Medieval fantasy is the go-to genre for most TTRPGs

>Medieval fantasy is the go-to genre for most TTRPGs
Why not space opera? Maybe I'm overlooking something, but wouldn't that make more sense as a genre/setting? Not only is the great expanse of space so vast that it makes your options quite literally unlimited and ever expanding, but various different campaigns and settings could very easily take place within the same universe or even the same galaxy, even if they're mutually contradictory in some parts. Even if you like your swords and your magic, you can still have them and you don't even need to rip off Star Wars per se.

It just makes more sense.

I'd say it's just harder to work with, you can do anything with fantasy and everyone'll go "alright" but with sci-fi everything has to be explained lest you get "ACKSHUALLY" five million times.

Why go for Elves in Space™ when you can have Elves Classic™ instead?

Because magic makes everything easier.

Really though the niftyness of fantasy has really been worn down over the last decade or so. Before it was a genre that was rarely explored to anyones satisfaction, now we have three hobbit movies, a harry potter franchise, how to train your dragon, and dozens of minor cartoons, movies, and series.

Not the same as when 'Wizards', LotR cartoon, and Willow made up the majority of an imaginations source material.

Fantasy is not meant to be realistic, so you have less people going into 'tism spasms since any weird inaccuracies within the setting can be hand-waved by "A Wizard did it."

Sci-Fi on the other hand requires much more inherent knowledge on how the world works because we have scientific knowledge on how physics would work IRL, so if you get shit wrong, every autist within range of a computer and a wikipedia page is going to give you the business because your spaceships didn't move exactly the right way in order for it to safely dock into a space station.

So it's generally easier to have things rooted in fantasy since it's the lowest hanging fruit for budding new writers.

Because D&D was fantasy and ultimately this is what shaped and shapes the perception of most people

magic tits >>>> space tits

>the great expanse of space so vast that it makes your options quite literally unlimited and ever expanding
That's the problem. Medieval fantasy works so well because basically everyone already knows how the setting works. You could grab a group of normies at random off the street, tell them they're playing a medieval fantasy game, and be fairly sure they'll be familiar with the general attributes of elves and dwarves and orcs, they'll know the difference between a fighter and a wizard, etc.

Space opera never really had a Lord of the Rings equivalent that codifies a set of tropes that universally apply to throughout the genre. If you tell people to picture a space opera setting, you'll get everything from Star Trek to Dune to Firefly. You'll need to spend a lot of time on exposition, and that's boring for new players.

I'd say it's the reverse.

The perceptions of most people are what shaped D&D into what it was. Hell, Gygax and Arneson fought hard and long against many of the ideas we now take for granted as "D&Disms", but only succumbed due to popular support for those ideas.

Later authors and designers rapidly discovered that while they could present their own tastes forward, the only pieces that people would pay attention to are the ones they liked. Popular opinion is what shapes fantasy, and that's why D&D's elves aren't quite like Tolkien's and why we don't see many of Gygax's favorite imposter-monsters around anymore.

The reason is that a sci-fi setting requires a lot more worldbuilding than a fantasy setting.

There are several related reason for this; one of the main ones is that fantasy settings tend to be themed around the past, while sci-fi settings are themed around the future. Fantasy settings tend to be low-tech with magic; since our own history is full of functional low-tech settings, we can look to the past to see how farming and government and warfare and all those things worked, before accounting for magic and the differences it makes.

Science fiction, in contrast, is based on more technologically advanced societies, which brings up a whole host of questions. Advanced technology tends to be more complicated, not just in a technical sense but in a practical sense that's directly relevant to the game. How does your setting's FTL work? What weapons can a character or ship have? How and where are they built, and what power supplies do they use? How good are your computers in cyberwarfare? How common are bionic implants? Who manufactures all these things? How does the law handle them? These are just a few of the questions that might come up in a sci-fi campaign, and you have to answer them for yourself. In the future, any field of technology could develop in any number of different ways, and we've got no solid guidelines for them because they haven't happened yet; you could look to other sci-fi for inspiration, but which do you choose and how does it fit together?

