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Has anyone ever run a campaign where its basically your boilerplate high tech sci fi universe, like Star Trek, but with magic as well?  As in, you have ray guns and starships... and dragons and wizards?  I'm trying to imagine how that would work and look and how it would develop.  I would think that you'd need strict rules as to what magic and tech both could and could not do, a strong way to differentiate between a transporter and a magical gate.

 

Energy would be the big thing, I'd think.  It takes tremendous energy to drive a starship the size of one of those Imperial Dreadnaughts around, but a flying carpet only needs willpower.

 

Another would be speed.  It takes time for even the best technology to give its results but magic can do something in seconds.

 

Still another would be results.  Magic can do the physically impossible, things technology says cannot happen.

 

On the other hand, tech would have its advantages.

 

Magic would require study and expertise, but technology anyone can use.  I don't need to know how a microwave works or be able to build one (or even fix it) to use one.  But casting a spell to summon food, that takes real training and ability.  Magic is also going to have a personal cost: mana, endurance, whatever.  Tech the cost is all paid for by the energy source and a fee up front.  Tech is perfectly reproducible, you can make 800,000 jet packs on an assembly line, but each spell is its own craftsmanship like art, and may not be exactly the same.  Technology is significantly more reliable as well, without a skill roll, side effects, and summoned things fighting back.  Your robot does what its told, that elemental may not.

 

What would be interesting is to have strict limits on each, where they fill in for each other.  Tech can't make force fields or manipulate gravity, for instance, but magic cannot create bombs or communicate like a radio.  Something like that.  Magic can't make something that can fly in space, but tech can't jump long distances for interstellar travel.

 

That way they'd be interdependent; you'd want a few wizards on the ship along with the engineers.

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I've never done a campaign, but I once enjoyed a rollicking one-off in a pastiche universe inspired by Lensmen, the Reefs of Space, and a bit of the old Star Wars. (That is, Darth Vader showed up.) I didn't really develop the mechanics very far, because I didn't need to, but, where necessary, I'd think that you'd just crib from the way that psionics work in high space opera.  Or just rip off The Witches of  Karres directly. Now there's a great setting --creepy, age-inappropriate relationships aside. 

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That's my take. My proximate inspiration for doing my standalone was an old Dragon article about AD&D in spa-a-ace that included a brief discussion of magic items like the "Boots of Safe Re-entry," and I was very disappointed to discover that you didn't need that kind of thing in Spelljammer, because it wasn't that kind of space. Missed opportunity, you ask me. Marines to the front! Present boarding axes! Semi-portable team, you're with me! 

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I've never run a Science Fantasy campaign, but they do interest me.

I briefly planned to run a Science Fantasy Pathfinder Campaign, but it failed to garner the interest of my group. The PCs would have been Terran colonists whose spaceship crash landed in an isolated valley because a battalion of elven warmages unleased a barrage of ​Disintegrate, Lightning Bolt, and Fireball ​spells on it. They would have awoken from cold-sleep in the ruins of their space-craft, armed with high technology weapons from the Technology Guide​ (such as laser pistols and such), and forced to fight off their zombified former crewmates and whatever monsters had already snuck into the ship.

The Pathfinder Campaign setting has a smattering of Science Fantasy elements (such as robots and laser pistols), but it is definitely more fantasy than science.

 

Paizo is currently preparing to release a new ruleset called Starfinder, which will be a significant departure from their roots (leeching off of the popularity of 3.5 D&D). Not only is the ruleset itself very different from Pathfinder (with no real promise of backwards compatibility), but the default setting will be very much Science Fantasy (with an emphasis on the science aspect I'm given to understand) instead of traditional High Fantasy.

You could probably datamine a fair number of useful ideas from the bits of the teasers and previews they've already released, as well as some of their older supplements that covered such topics for Pathfinder, such as Distant Worlds (which revealed that elves are actually alien to Golarion, and used a interplanetary portal network to come and go), and the Technology Guide​ which contains all sorts of neat illustrations and ideas for science fiction equipment.

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Yeah Star Wars is kinda magic in space, although the magic is really limited. Its more psionics than what gamers usually associate with magic.

I don't know, these young whippersnappers want a lot with their psi stuff.

