Just as it states, also what do you want out of a science fiction game?
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There are three science fiction RPGs that I currently love, and for different reasons.
Doctor Who- This rules light game fits the theme of Doctor Who perfectly I think. Story Chips are one of my favorite additions in a modern RPG.
Dark Heresy- The first of the Fantasy Flight 40k rpgs. 40k has a unique flavor to it, and I think this highlights one aspect of 40k that is really interesting to explore.
Edge of the Empire- This is still in beta, except there is an official beginner's box. The fact that Fantasy Flight had the guts to put out a Star Wars game without Jedi, focusing on the outer rim and darker components of star wars was really appealing to me, and so far it is shaping up nicely. The Destiny points are a good mix of story chips from Doctor Who, and maybe Hero Points from Pathfinder. I think this will be the set of Star Wars games that will really appeal to Role Players vs Roll Players.
What? I'm not a roleplayer, just because I like SWSE? Bummer.
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What? I'm not a roleplayer, just because I like SWSE? Bummer.
No, I am suggesting the new one by Fantasy Flight will appeal to you if you are more of a Role Player rather than a Roll Player, because the combat is not very technical, but it allows for a lot of freedom and story building for the players.
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Science Fiction is fiction that has fantastic elements that are based upon some plausible and consistent science. Most science fiction is what I would call "science fantasy."
I have yet found either a science fiction RPG or campaign that I would like to play in.
Just as it states, also what do you want out of a science fiction game?
What does science fiction mean to me? It's an arrow pointing from here to some compelling "out there" that we could maybe get to someday, for good or ill.
What do I want out of a science fiction game? Most of all I want a vision. There's a lot of pretty uninspired science fiction out there that reads like a shopping list of gizmos: power armor, plasma rifles, cybernetics, biotech, spaceships with energy shields and rayguns, robots, time machines, dimensional portals--but there's no big catchy idea that says THE FUTURE IS LIKE THIS. So it sort of blends with all the other games with identical big shopping lists. Some of the best science fiction roleplaying games I've come across:
Cyberpunk
Star*Drive
Trinity
Mechwarrior
Warhammer 40K
Metamorphosis Alpha
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Dragons are strictly an element of fantasy, because combining flight, fire-breathing, and strength/durability into a single creature ultimately violates the law of conservation of mass/energy. The only way to pull it off would be if dragons ran off a nuclear reactor. And nothing organic could survive that sort of physiology.
You might check out the film A Flight of Dragons.
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I can't really say what Sci Fi means to me... but I can say this:
Star Trek is SciFi; Star Wars is Fantasy in Space.
I put both of them in the Science Fantasy category. To be honest nearly, if not all video "science fiction" is really science fantasy.
To me the big distinction is in tone rather than scientific plausibility. Science fiction is about looking to the future, to progress and more progress, and the notion that the future will be better than the past (though we may have to make it be that way). Science fantasy (which is just fantasy IN SPAAAACE, generally), is more about things like recovering the glories of the past.
True science fiction explores possible answers to a question in the format "What if X is so?"
Fantasy explores possible answers the question "What if X were so?"
Many scifi stories use fantasy in order to provide their answer, but they are still distinct from fantasy stories because they're not about a fantasy question (Asimov asked "What if it's possible to build artificial people" but before he can do that do that he had to imagine the positronic brain, which he knew was impossible). The more a scifi story does that, the softer it is, but it doesn't make it any less a scifi story.
The other grey area is science fantasy, which is asking a "What if X were so?" fantasy question which involves science. That's fiction about science, but it's not scifi, just like a comedic love story staring police officers isn't a police procedural.
So what makes a scifi game? A fusion of speculation, story and gameplay.
What makes an ideal scifi game? Interesting answers, entertaining fluff (or emergent narrative) and fun mechanics.
I think the most important thing about science-fiction is, that it's not about the gadgets. Good sci-fi is always about social issues and contemporary social critique.
In some cases, the gedgets are a means to that end. You introduce one significant element that is different from our everyday world, which is used to increase the contrast and make whatever social issues the creator is concerned with more visible.
Smart sci-fi is always about the creator observing something in his culture and society and extrapolating it into the future to show the possible consequences of the choices that have to be made how to deal with contemporary issues.
