I mean...you're basically saying that you're playing D&D, but without any of D&D's magic, any of D&D's character classes, any of D&D's fantastical items, or any of the like are available. You're pretty much just bolting the Six Sacred Scores and a basic d20 resolution mechanic in place and discarding eighty percent of the actual game of D&D.
If that works for you? Coolio. It would not be sufficient for me, but I'm a different person.
That "resolution mechanic" is D&D. Staging the story in space with different equipment and possibly new classes (assuming you don't just tweak nonmagical classes like fighter, rogue, and even barbarian to fit the style) is just making a homebrew campaign setting. People do that all the time.
I think what Yurei was saying about 80% is that you have to replace the entire magic system. The Vancian system really doesn't lend itself all that well to other games. I'm not sure it's all that great for D&D. We're kind of stuck with it, and it's taken a huge number of changes to get it to work in 5th edition, it's almost unrecognizable now. Every class has at least one subclass that uses magic.
Which Barbarian sub-class has no magical or semi-magical ability? Rage is semi-magical, since it gives resistance to non magical weapons. Most of the subclasses have actual spells they can cast.
Sure, you can homebrew to your heart's content and make the D&D system do what you want it to. You want Star Wars, there's a ton of information about that Fandom Games has available at Wookieepedia
I have been scouring the internet for information and homebrew on running a futuristic D&D campaign, but have been mostly unsuccessful, so I thought I'd post here to see if any of you know of any good resources for rules for things such as interplanetary travel, Star Wars-style weaponry, and other futuristic commodities? Thank you for your time!
Why not just skip D&D and play the Star Wars RPG, or the Star Trek RPG, or any of the other SciFi based RPGs?
Probably more difficult to find a game and get it going. Some of us already have issues getting D&D going, so I imagine getting anything else going is going to be a lot more difficult.
Yeah, but getting it together to fail because D&D is not well suited to that kind of sci-fi is worse than not getting together.
Not sure if this is exactly what you're looking for but this is a decent conversion of 5e into a star wars themed setting and mechanics. https://sw5e.com/
D&D touts itself to be able to play a variety of settings and genres, and also encourages people to flavor and reskin things as they wish, so I think people should take full advantage of that more often.
Yes and no. If you look at it as a pure, unflavored system then sure you can do a lot with it, but that pretty much goes for all RPG systems when stripped to their bare mechanics. That doesn't make it particularly suitable for any given genre though. If you look at the DMG and the new Van Richten's Guide, you'll see that they advise extra mechanics (Honor, Sanity, Stress) in order to run a horror game using the D&D rules. In other words, either you expand on the core system to capture a genre better, or you probably get a watered down experience. FFG has their narrative rulesets for this, for instance. Boldly Go! has drama points and promotion points to emulate the Star Trek feel, Star Trek Adventures spends a lot of time on bridge positions and tasks, AEG's L5R has Honor to tap into the feel of romanticised samurai, CoC has actual Sanity rules, and so on.
The point is to look at D&D as a flavorless system stripped to its bare mechanics. Once you strip out the lore and fluff, nothing about D&D makes it feels specifically suited for fantasy either, so I do not see why people insist that fantasy paint looks better on these mechanics than sci-fi paint. For example, in my opinion, spell slots as part of the magic system is extremely awkward, clunky, and counterintuitive, and nothing about spell slots feels remotely magical to me. In fact, spell slots feel more appropriate as part of the ammo system in an FPS game where players carry various types of ammo in the form of bullets, grenades, mines, and so on. On the other hand, Sorcery Points, Superiority Die, and Ki Points actually feels more magic appropriate due to its more continuous and flowy nature.
If more options or changes are desired to better capture that sci-fi feel, I would add those in when the moment that desire comes up. I do not think it is a good idea to bloat the system right off the bat. There is no need to swap out D&D's ship combat rules with something else until the group actually finds it unsatisfactory.
