Why is D&D still Medieval?

[Lord Raziere]

@ gemini: ah sorry.

look, the problem with saying DnD is a western for unintended reasons, is that I can technically say DnD is anything if I draw enough connections and twists of logic:

DnD is a mystery because you go searching for clues, find out who the criminal is (maybe a shapeshifter is) is and bring them to justice, which there are shapeshifters who can do that, and that plot can be done in DnD just as the wilderness frontier plot can be done in DnD.

DnD is a romance akin to romeo and juliet because a human and orc were forbidden star-crossed lovers who didn't like the opposite sides not wanting them to be together and giving birth to a half orc in secret but one or both dying tragically and thats a half orc adventurers backstory.

DnD is a horror story because some NPC's went into the underdark and got killed by something and the PC's are viewing that horror story through the journals they left behind as they were picked off by some monster or other, which they then kill when they encounter it.

DnD is a post-apocalypse story because your a bunch of people wandering the ruins of fallen magical empires grabbing the remnant artifacts to do things and having to deal with the golden age of their world being behind them.

DnD is a science fiction story because you can hop onto a spelljammer to travel through space, play in Eberron or make a tippyverse with its magic.

DnD is a tragedy because a sympathetic person who ignorant of the cosmos judgment, is judged Lawful Evil and ends up doing things that brings about their own downfall by adventurers killing them, because they're a well-written BBEG.

DnD is a workplace comedy because the PC's go to an adventurer's guild where they hang out with their co-workers and get into wacky situations because of all the colorful adventurers interacting with one another between adventures.

DnD is a deep introspective work because an elf somewhere reminisces about his long life before he dies and writes them all down as his memoirs.

DnD is a harem comedy manga because a dumb bard goes around seducing various monster girls so they all want to adventure with him in the same party while sabotaging each others chances with him while they adventure.

DnD is a courtroom drama because the adventurers decide to capture some bandits rather than kill them, turn them in and two lawful people want to argue out the bandits case for their punishment because they're both rogues with social skills.

DnD is a swashbuckler story because its full of clever chaotic good rogues wielding rapiers in an idealistic black white universe going around fighting people.

DnD is a medical drama because the party is a bunch of clerics going around saving people from various maladies, including curses and whatnot.

DnD is a saturday morning cartoon where adventurers work as a team to save the day through the power of friendship and deal only nonlethal damage, while all being Neutral good and willing to talk the evil BBEG down to redeem them

DnD is a Mons series because summoners can summon up various beasts from the planes and rangers can tame beasts to do things for them

DnD is a Gangster story because its about rogues working in thieves guilds, do crimes and fight with other criminals over various things.

DnD is a Music Story because its about Bards working on getting inspiration to sing their songs and working to perform challenges relating to music.

DnD is a pirate story because its about a small crew of people sailing on a ship going to plunder treasure and fight others with swords.

DnD is a spy story because rogues spy on other kingdoms, foil plots to destroy or conquer their kingdom, and be really suave while they do it.

the only reason its called a western is because people keep using it in a way they think is a western. There is no reason to believe that the wilderness they explore is some "frontier" or to even go to a frontier for that adventure to be found or that a frontier somehow means western. its a projection of a different genre onto it because of the people playing it.

[Beleriphon]

the only reason its called a western is because people keep using it in a way they think is a western. There is no reason to believe that the wilderness they explore is some "frontier" or to even go to a frontier for that adventure to be found or that a frontier somehow means western. its a projection of a different genre onto it because of the people playing it.

The issues is that none of those things you list are actually tropes of D&D, although it can certainly be played that way. The general point has been that D&D fits Western's a genre structure than other genre's structures. On your note for horror though, D&D is terrible at horror because horror requires building suspense and dread in the audience, and then releasing that dread. In fact the best horror plays on the tropes of when we expect the release to occur and then doesn't do it, thus the jump scare. D&D by default is terrible at that and is part of the reason that stuff like Castle Ravenloft and Curse of Strahd ooze atmosphere but aren't actually scary.

The default assumptions of D&D map better to playing it like you'd play a western than if you played it as something else. Nobody is saying, "Heehee, that Gary Gygax tricked us all into playing a John Wayne styled adventure when we really wanted to play Robin Hood and Conan, what a genius!" We're saying, "D&D maps better to western genre tropes so if we build adventures around those tropes D&D will play to its strengths."

