Why is fantasy so much more common in tabletop games than sci-fi? I can understand why horror is rare, since it's difficult to keep a horror theme going when a group is cracking jokes and such, but sci-fi should be possible.
>>43511796
By what metric? There's almost certainly roughly equal numbers of sci-fi and fantasy rpg's out there. I'd go so far as to say every genre is well represented if you're willing to look around.
If you mean by player count, then that's just DnD/pathfinder domination. Still, there's large fan bases for 40k, shadowrun ect.
>>43511796
>Hating on old BSG
Nigger.
>>43511796
No Red Dwarf?
It's probably the most realistic depiction of what an RPG party in space would be like.
>>43511796
>neo galactica in high tier
>old galactica in garbage tier
I bet the cylons did this.
>>43513071
I honestly want to see you defend this scene.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7CvyLCZtMg
Go.
>>43511796
>B5 below DS9
m8
>>43511796
>Lexx
>garbage tier
every time
>>43516448
Why are old sci-fi series and movies so cool while new ones are such grimderp pseudophilosophical garbage?
>>43516491
Nostalgia
>>43516516
I honestly can't imagine how or why anyone would feel nostalgia towards Stargate: Universe.
>>43516448
>Not loving this scene
Next time try to hide harder Cylon.
>>43516491
Old sci-fi was made when the world seemed brighter. We're currently living in a time when the outlook is a bit grimmer, what with the lower job security and all. If the situation ever gets bigger it's likely we'll get more noblebright again.
>>43516551
I'll fucking fight you
>>43511796
>God Tier
Space 1999
>Good Tier
Babylon 5
>Pulp Shit Tier
Everything else.
>>43511796
because in fantasy, you can freely make stuff up wheras in sci-fi you kinda have a harder time creating a futuristic world considering all the techs, cultures and shits like that.
>>43511796
>Why is fantasy so much more common in tabletop games than sci-fi?
Sheer quantity: of fiction books, mythological sources, TV series, films, comics, etc. and of course roleplaying books.
Historically this hobby began with fantasy in mind.
It just so happens that people give less of a shit about muh space and cyberpunk when they regularly find computers inside their pockets.
>>43511796
Swap Bab 5 and TNG, Bring Atlantis above Voyager and raise Crusade a tier and we've got a deal.
>>43511796
Pick one of those answers to answer your question
1-Myths
2-Lord of the rings
3-D&d
4-Gurps
5-Fatal
6-Hybrid
>>43511796
Because it requires more imagination.
>>43511796
>Classic Blunder
>>43516491
>implying old sci fi wasn't pseudo-philosophical garbage, too
It's just philosophy you're used to ignoring. Old sci-fi had a lot of goofy-ass assumptions built into it, you just don't have to think about it because it's all outdated.
If you're asking why it's grimderp, there are a couple of reasons: People aren't as optimistic about the future (and with some pretty good reasons) and it's also a reaction to the past. Optimistic, shiny, bright sci-fi feels cheesy, like a kid's movie or something. So your options are: Follow the cultural zeitgeist and create something with modern messages (which old sci fi did, too, don't forget) or else go against the grain and create something that doesn't feel authentic.
I mean, you can't really write something that you don't believe in at least a little. Not to any sort of quality, anyways.
>>43511796
It takes more effort to construct a sci-fi world. With fantasy, you can assume that things like swords gold and potatoes and horses (or some other riding animal) are around, then think about how the fantastic elements work with them to make the world. It's easy to draw inspiration from the past to fill in the gaps. Plus, since magic is fantastic, it doesn't have to match real science to have logical consistency; you can think of the effects of various magical things on the setting while glossing over the "cause".
In sci-fi, by contrast, you have to create a whole cohesive world from scratch. How does future tech affect weapons technology? Communications? Medicine? Transportation? Entertainment? Fashion? Politics? You have to speculate on all of these things, not only for how they work "in the future", but on how they'd work for all the different alien species on the various planets in the universe. Not to mention you'd have to think about how various species evolve, their biology and culture, the environments on their home planets, how they interact to each other, basically a whole mini-setting for each one. Plus, since it's at least thematically connected to real-world science, then anything that doesn't make sense will raise some eyebrows; people are willing to accept a few fantastic elements like telepathy or dimensional warps, but they won't be so credulous if something that's presented as X doesn't work like X.
Now, in many forms of media, certain setting details can be glossed over. If we're watching a movie, we don't need to know the reproductive habits of a certain background alien's species, or what the range on their communicators is, or exactly what different weapons the ship has, or how much their hand-held blasters cost compared to their travel rations, because those setting details aren't immediately important to the story. But a tabletop RPG book is about the setting; if any of these things are left out, then the hole will be apparent.
>>43522020
Your premise is flawed. Most sci-fi is basically just fantasy in the opposite direction. People aren't choosing not to play sci-fi games because they're poorly designed or thought out. GURPS is a good system. Mongoose Traveller is a good system. Eclipse Phase is a decent system. Shadowrun is a solid system.
>>43522020
What you're saying basically just boils down to arguing that there's more familiar tropes for fantasy to lean on. To a certain extent that's true, if only because we have a narrow view of what fantasy is allowed to be thanks to the popularity of Tolkien and Howard.
But sci-fi has it's own tropes to lean on. Works like Star Trek, Neuromancer, 40k, have all laid similar groundwork as landmark fantasy authors. You can borrow and adapt from those worlds with out much difficutly, and indeed, many sci-fi games do.
>>43522486
Anything can be boiled down to mush. It's not an issue of tropes and archetypes, it's a matter of sci-fi necessitating an entirely constructed world by its nature. Fantasy can draw inspiration from history to reliably fill in the gaps. Science fiction has to decide on an enormous number of minute details, all of which could be represented in a massive number of ways, and all of which should fit together in a sufficiently well-thought-out setting.
>>43525825
But science fiction doesn't have to pull those details out of thin air, that's what I'm saying. Sci-fi, like any genre, draws from it's peers more often than inventing things from the whole cloth.
