Quote from: Omega;851702Keep in mind too that what someone calls magic one day, someone else is calling ESP tomorrow.

We have some water diviners in the family and they were called "water witches" and was considered magic. Now-a-days its called ESP.

This is a great point. Both magic and psi can mean a wide range of different things and be handled by a wide range of different practices, and there may be a fair amount of overlap in some systems, even essentially being the same thing.

I've generally usually ignored and not used psi in most of my games, because of the forms I first ran into it, which were:

* 5th grade D&D players who somehow thought there was a rule where you rolled d100 if you had some level of IQ or higher, and if you rolled 00, it meant you could take an action to have someone's head explode.
* The film _The Fury_ which I accidentally saw when I was young, where some kids have psi powers and can levitate people and tear them apart by thinking.
* The film _The Omen_, which seemed to me like a Catholic demonic version of the same thing.
* Other psi films which similarly seem to be about "some people can think and kill others who have little or no chance to resist".

So I didn't much care for the idea of some people who just sort of have the ability to think and have people die without much the victims can do about it. That just tends to keep seeming to me like a nightmare universe that's horrible and arbitrary and unfair in a way that there doesn't seem to be much way to resist in any way that seems very interesting.

If the abilities are much more limited, I think it can be more interesting.

If psi means some limited telepathy, energy sensitivity, interacting with spirits, empathy, premonitions, intuition, suggestion, dream skills, and perhaps a little bit of TK, all of which overlaps with magic, then I'm happy with that.

I've also always fairly liked the narrative description of TFT's magic system, which seems to be mainly psychic in nature, even though the use of it is pretty much all through specific learned functional spells.

Quote from: Skarg;851925I've generally usually ignored and not used psi in most of my games, because of the forms I first ran into it, which were:

It was non-existent in BX, and just short of non-existent for PCs in AD&D. 10% chance if you had 18s in the three stats. Which wasnt likely. Though we flipped INT and CHA so a good CHA score got you the 2.5/point and INT was the .5/point.

Quote from: Skarg;851925If the abilities are much more limited, I think it can be more interesting.

Me too.

I've been watching more Game of Thrones and noticing the low-fantasy feel of powers like the Wargs and Greensight... again, not spells but natural born abilities that appear. A rare person might have one, very few of those have more than one. THAT is how I'd want 'psionics' to exist in a fantasy game... not sure how such things might work in D&D, does 5e have rules for natural but limited gifts like that?

Thanks for those examples.

If I were writing a fantasy game with that sort of stuff, I'd probably call them "gifts" as you just did. I'd also pay attention to how other people would react. Magic users are bad enough, but freaks who have telepathy or TK might meet a lot of hostility

Quote from: Arminius;852002I'd also pay attention to how other people would react. Magic users are bad enough, but freaks who have telepathy or TK might meet a lot of hostility

Or they might be given positions of import close to the leaders... who would keep a close eye out for more and either employ them or kill them (as in 40K).
I'd might also rule than a person with such a gift has a leg up if they were to choose to learn formal magic at some point.

That is pretty much the Deryni series. You have hereditary psi powers and you have hereditary magic powers that can be unlocked by a psi ritual, and there was magic that could be learned. Both had limits at birth in how many things they could do if I recall correctly.

Many Colored Land limited each person to one or two talents. While a select few had more, usually inter-related to eachother. The elves and goblins had a different arrangement.

Quote from: Omega;851853I am cleaning up Kathy's book collection last night and discover she has the whole Deryni series in hardback.

On a simmilar note I have the Many colored Land series by Julian May. Which pits people with psi powers against elves in the prehistoric past. Should have been a Torg cosm.

Or a RIFTS something? That's a heck of a wild setup, and if you get tired of the Pleistocene, you can have travel back to the future hit the scene, or a Danaan or Fomor starship working.

I love Psionics. Always have. 2E D&D weirdness and all. I miss when it had it's own book in GURPS so I could build my own setting using that power set. Oh well.

Aeon, or Trinity as it was later called, from White Wolf presented an interesting psi based setting pitting psi endowed agents against former superheroes from Aberrant.

I'd also mention that pre-industrial cultures tended to have more belief not just in magic but also in limited "psi" powers such as telepathy, premonition, sensing distant information, and direction-finding. For example, there are still some indigenous people who have thought people's phones were just aids for telepathy, and who expect to already know what a hunter found before he got back from a hunt.

The stuff I avoid is when someone can find, observe and attack people from whatever distance without any particular effort, with little countermeasure, read minds, etc. and the reason is pretty much because they can and you can't.