I can play D&D a a murder mystery no problem, but that's setting up session as a murder mystery and has nothing to do with D&D rules or assumptions about how the game works from the way the books are written.

As for workplace comedy, you can do that. The Acquisitions Incorporated book is billed exactly as how to turn D&D into workplace comedy. It requires changing a lot of the basic assumptions of D&D.

So lets ask some questions instead. If had a game that was a noir murder mystery game and the rules were pretty clear about how to play that kind of game and setup that kind of scenario and resolve that kind of scenario, but the setting was a space station near Alpha Centauri does that make it a sci-fi game or a murder mystery game? What if I took the script of the The Maltese Falcon and set it on Corellia instead of Earth? Its still a noir film even though it is set in a Star Wars locale right? What about Ran, a Kurosawa movie that is pretty much King Lear but set in the Sengoku Period, is it still a classical tragedy even though it has samurai? What if I took the plot of the Oedipus Rex and instead of Greece we're in Bumblescum New Mexico circa 1850 and Oliver Rex kills his father in a duel at high noon, are we still working with a Greek tragedy in western garb or is it a western genre story?

A genre is more than its set dressing. Its about tropes and actions that characters take more than setting. No Country for Old Men is western for example, despite the fact that it set in a modern era.

[Tanarii]

Someone is going to have to make a bullet point list for us here fo these so-called western tropes. Not mapping them to D&D, just what are "western tropes"? Because right now they're just being referred to broadly and vaguely.

[Lord Raziere]

We're saying, "D&D maps better to western genre tropes so if we build adventures around those tropes D&D will play to its strengths."

Yes, thats what I disagree with.

It clearly does not map to western genre tropes. Its out of nowhere and your imposing that on it because its familiar to you when actually its tropes are not western at all. DnD does not have showdowns at high noon, guns or train heists, frontiers are not a thing unique to the wild west: colonies, empires and expansion are a universal thing. westerns do not own a patent on drifting heroes, nor on fighting criminals. just because you have wide and vague standards of what a western is and apply it to anything that vaguely resembles it or takes inspiration from it, doesn't mean it is a western.

this "DnD is a western" thing is nothing but fanon based on a bizarre categorization scheme where somehow newer things get forced into being called some older category that makes no sense just because someone can find vague resemblances and people allow them to water it down until it means nothing. after all, if "western" can be so wide as to be everywhere, then higher standards have to be applied to make sure its still a distinct thing rather than something that isn't and therefore not really a thing at all.

[Max_Killjoy]

Aesthetics vs plot elements.

D&D is light on many "Western genre" aesthetics (although the dungeonpunk and cowboypunk looks of lots of dirty leather, long coats, and equipment belts flirted with each other for a while).

D&D is heavy on many "Western genre" plot/story elements.

[warty goblin]

I think on net Raziere has the better argument and richer analysis here. D&D isn't a story that's made up of tropes and characters and plot points, its a tool. The interesting thing about tools isn't what they're made out of, or how similar to other tools they are, its what they allow you to do. Literary analysis based on tropes and so forth is the wrong tool (ironically enough) to analyze a tool, because its built to analyze products - things made by tools.

Now tools have some assumptions about their use built into their construction to be sure. So you can maybe say that D&D is built to facilitate making fantasy westerns. This does not make D&D a fantasy western, any more than the ability to drive nails makes a hammer a bookshelf. And people use tools in unintended ways all the time. The other week I improvised a way to hold a workpiece steady for soldering by using a bar clamp, a small swage block, a needle nosed pliers, and an old hairtie. Its perfectly fine to use D&D for a game about vampire court intrigue where nobody draws a sword for hours at a time, and there isn't a single frontier in sight.

Further, the largest purpose of genre isn't to codify tropes, or any other similar angels-dancing-on-a-pin theory questions; but to facilitate marketing, which I would argue is extremely driven by aesthetic. I'm gonna bet that most of this thread has read a fair number of fantasy novels, and a much smaller number have read westerns in anything like the same numbers. Yet if all that really matters is the underlying tropes, and those tropes are so similar, this would suggest that we're all missing out on tons more of our favorite stuff by not loading up on Louis L'Amor novels. Or maybe the aesthetics matter a whole lot more to our actual enjoyment, and we just like dragons and swords more than horses and six-shooters.

