quote: Original post by TechnoGoth
It may be effectivie to have all Talents divided into two catagories, Macro and Micro. What they mean is the kind of targets the abilites are designed to work on and they impact who the psionic was trained. A Micro talent affects small things like people or small objects. While a Macro power is designed to effect large things such as starships.

Very good. I like this.

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You could balance them by making Micro and Macro talents mutelly exlusive, so a psionic can only be trained in one catagory of powers.

Hmmm... This might work as well because both are powerful in the right situations.

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It would serve to seperate the two and allow interesting gameplay. After all with Macro psionic would be uselss in hand to hand combat. But you could use him to attack other ships or mellow your crew down in times of stress or even psyciclly spy on them.

Okay, I''m warming to this idea. It would make for good tradeoffs for NPCs. For PCs, it just might mean that they''d have to have a few Psionicist NPCs if they wanted to cover all the powers. This would make the game more tactical and the individual player less godly.

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Does this include psychic force shields for my ship?

It does now.

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It might be good to have the personalites have a certain opinion to the use of phsyicic powers and their use of themselves. For instance many crew members may become angry if they discover that your using telepaths to make them happy or monitior their activies.

Exactly. (See post above.)

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I don''t know if having restore itive items is a good idea, afterall this is suppose to by the characters mental energy, and a substance that give an artificaly boost of mental energy can''t be healthy it might have longterm health hazards. It might be better to have no restoritive items or only dangerous ones. In this way you can make enratives useful for only limited periods budgeting their use. They have the advantage of being able to use their power anywhere, but on the down size they have limited energy to call upon and have to rest before they can be useful again.

This is a nice tradeoff. If the channelers are restricted to the environment and vulnerable to psi-dampening fields and effects, then it might make sense to do this for the enervatives. I will have to be careful, though, to make it so that channelers can''t just hole up in a psi-rich environment and dominate.

Or maybe that is okay? Maybe if enervatives are attacking entrenched channelers, they must favor tactics that resolve the fight quickly?

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What if instead when you attach a psybiont it permently reduces some factor caused by its sharing you body. Perhaps each psybiont permently reduces your will power one point or permently decrease your max energy as long as it remains a resident?

So the cost of having more variety in talents would be lowered overall energy or psi-defense? I''m not sure about this one. It does present another good tradeoff. What I want is for there to be some Talents that can be used as long as you have energy, and others only usuable a few times between rest periods. For the player who doesn''t use a psybiont, their strategic flexibility is limited. For the player who does, the energy negotiation gimmick means that whatever the Talent the psybiont has, it can only be used infequently.

I do like the further tradeoff of lower Will, the psionic defense. But if I change the negotiation idea, the player will be able to powermax on psybionts and talents.

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Sounds more like a parasite then a virus. Ever consider the mental straning that having the creature invade the characters mind would inflict?

Heh. It''s hard to say because these things are on par with magic rather than physics.

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Perhaps theres is chance that a parasite could cause demintia, or drasticly alter the characters personality.

Not bad. Maybe I need another psybiont: Parasite, that acts like the virus but actually eats away at mental faculties.

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Also does the player know when a character is infected?

No. The NPC informs them, though.

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It could be good if they arn''t, perhaps that could even be a power belonging to the Prescient school that allows you to known when a character is infected.

Yes, I will add this.

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Oh that gives me another idea what about engineered psybionts? These are lifeforms created for the sole perpuose of infecting another psionic. There could be all manner such turning the psionic into a walking audio visual camera transmiting its thoughts to another psionic far away trained to recive that meesage.

I like this. It would be a matter of implementation, though. I''d planned to have a device that allows the player to switch characters. That''s a bit different from gleaning useful surveillance info from an unwiting spy, though.

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Or perhaps turn the psionic into a puppet that you can control at will.

Now your talking!

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Or maybe superimposing another personality onto the victim one more accomidating to your cause. Naturally the use and creation of thes kind of psybionts would be something looked on favorably by most people as such it could be consider criminal or even an atrocity to use them.

Hmmm... I''d be happier putting this kind of stuff into devices rather than psybionts. However, there''s no reason the two ideas couldn''t mix to form a "cursed artifact" idea. Maybe you engineer a psybiont and place it into an object. Then the object becomes like a bomb that causes an effect (personality swap, or loyalty switch).

One neat thing about this would be that powers which I consider unbalanced (such as the ability to drain enemy HP and make them your own) could work with this expanded psybiont idea. Psybionts would grow from being extenders of psi abilities to more three-dimensional presences in the game.

