39 odpowiedzi

1. What are the other 3 books you would want on a desert island?

2. Ray gun = a wand of scorching heat ray, with a handle.

3. Gandalf isn't casting ANYTHING, cos deity has forbidden the archangel-wizards from using their😮powers. Advise only.

4. Just recently broke my personal embargo against anything that has even the smallest iota of WotC in it to branch into pf1, and joined a crimson throne game online, but another AP I'd like to try is iron gods.

5. So interesting how videos games like Final Fantasy 1, which has such obvious inspiration from DnD, has VERY clear Sci Fi stuff, flying ships and Space stations etc, are more accurate to DnD than the strictly medieval fantasy games. Even Zelda 1 with them considering the "Dark world" to be a futuristic sci fi Hyrule, and now with Tears of the Kingdom we finally really got that

6. Steampunk is a great way to mix scifi and fantasy. Also he man /eternia style settings.

7. That was very informative, thanks!

8. Tale of the Comet was a 2nd-edition era attempt to inject scifi into D&D. It was very interesting module that relied very heavily on the DM to come up with the invasion element. It's a pretty rare item to find these days but it is a pretty cool attempt to inject a galactic-scaled, high-tech war into D&D.

9. While Moorcock has some definite sci fi elements in different Eternal Champion stories, it’s pretty fantasy overall, especially Elric. MM was a big Edgar Rice Boroughs fan.

   The genres can get pretty blurry, though, and Moorcock’s Hawkmoon stories, as an example, mix magic and weird science pretty freely.

10. I've never really liked science fantasy but lately I'm reading Dying Earth and god it's amazing, I'm loving it more than Tritonian Ring (also a great read) and the first Fafhrd+Grey Mouser book. However, thus far (I'm only in book 1 still) nothing feels "science", it all feels like fantasy. Other than them mentioning earth and sometimes like mathematics/physics, everything is at a medieval tech level. Which don't get me wrong is great, but it confuses me as to what actually constitutes "science fantasy". Something like Blackmoor/Barrier Peaks certainly is because it has robots and ray guns.

11. I fucking love Psionics and always use em in my games and even allow players to start with psionics as long as one mental stat is 16 and the other two are 10.

12. D&D is a rules set… a game engine… an operating system. To say "no sci-fi" in D&D is to say "Windows is only for spreadsheets and word processing… no music or movies is Windows".

    As for mixing genres… I'm a fan of Briscoe County, of Firefly, and of Star Wars, and while not exactly middle ages Europe, they are very sci-fi western.

13. Anyone who thinks this is an interesting aesthetic owes it to themselves to also check out the Book of the New Sun. That series is directly inspired by Dying Earth (among other things) and can only be described as a novel in which half of the plot and 80% of the world building is hidden between the lines. If you've ever seen a sword called Terminus Est floating around, or a creature that steals the voice of it's victims, BotNS reference.

14. Manual of the Planes is one of my favorite AD&D hardback books!

15. I wonder if anyone did “Space Hulk” or Aliens on Barrier Peaks?
    Like going on an infested derelict ship with high chance of mortality that included vent related fatality from Vege people hiding there.
    Heavily armored warriors or wizards with burning hands are optional but recommended.

16. Daddy. I had that toy set. I was sure gary stole the rust monster from it! Thanks for the info! 😂

17. Tim Kask, what did you do? Kaaaaaaaaasssk!

18. I find the folks who throw a fit about mixing genre kind of amusing. Their complete lack of knowledge and understanding of genre fiction and its history shows bright. Taste is one thing. If you want your Fantasy to be as mystical and (of course) Medieval European as possible, that's fine. You do you. But when you freak out over the whole idea, as though it's some kind of moral outrage that anyone would possibly mix the genre? That's just silly. And that goes double…or triple even, for D&D, which has genre blending and bending in its very DNA. As you pointed out, its magic, alignment, and very cosmology owe as much to what we'd now call Science Fiction as it does to what we'd now call Fantasy.
    But folks love to categorize and quantize, and then lord over others with their "perfect" interpretation of…whatever. I've run into it with folks talking about Film Noir, who are convinced that X movie can't be considered Film Noir because it came out in 1954, and "everyone knows" Film Noir was only made 1941 to 1953. Followed immediately by an, "only a true fan…" kind of statement. I used to see it with Star Trek fans and Star Wars fans. There's so much of it in the Science Fiction community, with so many people poo-pooing a book series as being Science Fantasy, or soft Science Fiction, while propping up their favorite book as "true" Science Fiction, even though it features faster than light travel and other fantastical ideas.
    Anyway. Cool video. I'm hoping to run a DCC game in the near-ish future that will eventually take the PCs to the Barrier Peaks. It'll start with the DCC funnel Danger in the Air and go weirder from there.

