Didn't stick even with some Dragon articles. Don't use it in fantasy (unless MA/Gamma World counts both as fantasy & having psionics) but do in Sci-Fi. Tekumel has psychic magic but it's really sorcery vs. the chanting & components type ritual magic. Never read the Deryni or Darkover books.

I don't mind semi-mythical stuff like foresight, scrying, and impressions as inherent powers, perhaps moreso than as spells or prayers. So I don't mind the concept, just haven't found the spark yet.

Quote from: RPGPunditThe only two psionic systems I've seen that were even mildly good were the ones for Traveller T20 (which was just tolerable)

It worked ok for a Third Imperium character but not as good for say a Zhodani or if you wanted something like PsiCorp where psionics isn't outlawed and use subject to fear and lynchings. Objects of the Mind has a Psionicist class & the Traveller’s Guide playtest draft had another go at it and slight tweaks to Psionics. IIRC Still geared towards the Third Imperium view of Psionics, a bit clunky in power selection, and PSI got drained too fast.

I recently introduced Psionics into my kitchen-sink Drow campaign (yes, I cringed too when my players suggested that). I don't have a problem with the system at all, it would be a good replacement for Vancian magic. It's a bit bothersome, that it exists parallel to normal magic and the names of the disciplines seem a little too sci-fi at times (and I won't even mention "ectoplasm" in my campaign, for fear of Ghostbusters jokes).

But in the high-magic Underdark, with Mind Flayers lurking around the corner and all kinds of weird creatures it certainly worked. Even the player who objects strongly to Psi-rules has found acceptance in his heart...

I never had problems with Mentalism in Rolemaster, too.

Back in the 30s and 40s there was a parapsychologist by the name of Rhine; founder of the Rhine institute. Professor Rhine (as he styled himself) worked with a number of people on parapsychological (aka, psychic abilities) work. What would later become known as, "extrasensory perception" (ESP).

One of the people he worked with was magazine editor (Astounding), John W. Campbell. John was a civil engineer by training, and under his own name and the pen name of Don A. Stuart a noted science fiction writer. A/-o a huge fantasy fan and big on technology.

John thought that psychic abilities were neat, and that proving they really existed would be keen. He also held to the belief that if psychic abilities really worked, they would abide by physical laws, and could be affected by the proper application of technology.

Enter Electronics.

Electronics were big back then. Radar, radio, and electronic circuitry were heavily discussed in the tech and engineering communities. And among science fiction fans. Campbell got an idea, to combine electronics and ESP. Psychic abilities augmented by electronics. Psionics in other words. (Rhine later claimed to have coined the word. This caused a rift between him and Campbell, aided by Rhine's troubles with basic honesty.)

Now John had his enthusiasms. Electronics, space travel, fantasy, Dianetics (he playtested Dianetics 1st edition), and psionics. In the 60s he started pushing psionics heavily in his magazine, now known as Analog. You wanted to get published in Analog you got a big boost if you included a psychic ability or two in your story. Dune, Known Space, any number of other SFnal settings would be very different if not for John's psychic fixation. And somewhere along the way "psionic" became conflated with "psychic".

John died in 1971 of a cerebral aneurysm. In 1972 Gygax and Arneson started collaborating on D&D. But psionics didn't enter the picture until, I think, 1976, when Eldritch Wizardry came out. As Gary later revealed, the very first version of psionics in D&D was an incoherent, mechanically crappy mess nobody but the creators knew how to use, and he suspected they were making it up as they went along. The version in 3.0/3.5 is the cleanest anybody's ever done, but it still isn't really integrated into the core.

For Dangerous Journeys Gary decided to call psionics, "Psychogenic (mind created) Abilities". He also integrated Psychogenic Abilities into the core system. The PA sub-system could use some further development, but as-is it can be  used fairly easily with some JM imrprovisation.

And that's a brief look at psionics in RPGs.

For me, and I may be hitting the same nail all over, Psionics differs hugely from magic in a number of ways.

Magic is fundamentally the drawing upon of forces external to the user, shaping them according to ritual and formula to accomplish things. Magic can be a science, where anyone can apply existing metaphysical laws to accomplish the same effect, or ART where only gifted users can do it, and the ritual changes according to the needs of the user.  I tend to prefer the first idea for my magic but hardly to the exclusion of all else.


Psionics, fundamentally, is the power of the self. The psychic is able to affect the world around him by the power of his mind alone.  This sort of thing suggests that the self is external to the physical structures of the body. Psychic stuff can't just 'do anything', unlike many forms of magic.  Arguably everyone could have some measure of psychic ability, and the real difference is how much they nurture it, or you could have only a few rare gifted individuals while the rest of the population is essentially 'mundane'.  Regardless, rather than learning rituals and formulas, rather than looking for places or artifacts of power, the psychic grows in strength as people's bodies do, by practice and development.    

Traditionally psychic powers are limited to telekinesis (with subsets like pyrokinesis and cryokinesis), Telepathy (including dreamwalking, and possibly astral projection... though psychic astral projection is not related to the astral plane of D&D lore), ESP including Pre and post cognition, distance viewing and pychometry.  If you like to mix things up a bit more, some include teleportation (powerful psi) and Prana Bindu, or controlling the biology via the power of the mind (weak, common psi, and NOT the same thing as body morphing).

While harder to balance, Psi in a level based system is not impossible to scale comparable to magic.  Psychics either have an ability or the do not, and their use is more unlimited than spells.  Balancing could be accomplished by linking strength of an ability to level, and most psychic abilities should have a skill linked to them, representing practice and control of the ability.  