In the most basic sense, it is true that every sci-fi setting is always either an utopia or a dystopia. Either a model of society that the creator proposes as a desireable goal for our society, or as a model for what our society could become like if the neccessary measures are not taken in our time.
Inception is a sci-fi movie that has only one single technological gadget. Everything else is completely identical to reality. Or the video game Mirror's Edge does have no fictional gadgets at all, yet the feel matches perfectly with post-cyberpunk settings like Ghost in the Shell or Blade runner.
On the other hand, you have Star Wars. Star Wars has tonnes of fictional futuristic technology, but the themes and issues are all fantasy. There is no relation at all to contemporary culture and society with neither any advocacy for future improvements of our society, or warnings of future problems. I would say Halo falls into the same category. It's about the evil monster empire invading the human kingdom and the human warriors are trying their best to find a magical artifact that can both defeat the evil monster empire and destroy the demonic hordes from hell that threaten to consume the whole world. There are some sprinkles of a slightly autoritarian human leadership and the treatment of transhumans and artificial lifeforms here and there in the bonus material, which do enhance the overall experience, but that's really not what the whole story is about.
Now what does this mean for a sci-fi RPG? I think the most important question to begin with is "Is it going to be futuristic society or futuristic technology". Both can make for very incredible worlds, but the whole outlook is very different.
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I have to say a lot of what we see today that is called Sci-Fi is not really Sci-Fi its more Sy-Fy. It is fantasy posing as sci-fi.
Sci-Fi is the effects of advancement of technology on the the world's culture, people, the individual etc. Not aliens coming to earth and trying to destroy us.
All good fiction is about characters, plot and theme, including science fiction and fantasy.
Science fiction is fiction that is based on exploring scientific discoveries, technological advancements or extrapolating current science or technology into the future.
Fantasy fiction is fiction that is based on exploring supernatural events, abilities or creatures. "Supernatural" means anything that can't be explained by natural laws, including magical spells, magical beasts, undead, etc.
The two are not mutually exclusive. Star Wars is an example of science fantasy fiction. Frank Herbert's "Dune" series had significant elements of supernatural events. The more stringently the story sticks to pure science, the "harder" it is, so "hard science fiction" is sci-fi that attempts to stick strictly to physical laws as we understand them. There is also a fuzzy area between them that is sometimes called "paranormal fiction" which is about pseudo-scientific things like telepathy, clairvoyance, etc.
It has become very rare to see any sci-fi story these days that does not have some element of fantasy to it.
I actually took a class that focused on true science fiction in college and the professor had some pretty keen ideas about this. At its essence true science fiction is about extrapolation, it is taking a single idea, be it a technology, Social paradigm,apocolyptic event..whatever and extrapolating what that ideas effect will be long term into the future.
For example in BladeRunner you are assumtion is that humans invent Android analogues and you extapolation is its effect on not only what it means to be human..but also how these new forms of life would affect society as a whole.
People think that just because you have lazer guns or space ships that they are watching science fiction...when really more often than not its just a Western with silver boots. True Science Fiction isnt in the trappings of tech and aliens etc. Its a predictive genre used for things like social comentary and often makes strong arguements about what is happening now in the world and where we are headed if we dont change. The veneer of robots and cybernetics is only crucial in that its the seed form which the comentary grows.
That pretty much leaves out Robert Forward and simmilar authors for whom it essentially is all about the gadgets, or in his case, the ships.I think the most important thing about science-fiction is, that it's not about the gadgets. Good sci-fi is always about social issues and contemporary social critique.
It doesnt leave them out...it just implies that they are a different genre. Which I would ascert they are. You can blur lines to varying degree for sure. For example the first Alien movie at its heart is a horror movie. There are trappings of science fiction but the plot, themes, the cinematography...they are all classical horror.
Star Wars is essentially a Western/Samurai movie...which coincidentally are the same thing. The you could change blasters for pistols, light sabers for swords, starships for horses and the plot could remain essentially intact.
Science Fiction is fiction that has fantastic elements that are based upon some plausible and consistent science. Most science fiction is what I would call "science fantasy."
I have yet found either a science fiction RPG or campaign that I would like to play in.
Eclipse Phase might not be a campaign you'd want to play in (it might), but it is definitely science fiction - near future, maybe within 50 years or so. The technologies are fiction, but based on the premises found in more recent Sci-Fi shows, like rogue AI, etc.
