Sci-fi vs fantasy

This.

>Shadowrun
>Quake
>Star Wars
>Wildstar
>Shardbound

sci-fantasy of varying degrees of either genre is the ABSOLUTE BEST aesthetic and theme

I prefer sci-fi. I feel like there's a lot more thematic creativity because its not constrained by LOTR and its derivatives. There's a place for fun action-adventure sci-fi like Star Wars and really high concept sci-fi like "Arrival" or "Ex Machina", while fantasy is really just the same story being told again and again with the pieces rearranged.

Fantasy. It’s easier to vary fantasy I think. The most relatable sci-if is space opera, and I find it harder to vary up the sci-if that satisfies my autism than with Fantasy. Most of it to do with ‘realism’ (air quotes).

To choose a specific example, it’s easier to come up with a decent reason as to how and why you’d want to sex a dragon in even low fantasy, but it’s much more glaring to try to come up as to how and why you’d sex a chitinous space alien.

>Star Wars
>Sci-Fi

That's just wrong. Yeah sure there's laser, space ships, and robots but Stars Wars is a fantasy. A laser light show Fantasy with magic, empires, and evil vs good

I Have to agree. I love mixed settings.

>glaring to try to come up as to how and why you’d sex a chitinous space alien.
There are anons in /d/ right now who could answer that with confidence

>There are people in this thread that would rather make a bastard child out of two worlds than an actual pure setting.

Absolutely disgusting.

>To choose a specific example, it’s easier to come up with a decent reason as to how and why you’d want to sex a dragon in even low fantasy, but it’s much more glaring to try to come up as to how and why you’d sex a chitinous space alien.
I'd say that depends on the chitinous space alien.

That said, I also prefer fantasy and I agree with your larger point.

Fantasy usually takes place on one world/planet, even when or if there are multiple planes/dimensions/underworlds/etc. present.

Sci-fi on the other hand acknowledges space and other planets/worlds.

I don't have any sort of preferance of one over the other.

Functionally you could argue the two are the same, but there is a bit of an obscure underlying difference between them that most people don't seem to accept. This difference is also why so many settings "feel' functionally different from each other.

That difference is that in fantasy, the world does not work off physical laws. It works of dramatic, symbolic, and spiritual laws instead. This is what separates good fantasy and bad fantasy.

To be more specific; The difference between sci-fi and fantasy is greatly about asthetics but also about the core differences in how the world is structured. In almost all sci-fi, the world is as ours but with a few new mechanics or special powers like psionics or "warp speed", but having a supernatural element doesn't make a science fiction setting fantasy. Which is why I hate retarded memelords like this who think Star Wars is science "fantasy". Star Trek is clearly science fiction, but yet has just as many supernatural or magic elements.

Personally, I think proper fantasy is the superior genre of choice.

I think they're effectively the same in that particular regard. Strictly speaking, there's not a whole lot of difference between using a ship to travel to another world and using a portal or a spell to travel to another world.

>Star Trek is clearly science fiction, but yet has just as many supernatural or magic elements.
But don't tell that to Gene "Everyone in the future will be hardcore atheists and people won't care about dying" Roddenberry.

The difference is that sci-fi shows something that we assume can potentially happen in our world (more or less), while fantasy shows something that we know is just purely fantastical.

>choose one
No. I choose both, and all the things in between and things that mix them.

Sci-fi does imply a certain theme, or at least it used to before the word got diluted into meaninglessness by modern media. The theme is about the interaction of society and the characters with new technology. The technology is central to the story, without it, you couldn't tell the same story. Whether it's robots, space travel, a super intelligent computer, whatever, it's all about the changes those technologies bring about in the world, and how the characters face those changes.

This is one of the reasons people tend to separate sci-fi from other speculative fiction with a technological aesthetic, as in "Star Wars is not sci-fi". This is also why is wrong about pretty much everything. Star Trek is considered sci-fi because the story just couldn't happen without technology (and it doesn't matter that the technology is softer than cream cheese and full of technobabble), while on the other hand laser and space ships are not essential to the story of Star Wars.

I would argue different, while you try to make a difference in aesthetic and not functionality I would say that is the oposite.

When you add teleporters in your sci-fi is no different from adding them in fantasy, they both follow a ritual, don't work with out current understanding of physics and can be adapted to anything you need for the story.

But, when you delve deeper into how would each be different; sci-fi allows to have a much more materialistic aproach making it functionally different to fantasy and although this is not usually exploited(reasons mix within two problems too complicated and numberphobia) it allows to create blatant differences between the two.