D&D is not at all a universal game system. "Reskinning" D&D into Star Wars (OP did invoke space opera) is not playing Star Wars. It's not even D&D characters cos playing Star Wars. It's D&D characters playing those kid Halloween costumes from the 1970s and 80s which consisted of a branded plastic apron and a vague semblance of a character mask.
I disagree. D&D can be used as a universal game system. It is not going to be perfect for every genre, setting, or IP, but I think it is good enough to work for practically all of them. Further improvements and adjustments can be made as the campaign develops to better capture a particular aspect.
Really if someone is truly a sophisticated reskin ninja, they could pick up any of the SW starter sets (which you can get used for dang cheap, bout $20, they retail for $30 but I see them discounted a lot, the set also comes with a full dice set which is $15 on its own, a price point that doesn't seem to move much and I've seen some vendors even try to gouge upwards) and use their reskin talents to reverse engineer character generation and options from the other two games (SW RPG was technically released as three overlapping games) with not too much work. The game, while it's sort of in print limbo right now, does have a very active and supportive fan community too (the only _really_ out of print can't find it anywhere other than at least 4x it's value at auction is the bounty hunter advance book, but those books don't have essential bang for their buck beyond what's in the core rules, you can also recover the info in the card sets that some folks favor to splatbooks). Once past character generation SW RPG has a very beer and pretzels feel to it too, and actually with a some practice the character gen is pretty quick too. With beer I'd even argue it's easier and more fun to decipher and count the explosion icons on Star Wars dice than it is crunching numbers in D&D between fistfuls of pretzels.
$20 to $30 is not a lot for you and me, but I would discourage people from spending that money even if they can afford it until they actually feel like it is worth it to them. I think TTRPG creators deserve as much support as possible, but I do not think they deserve blind support. It does not matter whether it is D&D, Pathfinder, or any other system or hobby, I think people should at least take advantage of all the free resources first so they can make a more informed purchasing decision. If all the person is going to do is to just copy some rules and take some inspiration from Star Wars RPG, then I think they are better off watching "how to play" videos to learn about the rules for free, so they can save that money for things they will actually need or will give them the most enjoyment.
Midnight puts it very well indeed - "reskinning" takes a lot more work than people think for anything but the most minor and forgettable of trifles. Turning a game like D&D into an entirely different kind of game is a Herculean task; even the people who make the game recommend switching to a different system rather than doing that. All of D&D's top people tell folks that D&D is a fantasy game. It can do star fantasy (see Spelljammer), it can do noir fantasy (see Eberron), it can do dark fantasy (see Ravenloft). It can do low fantasy, though 5e is actually quite bad at low fantasy. But even though it can do those things, it takes effort and understanding to get the ruleset there. It takes real work to bend this ruleset out of the genre it's so heavily baked into, and the further you go from High/Epic Fantasy the more D&D has to contort weirdly to make it work.
Just slapping a new name on everything means your game will feel exactly like Midnight described - like D&D in a cheap Halloween costume. It doesn't matter how imaginative your players are or are not - the game wasn't designed to accommodate the play experience and game feel a sci-fi campaign is looking for and with absolutely no work done to bridge the gap, your players will be able to tell.
Even if you don't use other game systems, look them up. Check out their rules. See where they diverge from D&D and ask yourself why. Ask yourself how those mechanics may help convey the feel of a freewheeling space adventure that D&D is so very, very not prepared to give you.
Magic and advanced technology are not very different from each other. They are both used to handwave our understanding of reality. None of the mechanics in D&D remotely suggest fantasy to me when we remove all the flavor and fluff. Spell slots mechanically speaking as I mentioned above are not inherently fantasy oriented, and I would argue energy cells or ammo packs would be more suitable flavor wise due to spell slots' clunky nature.
I will check out other game systems, but I do not think it is going to change my mind regarding mechanics being no more suited for one genre over another.
I have been scouring the internet for information and homebrew on running a futuristic D&D campaign, but have been mostly unsuccessful, so I thought I'd post here to see if any of you know of any good resources for rules for things such as interplanetary travel, Star Wars-style weaponry, and other futuristic commodities? Thank you for your time!
