You have five minutes to explain to me why Science Fantasy is not the greatest genre.
It's literally everything good about Fantasy and Science Fiction put together into one glorious clusterfuck.
>>43956733
But it's also not Science Fiction or Fantasy, so it lacks the things that makes those things those things.
It's all subjective. Just because someone wants to play Fantasy doesn't mean they also want to play Science Fantasy.
>>43956733
Sometimes science fantasy embodies the worst of those two genre. Like in your pic.
>>43956733
Because if YOU like it, it must be flawed.
>>43956733
Because it encourages writers to Deus ex their way out of corners. The writing is typically poorer quality and less thought out.
>>43956733
>It's literally everything good about Fantasy and Science Fiction
It's also literally everything bad about them. Twice as much shit as one or the other.
>>43956733
I feel like it's waaaay too easy to fall into the special snowflake trying-way-too-hard territory by just shoving 'science' into all the dumb, over the top fantasy shit you think of and will usually contain fucking magitech, which is almost universally shit.
I think it's better when there's more of own genre with some bits of the other. For instance, I quite like how Star Wars is a big sci-fi clusterfuck of aliens and shit, but the enemy is an dark empire ruled by an evil wizard and the technology is offset by some small usage of a long fogotten art of literal magic. But we're still flying around in spaceships fighting aliens and shit. I just like that. Or stuff like John Carter of Mars, fantasy shit on Mars and the guy travels there telepathically.
>The best genre
>Anything other than wuxia
>>43958105
>reading genre fiction
>>43957043
>and will usually contain fucking magitech, which is almost universally shit.
I feel like pulling "magitech" off is essentially the only situation in which having an actual Magic System properly works for you. A lot of what makes magitech so simultaneously gaudy and bland is that they use "magic" to ignore any actual practicality aspect of the technology, and "tech" to ignore anything potentially interesting about the magic. It ends up being like the worst of steampunk, but without any of the alt-history flavor or vague resemblance to actual physical things.
But if you actually have a background for what your magic is, and how it can interact with your tech, and what its limits and quirks are as an engineering aspect and what makes it different than do-anything voodoo writer paste, anything that actually makes it *fit* as a component of "magitech", that can be cool.
Also, >>43956776 this.
Science Fantasy is cool, sometimes! It's like futuristic mythology and traveller's tales. But without that mythic background it ends up feeling a little arbitrary - we accept magic swords and flying dragons and wizards because That's What Fantasy Is, because even though you're making shit up it's a variety of pretend that we already know and accept. But if you want to make up totally unrealistic shit about a future setting, the pretend really shows, because we can clearly feel that we can't get to there from here.
And, like multiverse-type settings, it often ends up so kitchen-sinky and unconstrained that you could have almost anything show up and it would "fit." Once you have everything, it just gets blended into a bland mass.
>>43956733
What is science fantasy? Examples in fiction? Serious question.
Is it just a generic high fantasy setting, except characters can apply scientific knowledge/methodology to engineer the shit out of stuff and break the setting (like idk flame elemental powered combustion engines or sentient iPod golem bard mascots or magical mines/artillery/modern warfare with MAGIC?)
Or a setting where magic is carefully fleshed out and has rules and exists in setting as a logical as another observable/measurable force of nature, and isn't just used as a way to explain shit by lazy/bad writers?
>>43958593
Feels like the former could work in fiction (though only because of plot and/or special snowflake protagonists) and in games would ultimately be ruined by munchkins trying to create dynamite or something.
>>43958593
i would say early pulp fiction.
Like the diying earth.
>>43958379
You're absolutely right about magitech. I like the idea in WH40K of lighting incense and chanting litanies to machines, I'd like for something to take that a step further and have that be the magitech.
Your engines and reactors and all sorts of industrial machinery actually powered by plain old rituals. Chanting, sacrifices, litanies, anointment - the machines are just machines, they have one regular function, but have choruses of people singing to the engines making them work. Instead of oil or coal, ritual. I feel like that could be made interesting.
>>43958593
Star Wars. Star Trek, especially the later series. Babylon 5. Lensman. The more sci-fi end of comic books. The more fantasy end of steampunk.
