Forums » RP Discussion » Is sci-fi dead?

I've noticed that there are almost no sci-fi RP's on the forums. there's like 9 of them most haven't been touched in months. with mine the only recent one. but there are 32 and 49 in general and fantasy respectivly.

It makes me wonder...is sci-fi a dying genre? Even on other Rp forums there isn't much for sci-fi. it's all moder/general or fantasy. what do you guys think?

I actually enjoy Sci-Fi very much. I don't know why there isn't more Scifi here...I would make a topic, but I'm still learning forum roleplaying, so I'm limiting myself to just replying for now...

I can understand that. but I'm also wondering why isn't there more sci-fi Rp on here? It's like it's become a very shunned genre. There are less and less i see that are sci-fi. most go fantasy and such. I RP at times on furcadia. even there i only know of two or three dreams there that are sci-fi when only a year ago there where almost ten of them.

I don't think sci-fi is a dying genre (I personally prefer it) but I have observed that fantasy is always a more popular choice for roleplaying.

I noticed this also, I made a topic quite awhile ago, and no one replied. I was kinda bummed out about it.

Although fantasy seems to be a more popular choice for RP, to say that sci-fi is a dying genre is more than a little melodramatic. It's still extremely popular. Just not on our public forums.

Why? Almost certainly because where RP is concerned, fantasy is easier for the majority of people to just jump into, because there is a whole lot of pre-established lore we all grew up with. Everyone has a general sense of, say, medieval monarchy and class systems, and what an elf is, even if there are variations. So when someone starts a fantasy thread, there's less intimidation to just jump in with whatever ranger, bard, or princess you have on hand.

Sci-fi on the other hand has NO such easy conventions. It's not based on something that actually existed, it's based on an imagined future, which could have any level of technology, any mixture of races (which, unless it's based on a pre-existing show or book, new players may have never heard of before the game in question), any system of ethics and law, any class structure, any currency, any planet... But you don't know which. So players either need to do a lot of study of materials provided to them by the GM, which not as many people have energy for, OR they feel intimidated and lost and don't enjoy themselves. For these reasons, just starting a sci-fi thread tends to fail, because people don't know where to start. The best way to get a sci-fi RP going would be to first find players and discuss carefully with them what sort of sci-fi world you actually mean before you start, so people don't feel lost.

I've also noticed that groups tend to be better suited to sci-fi RP, because they contain more space for writing out all these nitty gritty details of your world that people will need to reference to come up with appropriate characters and understand the world that they are playing in.

I find a good sci-fi universe extremely enjoyable, but they do require a lot of clarity to make possible. This is not to say that it isn't possible to make a truly unique fantasy setting that requires a lot of research to understand. I'm just saying it's harder to have a "generic" sci-fi world, because there's no such thing.

This has been discussed before in some manner!

Kim beat me to it, the short answer is that Fantasy is easier and Sci-Fi requires knowledge to work out well. If you write Sci-Fi, it can be anything, so if another player has this whole world established it may be difficult for my character to fit in. It's a lot of work getting to know this new world as well, whereas fantasy is usually the same with a few minor differences. We associate fantasy with medieval 9 out of 10 times, and most people who went to school have learned about this time.

It makes Sci-Fi less desirable because it can feel like work, or a chore, where RP should be fun and relaxing.

I dunno, to me, a well written sci-fi world is REALLY EXCITING.

But it does take a long time to work out the details of a universe and convey them to other people so that it's that good to read. So perhaps it is less desirable to GMs, too, because the setup is so much longer.

I was thinking about this awhile back. Fantasy settings do share things like race names. An elf in Lord of the Rings looks pretty much like an elf in Dragon Age. Same with dwarves, dragons and many other creatures. There are exceptions of course but generally, this is true.

When it comes to scifi settings, it's technology names and their purposes that are shared (even if how they work is different). You know a hyperdrive is an engine that makes getting around the vast distances of space regardless of it being Star Wars, Babylon 5 or something else entirely.

But it takes more than a list of advanced technology to create a science fiction world, so I have to agree with what Kim and Sanne have already been saying.

Fourthing Kim, Sanne, and Darth.

Sci-fi-- while I do enjoy it-- is not something as easy and pre-defined as the settings and genres of fantasy/medieval realms. Even to this very day I am still hammering out the aspects of the science-fictional parts of my personal continuity, because I pretty much have to start from scratch with no preset lore or hardcore facts to go off of.

It's fun, sure, but it's a lot of work, and were I to let anyone "play" in it, I'd have to set up all sorts of information for them in those particular areas that I'm still trying to hammer out myself.

Sci-Fi can be a epic setting for an rp, or story. There is so much you can do with tech and everything else such as places, creatures, characters and more! Like i had wanted to do a cybernetic mech operator. Skin, hair, looks compleatly human and acts human in every way but is nothing but cybernetics underneath.

