For those in tune with the Pathfinder RPG, they recently released the Technology Guide (http://paizo.com/products/btpy95d2/discuss?Pathfinder-Campaign-Setting-Technology-Guide), which introduces stuff like cybernetics, laser pistols and rocket launchers to the heroic fantasy world full of dragons, elves, and so on. This comes as no surprise since the Pathfinder setting has always had a region of the world where barbarians and robots clashed (called Numeria), but I digress.
Have you guys ever experienced this as players or done this in settings as GMs? Certainly D&D in general is no stranger to mixing sci-fi with fantasy: those who remember Expedition to Barrier Peaks knows exactly what I'm talking about (for those who don't know, it's an old AD&D module where you explore a crashed spaceship).
Personally I have absolutely no problem in mixing sci-fi with fantasy, and I know it's certainly not for everyone. Even I know where the limits should be drawn; if Tyrion Lannister suddenly pulled out a laser pistol and started shooting everyone I'd be pretty turned off by it, even if the image of Tyrion wielding a laser pistol is awesome.
Another thought: I'm not very familiar with 5e, but I'm curious if this kind of stuff can be easily implemented to such a system. I know Wizards will never release a Technology Guide for 5e (the closest, I suppose, being the magically-powered tech of Eberron) but I'm still awfully curious. I guess I'll have to wait until the DMG is out to see.
Expedition to the Barrier Peaks is actually (quite obviously) the inspiration for said region in the Pathfinder campaign setting that the Technology Guide fills in some details on.
Personally, I've been mixing in sci-fi elements with my fantasy literally forever - I don't actually see the two as being separate genres; it's all fantasy to me, just with varying amounts of explanation.
That, and the gateway to which I was drawn to D&D is Final Fantasy, and varying levels of technology are always included in those fantasy worlds so that is what seems "natural" to me.
I normally use elemnts of sci fi rather than go the whole hog. I jhave used things like Dunes Sandworms or psionics and interplanetary travel/exploration/refugees as plot devices in mundane D&D and Spell Jammer.
In Spelljammer for example the Illithids were building bigger warships than the other races that were star destroyers. I have had magical flying dagger shaped airships as welll complete with Wyvern Cavalry "TIE " fighters.
The pinnacle of technology in my worlds is usually a grenade, a keg of gunpowder or somehting like that. A specific race lie Dwarves my have magitech steam ships or an ancient race might have quasi electrical destroyers or something like that.
I do not want things like laser guns etc outside of outliers like Expedition to the Barrier Peaks.
Ive only seen a little of it, but it looked like like a bad product to be honest. Why would you use modern weapons that are weaker than the medeval ones. I think your better off finding the d20 modern books and using them. Having said that I do like to run final fantasy style campaigns from time to time. I wish I had bought some ebberon books because that setting looked like a good base to start building them. Magitek for the win.
I haven't read the books (not any appropriate region in my homebrew setting for a Numenera equivalent. I'd be better off buying Primeval Thule and using that with some minor modifications). That said I have looked at ways to include advanced technology in my game. One of our local gaming clubs I run one-shot adventures for has a strong emphasis on science fiction so I've looked at getting some "Expedition to the Barrier Peaks" level items into my game.
I ran the Carrion Crown campaign from Paizo using Pathfinder rules and loved the Mi Go. I really wanted to find a way to get a focus on them in a future campaign. So in my homebrew world I've looked for excuses to include them, although transforming them from plants to aberrations (they're still plant material. But a knowledge (nature) does not identify their characteristics!)
Influenced by Mi Go, Dark Sun and the Far Realms from 4th ed, aberrations come from space. So the excuse to use aberrations to introduce science fiction technology is pretty easy.
The two go very well together. One of the most popular fantasy stories of all time is Star Wars. Many people think of it as Sci-fi but really it is fantasy with technology elements mixed in. Virtually nothing about it actually has anything to do with science. In 4e I saw several people playing Bladsingers as Jedi because they went so well with the themes.
So no one here has ever heard of Dragonstar? It was kind of awesome honestly.
Veleria wrote:
Atheosis wrote:
Having read C.J.Cherryh's Morgaine Cycle at an early age, I've never had a problem mixing the two. I've run my campaign milieu under D&D and Traveller. Well, and a few others, but my point is, it was just a low tech planet with magic as an exotic atmospher/worldwide Ancients' technological artifact (VERY red zone) when I used Traveller. When WotC released the first Stars wars D20 book, the obvious thing happened. I will say that when I picture the high technology bits in my head, they're alot more Metabarons than Star Trek, esthetically speaking. Deep in my nerdy little heart I'm hoping they do a 5e version of the Sheen.
