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any room for Magic in a scifi setting?
dwarflordking
Member Posts: 265
do u guys prefer ur space scifi to be purely technological.. like trek or u woudln't mind some pure fantasy magic in a space setting?
do u think they dont really go together? and by magic i mean some wizard type of magic, shooting fireballs, summoning and casting powers.. like real fantasy powers in space.
Comments
I think it works, if anything I find anything sci-fi related with a tint of fantasy/magic invovled.
I think Neocron 2 had a sort of magic based class, though the game was entirely sci fi/cyber punkish.
There are Lots of ways to do Magic in a Sci Fi Setting. I got no problems with it. Now adding magic to a Established setting would be a problem.
If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude; greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.
Samuel Adams
Shadowrun...omg if someone would make an MMO of that i would die...it would have to be someone amazing too because if they screwed up that IP i would hunt them down...
Anyways Shadowrun was awesome with the Scifi and mixing in magics and such...i loved that game...also still wishing for a Battletech MMO.
"The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand."
- Lewis Thomas
Variety is good. It would be great to see magic in sci-fi.
I am simply myself, no more and no less. And I only want to be free.
Shadowrun is a great example. But what's Star Wars really? Lightening bolts out of your finger tips, being able to jump impossibly high, mind control? Sure, Lucas called it "the force" and then we learn it's the "midiclorians" in your blood, but really, just magic in a thin disguise.
Maybe the reason why i prefer feed my inner geek it is because of how they merge the -Fi's together. Star Wars (though imo is more of a Political-Fi with a side of Sci and Magic) is a very good example to anwser your question.
**oh, seems someone beat me to it, but yea, Sci-fi/fantasy is Lucas Land, now to keep him away from the actual "making" of the stories he creates.
I like my Sci-Fi non Fantasy like Star Trek or Firefly. Even some of the best Star Wars stuff was the non-Skywalker scenes in IV-VI and the X-Wing or Wraith Squadron Book Series.
No. I like how they did it in Anarchy Online, by replacing magic with "nanotechnology", so there was never a breach of lore until Shadowlands hit. If it's Sci-fi, then it at least has to be justified somewhat by science; magic is just magic and there's nothing really physical about it. Jedi didn't use the force to conjure up bread baskets and turn people into newts.
This is a sequence of characters intended to produce some profound mental effect, but it has failed.
This looks like a good place for this quote:
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Arthur C. Clarke, "Profiles of The Future", 1961 (Clarke's third law)
English physicist & science fiction author
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well it doesn't have to be games, im talkin shows and movies too...
i'm sorta torn by what the genre could be... i actually like to call future scifi, sci-tech... I'd like everything to be explained through fake science that kinda makes sense... but i also love pure magic.. it would leave room for dragons in space lol..
maybe if someone did it right i would be convinced.. this is probably why fantasy is so much more easier to do in games cuz nearly everything is possible.. probably why they arent making starcraft mmo cuz it just wont work.. unless ur fine with just picking out different guns all the time (in place of magic) hmm that would be kinda cool actually
If they can shoot lasers and space jump, if they can mind control, sure why not, magic is possible. Heck I even loved cowboys in space a la Firefly. To me sci-fi should be anything and everything you can imagine.
EQ1-AC1-DAOC-FFXI-L2-EQ2-WoW-DDO-GW-LoTR-VG-WAR-GW2-ESO
And magic and science do not have to be antinomic.
Sure, most of the time, "magic" in a scifi settings are call psychic powers. But that if you look at shadowrun, magic is scientifically studied and learn! Rationalising it as psychics is one way to merge magic and sci imo. But even mental powers don't really explain that much, except that it comes from within rahter than being an external energy or force.
Well Star Wars has already been mentioned. One tv show that sprang to mind was Babylon 5 Crusade where you have the technomages. While I prefer a more science based sci-fi (or believable future science) a la Trek, there's room for magic if you set it up right.
If they can shoot lasers and space jump, if they can mind control, sure why not, magic is possible. Heck I even loved cowboys in space a la Firefly. To me sci-fi should be anything and everything you can imagine.
all those can be explained through pseudo science in the shows... how is cowboys in space so unbelievable that u have to bring it up?
theres a difference between pure fantasy magic in space, and fake science powers in space..
Sure there is, Star wars being one of them
imo (the force can be seen as magic)
March on! - Lets Invade Pekopon
Man, I don't get you guys using Star Trek as an example of purely science sci/fi. Star Trek was rife with magic. Mind melds anyone? Q? Troy the empath? Lot's and lots of episodes featuring psychic powers or god like "energy" beings. As usual with sci/fi they disguised it as pyschic powers or various forms of mystery energy but that's just the standard way to put magic into a sci/fi setting.
Not that I necessarily hate that sort of thing. Some of my favorite books are sci/fi with psychic powers standing in for magic.
A mind reader can be explained by science?
EQ1-AC1-DAOC-FFXI-L2-EQ2-WoW-DDO-GW-LoTR-VG-WAR-GW2-ESO
A mind reader can be explained by science?
Yes. There are people who are "psychic", however, science has not been able to fully explain the phenomenon yet.
This is a sequence of characters intended to produce some profound mental effect, but it has failed.
dam it u guys aint getting it... trek has magic in the guise of technology some we can't explain.. so its more just super tech. and it doesn't pass itself off as magic.
im talkin about straight up magic in space.. starwars is sorta but its not enough.. im talkin real magic scifi show or movie that passes itself off as magic. with no nanotech explaination.. think WOW in space or something
or would u like ur space scifi to be explained through fake tech
The problem is, if there is some form of advanced tech, that seems to suppose a scientific "culture" that tries to explain everything through science 9even if the explanation is "we don't have the means currently to explain exactly how this work").
In a "medieval" settings, any unusual occurrence is explained through supernaturl means not physics and science.
In short, in a sci-fi settings, science is the default explanation, in med-fan, it's magic.
The only universe, imo, to really reconcile the two, to not try to look too scientifically at magic while still having advanced technology, is Shadowrun. The Amber cycle, particularly with Merlin, does that a little to.
There is plenty of 'magic' in science, just take a look at quantum tunnelling, superposition, or entanglement.
"Good? Bad? I'm the guy with the gun."
My point exactly. There is a lot of unknown around, as if every answer. just raises two questions. Depending on the cultural context, it will either be explained with (pseudo)science or magic.
That's why it is generally difficult to have magic and science mixed well in one context: if the science is advanced, we generally assumed that all explanations will be on the scientific side rather than just relying on "it's magic/divine intervention".
Of course, irl, we do mix more or less mix them (we all have our own lucky charms, at the very least); but when creating a universe, it is a lot easier to adopt just one way of thinking for the whole setting, rather than go into too much details on what everyone thinks about science and magic.
Shadowrun was probably my favorite PnP game of all time. I would love to see a MMO version done as long as it was done right.