Imagine that you have a sci-fi/space opera setting with spaceships, laser guns...

Imagine that you have a sci-fi/space opera setting with spaceships, laser guns, internet-connected computers and smartphones, televisions, memory uploads and VR sensoriums, artificial intelligences, bioaugmentations and cybernetic implants, cloning, and so on. People travel to different planets.

However, all of it is literally magic. The spaceships are highly advanced spelljammers, the laser guns project arcane force, the internet-connected computers and smartphones are matrices of divination and illusion, the televisions work through scrying, the memory uploads and VR sensoriums work ala Planescape's Society of Sensation, the artificial intelligences are incorporeal constructs, the bioaugmentations and cybernetic implants are biomancy, the clones are simulacra and necromantic clones, and so on. People travel not only to different planets, but to different planes of existence as well.

Is it still a sci-fi/space opera setting?

I have already been running a mix of Planescape's Great Wheel and 4e's World Axis as this for ~270 sessions and counting, and I was wondering how to classify this kind of setting. I cannot quite call it "science fantasy" because there is very little science to it.

It would still be science fantasy. the people within the universe are applying the scientific method, making rational observations about the rules of their universe and using it to advance both their understanding and their mastery of those rules and forces. That it's different to the real physics of our universe is irrelevant.

Then what is actually different?

It would be sci-fantasy as pointed out.
Space opera is more a conduct of plot.

Yes. You've just replaced our laws of physics with ones from your head.

I've used the term Space Fantasy for it in the past. All the trappings of sci-fi with none of the real-world laws of physics. Science fantasy would also work as mentioned, but I don't like the term.

Power sources, valuable resources, chain of production, all of which lead to how societies are organized at all levels, you unimaginative reddit-spacer.

The babble involved.

Only hard sci-fi pays attention to physics.

What prompted me to ask this was that one of my players proposed that I "run a [soft] science fiction game, with actual spaceships and technology," and it prompted me to stop and think about how that would be meaningfully different from what I am already running.

I am currently running a setting with highly advanced spelljammers that are spaceships for all intents and purposes (some are 12+ miles long), laser guns that project arcane force, internet-connected computers and smartphones that are matrices of divination and illusion, televisions that work through scrying, memory uploads and VR sensoriums in the form of the Society of Sensation, artificial intelligences that are incorporeal constructs, biomantic bioaugmentations and cybernetic implants, clones via simulacra and necromancy, and the like.

There is planet-hopping, there is plane-hopping, there is exploration of the uncharted reaches of the infinite multiverse, and the Great Wheel's factions are cyberpunk-like monolothic megacorporations, only with much more benevolence and appeal to PCs.

Would it really just be a matter of going, "Okay, I had essentially reskinned a soft sci-fi setting into an ultra-high-magic fantasy setting, so now I will un-skin it back into a more vanilla soft sci-fi setting"?

Someone else tells me that the differences between soft sci-fi and ultra-high-magic fantasy are tone and motifs, but what tone and motifs can be emphasized more strongly in soft sci-fi than in an ultra-high-magic fantasy setting, like what I am already running?

You're going to want to deemphasize alignment and mysticality: A couple thousand years of refinement means good and evil are separate from the forces therein. You may be antsy about the Kyton in the cargo bay, but in the seven decades she's worked here, a load has never broken loose.

Magic needs to be limited, but naturally so: Perhaps the world got bigger, but spell ranges really didn't: Gate remains useful for cross plane movement, but teleportation cannot match spelljammers for the necessary range in-plane

Sci-Fi plots are often more grounded in action, but larger in scale: Calling the armies of the damned is far less campaign ending, but you're still rather concerned when they start flying in their battleships.

That is not what was in question.

The player prompted me to "run a [soft] science fiction game, with actual spaceships and technology," that is, in a new setting, without all the yugoloths and the obyriths and the like.

