Oh, yeah: Ralph Bakshi's Wizards.

ENCOUNTER CRITICAL

http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/encounter-critical.htm

Quote from: Arminius;728508Oh, yeah: Ralph Bakshi's Wizards.

Which even had an RPG!

Other references:

80s movies (Krull, Yor the Hunter, just about every cheesy fantasy/sci fi movie of the decade)

Expedition to Barrier Peaks

The old computer game series Wizardry and Might & Magic had significant sci-fi themes in an otherwise fantasy world.

Quote from: golan2072;728555The old computer game series Wizardry and Might & Magic had significant sci-fi themes in an otherwise fantasy world.

Final Fantasy and Phantasy Star as well.

I think the biggest obstacle in blending the two is keeping magic...well, magical. Over explaining things with pseudoscience tends to make magic indistinguishable from psionics and drains it of its sense of wonder, IMZo. Shadowrun did a good job. Many superhero games dont, especially when magic is just "pick a few superpowers and count these as spells" (FASERIP originally suffered from this but The Manual of Magic goes a long way to giving magical abilities a unique feel. Still could have gone further though, IMO. Icons then went backwards in this regard.)

I also think there needs to be some explanation in the setting for why science and tech developed independently. If any zero level apprentice can create a flame, why invent lighters? Why invent airplanes if you can pay Fizzlebaum down the road to craft a magic carpet for you? How would advancements in medicine or, later, cybernetics take place if clerics can heal wounds and regrow limbs with a few prayers?

Right, that is something I actually had thought about last night. In the outline I have so far magic and tech are two distinct things and there is a reason that the two exist side by side and the presence of the two together has affected both of them.

Quote from: TristramEvans;728573I also think there needs to be some explanation in the setting for why science and tech developed independently. If any zero level apprentice can create a flame, why invent lighters? Why invent airplanes if you can pay Fizzlebaum down the road to craft a magic carpet for you? How would advancements in medicine or, later, cybernetics take place if clerics can heal wounds and regrow limbs with a few prayers?

Free and easy magic is a problem even in pure fantasy. Most (good) fiction gives magic some sort of price (corruption, risks, souls, whatever).

Other explanations could be:
*that the two appeared in different places, began mixing only recently (or one only appeared recently).
*magic is rare and only a few people can use it.
*some races (humans, dwarves) dislike or can't use or aren't affected by magic, and so tech is their racial magic.

My favorite reason is a post-apocalyptic/dying earth scenario. Tech is the lost secret of the ancients, at most kept alive through scavenging and craft--so not much chance for technological advance.

You could also have magic-tech, sometimes more of a cosmetic or stylistic quality, sometimes more. E.g. steam engines powered by fire elementals, or machines that interact with spirits (like the Ghostbusters' tools).

Quote from: Arkansan;728588Right, that is something I actually had thought about last night. In the outline I have so far magic and tech are two distinct things and there is a reason that the two exist side by side and the presence of the two together has affected both of them.

In my Traveller milieu, I have a few worlds that at one time were all together in an empire called the "Gate Worlds", where crystal cysts provided some sort of gate between the worlds. The worlds were settled and terraformed from the outside before the gates were discovered, so there is the original tech level, very high, the second tech level of a steampunk style and the varying tech level of now. The gates were psionically operated, and with later wars that had destroyed the steampunk-sh tech level empire, certain powerful psionic mages arose. On top of it all are traders from other star-faring worlds coming in.