Genre mixing is out? Post-modernism is dead?
Contributor
|
Zelazny's books - Lord of Light and the Amber books - tread to varying degrees the boundaries between science fiction and fantasy. The latter does interesting things with quantum universes, if I recall correctly.
Almost all comic book universes straddle the line.
An interesting thing in my mind is how UFO abduction folklore shows strong parallels with abductions by the Faeries/Elves in pre-modern folklore. We adjust our explanations according to our world view, and hence SF seems to be fantasy with a modern cosmology, more or less, and fantasy, deliberately, a pre-modern cosmology. But the stories can be essentially the same in their outlines and even in their source material.
What authors mix futuristic sci-fi with sword and sorcery fantasy?
George Lucas. It worked quite well for him.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Andre Norton's Witchworld.
What authors mix futuristic sci-fi with sword and sorcery fantasy?
C.S. Friedman does quite a bit of cross-genre stuff like this in her novels.
It's not modern or futuristic sci-fi, but Greg Keyes' Age of Unreason blends the two in a historic setting.
Of course, there are also the classic authors- Zelazny, Moorcock, et al- the guys who really formed the "Backbone" of modern rpgs through their influences on Gygax and crew.
Simon Green blends the two somewhat- again, not necessarily futuristic sci-fi. But even his future sci-fi novels (such as the Deathstalker series) make use of many tropes from fantasy, such that it isn't always so easily distinguishable.
The seven-novel Mageworlds series.
Weis and Hickman's Starshield novels (although those are probably the worst things they've written and I recommend you keep your distance).
The Star Ocean console RPG series (it's very much Star Trek's United Federation of Planets operating in a universe where half the planets out there are stereotypical fantasy worlds).
Most of the Final Fantasy games.
Dracula by Bram Stoker (for its time, it was a cutting-edge techno-thriller in which the characters are making use of the very latest gadgetry to hunt vampires).
J.R.R. Tolkien's Silmarillion, in earlier drafts at least: Morgoth had tanks, and the Numenorians had ICBMs.
Edgar Rice Burroghs did that whole thing with Mars.
|
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Fred Saberhagen's Empire of the East is one of my favorite chocolate in my peanut butter sci-fi/fantasy settings.
Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light *is* my favorite.
C.S. Friedman's When True Night Falls and Andre Norton's Witch World series and the various works of Linda Bushyager and Anne McCaffery are also good for that sort of thing, mashing up high tech or fantasy or magic or psychic stuff, willy-nilly.
And there's a lot of stuff that rides on the border. Movies like Event Horizon may be all sci-fi up front, but scratch the surface and they are supernatural all the way down.
But I also grew up on comic books, where it was literally no thang that a mythical Norse god was hanging out with a gamma-irradiated monster, a patriotic super-soldier and a man in a suit of ultra-tech powered armor. If the 'party' has a 'crazy old wizard' with force powers from his mystical connection to the life-force of the universe, who prefers swords to blasters, and a spaceship driving smuggler with a blaster, as well as a big hairy brute of an alien, it's all good to me. :)
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Alan Burt Akers' Kregen planetary-romance novels start out as a typical example of the genre, with soft science, but eventually reveal that no-kidding magic exists as well.
The best way to end this whole mash-up argument in the Pathfinder fans community would be making Numeria the scenario of a comic book limited series.
Right now, there is nothing in the comic book market which offers the premises found in a plot settled in a barbarian kingdom like this. Dynamite now haves the right for Pathfinder Inner Sea setting based comic books, they should hire a writer like Warren Ellis or Jonathan Hickman and sure you would find said limited series sky-rokecting to the first places in the most sold lists.
The best way to end this whole mash-up argument in the Pathfinder fans community would be making Numeria the scenario of a comic book limited series.
Right now, there is nothing in the comic book market which offers the premises found in a plot settled in a barbarian kingdom like this. Dynamite now haves the right for Pathfinder Inner Sea setting based comic books, they should hire a writer like Warren Ellis or Jonathan Hickman and sure you would find said limited series sky-rokecting to the first places in the most sold lists.
He-Man and the Masters of the Universe - DC Comics
You know what's the fun thing of people making examples of how SCI-FI and fantasy are forced together? Many people that hate the mix also HATE those products, so making those examples isn't really needed as people who are disgusted by the mix of lasers and faeries generally hate Final Fantasy and Spelljammers and all those other tech-mixes-with-magic products.
There are enough examples of only-magic worlds as well.