In any other story, most of these questions could be handwaved because you aren't presenting the entire setting at once. An RPG doesn't have that luxury. Unlike most authors, who are trying to tell a specific story in a specific part of their setting, you don't know in advance what the players will do or where they'll go; you can't simply handwave things like inter-ship space combat if it's not a major part of the story, because it might end up being a major part of someone's story.

You could do both

TTRPG fans largely want to wargame sans the 50x$100 vaguely orc-shaped monochrome plastic blops, and it's a physical pain in the ass to wargame plausible SF due to scales and added dimensions.

Because sci-fi attracts autistic assholes who just want excuses to whine and bitch at someone instead of creative nerds who want to enjoy themselves.
Which is also the reason why many experienced DM remove guns from their settings when playing with strangers in shops.

Something something too much money and welfare invested on gun.

Reminder that it is easier to build a Dyson Sphere, to the point that many scientists think it is inevitable part of the development of technological species, than to invent/build/feed an FTL engine, which would mean that time travel is not only possible but guarantied to happen.

FTL = Magic.

Something I wish more people would do with sci-fi is try and focus on a single planet or solar system, rather than having FTL and an entire galaxy to deal with.

Maybe it's just the sci-fi games I've played, but it always feels like once you give the players their own ship, the game loses a lot of tension. It's easy to fly away from any sort of danger, and if you only have the one ship then space combat is a constant TPK waiting to happen. Not only that, but space combat also ends up as a slog when everyone is just making the same skill check each turn to fire the guns or steer or whatever else.

Not only that, but having an entire galaxy available means that every planet you go to is going to be shallow by necessity. If you have to go somewhere, there's probably going to be only one important thing on the entire planet to look at, be it a city or a crashed ship or whatever else.

It becomes very tedious, and I've yet to see it work well in a game, be it as merchants, pirates, or military spec ops. You see one barren abandoned mining outpost, you've seen them all.

>dyson sphere
>not a dyson swarm

But if they focus on a single planet, it is usually cyberpunk and that genre is suitable for only a certain specific niche of people.

But big laser gun wielding elves in space suits.

Too much clothing.
Pass

Because D&D and its derivatives are medieval fantasy, and they're the most popular games by a huge margin. Take those away and the most popular settings are Star Wars and WH40k.

Elves in space have the benefit of coexisting with tons of other modern (or futuristic) creature comforts.

It's only cyberpunk if you decide to have corporations or the government ruling everything with an iron fist. Sci-fi doesn't automatically become a dystopia just because you can't hop over to another planet without worrying about any problems at the last one.

How do we fix this autist problem?

so more gundam than star wars?

im ok with that

You are correct and not wrong.
But reality is that most sci-fi setting that focus on a single planet usually is cyberpunk in nature.

Just ignore it?
There are room for everyone and all kind of genre.

I'm honestly surprised that Shadowrun is that high up.

The obvious solution is have problems that can follow them.

I get the issue of your ship blowing up just being random TPKs though. Perhaps find a mechanism by which the primary form of ship combat involves slinging them into the atmosphere of planets, forcing a crash landing and ground confrontation? Feels arbitrary but I'm sure there's a way to justify it.

A medieval world is roughly easy to predict.
A sci-fi world has to many common possibilities
>Surveillance
>Instant long range communication
>Mass production of powerful and complex devices
>Extremely fast travel from one location to another
>Incompatible software/incomparable technical skill sets
>Powerful, precise long-range weaponry
>Fucking surveillance
and that's just our world before factoring in teleportation, functional AI, super-fuels, nano-machines and a whole host of other crazy bullshit that may or may not exist.
A GM has to know what does and does not exist and how it interacts with whatever else exists in a logical way. The players has to be able to anticipate what they might go up against at any given time.

Most really popular sci-fi adventures ignore security cameras almost entirely. 40k ignores most meaningful sci-fi tech all together. Dune lacks computers and still ends up crazy complicated. Starwars may have hyperdrive, droids and lasers but in practice it winds up being effectively fantasy WW2.

