Wherein nerds rage over what it means to be fantasy

[Relique du Madde]

I bow to your supreme knowledge of WoW lore. Though I've been playing since WarCraft 2, I've only really been paying attention to the story since WoW. Had some vague awareness that Draenei pre-dated The Burning Crusade, but really didn't know much about them at all.

Sadly, I must spread some experience around before giving you a richly-deserved tip.

It's alright. Hell, the Draenei were only really mentioned in a total of about 10 lines of text prior to WoW. So up until Akama appeared nothing was really known about them.

 

[Gentlegamer]

I'm sure it's been cited before, but the original foreward to D&D specifically referenced Barsoom and the adventures of John Carter as part of the inspiration for the game. It doesn't really get more 'fantasy sci-fi' than A Princess of Mars, et al. Despite the 'Tolkien skin' applied to the game early on, sci-fi has been part of the 'potpourri' of D&D since the beginning.

 

[wingsandsword]

Of course, the same arguments were made about Eberron (e.g. there was some classic AD&D adventure where the heroes explore a crashed alien spaceship, 3e had rules for firearms and lasers before Eberron came out, etc).

Well, with the old Expedition to the Barrier Peaks module, there were a few key differences:

1. It was a single, isolated module. It didn't necessary change the whole tone of the setting, and it could easily be ignored by DMs that didn't want sci-fi in their fantasy. Eberron was built to be magitek from day 1.

2. Yes 3e had rules for firearms and lasers, as optional rules in the DMG. The earlier DMGs had some rules for firearms as well IIRC. Again, they were optional rules for special campaigns or crossovers (like time/dimensional travel ect.).

3. Return to the Barrier Peaks was finding a crashed spaceship, and they were lasers and robots found with running around the crashed ship as if it was a dungeon, not magic items that emulated them. Many DM's want their fantasy to be fantasy, and their sci-fi to be sci-fi, and don't want fantasy items that look sci-fi or sci-fi items that look fantasy.

 

[Vespucci]

Warhammer 40k fans must be more grown up than the rest of us.

 

[Argyle King]

I liked 3e Eberron. I always felt it was Fantasy with some sort of fantasy version of steam punk mixed it (Magipunk?) I'd also say it had something of pulp (and maybe noir too) presentation to it.

The Magipunk -to me- made a lot more sense than the traditional D&D settings because it seemed more logical to me that a society with everything available in the typical* D&D world would look more like that than some of the other settings. I also liked the pulp elements because it added a sort of gritty adventurous feel that I enjoyed.


*typical as in "has all of the crazy magical options which are readily available to seeming everybody in 3rd Edition -and beyond- worlds"

 

[Dausuul]

World of Warcraft is absolutely fantasy, as is Eberron. It's just not a brand of fantasy that I like. (I'm much more comfortable with stuff like Star Wars and Babylon 5... something about steampunk and its relations just grates on me. If there's going to be technology in my fantasy, I'd rather it went the whole hog.)

 

[Aeolius]

I love how that post completely glosses over the fact that Gnomes have been riding on mechanical chickens since day one.

Not to mention:
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2_ueohYRhU"]Law Giva!![/ame]