Why not just skip D&D and play the Star Wars RPG, or the Star Trek RPG, or any of the other SciFi based RPGs?
Probably more difficult to find a game and get it going. Some of us already have issues getting D&D going, so I imagine getting anything else going is going to be a lot more difficult.
Yeah, but getting it together to fail because D&D is not well suited to that kind of sci-fi is worse than not getting together.
I do not think D&D is bad at doing sci-fi. I think people are stuck on the idea that mechanics are better for one genre over another. While I cannot speak from much experience in TTRPGs, at least in videogames, mechanics do not dictate whether a game is better with a sci-fi coat of paint or a fantasy coat of paint, and I highly doubt TTRPGs are different in this regard. If you mod WarCraft and StarCraft and just reskin them, gamers might complain about things looking ugly or have a hard time identifying which new model corresponds to which old unit, but I highly doubt any significant portion of them are going to say the new skin does not fit a sci-fi or fantasy theme respectively.
D&D's Six Sacred Scores are not built with the idea of a highly futuristic society in mind. The whole STR/CON/DEX/INT/WIS/CHA thing is shaky at best in a fantasy genre where it can be argued that all those things are important. In a futuristic society where technology is widely available, who gives a snot how much raw strength your character possesses, or how perceptive they are (i.e. the ACTUAL function of Wisdom)? You'll have technological aids for both. Hell, if the society is far-future enough you could have technological aids for everything, and the better system would be measuring how many of those aids you can afford/tolerate before either your wallet or your body gives out.
To say nothing of the core D&D rules' exceptionally poor handling of skills for anything but, as it's been put by others, beer & pretzels fantasy. Where do you class engineering training in D&D, or computer hacking (either cinematic or proper)? "Oh, easy - just put those under Skills!", everyone immediately says without thought. Cool - where? The default D&D sheet gives no space whatsoever for new default 'skills', only a blank space for tool proficiencies. "Then make them tool proficiencies, duhhh!" everyone immediately retorts without thought. Cool - which tools do they use? What Sacred Scores are you going to use to govern tool use? Are you able to smoothly handle normal-ass tools in a normal-ass D&D game, or does the character that wants to use their Tinker's tools proficiency to tinker with stuff throw you ever time the way it throws ninety-five out of a hundred D&DMs? And that's just the most basic, bare-bones, oversimplified way of trying to introduce a tech-savvy character into a "D&D" system.
How are you going to handle vehicles? Just say "Land vehicle proficiency is fine"? All right - how're you going to handle vehicle chases, or someone wanting their character to be an exceptionally skilled driver that can do all kinds of cool things with their hovercar that D&D just has absolutely no basis for? A futuristic society makes vehicles easily obtainable by all, and not one-horse rattlecarts either - what's your answer?
How're you going to handle cyberwarfare? Base D&D doesn't have any means of acknowledging that a global information network exists, let alone interacting with it. Gonna reduce cyberwarfare to a bunch of impromptu Intelligence rolls and see who gets luckiest? How're you going to allow for the characters to improve their cybersecurity and try to breach the networks of their enemies?
There's a hundred other questions all demanding answers for running Shadowrun in the D&D system, and nobody ever thinks of them before they decide to Stick With What They Know(C) and just run every conceivable game in D&D. But you really should, if you're going to try and purge the fantasy from your fantasy game and turn it into Awkward Space Simulator 2021 instead.
I'll relate it to something I know extremely well. Fitness.
You don't simultaneously train to run your best marathon time while becoming as strong as possible with barbell lifts. Choose one. Enjoy the process while you're in, then when you grow tired of it, move on to the other thing.
Sci-Fi and D&D don't mix. Play a different game/system for a while. Scratch the itch, then move on.
D&D's Six Sacred Scores are not built with the idea of a highly futuristic society in mind. The whole STR/CON/DEX/INT/WIS/CHA thing is shaky at best in a fantasy genre where it can be argued that all those things are important. In a futuristic society where technology is widely available, who gives a snot how much raw strength your character possesses, or how perceptive they are (i.e. the ACTUAL function of Wisdom)? You'll have technological aids for both. Hell, if the society is far-future enough you could have technological aids for everything, and the better system would be measuring how many of those aids you can afford/tolerate before either your wallet or your body gives out.
