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<blockquote data-quote="Ratskinner" data-source="post: 7762845" data-attributes="member: 6688937">In a none-too-recent discussion of the topic at hand, a friend of mine described fantasy as &quot;the religious version of Sci-Fi&quot; for just this reason.For me, the difference (at least for what I consider &quot;good&quot; versions of either) comes down to how the non-mundane &quot;tech&quot; of the world impacts the heroes. Whatever the ostensible source, good fantasy tends to handwave how things work and obvious impacts on society because its more focused on fuzzy wish-y adventure-y things, while good sci-fi examines those impacts possibly through adventure.So, we can take the topic to be genetic engineering: a good sci-fi premise might be the squabbling between different sects on the moral uses of such a tech and the &quot;unforeseen&quot; consequences it has on the personal lives of the characters while a good fantasy premise might be our hero saves the world from horrible tiger-man soldiers.I think its also part of the reason that its hard to make a really good sci-fi (especially Trek) game. The players having an argument in-character about the morals or possibilities of genetic engineering just doesn't benefit as much from rpg-style mechanics as the adventure-y fantasy does. I do realize that my standard will &quot;flip&quot; many materials out of their commonly assigned genres, but so be it. (I mean, how important is that anyway?)</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Ratskinner, post: 7762845, member: 6688937"] In a none-too-recent discussion of the topic at hand, a friend of mine described fantasy as "the religious version of Sci-Fi" for just this reason. For me, the difference (at least for what I consider "good" versions of either) comes down to how the non-mundane "tech" of the world impacts the heroes. Whatever the ostensible source, good fantasy tends to handwave how things work and obvious impacts on society because its more focused on fuzzy wish-y adventure-y things, while good sci-fi examines those impacts possibly through adventure. So, we can take the topic to be genetic engineering: a good sci-fi premise might be the squabbling between different sects on the moral uses of such a tech and the "unforeseen" consequences it has on the personal lives of the characters while a good fantasy premise might be our hero saves the world from horrible tiger-man soldiers. I think its also part of the reason that its hard to make a really good sci-fi (especially Trek) game. The players having an argument in-character about the morals or possibilities of genetic engineering just doesn't benefit as much from rpg-style mechanics as the adventure-y fantasy does. I do realize that my standard will "flip" many materials out of their commonly assigned genres, but so be it. (I mean, how important is that anyway?) [/QUOTE]

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