19. Another great video.
    Gift idea: I purchased a Dice Schematic mug and a T-shirt for the guys who DM our games..just to say "Thanks for being our DM". I bet they are going to love them!

20. I love the drink/music notes at the end of every video (even though I don't drink myself) – you really know how to enjoy life, sir!

21. In the campaign world I'm developing, which is taking my childhood AD&D campaign world and adding an Eberron-flavored element to it, a Great Old One that I created crash landed on the planet ages ago, chased by advanced humans in a space ship that also crashed in another spot, and the resulting technology that was found significantly influenced the development of what was a magical medieval world to that point. There will be psi-knights wielding the handful of energy blades found in the wreckage, as well as a new sub-class of artificers that deal with using the technology.

22. I have always used the line that “I don’t like chocolate in my peanut butter” when talking about sci-fi and fantasy blends, so I laughed when you quoted your friend near the end of the video. I now amend it with “but sometimes I like peanut butter in my chocolate” because I’ve always wanted to play Barrier Peaks and it seems to be making a resurgence now. Another good video and great bonus content.

23. Tekumel definitely included legacy technological items, such as the "eyes", that filled the role of Magic artifacts on that planet.

24. How about “Science fantasy?”

25. Loved that some of the D&D monsters are based on some of those plastic figures! lol! that's hilarious, Martin! I have all of those DA modules, and as I mentioned on Twitter, S3 EXPEDITION TO THE BARRIER PEAKS is my favorite module that TSR ever produced, so I am very much aware of how often Dungeons and Dragons incorporated science fiction into the game. BARRIER PEAKS was rather epic back in the day, as it seemed to turned the game on its ear a bit. I have about 95% of their D&D and AD&D modules output, and it has always been my favorite module because of the adventure itself. The concept of adventurers finding a crashed space ship filled with sci-fi gear, robots, and strange monsters is just brilliant! The vegepygmies made the module for me! LOL. I enjoyed the power armor, needle pistols, etc! Fun stuff! I also have an original copy of METAMORPHOSIS ALPHA, as well as that big, hardback reprint version.

    This video is probably my favorite one that you've done so far! Nice job on pointing out how fantasy and sci-fi used to be considered (pretty much) the same thing back in the day. That's absolutely true. No distinction was made in many libraries and bookstores, and even in magazines like STARLOG, for that matter. I remember Sid & Marty Kroft's LAND OF THE LOST blurring the lines between fantasy and science fiction every Saturday morning in the '70s! Even in modern AD&D, the neogi (from SPELLJAMMER) are present in the MONSTROUS MANUAL, and I've used them in campaign games a few times.

    Keep giving us great videos like this one! I love learning about the origins of DUNGEONS & DRAGONS!
    PS: I got THE MANUAL OF THE PLANES when it first came out from B. DALTON BOOKSELLER. At the time, I was the ONLY person that I knew that had a copy, and that remained true into the 1990s. It wasn't until the early 2000s that I actually talked to someone else who owned a copy

26. It's only in the last two or three years that I've seen Dying Earth get more than a passing mention in youtube D&D circles. I hope that's just due to my failure to notice it before then. On the other hand, if it's genuinely getting more attention recently, that's great. Warts and all, it's one of my absolute favorite fictional series and settings; and a D&D game without at least some of its whimsical and bizarre flavor just isn't the same.

27. Played in several campaigns where there was technology. In one we found "a" mighty servant. Not the Mighty Servant of Leuko but a robot that was similar in aspect. It was great for transportation.
    In another I acquired 2 phasers but only one spare power cell, so usage was limited.
    In my Judges Guild Campaign there are several items of technology that are just lying around to be found. Those that require power would require that the PC's figure out how to power them before they were of any use. But they could be sold to the right person for a boatload of Gold!

28. I think part of the banshing scifi was that Traveller was there to focus on scifi, you to want to play star wars DnD? Traveller.

29. Much of the difference in genre is how you tell it. It's more important that it weaves together seemlessly than whether it's all from the same animal or plant.

