What would an all psionic world look like?

Hi all, I am just starting to toy around with the idea of a home brew with no arcane or divine magic, only psyonics.

So, I am turning to people here to help me think of what this world would look like. Here’s the thoughts that have worked their way into my fevered little mind so far. I will probably trash at least half of these. Please lend me some of the brain power / creativity here. (thanks!)…

- Healing would be very different, most healers would “take on” a patient’s damage, then heal themselves.

- Religion would be purely cultural. The gods don’t walk the earth regularly, and many people don’t believe in them at all. Of course, there could be man worshipers of some kind of psyonic themed god. Probably self control and discipline would be the main virtues in said religion.

- If self control and discipline are held in high regard, ‘going wild’ would probably be what people do to relax. Popular elicit drugs would cause INT damage, and maybe cause rages (al barbarian rage).

- Arcane orders of mages, as university-like research institutions might still exist, but would be psyonic.

- Crystal would be a major theme in architecture and design. Crystal would equal, on some level, power and wealth in the minds of common folk.

Dark Sun - without magic.

Why spend all that time on the beef - when it's the gravy that makes the meal?

I run one like this now. I run it as more of a failed age of discovery game, with former colonial powers trying to come to terms with the native (largely Meso-American and American Indian cultures) they share space with. Psionic characters fill all the roles that spellcasters once did, plus it has the added bonus of making religion much "fuzzier" and less certain. Very fun game.

My worst nightmare.

Would it also only have the core races from the Expanded Psionics Handbook?

Expect to see lots of Crystal mines/farms. The price of crystal might go up is there's ot enough to meet the demand. Or there might be advanced ways of growing large amounts of crystals in relatively short periods of time.

As written, psionic characters typically live in communes dedicated to their the study of their class or are self taught. And psionic potential is pretty much a random factor, with no other classes available a nonpsionic person has no real chance for greatness.

I would picture a world with much smaller population, with no huge cities or empires. Somewhat insular and with a tendency towards neutrality. This means less agriculture and lots more undeveloped wilderness. There might be many days travel between towns. Towns would be self sufficient and while trade would be relatively unimportant and much more difficult iots relative rarity might make the profits that much more impressive. So removed each town would develop its own unique cultural identity and customs. Smaller conflicts between cities and tribes would probably be quite common but huge armies and widescale wars would be almost unheard of.

Non psionic beings would be almost always be considered somehow inferior or lesser to the psionics. In some places having limited rights or being treated as second class citizens. IN some places they might not be allowed to own property or in an evil society they might be slaves. Differences might be shown in clothing, housing, food, choice and number of mates, and all kinds of other means.

Crystals & Cthulhu

Here are some of my ideas for a psionic campaign that I have posted before. I have not run this yet. Perhaps for a gaming convention one-shot adventure.

Yes, I am very interested in playing or running a psionic only campaign. In fact, a couple of weeks before the Expanded Psionics Handbook came out, I had a sleepless night where my mind was brainstorming (more like brain exploding) such a campaign setting. These are the thoughts that I wrote down during that night, with some clarification.

Psionic Campaign:

Society is ruled by gem dragons: (kinda like how its done in Dragonstar.) Gem dragons are royalty, gem half-dragons are nobility. They all run through the entire spectrum of alignments, but the right and privilege to own other sentient creatures is considered acceptable even though it bothers some gem dragon individuals. Some cheerfully exploit their subjects, while others regard themselves as respectful caretakers of their charges. Only a rare few are inclined to put any effort into changing their society so that slavery is not part of it.

Freedom of slavery? The gem dragon rulers own "mindshare" of the population instead of land. Because of this, they are motivated to "fertilize & grow" their "crops". Each citizen has a facial brand, received when they are born, that identifies which dragon currently owns them, but they are otherwise unfettered in their pursuit of their own goals since the gem dragons can automatically gain control of anyone of their subjects when they need them. Until then, the gem dragons encourage everyone to become as powerful as they can be. When someone becomes so successful or powerful that they could create a monopoly or rule a region, those individuals "ascend" to the direct service of the gem dragons. Subjects of allied dragons peacefully interact and even intermarry with each other, while being alert from attacks of citizens that belong to the gem dragon that is the enemy of their gem dragon master.

Subjects have better access to education and knowledge, along with psionically infused learning technologies. All Knowledge skills can be used as if they were "untrained" skills. All races have the bonus skill points human racial trait. Humans double their bonus skill points every level. Cross-class skills cost one point for one rank.