What I like is instead of playing a Wookie or 'gray skin' or other alien races, it's like Avatar (the movie) where you download into a body shell, that might be male or female, humanoid, cybernetic or a vehicle computer like on a star ship. So you can be whatever body type you want within the adventure and can change if you have the credits.
Also downloading your mind into a storage bank, works instead of resurrection. If you die, and your mind is stored, you can download once again - of course, you need the credits to pay for storage in the first place.
It's supposed to be post-apocalyptic, but near the apocalypse time, and as a survivor on a colony planet, asteroid or space station - only the solar system has been colonized, not the distant stars or other galaxies.
This is not a science fantasy setting. All the story elements are definitely within the scope of science, though certainly fiction.
Dr. Who on the other hand is pure fantasy, and not my kind of Sci-Fi.
...snip...what do you want out of a science fiction game?
Eclipse Phase, Numenera, Darwin's World, Star Wars (WEG & FFG)
Star Wars, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Dune, Stranger in a Strange Land and a host of other "epic fantasy or sci fi" stories are all well known and publicly acknowledged to have been written based on Joseph Campbell's seminal literary archetype study, "The Hero With a Thousand Faces." This work was so influential that it has become standard epic fantasy/sci-fi reading for pretty much any serious writer, or, as in my case, not so serious writers. Joseph Campbell was invited to George Lucas's house for an extended period of time while Lucas worked on the original Star Wars story.
Campbell's work described what he called the "monomyth" which he summarized as "A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man."
This epic story arc describes pretty much every epic story from Gilgamesh to Harry Potter.
Of course, they don't have to be directly based on Campbell to match. That's sort of the point of the monomyth.
I'm not at all sure about "written based on".
Star Wars has been publicly acknowledged.
Much of the LotR was written before Campbell's work was published, so it's unlikely to be based on the Hero.I'm not sure about Dune, Stranger or Harry Potter. I don't know of any direct statements suggesting influence. It's possible, but a quick search didn't turn anything up.
OK, it is true that Tolkien didn't base his work on Campbell's "monomyth" but Tolkien was working on a very similar concept at the same time as Campbell. Tolkien called it the "true myth" concept and he studied pretty much the same stories that Campbell did and came to more or less the same conclusion. His idea was that all of the great myths shared a story that was so similar that he believed they were all based unconsciously on the "true myth" that all humans intuitively understood.
The rest of these stories were written well after the "monomyth" was pretty much standard literary classwork and was discussed freely in any writing class or seminar. It is highly implausible that any successful writer from the 1950s to today was not exposed to Campbell's work. Heck, I learned about Campbell's "monomyth" in HIGH SCHOOL LITERATURE.
Also, Frank Herbert specifically said that "Dune" was written to subvert the monomyth. Instead of celebrating the "hero" he deliberately wrote Dune as a warning AGAINST the hero, but to do that he had to first create the hero.
Dune was also written as an ecological warning, a sort of sci-fi version of "Silent Spring."
In the most basic sense, it is true that every sci-fi setting is always either an utopia or a dystopia. Either a model of society that the creator proposes as a desireable goal for our society, or as a model for what our society could become like if the neccessary measures are not taken in our time
I challenge you to categorise The City from Transmetropolitan as one or the other in those terms. It has both wonders and horrible problems. It has its fair share of warnings about where we're headed, but it's not itself a warning.
The City is an exaggerated representation of here and now, warts and all. It's also quite certainly a sci-fi setting.I disagree about your interpretations of Star Wars and Halo. The Star Wars galaxy absolutely does relate to contemporary culture. There aren't generally one for one comparisons with modern groups or ideologies, but it does have a little to say about real issues.
As for Halo, the examples you give are no more fantasy than sci-fi. Yes, you can call the aliens demons, but you can also call them Nazis if you really want.
Not having been exposed to Campbell's "monomyth" before this thread I do want to ask a question: Did he create the idea or just articulate an existing idea?
As for the OP:
I have always had a hard time saying what is and isn't SciFi.
As for a game: I want a game where I can create a character, explore the world(s) around that character and in so doing develope that character. (Sort of the same thing I look for in any RPG).
