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.
Quote from: HappyDaze;1125619Which rules are you using?
I love Dark Heresy, but the system isn't my friend either. I've used Traveller and Savage Worlds. Traveller works great because combat is so deadly and chargen is easy to convert to Dark Heresy. Savage Worlds does the cinematic version of 40k nicely. I didn't use the gritty rules, because I wanted that Dark Heresy to play more like the 40k novels where Big Damn Heroes lead mooks vs. Chaos.
What I most excited to try is Dark Heresy via Stars without Number combined with Silent Legions, both by Sine Nomine. I think that blend would rock hard for an Inquisitor campaign.
Quote from: David Johansen;1125644Well, 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.
I guess they at least match the vibe i get from the art. I can literally hear a heavy metal guitar looking through the book.
The problem with the Modiphius Mutant Chronicles system is that the "Dark Symmetry Points" really force the GM into an adversarial role, which isn't how I usually GM. But but between "Momentum" hijinks and needing DSP to use npc powers and weapons it just feels like having your hands tied behind your back if you aren't ruthlessly exploiting the tools to generate more DSP. As a game design it does what it's intended to do but it doesn't do what I want it to do. Also, I hate talent trees. What a dreadful way to bog down a system with meta crap.
Yeah, that made my head ache. What is with Modiphius? They seem to have some great licenses (mutant chronicles, Conan, Fallout, john carter of mars, etc; Fantastic production quality books, and that funky system (I think Conan uses doom). Is Modiphius owned by some dude who won a lottery or has a super wealthy patron?
I prefer pulpy or 80's style settings where there isn't any metaphysical distinction between magic and tech. That's what I love about the Dark Crystal's setting. It has astral projection, divination, wormholes, axis mundi, genetic engineering, etc and none of it is called out as distinctly magic or technology. There isn't a distinction.
Same goes for the Lovecraft mythos. Memorizing maths lets you travel through space and time!
Reading the OP I was mildly confused about how to answer. Reading the posts I am now very confused about how to answer. Dark Heresy? I loves me some 40k, but I'm not sure I'd put that "in Genre"... but then again I'm not sure how I'd parse that Genre entirely, so...
If some form of juxtaposition of magic and technology is crucial (magitech or magic vs tech, as the OP suggests), where do I go? Honestly, I rather liked the Eberron setting, but that makes me a pretty basic bitch.
If we open it up a bit more, I suppose as settings (not rules) go, I'm rather fond of the World of Darkness, where magic creatures face down assault rifles, etc, but that feels more out of Genre than 40k.
Fading Suns? But the 'magic' and the 'tech' aren't really in opposition or working together.
Fukit: I nominate Deadlands. Steam-punk demon driven technology, alongside real world industrial age tech, undead gunslingers and poker card magic.
I thought ICE's Space Master was a sort of near miss in this regard. It did a fairly good job of being not-Traveller, and almost made it as an interesting world. The major influences seemed to be Dune (especially the David Lynch movie), Star Wars and Blade Runner - which kind of made sense given when it was produced.
While I was a Star Wars fan as a wee lad, I never got into role playing in the setting, although I may get the WEG reprint.
Have to say, hands down, my favorite Science Fantasy Roleplaying Game is the original edition Gamma World.
Had a splendid Gamma World game with a nearly complete TPK JIm Ward style, last weekend while running an online game at Virtual GaryCon XII. Look for some additional reports by me here in the next few days on the finally released Secrets of Blackmoor DvDs, The last convention I did attend on the first weekend of March, CincyCon, and of course Virtual GaryCon XII, where we spun up an amazing number, 668 online rpg gaming sessions and events with just ten days notice after the live convention in Lake Geneva was cancelled due to various State lock downs, and shelter-in-place orders, that went into effect from the 13th to 20th of March.
From my report over on the GaryCon FB page:
Gamma World AAR 3/28/2020
For those of you that enjoy Gamma World, just remember what Jim says "Jim Ward doesn't kill players, Players kill players!"
..and the players upheld the finest traditions of Gamma World yesterday managing a near complete TPK about an hour into the game...
The Players got in a fight in the desert with another biker gang, They launched a nuclear tipped neutron missile at the other gang and missed. That wasn't the bad part, but it was flashy and spectacular, and they managed to create a horrific radioactive sandstorm, and irradiated some more of the post-apocalyptic Northern California desert for another hundred thousand years or so. No the real problem was they were busy hosing down the other biker gang in the very best traditions of murder-hoboes of the post apocalypse.
