Why does fantasy tend to overshadow sci fi as far as rpgs and

>>50470159
The fantastic elements of sci-fi must adhere to a certain degree of logic or believably to be enjoyable. This makes sci-fi much harder to write.

In fantasy having a weapon that floats in the air and fights for its wielder is easy to explain and accept. That is far less true of sci-fi worlds because the tech necessary to do that would have applications that you need to work into the world. Thats just one example. Basically, in general fantasy settings you can explain away the limitations and utility of things by just saying "magic" and in sci-fi you cant.

>>50470159

The real problem as i see it is that it is much harder to have heroic individuals making a difference in a scifi setting. The main reason for this is firearms. With sword and shield you can go around and be a hero, and it is reasonable for you to survive for some time doing this based on the assumption that your just more skilled and badass then everyone else. In scifi it doesnt matter how skilled or badass you are, one laser bolt will end you, and there is honestly jack shit you can do about it. Furthermore scifi tends to have large centralized powers more than fantasy. Heroing works best if the governement can't do shit, cause if the goverment can actually do shit, then there really wouldnt be to much need of heroes cause they'd get all the shit done. This is also why a lot of scifi settings seem to revolve around lawless pc's or rebels out to fuck big brother. All just my opinion, i know none of this is definitive.

>>50470314
>>50470381
These gentlemen are both my niggers.

>>50470314
>>50470381
So how would you suggest we go about creating heroic sci fi?

Also, another possible point in fantasy's favor: a generic baseline exists for fantasy in media and especially rpgs. People come in thinking about elves and orcs and pseudo medieval magic lands and such, and that tends to be expected. I think we've all seen people who vocally prefer traditional fantasy tropes. Science fiction doesn't have that baseline. One man's sf and interpretations of various tropes and ideas will probably be completely different than another. You say sci fi, I don't know if I should expect Deus ex, Asimov, Alien, or Star Trek

>>50470493
40k

>>50470493
>So how would you suggest we go about creating heroic sci fi?
I would suggest making limitations for the use of firearms, such as "they might breach the hull of a spaceship" or "automated weapons caused great wars so they became a taboo"

or you just say "lightsabers wielded by skilled people can outclass laser blasters", and let it be.

there's no way to make someone look truly heroic with a gun, though. firearms will always be seen as something bad

>>50470493

The first thing that is necessary is some way to make you, the player, relevant. This is important because players like to be important. I can be joe smoe any day of the week, but Saturday when i get with my group i get to be the hero. In Scifi settings this can generally be achieved by giving them some manner of rank and responsibility in setting. You make them a ship captain, or something. Thing is if they work for the government then there would be rules and regulations, and players don't want people telling them 'uh, dude, that violates the prime directive you can't do that shit" so having them hold military rank is difficult. But if your just some civvy that's boring. Therefore the best option is people living on the fringes of society. This is why we get outlaw type games. Which are actually pretty fun. People like roleplaying t hings they don't get to do, and there is a certain thrill in flipping off authority. Alternatively they could be operating on the edges of known space, like some sort of space conquistador or Lewis and Clarke or something. Exploration and finding aliens and new planets. Pretty fun, compelling fantasy. Now we just need to solve the problem of them being good at something mattering. This can be solved in two ways. Way number one, have combat be handled in space ships only pretty much. The skill they are badass in is piloting and fighting their ship. Since ship battles probably won't end in one single salvo like a gunfight will, this could be interesting. Alternatively some manner of defensive technology that renders guns moot. Energy shields on roids that need to be gotten around some other way. But generally that just turns into laser swords and fantasy with a thin veneer of scifi slapped on it (its not magic, its psychic powers. That isn't an elf, its an alien, dude why don't you like my not!lightsaber). That can be fun. I love star wars and 40k, and both can be pretty guilty of that, but neither is really hard scifi.

>>50470635

I know i'm just restating a lot, i don't really have an answer, i'm just brainstorming really.

>>50470493
There's a reason 40k and Star Wars are among the most popular Sci-Fi properties.

Do away with Sci-Fi's philosophical or scientific trappings. Those are for books and movies and sometimes video games. Not for table top largely.

>>50470571
>there's no way to make someone look truly heroic with a gun, though. firearms will always be seen as something bad
You obviously don't watch westerns.

>>50470699

Based on the model you have proposed the pc's are badass and survive because they have the quickest quick draw, and a sixth sense for danger that gets them to duck before the shooting starts. I actually love old westerns. I would play that shit. This would of course be predicated on the edge of the frontier model. So space wild west basically is what your proposing?

>>50470635
you can always give them a mission
the "random encounter at the tavern" but styled as sci-fi.
you might find an old guy being chased by mysterious people while wanting to contact the authorities, or have the players at a ship that goes under attack.
accidental heroes are easier to make on sci-fi, I think, and you don't need to give them "destinies" of being heroes. they're just trying to outcome the stuff


>>50470699
guns in westerns make the guys look badass, but there's still some negative shred to it. westerns usually aren't about glory and heroism, but about surviving in a harsh world.
anyways, I'm willing to read/watch anything that will prove me wrong.

