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Game Mechanics: Gear in Science Fiction vs Fantasy
9 years ago
Hello Tabletop Warriors, Fluffy here! 
So it's been a while since I've contributed a proper article to the group. As I said in the past, I've been a bit out of the gaming loop and when I'm not rocking the dice, I'm not thinking about it too much. Now that I've got a game going again, (and last night was great. Thank you to you guys that showed up. I'm looking forward to the first session.) I've had some time to think about things I'd like to talk about.
As a GM, I feel quite a bit of pressure to present a group with a great setting and story. I love that pressure, though, as it forces me to think. It makes me pull out books, browse websites, and just get inspired. As I've branched out into other settings away from D&D, I noticed very early on that you have to focus on the setting from another perspective.
In D&D, you have three types of interactions – mundane, magic, and high-powered. For all intents and purposes, the mundane is the most common. That's your ordinary NPCs. It's the shopkeeper, the farmer, the merchant, the bandit, and so on. You know who they are and they're fairly one-dimensional. Then you also have your mundane gear. Now for the most part, 90% of a party's gear is going to be mundane. Grappling hooks, iron swords, leather armor, lanterns, and so on. It's all very basic. You know what a sword is from the moment you pick it up. You know all the functions of a lantern and its requirements, such as fuel and an ignition source. It's simple and easy to work with. No explanation needed.
We go into the magic next because this is where things get a bit more complex. Your mystical brethren, sages, magic gear, and so on. In AD&D, magic was a gamble. There was no reliable way to determine the properties of a magic item except to have it identified by a powerful NPC. Everything was about shades of gray. Was it cursed? Were -all- of the magic stats known? Who made it? A lot of the mystique of magic and sorcery went away with the arrival of the 3rd edition. An unidentified magic item stopped being a wondrous, potentially dangerous mystery and became a mere inconvenience. With the Identify spell, it took all the guess work out. Magic became a stat tool. In this way, it didn't really change the demands of the DM, but it did change the way the game worked. That's an article for another time, though.
Magic and magic users are still a relatively simple concept, merely due to the fact that the amount of magic that a group in play will experience is spaced out enough that it's easy to deal with. A powerful item can be rolled up and assigned stats with relative ease. That one item can be dished out in the next treasure hoard. You know where it is and its predictable. This is where modern and science fiction setting diverge significantly. The inclusion of tech in a game is basically what magic is to D&D. The main difference is its prevalence.
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” - Arthur C. Clarke's 3rd law
I first ran into this issue when I was building a 1960's spy thriller setting out of the d20 Modern game rules. The party consisted of secret agents working for a peace-keeping organization. In order to build up the larger-than-life action adventure, I had to put in all the typical secret agent tropes. Cool cars and cool high-tech gadgets. This was a lot of fun, but very demanding and time consuming as well. It took a lot of time to create these tools. (It took an even longer time to avoid introducing guns and such that would have been anachronistic. Strangely enough, there was not a way to look up firearms by date of manufacture at the time.) Things got difficult because it was no longer a matter of the mundane doing a mundane task. I eventually had to scrap the campaign due to numerous reasons, only one of which was the complexity of the research involved.
Modern settings suffer from this a little, but no where near the amount that Science Fiction does. At least in a modern setting, you can fall back on real-world technology to explain the function. Everyone knows what a cellphone is and isn't capable of. Everyone has a vague idea of what radar can do. In a Science Fiction setting, this is a little more difficult. If I had come up with a Tricorder before Star Trek, I would have to describe it. I'd have to describe everything it is capable of (seemingly everything) and its limitations (limited only when the plot calls for it). This is typically why pre-designed equipment in sci-fi games tends to only have one very specific function. It's not easy to work with.