They completely obliterated another small biker band with a photon grenade, had run another part of the largest band back into the radioactive sandstorm that they had created.
All that remained was this biker chick with an Uzi, and her side-kick, some floppy looking dude with a rocket launcher, who was taking pot-shots at the players. Well the mutant biker players closed range to use their death stench and other mutant abilities on the chick, and for three rounds she stands at very close to point blank range exchanging gunfire giving as good as she got, wounding two of the players. Now when she and her sidekick are standing alone at last, the player all rush her, to try to finish her and her companion off...
AxiomToday at 9:51 AM
... this cant end well.
GameDaddyToday at 10:00 AM
at point blank range. ...and get this. She literally gets down to 1 Hp and surrenders. She and her sidekick drop their weapons and hold their hands up high. The players like sharks in the water close in for the kill, and refuse to accept her surrender. They all open up at point blank range and every one of them misses. She holds up her hands attempting to surrender a second time and the players completely ignore this.
One the players a mutant biker by the name of Psycho Suzie (on account of the way she treats her boyfriends) rolls right up to them and announces, I'm going to use my pyrokinetics on them. Like the little girl in firestarter, with her mind she can literally light stuff up and bring the burning fires of hell. I'm like "are you sure?" and Psycho Suzie is like "yah, no way I'm going to let her live" and proceeds to turn the two into living human torches.
The only problem? The sidekick had been launching rockets at the players, and he was still carrying four rockets in a pouch which all simultaneously detonated delivering 20d6 of damage. Somehow every single one of the players had moved in so close they were all caught in the blast radius. Only one biker survived with like 7 HP. everything else ...gone.
AxiomToday at 10:02 AM
errr... again I state, I will have to thank work for making me skip the game. I would have been livid at Psycho Suzie.
GameDaddyToday at 10:04 AM
...she didn't make it. Hahahahaa.... I don't think I could have done better as a GM, giving them the chance to accept her humble surrender. Biker chick fought brave and well until the very end. I couldn't help laughing at the players though.
Do you think that makes me a bad GM?
I'm sorry I'm laughing again....
Phantasy Star setting? :o Love the blend, feels seamless while still alien to me.
Star Wars d6, obviously. I've recently been trying to start a Star Wars 5e game (sw5e.com), though, to try out 5e rules, but ran into some setbacks. It's not perfect, but content looks good for what's essentially a passion project.
RIFTS was also a great science fantasy setting. Not the best system, but solid world concept. Also gotta mention Shadowrun, since no one else has (tsk, tsk).
Quote from: oggsmash;1125667Yeah, that made my head ache. What is with Modiphius? They seem to have some great licenses (mutant chronicles, Conan, Fallout, john carter of mars, etc; Fantastic production quality books, and that funky system (I think Conan uses doom). Is Modiphius owned by some dude who won a lottery or has a super wealthy patron?
I sometimes wonder the same thing. I often run into fantastic looking games using some great IP's with that lame system. I once did a search for the system a few years ago to check forums and such for people's take on it and every single time someone criticized it the game's designers seemed to show up out of the woodwork to ardently defend it and insist people give it a chance. It was WEIRD.
Quote from: Opaopajr;1125689Phantasy Star setting? :o Love the blend, feels seamless while still alien to me.
I've never played a tabletop based on that setting, but Phantasy Star was one of the first RPGs I ever played. It's the quintessential science fantasy world.
Quote from: jeff37923;1125577WEG 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.
+2 to wisdom and +100 to good taste.
Quote from: GameDaddy;1125686Do you think that makes me a bad GM?
I'm sorry I'm laughing again....
Awesome!!! That's a great Gamma World story!
Quote from: VisionStorm;1125694I sometimes wonder the same thing. I often run into fantastic looking games using some great IP's with that lame system. I once did a search for the system a few years ago to check forums and such for people's take on it and every single time someone criticized it the game's designers seemed to show up out of the woodwork to ardently defend it and insist people give it a chance. It was WEIRD.
Modiphius is really weird.
Great IPs, licenced & homegrown.
Great art.
Great presentation.
Bland content.
Terrible home system.
Quote from: VisionStorm;1125694RIFTS was also a great science fantasy setting. Not the best system, but solid world concept.