Because if your mage has to start figuring out the thermodynamics of his own spells before casting them, at some point this will either result in a sci-fi universe or a fantasy universe with almost posthuman elements(if you come to think about it, mages are very dangerous in the way they work, even with rules they add energy out of nowhere or else they wouldn't be mages by definition).

And when you have to account for a story that sees; populations, systems, genetics, entropy... in a well laid down both academic, fundamental and numerical ways you most definely have sci-fi working as actual sci-fi. That's not to say that you cannot have your handwavium(otherwise you would end with a modern setting), but only have it as much reduced as possible, and being able to explain either how those limitations were overcomed in a scientific way(within our understanding of nature and followiing a process of discovery and implementation).

Also, your example is bad, star trek is known as sci-fi for it's focus on the way things work but when you start going through season after season of TNG, DS9... serious problems arise for writers tend to not have a sense of consequence and continuity between episodes and they become too self contanied with a lot of magic technobable solving things.

>I would argue different, while you try to make a difference in aesthetic and not functionality I would say that is the opposite.

You didn't read my post.

The difference between fantasy and science fiction is that the core underlying principles of the world are different. The fact that you said "if you think about it, mages are very dangerous because they add energy out of nowhere" which is exactly what I'm talking about. You don't understand fantasy, at all. You continue to try to put something based on a supernatural and pre-scientific view of the world into your post modern scientific box, and are getting frustrated when it doesn't work.

Dragons do not fly because they have magic and the magic they have lets them counter the force of gravity on their bodies. They fly because the God of Fire who made them told them to fly to deliver his gift of fire to the men all over the world.

You don't understand fantasy. Stop trying to pretend to be knowledgeable about it.

I prefer games based on real historical conflict. There's much more backstory and books / films / music to immerse yourself in.

So neither.

>there's not a whole lot of difference between instantaneous travel and non-instantaneous travel

Except Wildstar was a flop.

For reading, I prefer SF, but for RPGs I prefer fantasy.
Fantasy is very easy to homebrew for. People don't particualrly care whether you're playing in a custom setting or something like Forgotten Realms, as long as they still have the standard orcs, elves, dragons, and whatsnots. In fact, I think at this point a custom setting is pretty much the norm.
With SF, you'll be hardpressed to find a system not tied to a specific universe, like Star Wara or 40k. Which is great is you want to play that setting (in fact, most RPGs I play have been Dark Heresy/Rogue Trader/Deathwatch with people in my 40k gaming group), but there's not much of a generic system suited for making your own setting, and even if you got through the extra efford to homebrew a setting, the lack of a universally accepted SF standard (barring some basic archetypes and tropes) makes is a lot harder to sell. You can go make your own version of orcs and elves and people still get what they are about since they know what the basic orc or elf is, while with SF you have to explain everything from the scratch.

SF, although I’m not a big fan of space opera.

The difference? Well, science fiction has always been hard to define anyway, but it does seem to be more interested in big ideas than fantasy is.

Which is a crying shame, as at it's core, it's a great IP.

I think in most sci-fi settings the closest equivalent to a dragon would be a rogue AI, which isn't hard to justify at all.

The best I can do is fantasy has a mediaeval aesthetic whereas scifi has a futuristic aesthetic. Other than that, I'll know it when I see it.

I figure Star Trek is primarily a story about people. In what way does Star Trek really require technology that Star Wars doesn't?

Space fantasy/sci-fi loaded with magic and mysticism is my favourite desu.

This picture is awesome!
Now I really want a story around that.

Here have another.

You are an user of good tastes.

Running a homebrew where galactic civilization is everything from late stage rocket punk down to stone age shamanism.

There's nothing like a hot shot Buzz Aldrin pilot, an insectoid cyborg and a desert druid landing on a lich world and leading their band of recruited death world barbarians on a raid to secure sacred vacuum tubes.

I like sci-fi for dealing with big stuff like megastructures, space colonies, powerful laser networks for propulsion, etc. You don't often see stuff like that in fantasy.

Yeah I'm working on a setting like that at the moment for an Uncharted Worlds campaign. The galaxy is in a dark age after the last galactic empires broke down between a few hundred to a thousand years ago and took most of their knowledge with them, including most FTL communication so coordinating empires on an interstellar scale and galaxy wide access to knowledge via space internet became impossible. What's left is a bunch of isolated, primitive planets inhabited by technobarbarians, a few petty empires and a widespread spacer culture based around looting the ruins of the dead empires' megastructures and colonies and trading the stuff found within for luxury items. The old empires surviving technology operates on an advanced enough level to seem like magic, while psychics, science sorcerers and warlocks practice 'actual' magic through manipulating obscure laws of physics and rare types of energy and radiation.

