I recently read a blog post by Brian Murphy explaining the difficulty inherent in the romantic fantasy genre for roleplaying games, Romantic Fantasy and the Heroine's Journey.
Romantic Fantasy and the Heroine's Journey
I feel this is very similar in Science Fiction. There, if you don’t want “D&D in space” (what I might call Space Opera) then I find that Science Fiction is about extrapolating a trend we can all relate to in the present. Essentially, it turns into social commentary of the present and it would seem to me that the players at the table would have to pick such issues and develop them. Actual political issues to develop and personal stories that intersect incidentally, it’s tricky to pull of. I heard *Shock* might do it; I never played it.
But reading Brian’s blog post game me an explanation for why pulling off Pern or Darkover stories using D&D and its descendants might be harder than it looks. Perhaps it’s not even a problem in the rules themselves but in D&D game culture. We expect settings, classes, levels, treasure and so on to have certain effects. If anybody pulled it off, I’d like to hear more about your campaign!
Related: 2014-08-21 No Dice, which talks about the reaction roll.
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