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Will there be a psyonic faction in the game? Perhaps something like the psycore from bablyon 5.

I have no shame in stealing this for the Terrans, and there is a tall, gold-skinned humanoid species that doesn''t use any tech, only organic ships and cities and psi. I have a couple of ideas, such as a church whose goddess teaches followers to immolate themselves and their surroundings using psi energy; or cults organized around a psionically powerful artifact...


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Just waiting for the mothership...

quote: Original post by Iron Chef Carnage
I'm wondering about the mechanics of the Psymbionts. Are Psymbionts capable of acting on their own, without a host? Are they intelligent? Can they speak, or give the host memories and knowledge from past hosts? I like the idea of psymbionts, and am curious to learn more about your idea.

It sounds like I'm going to have to flesh these guys out! Psybionts (or maybe Psymbionts, as I said I like your spelling) are supposed to be disembodied fragments of consciousness. They're the remnants of minds that knew psionics so well that part of the being survived after death. I saw them surviving by hanging around psionically charged spaces-- areas where millions of minds have lived and died, leaving psionic energy imprinted in matter of the physical environment.

I did not see them as fully sentient, more like a half-asleep person floating in a dream. They have some will of their own, but can't exist without a mind or environment to draw energy from. There were to be two varieties: Benign psybionts, those belonging to a being that lived relatively peacefully; and malignant psybionts, those that belonged to a being that died a horrible death or committed atrocities in life using psionics.

I didn't see them as having memories of their own. Although writing this right now gives me some ideas. I could further develop psybionts into shades of personalities-- not too much, so as not to upstage NPC personalities. I could also give the player status effects as a result of psybionts (negative, such as nightmares that affect stats like alertness when you awaken; or positive ones, like increased effectiveness in some mental areas). I could also give the player knowledge of map coordinates, with events attached to them. For example, you could "know" that there's a derelict ship in a particular part of the galaxy. I could also be very fuzzy about this, maybe suggestion constellations or geographic features rather than exact coordinates.

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Tangentially, I know that your design is more than just a psionics system, but would it be possible for multiple psionic characters to "join forces" to do greater tasks?

I've been toying with this idea since reading a novel by Julian May where people did just that (called "metaconcerts"). It would be interesting to be able to deliver "stacks" of effects in one go. Say, you could simultaneously accelerate a boulder at somebody and make it more dense, causing increased damage.

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It would be neat to see ships shielded by a team of Psionic crew members, who work in groups to do things like plot the ship's course or analyze other ships.

Yes, I've got this idea that human psionicists float in these ice-cold tanks of superconducting material and act as devices on some ships, either in tandem or independently to tech items. I'd planned different types of energy, as well, and liked the idea that some ships could even run off of psi energy. (Of course, the monsters in the game that just LOVE psi energy, the Siegers, would be attracted to such a ship if they were around).

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Heck, you could make a gameworld in which absolutely everything, from anti-gravity to faster-than-light travel to weapons and defensive systems are generated and controlled psionically. I doubt that's the direction you're going, but I thought I'd throw it out there.

No, actually, as I wrote in a post above, there is a "zero-technology" society (called the Zelenae) that uses organic shells for ships and cities, and psionics for everything else. The backbone of their society are the Waymakers, psionic ferryman who can teleport goods and passengers across planetary surfaces. These people use psionics to stimulate food growth (controlling weather and bacteria in the soil); construct the few materials they need by shaping matter with telekenisis; and travel the stars in organic ships they meld with in order to travel FTL. All heavy lifting, defense, and terraforming are done with psionics. Their planets are absolute edens due to mental weather control. Though individuals, they telepathically merge with their brethren almost all the time. They have almost no crime and no war amongst themselves and live for thousands of years (again because of the ability to restore their cells telekenetically).

Their only problem is the meaning of life, and this creates a serious philosophical schism between the society's militarist, expansionist enervatives and eco-minded, deist channellers.

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Just waiting for the mothership...

[edited by - wavinator on March 18, 2004 3:58:35 AM]

quote: Original post by Iron Chef Carnage
Another thing I''m overtly stealing from Heinlein is the idea of "psionic vision". Maybe you could put this in with prescience, but Heinlein had a power that allowed his psionics to see into closed boxes or read closed books. Not quite x-ray vision, and distinct from telepathy, it was more like ESP. It could be used like a lockpicking skill, with players or characters trying to look past solid objects or around corners.

This would be very easy to do. For objects, it would be giving the players a peek at the inventory screen (say, of a crate) without trapping any non-psi related traps. And it could be extended into a kind of astral projection that allows players to wander through doors.



