Totes flashing back to my childhood right now...
What is distinctive about fantasy RPGing? Or sci fi?
The noble PC in my game has a yacht - and a mortgage to go with it, requiring over 200,000 credits repayment per month. There's no way to make that sort of money just ferrying passengers on your yacht!
Parmandur
Book-Friend
Hence... shennanigans and ADVENTURE!
Well, currently they're caught up in some sort of biological weapons smuggling/manufacture conspiracy. Having been paid to smuggle high-tech medical equipment on to a low-ish tech world, under the impression it was going to be taken to an even lower-tech world where the virus exists in the wild, they've disccovered that (i) the virus is already on the world they're on, and (ii) the medical equipment seems to be staying onworld, but is being taken out of the domed city to some isolated place. We finished our last session as they were approaching that isolated place in their ATV, which is filled to the brim with weapons and grenades (hidden in secret compartments, so as not to come to the attention of the authorities) but is running low on food and water (after the travel took longer than they had planned for).
So far the job has taken about a month (a bit more than two weeks space flight, about a week in the city, and about a week of travel) and the yacht owner has only been paid Cr 100,000. What will he do . . .?
Aenghus
Explorer
I know of a fantasy campaign some friends of mine played which was a sails and cannon privateer fantasy for most of it's playtime. Only at the end of the campaign did they discover they were all on a huge generation ship, and the dominant religion was a garbled misinterpretation of the starship's controlling AI, which was malfunctioning.
On one hand they were in space, on the other the PCs didn't have the education and understanding to comprehend what they were discovering. Did the whole campaign suddenly become science fiction in retrospect? Did the big reveal turn the game into science fiction, despite the protagonists being completely unprepared for the revelations?
Is fantasy or science fiction all about the trappings? You can have backwards scavengers or peasants scrabbling for survival in ruins or wilderness and lacking understanding or benefits of the setting in either fantasy or science fiction, but I'm not sure if either match what people commonly think of as fantasy or science fiction, unless they can get out, start exploring.
On one hand they were in space, on the other the PCs didn't have the education and understanding to comprehend what they were discovering. Did the whole campaign suddenly become science fiction in retrospect? Did the big reveal turn the game into science fiction, despite the protagonists being completely unprepared for the revelations?
Is fantasy or science fiction all about the trappings? You can have backwards scavengers or peasants scrabbling for survival in ruins or wilderness and lacking understanding or benefits of the setting in either fantasy or science fiction, but I'm not sure if either match what people commonly think of as fantasy or science fiction, unless they can get out, start exploring.
Last edited:
Tony Vargas
Legend
It's something I gave a lot of thought to, a long time ago. So it's been kinda settled in my own mind, but re-examining it is muddy.
In no particular order and to no precise purpose or point:
In fantasy, it seems OK to have a fantasy world with fantasy political units, and just give them all novel proper nouns, and call it a day - leaving everything else approximately like some pre-gunpowder period/place in history. In science fiction, it's fine to posit another world, but if there are humans, they've been transplanted there by some precursor race, or descended from colonists or something, there can be plenty of earth flora & fauna (likewise transplanted), but probably some native-to-the-planet stuff, too. Otherwise, the people will be at least Star Trek forhead-ridges, or ERB-color-not-found-in-humans 'alien.'
You could plop a random character from The Sword & the Sorcerer (or any even worse 80s fantasy flick) into LotR or Hyborea or Nehwon, and, apart from ignorance of the local proper nouns, he'll barely stand out. You plop a Green Man of Mars onto Dune or Pern or Darkover or Trantor and he will really stand out.
Plop a Jedi Knight onto Dune, and, even though Star Wars is in some ways decidedly derivative of Dune, he'll stand out - and light-(laser?)-saber vs personal shield may not end well. In fantasy, magic might work very differently from one setting or even one mage to another, but exactly how it works is often pretty vague, and the consequences of how it works often limited to what quest the hero must undertake to break a curse or something. It matters to the hero, not so much to the society.
In science fiction, technologies and societies shape eachcother. On Dune, booting up a computer is a capital crime and personal shields and laser weapons put MAD on the table in almost any conflict. On Trantor people carry computers in their pockets, and don't carry weapons because it's a safe well-policed capital. On Tatooine, everyone has a blaster and droids openly walk the streets, albeit, mostly as mere property - the Butlerians of Dune would never allow such abominations to exist.