>>50470493
>a generic baseline exists for fantasy
It really really shouldn't, FWIW. Fantasy should keep being the catch all that includes Dunsany, Alice in Wonderland, GRRM-style stuff, and Wuxia movies. Subgenres are okay and all, but myriad individual works with myriad individual tones/themes/milieus is better for a genre.

If anything it's the tight, limited number of original templates that limit scifi.
>First contact / invasion story
>Post apoc
>Cyberpunk
>Dystopia
>Space opera
>Rebels vs. space fascists
>Heroic space fascists shoot bugs
>Space survival
>Robots are revolting again
>The science experiment went wrong again
>The world is fake again
>There's a hole in space again

Getting away from some generic baseline is hard. And failing to do so makes it hard for your piece to "stick." Especially if your selling point is some high concept like "what if we can visit dreams?" (Reality is fake again)

Fantasy isn't exactly selling itself on a high concept as often. There's much more emphasis on tone and character, and when scifi feels fresh it's usually borrowing from those parts of the playbook. But fantasy still risks losing its novelty and cultural cache if it doesn't find some new territory to explore now and again.

>>50470761

So make them space ship crew sent to do x very important mission with the future of the galaxy hanging on the balance? Given a high degree of autonomy to do it?

>>50470834
yeah, basically.
that gives them some importance, but takes away the burocracy.
but that isn't stated on the first "episode". they are randomly gathered and thrown in the middle of it. some of them might be military, others just caught in the crossfire.

the usual gundam thing.
>colony gets invaded
>evacuation proceeds
>main characters are thrown in a warship
>???
>50 episode series

>>50470786
The biggest problem is 'space fantasy'.

It used to be huge and everyone loved it, but then we started getting cynical about actually colonizing space and everyone realized it was a void filled with absolutely nothing which is actually an awful prospect. Old stories where every planet had it's own Martian civilization or gleaming spires and you could go to space without needing a helmet or even messing up your hair were far more palatable, because that sense of emptiness is absent.

So to make a sci fi game work, I'd recommend limiting it to a single city/planet/spaceship, so you don't have to worry about trying to make up things to fill a totally empty universe.

>>50470759
Not sure you meant to reply to me, either way, I'm not the above space western guy. Just a passerby.

However, Space Westerns can be done quite well. Firefly was pretty great, and it would work well enough as a campaign setting. I'd argue that playing a sci-fi version of Dogs in the Vineyard could be one of the most awesome things of all time, especially adding in the conflicts of technology in the more civilized worlds pushing forward and the interplay of reliance the frontier worlds have with the core of civilization. Plus considering things like living on a non-earth-like planet and the fact that any violence could become catastrophic for everyone sounds like great pieces for conflict.

>>50470761
I'm going to have to disagree with you there. But I've also watched a bunch of "white hat vs black hat" westerns and old WWII propaganda-type movies where guns are presented as heroically as a sword so long as they are in the heroes' hands. John Wayne movies, the really old ones, have a lot of that attitude.

>>50470493
Honestly? As much as I hate to say it, the closest thing to a standardised baseline scifi setting is probably cyberpunk/generic dystopian shit. Sure, it's nowhere as big or influential to the concept as a whole as Tolkienite fantasy was, but it's one of the precious few subgenres where you instantly have some tropes that come to mind

>Big Bad Gov/Megacorps
>Leet Haxxors
>Tech coming out of your ears, often literally
>Sticking it to the man
>Murky neon aesthetic
>Jaded cynical take on "le wonderous world of tomorrow"
Sure, some of the tech and power levels may vary, especially in weapons - but what other flavours (not just particular franchises) of scifi can you automatically have a reasonable understanding of what it entails just by mentioning the name?

inb4
>REEEEEE not real scifi
>[/tg/ getting triggered by the suffix -punk]

>>50470381
>>50470493
>>50470571
>>50470635
Heroic scifi can be (and has been) done pretty well before, but the problem is that its prerequisites are usually the opposite of what you want on the tabletop.

I've always found there to be an incredibly striking difference between Brit and US scifi. American stuff is more focused on the big scale; on the pioneers, the explorers and innovators, on the final frontiers facing impossible odds (Trekshit being the obvious contender here). The Bongs, on the other hand, usually concern themselves with the ordinary people of a setting, no matter how fuckhuge the scale or challenges (some of Baxter's best work concerns worthless soldiers in spehss trench warfare against the most OP aliens in any setting I've seen; while most of Clarke's best work was about regular joes). I'd argue that that's also why IG are still get screen time, the adamantium balls meme and plotty characters in 40k instead of being faceless redshirts ALL of the time.

tl;dr: heroic scifi is best when the PCs win through grit and bloodymindedness rather than idealistic heroism or overt superiority