[Morgaln]

If only there was a place that specialized in summarizing tropes...

[Tanarii]

If only there was a place that specialized in summarizing tropes...

Like I said, broadly and vaguely.

[Beleriphon]

Like I said, broadly and vaguely.

Like most tropes?

[Xervous]

I'm gonna bet that most of this thread has read a fair number of fantasy novels, and a much smaller number have read westerns in anything like the same numbers.

Ironically I might have read more westerns than fantasy due to the relative book length I favor in fantasy vs. western. Though there’s a lot of sci-fi in the mix that’s not weighing either side of this scale. In my case I appreciate worldbuilding and the westerns I’ve encountered generally don’t do much of that, so they are consumed like a small comic book rather than a James Clavell novel.

[Anonymouswizard]

Honest at this point we're getting into the 'is Star Wars science fiction' levels of technicalities.

I mean, I'd argue that as long as we're not treating both as one genre I'd argue yes fantasy and not SF, but this is a matter of opinion and I'm somebody who didn't believe in the Magical Realism genre.

[Tanarii]

Okay so from tropes, we've got a few that are heavily western:

Characters: Cowboy, Gunslinger, Bandito, sherif/Marshall, Homesteader, Native.

Plots: Bank robbery, train/stagecoach robbery, Clean up this town.

Settings: Boom Town, Outlaw Town, Injun Country.

Trappings: basically all the outfits (Cowboy and Indians) and of course lots and lots of guns!

[Max_Killjoy]

Okay so from tropes, we've got a few that are heavily western:

Characters: Cowboy, Gunslinger, Bandito, sherif/Marshall, Homesteader, Native.

Plots: Bank robbery, train/stagecoach robbery, Clean up this town.

Settings: Boom Town, Outlaw Town, Injun Country.

Trappings: basically all the outfits (Cowboy and Indians) and of course lots and lots of guns!

Some concepts that I'd say make many D&D and similar games/settings, and "westerns" similar (some of these have been listed already):

The frontier -- beyond here is a "lawless land" where survival and justice are in your own hands.

Dangerous "natives" (sometimes with dubious accompanying tropes and stereotypes).

Personal codes of right and wrong, standing up to "the bad guy", rough honor.

The wanderer... either the knight-errant or the murder-hobo.

Skill with a weapon is very important.

[Lord Raziere]

I think on net Raziere has the better argument and richer analysis here. D&D isn't a story that's made up of tropes and characters and plot points, its a tool. The interesting thing about tools isn't what they're made out of, or how similar to other tools they are, its what they allow you to do. Literary analysis based on tropes and so forth is the wrong tool (ironically enough) to analyze a tool, because its built to analyze products - things made by tools.

Now tools have some assumptions about their use built into their construction to be sure. So you can maybe say that D&D is built to facilitate making fantasy westerns. This does not make D&D a fantasy western, any more than the ability to drive nails makes a hammer a bookshelf. And people use tools in unintended ways all the time. The other week I improvised a way to hold a workpiece steady for soldering by using a bar clamp, a small swage block, a needle nosed pliers, and an old hairtie. Its perfectly fine to use D&D for a game about vampire court intrigue where nobody draws a sword for hours at a time, and there isn't a single frontier in sight.

Further, the largest purpose of genre isn't to codify tropes, or any other similar angels-dancing-on-a-pin theory questions; but to facilitate marketing, which I would argue is extremely driven by aesthetic. I'm gonna bet that most of this thread has read a fair number of fantasy novels, and a much smaller number have read westerns in anything like the same numbers. Yet if all that really matters is the underlying tropes, and those tropes are so similar, this would suggest that we're all missing out on tons more of our favorite stuff by not loading up on Louis L'Amor novels. Or maybe the aesthetics matter a whole lot more to our actual enjoyment, and we just like dragons and swords more than horses and six-shooters.

