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Psionics system feedback

Started by March 15, 2004 08:35 PM
45 comments, last by Wavinator 20 years, 9 months ago
quote: Original post by Kars
Very hard to do... a group of melded humans/channelers supply''s energy to a Enervative who "tosses" the package into sub-space/other dimension which travels in a straight line (according to the laws of sub-space/other dimension) until a similar group "catches" the package on the other end. If they miss, or the "toss" is long enough, it can be intercepted either before the receiving group can catch or after they "fumble". Items that are not "caught" are lost forever/slowly disintagrate/quickly disintegrate/explode causing the birth of a new star. Since the item is being "tossed" through the same sub-space/dimension that Psybionts live normally, there is a chance that a curious Psybionts intercepts the package and keeps it for himself/destroyers/or otherwise meddles with the package (plants bug/bomb).


Whoa, this is a cool and unusual concept. It reminds me just a bit of Julian May''s idea for "D-Jumping" in her Golden Torc series, where people ripple space-time to jump to different places and painfully "rubberband" back if they don''t do it right. I hadn''t even thought of bringing the Psybionts into the equation, but that might work. You could think of this like traveling through water with all manner of curious "fish" in the form of psionic life moving about the medium. And who''s to say that you stop only at the end? Maybe there are the equivalent of "islands" you have to travel to in order to successfully jump all the way. These could be places of weird adventure, dunno.

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- channelers and enervatives hunting down the heretic communes who are most likely working for/as smugglers and could be in trouble with the local law anyway.


Yes, that''s cool.

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- enervatives offer finder fees to any Psybiont that intercepts a tossed package since they work with Psybiont on a relatively regular basis anyway.


Aha! Very interesting!

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- Channelers can "link" togeater to create a psionic web to interfere with/stop tosses.
- You wouldn''t be able to "toss" packages to planets that don''t have receivers so someone would still need to take the slow boat to the destination.


This actually could explain a little glitch I have in my backstory, which is the question of why does a 3 million year old empire only control so little space (1 thousand cubic light years). Perhaps they never developed a sufficient jump drive because their transport web was an economic disincentive. Now, the upstart humans and other races didn''t have that advantage, so they developed technology.

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Pictures this. A small group of heretic communes are trapped on a small moon with no way off and an advancing army of channelers. The group does some quick calculations, contacts another heretic commune group half way across the system and then proceed to "toss" themselves (assuming you allow this) as a last resort escape plan.

or

A small group of heretic communes are trapped on a small moon with no way off and an advancing army of channelers. The channelers realize that the heretic commune is about to toss themselves to safety. All the channelers "link" powers causing a psionic net to be formed keeping the heretics in or otherwise interfering with the "toss". The heretic commune still have a chance to sneak out since the channelers are busy creating the web.


This is just great material for missions and game world events, and would be an excellent way of drawing the player into different sides of the conflict. And it could be made morally complex, too. The heretics, despite being the underdogs, wouldn''t always be good guys-- maybe they harbor criminals and pirates because it serves their cause of getting out of dodge at the drop of a hat. And maybe those hunting them have some really good reasons besides ideology for doing so.


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Just waiting for the mothership...
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quote: Original post by ahw
Now for a cool idea that''s a pot pourri of other ideas...


Hey, sorry for the delay in replying, I''ve been busy with school work. These are very good ideas.

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It''s a realm of primordial Chaos, where Space and Time are much less rigid than in normal space ... meaning it''s bloody convenient for interstellar travel.
The only problem is that it''s bloody dangerous too !


You''ll be happy to know that I''ve already made warp travel dangerous for other reasons-- namely so you could have something to do with your crew of people aboard your ship while traveling to different stars. Having ghosts and creatures there was already in the cards, and I didn''t even know about Warhammer, honest!

quote: Conceptually, you could look at Warp space like the other side of reality, the side that hasnt "formed" and crystalised, but instead is pure potential.


The "quantum foam" filled with strange matter and virtual particles...

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What I am trying to show here, is the cycling nature of things.
Now the channelers tap into the Prime that everything around them is based on, because they can see/feel it and have a natural potential at doing so.


This is interesting. Now, in my dichotomy, they tap into the radiated residue of life. Here, they tap into something that''s a fundamental part of existence.

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Whereas the enervatives (I still dont like that name, BTW)

Suggest a better one?

