Psionics Too Psi-Fi?

[FireLance]

Reposted from another thread:

"O psionics, psionics, wherefore art thou psionics?
Deny thy science fiction connotations and refuse thy name;
Or if thou wilt not, be but appearing in my campaign
And I'll no longer play vanilla fantasy.

...

'Tis but thy name that is my enemy:
Thou art thyself, though not a fantasy term.
What's a fantasy term? It is nor keyword nor prerequisite,
Nor benefit nor effect, nor any other part
Belonging to a game mechanic. O be some other name!
What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other word would smell as sweet;
So psionics would, were he not psionics call'd,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Psionics, doff thy name,
And for thy name, which is no part of thee,
Be an element of D&D."

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Once again, I ask...

Is the name so very important?

A question for the ages...

For an RPG, I think not.

 

[Hussar]

That strikes me as an arbitrary and unclear and undiscernable distinction. Is animal husbandry, then, a science fiction field rather than a fantasy one? If I breed griffins in my fantasy setting to be larger and faster fliers, am I not using principles of biological pseudo-science?
/snip

Yes, absolutely yes, you are use principles of biological pseudo-science.

After all, why would evolutionary principles work on fantasy creatures?

Now, for my games, I'd certainly run with it. While animal husbandry might be a science, it's one that certainly fits within the genre. People have been breeding animals for thousands of years. A 15th century shepherd doesn't need to know what DNA is to breed better sheep.

So, I'd say this particular example doesn't really work as a counter argument. Smithing is a science as well, yet, I don't think it's out of place in a fantasy setting.

Sure, some of the spells have stupid names. Fine. As already has been shown, from our perspective at least, most of these names have a century or more pedigree. That's fine for anyone but the biggest of language geeks.

But psionics isn't a fantasy trope. It never has been. That's the difference here. Teleport, while it might not have been exactly called that, has been a fantasy trope since the time of Aladdin. Vanish from one place to reappear somewhere else? Not exactly a new idea.

But psionics - a biologically explained concept for permitting magic in otherwise real world science fiction is a poor fit in fantasy. For the same reason I don't want internal combustion engines and schooners in my D&D fantasy either.

Rebrand it as mind magic and I'm content. Keep the SF trappings though, which D&D traditionally has, and I don't like it in my games.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

But psionics - a biologically explained concept for permitting magic in otherwise real world science fiction is a poor fit in fantasy.

First, not all psi in sci-fi is biologically based. Some settings explain it as just being a differing and deeper understanding of the laws of the universe, and applying them.

Second, some fantasy settings (like the works of Barbara Hambly or Piers Anthony) explain that the ability to do magic is entirely based on heredity. Either you can do magic or you can't- it cannot be taught or learned.

 

[FireLance]

Rebrand it as mind magic and I'm content. Keep the SF trappings though, which D&D traditionally has, and I don't like it in my games.

I admit to being curious: apart from the name, what are the SF trappings of D&D psionics? The possibility of unlocking special powers through meditation and self-discipline may be an Eastern trope, but it's not a modern or futuristic one.

The only instance I can recall offhand of SF elements in D&D psionics were some mind flayer psionic circuitry in the 2e Illithiad supplement. However, I don't think anything similar has made an appearance in 3e and 4e.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Looking at the terms used for psionic disciplines in 1e, the only two really new ones are 'telempathy' and 'object reading'. The rest however mostly stem from the same period as that for the modern sounding spells I listed upthread - 1800 or so onwards, often from 19th and early 20th century fringe science and pseudo-science.

Id Insinuation and Ego Whip obviously derive from Freud, but 'ego' dates to 1780, and 'id' to 1920, so it actually predates 'ESP' and 'teleport'.

Cell Adjustment and Molecular Agitation/Manipulation/Rearrangement sound 'science'-y, but 'molecular' dates to 1815, much the same period as that for many spells.

The earliest reference to 'telempathic' (used in Telempathic Projection) I could find was 1963 so that is a new one.

A lot of the names are the same as those used for spells - Invisibility, Levitation, Telekinesis, Clairvoyance, Dimension Door, etc

Then there's Mind Over Body, Object Reading, and Aura Alteration. Mind Over Body may be a reference to 'mind over matter', which was first used in 1863, but popularised in the 60s and 70s. 'Object reading' is a newer term for psychometry, which was itself coined in 1842. I wasn't able to get a date for the later term. The concept of colored auras is supposedly an ancient Eastern idea, but comes to us from 19th century theosophist, Charles Leadbetter.

 

[Doug McCrae]

As has been said, the main sticking point is probably the word 'psionics' itself. It seems to have been specifically coined by John W Campbell to sound 'science'-y, a conjoining of 'psi-' and 'electronics', to try to sell Campbell's beliefs in psychic powers to the sceptical readers of Astounding Science Fiction.

