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

[Angcuru]

While I like to play all sorts of systems and genres, I am possessing an explicite hatred of certain cross-genre games.

Example: Shadowrun-type settings that take a technologically advanced Earth setting and then one day a bunch of tolkienesque creatures pop up along with a bunch of magic. They always try to explain it with some kind of special event, such as a meteor shower, nuclear explosion with radioactive fallout, etc., or the Shadowrun's Ghost Dance. It seems more of an excuse to put these things into a modern setting than a designing of the world from step one to fit the idea. A total lack of creativity and effort is what I see in these types of worlds, and I hates it!

A platoon elves with laser guns casting lightning bolts at a squad of trolls carrying flamethrowers is a neat idea in and of itself, but at least try to LOGICALLY EXPLAIN why it is possible, not just say "It's possible because this thingy happened back in the day."

I also dislike worlds where firearms coexist with full plate and longswords. Knights in shining armor were replaced by squads of musketmen for a reason. A musketball can punch through a suit of Plate Mail like a BB through a paper sheet and has a much longer range than a sharp metal stick. And inversely, modern military forces carry rifles instead of katanas for a reason. A katana can not block a series of bullets, and cannot cut through a tank. YAR!

Also on my list of dislikes are airships. But that's mostly because my DM ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS has airships in every single world. Boo, I say.

 

[Desdichado]

I also dislike worlds where firearms coexist with full plate and longswords. Knights in shining armor were replaced by squads of musketmen for a reason. A musketball can punch through a suit of Plate Mail like a BB through a paper sheet and has a much longer range than a sharp metal stick. And inversely, modern military forces carry rifles instead of katanas for a reason. A katana can not block a series of bullets, and cannot cut through a tank. YAR!

Apparently you're not very well versed in history, then. A musketball is less likely to punch through a suit of plate mail than a longbow (or even crossbow bolt) and it is also much less likely to hit said plate-mail wearing fellow, especially at any decent range. There's a reason the conquistadores for example, eschewed most armor except a breastplate and a helmet. Also, katanas were still in use in Japan through WWII with officers, although more as a mark of their station. In addition, the Polish cavalry did in fact attack German tanks with sabres in the invasion that kicked off WWII.

Your postmodern ideas of what makes "sense" from a genre collusion point of view is not even sustained by a cursory glance at history, much less by what could exist in a fantasy world. Practicality is only one (poorly understood, at least in your case here) aspect of why weapons and armor are used; cultural influence often being a much stronger one.

 

[Angcuru]

triple post

 

[Angcuru]

triple post

 

[Angcuru]

Quite the contrary, I am very well versed in history.

Actually, JD, a musketball can indeed punch through plate mail. Although in retrospect it would have been more historically accurate to say matchlock. And also, arrows and bolts were capable of piercing plate armor for a time, until improvements were made to steel that allowed the armor to better resist arrow and bolt fire. As such, the cheap-to-mass-produce armor-piercing iron bodkin-tipped arrow fired from a longbow became unable to pierce the improved armor.

Plate armor is simple capable of deflecting the shot if it hits at certain angles. A full-on hit, however, can easily punch through the armor, which is why men with early firearms were deployed in groups, and fired in aimed volleys at their well-armored foes. Lead musketballs, while softer than iron, were more dense than the steel, and carried much greater force/power than the iron bodkin, and were fully capably of piercing even the best steel armor.

As the technology improved, allowing for greater power, accuracy, and rate of fire, armor became less and less effective, and eventually phased out until bullet-resistant materials came into being(kevlar, cetain ceramics, etc).

Your arguments about katanas, the Poles, and conquistadors each have significant flaws.

Conquistadors wielding firearms were fighting low-tech civilizations which had lightly armored(if at all) warriors weilding swords, spears, and the ever-popular bow and arrow. Weaponry consisted primarily of stone or weaker metals. Thus, as they were facing non-firearm bearing foes, armor once again became feasible.

The Polish Cavalry charge on the German Panzer Division was a futile attack, a massacre, through and through. It was more of a symbolic resistance against an overwhelming enemy than a planned attack expected to be effective. I should know, because I have family who died in that very attack. Very distant family, but family nonetheless.

You prove(to an extent) my point with your comment about Japanese officers in WW2. The katana was a mark of honor and station, not an effective weapon of the time and combative situation.

Before you accuse someone of having a poor understanding of a topic, you should check to see if you have an understanding of it. And as this is a thread about cross-genre clashes, this little debate should take place in a different thread, if at all.

 

[Treebore]

Quite the contrary, I am very well versed in history.

