D&D General Magitech and Science Fantasy are Fundamental to D&D

[MichaelSomething]

Thanks to DM empowerment, you can have as much (or as little) science fiction you want in your campaign. Everyone's a winner!

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Thanks to DM empowerment, you can have as much (or as little) science fiction you want in your campaign. Everyone's a winner!

Indeed you can.

But the SHOCK! HORROR! we regularly see expressed from certain quarters whenever anything remotely SF - something that has been part of the game since it's inception - appears in D&D gets tiresome.

 

[Edgar Ironpelt]

The urge for low magic that doesn't meaningfully disrupt the pseudo-medieval setting is a mix of two things, IMO. One is Tolkien and his idealized pastoral gentry, and the other is the Hollywood mishmash of Arthurian epics and its near cousins of Robin Hood and Ivanhoe and the rest. If you want your D&D to be close to those, you want magic to be non-intrusive and minimally employed.

A variant is wanting relatively low powered magic that alters the setting in a measured way, mostly to justify that idealized pastoral / Hollywood vision and avoid a "dung ages" version of a pseudo-medieval setting (or a pseudo-pre-modern setting more generally). An extreme case would be RuneQuest (at least the older editions) with extremely common low-powered magic. (If you wanted, you could play it as "every child over six knows Healing-2")

 

[Kai Lord]

Great thread!

Yes if you read the awesome early works of Leigh Brackett and understand that her stories were among the foundational "Appendix N" inspirations for Gary Gygax then suddenly hidden spaceships and psionics make perfect sense for D&D. Many of her stories seemingly start out like a typical Tarzan or Conan yarn until it is revealed that the main characters are actually on Mars or Venus and then come across lizardmen, nymph-like beings, or even androids that almost always have some funky telekinetic or mind-reading ability that the non-psionic heroes have to overcome.

 

[Kurotowa]

Yes if you read the awesome early works of Leigh Brackett and understand that her stories were among the foundational "Appendix N" inspirations for Gary Gygax then suddenly hidden spaceships and psionics make perfect sense for D&D. Many of her stories seemingly start out like a typical Tarzan or Conan yarn until it is revealed that the main characters are actually on Mars or Venus and then come across lizardmen, nymph-like beings, or even androids that almost always have some funky telekinetic or mind-reading ability that the non-psionic heroes have to overcome.

Brackett is kind of a jump to the side, being a pillar of the Planetary Romance genre. Planetary Romance being the most direct descendent of works like John Carter of Mars and Flash Gordan, where you're using tropes and characters that got popularized by the mainline fantasy genre, but it's all painted to be aliens and advanced science with the excuse that it's a different world.

But if you've ever wondered why psionics has been built into D&D from early days? Brackett and Planetary Romance is probably to blame.

 

[Orleander]

I ran the 13th level of Undermountain: Trobriands Graveyard as a Mad Max: Furry Road adventure complete with motorcycles, post-apocalyptic rat rods, and mechanical purple worms.

I have to admit, it was such a blast that I ran it twice.

I joined up just to say that I have a homebrew setting that is basically just Dungeons & Dragons 3.5: Mad Max edition. Wastelands, buried ruins, tricked out deathcars. It's been an absolute blast running it. A few memorable PCs from various games have included:
-A Paladin of the Jedi Order.
-A Goliath Barbarian/meth cook.
-A snakehandling con artist Cleric.
-A Sasquatch Druid.

 

[Tonguez]

I joined up just to say that I have a homebrew setting that is basically just Dungeons & Dragons 3.5: Mad Max edition. Wastelands, buried ruins, tricked out deathcars. It's been an absolute blast running it. A few memorable PCs from various games have included:
-A Paladin of the Jedi Order.
-A Goliath Barbarian/meth cook.
-A snakehandling con artist Cleric.
-A Sasquatch Druid.

Awesome, so how do you handle car chases? and car builds for that matter

 

[payn]

I joined up just to say that I have a homebrew setting that is basically just Dungeons & Dragons 3.5: Mad Max edition. Wastelands, buried ruins, tricked out deathcars. It's been an absolute blast running it. A few memorable PCs from various games have included:
-A Paladin of the Jedi Order.
-A Goliath Barbarian/meth cook.
-A snakehandling con artist Cleric.
-A Sasquatch Druid.

Needs an Orc bard with a amplifier backpack and guitar

 

[Lakesidefantasy]

I joined up just to say that I have a homebrew setting that is basically just Dungeons & Dragons 3.5: Mad Max edition. Wastelands, buried ruins, tricked out deathcars. It's been an absolute blast running it. A few memorable PCs from various games have included:
-A Paladin of the Jedi Order.
-A Goliath Barbarian/meth cook.
-A snakehandling con artist Cleric.
-A Sasquatch Druid.

Check out Wyatt Trull's companion to Trobriand's Graveyard.

Dungeon Masters Guild

www.dmsguild.com

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

This could be like chating about how you cook your pizza at your home. The most would rather different styles.

The official answer should be "the door is there, and you can choose the option this to be opened or closed".

The roleplayers are people with a lot of imagination, and a open mind. The sci-fi shouldn't be banned in D&D, only to try a agreement about how to avoid a possible "jump the shark" effect.

Other point is the power balance. In a setting where firearms where allowed, the players would rejects the classes focused into hand-to-hand combat: barbarians, monks and paladins. And we are talking about a generation of players used to battle royal videogames where a different gun could be the key of the survival or victory in a fight.