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I find that most of my magic systems seem to start with the idea that whatever talent is necessary to access magic is psionic in nature, and that when I write psionics systems they seem to sort of gravitate toward being magic in some way.  I see psionic telekinesis as manipulating and redirecting kinetic energy that's already available in the environment, and that's already halfway to magic IMO.  Also, if you've ever read Stephen King's original book version of Firestarter, there's an early scene where Charlie's father causes someone to see a one dollar bill as a hundred, through essentially Mental Illusions.  He's powerful enough that when investigators later pick up the bill to examine it, their first impression is that it's a hundred; to me that says he didn't just manipulate the original guy's perceptions, but somehow imprinted part of the power into the bill.  Borderline magic, in other words.  

 

One of my favorite bits is the idea that psionics, magic, etc., can leave a signature behind that can be sensed by others with the appropriate ability.  Another is that poltergeists and ghost activity is caused by the death of a person leaving an imprint on an object or a surrounding area, and when that imprint is energized (usually by someone with latent power) it "replays" the ghost.  The more violent the death, or the more powerful the deceased was as a psion or mage, the more detailed the imprint will be.  Again, to me this blurs the line between psionics and magic, and goes to John W. Campbell's coinage of the word psionics and his note that it's basically magic, only in an SF milieu.

 

I've written up my own personal version of Appendix N (from the AD&D 1e DMG) to show what informs my Fantasy Hero gaming and magic system design.  Firestarter is for sure in my list.  

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I agree that a lot of mental powers as depicted in books and other media tend toward the magical.  In the Deryni books, that's pretty much exactly how it is; her magic is psionics.  I prefer them being more scientific, orderly, and logical, to distinguish the two but its hard not to blur the lines.

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There is also much to be said for presentation being important. In Full-Metal Alchemist​ "Alchemy" is functionally Transmutation Magic, complete with magic circles being a required component. However throughout the series Alchemists staunchly refer to it as a Science, and in some cases get quite upset at the idea that others might consider it sorcerous or miraculous in nature.

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This is a good point.  If somehow magic suddenly became real, how would the scientific community respond?  I mean magic as distinct from science not 'sufficiently advanced science.'  The "wiggle your fingers and something impossible happens" kind.

 

Would they deem it another branch of science?  Would they condemn it as dangerous and destructive to the real thing?  Would they blow their minds trying to figure out how spells worked, seeing them constantly violate the laws of physics, until they invent bizarre theories of how somehow, some way, it finally fits science no matter how much they have to speculate and bend things?

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If the woohoo magic were repeatable under lab conditions, then it would be studied until a workable scientific theory was derived to explain/describe it. If it wasn't repeatable--like all claims of "paranormal phenomena" in the real world--it would be dismissed as anecdotal nonsense.

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*pfft* Scientists. Its all "Anecdotal Nonsense" until the zombies are clawing out your eyes... Then its all "Oh gawd, they're clawing out my eyes!".

But seriously, if magic suddenly became real, scientists would develop a set of theories to account for and describe it. Even if they never managed to figure out why​ it worked the way it did, they would probably eventually figure out how​ it worked, and how to reproduce those effects.

 

Irregular At Magic High School​ is a good example of a modern world that has magic, but treats it much like science.

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But what if it was repeatable... but only by certain people, with no apparent explanation?  And what if its able to do what is literally impossible for physics and chemistry to possibly explain?  Like turn a block of lead into a bunny rabbit, then back. Or generate fire from no energy source.  Or teleport starships 1000s of light years without a wormhole or any propulsion system?

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Scientific Theory isn't really about conclusively proving theories, it is about being unable to disprove the theory. Science would still eventually produce a theory, flawed and incomplete though it may be. The fact that the theory would have lots of holes (like what qualities differentiate those who can and can't do magic), would be irrelevant until someone came up with an equally non-disprovable theory that better differentiated those qualities.

For example, they might postulate that the energy for the generated fire, or teleportation of starships thousands of light years was coming from another dimension that only magic-user's had a connection to or ability to manipulate. That theory would probably stand until someone disproved it, regardless of a lack of supporting evidence for such a dimension or given people's connection to it.

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