The 3.0 DMG has laser rifles, maybe there will be a nod to future tech in the 5th Ed DMG.
My opinion is the true challenge for game designers is the right balance of power for firearms or hich-tech. When I say hich-tech I mea the arcanepunk version of "Call of Duty: Advance Warfare". I am used to imagine a civilititation of arcanepunk gnomes fighting againts steampunk mechas driven by goblins.
My suggestion is the module of firearms should use a different system of XP rewars, because a PC with a shotgun is but powerful, or a enemy nPC, for example a goblin with a clockpunk flamethroser, too dangerous.
Other matter is magic vs firearmas. Maybe gods of war gift extra sacred magic againts gunslingers because the gunpowder isn´t honorable for the war, or wizards could cast arcane spells againts the gunpowder.
The fraals, the classi little gray alien men were a canon AD&D monster. They should be in the next psionic hadbook with the blue (goblin subrace). I would like the return of most popular humanoids races from 20 Future and Gamma World.
arderkrag wrote:
I plan to (eventually) convert Tale of the Comet, a 2e boxed set to 5e. It was an adventure setting that allowed for high-tech equipment, and dealt with how to 'mesh' tech and magic (an unknown variable). There were specific items like magnum cannons but also guidelines for reflavoring spells like say, lightning bolt as an alien blaster (to keep things relatively straight-forward).
I plan to convert quite a bit of 2e era stuff actually. Converting Tale of the Comet would give me an excuse to revisit my Near Earth homebrew.
Near Earth was an alternate setiting for Dragonstar. Imagine the Hyborian Age but in the distant future rather the past. No dwarves, elves or haflings; instead (inspired by the Xindi from Enterprise 
), there were five species of humans (aquatic, avians, reptillian, primate, insectoid).
Do you guys know some material for inspiration in a sci-fi fantasy D&D game? I know a little and thanks for the ones mentioned in previous posts. If someone can make a brief list, i'm happy! 
I'm planning to make a campaign for D&D 5e mixing Numenera + D&D and some sci-fi elements.
Gygax wrote Sturmgeschutz and Sorcery or How effective is a panzerfaust against a troll, Heinz?
A setting I designed back during the 3.5 days but never got to use was Starfall, a post-apocalyptic world where a meteor (which was a fragment of the planet of the dromites from the XPH) fell on a planet, damaging its weather control ring. The setting's unique elements were high technology treated as magic (you could get a +2 sword or a beam sword, a magic longbow or a laser pistol), the elan as the fallen genetically-enhanced rulers of what had been a world-spanning empire, and a race of cyborgs who worshipped and defended the control systems for the weather control ring.
In my current Mystara game, gunpowder weapons are quite new, with the Empire of Thyatia having a head start on the other powers and the Diamond Throne playing catch up after first encountering them when they began to settle in the Known World. The Diamond Throne didn't have gunpowder, but it did have huge, steam-powered armored warships that use dual wheels protected by armored "fenders" for propulsion. Personal firearms are treated as a Simple weapon with a very short "normal" range, a very long "long" range, high damage, but a requirement that you spend a full action reloading after each attack - the intended wielders of them aren't elite PCs; they're large groups of peasant militia taking advantage of bounded accuracy.
One of my players just started training Artillery as a tool proficiency.
In my setting the gods of war punishs or curse the gunslingers who kill a "honorable" warrior. If you kill a "blessed" warrior with a gun, the ghost will chase you until you (or your champion) defeat him in honorable hand-to-hand combat.
To add high-tech is like to try create a new d20 Modern with superheroes.. what if any players wants a martial artist PC, but anothers would rather a exosuit like Iron Man? A right balance of power is difficult to find. A monster could be a knighmare in a d20 Past campaign but a walking bulleye in d20 Future. A psycho killer nPC would be a terrible menace for civilians PCs without weapons, but extra free XPs for soldiers.
Or a DM wants to add the fantasy version of Carbyne, Graphene, Silicene and the nanocellulose? The ultimate chainmail bikini!!
And you should remeber if you PC can use, the enemy humanoids too, for example steampunk goblins like ones from World of Warcraft.
In the past I have suggested some times the "extra help" (allies, magic item, monster pets, firearms) oughts to be like a extra PC about to give XP rewards by DM. If PCs can kill more enemies with firearms, then the leveling up had to be slower, as if each killed enemy by bullets were a minion (lower XP) automatically.