But the prevalence of technology has another issue. This issue is accessibility. In a science fiction game, a lot of the character's power and capability is in their equipment. In order to make sure that opposing forces are on common ground, they too must have equipment. Since giving everyone the -same- equipment leads to lazy and boring narrative, you need to mix it up a bit. Also, remember that in D&D, the primary limiter in the prevalence of magic is written into the fabric of the game. Magic is hard to accomplish. Only the best of the elite can make powerful items. In science fiction, equipment isn't a one-time made item. It's a manufactured product, priced to sell to the right audience. This means it's available literally on demand to almost anyone. And those that can't access it legitimately, usually have other means at their disposal.
As a DM, you have two choices. Use the equipment in the book and stick with it, or suck it up and start designing your own. The first option is viable, but then comes the questions that may not be easily answered. What are computers like? What can a mobile phone do? These questions can quickly start reaching outside of the scope of a rule book and get into the realm of “What does the DM want to have in his world?” These are not questions that typically matter so much in D&D because the solutions are much simpler and more streamlined. Limitations abound; most societies in D&D couldn't fathom anything more technologically or magically advanced than steel. And magic, well, magic just is, and it's rare, thankfully.
When it comes right down to it, a piece of technology in a science fiction game is basically a magic item in D&D. In this case, magic is in the hands of the masses, for better or for worse. This can be frustrating when everything in a game does something 'magical' and the GM has to make the decision of what that -something- is, exactly. This leads me to believe that's the reason why swords and sorcery style games are so much more prevalent. They're popular from a gaming standpoint and because they're simpler to prepare for. On the other hand, this could just be my perspective on the subject. Some of you might think differently. Have any of you run or played in any advanced settings? How was the technology handled?
I'd like to hear your thoughts on the subject, so feel free to comment.
So it's been a while since I've contributed a proper article to the group. As I said in the past, I've been a bit out of the gaming loop and when I'm not rocking the dice, I'm not thinking about it too much. Now that I've got a game going again, (and last night was great. Thank you to you guys that showed up. I'm looking forward to the first session.) I've had some time to think about things I'd like to talk about.
As a GM, I feel quite a bit of pressure to present a group with a great setting and story. I love that pressure, though, as it forces me to think. It makes me pull out books, browse websites, and just get inspired. As I've branched out into other settings away from D&D, I noticed very early on that you have to focus on the setting from another perspective.
In D&D, you have three types of interactions – mundane, magic, and high-powered. For all intents and purposes, the mundane is the most common. That's your ordinary NPCs. It's the shopkeeper, the farmer, the merchant, the bandit, and so on. You know who they are and they're fairly one-dimensional. Then you also have your mundane gear. Now for the most part, 90% of a party's gear is going to be mundane. Grappling hooks, iron swords, leather armor, lanterns, and so on. It's all very basic. You know what a sword is from the moment you pick it up. You know all the functions of a lantern and its requirements, such as fuel and an ignition source. It's simple and easy to work with. No explanation needed.
We go into the magic next because this is where things get a bit more complex. Your mystical brethren, sages, magic gear, and so on. In AD&D, magic was a gamble. There was no reliable way to determine the properties of a magic item except to have it identified by a powerful NPC. Everything was about shades of gray. Was it cursed? Were -all- of the magic stats known? Who made it? A lot of the mystique of magic and sorcery went away with the arrival of the 3rd edition. An unidentified magic item stopped being a wondrous, potentially dangerous mystery and became a mere inconvenience. With the Identify spell, it took all the guess work out. Magic became a stat tool. In this way, it didn't really change the demands of the DM, but it did change the way the game worked. That's an article for another time, though.
Magic and magic users are still a relatively simple concept, merely due to the fact that the amount of magic that a group in play will experience is spaced out enough that it's easy to deal with. A powerful item can be rolled up and assigned stats with relative ease. That one item can be dished out in the next treasure hoard. You know where it is and its predictable. This is where modern and science fiction setting diverge significantly. The inclusion of tech in a game is basically what magic is to D&D. The main difference is its prevalence.