Technology is fantastical but what makes it a problem in terms of building an open game world is that it's common. Sci-fi is a world built by wizards. As crazy as D&D can get it is spared the fact that all in all wizardry is rare enough to be recognised as such. Life is normal until you encounter a spell or an enchanted dungeon or the magic-man himself. But otherwise life is somewhat predictable.
In a sci-fi world magic permeates life to the point where it, usually, isn't noticed anymore. Finding a way for that world to exist without flying apart the moment a PC touches it is no small feat.

As a guy with a computer science degree, the way hacking (and most other things worth computers) work in shadowrun (and some other games written by people who clearly have no idea how such things work) drive me absolutely nuts.

I have friends who have made similar complaints regarding their areas of expertise.

How does a Dyson sphere give you time travel?

People do that. It's near future scifi. Stuff like "humans" or "continuum"

Or Fringe, or "the 100"

Sounds like your autism tbqh

FTL gives you time travel. It is an inevitable consequence of the fabric of Space-Time.

Well, first you fix the actual problems. Then the "problem" of people noticing them will clear right up.

Eh.

It's pretty common.

Elements that aren't stored to be magic working nothing like that should often annoys people who know how it should work.

Call it "my autism" all you like. For me it's bad compsci that bugs me. For the physicist I know it's ridiculous physics that are front and center. A history prof I know hates d&d's bullshit armor and weapon categories.

Deny it and namecall all you like. Bullshit inaccuracies of real stuff annoys lots of people.

Like this guy

Aren't supposed*
working nothing like *

Shadowrun computers are literally the worst example because they're NOT things which exist in real life.

Because "go into the dungeon and slay the monsters and walk out with gold" is really easy to run

Starfinder aims to be the "Shadowrun of Space Opera" so maybe this will all change. It's too bad it's 3.5/PF version 2.0 so nobody but a subset of people still playing Pathfinder will actually put up with it.

A commlink is just an advanced smartphone type portable machine hooked up to future Google glass.

A cyber terminal is a pc hooked up to vr hardware for the vr interface on the internet.

A cyber deck is a high end terminal with software like a VPN, or onion routing, combined with Mac address spoofing, and ad blockers & always running the browser in private tabs.

It's all shit that you could build today, just better versions of it.

It's still ogc.

I expect if it's got anything good in it we'll see it ported for 5e compatibility, like ultimate campaign.

Why are space suits so sexy?

Yet they thought it was too hard to give players spaceships.

Eh? You don't have a spaceship?

Spaceships are overrated.

All you need is a 4-5 man team and a setting filled with Stargates.

Fuck are the pathfinder gun rules ever nonsense.

>hurr
>armor doesn't work, you have to dodge the bullets!

A commlink could also be a smart watch.

And they pair with everything using what is just future Bluetooth.

I'm 90% sure that they wanted to do "only use armor" originally, but then took a look at their monster manuals and realized that it'd make guns fucking worthless.

Why? Bows don't ignore armor and they're fine.

At least they dropped all that for starfinder.

Because of reload times.

Monsters usually have 0 dodge AC, so they'd have no benefit over bows, but have shittier relooad times, range, and also have the misfire chance.

You encounter a dragon.

Medieval game:
>Ok cool, this fits with the setting. Let's figure out how to kill this dragon.

Space game:
> What the fuck, there's no way a creature as large as a dragon could exist due to the square-cube law, and furthermore [AUTISTIC SCREECHING]

> implying encountering big alien creatures isn't a part of sci-fi

It isn't. Sci-fi fans are, as a rule, way too fucking autistic to let that sort of thing slide. If it comes up, you can bet there will be no end of bitching and ACKXTUALLY bullshit.

