You Got Peanut Butter in My Chocolate...D&D and Science-Fiction

[Mercule]

In general, I hate the mixture. I like Shadowrun, though.

Eberron doesn't count for much, IMO. I like the overall setting, but dislike warforged, elemental trains, and Sharn. On the other hand, I really like psionics (but not so big on the crystal waving and tattoos) and Kalashtar.

Scifi and fantasy are a tough mix to get right. It can be done, but it's vanishingly rare.

 

[sckeener]

I have the same issue with Ptolus. I'm not a fan of tech in my fantasy games and was turned off by Ptolus' guns (gunpowder being the mood breaker usually for me.)

However, China Mieville's books and Dragon Magazine 352 have now got me thinking it wouldn't be so bad. In fact, I'm viewing Ptolus now in a more Steampunk mood and seeing new vistas opening up.

As someone else mentioned, constructs in fantasy have been around since the Greeks at least so having tech in your fantasy is all about how it is presented. As long as you can keep the players's minds in the world it shouldn't matter what you include.

On a side note, because of Dragon 352 and China Mieville, I'm now looking at Eberron in a different light. I might steal the warforge for the Iron Council.

 

[Voadam]

I'm OK with shadowrun as a setting. I dislike guns in my swords and sorcery games though (both laser and blackpowder).

However I am running a low tech setting with two high tech PCs. I'm doing a modified Wildwood Oathbound with basically no metal items available for buying or crafting, lots of stone and wood weapons and some house rules such as defensive bonus to counteract the lack of armor to buy.

I have accomodated a warforged PC whose D&D class is a modified and limited option power armor adept from the Deeds Not Words d20 superhero RPG. And I'm working with one who wants to play a technologist class from The Fantastic Science.

I'm allowing some magi-tech from a crashed ship to be the basis for these two PCs and I like the design philosophy of Fantastic Science to keep it in the spirit of sword and sorcery D&D.

Right now stone javelin wielding goblins riding on worgs plus hit and run dragons in the wilderness are the big threats and themes of the game.

 

[mmadsen]

When D&D was first created, it was fairly typical to mix swords & sorcery with science fiction. In fact, I think most "fantasy" of the time had the trappings of sci-fi. Certainly Dave Arneson's Blackmoor setting involved sci-fi elements.

 

[WayneLigon]

When D&D was first created, it was fairly typical to mix swords & sorcery with science fiction. In fact, I think most "fantasy" of the time had the trappings of sci-fi. Certainly Dave Arneson's Blackmoor setting involved sci-fi elements.

Indeed. To my mind, the whole 'omg you can't have guns in D&D' mindset is inherited from arguments designed to keep the power level low or to discourage the players from having any sort of upper hand, as if gunpowder would make them the invincible kings of the world.

A good chunk of early fantasy has a lot of science fiction elements in it; there were no clear genre lines and no clear marketing categories because no-one made a dime off SF or fantasy until the 60's Tolkien craze hit the US. In fact, for a long long time you had to present fantasy with some science fiction element to it to get it to sell at all to adults. Otherwise, you were by default writing children's fiction.

 

[Garnfellow]

When I first started playing D&D -- and I came to the game through Tolkien, Lloyd Alexander, Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea, and other Ye Olde High Fantasy authors -- I found the presence of sci-fi elements anathema. What is this futuristic crap doing in my sword and sorcery? It used to drive me crazy, it did.

Of course, now I understand that the "sword and planet" genre of fiction -- ERB's John Carter, Warlord of Mars, most prominently -- is as central to D&D as Tolkien.

 

[Dykstrav]

Being presented well, I'm willing to accept a wide variety of different elements in fantasy.

However, I really don't like the settings that try to be 'grab bags' where you can cram anything into it. I do think that settings are as much defined by their restrictions as much as their options. Therefore, I don't feel like a given setting is 'bad' if I can't play anything under the sun.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

Or... "Any advanced technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced."

Or "Magic is indistinguishable from advanced technology." Anyone ever read "The Taking", by Koontz?

 

[Faraer]

A good chunk of early fantasy has a lot of science fiction elements in it; there were no clear genre lines and no clear marketing categories because no-one made a dime off SF or fantasy until the 60's Tolkien craze hit the US.

A lot of the fiction D&D is based on was written before the current distinction of fantasy, science fiction, horror. Heroic fantasy-like planetary romance, superscience in quasi-medieval worlds (e.g. in dying-earth settings), gate travel between 'fantasy' and 'modern' settings, and so on are common in 20th-century fantasy before the 1970s boom and the beginning of 'fantasy' as a publishing category.

 

[helium3]

When I first started playing D&D . . . Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea

Which is funny, since she's more of a sci-fi author than a fantasy author if you look at the totality of what's she's written over her career.

My impression is that most good sci-fi authors can also be good fantasy authors and vice versa. Both flavors (maybe with the exception of hard sci-fi) ultimately boil down to a fantastical world that is quite different from the one the reader lives in. The only difference between them is the method by which the fantastic elements are explained via hand-waving.

So, I don't really have a problem with settings that mix the two, as long as the explanation makes sense from a hand waving perspective.