Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
The
VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX
is coming! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
What is distinctive about fantasy RPGing? Or sci fi?
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7273387" data-attributes="member: 996"><p>One thing that struck me early in my RPG career was that D&D had a monolithic sort of dominance in FRPG, but the first sci-fi RPG, Traveller, had no such presence. Prior to gaming, I was much more a sci-fi/horror fan than fantasy, I liked fantasy, too, Harryhausen movies, anyway, but more sci-fi. </p><p></p><p>When I looked through more sci-fi RPGs, I started to form an opinion about why. Sci-fi and fantasy are both fantastic, they both ask you to suspend disbelief and go on to answer a 'what if' question. In fantasy that question is always some variation on 'what if the magic of legend were real?' In sci-fi, it can be anything. </p><p></p><p>So a generic fantasy game is going to have swords and armor and spells and monsters, probably including dragons and the like. People often figure, well, sci-fi is going to have ray-guns and space ships and bug-eyed monsters, right? Well, no, not so much. A science fiction setting might posit something that leads to rayguns and space ships, or it might lead to cybernetics and archologies, or mutant powers and monsters. </p><p></p><p>Another shading of difference is that, in fantasy, the fantastic has always been there in the setting. In sci-fi, that might be the case, or it might be a new development everyone's grappling with. In fantasy, too, the central conceit is often a backdrop, and the story is simple adventure, romance, heroes' journey, or whatever. In sci-fi, the central 'what if' question can be the primary focus. </p><p></p><p>So a fantasy game can be pretty generic, and even if it's magic - like D&D's - works like virtually nothing in the genre, it's still just magic (the hows & whys of magic aren't always that important to a fantasy story) and off you go, slaying the dragon and getting the treasure, anyway. </p><p></p><p>You create a sci-fi game, and you have to pick some fairly specific things. Is space travel super-fast and safe & easy and communication even faster, like Star Trek, or is it slow & dangerous and the only way to carry messages from one world to another, like in classic space operas? Or is it the latter, but there's a new development, like the ansible, poised to change everything? Are aliens humanoid? Are they integrated? Are they only rumors? All monsters? </p><p></p><p>Then there's societies. Fantasy cribs heavily from history, kingdoms, empires, maybe city-states, a fantasy setting could easily juxtapose several of those, and, again, they don't often dominate the story - there's a war, is it so important if it's empire vs kingdom or city-state-vs-bararians? </p><p>In science-fiction, the answer to that central question could re-shape society. You could have a society where privacy is unthinkable, or one where isolation is the norm, you could have a harsh dystopian dictatorship holding the galaxy in its clutches or a freewheeling mercantilism beyond the limits of any one system. That'll all be locked into the way science & technology work in the setting, and whatever species exist, &c - and changing one of those variables could change everything. </p><p></p><p>On fantasy game, even one that does them all pretty badly, like D&D, can cater to fans who want Howard or Tolkien or Moorcock, Middle Earth or Narnia or Hyborea. It can pretty much cater to all of them in one messed up setting, like FR. It can juxtapose elements of them with minimal consequences.</p><p></p><p>One sci-fi RPG can't do that. It could try, but it would end up with a long check-list for the GM. How does FTL work in your setting? Are there aliens? Central casting or CGI? etc, etc. One generic sci-fi setting can't have Star Trek and Star Wars and Blade Runner and Dune and Lensman tropes happily co-existing. Not even close. </p><p></p><p>(Space Opera was an early sci-fi RPG that tried to kinda munge together classic sci-fi - from Verne & Wells to Heinlen & say, Alan Dean Foster, and to paste Star Wars as an after-thought - and it was just hopeless.)</p><p></p><p> On a tactical level, you can always file the serial numbers off. Star Wars is Hidden Castle and all that sort of thing. </p><p></p><p>But, on a story level, a lot of stories - romance, hero's journey, adventure, etc - can be told in any genre, just change the trappings. Fantasy is often nothing more than that. </p><p></p><p>But, while you can just do that with science-fiction trappings, sci-fi has it's own sort of story that doesn't readily change genre with just a change of set dressing. So you can tell the same story as you might in a fantasy RPG in a sci-fi RPG, but there are some sci-fi stories that you can't just port into fantasy - not without the fantasy becoming sci-fi...