As you say, the six scores could be a reflection of how many augmentations and implants a person has. Why bother have those scores in fantasy when magic items exist is no different from asking why have them in sci-fi when technology exists. Sci-fi and fantasy are no different in this regard.
And as far as I can tell, Starfinder uses the exact same ability scores, and Star Wars and 40K uses similar ability scores. I do not think the presence of ability scores has any bearing on whether a game is suitable or not for any kind of genre.
To say nothing of the core D&D rules' exceptionally poor handling of skills for anything but, as it's been put by others, beer & pretzels fantasy. Where do you class engineering training in D&D, or computer hacking (either cinematic or proper)? "Oh, easy - just put those under Skills!", everyone immediately says without thought. Cool - where? The default D&D sheet gives no space whatsoever for new default 'skills', only a blank space for tool proficiencies. "Then make them tool proficiencies, duhhh!" everyone immediately retorts without thought. Cool - which tools do they use? What Sacred Scores are you going to use to govern tool use? Are you able to smoothly handle normal-ass tools in a normal-ass D&D game, or does the character that wants to use their Tinker's tools proficiency to tinker with stuff throw you ever time the way it throws ninety-five out of a hundred D&DMs? And that's just the most basic, bare-bones, oversimplified way of trying to introduce a tech-savvy character into a "D&D" system.
Some people like the simplification of skills in D&D. If it works fine for beer & pretzels fantasy, it will work fine for beer & pretzels sci-fi. If people are having an issue with the skill simple being too simple, they are going to have an issue with it no matter what the game's default genre is, so having a simple skill system does not mean it is more suitable for fantasy or less suitable for sci-fi.
Beyond's D&D sheet allows you to add new skills. For physical sheets, you can just use a second sheet and write over the old skills with whatever new skill you come up with.
Tools can can all still be the same; other than maybe renaming a few of them, I do not see the need to change the underlying mechanics of any of them. Repairing metallic armors and weapons would still use smith's tools, and you can flavor those tools as hammer and anvil for fantasy/historical settings, power hammers and welding torches for a modern setting, or 3D printers and fabricators for a sci-fi setting. Alchemy tools can be a chemistry set. Cartographer's tools can be software tools for Google Maps (or whatever its future equivalent). I personally do not think carpenter's tools needs any reflavoring as engineered wood is a pretty high tech material and it is being considered to build high rises (and maybe skyscrapers) right now, but if people want to rename carpenter tools to give it a more sci-fi flavor, they are free to do so.
How are you going to handle vehicles? Just say "Land vehicle proficiency is fine"? All right - how're you going to handle vehicle chases, or someone wanting their character to be an exceptionally skilled driver that can do all kinds of cool things with their hovercar that D&D just has absolutely no basis for? A futuristic society makes vehicles easily obtainable by all, and not one-horse rattlecarts either - what's your answer?
I do not see anything wrong with using the current rules on vehicle chases. D&D's vehicle chases involves more than just land vehicles, and if the current rules on vehicle chases can be used to handle ship chases, broomstick chases, flying carpet chases, and airship chases, I do not see why it could not be used to support hover car chases. If players are not satisfied with how hovercar chases are going to be handled in a sci-fi setting, they would not be satisfied with how airship and broomstick chases are handled right now either, and if that situation pops up, they are going to have to pilfer additional rules elsewhere regardless of whether the original system is geared towards fantasy or sci-fi.
How're you going to handle cyberwarfare? Base D&D doesn't have any means of acknowledging that a global information network exists, let alone interacting with it. Gonna reduce cyberwarfare to a bunch of impromptu Intelligence rolls and see who gets luckiest? How're you going to allow for the characters to improve their cybersecurity and try to breach the networks of their enemies?