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” - Arthur C. Clarke's 3rd law
I first ran into this issue when I was building a 1960's spy thriller setting out of the d20 Modern game rules. The party consisted of secret agents working for a peace-keeping organization. In order to build up the larger-than-life action adventure, I had to put in all the typical secret agent tropes. Cool cars and cool high-tech gadgets. This was a lot of fun, but very demanding and time consuming as well. It took a lot of time to create these tools. (It took an even longer time to avoid introducing guns and such that would have been anachronistic. Strangely enough, there was not a way to look up firearms by date of manufacture at the time.) Things got difficult because it was no longer a matter of the mundane doing a mundane task. I eventually had to scrap the campaign due to numerous reasons, only one of which was the complexity of the research involved.
Modern settings suffer from this a little, but no where near the amount that Science Fiction does. At least in a modern setting, you can fall back on real-world technology to explain the function. Everyone knows what a cellphone is and isn't capable of. Everyone has a vague idea of what radar can do. In a Science Fiction setting, this is a little more difficult. If I had come up with a Tricorder before Star Trek, I would have to describe it. I'd have to describe everything it is capable of (seemingly everything) and its limitations (limited only when the plot calls for it). This is typically why pre-designed equipment in sci-fi games tends to only have one very specific function. It's not easy to work with.
But the prevalence of technology has another issue. This issue is accessibility. In a science fiction game, a lot of the character's power and capability is in their equipment. In order to make sure that opposing forces are on common ground, they too must have equipment. Since giving everyone the -same- equipment leads to lazy and boring narrative, you need to mix it up a bit. Also, remember that in D&D, the primary limiter in the prevalence of magic is written into the fabric of the game. Magic is hard to accomplish. Only the best of the elite can make powerful items. In science fiction, equipment isn't a one-time made item. It's a manufactured product, priced to sell to the right audience. This means it's available literally on demand to almost anyone. And those that can't access it legitimately, usually have other means at their disposal.
As a DM, you have two choices. Use the equipment in the book and stick with it, or suck it up and start designing your own. The first option is viable, but then comes the questions that may not be easily answered. What are computers like? What can a mobile phone do? These questions can quickly start reaching outside of the scope of a rule book and get into the realm of “What does the DM want to have in his world?” These are not questions that typically matter so much in D&D because the solutions are much simpler and more streamlined. Limitations abound; most societies in D&D couldn't fathom anything more technologically or magically advanced than steel. And magic, well, magic just is, and it's rare, thankfully.
When it comes right down to it, a piece of technology in a science fiction game is basically a magic item in D&D. In this case, magic is in the hands of the masses, for better or for worse. This can be frustrating when everything in a game does something 'magical' and the GM has to make the decision of what that -something- is, exactly. This leads me to believe that's the reason why swords and sorcery style games are so much more prevalent. They're popular from a gaming standpoint and because they're simpler to prepare for. On the other hand, this could just be my perspective on the subject. Some of you might think differently. Have any of you run or played in any advanced settings? How was the technology handled?
I'd like to hear your thoughts on the subject, so feel free to comment.
However, the items are usually not the best possible for resource/money reasons. In Star Trek Starfleet character use standarized equipment, as you need to train thousands in the use of them. Advanced characters may have their equipment individualized, the focus changed or upgraded if new technology is found.
I am with you, Sword & Sorcery style games are much more easy to prepare for. Keeping an eye on every spell in D&D is difficult for a GM.
However, I have some other peeves in D20 Science Fiction settings, it's the balancing. What is the use of balancing species if even he classic starship Enterprise (NCC1701) can pretty much devastate a planet if it has no defenses on the same technological level. In Star Wars Jedi or (may the force be with you if your GM) allows them for players) Sith are and shouild be overpowered.
Science Fiction adventures should focus much more on problem solving and skill use.
Another problem I have with most Sci-Fi D20 games, skill points. Characters should have much more skill points, which can easyly be attributed to modern teaching techniques and data access. Not just to balance this, there should be much more sikills, starting with knowledge skills were each species should have it's own knowledge skill.