I just received my kickstarter pack of Savage Rifts Adventurer's Edition last week. If you don't mind Savage Worlds, it's 6.5 beautiful books (the last 0.5 is a thin softcover book with bonus content) that only require you to add the SW core rules to have a complete line. Does it have everything that Palladium Rifts had? No, but whether that's a bug or a feature is up to you to decide. For me, it was < $200 (including a core rule book and S&H) for a complete game that I'm hoping to play as soon as the Stay@Home2020 plague ends.
Quote from: S'mon;1125710Modiphius is really weird.
...
Terrible home system.
The home system has variations with every game line. Some are heavily narrative (Star Trek Adventures) while others are far more traditional (Conan). Still, if the base mechanic of 2d20 doesn't work for you, it might be hard to want to spend any time looking deeper.
Quote from: Nobby-W;1125681I thought ICE's Space Master was a sort of near miss in this regard. It did a fairly good job of being not-Traveller, and almost made it as an interesting world. The major influences seemed to be Dune (especially the David Lynch movie), Star Wars and Blade Runner - which kind of made sense given when it was produced.
Agree, although Blade Runner has got very limited relevance to the other 2, not sure how you synthesise.
I could see the Jedi as a Dune-style Ancient School, with toned-down powers and no lightsabers, and the Sith as an offshoot of corrupt mercenaries.
Quote from: S'mon;1125710Modiphius is really weird.
Great IPs, licenced & homegrown.
Great art.
Great presentation.
Bland content.
Terrible home system.
My thoughts exactly. Loving the look of the new skyrim minis though.
Anyway having recently said I couldn't see myself making the investment to get into Tekumel, I went ahead and bought 3 Tekumel books off drivethru - the 70s ones, Empire of the Petal Throne and 2 vols of Swords and Glory, which arrived on Friday. Welcome to 1970s production values - wall of text - but it's kind of endearing. I got as far as realising you need to roll a lot of d100 and cross-reference to make a character, but that is probably another thread.
The Wilderlands of High Fantasy -- both the original JG version and, more explicitly, the Necromancer Games reboot -- has some science-fantasy elements that can be completely ignored or dialed up to full gonzo as desired (mine is set to "medium.")
The early (proto-?)OSR blog scene ca. 2009-12 was a treasure trove of science-fantasy. Savage Swords of Athanor, Carcosa, Planet Algol, Anomalous Subsurface Environment, Black Ziggurats, more I can't recall...
Quote from: Marchand;1125714Agree, although Blade Runner has got very limited relevance to the other 2, not sure how you synthesise.
I could see the Jedi as a Dune-style Ancient School, with toned-down powers and no lightsabers, and the Sith as an offshoot of corrupt mercenaries.
It definitely had light sabres under a different name and did telepathy using much the same spell-lists system as Rolemaster, although there wasn't a direct knock-off of the force. You could do a pure telepath or hybridise it with other classes for something analogous to a semi-spell caster class in Rolemaster.
You could see Blade Runner's influence in the eugenics and replicant species, of which there were about half a dozen of each but not so much in the setting. There wasn't much of the cyberpunk or blade runner vibe in the setting, that was mostly a knockoff of the great houses of the Dune 'verse. Really it came out a few years before cyberpunk really started trending in sci-fi literature. It does give the distinct impression of being written by serious Dune fanboys.
There were a few odd traveller-ism's here and there; the authors had obviously read if not played it at some point. Looking back at it, I get the impression that it was designed to be not-Traveller. Many of the OTU conceits like tech levels, short jump ranges and travel-as-communication were obviously rejected.
I'd rate it about a B or B+ in the grand scheme of things. It wasn't crap, and it almost made it as having some atmosphere (if more than a little derivative of Dune) but it wasn't great either. Sort of a near miss.
Quote from: HappyDaze;1125712I just received my kickstarter pack of Savage Rifts Adventurer's Edition last week. If you don't mind Savage Worlds, it's 6.5 beautiful books (the last 0.5 is a thin softcover book with bonus content) that only require you to add the SW core rules to have a complete line. Does it have everything that Palladium Rifts had? No, but whether that's a bug or a feature is up to you to decide. For me, it was < $200 (including a core rule book and S&H) for a complete game that I'm hoping to play as soon as the Stay@Home2020 plague ends.