Actually, JD, a musketball can indeed punch through plate mail. Although in retrospect it would have been more historically accurate to say matchlock. And also, arrows and bolts were capable of piercing plate armor for a time, until improvements were made to steel that allowed the armor to better resist arrow and bolt fire. As such, the cheap-to-mass-produce armor-piercing iron bodkin-tipped arrow fired from a longbow became unable to pierce the improved armor.

Plate armor is simple capable of deflecting the shot if it hits at certain angles. A full-on hit, however, can easily punch through the armor, which is why men with early firearms were deployed in groups, and fired in aimed volleys at their well-armored foes. Lead musketballs, while softer than iron, were more dense than the steel, and carried much greater force/power than the iron bodkin, and were fully capably of piercing even the best steel armor.

As the technology improved, allowing for greater power, accuracy, and rate of fire, armor became less and less effective, and eventually phased out until bullet-resistant materials came into being(kevlar, cetain ceramics, etc).

Your arguments about katanas, the Poles, and conquistadors each have significant flaws.

Conquistadors wielding firearms were fighting low-tech civilizations which had lightly armored(if at all) warriors weilding swords, spears, and the ever-popular bow and arrow. Weaponry consisted primarily of stone or weaker metals. Thus, as they were facing non-firearm bearing foes, armor once again became feasible.

The Polish Cavalry charge on the German Panzer Division was a futile attack, a massacre, through and through. It was more of a symbolic resistance against an overwhelming enemy than a planned attack expected to be effective. I should know, because I have family who died in that very attack. Very distant family, but family nonetheless.

You prove(to an extent) my point with your comment about Japanese officers in WW2. The katana was a mark of honor and station, not an effective weapon of the time and combative situation.

Before you accuse someone of having a poor understanding of a topic, you should check to see if you have an understanding of it. And as this is a thread about cross-genre clashes, this little debate should take place in a different thread, if at all.

I think the polish calvary charge was meant to show that "cross-genre" type of events have actually happened in reality. IE a fanatasy calvary charge against hi tech tanks.

The conquistador's didn't just slaughter poorly equipped South American Natives. Their armor was useful in keeping them alive against gun powder using european opponents. Yes, a straight on shot is capable of penetrating the breast plate, but such shots occured far less frequently than the glancing shots. Which was very important, because infection caused by any wound was very likely to kill you after the fact, so the fewer wounds, the better.

Otherwise, Joshua is known for coming across as condescending, whether he means to or not is unknown for sure.

Besides, no one has a perfect knowledge of history, not even the historians. A lot of it is just their best guess based on what information they may have.

Take WW2 for example. As recent as it is there are still a lot of unknown facts. Some of it intentionally hidden by various governments, some of it just simply kept secret for whatever reasons, some of it just never explained by anyone who was believed to know the truth.

 

[Mordane76]

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.

No, I had no intention of getting into an argument about this, unless we're talking about the debate sort of argument; I just wanted to see where exactly your point of view stemmed from instead of just making assumptions about why you don't find the setting to be to your tastes.

While I do see your point, I do disagree a little. I've always seen it more as "What if the mystical traditions these 'crack-pots' have always believed in suddenly had real power, or somehow managed into the power that was there all along, but was somehow blocked?" From the mundane's point of view, Indian traditions, New Age healers, and faerie tales are all just stories or the preview of the criminally insane, up until the point where something actually proves these disenfranchised people right in Shadowrun, and mysticism starts actually working.


I think that cross-genre things can be fun, especially if you're playing in an era where the newer technologies are just coming to the fore. There was obviously a period in our history where guns were rare, and people didn't understand their effectiveness; I think stories in these eras make great fantasy/"sci-fi" cross-overs.

But I'm also one for more Arcanum style games as well. Arcanum is a fairly recent CRPG; it's a mix of swords and sorcery with steampunk. While I haven't play the game throughly yet, I have to say this sort of setting has always intrigued me.

I know this sort of thing isn't for everyone, but personally I enjoy it.

 

[Angcuru]

An interesting though just entered my mind.

What about Frank Herbert's Dune?

The whole setting is surrounded by high-tech, but somehow he manages to pull of the series of novels with very little combat outside of hand-to-hand knife fighting. Hmm...

BTW, sorry about the multiple posts. My browser must have been acting up.

 

[MiloThatch]

Mixing Genres

In the game I'm in, the GM has used stuff from Sidewinder, Mutants and Masterminds and Dragonstar. If I were to ever run a game of DnD, I'd try new things, but try to keep everything on the fantasy level.

 

[the Jester]

One of the most interesting campaigns I've ever run turned into dnd superheroes- there was Iron Dwarf, who had intelligent magical technologically sophisticated armor... there was the Shadow, a thief who used a wish to be able to turn into shadow... there was Dr. Magic, the wizard who could tamper with his spell components to try to alter his spells... etc.

They eventually had a plane shifting cloud castle.