Fantasy / Sci Fi setting help

[yrtalien]

I was hoping to run a game that mixed elements of magic with future...
Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be anything to base it on other than the just meshing the core rules. Can anyone think of a game that successfully did this that I might crib some notes from?

I would love to have different factions... The Wizarding Worlds in their magic ships. FTL through travel to a different plane...

The Psi-active worlds where FTL is achieved through ship augments that make allow a psi to teleport a whole ship (mimicking the 1au teleport but expanded to perhaps 1 parsec).

The Super Tech worlds where FTL is possible through Warp Engines.

Somehow the players would be in the middle of all this on a ship that perhaps mixes elements of all 3. Hell I would involve Chi, if I could think of a way : )

Or something like that.

Any help appreciated.

 

[Morrus]

I always rather liked Dragonstar, a D&D setting from about 15 years ago. Orcs and elves and wizards in spaceships. Shadowrun also freely mixes technology and magic.

A lot of superhero stuff and sci-fi horror also mixes the two freely. As do things like Buffy (I suppose that's more modern than future).

Doctor Who kinda does it too -- though it always explains that the "magic" was actually alines/science all along. Sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable form magic, and all that.

The Destiny video game. Final Fantasy.

I've not read it, but I'm told Shannara has magic and robots and stuff.

Star Wars is pretty much wizards in space.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

Go for re-flavoring mechanics - pick one of the FTL systems in new - declare that "plane shift drive" and the person activating it has to have a magic skill. Viola magic drive. But anytime you refer to it in game, make sure you use the fantasy technobable then SF stuff. It doesn't need Dylithium Crystals, it needs a power enchanted object to run.

Mixing races careers and such is easy.

On SF weapons - allow them to get enchantment enhancement. You could have explosive weapons that do "Good" or "Holy" damage, then you could have the holy hand grenade of antioch. Lasers with a cold enchantment that when activated makes them do cold damage.

One thing I learned playing the HERO system for decades - the rules are the rules, but how they feel in the game is up to player/GM and description/tone.

If you are of a mind, read "the Darkness saga" by Harry Turtledove - he basically tells WW2 in a fantasy setting (with tanks, planes, atomic energy and death camps all reflavored) - but it feels completely fantasy.

 

[easl]

Go for re-flavoring mechanics - pick one of the FTL systems in new - declare that "plane shift drive" and the person activating it has to have a magic skill.

This is how I'd do it. You could also modify the starship travel rules in NEW so that instead of Piloting/Engineering/Navigation rolls, psi ships use Teleportation/Metapsionics/Clairvoyance skill rolls, magic ships use Displacement/Transmutation/Divination skill rolls (with an appropriate Secret, depending on what the ship is made of), and so on. But in terms of mechanics, I would not bother trying to come up with entirely new starship design rules for each type. You can always just reskin the current components so that a tachyon drive = a "dimensional jump enhancer" and a repair bay = alchemical laboratory. If you're feeling ambitious, you could differentiate them by giving each type one or two special components/capabilities the others don't have. Maybe psi ships can teleport around the combat map, while magic ships have access to special weapons that ignore shields. You get the idea.


For careers, it would be easy enough just to throw some OLD careers in to the NEW system.

 

[seth47er]

Hard Magic: Book I of the Grimnoir Chronicles has a pretty good explanation for magic/science and is a pretty good read.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

For the most part, how starships cross interstellar distances is immaterial. After all, most of the fun occurs when they're at one end of the journey or the other. In most fiction, such drives can't even work deep in a gravity well, and space combat velocities are well below c.

It might matter if, for example, you were having a scenario where someone was trying to disable the ship's interstellar capabilities. For a pure sci-if ship, they might have to pursuade the chief engineer to tell them where a shutoff switch is, or the best place to temporarily disable the engine.

In something sci-fantasy or purely magic, the title "Engineer" may refer to beings who actually operate as the ship's interstellar drive...

So make some general notes, but don't worry too much about detailed mechanics unless and until you need to