What level of Psionics/Magic do you like in your Sci-Fi Campaign?

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by nondescript handle

I know that goes against the current 'party modeled after a SEAL team' doctrine, but I prefer it that way.

What, this? Lately, both the game I play in and the game I GM does not have 'SEAL teams' of PCs.

[nondescript handle]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

What, this? [...]

OT: Yes. My RPG style is basically the polar opposite of Kromm's "I have no patience for "lovable loser," "hero despite himself," or "distant loner" roles."

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Sunrunners_Fire

It is my understanding that you don't run one-shots with randoms in order to introduce them to the idea of roleplaying and the various genres, that instead you have a pool of candidates that you draw on to populate your table for a given game. Am I wrong in this?

Some of us do.

Then you should follow the approach that suits your needs. I'm not suggesting for a moment that everyone is obliged to share my tastes or my methods.

Bill Stoddard

[Sunrunners_Fire]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Then you should follow the approach that suits your needs. I'm not suggesting for a moment that everyone is obliged to share my tastes or my methods.

My apologies. I wasn't trying to suggest that you were. It is very much not a one-size-fits-all situation.

[Hans Rancke-Madsen]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Stick with telepathy and the traditional psychic seeing into the past and the future. The violation of conservation of energy is less blatant.

The violation of causality inherent in seeing the future is IMO a lot harder to accept that a few piddling violations of the laws of physics.


Hans

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by nondescript handle

In RPG SciFi settings with blatant superscience, I prefer said superscience to be the product of rare but powerful psi plus psychotronics.

FTL, ansibles, deflection shields, reactionless drives and the like break scientific believability anyway, and with the 'rare psi' handwave I open the stage for flawed and weird PCs to be accepted actors:
"Yes, he's a lecherous, drunken coward, but with him in the gestalt a dreadnought can jump 20 parsecs!"
"Yes, she is a moody 15 y/o and has an unhealthy obsession with boybands, but with her in the gestalt a Space Patrol cruiser has almost unbreakable deflector shields!"

I know that goes against the current 'party modeled after a SEAL team' doctrine, but I prefer it that way.

That approach can work for any rare inborn gifts, not just psionic gifts. It works less well in systems that fail to discern between that which can be learned and that which can't, though. And by "system" I include the "mental models" used by authors who write novels.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Stick with telepathy and the traditional psychic seeing into the past and the future. The violation of conservation of energy is less blatant.

But you smash headlong into issues of causality and 'action at a distance'.

Psi can be used in a hard SF scenario quite readily, but it has implications about how the universe works that a hardish setting has to account for.

(A softish one can just ignore them.)

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Hans Rancke-Madsen

The violation of causality inherent in seeing the future is IMO a lot harder to accept that a few piddling violations of the laws of physics.


Hans

Telepathy alone doesn't do to causality what FTL doesn't. Whether ESP breaks causality depends on whether the Now contains information required to vaguely predict the Later.

[Flyndaran]

At least telepathy can be handwaved easily with mild techno-babble electromagnetic communication without having too many unintended implications.
Some of my issue with creating semi-plausible psychic power is where the energy comes from. The entire body, let alone our tiny brains, can't pump out the power required to do much at a distance even if there was a way to get the energy out there.

[D10]

When I GM Sci-Fi I usually allow psionics in situations where it makes sense.

Alien societies, medical experiments, genetic enhancements, psychotronics, etc..

For standard humans, I usually allow no more than power 10 in any given area, and I assume theres some sort of static that being around lots of people generate, that makes using the powers in urban centers almost impossible unless you are on the end of the curve.