[Psionics] [Space] Psi Trek - Worldbuilding

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

I have the feeling that a psionic setting with an Astral Plane is leaning more towards a horror or fantasy setting than sci-fi psionics, so introducing astral beings opens up some questions of metaphysics that you'll have to answer.

However, it's possible to make a sci-fi flavoured Astral Plane by relabelling it as "the Universal Gestalt Consciousness," "the Psionic Carrier Field" or even "the Quantum Realm," and keep most of the mechanics and just change the fluff.

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Or just the classic parallel reality with different physical laws.
But I agree aspects would tend toward Lovecraftian, D&D, or religious like later season of ST:DS9 if not carefully controlled.

My personal conception of the astral plane is that it basically is the collective unconscious of all sophonts, so 'Universal Gestalt Consciousness' or 'Psionic Carrier Field' work pretty well. 'The Quantum Realm' fits the classic 'parallel reality with different physical laws.'

On the other hand, a number of TOS episodes, and some in later series, did get Lovecraftian in places (I'm blanking on examples beyond the Jack the Ripper entity in Wolf in the Fold, but I know I thought of several others some months ago), to the point that a friend of mine once played in a Star Trek themed Call of Cthulhu campaign ('Hailing Frequencies of Cthulhu,' I think), and felt that it fit well enough.