said it already - it's late enough my memory's starting to go.) whatever the tech is, and however good it is when used *properly*, everything they're using out there is jury-rigged. There should be quirks, foilibles, and annoyances. This stuff should have *character*.
...then maybe the characters shouldn't either.
"Gee. I wonder.... What would happen if we hooked one of them up to a blender?"
It does give you an excuse for Person X to have a nifty application of the Plot Device that Person Y doesn't know yet.
Also, if it's going to be a plot device of Many Blessings, then at least the handwaving should *vaguely* justify that.
Of course, this is the point where I immediately take the hard left at "any sufficiently advanced technology" and keep going out the other side, but I'm a fantasy geek by nature, and make up magic systems with my spare cycles just because. I do feel like we want to keep this one at least vaguely in the realm of science fiction.
Perhaps a crash-landed alien ship (or similar source) with a strange, adaptive alien biotech that is impossible to duplicate but relatively easy to breed? It's not quite the same as the original thought, but I don't think you sacrifice the feel all that much, and it lets you justify the enormous leaps in large numbers of technological fields without pushing society forward in time much at all.
On the other hand, do we want to hand the characters proof of extraterrestrial intelligence? Of course, there's always the Bizarre Archeological Find as a source for the stuff... with or without a message saying "gee, took you long enough" but that still requires that the Others have been here At Some Point. I dunno. I'm just throwing some stuff out there at this point. Thoughts?
Oh... one thing - since these *are* fen, it occurs to me that the likelihood that the name used for the stuff *by the characters hemselves* is pretty likely to be something like handwavium, unobtanium, or Plot Devices.
Oh, and just a thought on the feel on this... (if no one's said it already - it's late enough my memory's starting to go.) whatever the tech is, and however good it is when used *properly*, everything they're using out there is jury-rigged. There should be quirks, foilibles, and annoyances. This stuff should have *character*.