"What Is So Great About Sci-Fi Gaming?" Topic

What makes it so popular for you?

I was 7 when the Star Wars (the original) hit the theaters, I haven't been able to get enough sci fi ever since.

Robert

Like fantasy, practically anything you can imagine you can do.

Having completely burned out on most historical miniatures games (various iterations of Ancients, Dark Ages, Crusades, 7YW/FIW, Napoleonics and ACW, though I'll occasionally play WWI/WWII/Modern games), I like the freedom in applying original paint schemes, creating custom troop organizations, writing technobabble and handwavium, and creation of settings in which to fight my battles (though I'll occasionally dabble in some pre-packaged universe).

Playing my own, published (and well-received) rules is a nice bonus, too.

Nice to play games set in the books/webcomics I'm reading.

Or the TV shows/movies/anime I'm watching.

Beats trying to figure out how to play Eastern Front WW2 (where you can't root for either side).

Bashytubits, that is an epic pic. Wow, just wow. Han Solo and Bob Ross are my two personal hero's.

Like fantasy, practically anything you can imagine you can do.

You echoed my sentiments exactly!

You don't have another player crying that the game isn't historically accurate.

I have the freedom to collect anything from historical through fantasy to future… just by adding a warp portal. There is no limit to the possibilities and there are no button counters (unless I decide to go for a specific theme… like Star Wars, for instance).

It means I can create concept stuff and just go where the muse takes me, with complete freedom.

Plus… PEW PEW! ZZZzzzzap!

All the blood wine and pain sticks.

Yep. It's so much simpler and flexible that some historical periods.

TMP link

Dan

Allows great opportunities for creative terrain & paint schemes.

You get to *make* history, rather than repeat it? Well, my main motivation.

The visuals are fantastic.

Like modern conflict, it is real and I am living it. (Some of what was sci-fi in the 60's when I was born is real now. Hell, some of what was sci-fi when I got my undergraduate EE degree was real when DOM got hers!)

Realism is more challenging for sci-fi. History doesn't have to be plausible.

It is easier to focus in on the part of the conflict that is interesting without feeling the necessary baggage of things that happened, but aren't.

It's Sci-fi … something not real, yet. And yet may have some "basis" in reality to set up the paradigm, etc.

Or … it's just cool … I.e. fun !

All great comments and so true.

SF and Fantasy for all the reasons in the posts above. They stimulate my imagination. I am burned out on historical stuff except naval. Historic board games still interest me though.

I still study history … but love sci-fi as well … "I'm complicated" that way …

I like SF because it so broad of a genre. SF can take place in any era from the distant past to the far future. One can have an alien invasion in 2018 or intergalactic imperial warfare 30,000 years from now.

Though I'm still an enthusiast of historical gaming, it's nice to do some VSF, near future, or other SF games for a change of pace.

Same goes for fantasy.

Spaceship battles!

Ron

Probably mainly because I really like sci-fi literature. Also the breadth of the genre is truly massive and gives oodles of creative freedom.

And possibly because debates over accuracy and colour schemes don't devolve into flame wars. Oh, wait….

Bricoles are always correct.

What everyone else said.

Hydra Miniatures.

The possibilities are endless.

Dan

Indeed !

I'm with Coelacanth: Spaceship battles! Gobs of 'em!