Yes, if I learned anything from all the "Dnd Is an X" I did, its that DnD is not technically a genre, its a tool to make a setting that can have all sorts of genres, when its intended to build a medieval setting, but everyone uses it to build "A western". (which I still don't believe in somehow giving it a narrative monopoly on wandering heroes going through the wilderness, fighting things and saving random villages. a medieval world could perfectly allow you to do that without involving a "frontier" at all. nature is just plain dangerous at those tech levels, and there have been stories of folk heroes doing that kind of things for a long time.) when I'd personally term it somewhere closer to "shallow medieval fantasy" if you want to be general, as just because DnD is very shallow about making its medieval fantasy-ness and makes shortcuts for audience likability doesn't mean its not medieval, it just means its going for broad appeal, which is often a successful strategy in marketing, no matter how much some may wish otherwise. if some people want more medievalness in their ttrpg, thats just going for drinks that don't water themselves down, which may taste better to SOME people but often are of narrower appeal because of the stronger taste.

If you want to be specific about what DnD's strengths are and include the fans most common way of using DnD, its basically Action-Adventure, because you explore places and you fight things there. now does it follow the usual feel of action-adventure? eeeeeeeh, not really. see, the usual way of going about those stories is pacing: you need to keep things moving to an extent, keep things exciting so that the audience doesn't feel bored that and time is limited. in usual action-adventure that means constant danger and movement, avoid rolling boulders and other traps, fast and quick combat, that sort of thing, its need a certain dynamism to work. but in DnD, the players don't have to follow the Rule of Drama: they can be careful, they can form back up plans and they can be paranoid about the dangers around every corner and they often are, thus the constant movement and excitement is replaced with a low-level suspense or dread of "what has the DM got in store for this time?" thus forming a tension of constantly wanting to find traps or pitfalls before you walk into them, slowing things down and makes things more cerebral. at the same time the party is constantly making jokes and might even be doing stupid slapstick stuff or other bits.

Thus depending on how seriously the group takes it, it might be suspenseful slow tale of careful checking and killing enemies in planned ways for maximum advantage with the GM/entire world being the threat, or a dark comedy where the people joking about each other a few minutes ago are suddenly slaughtering things in tactical ways without thinking about it much, but then again Action does the "kill without thinking about it much" thing a lot? so its this weird slow suspenseful comedy-action-adventure thing where you MIGHT all die in some dangerous isolated location or to some monster because of the inevitability of luck, but in the meantime your joking around and fighting things?

Its honestly weird, because a lot of genre tropes have to do the manipulation of luck and convenience to make sure things have a certain tone, because in writing an author is basically fate, they determine everything, but as I stated before in Dnd discussions and will probably never stop stating....DnD and roleplaying is an improvisational medium. the dice and your own unexpected decisions in some ways determine whether your playing a comedy where you all live through your wacky adventure or a horror where you all die to something you didn't see coming or did but didn't roll well enough to do anything about it. there is margin of uncertainty no matter how improbable it is, so it can't for sure be a comedy no matter how much its slanted for that. its probably a comedy, but you don't know until you find out.

my conclusion: DnD if it was a genre, would probably be suspenseful comedy-action-adventure in medieval setting with a chance of a sudden horrific anti-climactic downer ending. but you can't say either way for sure.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Some concepts that I'd say make many D&D and similar games/settings, and "westerns" similar (some of these have been listed already):

The frontier -- beyond here is a "lawless land" where survival and justice are in your own hands.

Dangerous "natives" (sometimes with dubious accompanying tropes and stereotypes).

Personal codes of right and wrong, standing up to "the bad guy", rough honor.

The wanderer... either the knight-errant or the murder-hobo.

Skill with a weapon is very important.

But those are way broader than just westerns. Heck, I'd say "inner city gang" movies and novels have 90% of those tropes. But aren't "westerns" at all.

The issue is that if you abstract the tropes away from the trappings, they apply to way more than they should and cease to define genres at all.

[Tanarii]

Some concepts that I'd say make many D&D and similar games/settings, and "westerns" similar (some of these have been listed already):

The frontier -- beyond here is a "lawless land" where survival and justice are in your own hands.

Dangerous "natives" (sometimes with dubious accompanying tropes and stereotypes).

Personal codes of right and wrong, standing up to "the bad guy", rough honor.

The wanderer... either the knight-errant or the murder-hobo.

Skill with a weapon is very important.

Sounds a lot like Rifts!

More importantly, isn't that a perfect description of Wuxia?

[neceros]

This is a weird question. The same reason you can't get a big mac at Burger King.