>>50470493
>So how would you suggest we go about creating heroic sci fi?
Psychic powers, mad scientists, and super soldiers.
>Martial equivalents are super soldiers with bones that can resist rifle fire, skin as tough as Kevlar, who can lift a car, and fire an autocannon from the hip.
>Psychics can manipulate the fabric of reality, lightning, fire, teleportation, biomancy, summoning, "spirits", etc.
>Mad scientists are geniuses with so much technology in them that they are barely even human anymore, they can almost instinctively find the weak spots of a vehicle, how to hack a computer, and can integrate a completely alien weapon into their body in minutes

Essentially >>50470546 since 40k was originally WHFB in space. Instead of knightly orders and Bretonnians you have space marines, instead of mages you have psykers, you have admech, haemonculi, and dark mechanicus for technology shit, and Orcs and Elves are just aliens. If you wanted to be less hamfisted fantasy you could easily modify concepts to make them less overt, eg. psychic powers are more limited than magic in most settings or aliens are actually unique as opposed to space elves.

>>50470381
> In scifi it doesnt matter how skilled or badass you are, one laser bolt will end you, and there is honestly jack shit you can do about it.
The same is true of a sword, yet plenty of people run heroic fantasy games where PCs are expected to get stabbed routinely.

>>50470571
>there's no way to make someone look truly heroic with a gun, though. firearms will always be seen as something bad
found the europoor

>>50471193

This is true. A sword can end you. But you can dodge a sword, or deflect it. Skilled activities your pc can be capable of. I have yet to find a man capable of dodging or deflecting a bullet, but if that became a thing, then they would be pc's.

>>50471026
I'm a big fan of lunar systems, since there's a decent excuse to get bodies in space with less of the relativistic fuckery and a realistic reason for a whole pile of worlds in the goldilocks zone.

>>50471260
This. Also, the counters to firearms in terms of armour/energy shielding don't really have the same feel

>>50471260
>>50471291
you can always lightsabers
that's the sole reason they exist, to look cool and protagonistic

>>50471313

Well yeah, but then why am i not just playing fantasy? There has to be a way to do scifi without just doing a reskin of fantasy.

>>50471313
Egh, that's approaching fantasy territory

>>50471338
Depends what subgenre you're looking at first, senpai. Space opera, science fantasy, dystopian near future? Get that tied down and we can start looking at what works and what doesn't

>>50471260
Dodging and deflecting bullets is pretty easy in fucking sci fi

>>50471410

By what means is this accomplished?

>>50471427
(power) armor, force fields, psi power, superhuman reflexes, sheer grit and luck, etc

>>50471338
because fantasy doesn't have giant robots, fights for fuel and other resources or sweet sweet laser technology.

>>50471427
laser swords, shields, space magic, etc
everything we don't want on a scenario that tries to not be a fantasy reskin

>>50471338
I think it's perfectly possible, but might require very different stakes, pcs, and 'adventures'. Sci fi , at least the more grounded kind, is a lot less accepting of world saving larger than life ubermensche, and when it has them they tend to be more Char Aznable or (various people from LOTGH) than Conan or Aragorn.

>>50471487

Grit and luck don't really make for interesting gaming in my opinion. Congratulations, you live because the dm willed it and flubbed the rolls isn't really my pot of tea.

Superhuman reflexes are actually good. We can work with this depending on how they are achieved. Everone bullet times. Guns still get used but you can do something about it. ok, that could work.

the others have already been brought up i think, but if they weren't above they are right here >>50471526

>>50471605
Not your luck/grit, the characters. They get dodge bonuses or whatever just for being gritty, hardened badasses. They'd still probably need to be more tactical than a standard fantasy pc, but it would let them do some action movie shit sometimes

>>50471526
>because fantasy doesn't have giant robots, fights for fuel and other resources or sweet sweet laser technology.
Maybe your fantasy setting doesn't.

>>50471487
fuck off back to 40kids general

>>50471851
if you stretch it, any setting can have anything
I was planning on a "spellpunk" setting with giant robots and high tech spellcrafted stuff, but I'm not gonna stretch it and say it's an example of the average fantasy scenario

>>50470159
I think the big thing is sci fi makes the things that you have to fight in an equivalent fantasy setting too easy. It's like how none of Seinfeld would've happened if the characters had cell phones.

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>>50471935

>>50471526
>>50471851

>Castle golem
>plague and famine
>literally any ray spell

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>>50472243

It's because sci-fi is boring because the setting is always convoluted, guns ruin everything, space ships ruin everything, mechs ruin everything, and it's always HUMANITY FUCK YEAH.

All these people shittalking guns, it's like a forum full of feudal lords. You see it as taking heroism out of things, I see it as making it so anybody can be a hero. You don't see as many scholarly characters in fantasy without them being wizards or npcs, but sci fi and pulp can totally have action scientists

>>50472780
Well that's the problem. Hero's can exist if skill is taken out. Guns ruin a setting.

>>50472653
I know this is bait, but I know a guy who's basically like this. The few times my playgroup has done any SF stuff, he's tried to be as antithetical to the setting.

