For whatever reason my favorite settings are Science Fantasy. Either Magic VS Technology or Technology as Magic or Magic and Technology or Magic as Technology.

Im curious what neat RPGs people have run in Science Fantasy settings and what settings they made and what settings they used.

Lejendary AsteRogues. There's not a ton of magic. It does have psychogenics. And fantastic mutants. But the technology itself is fantastical. Renaissance style ships flying through space powered by OAR (Oscillation Action Retarded) engines. It's got some seriously cool ideas that can apply to any RPG, such as the "multi-tiered" campaign, wherein players have stables of characters participating at different level of action. You might have one group of space marines. Another group of interplanetary diplomats. Another group space pirates. And so on.

StarDrive for Alternity is one I've enjoyed. It doesn't seem like it has much Fantasy in it at first but if you dig in you will find that in addition to Psionic Powers, there are divine faith based abilities, some straight up magic, and an evil Cthulhu like enties trapped in the alternate reality that ships use for FTL travel. The big bag alien theocracy that starts out as a creeping conspiracy threat and in time turns to full scale invasion force of the sector of space you are in is really in thrall to these entities.

I've also enjoyed Fading Suns a lot as well.

WEG d6 Star Wars

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I tried to do something similar with D&D when 3.x first came out with an empire where the individual worlds were connected by teleportation circle networks. Different worlds had to be visited first by spelljammer ships and if useful, ended up having a permanent gate set up connecting them to a mainworld. Ended up being a reverse Traveller campaign, so I ditched it but kept the notes handy.

I really like the implied setting of Stars Without Number with Codex of the Black Sun (which makes it basically science fantasy, even if their space wizards got some premium technobabble explanations for spell-slot casting)

I'm using that to run a post apocalypse campaign in the Starfinder setting after the previous PCs in another campaign destroyed the universe.

I've had great fun with Palladium's PHASE WORLD which is just RIFTS in Spaaaace. I took the original Mechanoids RPG from Palladium which added magic in the later books, and created a Space Fantasy campaign with the Viking gods on ice worlds being invaded by psionic cyborgs and their giant slave bugs.

WEG d6 Star Wars (which leans heavily towards the SF end of science fantasy) is the main one, but I have a lot of SF elements in my fantasy Wilderlands campaigns and even my current Primeval Thule game. I ran some White Star which is very close to Star Wars vibe.

I love science fantasy 'Star & Sorcery' as a concept where you have space opera but much further to the fantasy side than Star Wars, but there's not a huge amount of games in this area. I discovered Solar Blades & Cosmic Spells yesterday - https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/260378/Solar-Blades--Cosmic-Spells - looks good for a self-consciously retro Barbarella type game!

Most of my games tend toward science fantasy in some form. I like to design my settings on top of a few basic forms:
- Sword and Planet / Planetary Romance in the vein of Barsoom or Dune with mystical elements turned up
- Sword and Sorcery but with science fiction overlays. Imagine if you took Star Wars and stripped out the star ships & interplanetary travel but kept the "look and feel" of the setting.
- Final Fantasy 7 & 13 inspired settings where you have a modernish or near-future setting with strong fantasy elements layered in

Actually, a lot 90's era JRPGs (and maybe beyond but I don't play a lot of video games anymore) make for good inspiration material. They tend to freely blend science fiction and fantasy in a way that Western games avoid.

Dark heresy, though i like the setting much more than the rules.

I recently bought Arcana of the Ancients for 5e looking for some science fantasy. It's not all that great unless you really just want Numenera ideas repackaged for 5e. I should have skipped this one when I saw Monte Cook's name on it.

Quote from: oggsmash;1125616Dark heresy, though i like the setting much more than the rules.

Which rules are you using?

Mutant Chronicles, which, admittedly keeps most of the fantasy in the hands of the bad guys.  Because the real magic was always the ridiculously big gun.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1125619Which rules are you using?

I use GURPS.  It had the oldest version of the game (dont know if they got revised) and I have wrath and glory that i was going to try to use, but they were/are worse than the original FFG rules.  GURPS to me is great for human agents of the throne, but High tech gunplay is EXTREMELY deadly.  I may give savage worlds a toss with gritty rules.  That with bennies should pad out chance enough so they dont get killed TOO easily.

Quote from: David Johansen;1125632Mutant Chronicles, which, admittedly keeps most of the fantasy in the hands of the bad guys.  Because the real magic was always the ridiculously big gun.

  Do you use the rules in the newest version?  I really like that setting but those rules did not read well for me.  Do they play better than they read? Or do you use another ruleset?

Well, the rules are okay, very over the top cinematic.  I had a PC cut a helicopter out of the air with a sword at one point.  I've got a personal rewrite on my hard drive but I'm not really big on doing rip-offs of other people's properties.  I've got my own ideas and my own games.