Brainstorming a “Kitchen Sink“ Sci-Fi campaign

[Dannyalcatraz]

I’m leaning more towards a pharmaceutical psi inhibitor rather than designating some material or energy field.

An anti-psi field or material begs the question of tech level in the former and the ubiquity in the latter, each of which can be VERY problematic.

By going with a pharmaceutical psI-neutralizer, you can have a variety of delivery systems- food & drink*, injectables (including dart guns), inhalants (like a restaurant’s patio misting system), slow release pills, etc.- from carefully monitored labs to back alley street chemists.

It also allows for pharmaceutical countermeasures that might delay or weaken the psi-neutralizers. Maybe even something analogous to Narcan.

It also allows for varying efficacy across species AND supports plotlines of Psions who take the drugs voluntarily because they can’t control their powers. An uncontrolled telepath who can’t stop hearing voices even with antipsychotics would welcome the silence an anti-Psionic pill could bring. Or imagine the relief an elixir could bring to an uncontrolled teke who is constantly creating poltergeist like events under stress.





* remember, Psions need to eat a lot

 

[Umbran]

3) the portals, being sentient, might choose to make things more or less difficult for military forces seeking to use them, based on their own motives.

How do the portals get their information?

 

[Nobby-W]

I do wonder about the point of portals. Mechanically, they define certain routes that can be taken, so you can control sandbox movement. From that perspective, it helps with the logistics of a sandbox. If you have a galactic empire with ships that can warp anywhere then you have a logistics problem in your game if you want to run a sandbox.

However, they are not easy to reconcile with any sort of back routes around the universe. Anybody controlling a portal can control who comes in and out. It makes for more of a choke point than one might want. You could have hyper-drive equipped ships that don't need portals as you've alluded to earlier as a way around it but he who owns the portal has pretty much final say over who can go through it.

A happy medium might be the shoals of the Collapsing universe or the warp navigation of the Honor-Verse. This sort of thing would have naturally occurring points that allow transit into hyperspace, but potentially multiple points in a system. You might require psi-aware navigators to avoid crashing into (say) ship-crushing gravity gradients.

These transit points could be predictable, and some could be transient, allowing people with the means to predict them (perhaps psionic in nature) to use them to take back routes around the universe. Some regions could be periodically locked off due to the lack of an exit point.

 

[MGibster]

Depends on the society. Some will lionize them. Some will treat them like any other natural gift. Some will enslave them.

...some will mark them for death and hunt them down.

But in all cases that's an institution created to control psions for the benefit of someone. I'm using institution here like I would from high school sociology. An institution is just a pattern of social behavior designed to meet the needs of society. If psions were an accepted part of human life we'd have institutions put into place to keep the status quo. i.e. There would be some mechanism to keep psions under control just as there are for the rest of us.

 

[Remathilis]

Even ignoring the time travel elements, Doctor Who is a wealth of great monster ideas. Daleks, cybermen, silurians, zygons, ice warriors, weeping angels, sea devils, the silence, sontarans, just to name a few.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I'm using institution here like I would from high school sociology. An institution is just a pattern of social behavior designed to meet the needs of society.

Five major institutions in sociology are political, educational, economic, family and religion.

I’m not so sure fandom or fear quite meet the definition. Simply seeing psions as part of the natural spectrum of a species’ abilities really isn’t, IMHO.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

How do the portals get their information?

Implied in their relationship with the KoO, some at least will have a channel of direct communications with other species.

Beyond that?

They definitely have their own sensors, simply because they’d need them to function. Individuals don’t survive millions of years without being aware of their surroundings and being able to react in some way.

With time the portals will form opinions on the nature of what’s around them, even if it’s just threat assessments ranging from “Mostly Harmless” to “Existential Threat”.

 

[Fenris-77]

I would be tempted to treat portals more like 16th century ship's rutters than modern maps, as far as how 'mapped' they are. The main ones are mapped, but different people may know about different alternate routes and specific portals. There's a ton of good reasons to keep a portal from becoming common knowledge if you can.

 

[MGibster]

Five major institutions in sociology are political, educational, economic, family and religion.

I’m not so sure fandom or fear quite meet the definition. Simply seeing psions as part of the natural spectrum of a species’ abilities really isn’t, IMHO.

In a setting where psions were a fact of life, all five of those major institutions would likely deal with them in some way.

Politics: There would almost certainly be laws regarding the use of psionic abilities. Are psions regular citizens, wards of society, or outlaws?

Educational: Are the nascent abilities of young psions recognized and fostered by society or are they repressed? What does society teach people about psions?

Economic: How do they fit into the economy? Do we have a bunch of clairvoyant individuals forecast this year's corn crop? Do psychic surgeons remove cancers in minutes that medical technology cannot cure? How does gambling in Vegas work when you have gamblers who can predict the future, read minds, or use telekinesis to affect the roulette wheel?

Family: Do psions marry other psions? How does a family of normies deal with a petulant 4 year old that can light things on fire with their mind? Are psion children taken from their families making them wards of the state?

Religion: Are psions blessed? Cursed? Or are they just the same as everyone else they just have different abilities as we are all equal in the eyes of God? What does religion tell us about psions?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

@MGibster

I’m not saying a given civilization’s institutions wouldn’t have rules or guidelines dealing with psions. I’m saying the reactions I listed are not inherently or exclusively institutional.