But D&D can have a massive communications network if you want to give it one; all the stuff are there. Sending spell, sending stone, sending stones, crystal balls, professor orbs, docents, etc. can all by used to lay the foundation of the World Wide Weave information network. Nondetection, mind blank, and crystal ball of telepathy could be used to protect and/or disrupt the network. And all of that can be reflavored into its modern or sci-fi equivalent.
There's a hundred other questions all demanding answers for running Shadowrun in the D&D system, and nobody ever thinks of them before they decide to Stick With What They Know(C) and just run every conceivable game in D&D. But you really should, if you're going to try and purge the fantasy from your fantasy game and turn it into Awkward Space Simulator 2021 instead.
No. Not all of those questions need to be answered, and I do not think you need to think about it before the game either. Those questions can be answered on the spot, be answered later, be answered whenever the GM wants it to be answered, be intentionally left unanswered, or just get handwaved because that is just how advanced technology works. A GM can answer those questions if they want to, but it is not something they have to do.
A GM does not need to think of everything and answer everything before they run an Eberron campaign, it can all be answered later or not answered at all, such as where Warforged goes after they die. Eberron feels pretty close to modern society, and you can easily incorporate the World Wide Weave into the setting and basically have a cyberpunk game in fantasy land. Taking it one step further and replacing fantasy land with sci-fi land is not that difficult nor out of place.
I'll relate it to something I know extremely well. Fitness.
You don't simultaneously train to run your best marathon time while becoming as strong as possible with barbell lifts. Choose one. Enjoy the process while you're in, then when you grow tired of it, move on to the other thing.
Sci-Fi and D&D don't mix. Play a different game/system for a while. Scratch the itch, then move on.
Sci-fi and D&D does not mix for you and your games, but that is a subjective opinion and it does not apply to everyone. Sci-fi and D&D can definitely mix for others.
Saying sci-fi and D&D does not mix is no different from saying artificer and D&D does not mix. Plenty of people ban artificers from their games despite artificers being officially part of Faerun. The issue is not whether or not something mix, cause they can definitely all mix if the all participants want them to mix. The issue is that people are stuck on the idea that mechanics have genre preference when it does not. You do not have to use D&D to run sci-fi games if you do not want to, but I would not discourage others from doing so based on just personal preferences. I do not like to run murderhobo games, but D&D can clearly be used to run such a game and I am not going to discourage others from doing it either.
In my own low magic setting, the secrets behind the creation of magic items has been lost for thousands of years. It's one of the things that is intended to motivate players to send their characters into lost tombs and ancient ruins filled with terrible dangers. The Artificer comes from a high magic steampunkish style setting and has no place at all in my game. Yet. I think they are kind of cool and if, at the end of a long campaign, the characters manage to discover enough of those ancient secrets, they might "unlock" the Artificer class, and in a brand new story arc with new characters, people could chose them.
More to the topic, the D&D rules can do an adequate job with Science Fiction. They do heroic fantasy well, they seem all right for horror, and may be workable for other genre yet to come. There's tons of information online to get people started, some of it hosted by Fandom themselves. A system purpose built for a given genre will always be superior. If you want to do Star Wars, that's do-able, but you have to pretty much tear out the entire D&D magic system, because the Vancian Magic System™ and the mechanics of The Force have very little in common. If you want to do Cyberpunk, it's possible, but you need some rules about the equipment. In Cyberpunk 2020, there was a mechanic called "Cyber Psychosis" that happened when you tried to cram too much cybertech into your body. It drove people insane. In Shadowrun, too much tech simply kills you. What's the D&D equivalent? A really super-generous Attunement system? The old sky high stacking modifiers thing with each individual part of the body having a slot for a piece of gear?
As long as you are prepared for all the work involved, you can do anything you like with D&D. The character sheet currently won't support much of it, so D&D Beyond won't be all that much help aside from research, but D&D itself is adequate to the task.
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I think SW5E is definitely the way to go for this. Being based off of 5E will hopefully make it an easier transition.