How do people get on and off space ships and stations that rely on spin for gravity?

>The poles of the sphere would have far less gravity than the equator, and hence would be the location of spaceship docking ports and zero gravity manufacturing.

Nice meme

Oh hurrr that's what I get for just skimming the picture.

Megastructures are fucking cool though.

>How do people get on and off space ships and stations that rely on spin for gravity?

You add transition zones in the axis of rotation and basically create a giant gyroscope.

I prefer fantasy bleeding into the setting to catapault it into sci-fi. Like all the bizarre/awesome technology exists as a response to the reality bending fantasy shit that got dumped in.

Wait, isn't the whole point of a sphere like that that the rotation provides artificial gravity? So then why the hell are those buildings all going along parallel lines? They should all be going towards the centre of the sphere. The floors get more and more slanted the further you go this way.

You can always count on that one guy who really, really needs to make everyone else aware that Star Wars totally isn't science fiction because reasons.

this

...

Because it isn't duh

If you want to count Cyberpunk as Sci-fi you can probably get a 2020 game easy enough.

Both are fantastical settings with worlds not at all like our own with situations and characters beyond belief.

Whether you are a genetically modified space knight in power armor facing down a dragon or a dirt farmer trying to fight your way out of a space ship is irrelevent to having fun and enjoying a setting.

>galactic civilization is everything from late stage rocket punk down to stone age shamanism.
>There's nothing like a hot shot Buzz Aldrin pilot, an insectoid cyborg and a desert druid landing on a lich world and leading their band of recruited death world barbarians on a raid to secure sacred vacuum tubes.
moar plz

A motely crew consisting of a Dread Empire cyborg, a Dread Empire marksman, a Knight of the Seventh Star and a primitive world mercenary seek treasure and glory, fighting the genetically engineered dragonic hordes of a bio-sorcerer, hidden away in the depths of an ancient, abandoned dyson sphere.

that picture is from a comic, 'Nameless' by Grant Morrison, I love it personally, if you like weird fiction I'd recommend it

It's not just a meme.

Watch the TNG episode "The Neutral Zone". They find some people from the 20th century who had themselves cryogenically frozen. The doctor explains to the captain that cryonics was "A kind of fad back in the late 20th century" because back then, "People feared dying. It terrified them." She says these things with a condescending tone and facial expression, as if to imply that they were a bunch of idiots for not embracing death. I could understand this if, by the 24th century, the existence of the afterlife was a known fact, but that isn't the case in TNG and Roddenberry himself was a well-known atheist.

Then there was the TNG episode about a crew member dying in an accident and her son being consumed with grief. Roddenberry didn't like it, because he thought that kids in the future basically wouldn't be upset at their parents dying.

Roddenberry was a hack. His death was the best thing to happen to Star Trek.

Hot LZ, puppers!

It’s not hard to justify sexing an ai (they are curious about the human experience and that includes sex) but how are they dragons?

They're both the iconic monsters for their genre and when they appear it's usually as the final boss. A bug monster could be used anywhere.

>Someone made a 3D render of it
Cool

Star Wars is science fantasy precisely because it's not our world with psionics/magic added, but a future of a fantasy world with medieval stasis broken. The Force is what drives the plot, political, economic and military forces are only important insofar as they choose which side they join. It's your classical dualistic deities setup with upgraded technology.

>took most of their knowledge with them
How? Surely people would still remember the stuff relevant to their jobs, at the very least.
Perhaps the Empire was a post-labor utopia which relied on AIs who refuse to obey anyone who isn't officially part of the Empire? Then your setting would get lots of "little gods"/demons associated with those artifacts. In fact the Empire's infrastructure could be nearly entirely intact and omnipresent, just unresponsive; then you'd have room for a "hacker" class who excels at negotiating with and manipulating them, as well as some really fantastic locales.

Exactly, the 'science' in Star Wars is just a part of the backdrop in service of a story of cosmic sorcery. You can replace spacecraft with magic boats, planets with kingdoms and countries, and droids with golems and the entire thing would virtually play out the same. It's delicious visual dressing.

This is with the assumption we're talking about the films of course, I'm sure there's some EU books specifically about droid rights or something.

There's a Discworld novel, "Feet of Clay", about golem rights.

Star Wars uses its sci-fi elements - for example, the Rebel Army "walks into Mordor" by hyperjumping right to the second Death Star's construction yard without having to fight its way through Imperial territory. It's not just fantasy with sci-fi dressing, but science fantasy, an amalgam of science fiction and fantasy the same way bronze is an amalgam of tin and copper. You can't remove either without the whole thing falling apart.

That's why Star Wars stays popular: it actually is a pretty unique setting.