We used them back in high school when we were playing AD&D. I use them currently in my Metamorphosis Alpha campaign, but not in my Beyond the Wall campaign.

For me their inclusion depends on the feel of the campaign I'm trying to run. They would seem out of place in Arthurian Romance, but fine in Swords & Sorcery. Not a good fit with most High Fantasy, but probably in Cyberpunk.

I like the concept, even in fantasy, but not the execution, at least not in any edition of D&D. So, apart from toying with it a little in high school when I had the 2E book, I have ignored it.

Psionics has long been a staple of fantasy, sci-fi, and RPG, and (for example) has existed in D&D since the original boxed set. it is interesting to see how various systems handled psionics and related phenomena.

From the beginning editions of D&D psionics was made available to players where it tended to be seriously randomized and occasionally extreme (i recall one character of mine that randomly rolled disintegration at first level in the 2e system....) If you don't believe me, check out the supplement 'eldritch wizardry' for the original boxed set which gave rules for psionics for all classes of characters. Amusingly enough, that supplement was released partly to 'fix' the ongoing rules creep, and to issue a rallying call of not relying upon the rules so much and using your imagination more.

latter editions of D&D (notably 3.5) made major strides at incorporating psionics into the rest of the game - and while the merits of harmonizing the psionic system with the magic system is debatable, it certainly made it accessible and easer to adjudicate, and for those interested in such things, the illusion of balance.

***

I have long enjoyed psionics in my fantasy literature (norton, brust, zelazny, and more), sci-fi literature (asimov, clark, norton, engdahl, czerneda, and more), and my gaming (D&D, Rifts, TfOS, GURPS, Heroes Unlimited, Star Frontiers, Palladium Fantasy, Amber, and more).

These days, I seldom rp anything but psionics, or at least psionically influenced.

Personally, as far as the mechanical execution of psionics goes, I think I like the GURPS take and flavor best, though it has it's pros and cons like all systems.

Quote from: nijineko;853697Psionics has long been a staple of fantasy, sci-fi, and RPG, and (for example) has existed in D&D since the original boxed set. it is interesting to see how various systems handled psionics and related phenomena.

From the beginning editions of D&D psionics was made available to players where it tended to be seriously randomized and occasionally extreme (i recall one character of mine that randomly rolled disintegration at first level in the 2e system....) If you don't believe me, check out the supplement 'eldritch wizardry' for the original boxed set which gave rules for psionics for all classes of characters. Amusingly enough, that supplement was released partly to 'fix' the ongoing rules creep, and to issue a rallying call of not relying upon the rules so much and using your imagination more.

latter editions of D&D (notably 3.5) made major strides at incorporating psionics into the rest of the game - and while the merits of harmonizing the psionic system with the magic system is debatable, it certainly made it accessible and easer to adjudicate, and for those interested in such things, the illusion of balance.

***

I have long enjoyed psionics in my fantasy literature (norton, brust, zelazny, and more), sci-fi literature (asimov, clark, norton, engdahl, czerneda, and more), and my gaming (D&D, Rifts, TfOS, GURPS, Heroes Unlimited, Star Frontiers, Palladium Fantasy, Amber, and more).

These days, I seldom rp anything but psionics, or at least psionically influenced.

Personally, as far as the mechanical execution of psionics goes, I think I like the GURPS take and flavor best, though it has it's pros and cons like all systems.

i know this is a touch off topic but could i ask how gurps psionics works i keep hearing out of peaple how good the gurps psionic system is and as a guy making an rpg im curious.

Quote from: kosmos1214;854001i know this is a touch off topic but could i ask how gurps psionics works i keep hearing out of peaple how good the gurps psionic system is and as a guy making an rpg im curious.

GURPS Psionics is a point buy system (all of GURPS is point buy) with both power and skill as separate items. Accomplishing tasks is skill based. Using psionics costs fatigue, which cost cannot be reduced below a certain level; one can spend extra fatigue and/or take skill penalties for 'extra effort' and the 'not-my-usual-thing-but-give-it-a-whirl' mechanics for extra flexibility.

powers are arranged along the real-world identified/believed-in psychic phenomena lines (extra-sensory, kinesis, telepathy, empathy, healing, teleportation, astral projection). Also contains guidelines about when "psionics" stops being psychic and starts being magic or superpowers instead; as well as notes about how to play a 'normals' game using some material from the sourcebook.


as a side note, i know of many gamers and designers both who purchase GURPS material simply as reference material, even if they never intend to play the system, on account of it almost always being very well written, researched, and referenced. I myself have found this to be true.



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