Also, I haven't read much Sci-Fi lately, but it seems to me that the races in many setting are a bit on the human-size side. While cultural differences are nice to play with, I find it adds, if there are more physical ones as well. Here are three species that are not possible to pull off with most RPG's.
Velantians ( http://www.ethanfleischer.com/lensm.....sman_gurps.jpg ) from the Lensmen series. They can tear an unprotected human apart with their teeth and claws, were six arms make it impossible to block. Their skin is so tough they needed bolts to patch one up when he got hurt. Many of them are also telepaths. They have wings that allow them to fly and carry two hunans in spacesuits while doing so. Mind you, all that before adding sci-fi technology.
Haluter ( http://www.perrypedia.proc.org/medi...../57/PR0200.jpg ) from the Perry Rhodan series. Aside from their size and strength that comes with it, they can change the molecular structure until it equals that of the hull of a starship. While they grow tougher, they also get slower. One of their favourite tactic is to get maximum speed on handfeet and feet and change before hitting their target(s). They also two brains, one that is completely logical and the other emotional. Depending on their situation, they can choose to use only one of them or both at the same time. Note that their unrestrained laughter can destroy a human's eardrums. The way their society is set up, every individual has a 100 meter diameter sphere shaped spaceship and of course they also use protective suits and beam weapons build for their size. Despit their abilities, they tend to be scientists and don't like to fight, but have no scruples to do so if forced.
Despite their abilities, the writers managed to avoid them overshadowing the human characters. For example once a haluter let his human friend take the lead in negotiations despite having calculated that violence was unavoidable. The whole time he admired his human friend how they got more and more information and had his calculation when violence would start changed again and again. A velantian constructed a device so his human friend could kill an enemy easier with his mental powers.
The third species? Well, that would be Chakats ( http://www.chakat.com/Intro.html ). While not as overpowered as the two others, their abilities add up a lot. Their creator usually uses them in social settings, something that should also be more often used in Sci-Fi advemntures.
Lastely, something I miss more and more in Sci-Fi is a sense of wonder. Something that makes you look at it while leaving you speechless. Like the Death Star or the first appearance of the Executor. One of the most wasted chances for a sense of wonder in Star Trek: The next Generation was when they found the Dyson Sphere.
So, that's my thoughts for now.
One way to put a limiter on the High tech equipment is by having the players come from some sort of technologically backwards world ect. where their people can't make much better then modern day or earlier level of tech and gear.. so you only get the one "Lasergun" you found in a abandoned alien spacestation because they are impossible for your people to reproduce. Common hooks for this can either be the players getting abducted by aliens, A pre FTL civilization finding some working FTL [faster then light] spacecraft, or the very early days of them making a FTL Vessel but entering a much more developed Galaxy.
The other choice, is a Technological dark age, all the neat and fantastic stuff has been built already, but everything for one reason or another has been disused and forgot about, or something just killed off most the life in the galaxy but left their worlds and gear somewhat intact and the players and likely the villians are out there rediscovering it.. and using it to their own ends.
Buyer beware can always be forced in. Most players barely get a clue on the new goodies they just bought much less a training book so imagine the *fun* when they accidentally shoot someone with that spiffy new super weapon.
Gremlins. I personally love this. The more techy the items are the more you can put in some painful repairs, recharges, or maintenance needs to limit when and where folks decide to whip out those nasties. Now of course the baddies can suffer that too but since players usually strip anything they kill down to bones, make sure they do pay for what they steal in some wicked repair prices.
Limited repairs/reloads. Think you can just walk into any store for a reload on that black death raygun?. Good luck chum and better still keeping your buddies from trying to take it from you if they are in worse shape then you..and every party always has one solid klepto.
everyone else envy. Gosh you got that mega blade?. hey look at all those others that would just love to have it too. How nice have you been to the rest of the party?. When you sleep you better hope you were realllly nice :).