    PS: I used to have that Christmas album on cassette. You give the wookie a brush.

30. I'm always delighted to see you upload another video Martin! I'm so pleased to have stumbled upon your channel, especially as a big gaming history buff myself! Personally, I've always appreciated science fictional elements in my fantasy, and the homebrew setting that I run my games in is very much a science fantasy one, with magic and steampunk-ish (with some a more advanced than that even) living and working side by side in it.

31. Wow! As ever an excellent review of early DnD ideas. I have a lot of commentary:

    I played a quite a bit of cross-over in the late 1980s (using 1E). We had a lot of psionics in these games. One of the mysteries we had to figure out was why all the animals on a world we had traveled to had bat-like sonar; of course there was a really good evolutionary reason for it. My Druid got some fun wild shapes from his time there. I played an early version of the Artificer in another game, and enjoyed my lightsabre wielding Kensai very much indeed.

    The John Carter stories are not really SF; they belong to a class of Imaginary World Fiction in which the reader's interlocutor is a person from our world who travels by some means to the imaginary. Lin Carter wrote an excellent essay that covers this concept well. Similarly Dying Earth is not really SF; that's another subgenre where the imaginary world is simply articulated as the far furture. Of course the Conan stories do something similar, but call their world the distant past.

    Yes, we used the plastic play figures too, back in the 3-books years and occasionally afterwards. I still have a “Giant sabre-toothed tiger” in my miniatures box. I didn't know that was the origin of the owl-bear!

    In the 1970s there was a miniature line (produced by Hinchliffe in the UK) based on the John Carter stories.

    Contemporary with the official pre-ADnD material there's a throwaway in Judges Guild's City State of the Invincible Overlord about a god who crashed to Earth. His name was Emig-21. After crashing and dying he gave birth to a mortal named “Defect”.

    I don't think the Elric with which Gygax was familiar is SF at all; the Young Kingdoms are a pure fantasy setting. However, Cthulhu definitely is. The nihilist Lovecraft attempts to explain the prototypical “gods” postulated by The Golden Bough as incomprehensible aliens.

    On Jack Vance. There was an article somewhere on the reptiles from The Dragon Masters for DnD. In one of my games I repurposed the word “Termagant” to mean a goblin.

    You didn't dicuss the Spelljammer setting, which does bring SF elements into DnD.

    There is absolutely no reason not to include SF elements in 5E games. What we have today is almost a superhero game anyway, so its mechanics can be ported to any place or era.

32. Eberron, which mixes sci-fi/magitek/etc. is one of my favorite settings for D&D. I steal a lot of it for the gnomes in my own setting for Basic Fantasy RPG.

33. I love to see metamorphosis alpha get some love!

34. The mention of Howard's Conan stories is also a good point to highlight how the line between fantasy and sci-fi is pretty blurry. Yeah, Conan's fantasy… but it's set in the same universe as Lovecraft's stories, which At the Mountains of Madness reveal to be solidly sci-fi.

35. I'm one of those gamers that resisted mixing genres, and I've played since AD&D 1.5. I never even considered using that host of real world dinosaurs detailed in Monster Manual, despite having been a 'dinosaur kid'. My only reasoning was the vibe of the thing. You can explain away anything in outlandish fiction, but verisimilitude varies from person to person.

    Later, Spelljammer inspired me to turn Mind Flayers and Beholders into invading aliens of a medieval fantasy world, but I felt they still fit the vibe because those ships are powered by magic, and those monsters come from nightmares rather than exo-biological speculation (which is why I would call Lovecraft cosmic horror rather than true science fiction).

    I think the vibe is what matters and some crossovers do it better than others. One thing I think that can help bring them together is an element of cheesiness – Thundaar The Barbarian and Krull both work for me because they are more than a little silly. Barrier Peaks sounds awesome just for the shock that would come from walking fantasy characters right into a science fiction setting. 🙂

36. One of the monsters from the plastic "Prehistoric" range was the one that became the Rust Monster. I had one when I was a kid before it ever apppeared in D&D. It had a yellowish underside and a rusty brown upper shell.

37. God. I am always so excited to see your uploads.

38. Keep up the information distribution about the different genres used in the making of D&D, AD&D and others. Star Frontiers is a good example of the others, alongside Boot Hill and Gamma World. Semper Fi…….

39. I totally had those toys (c. 1980) and years later I found the rust monster in a drawer and realized the connection.