Who Killed the Megaverse?

The popularity of Dungeons & Dragons has helped establish a baseline genre of fantasy that makes the game easily accessible to those familiar with its tropes. But in D&D's early days, the idea of mixing sci-fi and fantasy was built into the game.

Picture courtesy of Pixabay.​

D&D's Inspiration
Co-creator of D&D, Gary Gygax, was fond of pointing out that the inspiration for D&D was more inspired by R.E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian series than J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, but that does a disservice to the list of authors he identified in Appendix N of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master's Guide:

The most immediate influences upon AD&D were probably de Camp & Pratt, R. E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance, H. P. Lovecraft, and A. Merritt; but all of the above authors, as well as many not listed, certainly helped to shape the form of the game.

de Camp's Lest Darkness Fallis an alternate history science fiction novel. Leiber's Fafhrd & Gray Mouser meet "a German man named Karl Treuherz of Hagenbeck who is looking for his spaceship, which he uses to cross the boundaries between different worlds in his hunt for animals for a zoo" in The Swords of Lankhmar. Vance's works are set in The Dying Earth, where "magic has loose links to the science of old, and advanced mathematics is treated like arcane lore." A. Merritt's Creep, Shadow! is a pulpy adventure featuring:

...a witch that murders people with her animated dolls. It’s got sketchy scientists, femme fatales, world travelling adventurer types, and even a hard boiled Depression-era Texan.

H.P. Lovecraft wrote more modern weird horror while R.E. Howard's Conan took place in a fantasy setting -- and yet the two borrowed themes from each other's works to blend into the Cthulhu Mythos we know today. Add all this up, and D&D was anything but "regular" fantasy. So how did we get here?
You've Got Martians in My D&D!
James Maliszewski explains at Black Gate:

However, I think it worth noting that, in his foreword of November 1, 1973, when Gary Gygax is explaining just what D&D is, he makes no mention of Tolkien. Instead, he references “Burroughs’ Martian adventures,” “Howard’s Conan saga,” “the de Camp & Pratt fantasies,” and “Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.” Most of the borrowings from Middle-earth occur in Volume 2 of the game, Monsters & Treasure, which only makes sense as many of Tolkien’s creatures are easily dropped into almost any fantasy setting. Of course, Gygax does something similar with Burroughs; D&D‘s wilderness encounter tables include tharks, Martians of every hue, apts, banths, thoats, white apes, and more. I think this makes it readily apparent that, far from being the pre-eminent inspiration of the game, Middle-earth is one of many and not necessarily the greatest one.

The other co-creator of D&D, Dave Arneson, demonstrated his proclivity for mixing sci-fi with fantasy in the Original D&D set, Supplement II, Blackmoor:

While this background provides no real details about the Blackmoor setting itself, it does explain that the high priest of the Temple of the Frog, an individual known as Stephen the Rock, is “an intelligent humanoid from another world/dimension.” Furthermore, Stephen possesses several mysterious devices, such as an anti-gravity unit and an interstellar communicator. I found this information intriguing. I was of course already familiar with Gary Gygax’s Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, as well as the “Mutants & Magic” section of the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide, which provide guidelines for mixing science fiction and fantasy. But Supplement II was published in 1975, before any of this, which suggested to me that perhaps Arneson was perhaps the originator of this kind of “mixed genre” gaming.

There was the tantalizing possibility of D&D crossing genres, as evidenced by the Gamma World and Boot Hill crossover rules in the AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide. And of course, there was the Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, itself inspired by Jim Ward's Gamma World.

But it was not to be. Gygax frequently defended D&D's inclusion of Tolkien-esque creatures as a necessary sop to the popularity of the genre, but as Maliszewski points out, D&D eventually became its own genre, helping strongly demarcate fantasy vs. science fiction:

Prior to the success of Dungeons & Dragons, fantasy was a very broad genre, encompassing everything from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to A Princess of Mars to Howard’s Conan stories and more. The earliest players and designers of fantasy roleplaying games understood and accepted this, but, as these games gained popularity and moved beyond their original audience, they became much more self-referential and self-contained – a genre unto themselves – rather than drawing on the anarchic literature that inspired them.

The onus would be on other RPGs to deliver on the promise of a truly cross-genre universe with Palladium's Rifts being the foremost example. D&D would follow suit with its Planescape and Spelljammer settings that attempted to encompass all the other D&D universes, but even those settings generally stuck to fantasy as a baseline.

