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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fnork de sporg" data-source="post: 2780606" data-attributes="member: 4713">I was thinking about the psychological effects of an all psionic world. Since developing psionic potential is essentially random there would be a much greater emphasis placed on fate. Some people are destined for greatness, and those without that destiny can never hope to achieve it. Heavy shades of Neitzche and existentialism probably dominate in the popular literature and philosophy.  Power derives power. Power in the world comes from internal power. Leaders lead because they are the most capable, or the strongest. Practical concerns would tend to trump ethical and idealistic ones. Fatalism would be common. Someone taking to something naturally would be considered superior to someone who had to labor long and hard to master the techniques. Minor divinations based on things like horoscopes, blood types, and personality types would be popular, things that seem to reflect on your own inner nature, much more so than things like tarot and rune casting which appeal to random external factors. While for nonpsionics communal living and identifying with the collective might be for second nature for the psionics individualism would be just as natural. Psionic communities themselves are based more on common interest than shared genetics or ancestry.  People would be free to come and go as they want, and with most civilization consisting of far flung self sufficient communes the decision to leave you home would be a major one. But there would be a signicant minority of Wilders, exiles, and malcontents living as they want out in the sprawling wild lands. Most new communities would be founded in this manner, some by communities that became divided and some by small groups of loners who manage to become succesful. With the all important psionic ability not necessarily follwing the genes there would be all together much less emphasis on ancestry and family trees. Royal dynasties based on blood would be uncommon or even unheard of. Popular forms of geverment would lean towards learned councils of elders, or more likely whoever happens to be the most powerful telepath in town. There's a very good chance psion telepaths will be considerd the equivalent of royalty, the mere fact that your in the class ensures you a role in politics.Psionics is severely limited in regards to healing. Combat would be much deadlier, as would life in general. Death in general would be much more likely to be permanent. There are also a lot of particularly gruesome psionic powers, like Fuse Flesh for instance, that would combine with this to give an all psionic world a much darker and brutal quality, with violence having real consequence and not being something a person would resort to carelessly. You'll be seeing a lot more heal check, splints, and fighting infections than you would in any normal campaign. Disease becomes a thousand times nastier, especially for the local populations and the nonpsion commoners. There's also practically no psionic summoning. If extraplanar creatures , like demons or devils, want to intrude on this prime material plane they pretty much have to do it themselves. They would be quite rare, knowledge of the outer planes would be pretty spotty, and things like the bloodwar and the grand battle between good and evil would be very distant inconsequential things. This would lend strongly to the world's tendency towards neutrality that I mentioned earlier. Good and evil would be looked at personal decisions rather than part of some cosmic struggle. Cerebriliths and Psionic Couatls are in the XPH, so its not like the outer planes and good vs evil would be unknown, but they are just two amongst a number of creatures, and would not be given the same place of importance that fiends and celestials do in a magic world.With the far flung insular communes and relative sparcity of trade and travel going on there will be no taverns. At all. There might be breweries but most socializing would take place in town squares, village feasthalls, or local temples if the inhabitants are actively religious. Instead of an inn your going to have to find some one with a guestroom or at least and extra bed, but since visitors are rare chances are if they let you inside they'll be willing to let you stay the night. If they let you in. Exile would be an incredibly common form of punishment, more common than execution, so if you're not living at home there's a relatively good chance you might be violently insane. Strangers will initially meet distrust and, unless they have some pressing need to be there, might well be asked to leave immediately.</blockquote>

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