Worlds of Design: Fantasy vs. Sci-Fi Part 1

ToddBS · Nov 4, 2018

I had a much longer post typed out, but decided I'd rather summarize. As I see it, the major difference is not in the trappings, but in the themes.
Fantasy typically focuses on themes like:

Good vs Evil
Destiny vs Free Will
Restoring some deposed power structure or rediscovering some lost past, which will instantly make everything good again
Conflicts that are identifiable and opposable: Sauron, The Empire, Goblins!

Sci-fi tends to focus more on:

Oppression vs Freedom
Determinism vs Choice (which is not the same as destiny vs free will, I swear)
Correcting injustices of the present to make a better future
Conflicts that are nebulous and existential: The state itself (not any particular regime), apocalypse, what is human?

You have sub-genres that blend these to some degree or another, but at a high level I see these as distinguishing characteristics of the two broad genres.

barasawa · Nov 4, 2018

Thomas Bowman said:
Is the movie and book, Ready Player One, science fiction or fantasy? In the book, much of it was based on Dungeons & Dragons, he even had the hero's Avatar visit the Tomb of Horrors. Dungeons and Dragons is a fantasy genere, but the science fiction is the virtual reality technology that implemented it. So would you say Ready Player One was science fiction, fantasy or an intersection of both?

I'd say Ready Player One is just Sci-Fi.
Just because they play a fantasy game doesn't make their world a fantasy world, otherwise our world is a fantasy world.

dragoner · Nov 4, 2018

Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today- but the core of science fiction, its essence, the concept about which resolves, has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all.
-Asimov

SFRPG's have an individual core ethic, which often makes them highly varied, and different than Fantasy RPG's. Without digging into that individual ethic, it is too hard to discern the real differences.

Hussar · Nov 4, 2018

First off, there's the problem with how we're trying to define genre. Some genres can be defined by trope - American Old West Westerns, for example, are generally defined by trope - guns, horses, cowboys, that sort of thing. It would be difficult to set a Western (not impossible, but, difficult) in 3rd century Rome. That's because, by and large, Westerns are defined by their tropes.

Murder Mystery is also largely defined by trope. You've got a murderer, a victim(s) and someone trying to unravel the mystery. Remove any of these three tropes and it's kinda uphill climbing to sell this as a murder mystery.

OTOH, fantasy and SF are not defined by tropes. Yes, tropes exist in the genre, but, they don't really define the genre. You can have lightsabers, as [MENTION=30518]lewpuls[/MENTION] mentions, in both SF and Fantasy. And having dragons doesn't necessarily make a work fantasy - as in the Pern series by Anne McCaffery. No. Fantasy and SF are defined by theme, not trope.

The difference between SF and Fantasy is the difference between ethics and morality. SF is, by its themes, political. The central question of SF is "What does it mean to be human in the face of X?" Whether we're talking about Frankenstein or Spock or Wall-E, or Flowers for Algernon, that's the primary theme of virtually all SF.

Fantasy, OTOH, deals with morality. What does it mean to be good? What does it mean to be evil? And various shades of grey in between. So, we get Jedi, Sauron, and whatnot. Fantasy is based on the earlier morality tales of oral traditions and it shows through in modern fantasy.

pemerton · Nov 4, 2018

ToddBS said:
I had a much longer post typed out, but decided I'd rather summarize. As I see it, the major difference is not in the trappings, but in the themes.
Fantasy typically focuses on themes like:

Good vs Evil

Destiny vs Free Will

Restoring some deposed power structure or rediscovering some lost past, which will instantly make everything good again

Conflicts that are identifiable and opposable: Sauron, The Empire, Goblins!

Sci-fi tends to focus more on:

Oppression vs Freedom

Determinism vs Choice (which is not the same as destiny vs free will, I swear)

Correcting injustices of the present to make a better future

Conflicts that are nebulous and existential: The state itself (not any particular regime), apocalypse, what is human?

You have sub-genres that blend these to some degree or another, but at a high level I see these as distinguishing characteristics of the two broad genres.

This overlaps heavily with what I posted - romantic/reaction vs modernist/nihilist.

Hussar said:
SF is, by its themes, political. The central question of SF is "What does it mean to be human in the face of X?" Whether we're talking about Frankenstein or Spock or Wall-E, or Flowers for Algernon, that's the primary theme of virtually all SF.

Fantasy, OTOH, deals with morality. What does it mean to be good? What does it mean to be evil? And various shades of grey in between. So, we get Jedi, Sauron, and whatnot. Fantasy is based on the earlier morality tales of oral traditions and it shows through in modern fantasy.

A problem with this - which overlaps heavily with the other post I quoted - is that it makes REH's Conan non-fantasy. Or to put it another way, not all fantasy is anti-modernist.

Ratskinner · Nov 5, 2018

Jay Verkuilen said:
The threat/momentum mechanic at the core of 2D20 reads weirdly but turns out to play very well in terms of simulating the ebb and flow of a TV drama or short story.

Unfortunately the STA book is not written in a way that really helps lay out the rules but if you check out the free quickstart it's pretty good.

