03-14-2019, 01:38 PM | #41 | |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Portland, Oregon
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Re: Magic in Space Opera
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What constitutes "magic" is a definitional matter though. FtL travel is hard to do without so most writers handwave it and use a lot of technobabble. Psionics in many if not most cases really is indistinguishable from magic and is often treated as such by having rituals, etc. Actually I would suggest going back to the beginning and rereading The Golden Bough and then adapting that for Space Opera.
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03-15-2019, 12:14 AM | #42 |
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Earth, mostly
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Re: Magic in Space Opera
You spark a memory of a story I read waaay back when, about an FTL drive that worked because the drive crew were able to become so thoroughly convinced the ship had reached its destination that they would warp space-time around them to make it so - basically working magic. Complications arose when someone talked to a drive-crew member before a trip, and left a seed of doubt behind. Turned out to be all it took to completely randomize their destination...
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03-15-2019, 11:10 AM | #43 |
Join Date: Sep 2018
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Re: Magic in Space Opera
One of the game world we play in most frequently with GURPS is Fading Suns. It's a high-magic setting blasters and laser swords and psychics and it very blatantly has zombies and priests with blatant occult spellcasting. It works because it is very Science fantasy, you can play and technologically proficient character with all of the technobabble that explains how a ancient alien gate propels your starship faster than light but there are legit malevolent beings that inhabit darkness and bookish priests that can blast things with flames from their bare hands with the right incantations and gestures and it's just accepted.
I think you have to have a little bit of that doubt that science is any more real than magic in your setting. Magic wouldn't work so well with a hard cyberpunk world, but it fits fine in Shadowrun where ancient spirits are running wild and nobody is completely sure why the super advanced technologies work. |
03-15-2019, 12:01 PM | #44 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Hillsboro, Oregon, USA
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Re: Magic in Space Opera
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I like playing with this. There's a Babylon 5-style Psi Corps, where the training is military style, rigid, everything is done by control and rote, but there've been occultists and witches for centuries, and if and when psionics start working they're likely to be the first ones to figure it out. There's a semi-friendly rivalry; the Corps hates it when a perfectly good psionic gets ruined by witchy mumbo-jumbo, and covens are saddened by all of the marching and the barking of orders when it's really supposed to be about the feeling, maaannnnn.
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03-15-2019, 07:19 PM | #45 | |
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: West Virginia
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Re: Magic in Space Opera
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03-16-2019, 10:57 AM | #46 | |
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Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Southeast NC
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Re: Magic in Space Opera
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03-16-2019, 11:52 AM | #47 | |
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: West Virginia
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Re: Magic in Space Opera
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03-19-2019, 04:46 PM | #48 | |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: Magic in Space Opera
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03-19-2019, 07:06 PM | #49 |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Portland, Oregon
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Re: Magic in Space Opera
A lot of the stuff in Dune really sounds more like magic than anything else.
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03-19-2019, 07:50 PM | #50 |
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Idaho Falls, Idaho
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Re: Magic in Space Opera
J. S. Morin's Black Ocean setting, is a space opera fantasy. It is a blend of fantasy (magic, wizards, magic items, and gods) with science/space opera (lasers, blasters, computers, spacecraft, defensive shields, etc.). FTL travel is conducted by a spacecraft launching into orbit on reactionless thrusters, its anti gravity supplied by a magic "gravity stone", then either a wizard or a magic "astral drive" pushing the ship into Astral Space, the navigation computer determine its astral depth (which is a logarithmic type determination of its speed), and a the thrusters pushing the ship in the right direction. Advanced Technology (A-Tech) can be disrupted/destroyed by nearby magic use, so Wizards normally only use Primitive Technology (P-Tech).
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