Quote:
Originally Posted by Eddie T
This brings up a design theory question. Has it been said or does anyone know why the substantial difference between Psionics and Magic exist in GURPS.
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The standard magic system, that appears in the Basic Set and GURPS Magic, is actually quite old - it dates back at least to GURPS 2e, if not earlier (I think it might actually have appeared in the very earliest GURPS products, but I'm not sure). Anyway, that age means it has some issues, stuff that I don't think would probably get put in if it was being designed with modern GURPS ideas. Notably, it allows for a lot of absolute abilities (Utter Dome/Wall spells, for example, are invulnerability, which 4e GURPS doesn't generally allow for cheap at all), and even the 4e version of Magic suffers from some conversion issues, where older terminology wasn't properly updated.
The Psionics system, on the other hand, is newer. The 3e system was introduced in that era, of course, so it's somewhat closer to modern-day GURPS. The 4e system, however, is deliberately designed to fit into current sensibilities - it takes full use of the enhancements and limitations that 4e made standard for advantages, for instance.
If you're asking "why have different systems at all", though, the answer is probably "because we can"? Expanding on that a bit, one of GURPS' strengths is that it's flexible enough to build different power systems and roughly balance them against each other. So, if you have two different sets of supernatural abilities that actually tend to work rather differently from one another, why
not build them as two separate systems, to properly model their different behaviors? Building them on the same framework means you risk warping one or the other in order to fit into a model not designed for it, dissatisfying fans of the compromised set.