Downloaded and read the quickstart.

The basic mechanics don't really impress one way or another (yet another task resolution system...meh).

I do like the Threat/Momentum mechanics. They remind me of similar systems I've seen in other games, and seem relatively easy to bolt onto another system with minor tinkering. Some might think they are too "meta", but I think they (or something similar) are necessary to force the episodic structure, since that would be pretty "meta" wrt the characters anyway. In some ways it reminds me of a group Fate point pool.

I've often thought that a less intrusive system would be to give a penalty for the first third, no modifier for the middle third, and a bonus for the last third of any game session/adventure. No "meta" thinking would be required of the players. (Of course, that's only for players who fret over "meta" mechanics.) I suppose one could even do something like 13th Age does with its escalation die, for a d20 based system. Ratchet the die up when you reach a milestone, ratchet it down if you experience a big setback. (Alternatively, implement an expenditure system like STA does.)

Jay Verkuilen · Nov 5, 2018

Ratskinner said:
Downloaded and read the quickstart.

The basic mechanics don't really impress one way or another (yet another task resolution system...meh).

I will say this: It's fast. The amount of arithmetic is pretty minimal. Mostly you are rolling a few D20 and counting when one of a few conditions happen. This is as opposed to, say, doing a bunch of two digit arithmetic. Unlike other die pool mechanics, the numbers are fairly straightforward and they avoid many of the pathologies that afflict die pools. For instance, botches or complications are more likely to emerge when you're rolling a larger die pool, which was a problem in games like Storyteller, leading to pathological issues like the fact that critical failures can be more common for characters with larger die pools. Here, however, you choose to have a larger die pool by spending Momentum, involving another character's help, etc., and thus know that there's an increased risk along with the potential reward.

I do like the Threat/Momentum mechanics. They remind me of similar systems I've seen in other games, and seem relatively easy to bolt onto another system with minor tinkering. Some might think they are too "meta", but I think they (or something similar) are necessary to force the episodic structure, since that would be pretty "meta" wrt the characters anyway. In some ways it reminds me of a group Fate point pool.

They work surprisingly well in my experience. They're definitely meta and I think would bother any hardcore simulationist, but they really do a good job of emulating the narrative ebb and flow. I've played STA and run Conan and in both cases it fits. For instance, "random" encounters are built on threat spends, so they're not random at all.

Hussar · Nov 5, 2018

pemerton said:
This overlaps heavily with what I posted - romantic/reaction vs modernist/nihilist.

A problem with this - which overlaps heavily with the other post I quoted - is that it makes REH's Conan non-fantasy. Or to put it another way, not all fantasy is anti-modernist.

Not really though. Conan is pretty solidly good vs evil morality tales. Conan is the hero. Maybe a somewhat dirty sort of hero, but a hero nonetheless. There's no question that the bad guys are evil. They are Evil with a capital E. Pretty stock standard fantasy really. Hero goes out, challenges the bad guys, wins the day and saves the princess.

There's no examination of humanity or ethical questions going on at all. It's not about modernism at all. We don't have any question whether or not the Set worshippers are somehow a force of anything but death and destruction. Conan overthrows the evil tyrant and becomes king. But, at no point is feudalism called into question.

In what way is Conan not pretty solidly a morality tale?

The reason I like this differentiation is that it actually works. Focusing on tropes doesn't because the tropes are tropes of Speculative Fiction, and they appear in all sorts of Spec Fic. Is it a robot or a golem? Well, really, it doesn't matter all that much. What does matter though, is the different themes of the story which do (usually) differentiate fantasy from SF.

pemerton · Nov 5, 2018

Ratskinner said:
I've often thought that a less intrusive system would be to give a penalty for the first third, no modifier for the middle third, and a bonus for the last third of any game session/adventure. No "meta" thinking would be required of the players. (Of course, that's only for players who fret over "meta" mechanics.) I suppose one could even do something like 13th Age does with its escalation die, for a d20 based system. Ratchet the die up when you reach a milestone, ratchet it down if you experience a big setback. (Alternatively, implement an expenditure system like STA does.)

When I read your first sentence I thought "escalation die" - the "penalty" starts at zero, and difficulties are just set keeping that in mind; and the "adventure" is this combat.

HeroQuest revised goes somewhat the other way: cumulative successes increase the diffculty of subsequent checks (a de facto penalty); failures bring it back down; and there are also different consequence charts for rising action vs climactic conflicts, with the latter inflicting more severe consequences even on the victors.

I think the 13th Age structure (and also the 4e structure, which goes for a similar effect in a mechanically much more roundabout way) is good for generating a "rally" narrative. It gives satisfying and sometimes even sentimental wins to the players! I'm not sure it's as good for generating story structure over a longer arc, as it is a bit too linear.

Dioltach · Nov 5, 2018

dwayne said:
It is easy to do science fiction with the 5th edition system much like the d20 before. Take a magic item and give it a science description drop the magic( spells become programs or psionic abilities. A helmet of invisibility becomes a energy powered device that cloaks the person is a refection field that wraps light around the person. I wish wizards would release some official material for a modern and sci fi settings.

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