>>50472653
>the setting is convoluted
>defending a genre where tolkien took care to write stat sheets for every single character and their dog
Hey, the complexity in scifi is out of tech or political(ish) shit that's at least vaguely interesting

>scifi
>must have space
>must have mechs
>must have HFY
...I've been baited, haven't I?

>>50472901
Master Baited, yes.

>>50472835
>you can only be heroic if you are THE BEST AT FITING GUD!!1!!1!
> t. martial
PCs =/= OC donut steals

>>50470159
Because sci-fi is too broad of a genre, and if you just say sci-fi and rope people into it and it turns out to be retrofuturistic garbage instead of posthumanist utopia where competing in business is considered a national sport, they will be disappointed.

Fantasy is.. Pretty uniform. Sci-fi goes from 1984 to Hard Sci-fi to future fantasy to space operas to cyberpunk to post-apocalyptic wastelands.

>>50470159
People arent writing for you, secreyly pissing in your coffee and writing generic fantasy/sci-fi to piss you off.
They write what they think sounds good and occasionally: what sells.

>>50473233
>>50473003
/thread

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>>50473233
What? I was just wondering why people seem to like fantasy more. I don't think it's to piss me off, I just wonder why SF's not as popular. Have a japanesey robot for your trouble

>>50473347
I like these robots.

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>>50473366
As do I. Those two and these cyber-knights are apparently concept art for...some sort of game. Don't know what

>>50473233
>It's one of those "anon completely misunderstands the point of a thread" episodes

>>50473347
its because Fantasy has a more timeless set up inmost cases, despite some claims, Magic, Orcs, elves and dwarves don't get old, Sci-fi by its very nature dates itself by the values and science it was written under, what was cutting edge and on the verge of getting the universe 5 years ago is considered quackery today only to maybe be vindicated 10 years down the line. Sci-fi is a perpetual reflection of the times its written in, the hopes, dreams, fears doubts and ideals of the age and region, while fantasy stands in a world so old as to be alien and divided from our own, its why the most popular sci-fi have these truely impossible fantasy elements to keep it timeless, nobody will question the viability of hyperdrive in a world with Jedi, or the validity of a chainsword when there are literal daemons, or the nature of transporters in a universe where Q can drop by

>>50473412
If anyone know's the game let me know.

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>>50473527
It's maybe horizon zero dawn. It's all I know that Geurilla's working on right now

>>50473477
>Fantasy has a more timeless set up inmost cases
This is true.
>Orcs, elves and dwarves don't get old
This is not. Luckily, most fantasy outside of vidya and D&D has moved beyond shitty Tolkien knockoffs.

>>50472266
>Using old-timey rip offs of sweet technology

I like fantasy as much as the next Anon, but don't give me a golem that you can get inside and "pilot."

>>50473725
I've not seen them

>>50472835
Frodo wasn't a hero?

A couple rarely touched themes for sci-fi would make it generally as cool as fantasy but I think they'd also have to include some kind of magic/powers setup

> Travel between Settings

Time Travelers
Alternate Reality Travelers
Universe Jumpers

because then the centralized authority figures of futuristic or modern sci-fi become more distant and the players are more left to their own devices and ability to move around as they see fit

You can still have evil alien empires and so on but they seem again like distant factions such as "orcs" or "elves".

The players may be employed by some government project but, once they're out of the teleporter lab the only reprocussions they may face against them are not being able to come back or having an occasional cleaner squad sent after them, and they may find life in their new place more fulfulling and fun anyway.

>>50473725
hey, there's nothing wrong with popular archetypes

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I don't understand the love Fantasy gets. Like I love Tolkein and Conan but Sci fi has much better opportunities for fun pulp adventure AND deep explorations of the darkest natures of man

Like seriously, name fantasy writer as on point as John Brunner

>>50473477
That's a very good point. Most cyperpunk is still lingering in the 80s and 90s, and was made before people could begin to comprehend wireless. And more often than not, people end up making sci-fi that's either 'modern day stuff with fancy trappings,' or 'something so alien and different only serious sci-fi nuts could try and get into it.'

>>50473725
They may have gotten old for you, but there are other people still just getting exposed to them, or maybe getting tired of the reinventions and just wanting to go back to the classics.

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>>50470635
>The first thing that is necessary is some way to make you, the player, relevant.

Now you see that I really don't get. Stories are much more interesting when they are a human level, that's why people like Crime Dramas and thrillers more than epic fantasy.

Low Level is the way to go. Nice Noirish lethal as fuck campaigns with a high mortality rate but low body count. Good old fashioned pulp

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>>50474789
>I don't understand the love Fantasy gets.

Fantasy has been around a lot longer; there is actual mythology and real history to base it on. Sci-Fi became popular 60/70 years ago?

>>50474789

on some level i want to read that. on another level after reading some of the quotes i'm sure it would piss me off.

