What is distinctive about fantasy RPGing? Or sci fi?

Anselyn · Nov 8, 2017

Dannyalcatraz said:
Tech changes. Trappings change.
People, though? People are the same, regardless of time & place. They all need food & shelter. Rest & recreation.
The tech- be it mundane, Sci-Fi, or fantastic magery- mainly affects how we do what we do.

I've realised recently that gods and religion is a big difference for me. Sci-fi, to me, doesn't do religion and certainly doesn't have gods. Traveller in its general setting has no mention of overarching religion IIRC - although individual planets can have their own local beliefs and potential religion-related governments. I guess I assumed that the many parallel version implied that there were all equally wrong.

I've been running a few Numenera sessions and a player asked what the people believe in. I realised that I had ignored the question as, to me, Numenera-as-Sci-fi made that irrelevant. But - actually I have to agree monkey-brains will probably invent tripe to believe in whatever the time or place.

This is also why Starfinder is definitely Science Fantasy rather than Science Fiction: not the goblins or tech or the magic/psionics - but the gods.

Dannyalcatraz · Nov 9, 2017

Sci Fi can still work with gods, as long as they’re either paranthetical pretenders- see Stargate- or at least, not actively manifesting.

Arilyn · Nov 9, 2017

pemerton said:
Good question, and I'm not really sure. Probably something more space oper-ific than Clarke-ian.

In Traveller, it feels like space and size/distance should matter, in more than just a plane-hopping way. But I haven't quite worked out how to do this yet.

That's tricky. Do you have some kind of FTL drive? Sleeper ships? Generation Ships? I have a feeling you want space to feel big, so no convenient jump gates. I am currently enjoying "The Expanse", but right now the characters are restricted to our solar system. I assume you want the players to be able to travel farther than that. Maybe something similar to Star Trek's warp tech, but a lot slower? There's been a lot of scientists speculating about space travel, so you should be able to find something to extrapolate from.

Going more space opera's a good call. I think doing "real" hard-core sci-fi might be almost impossible. Anyone done it?

Legatus Legionis · Nov 9, 2017

Parmandur · Nov 9, 2017

There is no particular connection between gods/God/religion either way with regards to fantasy or sci-fi: plenty of counter examples either way.

I don't think there is a hard and fast genre distinction in reality, though...

Parmandur · Nov 9, 2017

pemerton said:
Good question, and I'm not really sure. Probably something more space oper-ific than Clarke-ian.

In Traveller, it feels like space and size/distance should matter, in more than just a plane-hopping way. But I haven't quite worked out how to do this yet.

Second thought: there is much reason to believe that Joss Whedon played a lot of Traveller in college, with him even admitting that Firefly/Serenity is based on an RPG campaign he ran in his youth, most certainly Traveller of some form. His screenplay for Alien: Resurrection, while not amazing, shows another Traveller example.

Thing about Traveller versus, say, D&D, is there is no Bildungsroman elements at play: your character is who they are at the start of play, actions matter rather than character development.

pemerton · Nov 9, 2017

Arilyn said:
That's tricky. Do you have some kind of FTL drive? Sleeper ships? Generation Ships? I have a feeling you want space to feel big, so no convenient jump gates.

Traveller uses "jump drives" for FTL. So the "bigness" isn't going to come through the mechanism of interstellar travel. The rules flag that one aspect of it is the slowness of communication (ie there's no intersteller telegraph that's faster than the interstellar vessles); I also think that each planet should feel like it is, in itself, insignificant given the scale of the universe and the number of settled worlds.

pemerton · Nov 9, 2017

Parmandur said:
Thing about Traveller versus, say, D&D, is there is no Bildungsroman elements at play: your character is who they are at the start of play, actions matter rather than character development.

I'm not so worried about that bit. It's what the actions should be.

Parmandur said:
Second thought: there is much reason to believe that Joss Whedon played a lot of Traveller in college, with him even admitting that Firefly/Serenity is based on an RPG campaign he ran in his youth, most certainly Traveller of some form. His screenplay for Alien: Resurrection, while not amazing, shows another Traveller example.

OK, I will investigate further. Thanks!

Jhaelen · Nov 9, 2017

Most stories work regardless of the setting since "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" [Arthur C. Clarke].

Some work better than others, though. E.g. your typical Shadowrun plot will involve hacking a company's servers at some point. I suppose you could translate that into some mindscape sequence in a fantasy setting, but it's really a stretch. But having a spacefight and being required to crash-land on a wild planet? That hardly requires any high-tech (apart from replacing spaceships with regular ships).

Gardens & Goblins · Nov 9, 2017

Fantasy: Beards.

Sci-fi: Trimmed beards.

What is distinctive about fantasy RPGing? Or sci fi?

Anselyn

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