I enjoy a bit of sci-fi in some games like Final Fantasy, but entire levels with robots in it often kills the game for me, like Torchlight 2 did for example with the dwarf/mechanical endgame level...
An entire robot-level in a fantasy game is often the death of the game (for me personally) and I put it on internet for selling right away.
I don't want to hunt through plains and beautiful forests only to end up fighting laser wielding robots and boring levels that all look the same without any plants and flesh in it.
He-Man and the Masters of the Universe - DC ComicsThe best way to end this whole mash-up argument in the Pathfinder fans community would be making Numeria the scenario of a comic book limited series.
Right now, there is nothing in the comic book market which offers the premises found in a plot settled in a barbarian kingdom like this. Dynamite now haves the right for Pathfinder Inner Sea setting based comic books, they should hire a writer like Warren Ellis or Jonathan Hickman and sure you would find said limited series sky-rokecting to the first places in the most sold lists.
Even if the franchise in its origins was basically a post-apocalyptic/exhausted future setting, 80s marketing and Filmation turn it into something quite distant from that idea. I don't know how DC comics is going to handle it now (perhaps making it more "grimdark"), but I can say a comic book about Numeria would have a very different flavor.
Even if the franchise in its origins was basically a post-apocalyptic/exhausted future setting, 80s marketing and Filmation turn it into something quite distant from that idea. I don't know how DC comics is going to handle it now (perhaps making it more "grimdark"), but I can say a comic book about Numeria would have a very different flavor.
It was still there, Man-at-arms made the vehicles, Man-e-faces still had the robot face, Hordak was all science in the filmation run.
In fact She-Ra may be better to look at for a Numeria view than He-Man. Magical resistance fighters against a technology powered overlord.
Numeria can be many things but for now, with it undefined, I treat it like Eternia.
|
You're missing the vocal group of conservative gamers for whom steampunk is a blasphemy, and any sci-fi elements in fantasy are equivalent to digging out Tolkien's skeleton and setting it on fire.
Sadly, said gamers form a large chunk of D&D market, which is quite the conservative to begin with. Perhaps now, after Reign of Winter and Distant Worlds both showing that there is market for science-fantasy, things will change, but still you'll have "get your Star Wars out of my dragons and princesses now" people in this thread in 5,4,3,2,1...
I think there is room for both, I think people are just concerned about if there is room for both within the same setting since the messageboards have shown if you allow it anywhere in the setting someone will scream it is unfair not to allow it everywhere in the setting because they are a unique snowflake...
I love the concept. I don't want to be "the" concept.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I'm running a Numerian game now, I yarble about it down in campaign journals. But here's what I've put in so far mostly in the South East section:
Gladshire:
A hundred years ago it was a bandit fort hiding from the River Kingdoms. Then the bandits families moved in. Then some retired. Then merchants came. Then they needed farms and livestock. Now it's a fair sized city of 3,000ish people with a central keep being the original fort and rich part of town also a semi-slum. The central fort has two sides, the East side is mostly nice free standing houses owned by the original settlers families, quite nice. The Western side is all buildings, on top of buildings, next to buildings, three stories tall and kind of one building but with many houses, shops etc inside.
They cheerfully pay tribute to the Black Soverign once a year and he does not care about them.
The government is a semi-libertarian city council that collects taxes from merchants, traders and adventurers, maintains the militia and a happily corrupt town guard.
Tin Holes
Settled about 200 years ago by six dwarven clans and four human clans in commercial alliance. The city was originally fairly large sitting just above the hills and mine shafts.
The town is a mining town with about 1,400 citizens and 200ish non-citizens.
Over the years as the mines had to stretch deeper and farther, the city brought in a fairly powerful wizard who worked with the local artisans to refit the played out tunnels as a double level city, with some houses grown out of the ceiling and the rest on the floor as normal. Now most of the dwarves live underground and the upper town has shrunk a bit.
The city functions more like a worker owned company town, with each citizen owning shares in the city, average people have between five and ten shares while more active workers averaging twenty or so and a small few holding up to a hundred (the maximum any one person can own). All town issues are done by vote where one share equals one vote. Non mining businesses are taxed with the proceeds going to the mining company. Each year a share can pay out 3d6 gold as profits are distributed.
Slavery is illegal within the town as the residents view hard work as a point of pride for free men. Given the insular nature of the town, both an escaped slave and the pursuing slavers would both get a chilly reception and little help, the slave as a poor outsider and the slaver as the backbone of the lazy.