That "resolution mechanic" is D&D. Staging the story in space with different equipment and possibly new classes (assuming you don't just tweak nonmagical classes like fighter, rogue, and even barbarian to fit the style) is just making a homebrew campaign setting. People do that all the time.
I think what Yurei was saying about 80% is that you have to replace the entire magic system. The Vancian system really doesn't lend itself all that well to other games. I'm not sure it's all that great for D&D. We're kind of stuck with it, and it's taken a huge number of changes to get it to work in 5th edition, it's almost unrecognizable now. Every class has at least one subclass that uses magic.
Which Barbarian sub-class has no magical or semi-magical ability? Rage is semi-magical, since it gives resistance to non magical weapons. Most of the subclasses have actual spells they can cast.
Sure, you can homebrew to your heart's content and make the D&D system do what you want it to. You want Star Wars, there's a ton of information about that Fandom Games has available at Wookieepedia
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Yeah, but getting it together to fail because D&D is not well suited to that kind of sci-fi is worse than not getting together.
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Not sure if this is exactly what you're looking for but this is a decent conversion of 5e into a star wars themed setting and mechanics. https://sw5e.com/
The point is to look at D&D as a flavorless system stripped to its bare mechanics. Once you strip out the lore and fluff, nothing about D&D makes it feels specifically suited for fantasy either, so I do not see why people insist that fantasy paint looks better on these mechanics than sci-fi paint. For example, in my opinion, spell slots as part of the magic system is extremely awkward, clunky, and counterintuitive, and nothing about spell slots feels remotely magical to me. In fact, spell slots feel more appropriate as part of the ammo system in an FPS game where players carry various types of ammo in the form of bullets, grenades, mines, and so on. On the other hand, Sorcery Points, Superiority Die, and Ki Points actually feels more magic appropriate due to its more continuous and flowy nature.
If more options or changes are desired to better capture that sci-fi feel, I would add those in when the moment that desire comes up. I do not think it is a good idea to bloat the system right off the bat. There is no need to swap out D&D's ship combat rules with something else until the group actually finds it unsatisfactory.
I disagree. D&D can be used as a universal game system. It is not going to be perfect for every genre, setting, or IP, but I think it is good enough to work for practically all of them. Further improvements and adjustments can be made as the campaign develops to better capture a particular aspect.
$20 to $30 is not a lot for you and me, but I would discourage people from spending that money even if they can afford it until they actually feel like it is worth it to them. I think TTRPG creators deserve as much support as possible, but I do not think they deserve blind support. It does not matter whether it is D&D, Pathfinder, or any other system or hobby, I think people should at least take advantage of all the free resources first so they can make a more informed purchasing decision. If all the person is going to do is to just copy some rules and take some inspiration from Star Wars RPG, then I think they are better off watching "how to play" videos to learn about the rules for free, so they can save that money for things they will actually need or will give them the most enjoyment.
Magic and advanced technology are not very different from each other. They are both used to handwave our understanding of reality. None of the mechanics in D&D remotely suggest fantasy to me when we remove all the flavor and fluff. Spell slots mechanically speaking as I mentioned above are not inherently fantasy oriented, and I would argue energy cells or ammo packs would be more suitable flavor wise due to spell slots' clunky nature.
I will check out other game systems, but I do not think it is going to change my mind regarding mechanics being no more suited for one genre over another.
I do not think D&D is bad at doing sci-fi. I think people are stuck on the idea that mechanics are better for one genre over another. While I cannot speak from much experience in TTRPGs, at least in videogames, mechanics do not dictate whether a game is better with a sci-fi coat of paint or a fantasy coat of paint, and I highly doubt TTRPGs are different in this regard. If you mod WarCraft and StarCraft and just reskin them, gamers might complain about things looking ugly or have a hard time identifying which new model corresponds to which old unit, but I highly doubt any significant portion of them are going to say the new skin does not fit a sci-fi or fantasy theme respectively.