Encountering big alien creatures is fun, which is the antithesis of autism, which is badwrongfun and REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Guns choke out a lot of different options and don't feel very distinct (with some exceptions, flamers and grenade launchers).
Psykers usually have a very weird position in space opera games.
The setting usually becomes so big that it's hard for players to get invested in them.
There's not a lot of easy access systems for space opera systems, nor a lot of pre made 'adventures'.
Character variety is usually very superficial (lack of classes and races).
Vehicles usually end up playing a big role, but there's usually poor mechanics for handling them.

yeah

medieval game biggest eneemy is a dragon or something, in space it's smugglers / a space navy / timmy forgot to change the nutrients in the environmental systems and now we have 4 days to get to a space station before we all suffocate

>people who know how it should work.
But you don't know how it should work. Shadowrun, for example, diverged from the real world sometime in the 80s (I think), and has had (as of 5e) 95 years of technological development that's not necessarily the same as ours, combined with two major global network failures. Even CP2020 has 30-40 years of divergent technological evolution. Expecting their tech to work in the same way as ours is fucking stupid.

You can replicate a Fireball spell with an M34, too, doesn't mean that you should sperg out over D&D making it out of wizard mumbles rather than refined batshit.

No one cares. Shut up.

Not implying. Stating. "Encountering big alien creatures" pretty much doesn't happen in sci-fi because of how intensely autistic the entire genre is. You'll be lucky to get away with encountering alien microbes, let alone an alien dragon.

Ill tell you why, because some autistic tech nerd always spergs out about the technology of the setting and is super critical and ruins the immersion.
It's easier to jut use magic so you don't have to argue with some guy with a STEM degree about how so and so "wouldn't really happen"

Don't call your space opera "sci-fi".

Well if you really want to go that deep real hacking isn't just sitting in a basement and typing away at a command line like hackerman. You're better off smooth talking your way into your target building with fake credentials and trying to convince people to give you their passwords and access to secure databases so you can run security analysis while in reality you are just copying pasting credit card information on a thumbdrive.

I should know, this situation almost played out exactly like this for the company I work at.

Because sci-fi is one of the worst, if not the worst, genre out there. It is an insufferable genre that attracts insufferable people for no reason other than that it gives them an excuse to complain about every little detail. Look at every single sci-fi fandom and you'll see that, plain as day. These are people incapable of simply enjoying something without trying to prove how superior they are.

Because even in a soft space opera you need to account for much more things than in most fantasy settings.

Like say even a simple small space federation may have 5-7 different species with different bodytypes, equipment, traditions and so on. Even if we don't account for more any scientific things like differences in food, biology and so on going with more or less space fantasy it is still much more massive in scale.

Unfortunately, this is true. I've got a copy of William Gibson's Burning Chrome, and it's got an ad in the back for Interzone. It's the most up-itself ad I've ever seen. For reference, the "modern" it's talking about is 1995.

>Science Fiction is Not Dead!
>Life's too short for the mindless spectacle of most modern visual SF. The chances are you got interested in science fiction because you like the mind-stretch you get from new ideas - and you only find that in the written word.
>Long Live SF!
>Science Fiction is alive and kicking in the UK. Every month half a dozen challenging new science fiction and fantasy tales appear in Britain's best SF magazine - INTERZONE

> "Encountering big alien creatures" pretty much doesn't happen in sci-fi
What?

Pretty much every big sci-fi franchise has its fair share of big alien creatures.

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> ACKSHUALLY
Way to prove his point. It's like you people have zero fucking self-awareness.

We were talking about good franchises only friendo :^)

(((Elves)))

Frankly the only people who have these sorts of problems are people with crippling levels of autism and very pointed and specific interests and they all seem to congregate here. I don't think normal people have any problem accepting a sci-fi or fantasy setting beyond what interests them and arn't bogged down by such things like getting pissy because a sci-fi series doesn't do FTL travel the "right way" or that a fantasy setting has guns because how else are you going to stay pure to Tolkiens formula of faggot ubermencse elf songs and dwarves with tourettes syndrome and poor dirt farmers

Por que no los dos

its more like they are getting pissed of by unrealistic things explained through "its the future"
you can explain unnatural or unlogical things in a fantasy setting with magic, but you cant do the same in sci - fi
call it autism but breaking fundamental laws of physics or other shit is just retarded and not cool

Sure, let's scrap every sci-fi epic that has massive ship battles in space because you sure as hell arn't going to have dog fights in space ships let alone mechs dueling it out with energy swords and guns.