But i am in agreement with the others talking in this thread. Sci-fi needs a bunch more stuff to work out in order for it to work. Fantasy is just pretty much drag and drop any setting as you can use the same thing for just about 9/10 fantasy rps..........yes i know that may be generalizing to much or stereotyping, but 9/10 fantasy rps usually are forests, bars, caves, magical places, castles, towns and villages.

Sci-fi on the other hand, can be compleatly different one moment to the next and usually are not typical scenes (though you can still have the same things as fantasy, not saying you cannot have common like that in Sci-fi). You can have barren to heavily populated and advanced, yet alien. Most fantasy cities, from common villages to the grand cites are usually mostly the same setup (same with forests, caves, etc). For example, Big cites tend to be in this order in most fantasy books, stories, movies, and games (or so i found) Castle being the most prominent thing and the center of the city, then the rich section, then the middle class, then the poor Where as a Sci-fi city can have no prominent place in the center, or it can be all encompassing on the planet and the entire thing be a city!

Thats not to say Fantasy is not fun, it is it really is a lot of fun to play fantasy stuff, just a lot easier to do.

I AGREE! I mostly meant being the second/third/fourth etc player who wants to get involved. They'd have to learn about the world you created, and sometimes that can feel like a chore when all you want is a simple, relaxing RP.

So THAT'S what a hyperdrive is? Seriously man, I didn't know. I may be good at English, but not technical English... It makes me feel dumb.

I'll mostly concur with what's being said, with a few disagreements. Generally speaking, the common fantasy thread is elves, dragons, and middle ages. Fantasy also has a broader spread at times of what is allowed, since just about anything can happen. At the same time, sci-fi does have its own common ideas. Hyperdrives, power cores, powerful processors and whatever. A lot of sci-fi movies actually barely define the technology for what it is, at a surface level. Yeah, you can go to the star wars wiki and find out about the processors or whatever, or what technology makes a lightsabre, but you can often enjoy the series with a vague understanding.

Whereas, in counter, I don't tend to delve into something so simple. Yes, my szurane setting has the default races people know, but it has an intense system of magic to it, its own demonic and godly pantheons, its own kingdoms, populations, religions, beliefs, it's own artifacts, and anything else that has shown to overwhelm people at a glance. Outside of the main world of szurane, I don't use medeival. I use my own theories of the gods from years of etymological and anthropological study of the evolution of entities across different cultures. If someone just freely jumped into my thread and started spouting something generic about gods, it could easily cause a clash. That's okay though. I'm flexible and try to find some way to work with them.

The presumption that it's any easier to jump into fantasy is more misunderstanding than anything. Both worlds have defaults accepted between them. Exchange elves and drow for alien species. Replace magic with hyperdrive. Replace mythril with nanorod compressed diamond. Replace demon lords with galactic emperors. When it boils down to it the only thing that shies people away is the fact that the sci-fi words sound scarier. I could be a real douche and bring any of my characters into a sci-fi setting easy-breezy. I mean, I often base my fantasy off of some level of metaphysics anyway. All I need is the right wormhole theory, or bend in space, and I could drop my character into some solar system far, far away. Heck, Luci could literally run out there. He's known to visit nebulas comprised of clouds of liquor, and often hangs out in the Orion Nebula for other reasons. I just choose not to since it might cause some distortion and make it harder for the other writers to work with it. With enough effort it could be covered without incident, though.

It really boils down to what is comfortable to the player, so in essence scifi isn't dying so much as it feels overwhelming to those that are unstudied on scientific fronts. They just have to remember that scifi is its own form of fantasy, and enough effort and imagination can build something magical. Or... scientifical I guess.

But you're talking about space sci-fi for those standards, Minerva. Half of sci-fi games don't take place in space at all, and may not even include the capability. Sure, there's no need to explain how hyperdrive works, but you do need to make clear whether it exists or not. Along with any other piece of technology.

And when one exchanges "drow" for "alien species" they are exchanging a well defined, well known race for just about anything ever.

While I agree that you don't need to explain how everything works, infact it's probably better if you don't but you do need to establish some basic rules as to what the limits are.

To use the two best known space sci-fi worlds as examples, in Star Wars, you can travel to across the galaxy in a matter of days. However, the same trip in Star Trek would take a century.

Yes, but that undermines the potential difference in fantasy settings as well. In one world setting, someone might see Helios and Apollo as seperate. In another, people take the medeival interpretation where they got slammed into the same entity. Other people can see Helios as the same individual as Horus, while other people have the idea that different pantheons camped in different parts of the world. Some people think Mana draws from within, some think from external elements. Some people feel demons can do whatever the heck they want; others feel they have some sort of hierarchy or even a complete lack of free will depending on the setting. The idea that every setting in fantasy is as accessible as the next any moreso than science fiction more has to do with the common perception of, well... common fantasy, I suppose you'd say. But there are common elements regardless, and there are always elements that can change. If you took Lord of the Rings and tried to mix it with Szurane, short of both authors being extremely flexible to the point of abandoning a lot of their own ideas, it just wouldn't work. There's just a better sense of security in "do as thou wilt" among fantasy than sci-fi, but if anyone took the time to really investigate every fantasy setting as much as they feel the need for sci-fi, they'd probably find there's just as much to learn about both.

