Science Fiction in Your Fantasy Game?

[JRRNeiklot]

I started in the days when fantasy and sci-fi weren't really distinct genres,
Fun adventure.

This. My earliest readings were of this nature. Phillip Jose Farmer and what have you.

 

[Obryn]

Did they harvest the metal from the spaceship? That would have been worth a fortune in Dark Sun.

It was pure unobtainium!

(but yes they tried, as expected. )

This. My earliest readings were of this nature. Phillip Jose Farmer and what have you.

Yep, while they've grown more distinct, almost every game I run has strange technology somewhere.

 

[Quentin3212]

I'm not the biggest fan of mixing sci fi and fantasy, particularly when it's hardcore sci fi.

I run a homebrew setting I made myself and there are areas of the multiverse which are very sci fi, but they are really only sci fi in the way that Star Wars is, and I don't necessarily have any intentions of players ever seeing them in any of the campaigns I've run or am running.

 

[The Human Target]

I'm always down for it, especially in D&D which is to me already super wacky even without the Predator.

So you might as well add the Predator.

The older I get, the more I'm fine with branching out from straight Hose & Serfs pseudo European stuff.

 

[Kinak]

Growing up on He-Man and graduating to Star Wars, Star Trek, the Cthulhu Mythos, Pern, and Darkover... I'm not really convinced there's a useful distinction.

Introducing something new to a character takes a moment to understand how that character would see it, whether that "something new" is a spell, a technological artifact, a dragon, a Rancor, an orc, a Vulcan, a robot, a golem, a flying city, or a crashed spaceship.

All a fantasy trope needs to become "sci-fi" is to be explained in the right tone. And the reverse is equally true.

Cheers!
Kinak

 

[Quentin3212]

I'm not completely sure about that, as far as I'm concerned there's a pretty big gap between say a singularity gun or a cyborg and fantasy tropes. But again that's just me.

 

[Hussar]

Trope? Yeah probably. Any sufficiently advanced technology and all that.

Theme on the other hand is not as easy. Giving laser guns to Harry Potter will not make it SF. Conversely, it's not tropes which make Dr Who SF. Make his screwdriver a magic wand will not make the stories fantasy.

 

[John Quixote]

#1, all the way.

Every setting I run, no matter how fantastic and medieval it may appear on the surface, will always, always have some sci-fi buried deep down at the core. Even if the players never become aware of it, it'll be there. IMHO, in order to be a satisfying fantasy setting, there needs to be a sci-fi explanation for the magic and supernatural elements somewhere in there.

And at least half the time, this will not be hidden from the players, but rather overt. I absolutely love the far-future, post-nuclear-apocalypse, the-Ancients-had-tech-so-advanced-that-we-use-it-as-Magic(tm)-these-days shtick. I'm running a campaign right now playing this trope six ways from sunday, and the payoff has been glorious. (It was four, maybe five sessions ago that the PCs were exploring a shielded bunker underneath volcano and found a "crystal ball", really an advanced computer, with a recording containing an ancient advertisement for a genetic engineering company to "make your dreams come true, be an elf or a dwarf or a centaur, just like in your favorite online massively-multiplayer VR game"; the player running a centaur necromancer turned to the elven viking's player and said, "OMG, we're all descended from WoW-nerds!" Then they got back in their rusty old M1 Abrams and got back to exploring the dungeon... with artillery.)

 

[GX.Sigma]

Many of the tropes are interchangeable (Jedi can be paladins with magic swords and divine spells; Klingons can be Orcs; other planets can be other planes; etc.), so yes. Pretty much all of my campaign ideas have some sci-fi inspiration.

The aesthetics are so different (phasers vs. crossbows) that I wouldn't really mix them unless I was doing a "thing," but it's a thing I am interested in doing every once in a while.

When you get to stuff like Spelljammer, I don't really see the point. I'm not convinced a space adventure is different enough from a sea adventure to be worth banalizing what should be one of the most mysterious aspects of the game universe.

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

I would never include sci-fi in my FR games but that's because I have been running FR for close to 25 years and it simply doesn't fit my vision - or my players' vision - for that particular world.

However, I would be more than happy to run Expedition to the Barrier Peaks in Greyhawk or include a crashed spaceship in Dark Sun, and I am rather excited about Paizo's upcoming adventure path (but I would run it using 4E or 13th Age).