Let's talk about science fantasy, Veeky Forums. Specifically...

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Doctor Who

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Which warframe is that?

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Mag.

It's a shit skin for a shit warframe.

I'd go with Starwars, but it never seems to be really good, hell Science Fantasy is rare as is. I mean maybe Dying Earth would work. As for what environments and genres, any and science fantasy. Though in general if you want a good blend you're going to have to get someplace around the borders of Clarke's Third Law and Niven's Collary to Clark's Thrid Law..

Mag w/ Premium skin

I like a consistant aesthetic but also want the variety as well. Final Fantasy 15 and 12 are good examples I feel

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wait a fucking sec
>grip in front of the string
how the fuck is this supposed to work

I think vertical crossbows have side-grips

The barrel could be longer then the resting point of the string. I would imagine as much to allow a mechanism to auto draw the bow back.

That said, where are the bolts being loaded?

that's what I thought at first, but look at the fingers on this nigga

You know I never really thought about this, but, could we possibly make our own sci-fantasy setting?

Why not user? Why not?

So we going Space Opera style or just fantasy with laser guns? We've got to start somewhere.

I always err on the side of Space Opera but let's confine it to a solar system. We've just left our homeworld and are expanding to the rest of the planets/dwarf planets/exo planets/etc

Question: do past eras (steampunk to Stone Age) with precursor technology count?

I suppose that depends on what the focus is. Steampunk as an aesthetic and a genre flavor can be interchangable I suppose but I see no reason why you can't have ancient astronauts with steampunk

I imagine it more a cyberpunk society flew too close to the sun/angered the Gods/suffered some vague disaster, and was sent to the Stone Age and we enter the scene by the time they’ve re-invented the steam engine.

RIght, so we have at the very least genetic manipulation, which would be good for colonizing things with a differing gravity, or even long term generation shipping.

Has much terraforming been done? Have we gotten to the body closest/furthest from the sun? Are people beggining to talk about jumping over to the next star? I’m assuming no FTL travel.

>ancient astronauts
>with steampunk
Now I'm imagining Lord Pacal with a monocle, finishing up the pipes that lead out of the engine of his ether rocket, powered by the immortal heart of his sacrificed daughter.
>aztec/mayan steampunk ancient astronauts

Most worlds are of the pulp like way so the planet closes to the sun has a massive jungle with desert on the other side while the 3rd planet is a slightly colder but similar world to the home world.

These worlds have humans who still look like normal humans while further out humans may have changed for any number of reasons

is right with recommending basically anything in the Dying Earth genre, most obviously the actual Dying Earth books and Book of the New Sun. Also check out Dune.

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Oh, so planet of Dwarves and planet of elves maybe?

Perhaps Humans have the smallest planet but largest population, leading to expansionistic empire?

Well we have technology that's pretty damn advanced since there's already colonization.
Please no, I mean it's a good solid thing, but that's pretty cliche.
Fuck I forgot early Pern, fuck that was some WTF to my Shanarra/Tolkien addled youth brain.

Kangaroo!

Different species of humans but hopfully we are not stuck on the whole "elf but...."

I'm partial to how Dune had humans who were mutants because they consumed so much Spice. maybe the worlds have such an effect on people who've lived their for generations.

>The solar system is divided into two sections: The Luminous Zone and the Umbral Expanse the difference being how far out one can go before the light of the sun is no different from any other light in the sky

Space elves and space dwarves? Or maybe veer more towards typical sci-fi races?

How the fuck has this not been mentioned yet?

How would you do them? That's the important question. Maybe the dwarves are a subterranean alien race, with a planet that's main business is exporting minerals and ore. Maybe they aren't just short and stocky humans, but look kind of like mole men, and have rocky scales that give them natural protection from the heat of their planet's core, as well as magma and deposits of natural gas, and have hands that are built to scoop dirt and break rocks.

