(One More Time) You Got Sci-Fi in my Fantasy!

[the Jester]

I'm reposting this since, being a dork, I didn't enable mutliple choice votes before... a certain feline buccaneer we all know and love offered to help move everything over into this thread- can we just merge it in? Anyhow, I'll just cut & paste the initial post of the initial thread...

Do you like to mix game systems/genres?

Did you love S3?

Does your wizard have a laser pistol looted from another plane?

Or do you hate all that crap, and want your fantasy pure?

This poll covers, broadly, whether you've mixed game systems in the same campaign (for example, the old 1e rules for converting from dnd to Gamma World ), as well as just plain mixing genres (S3, for instance).

 

[the Jester]

Thanks to whoever destroyed the defective version of the repost so quickly!

 

[the Jester]

Just a quick bump for the multiple-vote enabled version of this poll...

 

[Arnwyn]

Do you like to mix game systems/genres?

No.

Did you love S3?

No. I love all the classics except S3, which I despise.

Does your wizard have a laser pistol looted from another plane?

No. Never.

Or do you hate all that crap, and want your fantasy pure?

Yes.

Just my personal taste.

 

[Zappo]

I like crossgenre campaigns that are planned and declared as such. I haven't played many, but they were fun and could work.

I don't like crossgenre adventures in a normal campaign. All campaigns where crossgenre elements were introduced crashed down in flames soon afterwards and had to be terminated.

Quite literally so in the case of that Might&Magic 6 CRPG, where a system crash while saving the game deleted all my saves soon after I had arrived at the part with the blasters and robots. Not wanting to restart after two months of play, I uninstalled the game. I blame the unexpected crossgenre plot development for it.

 

[Desdichado]

I don't mix systems much, as your question above implies. I mix genres fairly regularly, though.

 

[Psion]

It depends.

I like what I call logical extrapolation. Like "what would a fantasy world be like in 5000 years." So Dragonstar works for me.

Similarly, I like settings that examine what cross-germination between worlds with different rules of reality would do. Second World Sourcebook is way cool in this vein.

However, I don't like worlds like Shadowrun, because, well, the event that "makes it magical" seem a little too convenient too me. It sorta breaks the fourth wall for me, makes it obvious that the world was designed.

 

[Mordane76]

However, I don't like worlds like Shadowrun, because, well, the event that "makes it magical" seem a little too convenient too me. It sorta breaks the fourth wall for me, makes it obvious that the world was designed.

Not that I want to hi-jack this thread, but I do want to ask this question to get a feel for your ideas before I start discussing it in more general, and thus on-topic, terms:

What makes you feel that the Ghost Dance and other mystical-activating activities in the backstory of Shadowrun are "too convenient?"

 

[LiVeWiRe]

Do you like to mix game systems/genres?

Did you love S3?

Does your wizard have a laser pistol looted from another plane?

Or do you hate all that crap, and want your fantasy pure?

I like my fantasy 'pure'...no laser rifles, no gunpowder, no flying ships or starships, etc., etc.

Just never liked mixing genres at all...perhaps I'm 'scarred' from a game once where our characters encountered Klingons!

Needless to say, after explaining my dislike for that type of game I didn't play under that GM again. He had other players who loved it and that's cool...

-LW

 

[Psion]

Not that I want to hi-jack this thread, but I do want to ask this question to get a feel for your ideas before I start discussing it in more general, and thus on-topic, terms:

What makes you feel that the Ghost Dance and other mystical-activating activities in the backstory of Shadowrun are "too convenient?"

It seems like you want to get into an argument so I am loath to respond. So keep in mind I don't expect you to have the same sensibilities I do and would ask that you show me the same courtesy. I recognize SR may work fine for you.

But basically, I see Dragonstar and Second World as an outcome to an event, whereas in Shadowrun, I see an event engineered to give an outcome. The former, to me, appear as answers to the questions "what would it be like to have a magical world advanced into the future in a realistic galaxy" and "what would it be like if there was a parallel magical earth we could travel to." SR, on the other hand, seems more like the thought up the desired first (putting magic and fantasy races in a cyberpunk setting) and then engineered the event to make it happen. To me, that makes the event, and the setting, seem more artificial.

Note that this is not saying that the authors specifically did anything wrong with their explanation. It's more an Occam's Razor sort of thing.