D&D General Who put all this Sci-Fi in my soup!?

[Yaarel]

Man I wish people would stop calling Spelljammer "sci fi."

Especially Spelljammer feels scifi. In 5e the method of translating into Astral thoughtstuff in order to travel at the speed of thought feels like a method of faster-than-light warp hyperdrive.

Arguably earlier method of translating into "phlogiston" for similar transport feels even more techy scifi. For what it is worth, I consider "phlogiston" to be identical to the 5e Elemental Chaos (with various fleeting energetic elemental formations). So such FTL transport is still possible if players want it.

 

[MGibster]

Early D&D had things from Gygax and his era implying that the setting was long post-apocalyptic, and that there was technology and ancients ruins of advanced civilizations about.

I kind of think golden ages of past civilizations with magical wonders are the default for most D&D settings. It's where all those magical artifacts and dungeons come from.

 

[Reynard]

Early D&D had things from Gygax and his era implying that the setting was long post-apocalyptic, and that there was technology and ancients ruins of advanced civilizations about.

That is the real "Vancian."

 

[Yaarel]

I kind of think golden ages of past civilizations with magical wonders are the default for most D&D settings. It's where all those magical artifacts and dungeons come from.

By extension, i prefer living in these magically advanced civilizations rather than seeing them in ruins.

 

[Laurefindel]

From Earth to the Moon.
Space 1889.
Treasure Planet.
it is a real genre that has been around for a long time.

Oh I’m aware of the genre. I just never heard the name. Often I referred to them by name as a reference, like space 1889 is Victorian space explorer, or something else is like space 1889 but without the Victorian aspect.

 

[Yaarel]

For comparison, "hard scifi" means the hypothetical application of strictly scientifically confirmed phenomena. But little of scifi is actually like this. Most scifi is fantastical with only vague technobabble references at best.

What was called fantasy in the past is genres within scifi today.

 

[Yaarel]

fantasy itself use to be basically any fiction that couldn’t realistically happen on earth. If you included elements like overt magic or races/species à la Tolkien, then you were in the sub-genre of high-fantasy.

This description helped me understand the difference between fantasy and "high fantasy".

 

[Reynard]

For comparison, "hard scifi" means the hypothetical application of strictly scientifically confirmed phenomena. But little of scifi is actually like this. Most scifi is fantastical with only vague technobabble references at best.

What was called fantasy in the past is genres within scifi today.

The shake out happened pretty early on, though. What's the old addage? Science Fiction has a rocket ship on the cover, and fantasy has a dragon?

Despite fuzzy genre lines, I think anyone can look at Spelljammer and see that it is purely fantastical, with no real "scince" elements at all, even if many of the tropes of sci-fi are borrowed.

But genre pedantry is dead. Look at how many people call Eberron "steampunk".

 

[Zardnaar]

The shake out happened pretty early on, though. What's the old addage? Science Fiction has a rocket ship on the cover, and fantasy has a dragon?

Despite fuzzy genre lines, I think anyone can look at Spelljammer and see that it is purely fantastical, with no real "scince" elements at all, even if many of the tropes of sci-fi are borrowed.

But genre pedantry is dead. Look at how many people call Eberron "steampunk".

Sci fis a more modern invention.

Fantasy over laps with a lot of cultural tropes and mythology echoing back millenia.

 

[Stormonu]

The shake out happened pretty early on, though. What's the old addage? Science Fiction has a rocket ship on the cover, and fantasy has a dragon?

And then you have things like this, and you go WTF is this - I want to play in that!

Which is from March 1989, BTW.