How would you set Sci-Fi and Fantasy as opposing factions without devolving into Avatar?

These guys are so fucking cool

Shame I built my city next to the coast...

There are actually multiple worlds built on ancient, superadvanced technology that's deep in the earth and the good guys dealing with the last world-shattering crisis have failed in disallowing the bad guys to reap the fruit of this knowledge, so now common fantasy troopers have to deal with an army of the same usual dumb monsters summoned by demonologists except they now have blasters.

hehehehehe

On the flip side, you have these guys. Tech-based humans that were stranded on the planet from who knows how long ago, that are slowly developing into the HFY/Science/Military faction that all those sci-fi settings are known for, but in the context of the fantasy world are basically the dorfiest dorfs to ever dorf.

The big bad evil guy is an intergalactic space pirate that the legends of your world have purported to be some sort of an ancient guardian or god.

Anyway, he shows up on your planet as he runs away from his intergalactic space prison, uses his translation device, tech and knowledge to set up an intricate industrial empire, using lowly grunts and mercenaries to just do his work, and starts devastating the earth in search of his old spaceship so he can fuck off.

The players have to dismantle his operations, ruin his excavation mines, and strike him down, all while having to use tacticool magic to deal with turrets and enemies in plutonium alloy.

Maybe they take over that tech and have a filler adventure where they take a dragon out in 2 turns with blasters.

science is outlawed because of its threat to religion, goes underground. fedoras are banned.

I've always had a weird urge to combine Alien dark 80's sci fi and The Neverending Story/Dark Crystal 80's fantasy, but I need more synth-pop. Not quite Shadowrun, mind you.

Medieval fantasy
The scifi side is the "medieval (insert something here)punk" for the lack of an better word.
Not everyone goes to scifi side/route (the reason it have 2 sides to start with instead of just one), because they think machines are unreliable (they are) and resource intensive (they are).

But I need to think of a reason of why the scifi side dont go live on a mix of scifi and fantasy route.

devolve into Saga i guess

>fedoras are banned

Stop inserting your weird fetishes into people's games Damien.

Putting sci-fi and fantasy in the same setting but keeping them separate results in plot holes.

the magic could be rooted in nature, spirits or some kind of deities that don't like technology for whatever reason. although there's a risk of that devolving into avatar.

maybe the magic is sketchy (like demon blood magic) and the sci-fi people have a moral/religious objection to it. or maybe the magic is geographically bound to certain locations or resources that only exist in the fantasy areas. maybe they are effectively two seperate races, and only the fantasy people have the innate potential for magic. maybe the fantasy people are ruled by magical bloodlines, and the sci-fi people were founded on a principle of equality (the kind of equality that comes from anyone being able to pick up a gun and use it) and have a distaste for magic because it's a symbol of inborn privilege. it's easy enough to restrict magic to a certain group of people because you can make up whatever rules you want. the harder part is the other way around, explaning why the magic guys don't adopt technology.

>that filename
But those aren't space wolves!

...

Reverse roles. In the scifi-side, science has advanced to meet with nature and form a harmonious balance, albeit not a wholly perfect one, but there is stability and peace enough for all who are in touch with the universe to share.

The fantasy side is using magic to just ignore nature's order and is wreaking havoc on a scale they scarcely understand, nor care to comprehend (and will ultimately end their civilization because they aren't looking into the long-term), invading the realms of void by tearing it asunder, and destroying harmony with the discordant notes of arcane reality-twisting.

This is really obvious honestly, but the only answer I see making sense is shit tons of magic, which may as well be futuristic tech. You have mechs? We have golems. You have paratroopers? We have winged knights. You have guns and artillery? We have magic armor and mages can call fire down from the sky. Etc etc. Boring, trite, but really the only way fantasy doesn't just get raped.

>take advanced race like mankind and pit them against hyper advanced race that shit looks like magic

Boom.

I'd play Rifts, probably.

> bringing that SJW trash here
Fuck off back to /co/mblr

just let them be factions instead of symbols.

Don't make the magic guys insufferable eco-nuts or batshit Luddites, and don't make the tech guys super nazis or GATE-tier jingoists.

Don't make it a political statement is my big thrust.

After that you can do it however you want. I'm a big fan of having both sides trying to ape each other's stuff so you end up with Gun Knights and Depleted Uranium Golems fighting Mana Reactor powered subs and Orichalcum Tanks.

Throw in some culture clash and some intrigue for good measure.

Hyper advanced race is still licking their wounds from a recent civil war.

The Barsoom/John Carter series has a nice mix of fantasy and scifi imo. The way it's pulled off is by keeping the fights close quartered and reasonably small. If one faction is fighting with a advanced, superior faction then of course they wouldn't face them in broad daylight in an open area to get slaughtered. Have the fantasy party sneak in or at least go around to the back door before they start slaughtering so they're not trying to face space tanks with swords. Have fights take place in strategic locations where both sides would be about square even after taking the magic and technology into account. So the scifi guys wouldn't bunch together in a battle to get blasted by fire balls and arrows and the fantasy guys wouldn't fight in places where technotanks and space ships could obliterate them. So they might fight in a mystical forest under,let's say, a large tree that contains magic and the souls of the fantasy people. Oh wait, God damn it.

Wut.

Flash Gordon

fun fact: people who say "SJW" are social justice warriors

Holy shit that thumbnail is misleading

Rise of Legends, but good

Well, you could look up some older games like Gatecrasher, or West End Games's TORG, they do it pretty well.

Rifts

Do a thing like Arcanum where magic and technology interfere with each other, except that one of the two major continent-spanning civilizations never discovered magic and the other never bothered with technology.

Coexistence is basically impossible because the shit they rely on so heavily they don't even realize it's there any more stops working when the other guys bring their basic shit around.