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D&D's Six Sacred Scores are not built with the idea of a highly futuristic society in mind. The whole STR/CON/DEX/INT/WIS/CHA thing is shaky at best in a fantasy genre where it can be argued that all those things are important. In a futuristic society where technology is widely available, who gives a snot how much raw strength your character possesses, or how perceptive they are (i.e. the ACTUAL function of Wisdom)? You'll have technological aids for both. Hell, if the society is far-future enough you could have technological aids for everything, and the better system would be measuring how many of those aids you can afford/tolerate before either your wallet or your body gives out.
To say nothing of the core D&D rules' exceptionally poor handling of skills for anything but, as it's been put by others, beer & pretzels fantasy. Where do you class engineering training in D&D, or computer hacking (either cinematic or proper)? "Oh, easy - just put those under Skills!", everyone immediately says without thought. Cool - where? The default D&D sheet gives no space whatsoever for new default 'skills', only a blank space for tool proficiencies. "Then make them tool proficiencies, duhhh!" everyone immediately retorts without thought. Cool - which tools do they use? What Sacred Scores are you going to use to govern tool use? Are you able to smoothly handle normal-ass tools in a normal-ass D&D game, or does the character that wants to use their Tinker's tools proficiency to tinker with stuff throw you ever time the way it throws ninety-five out of a hundred D&DMs? And that's just the most basic, bare-bones, oversimplified way of trying to introduce a tech-savvy character into a "D&D" system.
How are you going to handle vehicles? Just say "Land vehicle proficiency is fine"? All right - how're you going to handle vehicle chases, or someone wanting their character to be an exceptionally skilled driver that can do all kinds of cool things with their hovercar that D&D just has absolutely no basis for? A futuristic society makes vehicles easily obtainable by all, and not one-horse rattlecarts either - what's your answer?
How're you going to handle cyberwarfare? Base D&D doesn't have any means of acknowledging that a global information network exists, let alone interacting with it. Gonna reduce cyberwarfare to a bunch of impromptu Intelligence rolls and see who gets luckiest? How're you going to allow for the characters to improve their cybersecurity and try to breach the networks of their enemies?
There's a hundred other questions all demanding answers for running Shadowrun in the D&D system, and nobody ever thinks of them before they decide to Stick With What They Know(C) and just run every conceivable game in D&D. But you really should, if you're going to try and purge the fantasy from your fantasy game and turn it into Awkward Space Simulator 2021 instead.
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I'll relate it to something I know extremely well. Fitness.
You don't simultaneously train to run your best marathon time while becoming as strong as possible with barbell lifts. Choose one. Enjoy the process while you're in, then when you grow tired of it, move on to the other thing.
Sci-Fi and D&D don't mix. Play a different game/system for a while. Scratch the itch, then move on.
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As you say, the six scores could be a reflection of how many augmentations and implants a person has. Why bother have those scores in fantasy when magic items exist is no different from asking why have them in sci-fi when technology exists. Sci-fi and fantasy are no different in this regard.
And as far as I can tell, Starfinder uses the exact same ability scores, and Star Wars and 40K uses similar ability scores. I do not think the presence of ability scores has any bearing on whether a game is suitable or not for any kind of genre.
Some people like the simplification of skills in D&D. If it works fine for beer & pretzels fantasy, it will work fine for beer & pretzels sci-fi. If people are having an issue with the skill simple being too simple, they are going to have an issue with it no matter what the game's default genre is, so having a simple skill system does not mean it is more suitable for fantasy or less suitable for sci-fi.
Beyond's D&D sheet allows you to add new skills. For physical sheets, you can just use a second sheet and write over the old skills with whatever new skill you come up with.
Tools can can all still be the same; other than maybe renaming a few of them, I do not see the need to change the underlying mechanics of any of them. Repairing metallic armors and weapons would still use smith's tools, and you can flavor those tools as hammer and anvil for fantasy/historical settings, power hammers and welding torches for a modern setting, or 3D printers and fabricators for a sci-fi setting. Alchemy tools can be a chemistry set. Cartographer's tools can be software tools for Google Maps (or whatever its future equivalent). I personally do not think carpenter's tools needs any reflavoring as engineered wood is a pretty high tech material and it is being considered to build high rises (and maybe skyscrapers) right now, but if people want to rename carpenter tools to give it a more sci-fi flavor, they are free to do so.