Star Wars is essentially a Western/Samurai movie...which coincidentally are the same thing. The you could change blasters for pistols, light sabers for swords, starships for horses and the plot could remain essentially intact.Considering that the plot for the original movie was lifted, virtually whole from Kirosawa's "Hidden Fortress", Yeah. :)Is plot the defining thing, then?
I've seen Hidden Fortress. The influence is definitely there, but the differences are huge too. The themes, the character development, pretty much everything but a very general plot outline are different.
In terms of Genre I would say the plot is most certainly the defining factor. The rest are variables. Comedy, Drama, Science Fiction,Mystery, Horror...these are Genre's. Settings can change, time periods can change, You can introduce a multitude of themes and characters can develop in a myriad of ways.
I think the confusion arrises when tropes of a genre become so closely linked to the body of work that people cannot seperate them. Setting is a big one. You can have a horror western..mystery western, even a science fiction western...but people think that something being set in the old west makes it a "western" Because it so completely linked to the Louie Lamoure (sp?) Action/adventure genre Western in their mind.
Science Fiction has the same pitfall. You transplant its elements to another genre and people will dub it Sci Fi..because well dammit...there is robots in it.
Not having been exposed to Campbell's "monomyth" before this thread I do want to ask a question: Did he create the idea or just articulate an existing idea?
As for the OP:
I have always had a hard time saying what is and isn't SciFi.
As for a game: I want a game where I can create a character, explore the world(s) around that character and in so doing develope that character. (Sort of the same thing I look for in any RPG).
Joseph Campbell was one of many scholars who were examining the role of myth and legend in human culture back in the first half of the 20th century. J R R Tolkien was doing the same, as was Erich Neumann and others. Campbell took a literary angle, Tolkien took an etymological and linguistic angle and Neumann took a sociological angle.
The idea that there are only a few story types that are retold over and over again is an ancient one that can be traced back into the mists of literary history. Shakespeare once famously said there are only seven stories.
Anyway, Campbell was the first to publish a scholarly work on the subject, and it quickly became a sensation and has been recognized as the seminal work on the subject. It may no longer be the "definitive" work since so many others have tackled the same subject matter since Campbell, but when the subject of "epic story arcs" or "epic fiction" comes up, it is rare that Joseph Campbell's name isn't mentioned.
Even many modern video games borrow heavily from the monomyth concept.
Tolkien's take on it was that writers tend to tell that sort of story not because they are borrowing or stealing from others, but because the "true myth" story is deeply embedded in the human consciousness. He almost had a sort of "racial memory" angle to his view on the subject.
Regardless of which angle you take, the striking similarities between myths and legends from all over the world is definitely a subject worthy of study and while it may be impossible to know exactly what it says about humans, it absolutely means SOMETHING.
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The OP asked what does sci-fi "mean to you" and a lot of people are trying to answer using some sort of consensus definition of the genre. Most of those are trying to come up with some sort of thematic or structural definition that addresses how the story has to take an element of science or technology and explore how that changes or affects the human condition.
That's a pretty good scholarly, academic definition of sci fi. And it's one I more or less happen to agree with. But the problem with that is that applied logically you end up with Star Wars in the fantasy section, Frankenstein in the science fiction section and Dune in the philosophy/religion section.
The reality is that if it's got robots, lasers, spaceships and self-aware computers, it's going to end up on the shelf in the bookstore under "sci-fi" whether it's really a western in silver boots or a romance novel with laser guns. That's just how it works.
You could have a science fiction story with lower technology with modern day frankly. You might make a change the change doesn't have to be "forward".
Thank you all, currently working in my spare time ( what little I have) on a science fiction project. I was curious to see what people thought, thank you for the responses. If anyone has anymore comments, I would appreciate hearing them.
Happy gaming as always. :-)
I think from above Science Fiction is what you make it. After all, The book series Dragon Riders of Pern was not a fantasy series but science fiction. If you didn't read the books you would think that it was just another fantasy book but it isn't. That is kind of why I disagree with the idea of Star Wars being Fantasy.
I suppose when I think of Science Fiction, I think of all the writing done by Larry Niven. My favorite being Ringworld and how he discussed how such a thing was possible. I liked how Niven would write about how to make living space in the asteroid belt out of iron ore asteroids.
I also liked Arthur C Clarke's Earth Light.
When asked what I think about science fiction, I think about all the books I have read over the past 30 years.