Yeah its a bit of the old *screw the party* syndrome but unless you put some brakes on the rampant use of supertech/spells the average party will just melt anything that so much as raises a voice to them. Got to make sure you have some handle..or more..on what limits they can do with all that stuff and in a high tech adventure it gets even harder to stop a party from simply killing the king/take the village/blow up the death star.
gaia bless and good gaming ;)
Pakesh_De
Snoofy old burr
The other things are pretty reasonable all around, but I think you missed the in-depth point of the article. This issue isn't from a gameplay standpoint, it's from a preparation standpoint. I was saying that the creation of these technical items occurs far more frequently in a game with a scifi setting because these items are naturally prevalent, where magic items in a D&D game are far more rare. Chances are, you're going to be creating far more gadgets in a scifi game than you will roll up magic in a D&D game. So there's extra pressure on the GM in these future/modern games.
I read a lot of Discworld, see. >w> Terry Pratchett found fun and funny ways to bring everything from newspapers to motion-pictures to rail-travel and THE INTERNET to the Disc.
If anything, the problem stems more from mentality the average fantasy campaign; go into a dungeon, kill the monsters, pick up the gold and loot they puke up when they die, then unload it at a static town that never changes before doing it all over again. The really cool toys are all long-term goals the players save up for over the course of a campaign. The overall economics of the game are easily set up and understood, but that is both a positive and a negative. The end result is easy to explain but creatively bankrupt, and that's something that hurts both sci-fi and fantasy.
That being said, if you have a problem with the players being too trigger happy and getting too powerful too quickly, there are things you can do. Like Pakesh above me, I would make ammunition and item quality a factor. While professional armies would make weapon maintenance a part of basic training and enforce strict maintenance routines to ensure both strict discipline and that a soldier's equipment is always ready at any time; space pirates, rebels, and outlaws have no such requirement. Meaning anything looted from them is hit or miss unless you have a good engineer character and even they might just be better off scrapping the thing for parts instead of repairing it. Likewise, I would control the accessibility of certain types of ammunition, anything that's supposed to go into a military grade weapon is probably not going to be for sale at your local gunshop. On a related note is the question of legality. Is the weapon in question legal for a private citizen to own? Even if it is, it's generally not legal for them to openly carry it around in a populated area like "hi fellas!" And even if the characters are military, there are protocols concerning when and where you can have your service weapon outside of a combat zone.
If there is one thing I absolutely do not agree with though, it's encouraging the klepto to steal from the rest of the party. Had one of those in my first D&D game ever and thankfully never had one since as that almost killed my interest in the hobby. Regarding them, well if they want to roleplay that kind of annoyance, the rest of the party is well within their right to roleplay murdering them in their sleep or chopping fingers off.
A Star Wars D6 campaign I was in was around 2.000 character points. With changing GM's things went a bit out of control and some of us were talking about grounding the campaign again.
About three evenings later their supership was gone as was most of their private elite unit and crew. The joke? Some people and characters acted as they usually did. Being overbearing assholes and ignoring, that their enemy was several steps ahead all the time. An enemy that had studied the tracks they left behind. I could not have plan it better if I had simply told them what their characters were doing.
So yes, in a way they partially did it to themselves.
And I just used one Hutt they pissed off one time too often. No huge organization, not the Empire or the Sith, just one rich Hutt. And one they could not hurt, as he was already dead, the entire campaign done after his death, using up the last of his riches, so they couldn't even rob him.
So the invincible Team Nova had to beg the Jedi Order for a transport to even reach Coruscant again, after limping back to civilized space that is. The campaign quickly became more managable.
But as you said, this can be done in a Fantasy campaign. Their faces when they learned that the friendly silver dragon they had befriended was actually a polymorphed red dragon was priceless. Some of his later attacks they never even connected to him. And when they finally thought they had him cornered, they found that it was just a clone of himself zombiefied. *sigh* Good times.
I take the Future and Future Tech rulesbooks from the D20 Modern setting for example. These are basically just supplementary books packed full of no-nonsense rules and items. There's a decent selection of gear, arms, and armors in the game at first glance, but after a while, you notice it's very standardized. You can drop it into any scifi campaign and go, but it feels flavorless. Basic, perhaps.