I do not see anything wrong with using the current rules on vehicle chases. D&D's vehicle chases involves more than just land vehicles, and if the current rules on vehicle chases can be used to handle ship chases, broomstick chases, flying carpet chases, and airship chases, I do not see why it could not be used to support hover car chases. If players are not satisfied with how hovercar chases are going to be handled in a sci-fi setting, they would not be satisfied with how airship and broomstick chases are handled right now either, and if that situation pops up, they are going to have to pilfer additional rules elsewhere regardless of whether the original system is geared towards fantasy or sci-fi.
But D&D can have a massive communications network if you want to give it one; all the stuff are there. Sending spell, sending stone, sending stones, crystal balls, professor orbs, docents, etc. can all by used to lay the foundation of the World Wide Weave information network. Nondetection, mind blank, and crystal ball of telepathy could be used to protect and/or disrupt the network. And all of that can be reflavored into its modern or sci-fi equivalent.
No. Not all of those questions need to be answered, and I do not think you need to think about it before the game either. Those questions can be answered on the spot, be answered later, be answered whenever the GM wants it to be answered, be intentionally left unanswered, or just get handwaved because that is just how advanced technology works. A GM can answer those questions if they want to, but it is not something they have to do.
A GM does not need to think of everything and answer everything before they run an Eberron campaign, it can all be answered later or not answered at all, such as where Warforged goes after they die. Eberron feels pretty close to modern society, and you can easily incorporate the World Wide Weave into the setting and basically have a cyberpunk game in fantasy land. Taking it one step further and replacing fantasy land with sci-fi land is not that difficult nor out of place.
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Sci-fi and D&D does not mix for you and your games, but that is a subjective opinion and it does not apply to everyone. Sci-fi and D&D can definitely mix for others.
Saying sci-fi and D&D does not mix is no different from saying artificer and D&D does not mix. Plenty of people ban artificers from their games despite artificers being officially part of Faerun. The issue is not whether or not something mix, cause they can definitely all mix if the all participants want them to mix. The issue is that people are stuck on the idea that mechanics have genre preference when it does not. You do not have to use D&D to run sci-fi games if you do not want to, but I would not discourage others from doing so based on just personal preferences. I do not like to run murderhobo games, but D&D can clearly be used to run such a game and I am not going to discourage others from doing it either.
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In my own low magic setting, the secrets behind the creation of magic items has been lost for thousands of years. It's one of the things that is intended to motivate players to send their characters into lost tombs and ancient ruins filled with terrible dangers. The Artificer comes from a high magic steampunkish style setting and has no place at all in my game. Yet. I think they are kind of cool and if, at the end of a long campaign, the characters manage to discover enough of those ancient secrets, they might "unlock" the Artificer class, and in a brand new story arc with new characters, people could chose them.
More to the topic, the D&D rules can do an adequate job with Science Fiction. They do heroic fantasy well, they seem all right for horror, and may be workable for other genre yet to come. There's tons of information online to get people started, some of it hosted by Fandom themselves. A system purpose built for a given genre will always be superior. If you want to do Star Wars, that's do-able, but you have to pretty much tear out the entire D&D magic system, because the Vancian Magic System™ and the mechanics of The Force have very little in common. If you want to do Cyberpunk, it's possible, but you need some rules about the equipment. In Cyberpunk 2020, there was a mechanic called "Cyber Psychosis" that happened when you tried to cram too much cybertech into your body. It drove people insane. In Shadowrun, too much tech simply kills you. What's the D&D equivalent? A really super-generous Attunement system? The old sky high stacking modifiers thing with each individual part of the body having a slot for a piece of gear?
As long as you are prepared for all the work involved, you can do anything you like with D&D. The character sheet currently won't support much of it, so D&D Beyond won't be all that much help aside from research, but D&D itself is adequate to the task.
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