Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="TrippyHippy" data-source="post: 8249996" data-attributes="member: 27252">Again, I don’t know how anybody can reach this conclusion.In the last few decades, ‘Fantasy’ has included such prominent things as Harry Potter, The Sandman and His Dark Materials, none of which are anything like ‘medieval with Tolkien'. There is less of an agreed-upon type of setting in fantasy than there is in science fiction. The fact is that science fiction itself is a subset of fantasy, which is proof enough of that point.In the case of what is the ‘default’ science fiction setting, or the dominant one akin to Tolkien, it’s already been mentioned - Star Trek, Serenity, or even Doctor Who all adhere to the same model - that of a crew traveling in some sort of craft to different worlds that are diverse in geographical, technological, evolutionary/biological or sometimes cultural/social ways. It is the standard default for science fiction that most audiences understand and expect. Star Wars has a melodramatic ’saga’ overlaying it, but it still has the same tropes. So does Flash Gordon, Guardians of the Galaxy, Starship Troopers, Foundation, Alien or even Dune (albeit tending to focus more on one significant planet in the books). Some authors vary the ‘hardness’ of the science in their stories, but even things like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Planet of the Apes or Interstellar feature crews journeying in spacecraft towards different destinations. In Bladerunner, a definitive cyberpunk movie set in a future Los Angeles, they still make reference to people traveling to ‘off world colonies’.For RPGs, it is the model presented by Traveller since 1977 - and it still is. The fact that there are 'Technological Levels’ that allow for great diversity and the capacity to travel a vast number of uncountable worlds gives huge variety to the model.In Traveller alone you can:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">visit a high tech, low life, mega-corporation controlled world, wearing cybertech and VI devices - just like in cyberpunk.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">travel vast distances in space and get into melodramatic adventures - just like in space opera.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">travel to worlds still in prehistoric or historic or futuristic times, or find high tech wonders that circumnavigate time-space, just like in time travel.</li> </ul>You could do the same in other sci-fi RPGs too, but this just reinforces the fact that the sci-fi tropes are obvious.So far from there not being a default model  - it is patently already there.</blockquote>

Verification