>>50474950

It's the most depressing science fiction book ever written because it predicted nowadays better than any other book or movie or fucking anything

>>50470571
Hoplophobe faggot

>>50474015
If you look at the most popular fantasy series written recently, you'll find few if any Tolkienesque settings: Dresden Files, The Farseer Trilogy, The Lies of Locke Lamora, Mistborn, The Name of the Wind, The Stormlight Archive, and The Wheel of Time all lack the "standard fantasy" races. For RPGs there's stuff like Ars Magica, Legend of the Five Rings, and Unknown Armies. For visual media you have all sorts of things, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Game of Thrones to wuxia movies.

Outside of vidya, where having an original and interesting setting isn't really a priority most of the time, a list of popular fantasy works that actually do include Tolkien races would be much shorter. There's D&D, Warhammer, LotR itself, Discworld, Malazan (kind of), and that's about it. It's just that those first 3 are so popular that people (especially on /tg/) tend to assume all fantasy looks exactly like that, when it actually tends to be quite a bit more varied.

>>50475262
>tfw none of the things he mentioned interest you

>>50474822
Cyberpunk isn't going to leave the 80s and 90s either, it's been cemented there as a genre.

In general, all the -punks are just sci-fi from an earlier era. Their concepts and imagery have been crystallized and only become more caricatured.

>>50475620
>Cyberpunk isn't going to leave the 80s and 90s either

But like nowadays is cyberpunk

>>50475768
thats why we keep it in the 80's, those innacurate predictions are part of the charm that real life's resemblances lack

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>>50475821

Eh, I disagree. Cyberpunk got the future more right than most sci fi genres did.

Now the only accurate sf is stuff like The Water Knife or Soft Apocalypse. Jesus we're fucked

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>>50470159

Because fantasy is naturally more limited with its fantastical elements, and is thusly way easier to write, whereas science-fiction is much more intertwined with cause and effect, and every fantastical science-fiction element that is utilized must have its affects on the overall fictional universe accounted for.

Magic can be as expansive or as limited as the author wants. And it's usually limited.
Science-fiction concepts are almost inherently and exclusively expansive.

If a scientists creates a robot to do his bidding, it revolutionizes the fictional world he lives in, as commandable robots would drastically change the spheres of manufacturing, warfare, home-life, space-exploration, labor, economics, etc.
By comparison, if a wizard creates an artificial golem to do his bidding, it changes nothing.

Science, by its definition, is built on principles that can be repeated by other individuals. Thusly any scientific advancement affects the whole of society.
Magic, which is typically written to be limited and exclusive, does dick in regards to society.

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Because people are stupid

"Fantasy" and "science fiction" weren't opposed or even distinct genres until recently

An alien comet crashing into earth, stealing souls, and being vanquished by a local wizard in a neo-shamanic journey wouldn't raise any eyebrows

"Science fiction" and "fantasy" are nothing more than a successful bookstore marketing strategy

In the western tradition "magic" and "science" were indistinguishable

FFS we have grimoires with bulletproofing spells from the 16th century

Isaac Newton was an alchemist, and considered it his greatest work

Paracelsus was the father of toxicology and a well known magus who invented the popular fantasy "elementals"

Astronomy is the daughter of Astrology

These guys weren't crazy, nor were they idiots

"Magic" (although THEY wouldn't even see it as such in many cases) was cutting edge science

Psychic powers were once a plausible scientific theory

In short, fuck fabricated boundaries

>>50475620
Main point is that it has been cemented in a specific spot in time, where fantasy is somewhere almost completely timeless - based on history, sure, but also outside of it.

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I will never be able to wrap my head around the idea that a dude going around shanking people with a sword is more heroic then a gun. I won't claim that one is more important than the other because the heroic nature of it lies with the one using it.

As far as "Heroic Sci-fi" goes I'd put Destiny up there. In spite of whatever faults it has I feel it does do a lot of things right. You have characters who are comparable to the sorts you see in your fantasy eqvuilient settings; Shinobou who was a hunter who promised to aid some people to get to the last city in spite of the fact she and her crew were hurt, had barely any ammo left and were up against overwhelming odds against the Fallen, Jharen Ward who wielded a famous handcannon tracking down and dueling a fallen hunter Dredgen Yor who was later finished off by his apprentince Shin Malphur. The epicness of the Titans who stood fast and held the walls of the last city against a Fallen siege. Saint--14 Headbutting a Fallen Kell to death and later Ryzel Azier letting himself get killed so he could revive and put six bullets right in the chin of another Fallen Kell.

Ya'll niggas just need to get off your shit that sci-fi means whatever shit you puked out earlier. If I wanted a hard sci-fi setting then what you said makes sense but I want my power armor ranger wielding a shotgun partially made out of the bones from some alien I ganked.

>>50472183
>>50475995
well said

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>>50476593
>implying a psychic can defeat a saint
>shit, implying an army can beat a saint

>>50473854
Fuck, yeah that sounds dumb as hell. But what about a suit of armor that enhances strength?