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Just waiting for the mothership...

Your system seems very similar to Psionics in the AD&D 2nd Edition Dark Sun capaign. You might want to get one of those source books are the ''The Complete Psionisist Handbook''.

hmm, it almost seems like you are saying that psybionts are ghost of psionics. If they perhaps you could work that some how into the game. Maybe they react to the places of their death or when they meet their killers. Perhaps generating a quest or event, That provides a one time benefit.

You could make the quest sutble such as you come across a derlict ship when all of sudden you feel an urge to explore it. Inside you discover the remins of a long dead pilot, and you can''t help feel that this person diserves a prober burial.

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So the cost of having more variety in talents would be lowered overall energy or psi-defense? I''m not sure about this one. It does present another good tradeoff. What I want is for there to be some Talents that can be used as long as you have energy, and others only usuable a few times between rest periods. For the player who doesn''t use a psybiont, their strategic flexibility is limited. For the player who does, the energy negotiation gimmick means that whatever the Talent the psybiont has, it can only be used infequently.

I do like the further tradeoff of lower Will, the psionic defense. But if I change the negotiation idea, the player will be able to powermax on psybionts and talents.

hmm, I''m a little confused. Do psybionts have their own supply of energy that is used when their talent is invoked and supplied from part of the characters energy. Or does the energy used to invoke the talent come from the player? I assumed it came from the player, and that the psymbiont simply provided an additonal talent.

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Writer, Programer, Cook, I''m a Jack of all Trades
Current Design project
Chaos Factor Design Document

This idea is absolutely fascinating. I''m a little worried, however, because I and apparently some of the other posters on this thread are not able to see the "big picture" of your design. I think that I for one am putting too many eggs in the psionics basket, some of which might fit better under technomancy or some other category of which I''m not even aware. I trust that you will be able to rework any suggestions to derive maximum benefit from them.

quote: Original post by Wavinator

quote: I''d be careful about permanently reducing a character''s psionic capacity when they leave, though, and I actually find the "MP" feel of it to be a little distasteful.

MP? Not sure what you mean here.

With an enervative psionic, the system feels a little bit like the "magic points" (MP) system found in many RPGs. One of the things that I found most annoying about the Super Star Wars games was the fact that Luke Skywalker had a "Force Meter", and whenever he did something using the Force, it would deplete. You had to pick up little items to refill it. That seemed so dumb to me.

There''s a flash game at Adult Swim''s webpage based on the anime show Inuyasha. In it, you use a stamina/energy supply to perform different maneuvers in a simple duelling system. Each maneuver has a cost associated with it, and you regain a small amount each turn. If you are getting low on juice, though, and need a boost, you can sacrifice an active turn to perform a charging move, which doesn''t attack or defend, but instead builds up your energy for the next turn. That seems more like how an enervative psionic would regain energy, instead of using an item.

Another example is the Musou Meter in the Dynasty Warriors games. It fills when you kill people or as you lose health, sort of like a limit break system, and when it''s full you can do special moves and whatnot. If you want to just fill it without fighting, you can stand still and hold in the special attack button. You are vulnerable and stationary, but your meter fills up. Maybe the enervative psionic could recharge (perhaps at a rate determined by the psionic "richness" of his surroundings) by meditating or performing some kind of mental exercise. Temporary vulnerability and uselessness in exchange for increased potency later on.

This idea gets better and better as I read more about it. I can''t wait to learn more about the world you''re building. You''ve obviously put a great deal of effort into it, and I''m dying to learn about the races and the world. Fascinating.

quote: Original post by Iron Chef Carnage

With an enervative psionic, the system feels a little bit like the "magic points" (MP) system found in many RPGs. One of the things that I found most annoying about the Super Star Wars games was the fact that Luke Skywalker had a "Force Meter", and whenever he did something using the Force, it would deplete. You had to pick up little items to refill it. That seemed so dumb to me.

A trade off could be physical or mental, losing stamina IE. less effective aiming (due to shaking) / melee.

As usual, you come up with great ideas Wavy :-)

Some thoughts on the psymbiots :

I am starting to get a feel that those psymbiots (I am pronouncing that like "symbiots" in Stargate) are jsut ghosts really.
I dunno if you know the roleplaying game called Wraith, but basically, you play ghosts. And there are a LOT of concepts developed in there that seem to resonate with ideas you are talking about here.
One of those is the importance of willpower.
A ghost exists because it wants to, because it has/had some unfinished business.
This in turn binds the ghosts (I am using "ghost" here, but you can hopefully draw parallels for yourself) to places, to people.
There is only two possibilities for a ghost, ultimately.
Oblivion or Transcendance.