One thing I could do is make the setting smaller-scale in the sense that it concerns itself with a single galaxy with no wacky multiversal dimensions, but that seems completely backwards to me. How is it possible that going from "fantasy" to "soft sci-fi space opera" actually makes the game *smaller* in scale? Is that not the opposite of what people think of when comparing the scale of fantasy to the scale of sci-fi?

The world is bigger, making the people smaller.

There is no Elminster in a Sci-Fi setting: Great works are the product of at least a dozen minds.

Consider Mass Effect 1, The grand threat included three races (or splinter groups), 3 leaders, and a literal armada of craft working in concert.

The wider antagonist pool is opposed with a wider protagonist pool: Instead of the 4 Light warriors, you've got the player party, any allied species or government, incidental pickup allies ETC.

This makes the player's role less "face the baddie" and more "stack the odds." Instead of hitting evil wherever it appears, you instead focus narrative energy on balancing points. Even though the players are pushing on smaller targets, their actions are felt on a larger scale: In a fantasy setting, you're expected to clean out the evil overlord's tower, not steal the schematics and throw a bomb in through a sewer grate, but with a bit of charitable interpretation, that's exactly how A New Hope ends.

I currently run two games in this setting of mine, in two different systems: a lower-powered game, and a higher-powered game.

The lower-powered game has the characters as knights of a massive multiplanar empire (namely, the Harmonium, under my generous interpretation of it), and it is more or less as you have described:
>you've got the player party, any allied species or government, incidental pickup allies ETC.
>This makes the player's role less "face the baddie" and more "stack the odds." Instead of hitting evil wherever it appears, you instead focus narrative energy on balancing points.

My other game, in another system, involves much higher-powered characters, which is as you describe here:
>the 4 Light warriors
>In a fantasy setting, you're expected to clean out the evil overlord's tower

And even then, in the higher-powered game, the party still has to do much of this, because of the sheer scale involved:
>any allied species or government, incidental pickup allies ETC.
>This makes the player's role less "face the baddie" and more "stack the odds." Instead of hitting evil wherever it appears, you instead focus narrative energy on balancing points. Even though the players are pushing on smaller targets, their actions are felt on a larger scale

For example, during its downtime, the higher-powered party has been doing its best to navigate the bureaucracy of the Celestial Concordance (as 2e Warriors of Heaven establishes, the "United Nations" of the seven Upper Planes) to try to create a task force to respond to a certain threat over in Arborea's third layer.

Does this mean I am *already* running a soft science fiction game? That cannot be the case, because one player has requested that I try running a soft sci-fi game in a new setting, which implies that I am *not* already running a soft sci-fi game.

Your final premise is flawed. It is entirely possible you are playing with the appropriate tone for a Sci-Fi story, but your players simply want a palette swap to be fresh.

You should ask what components of the Sci-Fi world they want: It's very possible they're looking for more exploration or a more active war, which are also hallmarks of Sci-Fi settings.

>more exploration or a more active war, which are also hallmarks of Sci-Fi settings.

I do not see how exploration and war are hallmarks of sci-fi settings. In the real world alone, we have had much war and colonization efforts of unknown continents. In a completely down-to-earth low-fantasy setting, there can still be plenty of war and expeditions to uncharted lands.

What is the difference in the soft sci-fi method, then?

Your proposal of a "palette swap" is what puzzles me.

Here is a passage taken from the lower-powered game in the fantasy setting. Do not ask how the players entered this situation; it is a long story:
>Many solid, NON-holographic monitors are spread out along the dragoness's desk now. All of them are open to numerous tabs and windows of an advanced, sensory-recording-editing program. "So the three, four of you are... Harmonium knights, you say?" Ajagar asks with a skeptically raised eyebrow. "And here you are with 24 other women, the vast majority of which seem to be common petitioner schmucks... and you are all cowering together in a corner, hugging each other while shaking, and screaming hysterically, in nothing but your underwear and some nice pairs of heels. Is that right?" The copper dragon's smirk and narrowed eyes are oh so impish.

