The Mind of Fantasy - not the Sci-onics of the Mind

[Halivar]

I must agree with Mallus, especially after reading Orson Scott Card's "How to Write Science-Fiction and Fantasy" (an indispensable book for anyone interested in RPG world-building). OSC suggested we throw out the terms altogether and call sci-fi and fantasy what they really are: speculative fiction.

Both genres involve taking the understood world, filing off the serial numbers, twiddling the dials, and saying "ok, now what would happen in this world?"

For me, sci-fi and fantasy will always be this huge venn diagram with more stuff in the middle than on the outliers. I think D&D has always been about hewing as close the "fantasy" side as possible, while still being in that overlapping area.

 

[Ferrous]

I agree with the original poster myself, the flavour is pseudo scientific and that is all wrong for most (but not all) fantasy settings. It is not wrong to want a coherent setting. And yes both magic and pseudo-science are made up. However that does not mean they are the same.

Tolkein et al drew upon traditional folk tales from half a dozen countries that had magic traditions but no pseudo-scientific ones because science as a philosophy had not been invented.

I think it is reasonable to want to run a game with say an Arthurian, Greek mythos, or Arabian Night setting without laser beams. Just like it is fine if somebody else wants to run one with. However D&D is a Fantasy role-playing game and most of its conventions should be drawn from fantasy. And that is the case. You don't find Hover cars or phaser guns in the equipments lists. That is why the psionic rules names and conventions are so jarring to many people.


Flavour matters. In the end all fiction is made up, not just science fiction or fantasy. That does not mean that it is necessary for laser beams to shoots from a characters eyes in your cop procedural drama or Bobby Ewing to pop out of the shower in your Norse saga.

It is even easy to re-skin psionic powers to a traditional fantasy setting as they model an internal magic common to many fantasy stories and legends. Just call them "mystic" as in a mystic from historical sources. If you had divine magic, arcane magic, and mystic or internal magic then I don't think that most people would have such a problem and it woud provide a mechanism for monks, savants and fakirs magical powers.

 

[Zaukrie]

I've never understood how psionics are anything other than magic from inside your brain, instead of magic from outside your brain. I've never understood how it was "sciency" at all. But, I understand others have felt that way.

I'd like there to be different mechanics for how people cast magic, like point based and non point based, for example. So, if psionics is the point based system, I'm cool with that.

 

[Jack7]

I'll give you guys a good example from my point of view. The Palantir. an excellent example of fantasy psychaecs, for the exact reason that the use of it was misleading, it gave misinformation and disinformation, and the useage of it was really a test of wills.

A specially modified television or even internet like device that allowed one end-user to read the mind of the person on the other end through input/output devices would be a great psionic device. And of course if this device gave misleading or false information it would not be considered a reliable psionic device, but a totally unreliable and untrustworthy device. Because technology is supposed to be reliable and that would extend even to "psychic devices" or at least fictional psychic devices.

If a technological psionic device gave false information, or could be easily intercepted or tampered with as it functioned, then it would be, while not useless, at least considered unreliable. And would therefore be considered only one tool in the toolbelt. In a technological or sci-fi world.

On the other hand a Palantir, whereas certainly imperfect, and even psychologically very dangeorus to use, would be a perfectly risk-acceptable tool and perhaps even the only way to gather otherwise unobtainable intelligence or to communicate quickly over a vast distance in a fantasy world.

Sci-fi psionics and fantasy psychaecs share some commonalities in end-purposes, but they operate entirely differently in practice, and often with very, very different risk assessments.

The very reasons for the existence of operational technologies are that they are reliable, and that they limit risk. This isn't the way I see things working in fantasy worlds at all, not in games or in literature.

So to me, although similar in some ways, they are very, very different operationally. Fantasy psychaecs should be dangerous both when they fail, and even when they work correctly. Sci-fi psionics are only really dangerous most of the time when they fail.

 

[Lord Zack]

Of course, D&D has included Sci-fi elements since the beginning. The Original D&D set has references to cyborgs, robots and androids.

 

[Dragonhelm]

I believe that psionics will become one of those modular parts of the game. Throughout the history of D&D, fans have been split on psionics. The long-term criticism remains that psionics feels too much like science fiction.

My prediction is that psionics will be tackled in a new iteration of the Psionics Handbook, which I hope is penned by Bruce Cordell. It will be wholly optional, with advice on how to incorporate it as magic or as a new power source.

So if you like psionics, you're covered. And if not, no worries. Just ignore the book.

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

I love psionics. I fell in love with them when I first saw them in 2nd Edition.

I can kind of see how they're out of place to some, as they aren't a common part of many fantasy novels, but I've never seen them as sciency. In fact, most of the time, I dislike psionics in my science fiction because they're too fantasyish. I consider them entirely implausible, like any other form of magic, and thus having no place in a plausible future.

But fantasy is entirely about the implausible. If the world can have hydras, vampires, and Otto's Irresistible Dance, then it can have a system of mental powers.

 

[Jack7]

Here is a question I had meant to ask earlier, got interrupted with other things and am just now getting back to:

Do you guys want to see a separate Psionic Class, or do you want to be able to see any character or character class potentially (even if the odds are only slight) able to use Psychaec abilities?


Personally I'd rather see any and all characters to be at least able to have a chance to have such abilities, with that being determined by the individual, rather than having a separate class of Psychaec specialists.

Now I can see certain individuals, let's say someone with very high Wisdom or Charisma being more likely to have psychaec capabilities, or even some classes - like let's say the Wizard, giving a greater chance of having such powers. But I'd rather see any and everyone have at least the potential for such capabilities, rather than a specialized Psionic Class or Classes.

That's my opinion. What's yours, and why?

 

[Ahnehnois]

Wild Talents are fun.

Everyone that has a mind has the potential for psychic/psionic/etc. ability. I'd like to see psionics approached as a set of skills (using the word loosely) first and classes second.

 

[Recidivism]

Psionics is just another system of magic, typically with another mechanics system behind it. I don't see psionics fitting in with medieval-themed campaigns, as anything that performs magical effects in a medieval setting would be termed generically "magic" or "sorcery." The term psionics implies a level of sophistication in understanding about how those effects occur that doesn't fit a fantasy milieu.

Although there's nothing stopping anyone from using the psionics system if that's their preferred spellcasting method.