Better quality of life: Commoners make 10x more than default D&D commoners. Everyone else makes more (but not 10x more) than their D&D counterparts. More civil rights and social services (but not up to real-world modern standards), but free enterprise is encouraged.

Legal remedies for lawbrekers: Instead of time in prison or the death penalty, guilty criminals are psionically reconditioned to avoid doing the crime that they were charged with. Reconditioning is done very precisely because any reconditioning tends to arrest the individual from becoming more powerful or accomplished. Other than the dragon brand that conditions everyone to automatically obey their gem dragon masters, subjects are otherwise mentally untampered.

PCs are born special: For some mysterious reason, PCs have the ability to resist the control of their dragon brands. This is undetectable and currently unknown, as the PCs have yet to choose to oppose their gem dragon masters.

Races: Humans & the psionic races from the Expanded Psionic Handbook. No other D&D races. This is a world that from the ground up features the XPH races as the prominent default races of the world.

Classes: Psionic classes & Fighter, Rogue, & Monk (whose abilities would be psi-based instead of magic-based.)

No Magic: No arcane or divine spellcasters. No Knowledge(arcane), Spellcraft, or Use Magic Device. Any magic items in the campaign are actually psionic items.

No gods or religion. People follow philosophies or worship their gem dragon masters, but receive no supernatural benefits for doing so.

Psionically infused society: Psion levels are not counted for multiclassing XP penalties. Almost everyone has PSPs. All classes (including NPC classes) that don't normally grant PSPs grant 1 PSP/level if the person has a INT, WIS, or CHA of 10 or better.

Greater access to powers: PSP-using classes can access powers they don't have by touching a power stone, dojre, or a person with the power they want to use, then spending their own PSPs to manifest it. Although the XPH has a nice system for this described in the Psionics chapter, this ability works automatically and with no extra time in this psionic campaign.

PSP-powered items are common and affordable. These are psionic items that require at least one PSP to function. The least expensive items require several PSPs and only function for a very short duration, whereas the items that run all day on one PSP tend to cost almost as much as a regular continuous psionic item. Currently there will be PSP-driven appliances, vehicles, communications and information access through a social "metamind". Normal gems can be used by anyone with PSPs to store and recall information. Each gem holds one page of text, one mental image, or one second of full-sensory memory per GP of the gem. Costs PSPs to imprint, but anyone can access it at will. Normal writing is still used for public signs and such.

Armor and Weapons are made of "sheen". Sheen costs just as much as D&D steel and works like steel (steel in this campaign world costs less.) A character can spend one PSP as a swift action to psionically enhance or improve a sheen weapon's enhancement by +1 and to double the threat range for one round. A character can spend one PSP as a swift action to psionically enhance or improve a sheen armor or shield's enhancement by +1 and to reduce any critical hits done to the character by one multiple for one round. If the character uses a standard action to enhance their armor or weapon, then the psionic enhancement lasts for 1 round/level. Sheen tools grant a bonus to skill checks in a similar manner. Sheen is not masterwork, but doesn't need to be masterwork to be psionically enhanced. Sheen items can be crafted to be Masterwork if desired. Sheen becomes ultra-shiny when infused with a PSP.

No unneeded obfuscation: The functions of psionic items can be identified with Psionicraft along with Detect Psionics, or with Appraisal or Psionicraft along with a PSP spent for the identification purpose.

Non-psi tech is medieval level: As per D&D. No gunpowder, steam, or electricity, nor is it likely that it will ever advance. Any advanced technology is psi-based and psi-powered.

Obviously, this is going far away from your traditional fantasy setting. This psionically-based campaign features several modernisms and will not appeal to those who use fantasy gaming to connect with the history, literature, legends and folklore of our culture. This campaign is all about the sci-fi-like exploration of "what would a world be like if it was dominated by psionics?" and discovering where this will take us and experiencing what it would be like to live there. However, it will make a strong effort to implement the classical elements of D&D psionics in the campaign. The mind-flayers would be a major persistent threat as would be the yuan-ti (part gem dragon instead of part snake?). The use of classical monsters (minotaurs, orcs, goblins, etc.) would be minimized. Some monsters would be retrofitted so that their spell-like and supernatural abilities would instead be psi-based, such as dopplegangers. But the monsters that are Cthulhuian in nature such as mind flayers and gibbering mouthers would be prominently featured in this campaign (although the "we're powerless and helpless against the aliens" element of Cthulhu would not.) There is room for some Twilight Zone twists for the characters to discover, such as discovering the Matrix-like function of the mindshare system, or what really happens to those individuals who become too powerful (something like what happens in Atlas Shrugged would work well here,) or discovering what awesome beautiful beings of pure psionic form that people could be if it wasn't for the "mindshare". Perhaps the mind flayers turn out to be liberators. They don't eat brains as commonly potrayed in propaganda, but instead "free your mind".

