Fantasy Kitchen Sink. In Spaaaace!

[Corvus 501]

Ever wondered what would happen when you mixed space opera with the fantasy kitchen sink genre? Well here's my take on it.

This 'verse contains a massive number of talented individuals, baffling amounts of weird shit, and a horrifying amount of stuff not to out of place from H.P Lovecraft' mind. Thankfully, the lovecraftian horrors top out at about half of cthulhus' power, and there are no Great Old Ones roaming around, and the horror aspects has more to do with with the power level, not the local Eldridge Horror population. Generally speaking, there are four categories from weird stuff.
First off, supernatural beings. This includes dragons, shoggoth, the fey, demons, and animals that set off magic detectors, or anything thar counts as both alive and Eldridge.
Secondly, psionics, otherwise known as the ability to affect minds, and to a limited degree, energy via quantum bullshit. The abilities vary in both potency and in application, but generally conform to a dozen or so categories.
Magic, or the ability to affect the world via the quantum bullshit of psionics boosted by taping into the collective unconscious of a civilization and or an amazingly large amount of processing power in the form of quantum computers. With this, you can get results ranging from the Elder Scrolls fireball and potions magic style (adjusted to ignore gameplay, ie a fireball is a mass of magic pretending to be fire, and doing a damned good job or it) to high end magitech.
Magical materials, or materials that interact with the world on a spectrum greater than they strictly should. This includes ADAM and EVE equivalents, Tiberium, Quantum 40, Tylium, Element Zero, Elerium, and (Warhammer 40k style) Adamantium equivalents.
Finally, there is supernatural physical enhancement, essentially using excess metabolic energy to increase one's body and/or equipment. It could be said to be equivalent to low level Ranma style ki enhancement, powered by BioShock style gene mods and EVE, which is essentially liquid metabolic energy.

The setting itself isn't all that crowded with sentient, space faring species, though it has the usual space Orks, space dwarves, space bugs, space elves, (think humanoid Vorlon, crossed with per fall W40k elder) dark space elves, (who are actually the non asshole branch of the species, generally being semi nomadic, selling basic interstellar technology, or almost anything else, for a price, of course) and of course, the obligatory Evil Space Empire.
The main factions are the Orion Arm Alliance, the Dominion, (they conquered the five or so other evil empires so they got to have a non specific name) the Dwarven Imperium (called something else in their own language, but that's as close a translation as you can get in English) the (dark space elf) Migrant Fleet, the T'Plet Collective (non hegemonic swarm humanoid insectoid species with a hive mind acting as a collective voice, and a convenient magic booster) and finally the Glorious Empire, (direct translation) which is the "high" elvish government.

Comments, concerns, questions?

[Vendetta]

Ever wondered what would happen when you mixed space opera with the fantasy kitchen sink genre?

Warhammer 40k?

[Purple]

Pretty much sounds like the RPG setting I ran between 2008 and 2015. We had cosmic horrors, Warhammer 40K eldar and the warp (separate from my cosmic horrors), a race of anime people, a race of space aadwarks, androids, magic using telepathic humans, a sentient artificial hive mind, a faction based entirely on HALO superpsoldiers, Thiotimoline powered time flow manipulation, people who live forever in an eternal waking existence thanks to their souls being no more, cloning, genetic manipulation, an Orwellian society built for the benefit of those inside it, all but magical cristalsteel materials, magical force fields, non magical force fields, magical materials, magical materials with telepathic properties, death rays, magical death rays etc.

[Simon_Jester]

The Palladium game set in the Three Galaxies is another candidate too. Less horror, more grandeur, but still enough horror and fantastic elements for any reasonable person.

Tip of the hat to the thiotimoline resublimators, though. Extend to them my compliments, Purple.

Anyway, Corvus, the problem is that it's a bit too compact and nonspecific to have questions about, at least for me.

[Corvus 501]

Just a setting that I've been screwing around with for a while. Mostly I'm annoyed with sci fi shying away from the word magic when it's as good an explanation for half the stuff that happens in it. I mean just look at StarCraft, 90% of what the Protiss or Zerg pull off is magitech, (psionic technology anyone?) or magic.