New mixed-genre stories have since spun out of that baseline assumption, regularly mixing technology with fantasy in a way that was fresh to fans of the Thundarr the Barbarian cartoon. Thanks to the Internet, cross-pollination between genres is a natural outgrowth of so many ideas mixing together, and that's reflected in our own D&D campaigns where aliens or robots might make a surprise appearance. With the announcement by Goodman Games of the return of Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, it looks like the megaverse still has some life in it yet.

 

[Mournblade94]

I always found Gygax's downplaying of the Tolkien influence to be rather disingenuous. Tolkien was obviously a huge influence, from elves-dwarves-halfings-orcs to "You meet in a tavern" to rangers to Smaug to...well, it goes on and on. IIRC, Gygax spoke of Tolkien somewhat like a petulant teen rebelling against a parent that they want to distance themselves from but unconsciously emulate.

I am 100% convinced Gygax talk on Tolkein is all legal dodging to avoid the estate. The influences are obvious.

 

[jolt]

Gnomes were based on the Dwarves' as they were presented in the Hobbit (e.g. large noses, brightly colored hair, sometimes strange abilities ("I can talk to Ravens!") etc). Dwarves as they're presented in LotR are much more dour with very few of the qualities that the Hobbit ascribes to them.

 

[bloodtide]

My big killers:

1.Purity. The popular desire for low magic nitty gritty like Earth type settings. Low magic also has to have equal low tech.

2.The Rules Problem and Balance. You can make a magic tech rule system....but to drop in tech in a fantasy system does not work so well. Once one character has a gun or blaster or more they can kill a mass of powerful foes. With standard D^D rules it's hard to fit in tech...how much damage does it do? How does tech and magic work? Worse, and too often, they will just water down tech : the rapid fire blaster only does 1d8 damage. Wow. So a blaster is equal to many D&D weapons. Both a sword stab and a blaster blast do damage five.

3.Capitalism: don't add future or apocalypse or spy or modern TO D&D.....make a future or apocalypse or spy or modern and sell THAT.

 

[jasper]

Strikes a pose. "I Did. I Killed the Megaverse!"

 

[Micah Sweet]

While I agree with you, the fact is that lack of exposure to how actual weapons and armor work leads to people thinking that somehow a gun is more deadly than a crossbow bolt, and if they believe that then it will be harder for them to swallow.

Sure the gun does more physical damage - if you shoot a gun at a target and shoot an arrow at a target you can see which one gets more damaged. But a crossbow bolt to the chest is going to kill you the same way that a bullet in the chest will. The hero running through a hail of arrows to close in with a sword is going to be equally as dead as the hero running through a hail of bullets - in a movie they'll both make it through because that's how the narrative works. In real life they're both equally dead unless they're either incredibly lucky or their enemies are really unskilled.

And there isn't anything inherently more real about a barbarian shrugging off fireballs to close with the wizard and fight him with his sword than there is about a barbarian shrugging off mortar rounds to close with a solider and fight him with his sword. It's just that in the real world there are actually guys with mortars and we feel that the "rush them" tactic would not be a good one to engage with them in a fight, while we can sit comfortably in our ignorance of how the same tactic might work for a barbarian rushing a wizard hurling meteor swarms or fireballs at them. (Though again in a movie the "rush them" tactic is just fine for the guy with the mortar if we're watching the right kind of movie - if we see Captain America or Jack Ryan run through a hail of attacks and tackle a guy with a heavy weapon, we probably buy it because that's how action movies work. Try to pull off the same in a realistic movie about war and it likely won't work).

IMO with a lot of different gamers I've seen what it comes down to is if they think that high tech weapons are inherently more deadly than low tech ones because they are more damaging then they aren't going to buy into any kind of system that says that a gun can do the same damage as a crossbow. They are going to insist that the difference in their damaging capabilities be modeled by the system and won't buy into the narrative if that isn't taken into account, and because of that they are going to be worried about breaking the balance of the game. On the other hand, if they think that any and every weapon ever made can one-shot kill a person so the damaging capabilities of the weapon isn't a good proxy for the 'deadliness' of the weapon, then they're going to be much more open to mixing it in without concerns about breaking the narrative or the balance of the game. Because they will accept that a laser gun might have the same damage roll as a crossbow (but maybe do fire damage instead of normal damage) and it isn't going to break their suspension of disbelief.

(This is all related to how you view the abstraction of hit points as well, which is a long and well worn set of arguments that never change anyone's minds...)