Last edited:
Parmandur
Book-Friend
I think that, for the reasons you lay out, the most popular sci-fi RPGs have always been tied in to an existing IP (namely, Star Wars in multiple iterations). A "generic" sci-fi is a tall order.
I remember a TV show a few years ago (OK, I just checked, 10 years ago) that used a similar resolution to transition from cops to sci-fi.
Personally I thought it was an average cop show that had a weak ending. I can imagine it being made to work better than that show did.
practicalm
Explorer
Can't believe we got to page 4 without a mention of when What's New with Phil and Dixie covered this.
http://www.airshipentertainment.com/growfcomic.php?date=20070617
As someone who played Traveller, Space Opera, and Aftermath. the difference I saw between Sci-Fi and Fantasy games were players were motivated by profit more in space games and increasing their character power in fantasy games.
Money was a way to buy better equipment but the character didn't usually improve where in fantasy games, players were leveling up and gaining power in addition to buying equipment.
In fantasy games players went and found adventures and in sci-fi games people offered players jobs that were usually short lived because we would then jump to another planet for more jobs or to avoid the trouble we got into.
http://www.airshipentertainment.com/growfcomic.php?date=20070617
As someone who played Traveller, Space Opera, and Aftermath. the difference I saw between Sci-Fi and Fantasy games were players were motivated by profit more in space games and increasing their character power in fantasy games.
Money was a way to buy better equipment but the character didn't usually improve where in fantasy games, players were leveling up and gaining power in addition to buying equipment.
In fantasy games players went and found adventures and in sci-fi games people offered players jobs that were usually short lived because we would then jump to another planet for more jobs or to avoid the trouble we got into.
By and large I agree that most of what gets called science fiction is really space opera - and acts just like reskinned fantasy. The science bit usually doesn't matter.
The original Star Wars trilogy can be turned into a sword and sorcery fantasy yarn with pretty much no changes. The scale would be different - no planet hopping - but the evil empire is here and the rebels are over there and the ewoks live in those woods and yoda is in that swamp and the boy learns he's got magic powers and the princess needs rescuing from Darth's castle and wise old obi wan gives him a magic sword and sends him on his way.
Stuff like Star Trek doesn't pose faster than light travel and spaceships where people are magically stuck to the floor (thank the heavens for convenient gravity generatation) to show us how life is with faster than light travel and convenient gravity. It just's the window dressing on a different mini-drama each week in which Scotty says "The engines cannae tek it, Cap'n" and Spock waggles his eyebrows.
Whereas, say, Blade Runner isn't using science for window dressing or episodic handwaving. It asks the audience to consider the essence of being human, by introducing an artificial alternative created by science. And since artificial intelligence may be possible it draws its power from offering a window on a possible future - a window that 'fantasy' doesn't try to create.
I think this feeling of curiosity about the future is a key element of science fiction, whereas fantasy is about the wonder of the impossible.
The original Star Wars trilogy can be turned into a sword and sorcery fantasy yarn with pretty much no changes. The scale would be different - no planet hopping - but the evil empire is here and the rebels are over there and the ewoks live in those woods and yoda is in that swamp and the boy learns he's got magic powers and the princess needs rescuing from Darth's castle and wise old obi wan gives him a magic sword and sends him on his way.
Stuff like Star Trek doesn't pose faster than light travel and spaceships where people are magically stuck to the floor (thank the heavens for convenient gravity generatation) to show us how life is with faster than light travel and convenient gravity. It just's the window dressing on a different mini-drama each week in which Scotty says "The engines cannae tek it, Cap'n" and Spock waggles his eyebrows.
Whereas, say, Blade Runner isn't using science for window dressing or episodic handwaving. It asks the audience to consider the essence of being human, by introducing an artificial alternative created by science. And since artificial intelligence may be possible it draws its power from offering a window on a possible future - a window that 'fantasy' doesn't try to create.
I think this feeling of curiosity about the future is a key element of science fiction, whereas fantasy is about the wonder of the impossible.
Similar Threads