Science Fantasy merges seamlessly with the softest science fiction - it's the point at which you give up "realism" altogether and have no problem throwing fantasy tropes in as long as you paper over them with technobabble. If it has psychic powers, arbitrarily advanced alien technology, and interstellar travel, it's probably science fantasy.
>>43956733
>You have five minutes to explain to me why Science Fantasy is not the greatest genre.
Because it's not neo-post-apocalyptic gothic victorian erotica.
>>43956733
Honestly the only science fantasy I can even think of is Star Wars. And like... Eberron? Maybe?
What else is there? It seems like it could be fun. Or go horribly horribly wrong.
>>43958105
>implying that you can't have Wuxia Science Fantasy
>>43958593
>What is science fantasy?
OP here, the kind of Science Fantasy I like is basically just cramming Sci-Fi and Fantasy together.
Cyborg dragons. Spaceships powered by arcane rituals where a sorcerer is nearly as important as a technician. Having to appease the local God of the star you just warped to so he doesn't curse you. Sorcerers using giant mecha to cast spells they couldn't do alone.
Asura's Wrath is a pretty good idea of what I'm talking about. The later Final Fantasy games would also be an example.
People should check on phantasy star, especially the Sega Genesis games. That's more or less how a science fantasy game runs.
>>43958998
40k is basically science fantasy.
![metal-gear-rising-revengeance-pic-2[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/xnvSjCL.jpg "metal-gear-rising-revengeance-pic-2[1].jpg")
>>43958224
>Having shit taste
>>43959003
Alright you've got me there
>>43956733
The relationship of goblins, kobolds, and skeletons to the world entirely changes once you introduce industrialization, economies of scale, and the AK-47.
In science fantasy the scrub races inherit the universe. When you can field that many able bodies and replace them just as quickly when they die, and affordably arm each one to the point that they can take out the most powerful wizards, everything else just can't compete.
>>43959003
I want this
>>43959312
Not a problem if you prefer human-only settings.
>>43956733
The sad thing is, you're probably serious.
>>43959074
Phantasy Star 4 was my Crack when I was a kid.
>>43956733
Science fantasy usually ends up being an incoherent mess with no consistency in style or tone, like 40K or most comic books. The only sci-fantasy I've seen that's even halfway decent is Star Wars.
>>43959318
Xiaolin Showdown is kind of this I guess.
Gintama if you are willing to have Weexia instead.
One uncommon method of doing Science Fantasy which is really cool when done well is making a futuristic society based off of ancient myth and legends.
Asura's Wrath for instance takes place in a futuristic society which has massive influences from Hinduism and Buddhism:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apojWw_ptO0
There's spaceships and holographic screens and fighter jets but everything still feels fantastical.
>>43956733
In general, it's everything I hate in those two genres with nothing of what I like.
>>43958224
/lit/ pls
Would endless legend be science fantasy or just science fiction in disguise?
>>43959812
dammit forgot my pic
>>43959812
>>43959833
All the Endless games are basically (science) fantasy. Dust and its implications for society aren't examined in some in-depth way, it's just a valuable phlebotium that makes the setting go.
>>43959812
Both EL and ES are Science Fantasy, dust is pretty much magic.
Because it's just fantasy. I'm not sure where the idea that adding advanced technology to a fantasy setting makes it not fantasy, but it needs to fucking stop.
>>43958593
A lot of early pulp was basically 'Science Fantasy' because the two genres hadn't fully differentiated yet. So you had the hero getting on their robot-piloted, atomic-powered rocketship, travelling through interstellar space to land on a distant planet- and then getting out to fight an evil demon-summoning wizard with a magic sword while stripped to the waist.
>>43959873
This. Adding random high-tech devices to your setting doesn't make it sci-fi. Science fiction is about exploring a particular set of scientific ideas in a broader context, and seeing what kind of interesting stories they can generate.
>>43958593
Metal Gear Solid before Guns of the Patriots.
>>43956733
I know two people with very specific tastes.
One of them really dislikes technology in RPG's and sticks to playing generic fantasy like DnD and PF.
The other thinks fantasy is really bland and only plays technology-heavy stuff and thus plays shadowrun.
The latter might be ok with science fantasy (because eventually that's what SR is), but the first would really dislike it.
>>43959082
I don't know how I didn't think of that.
>>43956733
Because it's not dungeonpunk/magitech, which is the same mix, only done right.