Let's throw away the cool space suits because there's no way you could have the sort of miniutirzed tech and power sources to power small co2 scrubbers that would last you days or shit like still suits from Dune.

It is autism, if you're willing to accept faggot elf songs, dwarves and dragons why is it so hard to accept space ships, anti-gravity, and sword based combat guns are prevelent?

Theres nothing stopping physics in a fictional universe working differently than in our own. And even then, our understanding of the universe and technology is completely different from 200 years ago, why would there not be new discoveries which change the way we understand the universe 200 years in the future?

This post is an exemplar of why modern sci-fi is really hamstrung. You've got a genre loaded up with fans who automatically cry about realism and care more about poking holes while willfully resisting verisimilitude. It's like the modern horror fans who actively resist being scared then call every movie dogshit because it didn't scare them and jump scares don't count just because.

1) Don't play with autists
2) If you must play with autists, tell them to shut the fuck up when they go ACKSHUALLY

i can live with it to a point, but it also gets ludicrous at times
i also dislike retarded things in fantasy and "historical" settings like retarded displays of martial arts which also puts me off quite frequently in movies and video games
just putting in things that look cool doesnt overshadow that they are nonsensical and stupid
some scifi works also pretend like they bear any resemblance to reality, which most works of fantasy do not

severely underrated post

Fantasy as a setting allows for individuals to make a difference. As technology advances the impact any one person can have with their own two hands decreases and it becomes more and more about organizations.

This is obscenely false, both in reality and almost universally in fiction.

So what system has a good rule set for vehicle mechanics? I do get that most of them suck but what's the most "realistic" system?

Why is it only the nerd sciences that go into autistic rages when a game does their shit wrong? I'm a doctor and I never bitch about how retarded the fakey medical shit in sci-fi games is.

Well there is GURPS Vehicles. But many even GURPS fans consider it pretty dense.

New GURPS Spaceships is actually pretty nice. Though at basic it works with more or less realistic approach so combat is a rocket tag with glass cannons everywhere. You can transform it into a space opera setting but you'll need some experience to do it just right.

Mutants&Masterminds should be pretty great for soft space opera with crazy technologies on a run.

Well jump scares literally aren't scary, they're startling. They can be employed effectively to create a break in the mood by relieving the tension built up by atmosphere, but just having jump scares without effective set up is hackey writing.

If you were just doing basic soccer mom vehicles what system would you borrow from for mechanics?

M&M definitely. It doesn't go into any technical details and has all the needed stats. If you want to concentrate on characters instead of vehicles/spaceships it is much better.

If I ever get to run a space military game I'd probably use something like GURPS Spaceships. Maybe a little trimmed down in some parts.

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Thanks for the info user.

Spaceships.

No, seriously. I've yet to find a good system which can handle spaceship combat in a way where all the players feel like they're contributing and get engaged. The only real way is to give each player their own ship, but then either they can't interact out of combat or they're all piloting fighters and every fight is an escort mission. There are no good options.

Ah, so when you complained about "screeching", you were actually complaining about people pointing out your errors, which your mind interprets as incoherent offensive noise.

>fall in love with Eclipse Phase
>try to GM a few times but it didn't click with, they don't really like sci-fi
>look online for other groups playing it in my country
>last google result in my native language is from 2 years ago
>last fagbook result is from 5 years ago
I just want to play this fucking game.

Answer any "well ackshually" with a faint smile and "you're right, that doesn't seem quite right, does it?" With luck they'll either decide something's up and get too invested in solving that riddle to kick up a fuss, and if not then eventually they'll get frustrated that you won't engage and stop complaining.

>the solution to being wrong is to be intellectually cowardly and smug about it
Your worldbuilding skills are remarkable.