</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Tony Vargas, post: 7273387, member: 996"] One thing that struck me early in my RPG career was that D&D had a monolithic sort of dominance in FRPG, but the first sci-fi RPG, Traveller, had no such presence. Prior to gaming, I was much more a sci-fi/horror fan than fantasy, I liked fantasy, too, Harryhausen movies, anyway, but more sci-fi. When I looked through more sci-fi RPGs, I started to form an opinion about why. Sci-fi and fantasy are both fantastic, they both ask you to suspend disbelief and go on to answer a 'what if' question. In fantasy that question is always some variation on 'what if the magic of legend were real?' In sci-fi, it can be anything. So a generic fantasy game is going to have swords and armor and spells and monsters, probably including dragons and the like. People often figure, well, sci-fi is going to have ray-guns and space ships and bug-eyed monsters, right? Well, no, not so much. A science fiction setting might posit something that leads to rayguns and space ships, or it might lead to cybernetics and archologies, or mutant powers and monsters. Another shading of difference is that, in fantasy, the fantastic has always been there in the setting. In sci-fi, that might be the case, or it might be a new development everyone's grappling with. In fantasy, too, the central conceit is often a backdrop, and the story is simple adventure, romance, heroes' journey, or whatever. In sci-fi, the central 'what if' question can be the primary focus. So a fantasy game can be pretty generic, and even if it's magic - like D&D's - works like virtually nothing in the genre, it's still just magic (the hows & whys of magic aren't always that important to a fantasy story) and off you go, slaying the dragon and getting the treasure, anyway. You create a sci-fi game, and you have to pick some fairly specific things. Is space travel super-fast and safe & easy and communication even faster, like Star Trek, or is it slow & dangerous and the only way to carry messages from one world to another, like in classic space operas? Or is it the latter, but there's a new development, like the ansible, poised to change everything? Are aliens humanoid? Are they integrated? Are they only rumors? All monsters? Then there's societies. Fantasy cribs heavily from history, kingdoms, empires, maybe city-states, a fantasy setting could easily juxtapose several of those, and, again, they don't often dominate the story - there's a war, is it so important if it's empire vs kingdom or city-state-vs-bararians? In science-fiction, the answer to that central question could re-shape society. You could have a society where privacy is unthinkable, or one where isolation is the norm, you could have a harsh dystopian dictatorship holding the galaxy in its clutches or a freewheeling mercantilism beyond the limits of any one system. That'll all be locked into the way science & technology work in the setting, and whatever species exist, &c - and changing one of those variables could change everything. On fantasy game, even one that does them all pretty badly, like D&D, can cater to fans who want Howard or Tolkien or Moorcock, Middle Earth or Narnia or Hyborea. It can pretty much cater to all of them in one messed up setting, like FR. It can juxtapose elements of them with minimal consequences. One sci-fi RPG can't do that. It could try, but it would end up with a long check-list for the GM. How does FTL work in your setting? Are there aliens? Central casting or CGI? etc, etc. One generic sci-fi setting can't have Star Trek and Star Wars and Blade Runner and Dune and Lensman tropes happily co-existing. Not even close. (Space Opera was an early sci-fi RPG that tried to kinda munge together classic sci-fi - from Verne & Wells to Heinlen & say, Alan Dean Foster, and to paste Star Wars as an after-thought - and it was just hopeless.) On a tactical level, you can always file the serial numbers off. Star Wars is Hidden Castle and all that sort of thing. But, on a story level, a lot of stories - romance, hero's journey, adventure, etc - can be told in any genre, just change the trappings. Fantasy is often nothing more than that. But, while you can just do that with science-fiction trappings, sci-fi has it's own sort of story that doesn't readily change genre with just a change of set dressing. So you can tell the same story as you might in a fantasy RPG in a sci-fi RPG, but there are some sci-fi stories that you can't just port into fantasy - not without the fantasy becoming sci-fi... [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
What is distinctive about fantasy RPGing? Or sci fi?
Top