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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 8253317" data-attributes="member: 22779">Sorry, no red ink there bud.  No censure.  Just a friendly poke to tell me to tone it down.  Which I most certainly will take to heart.  But, when you agree with someone who says exactly, virtually word for word, the same thing that I said, and then disagree with me, that doesn't exactly make for a winning argument.  Anyway, back to the actual discussion.Let's see if I can do this without annoying people.  Would be a nice change.  I don't think it's terribly controversial to say that D&D is the iconic fantasy RPG.  Heck, for a lot of people it's the only RPG, but, even among us gamers, D&D is the iconic fantasy RPG.  Anyone want to take a swing at that?  Can I say that without a great deal of argument?  Now, if we presume that to be true, that D&D is the iconic fantasy RPG, again, I don't think it's controversial to say that no single work of fantasy has as much impact on D&D as Tolkien.  Whether it's the playable races, the iconic monsters (remember orcs actually had White hand clans and they still worship a one eyed god), or whatnot, Tolkien looms pretty large over the game and is largely inescapable.  That's not to say that there aren't other influences. There are.  There's been lots of ink spilt talking about them.  But, again, no single writer looms larger in the D&D zeitgeist than Tolkien.SF RPG's OTOH, don't have the same figure.  Sure, we can talk about the impact of Star Wars or Star Trek on Traveller, presuming that Traveller is the iconic SF RPG.  Star Wars I'm not so sure, considering Traveller came out in 1977, only a year after Star Wars was released.  And, it's not like you have Storm Troopers or X-Wings in Traveller.  And, thematically, Star Wars doesn't really fit since Traveller is all about exploration and discovery, rather than opposing an evil empire.  Star Trek might be a better source, but, again, it doesn't really fit.  Star Trek, even TOS, was about a flying city - the ship was huge compared to the typical Traveller ship.  And, it's not like Traveller really fits with the whole Federation thing, nor Star Fleet.  Traveller characters aren't necessarily part of any larger organization with rank structures and whatnot.  Better influences might be things like the Lensman series, or even Buck Rogers or some of the earlier Heinlein stuff.And, really, can we talk about iconic SF without Asimov?  But, Foundation bears little resemblance to Traveller and AFAIK, there are no Three Laws of Robotics in Traveller.  Granted, Traveller incorporates elements from all sorts of SF works and that's fantastic, but, we're talking about a default setting.  An iconic setting so ingrained into the genre that it's easy to envision.Heck, how can we really talk about iconic SF without going back to the grandaddies of the two biggest streams of thought in SF - Wells and Verne.  Wellsian SF with it's cautionary tales of technology and science where the loss of humanity comes with the rise of technology (see the Morlocks of the Time Machine or the Martians of War of the Worlds) isn't really represented in Traveller which is far more Vernian in approach.  Technology and science are things to be celebrated.  They let us travel around do these wonderful things, and learn and explore.  It's a very positive take on the genre.  So, no, I don't see a "default" setting in SF.  I don't see it like I see one in fantasy because there is no single author that stands so large in SF as Tolkien does in fantasy.  SF RPG's will incorporate all sorts of elements from SF, of course.  But, a given SF RPG will tend to incorporate a selection of genre works that fit with the general theme and tone of that particular SF RPG.  So something like Sufficiently Advanced incorporates Trans-humanist elements.  The latest version of the Star Trek game looks almost exclusively at Star Trek and doesn't really incorporate anything else.  So on and so forth.  Two fantasy RPG's, unless they are deliberately working against trope will tend to share a very large number of fantasy tropes.  Two SF RPG's will only share similar tropes if they are creating similar RPG's - exploration style like Traveller, or much more story telling style like the Doctor Who RPG.</blockquote>

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