To make psychic powers more compatable with D&D all together they should be made more of a core part of the game. Indeed, into the players guide with thee, or get thee out of my backyard.  

One of the problems often heard about balancing Psychic stuff in D&D is the fifth level character with Disintigrate, which is a very high level spell for mages.  I see this as a non-issue. Disintigrate doesn't really belong in a psychic's bag of tricks.  Certainly not complete with green rays shooting from the eyes or what have you.

The original source material for 'fantasy' – myth and legend, fairy tale, that sort of thing – has strange and otherworldly powers; sometimes knowable by humans and sometimes not. It doesn't have 'Magic' on one hand and 'Psionics' on the other. That's my reason for rejecting psionics in fantasy; my fantasy tends towards the primary sources.

Sword-&-sorcery is a bit different, being essentially a 20th-century form. I guess that to the extent your fantasy stems more from S&S than legend, scientifically-handwavable mental powers may be appropriate.

Quote from: RPGPunditI have always utterly despised psionics in almost all its forms, and not just in fantasy either.  The only two psionic systems I've seen that were even mildly good were the ones for Traveller T20 (which was just tolerable) and the one for CoC D20 (which was awesome, because using it was as much a potential way to get totally screwed as it was a help).

RPGpundit

I'm with you on that, but I've always been a big fan of having magic/psi come with some sort of price, vanilla fantasy or not.

Quote from: obrynSecond, both magic and psionics are basically doing the same thing - imposing your will on the world in a supernatural way.  I think it's silly to make a distinction between two ways of doing this.

It's funny - I always felt the same about Divine magic.  Does it really matter from where the magic is coming?  And that led me to feel the same about Psionics. You have an attempt to cause something to happen that otherwise would not occur (in "standard" physics, etc.).

The biggest problem I see with this approach is that it could make them all seem too generic, reduced to the same set of capabilities.

Quote from: RPGPundit....and the one for CoC D20 (which was awesome, because using it was as much a potential way to get totally screwed as it was a help).

That aspect is what I find sorely missing in so very many RPG magic systems.

Anyway, I'm going to lay a lot of Psi's bad rap squarely at the feet of AD&D. That was one fubar sub-system they put together. It's taken, what, 15 years and a decently put together system for D&D psionics to start dragging itself out from underneath that deadweight. :/

Rolemaster originally integrated psychic powers as mentalism, a third realm of in addition to divine (clerical) magic and magician magic.  They tended to focus on psychicy stuff, but there were no major flavour differences, just a different form of magic.

That's very different from what Spike's talking about, and 'm not sure that psychic powers - built in line with modern conceptions of what psychics can do - do fit in a fantasy world.  I absolutely agree with all your suggestions for making them distinctive, and would add stuff like having them powered by the will and tiring to activate, a narrow range of powers overall and a much narrower range of powers in the hands of any given psychic than is the case with magic-  get rid of anything magicy, and get rid of anything psychicy from magic.  But once you've done all that, and created a distinctive identity for psychic powers, I'm not sure that what you've ended up with is the kind of thin that fits in vanilla fantasy.  It just strikes me as out of whack with the way the supernatural works in most fiction.

The thing, lacemaker, is that numerous authors HAVE managed to keep psychic stuff in fantasy worlds, as distinct from magic (even calling it magic sometimes) and pulled it off quite excellently. Maybe not everyone's cuppa but it works.

I agree with the Divine Magic comment as well. While it was smart to make divine magic less 'attack' and 'magic' magic less 'healing' it was only a minor step. Preists and clerics shouldn't be studying spells from their gods, and casting spells.  There IS some fiction support for this, true, but most people would probably be more impressed if the miraculous felt more, you know, miraculous.

Psionics in sword and sorcery, absolutely.

Psionics in trad fantasy, no.

For me it's a genre thing, psionics were often there in s&s stuff but in Tolkien derived fantasy it feels very out of place to me.

Bodymorphing is a no-no to me, psionics in fantasy were based on 1930s ideas of how psychic powers might work and bodymorphing was no part of that.  It's as out of genre as a fireball IMO.

Quote from: lacemakerBut once you've done all that, and created a distinctive identity for psychic powers, I'm not sure that what you've ended up with is the kind of thin that fits in vanilla fantasy.

I agree with this essentially, the only thing missing is that I think it does fit rather well with pulp fantasy, but that is not a genre that's really around so much anymore.

Quote from: RPGPunditI have always utterly despised psionics in almost all its forms, and not just in fantasy either.  The only two psionic systems I've seen that were even mildly good were the ones for Traveller T20 (which was just tolerable) and the one for CoC D20 (which was awesome, because using it was as much a potential way to get totally screwed as it was a help).

RPGpundit

CoC d20 psionics were indeed very good, in-genre, low key, mechanically well implemented and true to period ideas of what could be done.

Great bit of mechanics. I am not a huge fan of CoC d20, but those particular rules were excellent and a really good addition to the game.  I would love to see a BRP conversion for them

I remember some Dragon articles back in the day about how to break AD&D 2's advancement system with correct application of the Psionicist class.

One of my players also managed to break an AD&D campaign (thankfully not one of mine,) in half with his psionicist, reportedly by using flight and mind lasers to eradicate any enemy force under battalion strength.

Warped as both experiences are by the weight of memory, they've been the reason I have never, ever-ever-ever-ever-ever, considered psionics a valid PC tool.

That said, d20 CoC's ESP is too cool for school.

Quote from: mattormegI'm with you on that, but I've always been a big fan of having magic/psi come with some sort of price, vanilla fantasy or not.

Its one of the things that makes Warhammer's magic system so awesome.

RPGPundit