Because its even easier to say 'magic'. Shit's easier than reversing the polarity, which is pmuch magic, but you have to at least know a bit about the miracle of magnets for that. And turns out most people like easy things when they're consuming media for fun.

>>50470381
I really don't understand the argument about guns not working in an rpg. Do bows and crossbows break games? Hell, do fireball spells mean sword and board players should go home?

Are we saying that a knight can take 4 bolts to the chest, but a future cop can't take 4 bullets to the chest? Does armor not exist in the future? Does skill with a firearm not matter? Then why does the army train its soldiers? Why are there different ranks of marksman if a gun is so easy?

If you don't like armor, then personal energy shields like Dune or hey, everybody is backed up to a central mainframe and if you die, you'll be reincarnated in a "CloneTek" body the next week when you miss your scheduled backup. You can have PCs be specially trained Gunkata experts that can dodge incoming fire. You can have genetically engineered super agile soldiers. You can have a personal CIWS that will block 90% of incoming fire. Drugs or implants that increase agility and endurance. Anything you can imagine, you can put into your setting.

>>50473854
Why not? That's what you asked for.

>>50471159
>spehss trench warfare against the most OP aliens in any setting I've seen

What's the book called?

>>50476490
>I'd put Destiny up there
You shouldn't because, like Star Wars, it's not sci-fi at all. It's just a Fantasy story with a high-tech paint job.

>>50470159
The best way to do sci fi is to get a jumpsuit, a sword, and a raygun, go down to some primitive planet, swap out the jumpsuit for a loin cloth, save the double headed lizard woman from the mighty zor, then move on to the next planet and repeat.
Nothing is stopping you from being old time science fiction hero.

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>>50470159
>>50477750

If Starwars and Destiny are Fantasy, then how do we tell Sci-Fi and Fantasy apart?

>>50478074
"Sci-fi" is mostly defined by the technology level. Space opera settings are still sci-fi even though it's at the soft end of the spectrum.

>>50470159
I could be off base, but I've always thought fantasy simply had more fans in total, and therefor more people in the category of RPG players.

>>50478074
An explanation I heard was that in fantasy, you're the chosen one; in sci fi, you're not.

It might be because there's stuff like the Force in Star Wars and literal wizards in Destiny, but I've read star wars stories that were way harder sci fi than the movies.

It's mostly on an individual basis, although I think the special/not special thing holds

>>50478163
But in Destiny you're not the chosen one. You're literally just another zombie that the Traveler resurrected to fight for it.

Shit, now that I type that out it sounds awfully fantasy.

>>50478503
>not the chosen one

>kill an aspiring Devil Archon before you get your jumphsip
>kill the Machine God Sepiks Prime, crippling the Devil ether supply
>find the hive on the moon and stop them from stealing Light form the traveler, thus allowing it to heal
>break through cabal forces on mars looking for Vex
>kill a proto-god in the heart of the black garden that the vex worship
>all before lvl 20
>kill aethon, stopping their attempt to make the vex a fundamental law of the universe
>kill Crota, a demi-god that spent eons killing things across the universe
>kill Skolas, crippling wolves
>kill rebuilt wolf servitor prime, doming the wolves
>dismantle the hive enough to make jaina proud kill Oryx(a god), his daughters(demi-gods), his court, his war priest(could be considered a demi-god), his pet super weapon, take control of the ship, and kill another god when they dropped oryx
>acquire titles such as Hive Bane, Kingslayer, Wolf Breaker, and The Guardian
>THE Guardian

not chosen my ass

>>50477144
> Do bows and crossbows break games? Hell, do fireball spells mean sword and board players should go home?

Yes

>Casters4life

>>50477144
Dude, with about a hours worth of learning you can pick up a rifle and hit a man sized target at about 75 yards. Outside of something extreme like a sniper, shooting isn't skillful in the slightest.

>>50470571
Yipi ka yey, motherfucker

>>50478649
The game's story contradicts itself multiple times

>kill super special named dudes on a regular basis
>kill gods

>still treated as yet-another-guardian by everyone on the tower

>>50473854
>but don't give me a golem that you can get inside and "pilot."
>what is the Apparatus of Kwalish?

>>50473477
>The_Gernsback_Continuum.pdf

>>50472901
To be honest I see a lot of the last one

>Players constantly throw insults at aliens on space station
>All of them get mad at ME when an NPC alien turns out to have a temper and one of the PCs gets punched in the nose

>>50478714
>Learning about slides safeties and other gun crap

>hero on his farm get's attacked by bbeg's army has his dad killed and picks up his sword and kills both of the soldiers

What kind fantasy have you been reading? that kind of shit only happens in game of thrones

>>50478714
Within seconds I can learn how to stab a standing non-defending target with a sword. Does not mean I am a great swordman.

>>50478126
Incorrect. Sci-fi deals with today's fears while fantasy focuses on timeless stories, like good versus evil. For example Canticle for Leibowitz or Planet of the Apes are sci-fi even though their tech level is shittier than ours. That's why sci-fi tends to be more cynical or pessimistic than fantasy (but not always of course).