Apparently, all it takes to turn this into a scene from a soft sci-fi game (with dragons!) is the alteration of a single hyphenated word and the removal of another word:
>Many solid, NON-holographic monitors are spread out along the dragoness's desk now. All of them are open to numerous tabs and windows of an advanced, video-editing program. "So the three, four of you are... Harmonium knights, you say?" Ajagar asks with a skeptically raised eyebrow. "And here you are with 24 other women, the vast majority of which seem to be common schmucks... and you are all cowering together in a corner, hugging each other while shaking, and screaming hysterically, in nothing but your underwear and some nice pairs of heels. Is that right?" The copper dragon's smirk and narrowed eyes are oh so impish.

Is this really so massive a change that it warrants its own, new setting?

That lag while playing with Martians, though. 20 minutes of delay or more fuck.

The difference is if you explore the earth, you find pyramids and malaria.

If you explore space, you can find green skin babes, space whales, ruins with working archeotech, alien pyramids and space malaria (With space mosquitoes.)

Yes.

It's kinda pathetic, and I know I'm giving Sci-Fi fans a bad name, but we're very particular about it being shiny metal instead of crystals, Killing people with brain powers instead of god powers and plying an empty void explicitly in this plane of existence.

Talk to your players; They must want something out of a new campaign... It may even just be the emperor's new clothes.

If you explore an uncharted area of a fantasy setting, you might encounter purple-skinned girls, sky whales, ruins with working archeomagic, pyramids of a heretofore unknown mortal species, and magical malaria (with magical mosquitoes).

If you explore an uncharted area of the planes, you might encounter blue-skinned girls, planar whales, ruins with working archeomagic, the pyramids of heretofore undiscovered planar species, and planar malaria (with plane mosquitoes).

What is the meaningful difference, then?

>shiny metal instead of crystals, Killing people with brain powers instead of god powers and plying an empty void explicitly in this plane of existence
Some sci-fi universes have crystals as power sources, many fantasy worlds have people using brain powers (whether it is called "magic" or "psionics" in that fantasy setting), some sci-fi settings have alternate dimensions, and some space fantasy settings (e.g. Spelljammer within the crystal spheres themselves) explore planets in black vacuums... so what is the difference?

Could it be that I am hitting the realization that when one stops to analyze things closely, there is not much meaningful difference between soft sci-fi and ultra-high-magic fantasy?

I'm pretty sure a man once said any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

And a far less notable woman once said any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from technology.

It could be that I am currently running a truly hipster-tier, obscure, recondite setting permutation that has the tendency to confuse players.

"Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" is much more common in fiction than "sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology," so when I run campaigns with the latter as the central conceit, it is more foreign and confusing to people... yet it also has the odd effect of making people classify it as "fantasy" rather than "sci-fi."

Perhaps fantasy vs. sci-fi is a false dichotomy after all?

There is a reason that up until a few years ago, Sci-Fi and Fantasy were sorted as the same genre on bookshelves and movie lists.
They often blended, and where they did not blend in terminologies, they blended in ideas and concepts.

This whole topic is something a friend of mine and I discuss as I find myself loving the flexibility of fantasy whether it be in the forms of the default sword and sorcery, or the explorations of what happens when people evolve magic and treat it as a science, whereas he is very much the fan of sci-fi, of technology, and evolving humanity.
Often times we come to the point where we see that both our sides aren't mutually exclusive on paper, and in fact can encompass very much the same things.
However, the feeling is what's different.
As the other user said, when someone claims they want sci-fi, they don't necessarily want something different or even entirely new concepts, they just want the lasers to work like the lasers they're familiar with, and the computers to be like the computers they have, and the technobabble to be about quantum mechanics as opposed to manipulations of arcane energies or planar currents.

>lasers to work like the lasers they're familiar with
You mean laser pointers?

More like starwars blasters.

>evolving humanity
If anything, the majority of D&D-type fantasy settings are distinctly transhumanist and involve characters rising to superpowered, more-than-human heights.

