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

[Carlsen Chris]

As creative work mediated by language, nothing is fundamental to RPGs.

 

[overgeeked]

Advanced technology that existed long ago is a trope that I like to pull out of DM Bag o' Tricks every once in a while. Something that's intended to make players respond with "WTF?" and pique* their interest. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

As I mentioned in another thread, I've used "Cavemen with lasers * * " The next adventure I plan to run in my DCC campaign is Crypt of the Science Wizard by Skeeter Green; which assumes that powerful magic and advanced science knowledge existed long ago, but was lost in a cataclysmic event. It combines Mesopotamian culture * * * Necromancy, and Magic Tech. The final battles involves Mummies that are powered by advanced technology.

* Or is it "peak their interest"?
** I don't think it really worked in this case. The players viewed it as just some anomaly and moved on.
*** Might by Egyptian

You’re right. It’s “pique their interest“.

 

[Weiley31]

It should be an even swap: the beholder, now stuck in their enemy's body, asks the players for help on getting his body back!

Beholder brainswapped into a human body: HOW DO YOU MANAGE WITH ONLY TWO BLOODY EYES!?!?!?!?

 

[overgeeked]

In published D&D my first real published setting love was Mystara, which built on Dave Arneson's Blackmoor background and had a crashed starship from the "Federation" where the crew had used their advanced technology to dominate the locals. So I've embraced science-fantasy in D&D pretty much from when I started.


I've embraced all of it. D&D is built on a bedrock of science fantasy - and not just science-fantasy but actual science fiction. Folks often forget or don't realize that Blackmoor was the second expansion book published for the game and it had a plot directly ripped from Star Trek right there. And Empire of the Petal Throne was published by TSR as its first licensed setting and Tekumel was explicitly a science-fantasy world. It isn't like the founders of the game were all that precious about mixing sci-fi and fantasy together, because in that era the borders were much more porous than now.

I personally think that folks who want to play D&D with strict "no science fantasy" rules would be better served by the (sadly now no longer published) Adventures in Middle Earth game by Cubicle 7. That was a good version of D&D without the science-fantasy anywhere near it - maybe the Free League version that is supposed to be out soon will be as good. Or my actual personal favorite historical fantasy game, Ars Magica - I personally feel that both give a better "pure fantasy" experience than D&D, which really makes you fight back against the kitchen-sink approach if you want to keep it to just fantasy.

Gamers are notoriously bad at knowing the history of the hobby.

 

[Jer]

Gamers are notoriously bad at knowing the history of the hobby.

The thing is I probably only know it because I've lived through most of it. I guess that's an advantage of being old?

 

[Oofta]

Beholder brainswapped into a human body: HOW DO YOU MANAGE WITH ONLY TWO BLOODY EYES!?!?!?!?

I can see them trying to compensate with a hair style. Not sure it would compensate though...

 

[Weiley31]

I can see them trying to compensate with a hair style. Not sure it would compensate though...
View attachment 274815

Punk Beholders.

 

[Oofta]

Punk Beholders.

Exactly. Just need to add googly eyes to the spikes.

 

[Tonguez]

The Prisoner 13 thread got me thinking of Supermans Fortress of Solitude built using magical supertech crystals including a crystal ‘computer’ and holographic AI. That kind of Crystal tech fits perfectly well in fantasy too.

and does anyone remember the Galaxy Rangers episode Heart of Tarkon. The rangers visit a planet that uses medieval tech and ‘magic’ amulets (like Sending stones and Staffs of Telekinesis). Anyway the magic is failing, the rangers are initially dismissive of ‘magic’ as just misunderstood tech, which upsets the king of Tarkon.
Eventually the psychic ranger meets a shaman and learns that the magic is powered by the Heart of Tarkon which isnt just a machine but a living organic bio-computer.
I loved the premise and would be happy to play in such a fantasy world

 

[Mallus]

Put it this way, one of my favorite series that I read as I was getting into D&D back in high school was Julian May's Saga of the Pliocene Exile. Which led to one of my setting design maxims: "It should always be possible for a character to dig up or be gifted an ancient laser".

My current homebrew setting is like a section of a small magi-tech ringworld with portals at either end. Hmmm, make that a small magi-tech Culture orbital.

Appendix N mentions Tolkien alongside post-apocalyptic sci-fi, planetary romance, the father of the Dying Earth sub-genre and whatever Farmer's World of Tiers qualifies as. The relationship between D&D and science-fantasy has been clear from the outset.

 

[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.