I think you can play complex characters that are tied in to the world just fine with newbies. I have no idea how to manage my footing when I swing a sword, but many of my characters do! Similarly, my quick-fingered thief likely knows a great deal about the ghost field that I’ve yet to learn (I think this is what you meant? The only ghost fence I’m seeing is from Morrowind).

The way I’ve handled this is to give a quick, concise rundown about a topic right when it becomes relevant, or looks about to become relevant. I keep it limited to just what they need to know for what’s happening now, and only expand on it if asked. Being relevant to what they’re doing right now makes it easy to focus on, and being able to experiment with it right then helps it stick for them.

If it’s something just one or two people should know (like how their automatons function, or the political situation of their distant cousin’s family that they’re walking into), I’ll try to give the information just to that player . And if they improvise or expand on what I said, I do whatever I can to make what they said true - that kind of player buy-in is absolute gold, no matter how it might diverge from what I had in mind!

The idea is to teach complex game elements in play as much as possible, rather than explain them. They’ll remember the intricacies of court a lot better if they discover them while being cats-paws, or running a heist! (This is also how I introduce GURPS to people - start with the simple rules, and if they want to try something different, we’ll walk through how that part works. If they didn’t like how that worked, we try a different way next time - either different rules for it, or a different approach).

I’m not confident the nurse was wrong!

GURPS has a specific disadvantage that is essentially this.

I’ve been trying to avoid soap labelled antibacterial for this reason, and it’s tricky to even find any that’s not labelled antibacterial.

Been wondering if they don’t just slap the label on any soap, because it could be considered antibacterial by its nature. Apparently not?

My players ran across some Imperial guardsmen killing off skeletons, only for the orcs accompanying them to protest that they were destroying “registered cultural artifacts!” The orcs didn’t have much, and they would leave their bones to their children to help them eke out a meager existence.

Some of those solo games can be played with multiple players and no GM, too!

But not the stem!

Hah, my first time, I had one of the bandits yell “Sammy!” to another, a name I just grabbed on impulse. Sammy was also one of the PC’s names…

I’m actually still trying to get one to work… might need to step back and make sure I can get base Dolphin to run it first!

I actually thought that scene was a missed opportunity to inject a Klingon operatic bit!

To speak more to the point - Geordi is asked by his doctor a few times (by different doctors) why he didn’t upgrade to a more modern prosthetic. He preferred the visor.

Eventually, in the movies, he did switch - presumably his new implants finally had feature parity with the visor. Or he got tired of the visor popping off…

As a 41 year old, when I call someone in their early-mid 20s a kid, there’s no derision intended. Think about how you relate to someone who’s 12 or 16 when you’re 20 or so - they might be quite capable, even fun to hang out with; but their life experiences also give them a clearly different outlook. And, like as not, you feel a little more interest in making sure they’re getting along all right (at least I do!)

As you age, that doesn’t really change - but the “target age” where that comes into play follows you up! So at 26, you feel that way about people just coming into high school; at 30-35, about people getting out of college and starting their careers. My oldest kid is 6; and I feel this way now about most of the parents of my kids’ classmates! Makes for a fun juxtaposition, when they have older kids and know more about what we’re in for than I do :p

It can turn into something condescending, depending on the person; but I think it’s usually more of a statement that “I remember being where you were!”

Even knowing what it was supposed to be, I couldn’t see it until I happened to scroll by on my phone…

You know, your question sparked a little realization for me - I like some of the newer series quite a bit more than some others; but I love that we’re getting such a wide variety of directions and perspectives on the themes behind Star Trek!