An interesting titbit I found, Campbell actually thought that Hieronymus machines didn't work by means of their electronic parts, but merely served as a focus for psychic powers.

The inventions of Hieronymus were championed by Astounding Science Fiction editor John W. Campbell in late 1950s and early 1960s editorials. A series of correspondences between the two men show that while Hieronymus was sure that someday his theories of eloptic energy would be proven and accepted by physical scientists, Campbell was convinced that the machines were magical in nature, and that mock-ups of Hieronymus Machines allegedly worked by analogy or symbolism, which directed the user's PSI or ESP powers.

As an example, Campbell believed one could create an eloptic receiver or similar device with the prisms and amplifiers represented by their cardboard or even schematic representations. Through the use of mental powers, such a machine would function as well as its "real" equivalent. While Campbell claimed that Hieronymus machines actually did perform this way, the concept was never fully accepted by Hieronymus or pursued by him in later years.

Interesting that the word 'magical' is used, blurring the line, not only between technology and psychic powers, but between psychic powers and magic.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

The big issue is that, mechanically speaking, Vancian is far more sci-fi then psionics have ever been.

I'm sorry, but if you think it's ok and not sci-fi to have psuedo scientists with books filled with formula who use experimentation to discover ways of altering physics...but it's totally sci-fi and fantasy to have someone who simply reaches into the world and changes it with his mind? You're wrong. Your opinion is bad.

There are no fantasy wizards that are 1) unrelated to D&D and 2) act the same way D&D wizards do. None of them. Fantasy wizards either have some kind of "energy" inside them that they manipulate along with a few spells, or they can cast whatever they seem to want instantly. There are no non-D&D wizards that carry around a spellbook and reagents. Hell, the whole system came from a damned sci-fi sword, sorcerery, and laser guns series.

And no, you can't point at words from the late 1800's and say "Look, see, not sci-fi." Sci-fi is founded and built on the late Age of Exploration, the Industrial Revolution, and on Victorian fantasy. There's a reason steampunk and cyberpunk are held so close to each other. The same themes of rampant technology gone wrong, the exploration of new frontiers, and the loss of humanization are the foundations of both. Medieval fantasy - the type some people bizarrely fetishize when it comes to D&D - doesn't use teleportation, or disintegration, or ESP, or any of those. In fact, that's the funniest thing. The rigidness and lack of mystery in Vancian, the open ended flexibility of psionics - psionics have been more "magical" then actual "magic" for a long time.

 

[I'm A Banana]

The line between fantasy and sci-fi is always a blurry one, and to make an artificial distinction is kind of narmed.

Star Wars involved dudes with swords, magic, empires, and magical creatures.

Eberron takes pages from Blade Runner.

Pern is a big psychic planet (or something).

The Cthulu mythos is found in Conan.

There's things that are clearly one or the other (A Scanner Darkly is pretty non-fantastic; LotR doesn't involve much pseudotech), but the genres clearly love each other, and they should be allowed and encouraged to follow their hearts and make little game design babies like Psionics and Artificers.

Wanting to avoid a Sci-Fi influence is almost as goofy to me as wanting to avoid an anime influence, or wanting to avoid a Tolkein influence or a Greek Myth influence. Yeah, it can be thematically inappropriate for certain narrowly defined game feels, but D&D in general probably shouldn't hate on these little genre twists. If D&D was All Conan & Frodo, All The Time, I'd get bored much faster.

 

[Doug McCrae]

I'm sorry, but if you think it's ok and not sci-fi to have psuedo scientists with books filled with formula who use experimentation to discover ways of altering physics...but it's totally sci-fi and fantasy to have someone who simply reaches into the world and changes it with his mind? You're wrong. Your opinion is bad.

I think you make a very good point. The D&D wizard, with his books and experiments, is a lot like a scientist, whereas the psionicist doesn't need books or objects or any kind of civilization.

There are no non-D&D wizards that carry around a spellbook and reagents.

You're going too far here. Prospero, from Shakespeare's 'The Tempest', is a book-learning sort of wizard. Atlantes, from medieval French romance, foretells the future with his Book of Fates. Dr Faustus is learned.

In Spenser's Faerie Queene, Archimago's magic is described as science -

He then devisde himselfe how to disguise;
For by his mightie science he could take
As many formes and shapes in seeming wise,
As ever Proteus to himselfe could make

As Sepulchrave II informed me in the other thread, the Renaissance wizards were bookish - Agrippa, Paracelsus, John Dee. They were often proto-scientists, alchemists or astrologers.