>>50478999

If anything it makes more sense for the farmer joe boy to pick up a rifle and shoot someone because he'll know how to use one for hunting.

That said, in either case you'd have trouble because you've never had to kill a person with it, especially one that is bearing down on you with intent to harm/kill you.

>B-bu muh heroic sword!

The demographics into gaming are generally more willing to let bullshit side with a fantasy setting.

>>50479257
that's the point I was making they're BOTH hard to use in real life but in fiction if you're the main character then they're easy to use

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>>50471193

>>50478714
Nigger, I'm a European socialist who thinks guns should be outlawed world wide, and every civilian found in possession of one should be flayed alive and tossed into a tub of salt.

And I still know there's skill to gun use. Look up 'fanning' on YouTube and you should find some examples.

>>50479220
>Timeless stories
I disagree, they are stories that appear to be "timeless" by tapping into the basic seemingly axiomatic mythic, moral, and power, structures underlying modern society and culture.

Fantasy stories from other times and other cultures don't necessarily have the same narrative structures that our current fantasy which is built upon our western religious and cultural foundations.

>>50470159

I'd argue there's another factor as well; a lot of scifi authors come from a scientific background rather than a literary one. While this means they've got a greater understanding of how their settings might work, it also means that their grasps on writing is shakier. Alistair Reynolds is a good example of this; the Revelation Space setting is fascinating, but he cannot write interesting characters or dialogue to save his life.

>>50479483
Just gonna put it out there, but it's not like most fantasy is renowned for it's great writing either. Genre fiction tends to be pretty weak in that area in general.

>>50470159
> It's magic, I ain't gotta explain shit
vs
> This is how X works, this is how Y works, this is how Z works, you need to know these so the plot makes sense

And, so, we have the issue with getting normies to buy in on anything. Most of them don't want to think, so they'll just accept magic is magic and you end up with Harry Potter. Which is shit.

>>50473233
>generic predictable pap is a sure route to a best seller
I know this shit isn't rational. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is the worst fucking book. But it's been a long time since generic fantasy really did well in the mainstream book market as a rule.

>inb4 people list 4 exceptions like there aren't millions of generic fantasy failures on the list

>>50478157
>>50470159
Because making up new shit is harder than simply reusing old existing stories and put a new coat of paint on it and them mashing them together like Tolkien and Gynax did.

>>50480503
If you want to take that to its logical conclusion, almost any story is a modified version of a previous story, you just remove and add stuff to taste.

>>50479441
/k/ommando here, degenerates like you belong on a cross.

>>50470159
In fantasy setting it's far easier to inflate the importance of PCs and impact they make on the world without creating major plot holes. Generally people with military skill and equipment (or magical talents) are quite rare in medieval stasis, and both skill and gear give plot characters some major edge over commoners, while in a ScyFy your awesome team of heroes could be offed by a hobo with a shothun, or even a drunken driver. Not a bad setting for dark realistic games or noir detective or depressive distopyan horror, but most players want high advenrures.

>>50482662
>Generally people with military skill and equipment (or magical talents) are quite rare in medieval stasis, and both skill and gear give plot characters some major edge over commoners, while in a ScyFy your awesome team of heroes could be offed by a hobo with a shothun, or even a drunken driver.


>Implying you can't be killed by a village mob

This line or reasoning is dumb and you should feel dumb.

>>50482837
Yeah, but they need a mob and they need to put some real effort to bring down someone like man at arms, while in a scyfy a soldier could be killed by a single civilian by accident.

>>50482662
Guns don't mean that characters can't be invincible. It really depends on how you play the setting.

Look at Black Lagoon. Everyone uses guns. Some characters are average. Some are unkillable monsters like the fucking Terminator.

Better yet, actually look at the Terminator. Or Arnie in Commando.

Just have the pcs be giant robot pilots
Suddenly individual prowess and character customization matter again

>>50479544
>Genre fiction tends to be pretty weak in that area in general.
Honestly this could be pared down to "Most writing tends to be pretty weak."

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>>50479220
>Sci-fi deals with today's fears

Yeah, and as a scientist, it gets fucking old.

Also, to more directly speak to the original point: Science fiction (or, at least, hard science fiction) is supposed to follow science and be plausible. Stories (and especially /tg/-worthy stories) want protagonists, whether they be world-shattering heroes or just regular Joes doing their jobs. Science is in the process of replacing humans for pretty much every task. So the more you extrapolate from what we're doing now to the future, the more boring it gets. So you end up with the most popular sci-fi being fantasy with interstellar travel.

A core problem is not so much firearms as the reason firearms became popular: It is easier to advance weapon technology than defense technology. Hell, same with movement technology, though when you tailor-make your FTL you can usually come up with a reason it isn't a super-RKV waiting to happen.

