Mixing Fantasy and Sci-fi

[Deleted]

i've had a long-running series of thoughts and ideas over the years about a world that is really sci-fi but feels more fantasy. a world where one travels through space via starship to visit the Dwarven, Elven, Human, or Goblin homeworlds. a world where swords and bows mingle freely with blasters, phasers, and grenades. a world where, as Arthur C. Clark put it, technology is so advanced that it appears to be magic. characters may possess limited to great psionic abilities (ranging in effects from Enchantments, Illusions, and Seeing) while certain technological devices can amplify psionic ability to a level capable of Creation, Healing, Kinetic, Morphing, and Summoning.

anyone else ever slip in the shower, hit their head on the toilet, and wake up with such a strange notion?

EDIT1: basically, the inhabitants inherited a world full of technological marvels from some long extinct race, perhaps they refer to this race as 'the gods' they have no idea how the items really work. they just know how to use them and replace parts. therefore, as time progresses and we enter this world for our stories or adventures, it is in a state where the more powerful, less common devices have taken on the airs of legendary relics and artifacts.

EDIT2: i would actually be amazed if something like this doesn't already exist so if anyone knows of anything resembling this, please let me know.

[mister frau blucher]

There are a lot of examples of this, to varying degrees. Not too many where rayguns are commonplace, but lots where there is technology side by side with mundane weapons.

There are several examples in our own advantures, like Raid on Cygnosa wich has a few areas that you can find ancient, advanced technology (including radiation exposure). It is more pronounced in the high level Emerald Twilight, with crashed spaceships and alien races and FTL communication.

But it actually goes way back to the dawn of the roleplaying hobby. Arneson used a bit raygunism in Blackmoor, and Gygax to a lesser extent in Greyhawk. But his adventure expedition to the Barrier Peaks is an exploration of a multi-leveled crashed spaceship.

The strongest, most consistent voice in the early days was undoubtedly Bob Bledsaw and Judges' Guild, with the Wilderlands of High Fantasy. Many of their products featured or at least provided advanced atrifacts from long ago wars and races.

Later RPG products did not see as much, as the lines between fantasy and science fiction strengthened.

With the advant of the OSR, there has been rekindled interest in blurring the lines between sf and fantasy. Many games are explicitly marketed this way. The best example of the top of my head is Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea, where the default setting is the rememrgence of civilization amidst a bunch of elder artifacts. The cover even has a knight with a raygun. Google it and check it out.

But to answer your question, yes, there has been a lot of mixing the two genres that are now seen as separate, mostly early in the hobby and in more recent years as people try to recapture the old scholl, anything-goes vibe.

[Deleted]

wow. thanks man. you've given me a lot to look up

[Deleted]

however, those examples sound more like 'cross-overs' than an actual mingling. i'm not looking for something like Terry Brook's Shannara....but something more like (for lack of another example) He-man.

sort of a mash-up of star wars, star trek, stargate, and fantasy. i always thought dwarves could be drop-in replacements for klingons in star trek. goblins for feringi and elves...well, vulcans are really just space-elves. i suppose romulans could be drow. after that, wash away the liberal, utopian, disinfected ambience of star trek and replace with a messy star wars/firefly ambience. remove the force and add descendents and devices of stargate's Ancients.

^i guess that's really more sci-fi than fantasy

[Deleted]

also, i did realize that your adventures included this sort of thing. i'm a bit more understanding of why i could buy 'medkits' at the beginning of ROC. i started it, got to the troll, and lost interest in playing for awhile. my interest is now renewed.

is there perhaps a town or village in Tyrin over which starships sometimes orbit to trade some manufactured goods for raw materials grown or mined by the local populace? these could serve as jumping-off points to other campaign worlds and allow characters to move between LAW, LTS, and LUW. crazy, huh?

hmm...this kind of tied into the LAW Advanced discussion...really, all 3 lines could be shoe-horned into the Legends of Time and Space moniker...LTS d20...d10...Advanced LTS...

[Deleted]

anyways...the crews of these starships sometimes take on replacement personnel or passengers and ferry them to a desired destination. unfortunately, The Builders, in their great and mysterious wisdom, programmed the base assembly code of the transporters (or air-locks or some such) to filter out technology that does not belong to a particular world according to its hard-coded database when transporting from ship to ground. (analogous to a bio-filter; a techno-filter). anything goes aboard ship, unless the crew has asked the ship's computer to disable all weapons of a certain technological level and above.

[Deleted]

someone stop me and tell me shut up if this is getting annoying...

perhaps the ships (created by The Builders) are mostly automated, controlled by the ship's computer which is AI. the crews are more like parasites living aboard them. the ship's AI allows and even seeks out replacement personnel because there are somethings that it just can't do for itself. sometimes, the ship's AI might even relinquish controls to the crew for a period time if it deems such actions necessary to accomplish its mission.

for the most part, the ships fly along predictable space-shipping lanes. occasionally, the ship's AI will enter 'interupt mode' and task the crew with a special mission that must be completed before resuming normal operations. (yes, i'm getting SGU here)

[Deleted]

i read REH's Conan/The Elephant Tower a few weeks ago. the sci-fi element seems to have been there from the beginning of the literature that inspired the games. cool. will be reading more of REH and Conan.

Also, read a review of ITL last night. Wow. They did everything with Cidri that I've ever wanted to do with a campaign setting, they just didn't use spaceships or stargates. i can't seem to find a copy of ITL online. i'd really like to read it.

[Lord Inar]

Feb 20, 2013 10:01:19 GMT -5 @ewookie said:

Also, read a review of ITL last night. Wow. They did everything with Cidri that I've ever wanted to do with a campaign setting, they just didn't use spaceships or stargates. i can't seem to find a copy of ITL online. i'd really like to read it.

The main problem is that the whole ITL thing fell apart before there was any real chance to develop Cidri.

If you're interested, you could also check out the two Game Lords adventures (Wikipedia description of the adventures below).

Unfortunately, they never released anything about Soukor, the "post-apocalyptic" land with lots of lost technology.

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2202 - The Warrior Lords of Darok. The first module released in a series called "The Land Beyond the Mountains", a full campaign setting designed exclusively for TFT. This detailed the province of Darok, whose inhabitants worship a mean and nasty god of war and fire. This land was to be detailed over the course of several modules, but only this and The Forest Lords of Dihad were released before Metagaming's untimely demise. In the works were two more province modules for Muipoco and Soukor, along with two and probably more city modules, detailing the provincial capitals. As noted below, the city modules for the capitals of Darok and Dihad were redesigned and released under other names by Game Lords, Ltd.

2203(?) - The Forest Lords of Dihad. The last TFT release before the closing of Metagaming. The product number is speculative, as it does not appear anywhere on the module itself.

[Deleted]

that sounds interesting. the main thing i was trying to do with spaceships and stargates was create a setting where you aren't locked into any one campaign...one setting to rule them all. ITL did this with Cidri, an artifical world created by dimensional-traveling aliens called the Mnorens--a world so vast that it's seas could host an endless number of continents. that has the same effect as 'planet-hopping'.

[Lord Inar]

Yes, these Game Lords adventures were official. I believe they even mentioned a path that led through the mountains to Elyntia (the Thorsz' land from Death Test) and Soukor had the highest concentration of leftover Mnoren (also mentioned pre-Mnoren?) technology.