I'm a big fan of both Science Fiction and Fantasy as genres. I spent my childhood in the 1990s, which was a period in which there wasn't really a lot of fantasy-genre stuff. The 80s (the decade I was born in, though I was only about three and a half by the time 1990 came around) had seen a ton of fantasy movies, but a few things, I think, pushed the 90s more toward science fiction. First, you can't ignore the growing presence of computers in daily life. My dad's a professor of computer science, so I think there was never a time while I was around that we didn't have a computer in the house, but the idea of having a computer went from a somewhat rare thing to basically universal by the year 2000. The Internet and specifically the World Wide Web (a term people don't really bother with anymore, but specifically this thing that you access via web browsers, and upon which you're reading this blog, as opposed to, like, email) exploded in use and popularity.
At the same time, the popularity of Star Wars, and the Star Trek films, which started in the late 70s and were at their height in the 80s, the latter of which then spawned Star Trek: The Next Generation, which itself helped to inspire a number of other popular spacefaring sci-fi shows, meant that the public was thinking sci-fi a lot. Furthermore, the 90s was a period of space exploration - the Hubble space telescope and the Pathfinder Mars mission made it look like life in space was just around the corner.
I think it was probably the Harry Potter series (books and movies) and especially the Lord of the Rings movies that came out in the early 2000s that elevated Fantasy to similar heights. (It's crazy for me to think that it's been longer between now and Return of the King than it was between The Fellowship of the Ring and Return of the Jedi.)
As a consummate nerd, then, I've sort of tilted back and forth between the genres. My household, particularly from my Dad's side, was always very rational. We weren't religious (at least not spiritually - I still feel a strong cultural connection to my Dad's Judaism and my Mom's Catholicism). My sister likes to joke that our religion growing up was Star Trek, and certainly I think the optimistic humanism of that series remains very appealing to me.
This is all a very winding road to lead to the following discussion:
Immersed in the fantasy landscape of D&D for many years now, I've been itching to try out some sci-fi roleplaying. And I'm finding that inspiration is a little harder to come by.
I think there are a couple reasons for this.
Fantasy, ultimately, is the genre where literally anything can happen. You're unbound by just about anything because you can literally say a wizard did it (or a god, or something else). Sci-fi at least requires some internal consistency, though admittedly you can always invoke Clarke's Law about sufficiently advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic.
Still, there's this other issue: Fantasy has a lot more kind of "public domain" tropes. Tolkien codified the classic fantasy elf, but he didn't invent them. Dwarves, orcs, goblins, and any manner of existing folklore creatures from any culture are fair game for fantasy.
Sci-fi, though, tends to expect novelty. Whether you're going for the deeply alien entities from 2001: A Space Odyssey or Arrival, or for more human-like ones like the Vulcans of Star Trek, there's not generally a list that any casual fan of the genre could point to and say "oh yeah, those are the classics."
For example, if you look at the default playable races in Starfinder, Humans and Androids are really the only ones you could show to people and expect them to immediately get the basic gist of them. Kasathans, Vesk, Lashunta, Shirren, and Ysoki all require an explanation.
Compare this even with Pathfinder's main races: Dwarf, Elf, Gnome, Half-Elf, Halfling, Half-Orc, and Human. While Halfling is arguably more specifically tied to Tolkien (and haven't become as universal as Orcs have) you can probably expect any casual fantasy fan to know what you're talking about with these (the most explanation you'd need for Halfling is "oh, those are Hobbits").
Now, sci-fi does have its own popular tropes for villainous threats, but I think it's relatively straightforward to say "this adventure is about fighting the undead" or "this one has a mad wizard" or "this one has a demonic incursion" or "this one has you slaying a dragon."
Often, science fiction builds itself around a novel conflict and trying to logically determine how people would respond to such a thing.
Now, one fallback that one gets to enjoy with both Spelljammer and Starfinder is that both of these still take place in a fantasy universe. Fantasy often puts these sort of arbitrary limits on technological development - as if magic and technology up to a certain level couldn't co-exist. But by embracing the science-fantasy hybrid genre, it actually gives you a bit of an out - you can still tell stories about undead legions, demonic incursions, mad wizards, and rampaging dragons. Just, this time, rather than slaying the dragon with a legendary sword, you can shoot it with a rocket launcher.
Honestly, I don't know if I have much of a point so much as I'm walking myself through how to tell a story in a sci-fi setting.
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