[Purple]

Just a setting that I've been screwing around with for a while. Mostly I'm annoyed with sci fi shying away from the word magic when it's as good an explanation for half the stuff that happens in it. I mean just look at StarCraft, 90% of what the Protiss or Zerg pull off is magitech, (psionic technology anyone?) or magic.

I find it that for the most part it's hard to not call magic magic once you get to the point where 2m tall organic battlesuits modeled after Unit 01 from Evangelion are sword fighting a greater demon of Nurgle inside a psychically charged planet ship powered by the souls of tortured slaves.

Tip of the hat to the thiotimoline resublimators, though. Extend to them my compliments, Purple.

They were my idea actually. I used them as a way of manipulating time flow for all sorts of things including but not limited to combating scrying and preserving food. In my empire Millennium Sausage means exactly what it says on the tin.

[Murazor]

Ever wondered what would happen when you mixed space opera with the fantasy kitchen sink genre?

Spelljammer is what comes to mind, tbh.

[Simon_Jester]

Just a setting that I've been screwing around with for a while. Mostly I'm annoyed with sci fi shying away from the word magic when it's as good an explanation for half the stuff that happens in it. I mean just look at StarCraft, 90% of what the Protiss or Zerg pull off is magitech, (psionic technology anyone?) or magic.

Psionics is often 'allowed' into science fiction because:

1) It gets a grandfather exception; psychic powers were introduced to SF at least as early as faster than light travel, and were treated as just as much a scientific phenomenon as the FTL drive was in the story in question (The Skylark of Space).

2) Psionics as portrayed in SF is generally a scientific phenomenon: it can be understood and analyzed in terms of neurobiology, it can be blocked, generated, or amplified using machinery. Given how psychic abilities work for the Terrans and Protoss there is no more reason to call their psi abilities "magic" than there is to call their radio waves magic.

[Purple]

Not that there is any difference really. In most settings magic is just another form of science. You can study it, analyze it and block/amplify it with devices. And it ultimately follows a self consistent set of rules. It just happens to be a set of rules incompatible with the rest of the universe. But if you have already established things such as FTL working there is no reason not to conclude that the universe simply has several distinct and concurrent rule sets that each apply to their own area.

[biostem]

The only problem I have with this type of setting is one of "flavor" vs one of "practicality". Specifically, if I could equip a bunch of baseline humans, with moderate training, with ships or equipment to take down the various creatures/magic users/psychics, then that will be the defacto ruling force in most cases. I suppose you could have a setting like Rifts Three Galaxies, where you do find that most people use various high-tech ships and weapons, but all the rest fill various niches within that - special forces operatives, interrogators, entertainment stars, assassins, etc.

[Khaat]

The universe you plan may be wide, but the players will only play as deep as they want to. Throw them into waters they don't want and you can kill a game faster than closing out the invite email with "no snacks allowed".

[Adam Reynolds]

Another example is the old Star Wars EU. If you can think of it, it has been done(albeit often poorly). Various works have featured everything from dragons(Darth Bane trilogy among others) to zombies(Clone Wars and Death Troopers/Red Harvest). One also can't forget the horrors that were possible using Sith alchemy(with featured the glory of sithspawn, which could include both technomancy and necromancy) or the abilities of some of the odd Force users like the Nightsisters(who actually used verbal spells) or Aing-Ti monks(who apparently used the Force to teleport across interstellar distances and directly view history).

I had previously had something of an inverse idea, that of building a fantasy setting purely though technology. The characters treated it as if it was magic when it was actually just technology they did not fully understand. Their "natural" magical abilities could be reasonably plausible transhumanism(with things like telepathy being simple radio waves). In particular enchanted devices could be black box technology.

Though there is a fundamental problem with the idea of fantasy style magic in most science fiction. Given that much of it of it takes place in Earth's future in some sense, any magic that exists in the setting must have a plausible reason that we see no evidence of it today.

[biostem]

The Clone Wars series also had the Nightsisters with the army of animated dead vs droids, a witch and a force user vs a cyborg commander, etc.

Rifts is also a great mix of all these disparate genres.

[Gaidin]

If you want psionics in space that's more Science Fantasy, read Glen Cook's Darkwar. A trilogy he wrote in the 80's. Was actually pretty fun. But it's wayyyy different from what people normally associate with him ala Black Company.