They pay tribute to the Black Soverign in the form of raw metal as well as it being an open secret that many shafts hold gunpowder caches and any attempt to take the mine would result in its' loss.
Thriae Hive
The bee ladies have a nice hive here surrounded by several kilometers fo beehives and gardens. People sometimes come to ask about the future which they will share for gold or healthy males (one per question).
The Black Soverign came by a while ago and they drowned his army in wasps, so he left.
Nomadic tribes:
While varied greatly most are under a hundred members strong, they travel the scrublands on horseback, with their greatest warriors taming dinosaurs to use as mounts. Most of their existences are hand-to-mouth but some raiding and slaving provide them with trade. They live in yurts, value riders and many tribes carry idols, wood, stone and bone being the most common. Now and then the tribes will meet in a great gathering where territory will be loosely defined and other mixing happens.
Their spiritual leaders supposedly have a secret valley somewhere full of stone idols, each bearing the most potent memory of legendary warriors, sages, clerics, chiefs and others.
Slavers:
Bands of slavers move through the region in the summer, they most commonly use a large carte frame with their slaves shackled in the middle to walk or be dragged. Most of them make large circuits heading south to avoid the winter.
The Tribute Train:
The Technic League and soldiers of the Black Soverign march from town to town making a one year circut away from the capitol. The force is pretty impressive holding about a hundred hardened warriors, a few wizards from the Technic League (low level, higher level ones teleport in if they need to) and several gearmen. Messing with them is a bad idea.
Androids:
Have been around for a while but are getting more numerous and are completely unconnected to the Silver Mount. The Technic League is taking an interest in them but more of a hobbiest one.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
A Numeria AP is the only thing I can think of that would make me cancel my subscription for 6 months.
Imo thar sort of thing has no place in a fantasy setting I want to play in. I generally like Golarion as long as I just ignore the existence of Numeria.
However a Numeria AP might intrigue me into subscribing.
More tidbits:
Dinosaurs: with some of the smaller herbivores being used as cattle and the smaller carnivores/omnivores being kept in place of dogs. The greatest warriors and animal trainers learn to break megaraptors and young allosaurus.
Chupacabras: Are also common, everyone to a man hates them. They prey on unattended animals and occasionally unwary travelers. Their heads are worth bounties to just about everyone.
Meteors: For unproven reasons (the Silver Mount) Numeria gets more skymetal than anywhere else which is awesome, except when it's not. Because some break up and create "zones" of dust which can be semi-harmless (Adamantine) to dangerous (Siccatite) to toxic (Abysium). Being in the path of these zones is a bad idea. Claiming skymetal is also done through the Technic league who charge either 10% of the metal of 500 gp, your choice for marking it. Getting a significant find to one of their local agents can be an adventure itself.
Enhanced rivers: Several sites near major waterways have "second" springs along them. These springs are all mysterious and stuff but they put out about thirty "create water" spells a round pumped into the stream resulting in several miles of much more fertile land. Somehow this water gets syphoned off first by plants and animals, which creates a small swath of dead land right before the "vanishing point" where the water disappears 24 hours after creation.
|
|
Random Numeria critter I was thinking of;
Rikeya (Kellid for 'Should Not Be', as in 'that which should not be')
The rikeya is a small to medium sized aberration with nine oily black tentacles that end in a tripartite claw structure that opens up to reveal a red orb that functions like an eye. The creature's mouth is in the bottom of it's central mass, about the size of a basketball, and it both eats and excretes from the same orifice.
The creature feeds on smaller creatures, preferring warm-blooded prey, but perfectly willing to wallow in carrion, picking it apart with it's many limbs and chewing up flesh, bone and organs, before spitting out whatever parts it has leeched of whatever nutrients it requires. It prefers to strangle prey with it's tentacles, so as not to damage the skin, and then very carefully remove the skin, peeling it back with a special mucus secretion that makes it somewhat more elastic and durable, before devouring it's organs, and then slithering it's body into the skin and manipulating it's extremely flexible tentacles around the limb-bones and remaining musculature and connective tissue of the former creature, wearing it's skin as a disguise. It is fairly bad at imitating the movements and behaviors of most animals, and so it is only a DC 10 Knowledge (nature) check or DC 15 Perception check to note something 'off' about the skin-wearing rikeya.
Still, the occasional creature is fooled, sometimes a predator that believes it is hunting the prey animal whose skin the rikeya is wearing, or under conditions of darkness or unfamiliarity, where a person might not recognize that the 'dog' is not what it seems until the rikeya is within striking distance, at which point it's many tentacles tear free from the skin and attack.
