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D&D 5E Psionics in a sci-fi D&D
- Thread starter Morrus
- Start date
It refers to a different sphere of effects.
We all know what it refers to and basically what it's effects are, it's just that some people want to play the reduction game to say that in actuality all these things are the same thing.
Which as always when people play the reduction game is true only so long as you privilege the points of underlining similarity over the distinctions that matter.
We use different terms for these things, and they are used differently in genre. We get absolutely nowhere in talking about them unless we try to examine these differences rather than pretend that they don't really exist.
I'm sure Tony Stark could explain it to you, while Stephen Strange might disagree.
"In Marvel comics" ... "Thor (at least classically)". I can link bomb you with all kinds of things from the comics where it wasn't portrayed that way there, and it is enchantments and the like.
Hussar
Legend
For a couple of reasons.
1. In SF, you are generally allowed one gimme. One thing that breaks science and you're good to go. So, FTL is fine in SF stories, so long as the rest of the story is largely plausible.
2. The purpose of psionics in SF is to allow magic in an SF setting without calling it magic.
3. The purpose of magic in a fantasy story is a plot coupon to get our protagonist to the next challenge. The purpose of the science fiction point in an SF story is to ground the story in a particular question. The reasoning is very different.
But, as far as "how the world is supposed to be viewed" is a very fantasy genre approach that SF simply doesn't do.
Psionics sort of suffers in that it has migrated from something that may have seemed somewhat plausible as something that might exist at some point in the future if you squint your eye and don't study the science to closely.
If people have some small degree of psychic ability, which was actually something being seriously studied at one point, then it would make sense that genetic manipulation or eugenics might one day enhance this ability.
I don't think people take this seriously any more. It's sort of slipped now into the same realm of magic in most people's imagination. However, it's still viewed differently to how magic is usually viewed, because it's origins in a form of pseuo-scientific thinking inform it's use in genre.
As I said earlier, think about whether psionic powers should be able to animate zombies and have them walk about of their own volition. Necromancy assumes that death is a kind of energy of it's own that can manipulate things. Psionics (generally) assumes that the laws of phyiscs roughly apply (except where they can be broken in the expectation the average person won't notice)* and that you can't use mysterious metaphyical forces like the power of death.
There's also degrees of proximity. Once you have a hard science fiction in space in which people have a limited form of psychic ability, the the more pulp arm of the genre which take that and stretch it past the limit of plausibility, because you are allowed to do that with the pulpy arm of the genre. It's the more fantastical element but it exists in a kind of dialogue with the more serious.
If people have some small degree of psychic ability, which was actually something being seriously studied at one point, then it would make sense that genetic manipulation or eugenics might one day enhance this ability.
I don't think people take this seriously any more. It's sort of slipped now into the same realm of magic in most people's imagination. However, it's still viewed differently to how magic is usually viewed, because it's origins in a form of pseuo-scientific thinking inform it's use in genre.
As I said earlier, think about whether psionic powers should be able to animate zombies and have them walk about of their own volition. Necromancy assumes that death is a kind of energy of it's own that can manipulate things. Psionics (generally) assumes that the laws of phyiscs roughly apply (except where they can be broken in the expectation the average person won't notice)* and that you can't use mysterious metaphyical forces like the power of death.
There's also degrees of proximity. Once you have a hard science fiction in space in which people have a limited form of psychic ability, the the more pulp arm of the genre which take that and stretch it past the limit of plausibility, because you are allowed to do that with the pulpy arm of the genre. It's the more fantastical element but it exists in a kind of dialogue with the more serious.
Crimson Longinus
Legend
It still isn't a distinction that makes any sense to me. In all of the psionics threads no one has ever managed to even remotely coherently explain to me how one way of using the nature of the reality to levitate things with your mind is supernatural and other way of doing the exact same isn't.
It feels like that's true in some settings and not others. Are discovering laws of magic and engineering knew spells? Or are they finding random unconnected things and practicing those? (Are they doing the analog of physics, or of stamp collecting?)
Why does anyone need to coherently explain it? It's a comic book, it mostly works by a series of associations; no underlying logic is required.
Crimson Longinus
Legend
But in a fantasy world that death energy is part of the physics of the world!
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