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realise that they are a sublime form of the various spheres of
reality, Life, Mind and Spirit all in one. Their introspective nature has lead them to awaken that part of them, which they think is a part of every sentient being, that allow them to manipulate that energy they are made of.
Some of them extend those powers to manipulate the reality around them, but they would be the odd ones.


This is cool, but as a playable group, enervatives would only be able to heal themselves and defend, practically speaking-- and that makes them a bit too wimpy for my tastes.

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***(kicked out AGAIN)


Don''t you just love school facilities?



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Just waiting for the mothership...
--------------------Just waiting for the mothership...
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quote: Original post by TechnoGoth
speaking of controlling space travel, there are two classics refrences to choose from. The dune version where the guild navigators are the only ones who possess the abilite to travel through space and thus they control all interstellar travel.

Or the Last Exile version which is set on a planet and could, there is a group also called the guild that are the only ones the possess the technology to build flight engines, this is technology they so jelously guard that the core of each ship, which is where the power of flight comes from is enclosed environment manned and maintened by a member of the guild. The guild thus control the world since flight travel is the only means of travel from one place to another and with the guild you can''t move your ships, the guild also has the ability to recall the cores at will causing the ship to crash. There was also one faction that had recently managed to create their own flight engines but they only had 2 vessels.


Thanks for the reference. The guild navigator approach works for the Zelenae, who are psionic demigods. But for a large portion of the universe I really want to use a Cowboy Bebop universe, where, despite all logic and economics to the contrary, groups of small individuals can own ships and get into adventures amongst the stars. Pure space opera, but I got over my guilt of being cheesy once I saw how fun the idea could be.



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Just waiting for the mothership...
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quote: Original post by Dobbs
I like the idea of psymbionts as ghosts. It could lead to a different style of play as a ''harvester'' psionicist. You hunt down other psionicists, kill them, and then absorb the psymbionts that their deaths generate. Don''t have enough money to learn telepathy from some teacher? Kill him instead and take it. This would presumably make you a sort of outlaw psionicist, reviled and hunted by the rest.


*furiously scribbles great idea into design doc*

You know, for every time I met a teacher in Morrowind who wouldn''t teach me and made me instead click-click-click forever... this would have been a great idea...


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Just waiting for the mothership...
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quote: Original post by CyberSlag5k
Looks like you''ve put alot of thought into this and it looks good to me. It''s an interesting twist on the similar, more traditional systems. I like it.


Thanks for taking the time to comment!

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First, psychocreative seems a bit unbalanced and unrealistic compared to the others. Tornados and earthquakes, for example, are a bit much when compared to the scope of the other talents.


Let me stress that these would be VERY high-level powers. Their equivalents would be city-sized psychic shields, mass amnesia, the ability to remote heal everyone within a ship, etc.

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Also, anything on a molecular level would require the psionicist to be able to observe these events. Even if he/she does so psychicly, it still seems a stretch that the psionicist could fabricate such a complex, precise change, especially on a level beyond normal perception.


Very true, but this presupposes that they can "sense" what is happening and what they need to do. I would see this less as a linear, logical process and more as a holistic, parallel process whereby the psionicist gets intuitive hits that tells her how to apply her power, where, when and how much.


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Also, how is death to be handled, both in and out of character? If you die, are you dead for good? Obviously not out of character but is this also the case in character? Or is there some form of resurrection.


There is no in-game restoration planned as I write this beyond restoring saved games.

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That may be a little sticky if you figure they have to do it to learn it and they die if they cease the connection. I know, that''s a bit anal, but it''s just something to consider.


Actually, don''t worry about this one. There''s no way for the player to accidently disconnect, this is just an explanation of WHY they don''t get to make changes once they take the joined psybiont on. There''s no real, in-game way to mess up.


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Good luck!


Thanks!


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Just waiting for the mothership...
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quote: Original post by Wavinator
quote:
What I am trying to show here, is the cycling nature of things.
Now the channelers tap into the Prime that everything around them is based on, because they can see/feel it and have a natural potential at doing so.


This is interesting. Now, in my dichotomy, they tap into the radiated residue of life. Here, they tap into something that''s a fundamental part of existence.


