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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 3779519" data-attributes="member: 18">I think that's an anachronistic and inaccurate assumption. Rolemaster's particular brand of psionics may be inspired by Indian Yogis, but all fantasy psionics? Have you ever read a fantasy novel where people had psionic-style abilities as opposed to arcane-style ones? (or the even-more-rarely-seen divine-style ones).In the 1970s, psychic powers were huge, absolutely huge. Thanks to Uri Geller and other frauds, the idea of "the psychic" was all over the place. AD&D 1E latched on to this, stealing the entirely sci-fi term "psionics", and modelling it's powers strictly on sci-fi psychic powers.It certainly didn't base it's abilities on "Indian Mystics" - Maybe it should have done, but it didn't. So we've had fantasy psionics for a long time - in fact I'd be surprised if the first time they appeared in any fantasy product was Rolemaster. Equally, since the 1970s, we've had fantasy novels which included powers best described as "psionics" or psychic powers - Again, these all seem much more focused around sci-fi-based psionic ideas re-rendered in an entirely fantasy way, as magic (with no reference to science). I strongly suspect you've not come across these, which leads to your apparent belief that fantasy psionics starts and finishes with Rolemaster.Further, Yogis have had absolute every possibly magical ability attributed to them at one time or another - there is simpy nothing that someone hasn't claimed a Yogi could do, which makes them a poor starting place, I'd suggest. In the end, when people say "psionics" they don't think of Yogis mediating for enlightenment, they think of telepathic and telekinetic psychics and superheroes in the Western sense, albeit often with shaved heads, crystals and ectoplasm bumping around. Thus I think that makes for a better starting place. Take out the psuedo-science, yes, but take out the "Eastern" junk with it, I say.You're right about psuedo-science, you didn't say that, that's just how I read it, and I retract any implication that you are a leet kiddy, but I just seriously loathe wuxia-style "three word names" for powers, regardless, and I don't think that would be in any way an improvement.</blockquote>

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