[Calthropstu]

I saw a fantasy movie a lot like that. A wizard gives a farm boy a magic sword and convinces him to join his quest to rescue a princess from the castle of a dark knight with a flaming sword. Along the way, they are helped by a rogue and his ogre sidekick.

It was called "Star Wars".

Yeah, no. Running around with blaster rifles, star ships and death stars is not anywhere close to a sword and sorcery story. Your analysis was pretty far off point. We can nitpick all day, but scifi =/= fantasy.

[Anonymouswizard]

Yeah, no. Running around with blaster rifles, star ships and death stars is not anywhere close to a sword and sorcery story. Your analysis was pretty far off point. We can nitpick all day, but scifi =/= fantasy.

Cool, but I don't think he was describing a science fiction story, it sounded like Star Wars.


Star Wars isn't the only fantasy story to use starships, just the most will known. The line between the two genres is blurry anyway, on the one side you have hard science fiction, on the other you have soft fantasy, and everything else is somewhere in between. Roughly at the middle you find Science Fantasy, those works that can't have either label nearly applied. The Star Wars films are mostly there, the expanded universe certainly is for the most part. Then you also have the realism- fantastical axis which at one extreme brings us such things as magical realism, the genre which exists to say you aren't working a fantasy book.

At the end of the day what makes Star Wars science fantasy rather than science fiction is the fact that mysticism and the associated trappings are key to it. Except in that one film with it's minichlorines.

[hamishspence]

Even in-universe, characters are conscious of the fantastical nature of the Force IMO:

"That wizard's just a crazy old man"
"Don't try to frighten us with your sorcerer's ways"

[Mendicant]

The repeated attempts to separate the aesthetics of westerns from their plot points and tropes seems wrongheaded to me. "Westerns" are fundamentally aesthetic things. The aesthetics literally *make* the subject a western. The knight errant, the danger "beyond the pale" and personal codes of honor are not unique to the western genre or even necessary, really. Lots of westerns do away with some or all of them. Stephen Crane was subverting all the tropes in the Blue Hotel as early as 1898, without that story being any less genuine of a western.

As for the relationship to D&D specifically, there's clearly plenty of influence, but if we're going to go as far as saying "build D&D games around western genre tropes and it will play to its strengths" we've gone too far. One of the strongest recurring themes in westerns is the lone hero/anti-hero. That trope is at least as common as anything that's been trotted out to argue for the "D&D as western" framing, but it is so fundamentally antithetical to playing D&D that players wanting to do that kind of thing are an evergreen topic of "this player is driving everyone nuts" threads. Nothing core to the western genre even approaches the power levels D&D rises to. Hunting through a ruin or temple or fortress or what have you for an ancient relic is not a western trope, but is core to normal D&D. That basic source of action has far more in common with sword and sorcery, planetary fantasy, or medieval romances (or at least medieval romances filtered through Poul Anderson) than anything Sergio Leone ever produced.

Then there's the "frontier" itself. If there's any place where the overlap is a thin veneer, I think it's drawing parallels between the wilderness of a western and the wilderness of D&D. In a western, the frontier is where "civilization" is encroaching on the wilderness. The direction is outward, colonizing. In D&D, if there's any conquest of the wilderness going on, it's much, much more likely to be a "reconquest." The wild has swallowed up much of civilization, Moria/Mithral Hall are overrun, the Dying Earth/Athas etc. are speckled with Points of Light and, you know, Dungeons and Dragons. Orcs, who are generally invaders and squatters, have far more ancestral DNA from Western European narratives about Romans vs Huns and Goths, or Camelot vs Saxons than from Cowboys vs. Indians. This is, to my mind, a pretty big difference that's a lot deeper than slapping a medieval European coat of paint on things. It touches on common character backstories, campaign arcs, and the conflicts that typically drive the game forward.

[Mechalich]

A think there's a lot of unfortunate conflation here (and I was myself guilty of it earlier in the thread), between elements of system & setting - which is what D&D represents - and story genre, which is what a Western is.

A Western is a series of story structures, themes, and tropes, and is broadly independent of setting, which is why space westerns, Chinese westerns, post-apocalyptic westerns, and other variations exist within the genre. This includes quasi-medieval fantasy Westerns, for example the Joe Abercrombie novel Red Country.