Any forcefield capable of deflecting a bullet could easily be used to crush ships. If you have reaction thrusters capable of dodging missiles, those same reaction thrusters could also be on the missiles.

Obviously, advanced aliens aren't going to die to AK47s, but at remotely similar tech levels, the core of the problem generally is that one small thing that is solely designed to hit other stuff at high speed (Which is pretty much always a highly destructive event unless the thing it is hitting can regenerate and reconstruct from fragments, at which point that technology can be applied to bullets that grey goo their target or whatever) is dramatically more effective and efficient in its maneuvers than a large thing designed to do even one single thing other than hit something really hard.

The large thing has an enormous defensive area to cover, the small thing may not even need to care about defense at all, simply making contact is enough a lot of the time, otherwise it can utilise whatever extras are available at that tech level like detonating its fuel source. Force fields available? It spreads them everywhere to cut shit apart. You can siphon projectile energy into parallel dimensions? Siphon the target's energy into parallel dimensions and freeze it.

To have defensive tech outstrip offensive tech requires someone, at some point, to willingly hamstring themselves. Maybe the space elves are the pinnacle of space science and considered it vulgar to put intellectual effort towards destruction, so everyone's reverse engineered armaments are short on offensive punch. But that's unstable. Eventually, an elf will get upset enough to ruin everything.

>>50470493
>So how would you suggest we go about creating heroic sci fi?
Rip Dune's shielding system off wholesale.

>>50483358
Yeah, and you have the problem that once you figure out how much energy it takes to get to another star system, you realize that you could destroy the planet you're visiting by forgetting to set the parking brake when you get there.

>>50483383
Also rip off Dune's Butlerian Jihad so there's a reason for humans to do story-important things.

>>50483358
>To have defensive tech outstrip offensive tech requires someone, at some point, to willingly hamstring themselves. Maybe the space elves are the pinnacle of space science and considered it vulgar to put intellectual effort towards destruction, so everyone's reverse engineered armaments are short on offensive punch. But that's unstable. Eventually, an elf will get upset enough to ruin everything.

I've kinda done this in the setting for the novel I'm working on. Mine comes down to more flaws in the ship design and reactor output.

>>50479483

Peter Watts is the Patron saint of that. His settings are incredible but his characters are super hit and miss

>>50482978
I'm pretty sure power armor is a fairly common technology in most science fiction settings.

More importantly, I see no reason power armored troops couldn't be treated like the equivalent of a knight or man at arms.

>>50470159
>Why does fantasy tend to overshadow sci fi as far as rpgs and genre stuff goes?

Guns, namely most people really have VERY bad idea of how effective or not guns are at killing people. It is not even the same idea either, rather it is all over the place. This means that out of say a table of five you are going to get 3 to 5 view points of what realistic level of lethality in that RPG should be. Not to say that players & GMs are looking for realism first and for most. But it does mean they will likely view the matter only thru the lense of gamist out look. Does the combat system support the type of game play wanted and is it fun to work with?

Which comes back to the same issue, because game designers also have that same issue. Most of the time that in turn cause the combat system to suffer for it. If that bad combat system does not have the idea of realism to hide behind everyone who has been playing it for bit will know very well what those issues are fast.

Reason why I believe this is because I asked myself why most sci fi combat systems are bad. I was looking for a good sci fi system to use that was not overly rules heavy. I did not find one.

>>50479441

>Wanting to disarm the proletariat
>"Socialist"

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>>50484739
The "establishment" must have played a massive trick on the left, now they either support exactly the things that will keep it running or waste their time with inconsequential garbage.

>>50470759
Youcwant edge of the empire. With fly casual.
Gunslinging and fast talking your way out of whatever flavour you want to run.

If you like star wars

>>50470761
Tombstone.
Its the story of a retiered sharrif who has his world flipturned upsidedown making him take up his holster again and fight for justice and revenge.

Half a descent into maddness half a hero being reborn. Its actually one of the last good westerns. Id recomend it highly.

>>50483315
True enough.

>>50470159
Because it's easier to add science and gun to fantasy than to subtract them from sci-fi.

Science kills mystery
Gun kills heroism

>>50479441
Grabbers always seem to advocate mass murder

>>50486618


Guns don't kill heroism. Theyre tools just like swords.

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>guns kill heroism
Congratulations /tg/ you have reached peak autism!

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>>50486618
>Science kills mystery
>Gun kills heroism

Whatever you say snowflake

>>50484799
The closest I come politically is left.
My actual political agenda is A. go to space B. eternal glorious human empire C. riot if A and B are not met

it is really hard to make this happen when everyone is arguing about whatever the fuck they are arguing about these days.

>>50486803
That's because by murdering the bad people, it'll stop murder.

You can't commit a crime if you're dead, after all.

>>50489794
You know who to start with, then. Hint: it's yourself.

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>>50489858
[spoiler[Is joke, friend.[/spoiler]

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>>50479220
>>50483347

I always felt that the difference is that Sci-Fi has an speculative element to it, while Fantasy is well... Fantasy.