Zhodani without Psi

[Malenfant]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

The answer is simply that having a Psiocracy is a distinctive enough idea to be worth playing with. We surely don't "need" it, though it is hard to picture the Zho as the Zho without it. But it is interesting, and being interesting is good enough of a reason. Having a Psiocracy is also a great "what-if"

yeah, but it's an unnecessary one. The Psi is one means to get the interesting society, but there are otherr more mundane ways to still have a similar kind of society. I think the meat of the 'what if' concerns the nature of the society itself, not the means in which it got there.

As for "supernatural" psi, the proper term is "preternatural". Supernatural must come from a source outside the universe(which is why even Greek gods are not "supernatural"). That is neither here nor there.

Well that's the word the OP used. Though in the OTU isn't psi supposed to have something to do with jumpspace? So technically it IS supernatural...

Part of the reason I sounded irritated is that I suspect, like several people here apparently, that you have a prejudice against soft sci-fi as a genre. Traveller is soft sci-fi and Psi belongs in it.

That is "neither here nor there" for this discussion though. This has nothing to do with my "prejudices" - I'm just asking "why not just remove all the supernatural/preternatural/magic/whatever you want to call it powers" because I think that's an interesting angle to take (and it's in line with the title of the thread). Merely replacing the Psi with some other form of technological mind control doesn't really that change much in broad terms.

The Psi angle makes the whole thing feel 'telegraphed' IMO - the imperium hates psi, the zhos use psi, therefore the imperium hates the zhos. It's too obvious for my taste, and I don't think the psi is even necessary to make the zhos an interesting 'bad guy'.

And we've been told not to restart the discussion of what genre Traveller is supposed to be, so I won't answer that part.