Greetings and salutations. It is I, Graham.

“I’m late! I’m late! For a very important date! No time to say ‘hello’. Goodbye! I’m late, I’m late, I’m late!”

So this has been quite the weekend. I’m not going to get into it, but nothing I wanted or needed to accomplish got done. But that’s okay. That’s life. I’ll get it all done today.

So the big question today is, “Why Fantasy?”. I adore both science fiction and fantasy. Both genres give the ability to look at a scenario and ask, “What if we could tweak it?”. Both give different sets of rules for how to do so, however, and both also allow you basically two directions to go in. Of these, due to gaming dynamics, I tend to drift toward fantasy a bit.

First, why tweak it? Is it only for entertainment? If that is the case, why not action/adventure genres like Indiana Jones or Uncharted? Why not murder mysteries, true crime, or police procedurals? Why not spy thrillers? Or if I really want to tweak it, why not horror? Well, for that last, as much as I really feel that I am missing out, my mental health can’t handle horror. As for all the rest, I am not usually looking for adding a twist to my owl life, my own reality. I am trying to escape to a different reality, a different life. I don’t want “modern day, but with a twist”. I want a wholly different life, but still with rules.

Science fiction allows you to alter reality using science and alien technology. This is really excellent, as it allows me to work out my own Utopian settings, discover what I think sounds like an excellent society, and then try to logic out exactly what ways Humanity would decide to completely screw it up and bring it down to our current level of misery. Or lower. It lets me ask a bunch of “what if” scenarios, roll them around in my creativity, and spew out some really interesting life altering realities.

In comparison, Fantasy gives you magic and mythology as your reality altering tools. Does this give you more tools? Less? No, they are just different. You still get the reality-offering benefits, and you still have to stay with an internal consistency to how your world building comes across. You can still go as Utopian or Dystopian as you want.

For me, both are equally excellent for storytelling, and you can mix and match your genres between the two when writing. Both can go into exploring new lands and new civilizations. Both allow for all sorts of non-Human sentient if that is your thing. Which for me, it very much is my thing. Both allow you to explore social experiments and answer deeper philosophical questions. Both allow you to have glowing heroes and despicable villains, or to delve into the greyest of antiheroes. Both genres allow you to mix in action/adventure, murder mysteries, police procedurals, spy thrillers, political and military intrigue, or if you must, horror. So what’s the difference, for me? Why does fantasy win out by a slivered margin?

My old nemesis, Stairs.

Stairs? Huh? More specifically, or I should say generally, travel. I tend to look at different genres through the lens of my gaming, especially tabletop roleplaying. In that vein, travel has always been the bane of my existence. As a DM running a game, I always get caught up in having the players travel from one area to another. That is bad enough, but in scifi gaming, I get caught up in the problems even as a player. In fantasy, any player, given enough motivation, can travel from point A to point B, even if they have to walk. However, in science fiction gaming, travel almost always involves planet-to-planet travel, typically needing a ship or other transport.

Suddenly you aren’t just dealing with time and events, but also with transport. Unless you have included some kind of FTL teleporting between entire solar systems, you can no longer “walk” between areas. This means you have to finagle ways to keep the group always traveling together. Usually one of the players ends up owning the “group” transport, which means you instantly have a power imbalance. From a storytelling standpoint, that is fine. Firefly worked out great. But picture the crew of Firefly as a gaming group. Now you have Mal’s player always getting annoyed at Jane’s player for regularly arguing and trying to kill him. You have Zoe’s player frustrated because she is written into a corner of playing Mal’s “yes-man”. It is an entirely different group dynamic than what you have in D&D.

Maybe I just haven’t played in the right science fiction roleplaying game. If someone knows of one and wants to change my mind, contact me. But I have tried several science fiction games, in several different game systems. No matter the rules, the group dynamics always tend to turn out the same. The only science fiction genre I have had work for me was dystopian Cyberpunk, since it tends to always be on a single world. Unfortunately that is just not a popular genre to game in. But I have played Firefly, Star Wars, Starfinder, and a few others, and the “ship crew” dynamic is always there, getting in the way of me being able to enjoy the game as well as I would like. Maybe I am playing it wrong. Maybe I am missing the “point” of this style of gaming. Regardless, the way the roleplaying of this genre is done, it colors how I read the genre as well. I suppose this this is just part of my flawed nature.

Contact me if you think you have advice or opportunity to change my mind. I would love to enjoy more about science fiction.

Don’t forget to love one another.

Graham.