Now imagine your psymbiots as ghosts.
Why are they psionics creatures ? Because they are pure willpower.
The problem is that they have their own internal conflict, one side wants to give up, go to sleep, embrace Oblivion. The other wants to live again, to reincarnate, whatever.

If you expand the concept of ghosts to alien races, you can have some very strange and hard to understand "ghosts", you call them psymbiots.
There are also those beings which are the very stuff of collective consciousness. Created from the nightmares or dreams of people. Those dont know about being alive, having a body, they are curious, possibly friendly beings when formed from dreams. Needless to say their nightmarish counterparts are the bane of living beings and want nothing more than to abuse or destroy life.

So you would still have your nomenclature of more or less powerful psymbiots, depending on how long they have existed in that form,
then you would have their origin : are they of the same species as the psionists, are they from an alien species, or are they creatures of sheer phantasm ?
then what is their alignment/goal : Oblivion or Transcedence. Are they benevolent towards life or not, do they seek to corrupt and destroy the psionist to feed on her once he is dead and a newly born psymbiot ? Or do they just want a master/friend because they feel so alone and miss being alive ?

Ultimately, even if the psymbiots can help the psionist, they feed on her. The question is, is the loss worth the gains ?
Abuse the use of psymbiots and ultimately, they will erode your sanity, feed on your emotions, drain your willpower, your spakle of life, turning you into an empty shell of a living being.

This leads me to my second thought...

What is psychic energy ?

Now, I love the concept of channeler/enervator.
The way I see it, the enervative type is your typical monk, using his Chi to gain superhuman powers.

What I am having trouble with is the channeler. The concept is sound and all, but how do you decide the amount of energy available ?

I am considering several ideas :

1) the small god (as in Terry Pratchett''s novels)
that kind of channeler feeds on the beliefs of people, their faith in him. Potentially they are Gods.
They can be like the Warhammer Orks shaman that gets more powerful attacks as the crowd around him gets bigger.
Or he could be the Emperor of a realm, worshipped as a living god (think Pharaohs), able to control the weather and generally whoop ass on a biblical level.

the downside is that this kind of person is tied to a crowd that believes in his powers. If that crowd dissapears, or if the belief is shattered, it''s back to square one.
he can feed on faith if it''s not directed at him, but it''s not as powerful. Holy places, places of worship, statues and other icons are the kind of items/locations that give off residual energy that can be used by the channeler.

The belief of the target (for people) also tend to slightly affect the resistance of any powers on them.
This sort of channeler tend to come from low technology civilisations, making it a big problem for the channeler to travel to high tech places, or to affect science based civilisations.

2) the empathic.
this guy feeds on emotions. A cheering crowd, a haunted house, a cemetary at night, a fight. All this emotional situations and places give the channeler power.
The trick is, the emotions tend to "taint" the channeler.
So a happy crowd will make the empath happy, and will make his powers more "happy" (how a wall of power can be happy... that''s a good question), while a place of death and sorrow will impede the character, making him relive those bad events.
In general, the empathic needs life around him to function properly. so deserts, deep space and other secluded places, unless they still resonate from extinct lifeforms are very hard on this type of channeler

3) the solar energy kind.
this is the star travelling channeler. his power are based on light and solar energy. The closer he is to a star, the stronger his power get. Solar flares, solar storms all affect him.
Possibly he literally shines whenever he uses his powers. And the light reflects the dominant star in the system he is (so near a red dwarf, he would shines dark red...)
Deep space (and to a much lesser extent night time) affect this channeler''s powers to a certain extent.
the ultimate place to avoid would be near a black hole, or other places where the light of day never had a chance to shine.

4) the chtonic kind.
Similar to the solar kind, expect that this one needs to be close to planets to feed. Deep space, and space stations are not very good places, whereas underground complexes, mines, mountains are great spots.

well, anyway, the point is, if you can explain WHAT channeled psionic energy is, you could design the channeler class a bit more clearly.

as a side note, the advantages of having a psymbiots become obvious for the channeler that is in a deprived environment.
The empath going to deep space in a cryotank will particularly appreciate the company of psymbiots to keep her happy during the flight but also to have some sort of back up power source.


the Psionic schools

I have thought about it and I cant help but put my two cents (based on Mage the Ascension RPG).

scale and precision
I think you could have some sort of value that indicates the particular scale to which a psionist uses her powers.
Telekinesis is manipulation of Matter and Forces. The question is, to what scale are you working.
Someone generating dampening shields for a starship is working or a large scale (Macro seems appropriate indeed), whereas someone trying to manipulate the very atoms that make up an object is working on a much finer scale (call it Nano), while someone levitating objects is working again on a different scale (Micro seemed good to me, too).