When a rikeya is fortunate enough to have a surplus of prey, it only renders extra creatures unconscious with it's strangling tentacles, and then implants an egg into the creature, leaving it alive and unconscious, as food for the egg growing within it.
Rikeya dislike and are repelled by salt, which acts like a weak poison to them (treat as greenblood oil, but on contact), and, despite their animalistic intelligence, have a strange fascination with making geometric patterns out of debris, small stones and rubble in their territory, so that an experienced Numerian hunter can recognize the odd fractal patterns of stones and bones as the hunting area of one or more rikeya.
Imma steal that.
Also, one of my PCs decided he worships or has as a patron the Old Ones. And there's a deep one tainted lake, and there should be temples to horrible gods so I need to come up with some of that too.
|
|
Imma steal that.
Also, one of my PCs decided he worships or has as a patron the Old Ones. And there's a deep one tainted lake, and there should be temples to horrible gods so I need to come up with some of that too.
Crumbly standing stones marked with strange glyphs that glow at night (due to phosphorescent fungus that grows in the glyphs) on an island in the middle of the lake, haunted by one or more will o wisps could be thematic.
On the other hand, an island-less lake might be all the more mysterious because it's more or less perfectly round, and goes straight down, like a ginormous well (or freakishly huge purple worm tunnel...). Sixty feet down, there *appears* to be a 'floor,' but it's a filmy meter-thick layer of algae, that, when torn through, reveals yet more rough-walled mile-wide utterly lightless vertical 'tunnel' leading down, until there's *another* filmy layer of algae, which, when torn away...
Any structures would be carved and tunneled into the otherwise ribbed and scalloped walls (more like the inside of an enormous esophagus, than a natural development), like the buildings carved into the canyon walls of Petra, or Cappadocia or some sort of cliff-dwellings.
Are there more ruins at the bottom? Who knows. No one has ever found 'the bottom.'
"Beneath every abyss, a deeper abyss unfolds."
Lots of stuff can come out of Numeria.
For instance, Annihilator robots act completely independently of the Gearsmen, the Technic League, the Black Soverign, and what not.
Supposedly.
Allegedly, those who are taken by them disappear, never to return. What if they do return, but not as what they once were?Stroggification anyone?
I had that plan before I split the androids off from the robots. it still kind of works that way, you see in the place where androids are created there is a large vat with a living "sludge" spell (like disintegrate but turns things to grey goo instead of dust) the sludge is fed to a living fabricate spell that builds androids. So not quite as horrific but close.
Crumbly standing stones marked with strange glyphs that glow at night (due to phosphorescent fungus that grows in the glyphs) on an island in the middle of the lake, haunted by one or more will o wisps could be thematic.
"Beneath every abyss, a deeper abyss unfolds."
I think it'll be simpler with a happy Deep One colony in the depths and the player tricking the party into helping the deep ones.
Someone asked about it elsewhere so I'm going to put it here. When the Technic League shows up, they will have robots, also part robot soldiers. They'll pick up the extra vulnerability to electricity and critical hits from the robot template. Also they'll have robot parts grafted onto them.
(I'm thinking it'd be a Prestige Class type thing, each level getting them better access to more robot parts.)
Some ideas are:
Eyes: give better vision or ranges of vision (darkvision etc).
Arms: +2 to Str or Dex? Maybe have built in weapons?
Legs: + land speed/jump/CMD?
Organs: resist crits a bit.
Shells: (Natural?) armor
Coatings on the shells: resist stuff.
If the party goes after the league, they'll find more exotic makes, with spider legs or even integrated guns but those are a bit much for now.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Alan Burt Akers' Kregen planetary-romance novels start out as a typical example of the genre, with soft science, but eventually reveal that no-kidding magic exists as well.
Kregen, the setting of the Dray Prescot series, is IMHO one of the best "low magic" fantasy fiction settings out there. But it does have a sci-fi premise rather than a fantasy one. Early in the series the so called "wizards" that Dray Prescot encounters usually have psychic abilities rather than overt magic (and psionics is generally considered legit in sf when magic is not). For example, the primary demonstrated ability of the Wizards of Loh is a form of Astral Projection, though other powers are revealed later in the series.
Later in the series magic starts appearing much more frequently, and this is in part because the author (whose real name is Ken Bulmer) started playing D&D around that time. :) Basically the series started as a sci-fi adventure series but gradually morphed into more of a fantasy one as time went on.