D&D can be used to create stories that qualify as Westerns. For example, RA Salvatore's The Sellswords trilogy in which Artemis and Jarlaxle wander around in Damara and Vassa probably counts as a Western (Jarlaxle, at least, absolutely thinks he's in one). However, this is rare. Most D&D novels are either epic fantasies about the fate of the world, the Dragonlance Chronicles and its various sequels remain the most famous example, or high fantasy character studies about people like Drizzt and Elminster.

Actual D&D campaigns are a bit different of course. They do tend to be more oriented along the typical lines of a Western, though because of the way gameplay works in D&D, they almost always qualify as post-apocalyptic westerns.

[Witty Username]

Yeah, no. Running around with blaster rifles, star ships and death stars is not anywhere close to a sword and sorcery story. Your analysis was pretty far off point. We can nitpick all day, but scifi =/= fantasy.

Cool, but I don't think he was describing a science fiction story, it sounded like Star Wars.


Star Wars isn't the only fantasy story to use starships, just the most will known. The line between the two genres is blurry anyway, on the one side you have hard science fiction, on the other you have soft fantasy, and everything else is somewhere in between. Roughly at the middle you find Science Fantasy, those works that can't have either label nearly applied. The Star Wars films are mostly there, the expanded universe certainly is for the most part. Then you also have the realism- fantastical axis which at one extreme brings us such things as magical realism, the genre which exists to say you aren't working a fantasy book.

At the end of the day what makes Star Wars science fantasy rather than science fiction is the fact that mysticism and the associated trappings are key to it. Except in that one film with it's minichlorines.

I would also add that Star Wars exists in a secondary world while sci fi is almost always in a primary world.
Now, what does that mean. Primary and secondary worlds are fantasy terminology, in short a primary world is our own (or rather an alternate version of our own) while a secondary world is a creation of the fiction whole sale. High and low fantasy are defined like this, high fantasy is within a secondary world while low fantasy is within a primary world.
Star Wars is in a far removed galaxy by way of space and time from anything we know, so in the discourse of fantasy it would be high fantasy.

Compare with Voltron, which takes place in a primary world, earth exists, it is a place and various alien races can interact with it. This would kick it out of high fantasy and in to low fantasy at the very least. But one could also make the argument that magic not being something humans can use/have discovered yet brings it in line into soft sci fi (I would disagree).

One of the problems with defining sci fi and fantasy as separate is the difference tends to be how the audience of the thing buys into the thing and not the particular elements of the thing. Science Fantasy helps solve that, in my mind by separating aesthetic and themes. Space travel is an aesthetic, a possible future for humans in the near or distant future is a theme.
Science Fantasy is the themes of Fantasy with the aesthetic of Sci fi.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I would also add that Star Wars exists in a secondary world while sci fi is almost always in a primary world.
Now, what does that mean. Primary and secondary worlds are fantasy terminology, in short a primary world is our own (or rather an alternate version of our own) while a secondary world is a creation of the fiction whole sale. High and low fantasy are defined like this, high fantasy is within a secondary world while low fantasy is within a primary world.
Star Wars is in a far removed galaxy by way of space and time from anything we know, so in the discourse of fantasy it would be high fantasy.

Compare with Voltron, which takes place in a primary world, earth exists, it is a place and various alien races can interact with it. This would kick it out of high fantasy and in to low fantasy at the very least. But one could also make the argument that magic not being something humans can use/have discovered yet brings it in line into soft sci fi (I would disagree).

One of the problems with defining sci fi and fantasy as separate is the difference tends to be how the audience of the thing buys into the thing and not the particular elements of the thing. Science Fantasy helps solve that, in my mind by separating ascetics and themes. Space travel is an ascetic, a possible future for humans in the near or distant future is a theme.
Science Fantasy is the themes of Fantasy with the ascetic of Sci fi.

I believe you meant "aesthetic", not "ascetic".

While I'm not sure about the primary vs secondary world distinction being meaningful here (I've read lots of sci fi where earth isn't a thing or where the universe is completely different), and I'm not sure there's any kind of bright line between fantasy and science fiction, I do like that last sentence.