I'm likin a lot of ideas here! One of the things I wanted to do was have a homebrew setting taking place in Shadowrun, but many centuries after the apocalypse. So you have genuine magic, and the mainstray weapons are swords and bows and what have you, but the echoes from the prior ages are in the form of cybernetics, limited access to the Matrix, rail guns, etc.
because I really, really like Adventure Time and Wheel of Time, I wouldn't let the players know the supposedly fantasy setting they're on is Shadowrun-era Earth until a bit later into the game.
masterfat78 wrote:
I like to add some steam/diesel/magic-punk in the hands of players, warforged, primitive guns, clunkt mechanical armor, clockwork golems, etc, and some little sci-fi or magic-sci-fi just here and there and usually broken and in pieces or in the hands (tentacles?) of aberrations. Also i like my broken sci-fi veing the reason why there is even a little whatever-punk in the setting: some kind of reverse enginering of sorts.
My players like it so much that i was forced to update our artificer class before we began playing (the english version is here btw http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?367999-5e-Homebrew-The-Artificer-%28of-Alancia%29)
The closest I get is steampunky/arcanepunky stuff.
My homebrew setting features floating cities, airships, some firearms, artificers, warforged, etc. Although, most of this stuff is almot on another plane, as PC's start on the surface, having grown up just seeing this stuff by looking up, or by the fact that the sky peoples dump trash on the surface, and just come down to mine, raid, and generally do bad things. I have used UFO's that crashed 10,000+ years ago as dungeons, but I treated anything found like one use, or limited charge magic items. That's about as far as I go. I don't just allow rocket launchers, combustion engines, fusion ractors, etc. or whatever to be common.
I don't think I'd want a lot of modern, or sci-fi stuff in my game, but, hey...It's a cool supplement for those who do. Also, PF is at the point where they are running out of ideas to publish...LOL, it happens to all TTRPGs.
I'd like to try a magi-tech world at some point, because guns and cars really change the feel of everything. But my I like going with more "traditional" fantasy as well. It scratches the right itch
You ought to think about the idea of vehicles with motor in a arcanepunk setting would be the end of the mounted chavalry. Have you read about the war wagons?
How would be the trench warfare in a fantasy setting? Or the combo of artificiers crafting bombs for the warmages, for example smoke grenades.
Magic could be used to controll war beasts, for example dogs to carry magic runes... when the runes are in the enemy squads, then teletransporting spells to send bombs, or a swarn of summoning flying creatures, for example fire bats, or vermins.
JohnLynch wrote:
In my 2 1/2 year 3.5e campaign, the pcs went through a portal into a post apocalyptic world (Gamma World/Darwin's World inspired) and they explored an old military base complete with computers, cyborgs, vehicles and firearms. We spent about 8 sessions before returning to pure fantasy.
It it was an nice break.
I have no problem mixing tech and fantasy; I'm something like a "Sure, why not?" guy in this genre.
In case of firearms for 5e, I think I've heard that they WILL be included in the DMG...
If I ever get to DM, I'll treat all firearms and/or more advanced weapons (like nukes and such) as magic items, in the sense that their sheer kinetic energy has meaningful impact on the magic nearby, thus piercing Tarrasque hide and such.
Yeah, DnD magic is pretty much as Sciency as it gets really. Mix and match, not much difference between getting blasted by a grenade or getting blasted by a fireball.
Shasarak wrote:
I think the key thing to keep in mind is how much does the campaign world to have hardcore technology items in the world. the Expedition module made for a nice break and was very well written that players who didn't know the details could go a long ways without realizing it was tech items and it never unbalanced the campaign. A random "artifact" or even some "magitek" type items can be put in without ruining the fantasy feel, especially if the players don't metagame the "this is a laser rifle" aspect.
Just as with anything about a campaign setting it's about internal consistency to the world and story.
JohnLynch wrote:
Shasarak wrote:
Shasarak wrote:
I converted Dragon*Star for 4e, and at the moment I'm translating some of my more interesting ideas from that to 5e (like the minigun-wielding barbarian build, and the bard whose performance style is 'trick shots').
Also, I am contractually obligated to plug Amethyst, although that's more 'you got fantasy in my sci-fi'
On the whole, though, I prefer the Spelljammer/Eberron approaches to high-tech - using magic to duplicate modern/futuristic conveniences. I just don't necessarily care for Spelljammer's implementation of 'space' travel.