Clarification: "we're powerless and helpless against the gem dragons" is part of the campaign, although this is simply a normalized fact of life and not a horror element. But this campaign element is to be followed up by the revelation of "You mean we're not helpless and powerless against the gem dragons?"

Tatsukun said:

psyonics

Click to expand...

Psionics psionics psionics

Tatsukun said:

- Healing would be very different, most healers would “take on” a patient’s damage, then heal themselves.

Click to expand...

Depends on the psionics rules you use. Some healing psi does this, some doesn't.

Tatsukun said:

- Religion would be purely cultural. The gods don’t walk the earth regularly, and many people don’t believe in them at all.

Click to expand...

Belief and 'purely cultural' don't go hand-in-hand. They might believe just as strongly as if there were gods descending from the heavens.

The three big keys to making a successful pure-psionic setting which you should keep in mind are:

1. Psionics are darker than traditional magic. Relative to traditional magic, psionics have a psychological-horror twist to them. It is at once a paradoxical system of "magic": on one hand, it shows how someone can change matter, time, and space itself with nothing more than pure will; on the other, it shows how inherently helpless we all are, as if someone were to seize control of your mind, he could control your every movement, shut down your heart, or even trap you in a world of your own nightmares forever. All at once the mind is the greatest weapon and the greatest vulnerability a person could have. Someone who can manifest psionic powers is painfully aware of the fact that for every amazing power he has, there is another power out there which could steal all that free will and illusion of control away. Then look at the lack of healing powers, creature-comfort powers (akin to the Tiny Hut line of spells, healing spells, spells which create food and water, etc.) and some of the more gruesome psionic powers (decerebrate rips out bits of the brainstem, mind seed turns someone into a copy of you, microcosm locks someone in a fake world of their own creation and leaves them comatose, etc.). Play this paradox up.

2. Psionic powers are the same as traditional spells and they're different from traditional spells. Psionics can fill many of the roles in a society that traditional magic would. Transportation with psychoportation powers, manufacturing with metacreativity powers, etc. On the other hand, psionics also enjoy very different strengths from traditional magic. A psionic society would be able to very easily pry into the minds of its citizens with telepathy and very easily gather information on a wide scale with clairsentient powers. The dark nature of psionic powers can be played up here as well: psionic enforcers could walk around with the power ego whip ready to lash out and bludgeon disidents into unconciousness, and use it as a means of torture in interrogation. Finally, aside from shapers manufacturing goods for people and nomads transporting people, psionics offer few benefits to someone other than the manifester. While a sick peasant might seek out a cleric for magical and instantaneous healing, they wouldn't do something similar in a psionic world. The local psion is someone who took a hard look at someone last week and left him screaming on the ground in the fetal position, clawing at unseen wounds. Since psionic characters are poor at affecting other characters positively, people are likely to have more cynical views of them.

3. Psionic creatures provide excellent support for the feel of a psionic game. Throughout the development of psionics in D&D, different extremely flavorful creatures have cropped up, especially the mindflayers. The mindflayer is, in essence, a microcosm of what a psionic world can be. Egos are pushed to the extreme by the excessive power characters can wield over one another, and the mind becomes the centerpiece of society. Threats to the body pale in comparison to threats to the mind, and these are ubiquitous in psionic worlds. Rather than sending another slew of Tolkien-esque monsters to harass PCs, take advantage of the unique and horrific feel of psionic monsters like the mindflayers, the intellect devourers, the callers in darkness, and the like. Psionics might dredge up the stuff of nightmares from the darkest corners of creation. Cthulhu-esque horrors from the Far Realms and other monsters from the Far Realms are excellent fodder for psionic games. Feeling lazy? Just slap the pseudonatural template on goblins or your favorite fodder of choice, and suddenly you have otherworldly monsters right out of a world Euclidian geometry forgot. People are comfortable with traditional monsters, but psionic monsters of this sort are new and frightening to most players. Goblins elicit yawns. Screeching masses of withering ectoplasmic tentacles trying to silence the minds of others are unknown and frightening.

i always think of the song "In the year 2525"

diaglo said:

i always think of the song "In the year 2525"

Click to expand...

I'm unfamiliar with this song. Care to elaborate?