I'd say Star Wars is comfortably science fantasy, for a few reasons:
* The technology doesn't really matter, it just enables the plot. As part of this, the technology is almost entirely aesthetic, rather than rational. This isn't enough, because there's soft science fiction that fills the same role.
* The plot is much more akin to a fantasy epic (focusing on a few heroes who, by their individual power do heroic things against a mostly faceless, "evil" force that mostly operates in hordes[1]) than most comparable science fiction "space battle" types (which mostly have relatively similar levels of power and focus on the force-vs-force battle rather than the individual hero). In the "space battle" subgenre, the heroes/protagonists are generally commanders or generals, rather than independent fighter pilots.
* The heavy amounts of mysticism and other pseudo-religious elements, as well as the overarching "good vs evil/light vs dark" mentality. A focus on morality (or ethics, or other ethos-based things), especially one hard-coded into the power system, leans toward fantasy in my mind.

[warty goblin]

Trying to shoehorn Star Wars into modern genres is just am exercise in frustration, for at least two reasons. First off Star Wars is so big and has so much cultural gravity that in Anno Dominae 2021 it may as well be it own genre, which bends other things towards itself, rather than being particularly tied to public perception if any other genre. And secondly, the foundational texts for Star Wars substantially predate the ossification of genres into their current form. If you look at the pulp space stories if the first half of the 20th century, they really don't fit at all nicely with our current genre aesthetics or conventions. Like sure you can call A Princess of Mars science fiction or space fantasy or whatever, but it simply isn't playing in the same sandbox as modern stories in those genres. Call it what it is, 20th century planetary romance. And call Star Wars (particularly Lucas era Star Wars) what out is, the last, greatest relatively undiluted imitator and survivor of planetary romance.

[Anonymouswizard]

I've seen A Princess of Mars called both Science Fiction and Fantasy, and occasionally even see people know to use the term 'planetary romance'. Honestly the book I really couldn't put a definitive genre on would be Out of the Silent Planet, because of all those reasons it's hard to talk about Lewis's work's themes here.

But there's some Doctor Who stories I'd personally define as fantasy instead of science fiction, non-EU ones even. The Daemons being the prime example. Things get murkey. But Doctor Who is already very soft as it is.

You don't have to go all Revelation Space to be science fiction, but it's not just about shooting glowy bullets. But Star Wars pulled from everything, there's even influence from the original Foundation trilogy, so it's not going to fit into one neat category and we should accept the messy one.

As a side note, I believe that one of the writers of GURPS Ultra-Tech said that one of the things he wanted to do was to include technologies from more modern science ficttion rather than just include what most science fiction games did. And despite not being a great book it's still one of my favourite science fiction sourcebooks for it.

[Witty Username]

I believe you meant "aesthetic", not "ascetic".

A reminder to us all to not rely on spell check.

[Yora]

I've seen A Princess of Mars called both Science Fiction and Fantasy

Some people classify everything that is set in space automatically as science-fiction.

But I think anything that could be called science fiction needs to have at least some kind of basis in science, and be in some way about scientific and engineering progress. In Star Trek, this very often is limited to only meaningless techno-babble, but at least it pretends to be science.
A Princess of Mars and Star Wars have no such things.

[Max_Killjoy]

I've read low fantasy that takes place in a secondary world, and high fantasy that takes place in primary.

[snowblizz]

Some people classify everything that is set in space automatically as science-fiction.

But I think anything that could be called science fiction needs to have at least some kind of basis in science, and be in some way about scientific and engineering progress. In Star Trek, this very often is limited to only meaningless techno-babble, but at least it pretends to be science.
A Princess of Mars and Star Wars have no such things.

Not sure that's an entirely useable definition. A lot of stuff in 40k is about as technobabbly as Star Trek and pretends to be science, but few would cleanly classify it as sci-fi. Much like Star Wars have a lot of detailed techmanuals and indeed explanations for it's tech stuff. None of it really important for the stories we get though.

Someone here once described sci-fi as roughly "exploring the human condition if technology progresses" and I think that's kinda good. I also see it as an category looking at the big picture, the power lies in the collective. Say mankind itself has the power to change the stars, what happens? What does it mean to be human? Fantasy is more often a case where the individual is the up-powered, often in comparison as society as a whole and we ask what does it mean to be human here? It will be rather different stories.

Ultimately I think splitting hairs too much isn't very productive. I know a western when I see one. Like 99,99% of the time that's really the only thing that matters.