“Theorising that one could time travel within his own lifetime, Doctor Sam Beckett stepped into the Quantum Leap accelerator and vanished... He woke to find himself trapped in the past, facing mirror images that were not his own, and driven by an unknown force to change history for the better. His only guide on this journey is Al, an observer from his own time, who appears in the form of a hologram that only Sam can see and hear. And so Doctor Beckett finds himself leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong, and hoping each time that his next leap will be the leap home…”
So when Sam leaps into a past life, he's wearing somebody else's clothes, yeah? Does this mean he's wearing their old underwear? Yee-Uck!!
I think a medieval/fantasy spin on Quantum Leap would be fun. Exploring alternate/past settings perhaps (rather than past lives), 'leaping' into them via some magical 'accelerator'. I'd have to work out the details. The campaign would have to accomodate a group of PCs and not just a siingle character (like the TV show). The DM could be 'Al'.
Rambling thoughts (especially about the underwear thing ).
.
I play Shadowrun from time to time so this source book has me pretty excited.
I'm good with it. I'm good with it as a baked-in option for a setting. I'm good with magitek and clockpunk gnomes and all sorts of pseudotechnological elements. Give me airships and steam-powered steel golems and green martians and tesseract walking witch-huts with Russian tanks in the basement.
But not in every game.
I'm currently working on "D&D in space", which is largely just D&D but with spaceships and different planets instead of different regions. I'll be making a post when it's ready.
Other matter is then the PCs are the primitive people (na'vi, ewoks..) and the alien invaders the main antagonists (for example illithid and neogi from Spelljammer). How to get a right balance of power?
I would figure the ready access to flight platforms, plus the exotic weapons and tactics they bring should be rather daunting. Depending on how they stat out, you may want to up the damage on the invader's weapons to make their magitechnological superiority more manifest.
Orethalion wrote:
My previous game had some Barrier Peaks items, some of which the PCs acquired when they rifled through an art collector's stash. They found two black balls emitting blue light, with buttons on them, believed by him to be ancient art, and known by me to be Singularity Grenades. Long story short, one of them wound up in the main villain's hollowed-out chest cavity, after his immortality crystal he embedded there had been pried out by the Monk.
The sequel to that campaign takes place at the foot of the Barrier Peaks, and the villain is a beloved and mourned princess who disappeared on an expedition to the Barrier Peaks (c wut i did there?) sixteen years ago. In fact, she was cyberized and corrupted by Phyrexian equipment and oil, left behind a long, long time ago, and responsible for most of the weird stuff in the Peaks. She then returns, and turns the game's setting into Metal Gear Rising. Also Kill la Kill, in several ways my players have pointed out.
I realize not everyone would like this, but, well, my group does.
Science Fiction Armor
Light Armor
12+Dex Deflector Bracers 600 Credits
13+Dex Nanoweave Armor 2000 Credits
Medium Armor
14+Dex (max 2) Cyberweave Armor 3000 Credits
15+Dex (max 2) Technoweave Armor 4000 Credits
Heavy Armor
16 Assault Armor 2000 Credits
17 Techno Armor 8000 Credits
18 Exo-Armor 10000 Credits
Nano-Shields +2 AC
Archaic Armor if used has a -2 to a minimum of 10 versus ballistic weapons
All the Science Fiction Armor and Shields except the Assault Armor can be removed
and donned as a Reaction as it morphs around your body from a small container carried on your
person
Blaster 1d6 Ballistic Damage
Blaster Ridfle 1d12 Ballistic Damage
I've already been making tweaks. Plan to eventually have add-ons and customizations to the armors where the add-ons need to be learned with training on downtime.
The best way to mix sci-fi and fantasy is the Elder Scrolls way
Which is, of course, the "So the inspiration for paladins and one of the greatest heroes of humanity is actually basically a Terminator who was sent from the future to kill elves"
A setting could like "world of Gor" or "John Carter warlord of Mars" being invaded by aliens from Far Realm with high-tech...
Another point we ought to remember is the energy and the repair. If a car spend oild to run, the level of consumption is really important in a post-apocalypse setting, or if a piece is broken, you need a new piece to replace it.
Some players are imaginining "my PC will use a machine gun to kill a horde of orcs"... nobody is thinking about a...D&D version of "War of the Worlds".
Another matter, maybe the D&D deities could want to monopolise those knowledges. Think about the medicine could cure a disease also could be used to create biological weapons.
Or the clonation... a wizard could use biopunk technology to grow monster plants and plasma fruit to be sold to vampires. If a lord vampire notices blood could be got by plasma fruit fields... he could create an army of vampires, and the slaves would work in the "blood farms".