I'm trying to think of a game that has a lot of gear...
I think the Star Wars setting has a large variety of items to choose from, all iconic and easy to visualize because they're a part of an established universe. But that's just it. You're playing in a universe that has been explained. Everything from the tech to the cultures have been laid out. I also call it Old-World Sci Fi becasue everything in the Star Wars universe is pretty basic when it comes down to it. It's 1970's concepts immersed in a futuristic timeline. There's not more to any piece of tech than meets the eyes. It's exactly what it seems to be and performs that function without problem.
And no, I'm not having any problems. All of my articles that I post here are merely observations. I'm writing this because I've noticed more work goes in to fleshing out a Sci Fi game than a Fantasy game because the details are right up front and important in most cases. It's not merely the description of a room, but a description of the technology and what that device in someones' hand is doing and all that.
Point one: that's because WotC had to make Future fit as many different subgenres as possible into two books, a mistake on their part but an understandable one. And... honestly Future Tech just plain sucked. It looked so boring that I wasn't even interested in picking it up and I'm a huge gadget/tech nerd.
Point two: we actually have a lot of sci-fi gadgets working today. Most of them are still huge things that exist only in laboratories but they exist and by extension we understand how they should work in the real world, let alone in established licensed universes with roughly forty to fifty years of history under their belt. Knowing how lasers and plasma works in reality takes some of the fun out of it but that also helps make things easier.
Point three: there is a question of use involved in here. Using Hc Svnt Dracones as an example, we have a water/fluid-manipulation device that feels like something straight out of Ratchet and Clank. Now that's cool but let's be honest, how many GMs are going to find a use for that in their campaigns let alone players? By extension, it's almost a given that the players are going to need some kind of weapon, some kind of armor, survival gear, and some kind of professional tools (engineering tools for tinkers, portable computers for hackers, doctor's bag for medics, and so on.) And that's probably where your "flavorless" feeling comes in but there's nothing you can do about that. That stuff HAS to be there in some form or another, players need it. To ignore that is simply bad design.
Anyway moving on to your fourth paragraph, again you contradict yourself. You lament how everything has been fairly well explained already yet and make that sound like it's a bad thing. Yet you continue to praise the same about D&D both before and after. Simply put, you can't complain about the effort involved in designing technology and explaining how it works THEN complain when the setting does it for you. Also, this "Old World Sci-Fi" is not a "look", it'a a basic principle of engineering design. Your technology can either do one thing and only one thing very well or it can do multiple things not particularly well, it's the difference between having a box of tools and combining all of them into a Leatherman. The Leatherman is convenient but it often doesn't do the job quite as well as the individual tools in the tool box. The only real middle ground between these two extremes is the "modular multitool" you see mostly in video games or the "omni-tool" like The Doctor's sonic screwdriver, the former can be reconfigured to suit different jobs on the fly while the latter is the constantly modified plaything of a figurative god of time and space.
Finally, to counter your last paragraph. If you think more work goes into sci-fi then fantasy then clearly most of your campaigns are the D&D/Pathfinder versions of Diablo, Torchlight, or any other number of dungeon crawler Action RPGs that dominated the computer game scene for awhile. If you are homebrewing your own fantasy campaign, everything you said about sci-fi applies to fantasy just as much. Do you have one kingdom? Several? How do the people relate to one another? What sort of government do they have? Who is the bad guy if anyone? How common is magic (nonexistent, standard, or Eberron levels of magic?) What sort of overall asthetic/cultural feel are you going for (European, Middle Eastern, or Far Eastern)? These questions are not bad things, they merely prove my point that there is as much work in fantasy as there is in sci-fi.