I once tried to run a game set on Kregen but since the rest of the players hadn`t read any of the books it kind of fell flat.
I have a fan site based on the books here:
The Dray Prescot Collector`s Page but I admit I haven`t updated it in around eight years.
Peet
The thing about Numerian technology is that as a GM I can imagine introducing it and then spending a bunch of time trying to keep it out of the hands of the players, by limiting the technology through new specialized classes, etc.
Like a new version of the gunslinger that can use lasers? Which basically means everyone else can`t.
An AP would probably be the best way to introduce this since you can have an overarching theme for the campaign, which I think would be the best way to do it, since otherwise the shiny new toys would take over a campaign that is meant to be about other things.
Peet
Nah, that's missing a bit of the point. The real danger is power creep. For example, the things I just splattered on the page here, if the arms give a +2 OTHER TYPE bonus that stacks with alchemical, morale, enhancement, sacred... well then we've power creep. If it's just another source of one of those then it's just another way to get your +whatever to whatever.
I don't plan to give my players any weapons from the Eclipse Phase books really, but some of the robots have them. They're just for the moment beyond the reach of the League. Or Not worth the effort on a small scale of production.
I'd likely add a few new weapon bonuses/types to the list but nothing beyond what we have already. Maybe make them harder to build but that's just how it rolls out.
[In my game the League does all their reverse engineering through using magic to understand the idea, getting pure materials and using fabricate to produce processes they cannot with the limited tech/sophistication of tools levels they have.]
|
Sometimes I'm hesitant to put Science Fiction into Fantasy, but this only applies when I'm the one making it up. I'm not good at juggling implications, and since I am neither a professional writer nor have multiple people to soundboard off of, I usually avoid such things in homebrew.
BUT, that said, I've been wanting to play around with Numeria forever. The idea is pretty cool (most ideas can be made cool with a little effort), and I trust Paizo to make it cool without raising odd problems or unfrtounate implications. I don't trust myself. i trust these guys. Bring on the giant robots and the space aliens and what have you. Dragons, spider robots? What difference does it make? I have pointy things and words that make people explode. Bring em on!
I have to agree with Journ-O-Lst-3 that if you are going to use Numerian technology in a game it should not provide a new type of bonus to game stats.
It would make sense for a new type of special material, "Numerian Steel," to exist with interesting properties. But will it be better than Adamantine or Mithral? Probably not.
The one thing that I can envision being an issue with actual powered technology is the power source. Does your device need fuel? Does it need power packs? Or some type of charging device? any of these limit the usefulness of such devices. A limitation of once per day does not make any sense for a technological device unless it is solar-powered in which case it also needs to be exposed to sunlight.
Peet
It would make sense for a new type of special material, "Numerian Steel," to exist with interesting properties. But will it be better than Adamantine or Mithral? Probably not.
Especially not since most Numerian special materials have already been written up -- they're the seven skymetals. "Numerian Steel" in fact exists, it's an in-setting name for adamantine.
Actually, every local bookstore I've seen has a science fiction/fantasy section, not separate ones for each. And a lot of works mix the two.Yeah, the larger section is sometimes called that here too, but they don't intermingle books of the two genres but shelf them separately. Perhaps they are just more pedantic in my country.
What authors mix futuristic sci-fi with sword and sorcery fantasy?
Anne McCaffrey jumps to mind. L.E. Modesitt Jr with the magic of recluce series if you go far enough into it. Plenty of others including the latest versions of Thor.
It would make sense for a new type of special material, "Numerian Steel," to exist with interesting properties. But will it be better than Adamantine or Mithral? Probably not.Especially not since most Numerian special materials have already been written up -- they're the seven skymetals. "Numerian Steel" in fact exists, it's an in-setting name for adamantine.
What supplement are these in?
|
|
Especially not since most Numerian special materials have already been written up -- they're the seven skymetals. "Numerian Steel" in fact exists, it's an in-setting name for adamantine.What supplement are these in?
According to the wiki Children of the Void seems to be the primary source.
Pardon me Set and assorted gentle-beings. Please note that the wiki link posted is to an inactive site that has become woefully out of date. The current PathfinderWiki has a much more up-to-date article on skymetals.
However, as our reptilian overlord has indicated, even the current wiki isn't completely up to date with the latest information. Our chroniclers are constantly overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information to be collated... your patience is appreciated.