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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gez" data-source="post: 3030098" data-attributes="member: 1328">My point is that novels and RPGs are a completely different kind of things, and that they can't be compared directly by number sold. (Unless, of course, you're a publisher. Then it makes sense because for you they're just things you print and sell. But technical manuals should be included in the mix, too, and that's how we'd get a movie adapted from Photoshop for Dummies.)You say "however, they share a common inspiration." Great. But that doesn't lessen the fact that a novel and an RPG are different things for different audiences that are read and used differently.I don't have numbers to give, but I wouldn't be surprised if D&D sells much better among RPG books than LotR sells among fantasy books.Time only goes in one direction, you know? Unless you build a time machine. You can't say D&D isn't as enduring as Homer's most famous works, because D&D isn't dead yet. If one day in our lifetime D&D dies, then you could say "see, I was right." But in the meantime, just because Iliad & Odissey have a headstart doesn't mean anything.Trunks and antlers were just me being silly, I could have taken something more subtle, and maybe then I would find some ME illustrations that would support my claim.Yeah, we get it they're degenerate. But it doesn't go much farther. Skin color, for example?Just like I would encourage you to look into the Zoroastrian origins of magic.I've read plenty of sci-fi novels featuring psionics, notably Cordwainer Smith's excellent Instrumentality novels. In fact, I haven't read many sci-fi novels that didn't sneak in psionics somewhere, even if it wasn't exactly refered to as such (Asimov, for example, doesn't use the word "psionics" but still uses telepathy and even mental storage of data inside of rock; Van Vogt doesn't use the term either IIRC but various aliens exhibit mental powers in the journey of the Space Beagle, and there's the Slans, too). I don't remember reading anything by Campbell, though that's possible I did long ago.If I have never been exposed to Campbell, is Campbell relevant? No. He isn't. The same way nobody needs to read up on Zoroastrian priests to understand Harry Potter; nobody needs to read Campbell to understand Mister Spock.My description of psionics is accurate. It's magic inserted in sci-fi. It's raw power of the mind. It's a form of solipsism, as the sheer strength of the will directly reshape the world. Does it work through psychic electronics? Maybe, maybe not. The story never revolves around the internal of psionics. It'll have different causes, such as learning a new way of thinking or being genetically engineered for that or taking a drug that is found only on one planet or being exposed to strange radiations or even maybe simply being the next step in human evolution (you can hardly make a concept less scientific than that). These causes may be central to the story. But they're the why. Not the how.</blockquote>

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