What if technology is possible, but it is forbbiden? Maybe a D&D kingdom could use motorbikes, but they would rather horses because in the past the machines were "possesed" by spirits from Far Realm (a splatterpunk version of decepticons ghots) and they attacked the humanity, like in the Stephen King´s serie B movie "Maximum Overdrive", or the novel "Christine", or "I bought a vampire motorcycle".
The campaign I plan on running has low level scifi.
Some world-changing event destroyed the old tech world.
While there's remnants, the world has mostly restarted and magic is now coming into prominence.
I had an idea that there was two seperate planets at one point (the magical world and the tech world). The tech world was suffering from the normal problems of ancient, highly-advanced planets (red sun, no more resources, whatever). They developed technology to allow them to travel to parallel dimensions (where the magic planet resides). They found the planet, saw it nice and fresh and ready to go, and decided to develop the science to merge the planet - essentially mash them together into one so they'd get to live/keep their cool stuff, but have a fresh planet to rip resources from. The magic planet reacted to merger defensively, resulting in the planet I first described.
But I'm not sure if I'm going to follow through on that or not. I had initially thought of this as a reason to have two groups. One group would be on the planet above. The other would be on the sister planet where the results of the merger were flipped: the magical world was destroyed and technology came into prominence once the world got back on its feet. But I could barely get my one group of players (and there's only three of them).
I might still run with it though. I could even have the group go to the sister planet for an extended adventure.
I tend to use scifi as background (wands look like ray guns). I think the people on most D&D type worlds wouldn't be able to distinguish between high science and magic or aliens and monsters. If the abberations are going to be aliens (or reskinned kobalds as "little green men") then I have the wizard or a convenient NPC mention that the aliens are "creatures of flesh" so that no one wastes "protection from good and evil" on them. That is also how I handle psychic powers. The player (and maybe the PC) knows the PC is psychic, but 99% of the world thinks he/she is "just a weird wizard, I mean weird even for a wizard, almost warlock weird."
I'm curios no one mentioned Space Opera genre (pardon if i skiped someone). Since i love good space opera which is basicly fantasy in space,i think it would work well with d&d rules. A bit of reflavoring and voila. Sword fights,necklace of shield spell used like personal shield from dune, wand of magic missile reflavored as laser rifle and so on. I think it is very doable and very fun to play,but it would require lot of work on the DM side.
Dex-fighter and models for viable naked AC makes 5th one of the most Barsoom-friendly editions
Am I really the first person to make the Reeces referrence?
"You got Sci-fi in my fantasy!"
"You got Fantasy in my Sci-fi!"
Shasarak wrote:
Scrinoverlord wrote:
Mecheon wrote:
There isn't any intrinsic reason for high-tech weapons to be more damaging than medieval fantasy ones: real weapons are fairly uniformly lethal. Their chief benefit is that they are higher up the arms race ladder compared with medieval armor, and that is iffy in a magical world where armor designers would have to make some of the same considerations that they would make for dealing with guns, grenades, and exotic damage types. It would have to be a dial the GM could set based on the impact they'd want technology to make on their setting: say, if you wanted to emphasize the superiority (or at least the unfamiliarity) of technology, you could have technological weapons grant advantage on attack rolls against low-tech armor, with low-tech weapons having disadvantage against high-tech armor (probably best for something like Dragon*Star, where the Empire is able to quite easily take over Outlands planets without much difficulty, or one-shots like Barrier Peaks/Comet); but if you wanted it to be just something different and not necessarily better, you could play technological equipment alongside medieval gear and have it be roughly equivalent (more appropriate for settings like Amethyst, where you might have mixed groups, or planetary romance where swords and guns are treated as equivalent for stylistic reasons).
A D&D with high-tech would be a d20 Spectacular (d20 Modern with superheroes).
Lots of you are imagining PCs with guns killing hordes of primitive gnolls but it would be too different if PCs are the tribal people agains invaders from outer space (like "Mars attack!"). Then the balance of power would be too different.
Do you remember teleserie "Stargate"? From "Urban Arcana" I have imagined a "stargate expedition" to a D&D world.
* Somebody imagine high-tech like "magic item" but he forgest it may be "too cheap" magic item.
* DMs could create anti-ballistic defenses, for example to add half-troll template to add regeneration or extra powers, for example a shield created by psionic powers by githyankis..
* If I was a D&D deity I wouldn´t allow the industrial revolution because pollution would destroy Nature and to mixture the secrets of the atom and the magic would be the apocalypse. Let´s imagine an atomic bomb sent by teletransporting to a enemy city.
* How would be a d20 Future-Spelljammer crossover? And with another space operas (Flash Gordon, Andromeda, Star Wars, Star Treck, Doctor Who, Babylon 5..)?