Being proficient on one doesnt necessarily prevent a psionist to work on another scale, but it should, to a certain extent.
For someone used to blastin ships by unleashing force waves at them, it should certainly take some mental exercise to affect
another person''s body on the molecular level without blasting them to little bits...

a different classification

the various schools are based around what is being manipulated by the psionists.
The first thing is to be able to "grasp" and feel the energy/things being manipulated. Which means that the first kind of power a psionist of any school would get would be the ability to detect that particular thing they are used to manipulate.

1) Forces and Matter
this is the basis of telekinesis.
The psionist manipulate the various forces around him, such as kinetic energy, gravity, magnetism, and can redirect them/reshape them.
at the Nano level, you could affect the Forces between atoms, effectively destroying or strengthening the very atomic structure of the target, and so manipulating their Matter.

Blowing things up, frying them, throwing a stone at supersonic speed are the kind of offensive things that can be achieved here.
Creating dampening shield, anti gravity, affecting light so that you become invisible, are more defensive aspects of this school.

2) Mind and Spirit
this is the basis for telepathy.
This school is interested in the manipulation of the mind, be it inside a body, or an ethereal manifestation (that would be the psymbiots, possibly ?)

3)Entropy
this is the basis for prescience.
Each and every action we do affects our lives. The flap of the wings of a butterfly can create a cyclone on the other side of the world.
This school teaches you to SEE the Chaos in the universe, and then to affect it.
You can predict the future because you can see the sequences of little events affecting one another and ending up doing what you want. By doing the right thing at the right time, you can affect the outcome of a situation. In a fight, you see the patterns of positions that the opponents take, you see the repercutions of each step they take, etc.
If you walked into a Casino, the sheer amount of randomness would give you a headache

4) Psi-energy
This school deals with the very stuff that makes psionic powers exist in the first place.
As shown by the channeler kind of psionists, Psi energy is something that can vary in quality and quantity and that can be manipulated.
By doing so, you get the powers that you described as psycho generative

5) Life
I would personally have another category which deals with lifeforms. Life itself is a strange concept, and this school would study it in depth and allow the psionists to manipulate Life. Healing, mutations, shapeshifting, sensing life and so on.


The psychocreative school is now integrated in the Forces and Matter school. My opinion is that you should have Forces and Matter separate, in fact.
The psychocreative school being a Nano level manipulation of Matter.

Now, by combining various schools (Mage the Ascension calls them Spheres), you can do some pretty amazing things.
As you begin, you can usually do thing on a normal scale (human scale). As you progress in power, the magnitude of the effects you can achieve increases too, but as I said earlier, it would be interesting to make it difficult for someone used to work on a certain scale to have troubles with another.

Anyway, that''s me for now
I hope you find some of my thoughts useful.

Sancte Isidore ora pro nobis !

I''d like to see the psionic energy that channelers tap into as a sort of metaphysical overlay to the world. There would be areas of high concentration and areas of low concentration, but instead of being generated by areas of great catastrophes or other psionic nexus, have the energy flowing throughout the universe, and have these psionis loci serve as gravitational bodies for the energy. Nuked out space stations and glassed planets would still be areas of very high concentration, but there would be swirls, eddies and currents of psi coursing through the metaphysical topography of space.

Perhaps the Zelenae have charts of these currents, and use them to plan their shipping routes and colonies. It would be like the ancient maritime charts, with "doldrums" in areas of minimal psi and "Here Be Siegers" written over areas where ships had been lost. Other psi-sensitive races and characters could learn about these patterns as well, perhaps with a specialized form of prescience or ESP, but no doubt the Zelenae would have the most sophisticated documentation. Perhaps they would guard it jealously. You''ll have to tell us more about this world, Wavinator, before I start getting too used to my own ideas of what these critters are like.

quote: Original post by yspotua
Your system seems very similar to Psionics in the AD&D 2nd Edition Dark Sun capaign. You might want to get one of those source books are the ''The Complete Psionisist Handbook''.

Thanks for the reference. I''m sure there are some ideas I could stea-- *ahem* err... check out for inspiration.



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Just waiting for the mothership...