>they just want the lasers to work like the lasers they're familiar with, and the computers to be like the computers they have, and the technobabble to be about quantum mechanics as opposed to manipulations of arcane energies or planar currents.
What good does a palette-swap do in practice? How much does it *really* matter?

The palette swap matters a lot more than you'd think.
Science fiction up to a certain point can be very relatable. Small things like having trouble with a computer, looking for signal on the space-phone, and helping Timmy ride his first hover-board have a certain flavour you can't get in a fantasy setting. It's familiar, but with a twist.

Again, on paper, it is absolutely 0 difference.

In application though, and as points out, it evokes different emotions and feelings. Shallow as fuck, and nonsensical as it is, that's humans for you, wanting it to "feel right" even if mechanically speaking and story-telling wise there is absolutely no difference.

>Small things like having trouble with a computer
The computers in a science fiction setting would be far apart enough from the computers of our world that it would be difficult to truly relate. Even then, as mentioned in , my *fantasy* game has computers in it (with monitors that can be solid or holographic, windows, tabs, programs, and the like), thanks to complex divination and illusion magic.

>looking for signal on the space-phone
Just as my fantasy setting has computers of divination and illusion magic, so too does it have phones.

>helping Timmy ride his first hover-board
Creatures with natural flight, flying spells, flying magic items, and the like all cover this. I regularly employ all of these.

The difference between saying "this is powered by magic" and saying "this is powered by technology" still seems immaterial to me.

>The difference between saying "this is powered by magic" and saying "this is powered by technology" still seems immaterial to me.
Because it is.
But saying humans don't care about meaningless things is a lie.
Otherwise you wouldn't care so much that someone said they'd rather have something sci-fi over fantasy.

If you do end up making a new setting for this group it shouldn't just be your old setting with some of the words swapped out. You should build a new high level setting from the ground up. Something that could be cool is a setting based entirely on biological tech and genetic manipulation. Living ships, visiting new worlds through custom grown representatives built to survive new environments, stuff like that.

it's almost like you do not understand implied definition and connotation as it relates to word choice and usage.

All your doing OP is dropping the pretense that separate between Space opera science-fiction and our right Fanasty.

Which might sound like a good idea only but really isn't.

A Science fiction setting where all the advance tech is explicitly just magic is going to see a David Copperfield show only to have him come on stage in street clothes and the audience how they'll love all the misdirection and clever trickery he has line up.

Doesn't matter how well done his tricks he trick are, it's still not a magic show.

Anons right op

You need to take a step back and look at key Sci-fi staples and fantasy staples to understand the difference. Go read so Asimov, or even better still go read some CS.Lewis. People know him for his fantasy series like Narnia but his sci-fi series are actually so much better.

Have a look at some of these stories and you'll realize what makes them sci-fi vs science fantasy. Its more than the pallette swap, its the themes, plot, arcs and so forth.

>Asimov

Now we're just getting into hard scifi vs. soft which is its own autism.

We care about different meaningless things; I am trying to understand *this* meaningless thing.

>Living ships, visiting new worlds through custom grown representatives built to survive new environments, stuff like that.

I already have strong shades of this in some areas of the Great Wheel/World Axis hybrid cosmology I am using. The Positive Energy Plane/Feywild, Arborea, and the Abyss, in particular, are the places most rife with "organic" materials, living ships, and so on.

I also tend to play up the 2e-canonical concept of "altraloths," yugoloths of Gehenna and the Grey Waste supercharged with bioaugmentations. There is a great uproar over them in Gehenna, in particular, where such empowered daemons are looked upon askance for their supposedly treasonous transyugolothism.

I also use the concept of a "soul-gene" as a more mystical form of DNA.

How would a more technology-based version of this be different?

Fantasy and sci-fi shouldn't even be a dichotomy.

