Steve Jackson Games Forums - View Single Post - Setting building help with intrigue and sci-fi

starslayer · 10-31-2015, 08:27 PM

What type of psionics are you thinking of.

Mind control/cyber control would be my thought, for a TL10 world its one of the few expressions that would still 'do anything' (In that, if people can wear TL10 armor, and use TL10 weapons, a psi who can crush someone with TK is really only better that an armed and armored person in that they cannot be disarmed).

This also feeds into the shadow world, mind control is scary, to have the final bastion of privacy being stripped away (IE the thoughts inside your own head) would be a very scary concept.

As well, mind/cyber control is not obvious and, while an order of magnitude more effective then memetics and remote hacking, remains in the realm of 'they are just that good'- so psi's can be superstars without making their power obvious; people will just believe that they are epically good hackers/social engineers and situations where there is NO way to do that with technology will be very rare.

So as for what the PCs do in this world- make them psis, and they do work for one of the shadowy organizations that knows about, shepherds, and cleans up after psis (After all the secret has been kept this long, someone is doing some work to keep it that way).

For a bit of an extra 'oomph' the psis are the result of genetic engineering with genetic information from a long extinct alien race, and so far no one knows what wiped them out.

10-31-2015, 08:27 PM	#11
starslayer Join Date: Dec 2006	Re: Setting building help with intrigue and sci-fi What type of psionics are you thinking of. Mind control/cyber control would be my thought, for a TL10 world its one of the few expressions that would still 'do anything' (In that, if people can wear TL10 armor, and use TL10 weapons, a psi who can crush someone with TK is really only better that an armed and armored person in that they cannot be disarmed). This also feeds into the shadow world, mind control is scary, to have the final bastion of privacy being stripped away (IE the thoughts inside your own head) would be a very scary concept. As well, mind/cyber control is not obvious and, while an order of magnitude more effective then memetics and remote hacking, remains in the realm of 'they are just that good'- so psi's can be superstars without making their power obvious; people will just believe that they are epically good hackers/social engineers and situations where there is NO way to do that with technology will be very rare. So as for what the PCs do in this world- make them psis, and they do work for one of the shadowy organizations that knows about, shepherds, and cleans up after psis (After all the secret has been kept this long, someone is doing some work to keep it that way). For a bit of an extra 'oomph' the psis are the result of genetic engineering with genetic information from a long extinct alien race, and so far no one knows what wiped them out.