Nobody is saying that there's no such thing as more detailed fantasy settings, or super unique settings. Nor even that all fantasy settings are compatible with one another. That's clearly ludicrous. Just that if you do want something with an absolute minimum of set up, it's easier to pull a "generic" fantasy setting off the shelf.

Of COURSE you can do more.

Fantasy settings are far more bountiful than Sci-Fi ones. Fantasy is based on something that has been around for centuries, i.e. concepts of other-wordly beings, demons, elves.... those range back to medieval times. Because they reach so far back and are easy to relate to for the general public, they get thorough research, are usually 'dumbed down' because high technology didn't exist in medieval times (which is what Fantasy is usually based on) and everybody can work with it.

Sci-Fi is modern, something that hasn't happened yet, but is likely if people keep coming up with advanced technology and innovations. 25 years ago, the concept of an iPad was something alien and impossible. It took some innovative minds to fix us up with that, and it's not an average Joe's thing, otherwise we would be cruising in spaceships already I'm sure. It's also the technology bit that makes it hard. I'm pretty nerdy, I know my way around computers in general and I only need to be shown once to learn something I don't know yet. But I am not really capable of coming up with a crazy new gadget or some unknown futuristic society or landscape. It's like asking someone in the middle ages to draw up today's New York. It's like asking someone who only knows the world as a flat disc to imagine the world as a globe etc.

It's hard because it's unknown. It can go everywhere. Fantasy can go everywhere you want it to, as well, and people like Tolkien did great jobs coming up with extensive fantasy worlds. But doing so is made just a bit easier because of all the lore that already exists. You just have to reshape it, not invent it.

And I think my last sentence there just really sums up how I feel about the difference between Fantasy and Sci-Fi and why people like me struggle with it. I'm a shaper, not an inventor.

I'll still have to disagree. Yes, there are sci-fi earth/almost modernish, there are sci-fi future. There are fantasy medeival, there are fantasy future, there are fantasy complete-unique worlds. There are limitless undefined alien races for scifi, but so are there for fantasy (can anyone here tell me what a Karura Ebon is?). There are limitless potentials for technology in sci-fi, but so are there for magic in fantasy. People thus far have said, 'but you're thinking this branch of scifi, instead of all of these!', but those same debates ignore the very idea 'you're thinking of this branch of fantasy, but not these!'.

The only real arguments I've had boil down to that it's easier for people to feel comfortable throwing together a lazy fantasy RP than a lazy sci-fi RP. I mean, I know that's not what you're saying, but that's pretty much the idea of it. Anyone can mix elves and magic, but somehow not anyone can mix genetic testing and cryogenic chambers. I've seen both done as flippantly.

I hold to the idea that the sci-fi words just sound scarier to the undereducated in science and thereby dissuade them from wanting to throw things together so quickly. And when it comes down to it, the quantity of the RP should never dictate how "alive" people think either are. Same way the quantity of words in a post never dictates a player's writing skill.

Yeah, people are more comfortable being lazy in fantasy. I can cope with that statement even if it wasn't said verbatim. They can fall on past ideas rather than having to dream up future ones; but even then, many of the ideas chosen for futuristic RP or sci-fi have somehow spun, by one method or another, off of an idea someone else has had at some time.

Is Sci-Fi dying? No; sci-fi always intimidates lazy people easier than it does the devout. It's a bit easier to throw together some vague room; but earlier in the thread someone inferred that you can just throw your bard or whatever into whatever fantasy thread is available. That is a direct misjudgment of fantasy at face value. It would be like me saying "I can throw my android into any sci-fi thread.", and then of course someone could say "well androids only exist in XYZ in this world." -- and in a fantasy world, bards might have gone the way of the dinosaur; fantasy can be modern, after all.

It's been said that you should at least vaguely define what is available in your sci-fi setting. Why is any less expected of a fantasy setting? I mean, do people here just treat fantasy like the throw-away bin without expected dedication? I sure hope not, because I like this place. There's a million things to define in fantasy, just like in sci-fi.

I'm just saying that the very idea that one is easier to jump into than the other is... wrong. Both settings can be thrown together lazily. Both can be very dedicated and in depth. The seeming slowness mostly comes from large/harder to perceive ideas making the lazier people feel intimidated.

EDIT: I'm deleting my post because I'm losing my temper. What I'm understanding is that you feel comfortable jumping into any scifi thread, even if there's been no set up at all, which is awesome. We need more people like that. But the large majority of respondents here have said they don't feel there's enough of a consensus for them to jump into a sci-fi RP without some setup. And you seem to be saying that you think all of those people are lazy or stupid because they don't see the same level of consensus in the genre that you do. I can't have a discussion wherein other people being too dumb seems to be the assumption without losing my temper, so I'm bowing out for good.