The Good Ship SeaView Musings and Covid 19
Greetings fellow game players and crafters. Despite my best efforts to not contract Covid-19 I have in fact caught it and I am currently suffering through it. I am finally feeling a bit better. Obviously there is a huge gap in my writing mostly caused by just the realities of life. I will be starting to write again. All I can say is this C19 is not fun. However I have been watching a lot of science fiction, or rather passing out and sleeping through a lot of science fiction.
Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea is one show I have been rewatching… this old show has great potential to be translated into a game system of your choice.
I suspect GURPS might be a good choice, but other systems can be adapted as well. If you have never seen the crew of the SeaView in action check out YouTube. I grew up watching Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea and of course Star Trek. As an adult I can compare the two show’s different philosophies and it is very interesting. The various attitudes of the officers in charge are completely different. On the good ship SeaView nuking an island every now is okay and the rest of the planet does not seem to care. Somehow I can not help but think the crew of the Enterprise on Original Star Trek would really have to justify blasting any part of a populated planet supporting humanoid life as the ethics and morality of such a proposed action would be a major plot theme. On the SeaView they are not so much concerned with such dilemmas, if you got to nuke an island to solve the problem just do it. Mad scientist abound throughout the Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and the good Admiral Nelson is at times just one step away from being just as mad. Pesky concerns over the ethics of creating rare albino ape super soldiers are never discussed, in fact the Admiral goes to great length to save the research, and will probably have his boys back at the base take over that research. Ghosts, aliens, weird native sentient life forms that the SeaView probably commits genocide on, mummy undead, werewolves, out of control artificial intelligence, cyborgs, androids, radioactive mutants, mind control experiments and more all possibilities to throw at the crew.
On the nuclear submarine SeaView anything can happen. This means this setting is awesome for crazy monster of the week or problem of the week RPG adventures. Like the Enterprise certain crew members seem to die regularly so keep those NPC “Red Shirts” handy (the SeaView has part of the crew in red or blue overall onesies).
Unlike Star Trek I have noticed no pesky Prime Directive (we all know Captain Kirk was a bit fuzzy on that rule anyway but at least they tried), no big ethical debates seem to go down, it is often just an us vs them sort of show. The first couple seasons are more Cold War in feel with aspects of espionage meaning you could work some fun 007 or Mission Impossible type stuff. The imagined ships and aircraft in the show are also fun designs.
You can easily modernize the concept by adding in elements of the latter SeaQuest. After all a talking dolphin or a clone soldier seems the sort of thing the Admiral would love on his ship.
A more prolific underwater human colonization of the sea as seen in the latter SeaQuest could easily be worked into the setting. You could keep the real life and made up nations as seen in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea or create your own more futuristic nations. The setting has lots of potential for not just problems with submarine and staying alive underwater, but dungeon crawling through cave systems, visiting strange islands, ghost ships, alien bases, sea labs and colonies, different climate challenges and more.
I think this old show is great inspiration for a RPG campaign setting. I would not make the setting an exact copy but rather update it bit. The SeaView rarely has women on board in the TV show and then they are guests, whereas female crew would be excepted by today’s standards and are seen on the latter SeaQuest.
Have Fun!
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