Do you mix high fantasy and sci-fi?

[Stoat]

My first true love was the Spelljammer boxed set, and I tried mightily to get my players to sign up for a campaign featuring "Dimensional Steam Unit Tau" (a team of gnomish mecha pilots explore the outer plane Acheron in search of lost treasure).

So yeah, I'll mix in as much Sci-fi as the folks at the table can stand.

 

[GreatLemur]

When I do fantasy, it's really just really soft sci-fi in a setting where people have developed a technology called "magic". Which is to say I just really dislike fluffy, high-fantasy magic, and the idea that magic and technology are fundamentally different forces that cannot coexist.

That said, regular cross-genre stuff isn't really new enough anymore to seem like a good idea without something to really make it work, or make it stand out. You can't do just wizards-and-laser-guns and call that a hook, you know? Maybe part of it's because I follow all the MMORPGs in development, and we're frigging well drowning in sci-fi games that shoehorn in some kind of quasi-magic system (often handwaved as something like nanotech or psionics, but otherwise following magic tropes to a T), presumably because the developers don't dare to make a game that isn't essentially World of Warcraft.

 

[Ilium]

I've mixed them in the past, usually as a short-term diversion. My first real D&D campaign ended with the planet being colonized by high-tech aliens (actually from Earth, circa 2400 AD). The PCs had to build and man what was basically a starjammer ship to appeal to the "council of worlds" for protection. The "wizard" they had been working for for a good chunk of the game turned out to be an expatriate terran on the run from the law.

I also had the PCs in my GURPS Star Trek campaign visited by (and then chase down to his home world) a wizard from a fantasy dimension. The players in my current D&D campaign (mostly the same players) have just figured out that it is set in that wizard's home world a few decades before the events in the Star Trek game.

So I do mix them, but not too often.

 

[Arnwyn]

Never, ever (or so I say). For example, while I understand it's reasonably popular, Barrier Peaks wouldn't last one second with my group and I. Bleh. Completely uninterested in that kind of stuff. Keep them way seperate, for us!


(Of course, after saying all that, I then admit that we use Spelljammer in our long-running FR campaign, so we could probably be accused of being totally irrational...)

 

[sckeener]

Depends on the story I am trying to tell.

I don't usually go the full Expedition to the Barrier Peaks level, but I've dabbled in steam engines and gun powder.

I try to keep it low though. It isn't a problem since it is usually limited material.

More dangerous is modern concepts such as the scientific method. 'Ideas are much harder to kill' to paraphrase V....

 

[Turanil]

Once or twice there have been robots or endeavors to sci-fi worlds (planar travel) in some of the games I ran or played in. Now, I would be okay with a specific setting mixing fantasy with pulp sci-fi. Something Barsoom or Dying-Earth like. On the other hand, I wouldn't mix hard sci-fi with fantasy.

 

[Prince of Happiness]

Sometimes:

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

I don't mind it at all. Many of the "fantasy genre" stories I've read are a mix anyways. Do I run games like that, however? No. Why? Never bothered to, I suppose.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Mixing fantasy and sci-fi: almost always. I much prefer a technological element to my fantasy, be it 'modern' steamtech of the era the game takes place in or space-faring superscience lost by a precursor race in pre-human antiquity.

The fantasy component being high/epic fantasy, however, is a HUGE no-no for me. Apart from not liking the subgenre, I don't think it blends well with sci-fi elements AT ALL, whereas sword and sorcery does so beautifully.

I answered yes, however.

 

[boerngrim]

Hi
I feel that mixing SciFi and Fantasy elements in a game can be fun, but I think it should be made known to the players going into the game. I think people might react badly to starting what they think is a fantasy game and then encountering a flying saucer or little green men.
Thanks.

 

[Prince of Happiness]

little green men.
Thanks.

You mean unlike the other green men that they kill for loot and XP?