Well, the way I was seeing it, Prime concentrated around stars and planets and other things, whereas in deep space it''s kinda stretched thin. (I think I wrote that somewhere else.)
What you are saying is, after things die, they go back to their Primal state, and before they are *recycled* by the universe, they can be tapped upon by the channelers ?
I like that too
To be honest I am weaving using the ideas from Mage and Wraith and kinda trying to scale them up to the universe.


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Whereas the enervatives (I still dont like that name, BTW)

Suggest a better one?


I think it''s because in French "enerver" means "to annoy", so it kinda sounds weird. Like your evervatives ares "Mr Furious" or something
I was thinking "introspective".
Those who have been taught into some sort of school think of channelers as lazy ass who dont bother understanding what they are doing and just wield power as a teenager would wield a loaded gun.
Obviously the channelers view the introspective as utter bores who cant see what''s around them and restrict themselves by closing their minds.

quote:
quote:
realise that they are a sublime form of the various spheres of
reality, Life, Mind and Spirit all in one. Their introspective nature has lead them to awaken that part of them, which they think is a part of every sentient being, that allow them to manipulate that energy they are made of.
Some of them extend those powers to manipulate the reality around them, but they would be the odd ones.


This is cool, but as a playable group, enervatives would only be able to heal themselves and defend, practically speaking-- and that makes them a bit too wimpy for my tastes.


Yes, that thought crossed my mind as I was writing this. It''s kinda wrong isnt it. But I was thinking maybe instead of limiting, like I suggested earlier, you can just give a slight advantage one way or the other.
Channelers are good with everything around them, whereas enervative/introspective are good with themselves.

This would just help players during character creation by showing them "typical" styles of powers, without blocking the way for the odd character that breaks the mold and want to widen their horizons.

quote:
quote:
***(kicked out AGAIN)


Don''t you just love school facilities?

Well, the way I see it, if it''s free, I try not to complain

PS: the GDNet staff icon suits you very well. I almost thought it was real for a second

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quote: Original post by ahw
Well, the way I was seeing it, Prime concentrated around stars and planets and other things, whereas in deep space it''s kinda stretched thin. (I think I wrote that somewhere else.)
What you are saying is, after things die, they go back to their Primal state, and before they are *recycled* by the universe, they can be tapped upon by the channelers ?
I like that too


Cool. I have some other reasons why I don''t want to directly go with Prime, btw, as they relate to the game''s backstory and what the universe is or isn''t.


quote:
I think it''s because in French "enerver" means "to annoy", so it kinda sounds weird. Like your evervatives ares "Mr Furious" or something
I was thinking "introspective".
Those who have been taught into some sort of school think of channelers as lazy ass who dont bother understanding what they are doing and just wield power as a teenager would wield a loaded gun.
Obviously the channelers view the introspective as utter bores who cant see what''s around them and restrict themselves by closing their minds.


Ahhh, I see. I was using enervative as "energy draining" or almost like "tiring." Introspective at least locally where I live has a connotation of being a "navel gazer." You spend so much time looking at your own belly-button that you don''t get anything else done. Language is funny.

quote:
quote:
This is cool, but as a playable group, enervatives would only be able to heal themselves and defend, practically speaking-- and that makes them a bit too wimpy for my tastes.


Yes, that thought crossed my mind as I was writing this. It''s kinda wrong isnt it. But I was thinking maybe instead of limiting, like I suggested earlier, you can just give a slight advantage one way or the other.
Channelers are good with everything around them, whereas enervative/introspective are good with themselves.

This would just help players during character creation by showing them "typical" nostyles of powers, without blocking the way for the odd character that breaks the mold and want to widen their horizons.


This is a good point, however if I make the enervatives very good at self-motification, what this leads to practically speaking is the ability to "cure" or remove psychic status effects, like panic or psychosis, more effectively, and heal themselves more quickly. But what I imagine in a dual is that the enervative then gets the ability to constantly NEGATE effects, which leads to tedious gameplay. Have you ever fought an enemy in a game that could constantly and quickly heal itself? This is what I see battles becoming: Long, drawn out affairs because the enervative keeps healing.

Then, again, maybe this would be okay because the enervative psionicist would eventually run out of juice.

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PS: the GDNet staff icon suits you very well. I almost thought it was real for a second


Haha, I rather liked the Gestapo tag that appeared on April 1st. (Twisted sense of humor that I have )



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Just waiting for the mothership...
--------------------Just waiting for the mothership...

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