The TL:DR- This "observation" of yours is bunk and full of too many contradictions to be taken seriously. You say there's a problem yet you cannot decide whether it lies in the perceived amount of work done to fabricate technology or the fact that much of the work is already done for you in your cited cases. You also seem to forget the "science" in science fiction and that everything needs to have a grounding in reality no matter how small that grounding is when creating Sci-Fi. Yes there is a sliding scale of science in the Sci-Fi genre but it's still science. I could draw a couple conclusions from your arguments but the only one I can prove with certainty is that you have no idea what you're talking about and are fabricating a problem that simply Does Not Exist. Perpetuating this nonsense of yours merely creates animosity and perpetuates false logic, two things this hobby simply does not need.
I find this issue can be greater or lesser depending on the sort of setting you're going for. FOr instance: I did a star wars conversion of dnd3.5 without too much trouble. But: that's because Star wars is in some respects a "future fantasy" setting.
My view (and I have DM-ed and played a few games on both settings and inbetween) is that Fantasy is simpler, and simple moves the foccus from the gear and into the roll of the game.
Yes, D&D is foccused on the gear, about as much as any sci-fi setting, yet because the details of said gear are simpler and more straightforward, a group can eaily deal with those details in 10-15 mins when they are on town (getting new gear or when identifying loot gear).
Magic being more spreadout also helps, it is easy to controll what foes have +1 swords or armor and when to drop more powerfull ones and where one can upgrade their gear or get wondrous trinkets.
With sci-fi you have the oposite, magic is everywhere and most have a basic underestanding if it - and call it technology. Mages? > engineers, scorcerers? > gadgeteers.. and so on.. from there you have two paths, star trek vs starwars:
On star trek, technology can be standard and well known, yet weapons are limited to "military" and restricted to where and when one can carry one around in public. That is the view of many other sci-fi settings: You may have that sweet assault armor and tht awesome weapon that can wreck an armored car or blast a builting to smithereen, but go for a stroll with that on a park and the local law enforcers will stop you and aprehend your toys. ST may have replicators, but ask something dangerous and the computer will not only deny it but will alert others on your request.
On starwars things get funny. Both technology and its knowledge are common and parts are standard: you can grab a power cell from one tool and place it in another. Your droid broke? grab some parts from that enemy droid you just shot. SW is also a conflict foccused setting, meaning most of the time people will have a weapon (or concealed one) because sonner or latter there will be a need for them.
..and if everyone has a magical trinket, what then makes it magical? You need not have weapon A or B, when you can scrap a few and have an average blaster that works. Designing something special then is the difficult part, it is easy to make it overpower.
The overall difference then is, how common is that special magical / tech gear? and what limits their use. Tech may have licences to limit carrying weapons and armor in public, ammo requirements that may not be found everywhere (and not be just "energy").. and as mentioned by others, maintenance may be used as an issue: not something you need worry with all you have is standard equipment, but can become a limit when you have unique / non-standard gear: you may even have an engineer on the group, but have you the tools, parts, place and time for that? using that, that awesome gear you just got might be sweet and overpower, but if it is of alien or made of technology you do not underestand, one will think twice before using it if it has ammo or is big and obvious.
Another trait of sci-fi settings that i notticed is that half the times, the setting os larger-than-life: you have starships and can go near everywhere. On fantasy something horrible happened, you can walk (3x - 4x the time) and reach a village, easy. Same is true to sci-fi restricted to one planet, you grab a cab or something. Now add starships and should something happen you are stranded on another planet.. or worse, floating on outter space with 1h or less of air.
That was my main concern on the two games I DMed, how to deal with that one big magical item that is a starship. Should I give them fighters or one big transport? How can I add combat and what to do with that nasty critical that cripples their ship?
Sci-fi often adds things that make it a more complex setting then a fantasy one. Plots are often more complex than the kick-door-kill-monster-grab-loot loop fantasy can have - a good filling in between plot archs or when the group is not fully with their minds to it. That makes it easyer (to me) to consider fantasy games (I foccus on the plot and improvise most of the lil details along the way).. were it sci-fi I often find myself lost on the many questions and details that are part of sci-fi, and less on a plot - or often, have to make the plot much bigger.
..and now i might be rambling.. so i will close it here.