Do you mix high fantasy and sci-fi?

Tonguez

A suffusion of yellow

• Oct 22, 2007

• #41

Prince of Happiness said:

I think from now on I will have to call Skeletor "Esqueleto."
.

Click to expand...

yep and Aquatico, Mentor and Maligna are much better names too - especially Maligna, I'm going to have to create a PC named Maligna

Anyway I once ran a campaign which included Lightning Spears (ie Laser rifles), Sky-Gliders (personal aircraft), Sky Ships, and various other magical hi-tech devices (*like googles of far seeing, an orb of floating eyes (the 'eyes' could be sent out and would then relay images back to central orb) and a magnetic glove (mage hand) etc).

I really enjoyed the setting which allowed me to fight dragons with lightning spears whilst riding in a sky glider

 

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R

Rechan

Adventurer

• Oct 22, 2007

• #42

As long as the sci-fi is packaged in a Fantasy-like feel, I'm okay.

Even in something like Dragonstar, where a wizard's spellbook is a PDA, and you have robots who are infused with the souls of people, or DragonMech, which has steam-powered armor, that's fine, because it's sci-fi with a heavy dose of fantasy.

Even Star Wars is fine with me, because the sci-fi qualities are barely noticable.

I personally can't stand heavy sci-fi. This is why I can't stand the 3.5 psionics, because it has a heavy Sci-Fi vibe to it, rather than Dune-style or whathaveyou psionics.

 

Last edited: Oct 22, 2007

WhatGravitas

Explorer

• Oct 22, 2007

• #43

I only like it, if you put a fitting genre-dressing around it. Examples:

Star Wars: Sci-Fi with a lot of fantasy stuff in Sci-Fi dressing? Sure.
Warhammer 40K: Dark sci-Fi with a lot of dark fantasy-esque elements? Fine.
Ptolus-like Chaositech: I like it.
Eberron: Fantasy with pseudotech? Okay!
Bas-Lag: Steampunk fantasy with weird science? Gosh, I *love* these books.

Mixing stuff together without appropriate genre dressing? Like strange cross-overs? Like barrier peaks? BAD.

Cheers, LT.

 

Bloosquig

First Post

• Oct 22, 2007

• #44

IMHO it's one of those things that has to be apparent when you start the campaign. If you want straight science do that, straight fantasy then go that route. But it can do a bunch of damage to the verisimilitude of your campaign if you drop a .50 cal into the loot table for your orcs if it's not expected.

Though I think science can more easily handle a bit of magic probably because it can mimic our own world more easily. After all there are all sorts of cults and whatnot around it's not such a huge stretch of the imagination to say, "When THIS cult prays for the end of the world it happens."

Anyway just my two cents.

---

Oh yeah. I love to mix the genres and I'm working on my own campaign world that does so.

 

Mercule

Adventurer

• Oct 22, 2007

• #45

I said "never" based on perceived context. I absolutely, positively hate tech in my fantasy.

I can occasionally stomach magic in my sci-fi. I enjoy Shadowrun, but consider that an exception that I can't figure out. Space opera, ala Star Wars works, too. Virtual Adepts and Sons of Ether never really floated my boat, but they didn't inflame me, either. That's pretty much the exhaustive list of all the tech + magic that doesn't suck, by my recollection.

 

RangerWickett

Legend

• Oct 22, 2007

• #46

"I am very old, O man of the waste countries; long and long ago I came to this planet with others of my world, from the green planet Yag, which circles for ever in the outer fringe of this universe. We swept through space on mighty wings that drove us through the cosmos quicker than light, because we had warred with the kings of Yag and were defeated and outcast. But we could never return, for on earth our wings withered from our shoulders."

Click to expand...

~Robert E. Howard, "The Tower of the Elephant

So, this is an excerpt, where Yag-Kosha, who is a Giant Flying Elephant Alien Demon God With A Gemstone Heart Prisoner of War, is talking to Conan. Conan treads on some weird, very sci-fi territory. Not everything is Arnold. V Thulsa. Speaking of which, the original Thulsa Doom, is actually a Skull headed Sorcerer-lich from Atlantis.


This issue came up in the Conan game I play in, where the GM was very sleepy during an encounter with a devil sorcerer. He was too tired to get his usual awesomeness into play, so what should have been an

Iron demon, metal-skinned and viciously clawed, the palms of its many hands issuing forth glowing maws, from which spew fire, sorcery and death...

somehow got boiled down by a fatigued and sleepy DM as "It looks like an anime giant robot."

However afterward he showed us this concept art, and we were cool with what we fought not being out of place in the setting:

 

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Roadkill101

Explorer

• Oct 23, 2007

• #47

I mix science and magic. Some places in my Homebrew heavily utilize science while others use magic and yet others tend to mix the two to varying degrees.

 

Thurbane

First Post

• Oct 23, 2007

• #48

About as close as my homebrew gets to sci-fi is an isolated land ruled by a variant version of the Karsites from ToM. Since they can't wield magic, they use "advanced technology" like primitive firearms and advanced alloys in their armor (i.e. mithril and adamantite are much more common in their land). They also ride warbeasts like rhinos, and take slaves of small races like halflings and gnomes to use as their casters.

...I'm OK with one culture having some slightly hi-tech gear, but certainly nothing more advanced than early firearms.

Not sure if that counts as sci-fi...probably not, in fact.

 

Johnny Angel

Explorer

• Oct 23, 2007

• #49

I like science fiction in fantasy, though it has to be put in with a kind of coherence. For me it needs some science to the science fiction. Steampunk is particularly nice as it reflects what was a golden age of science in our world, but a lot of the legitimate science back then is known to be the bunk now. Suppose it wasn't the bunk, though? Of course, much of the campaign I previously ran in which we dealt with grand onotological and epistemological implications of magic was played with fellow philosophy majors, but I like to add an intellectual element to a setting.

On the other hand, I don't care for putting fantasy into science fiction, though for these purposes I often pretend that psionics isn't fantasy.

 

Melan

Explorer

• Oct 23, 2007

• #50

Yes, of course, I mix science fiction with fantasy elements. My earliest fantasy influences usually featured some sort of technology, and my recent campaigns have also had a very strong SF/planetary romance component. The tech I use is "retrofuturistic", reminiscent of 30s to 50s SF (Leigh Brackett, C. L. Moore, etc.). Technological devices are not common in the game world, but the PCs, who go to out of the way locations and visit strange otherworlds, meet them now and then. The current party has had a number of laser pistols for a while, and is on a technological mini-dimension at the moment. I'd also like to run a pure planetary romance game some day, likely based on Brackett's The Book of Skaith (soon to be republished by Paizo).

My most recent free adventure, Systema Tartarobasis is also SF-inspired.