The idea I had for "space elves" for my own magic sci-fi setting was to have them be humans initially, but the incredibly wealthy, who got all hopped up on altering themselves with magic and technology to the point that the traits became hereditary over the centuries after the discovery of magic and the technological revolution it kicked off, and they left, funding their own colonization projects of the planets closer to the sun. They're eerily perfect and just fucking weird, and are up their own asses. But in a subtle way.

Blame! does it pretty damn well. For me it also sort of cemented my ideal science fantasy aesthetic. Massive scale in all dimensions(characters should always feel tiny in comparison to surroundings, the passage of decades is ignored without consequence if nothing interesting happened and characters millennia old are commonplace) and worn-down, rusting, and hostile or at least neglected and ambivalent worlds dotted with entities powerful enough that the general population's only hope for survival is avoiding them at all costs are a must. In general, I don't like optimistic science fantasy. If the world is overwhelmingly good then there's so much power in the hands of the good guys that the conflict feels pretty empty. Because of the aforementioned preferences, I don't think, science fantasy is too suited to much beyond grand-scale adventures with serious potential to change the world. Any genre that relies on interpersonal conflicts should and does feel empty in a world that cares about individual characters so little. Also, lots and lots of biotech.

Honestly likely flavors of human since we seem to be going for "relatively" recent colonizing. Like nothing so big that they're a separate species, but just enough that a "Venusian" is much different from a "Ionian".

Something similar to that. I’m thinking space Dwarves living on a planet with most life on the underground, space elves being savage honor culture on a volcanic jungle planet, and humans on a mostly water planet with naval tradition that’s translated to space.
Eh. That kind of stuff has always annoyed me.

Well, we're not bound by a particular time scale so we can go crazy with how humans changed but are still human.

The Desert portion of the !Venus has sand so fine it flows like water and scholars have possit that water used to be present at one point. The animals that enhabit the desert are descendent from aquatic animal and the early settlers used alchemy and transmutation to alter their bodies to better live in this part of the world have course tough skin and swim in the sand seas and hunt the Sun Salmon

Now that's a good idea make it just old enough that yes space elves are elves, even if the precursors were all just humans.

>The 4th world of Forya is a harsh world. Cold with a winter that never ends. From the Void one can see what is called the Great Wound were a large meteorite collided with it destroying the surface world and causing the Ever Winter that plagues the planet.

>The People of Forya have taken shelter underground. Some closer to the surface and others deeper underground. They are a hardy sort strong from their industries and some short in stature from centuries of living underground. Their skin is light and pale and they are often in need of thick clothing not only to withstand the Ever Winter but to shield their sensative skin from the light

Currently running a sword and planet campaign where a colony ship of sleeper pod humans had an onboard ai disagreement, crashed into an alien prison planet, and the conflicting ai's rebuilt human societies as greek platonic republics during the titanomarchy.

Get to have Olympians, who have lightly modified humans in casts (gold: magic user, silver: fighting man, bronze: specialists, and drones. Also barbarians, but they're basically fighting men), Titan-spawn, basically all giant type monsters, and alien civilizations imprisoned on the planet who's civilizations collapsed because of planetfall. The humans basically believe in technomagic, there are monsters, and we get to make classics studies jokes.

This and Creatures of Light and Darkness are both amazing.

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Those are actually fired one-handed, typically with a small shield in the other hand. I think he may be holding it that way to quickly ready the bolt itself.

Before delving too much deeper into setting creation, is there some kind of theme or subject that Science Fantasy would be good at dealing with/ highlighting?

For example, how Cyberpunk stories tend to deal with the power of corporations and how they relate to the people under them.

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IN general it's the whole thing of how realistically things like the homeworld would become legends after a long time without real communication, and how Clark's 3rd law actually works.
I hope you know what Clark's Third Law is.

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The problem that science fantasy often has is that it rarely feels genuinely strange as a world and more often ends up being a schizophrenic mashup of science fiction and fantasy clichés.

Basically make the world feel alien.

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Rayearth is best mixture desu

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I never not laugh at this image when posted.