>Palette swapping
It's actually pretty damn important. Most people don't think this hard about such dichotomies, even people who enjoy the same things we do. I had this discussion with a friend and he basically said "this is fantasy because it has orcs, elves and dwarves, and this is sci-fi because it has aliens and technology" -but even if something is effectively aliens with super tech, it's not sci-fi if you call them "star demons" or what have you. Presentation triumphs over depth for many, because many don't want to dig deeper into genres of fiction.

The deeper implications of fantasy and sci-fi being separate yet so similar usually doesn't concern most people , and your players seem to fall into that group.

Space fantasy.

Aren't demons more alien than aliens because they come from a different dimension?

You get arcanobabble instead of technobabble.

Pretty much. OP should just switch fantasy races to original races, switch magical explanations to "scientific" explanations, replace mysticism with philosophy.

Sufficiently studied magic is really just a science, but they don't want fantasy fluffed sci fi, they want science fluffed sci fi. Palette swap.

By far. And describing them as creatures from an alternate dimension where the laws of physics and the evolution of life went on a completely different course will evoke a different reaction than describing them as creatures from another plane of existence where the concepts of gravity, distance, and even time are completely different to our own, where the very fabric of reality itself has become an organism that births the creatures before you.

>And describing them as creatures from an alternate dimension where the laws of physics and the evolution of life went on a completely different course will evoke a different reaction than describing them as creatures from another plane of existence where the concepts of gravity, distance, and even time are completely different to our own, where the very fabric of reality itself has become an organism that births the creatures before you.

I don't even know which is supposed to be the fantasy one and which is supposed to be the sci-fi one.

well they are and should be. the underlying idea of magic is "works without fundamental understanding", whereas technology works "because of fundamental understanding"

i.e.
magic is press the funny button on a cigarette lighter and a flame appears.
technology is spin the textured steel wheel that grinds on a flint to create sparks, as you depress a lever that open a valve on a chamber that contains liquid butane that is evaporating into a gaseous state (which is known to be flammable) and leaving the chamber, and being ignited by the sparks.

But D&D magic is basically a science already.

not really. it's more akin to natural philosophy, prior to the use of the standard scientific method. observation that lead to beliefs.

the lore has been that it takes tremendous personal effort (time and study, but not energy) to learn magic, or how to "flick a bic". the standard wizard after years of study can create a specific effect repeatably and reliably, but that does not mandate an understanding of the fundamental nature of magic, only a superficial understanding of a method of manipulating magic.energy/forces.
Now spell creation scratches at the idea of a deeper fundamental understanding, of creating new ways to manipulate magic forces, but rote spell casting implies limited understanding.
now granted, that is the takeaway from the mechanics, but the lore from within the spell descriptions relegates the creation of spells to very powerful (read long practicing and wide breadth of spell use) mages, who did a lot of magic stuff.

Depends on the demons. In many settings demons are reflections of mankind's darker impulses or at least feed off of such impulses in some way. Aliens are not so intrinsically entwined I'm the human condition and thus can be more, well, alien.

Another thing I should be asking:

Is the kind of "multiversal fantasy" wherein there are many, many galaxies' worth of populated areas even considered part of the usual fantasy milieu?

Is that not closer to an epic-scale, soft sci-fi setting?

But there can also be demons of alien species' dark impulses.

You'll notice I mentioned replacing laws with ones from OPs head.

That's the opposite of hard sci-fi

Sci-Fi and Fantasy have always been cliches of Weird Fantasy, not subgenre unto themselves.

>Asimov
>Weird Fantasy

Real science at the highest level is almost indistinguishable from magic.

Magic is technology. Like literally. If you dig down on the meaning of the word youl get to something like "excellence in the art", which for ancient people means everything from metallurgy to songs

>Could it be that I am hitting the realization that when one stops to analyze things closely, there is not much meaningful difference between soft sci-fi and ultra-high-magic fantasy?

Precisely.

If that's rustling your jimmies, you could step up a layer to Speculative Fiction?