Did that include the world books? Or the adventure base books and the savage rifts books? I have the explorer edition savage rifts set and we were about to kick off a rifts campaign before Sharona Cyrus showed up. I think Savage Worlds is almost the perfect rules to make rifts work. Juicer I did change, i think they should, by lore, have quickness as a power/ trait. But have not played that out yet. Have you run any games with the older version? I thought KS made the best move of his life lending out his ip to different rules.
Quote from: oggsmash;1125753Did that include the world books? Or the adventure base books and the savage rifts books? I have the explorer edition savage rifts set and we were about to kick off a rifts campaign before Sharona Cyrus showed up. I think Savage Worlds is almost the perfect rules to make rifts work. Juicer I did change, i think they should, by lore, have quickness as a power/ trait. But have not played that out yet. Have you run any games with the older version? I thought KS made the best move of his life lending out his ip to different rules.
It's the three Savage Rifts books redone along with four new ones (one of which is a thin softcover). I did not play the previous version despite having it on pdf. I was going to buy hard copies, then saw the new kickstarter and decided to jump in on it. The whole thing looks very shiney.
I very much enjoy the Star Wars universe, in general. I am not 100% sure how easy it would be to balance the force-using and non-force-using classes in a roleplaying game. I have tried d20 versions of Star Wars and it worked . . . ok-ish. I am also not a huge fan of the vagueness of the Jedi and Sith ethical codes. Looking at the source material, it is possible for a fictional universe but hard for an RPG where players need to have a sense of what is the light and dark side.
I did browse a copy of the WEG d6 star wars and thought it had a ton of potential. Never owned a copy.
The FFG system actually moves away from coherence, as they seem to have a separate game for each archetype. What I really want is a game where Han Solo, Princess Leia, and Luke Skywalker are all viable and interesting characters. Bonus points if Chewbecca and R2D2 work well.
Quote from: HappyDaze;1125712I just received my kickstarter pack of Savage Rifts Adventurer's Edition last week. If you don't mind Savage Worlds, it's 6.5 beautiful books (the last 0.5 is a thin softcover book with bonus content) that only require you to add the SW core rules to have a complete line. Does it have everything that Palladium Rifts had? No, but whether that's a bug or a feature is up to you to decide. For me, it was < $200 (including a core rule book and S&H) for a complete game that I'm hoping to play as soon as the Stay@Home2020 plague ends.
I never got into Savage Worlds but I might check out a PDF eventually just to see what they did with it. I might even try to convert the setting to my own system if I ever get the itch to play RIFTS again. Hell, if I still had my old books I might be tempted to play using the Palladium system with some modifications (like maybe lowering MDC to being equivalent to x10 SDC rather than a whopping x100), but I don't know WTF happened to those books. I might have lost them to a termite infestation years ago, but I don't remember seeing them in the pile of damaged stuff. I know a friend of mine loved them, so maybe I lent them to him and they still live. Not holding out hope, though.
Quote from: VisionStorm;1125767I never got into Savage Worlds but I might check out a PDF eventually just to see what they did with it. I might even try to convert the setting to my own system if I ever get the itch to play RIFTS again. Hell, if I still had my old books I might be tempted to play using the Palladium system with some modifications (like maybe lowering MDC to being equivalent to x10 SDC rather than a whopping x100), but I don't know WTF happened to those books. I might have lost them to a termite infestation years ago, but I don't remember seeing them in the pile of damaged stuff. I know a friend of mine loved them, so maybe I lent them to him and they still live. Not holding out hope, though.
The Savage Worlds conversion for Rifts really did an amazing job of capturing much of the flavor of Rifts without the annoying rules of Palladium. It has its own version of Mega-Damage (Heavy Armor and Heavy Weapons) that are much better balanced than in the original source, while the use of Iconic Frameworks (where you get things like Juicer, Burster, Ley Line Walker, Cyber-Knight, and Glitter Boy Pilot) does a great job of removing the "sameness" that often existed among starting Savage Worlds characters. Keep in mind that, if you decide to give it a go, you'll need at least a SW core and the three original titles. For SWADE versions in pdf, that's about $45. I think it's worth it, but I paid about 4x that for pdf and hard copy plus box and doodads, so I'm admittedly biased.
Well, my favorite Science Fantasy game as of now has turned out to be DCC, based on the sci-fantasy setting I created for my Last Sun campaign (which you can look into in various issues of RPGPundit Presents (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/451/Spectre-Press)!).