>What are some settings based around sci-fi and fantasy elements blended together in a way that it doesn't feel like a tacky mix of the tropes of both genres?

None, all the settings people think have done it "right" actually do is absurdly diminishing one aspect for the sake of the other to the point it almost becomes irrelevant to call it science fantasy.

If you want actual science fantasy you cant get autistic about "tackiness" because thats literally what it is.

All I want is a setting that gives me the same feeling I got playing through hyper light drifter, is that too much to ask? ;_;

A great aesthetic, user. Sadly, it's hard to steer away from the usual settings in stuff you find.

Me too, It's great
>Orc glaring at the human and putting all the blame on her
>The human realizing she fucked up
>The other orc who looks worried that they might go to jail and/or get yelled at by their client
>The power surge in the graph that goes immediately to dangerous levels
>The blast wave still affecting the left orc's stringy thing and the human's hair

it tells a very clear story and I love it

nice love i fucking love sword and planet settings

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Because this is still science humans have to at least number in the trillions (a few dozens at least) before they start becoming expansionist assholes.

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I always thought the setting for the comic East of West could be interesting as a tabletop, and it's a science-fantasy western.

You have to get down to what stories each genre generally deals in. Fantasy is typically heroic stories and the hero's journey, exploration of narrative tropes that involve people and knowledge and relationships, each heavy with metaphor and meaning (at least in a good story).

Science Fiction has typically associated with philosophical questions and questioning, dealing almost less with the science itself, and more with philosophy in the context of the human narrative.

So, Fantasy is about mankind confronting himself from within by journeying beyond. Science Fiction is about journeying beyond to confront mankind from within.

Anyway, my plug would be to look into Destiny. Lore-breakdown videos and grimoires because don't invest in the game. The narratives there toy with the mating of fantasy and science fiction, showcasing very science fiction-y philosophical questioning and conflict within a fantastical narrative featuring background characters and the player character. The Taken King is considered to be perhaps the best example of this; showcasing the philosophy of the Hive as the science of objectivism contrasted against an inverted/confounded Arthurian grail quest narrative.

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Honestly is there suppose to be a particular form of story that can only be told with Science fantasy? From a story telling perspective you can do anything from epic heros who cause change that affects everything to the common man of the setting and his slice of life adventures (frankly that would be interesting all things considered).

Whether it's bog standard sword and sorcery fantasy setting or epic sci-fi they always (to me at least) seem to focus on the events before the epoch as it where where something ends adn something new begins.

Frankly I just want a universe where shits happening and you don't have to worry about existence being nuked or something. Why not just deal with some warlord who's going around conquering planets and you're one of the few people who disagree by way of bullets/mind bullets/energy bullets?

Its really not THAT fantasy. And thats even before the whole midi chlorine.
The force was just shittily done telekenisis.

I'd just flat out steal from Doc Savage and John Carter, then upscale them to a galactic level.

Pulp tends to be rather fantasy like in retrospect, even if it wasn't the intention when they were written.

Endless series
Marvel
Star Wars
Warframe
Warcraft to some extent

Harry Potter
Star Wars
Avatar
Trigun

I don't really see the point in just giving everything medieval the 40k treatment and then saying its science-fantasy. I guess superficially it looks cool, but that's about it. I don't think that some people running around with swords fighting mutants in a post-apocalyptic sci-fi world really constitutes science-fantasy, and I don't see how all the fantasy elements of science-fantasy aren't just relegated to "not yet figured out science".

I vote we merge this thread with the Amazons vs Lady-knights thread:

Why?

Hell yeah, I don't think we've ever done that before.

underrail

and parasite eve 2

what does science fantasy? Is it just science fiction with a focus on the themes fantasy usually occupies?

Yes, plus add anachronisms like laser swords & powered plate. Mystic sages & space religions

Nanoha but ultra-tech pseudo-magic.

We did this once. It died because no one could decide on a system. But it was pretty fucking sweet up till then.

It's sci-fi elements and fantasy elements coexisting. Like Shadowrun or some of the newer Final Fantasy games.

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