The problem is, if you take that argument to its logical conclusion, why does ANY weapon do more or less damage than another? After all,, all of them can kill you in one attack. Once you reach that point, all weapons become a reskin, and the magic of bothering with different weapons is lost.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I don't get why so many still think the d20 system can't do sci-fi or science fantasy... If we look at 5e alone there is:

Dark Matter by Mage Hand Press (a much more realized take on Dragonstar).
Esper Genesis.
Ultramodern5.
Spaceships & Starwyrms.
Apex.
NeuroSpasta.
Wastelands 2099 (it could be 2099 Wastelands).

Plus solid fan hacks of Star Wars 5e and Mass Effect 5e (ME 5e has its own website), about 3 Fallout 5e hacks, and fully fleshed out classes that add rules to 5e that fill in the gap, like the Complete Alchemist, Craftsman and Gunslinger classes (from MHP).

If we expand further, for 3.5 there was:

Dragonstar
Mutants & Masterminds (1e was pretty close to its d20 roots).
D20 Modern.
Armageddon 2089 (some mecha themed game and I could have the year part wrong).
D20 Mecha companion.
BESM d20.
A Fading Suns d20 try.
Judge Dredd got a d20 game.

This list can get even longer if we look at Pathfinder and look at their 3pp stuff.

Then there are games like Radiance (an electropunk science fantasy d20 game).

To say that d20 is only good for fantasy is really not looking at the broader scope of just how well developed the system has been and if only looking at it from a If WotC doesn't do it than its not done right perspective.

My homebrew sci-fi 5e is largely based on Starships & Spacewyrms, Ultramodern5, and Dark Matter. All great stuff.

 

[jasper]

1. People got tired of pro Tech people wanting to tech to be uber and always available. Hey I read the x book here is the recipe for gun powder. I should be able to make more ammo for the six shooter from Boot Hill. There is nothing in the book adaption that says lightsabers run out of power. Kirk phaser never ran out. ETC
2. Other systems came on the which did gun tech and sci fic tech better.
3. A pc with a magic missile machine gun with 50 rounds is fun. 5 out 6 pc with MMMg is a bother.
4. Hopping campaigns to another DM with your megaverse mcthingy was a bother. Mom Morrus! Mom Morrus! Talien is allowing Mike to play with Thundar's Sun Sword but He won't let me play Talon's three bladed rocket sword.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Frankly, D&D isn't a generic system. It isn't. It's a fantasy RPG and pretty much its own genre for the large part. Adding in full blown SF or whatnot into the game is very, very problematic. That's some pretty big square pegs you're trying to pound into a very round hole.

I'd rather they made the D&D multiverse that adheres to D&D tropes. Planescape does a good job of this. You travel the different planes of D&D, but, every plane is still, more or less, faux medieval Europe. No high tech, no SF tropes to speak of. Even Spelljammer doesn't try to shoehorn actual SF into D&D.

While, sure, we had psionics, it certainly wasn't an SF psionics. It was just magic by another name. And, unfortunately, because the early attempts were horribly designed, most DM's are very, very reticent to add in psionics. They might claim, "no SF in my Fantasy" but, the base problem is that psionics throughout D&D have not worked very well and it's more a case of DM's not wanting to get burned yet again by broken mechanics.

You can get away with adding in some SF elements, but, adding in actual technological advancements would drastically change the game and if you're going to change the game that much, why wouldn't you just play a different system that's actually designed from the ground up to handle things?

The answer to "why don't you play a different game?" Is always "because my players want to play 5e".

 

[James Gasik]

1. People got tired of pro Tech people wanting to tech to be uber and always available. Hey I read the x book here is the recipe for gun powder. I should be able to make more ammo for the six shooter from Boot Hill. There is nothing in the book adaption that says lightsabers run out of power. Kirk phaser never ran out. ETC
2. Other systems came on the which did gun tech and sci fic tech better.
3. A pc with a magic missile machine gun with 50 rounds is fun. 5 out 6 pc with MMMg is a bother.
4. Hopping campaigns to another DM with your megaverse mcthingy was a bother. Mom Morrus! Mom Morrus! Talien is allowing Mike to play with Thundar's Sun Sword but He won't let me play Talon's three bladed rocket sword.

I'm reminded of an old Knights of the Dinner Table storyline where they went to Gary Con to play in the big tournament. As a parody of old D&D, any character was "legal", no matter how overpowered, as long as they obeyed the rules (oh and you needed an "official" GM, lol). To get an edge, one group went on "The Expedition to the Barrier Reef" to load up on high tech weaponry and powered armor!

 

[Maxperson]

Strikes a pose. "I Did. I Killed the Megaverse!"

Zuckerberg, is that you?