Psi as Magic

dataweaver · 03-25-2011, 04:36 PM

I really liked the first Pyramid article in David Pulver's "Eidetic Memory" column, "Psi as Magic". In addition to the reasons given in the article, there's the additional advantage that Psi-as-Magic intuitively represents a trope that Psi-as-Powers only handles counterintuitively: namely, the idea that psychic powers are an innate human potential shared by everyone in theory - though in practice, only a rare few have sufficient aptitude to do anything useful with it.

That said, there was one line in the article that got me to thinking: "It wasn’t as flexible, but it was easier to use for players who were comfortable with the GURPS Magic rules, and proved to be a good fit for some types of campaigns."

OK; so Psi-as-Magic isn't as flexible as Psi-as-Powers. I'm not quite sure why this is, although I suspect that it might have something to do with the narrowness of effect of the typical spell. Still, I'll take it as a given. So why not apply some options to make it more flexible?

The first possibility for doing this is right there in the Basic Set: Ritual Magic. With this approach, each psionic power group becomes a Path, with the individual "spells" becoming Techniques. Two problems arise with this: first, you'd need a central VH "controlling skill" to act as a cap on the various Psi Paths. Second, having one Psi Talent per Path (in effect, a set of one-skill Talents) feels wrong. That said, both of these issues can be addressed with a minimum of trouble: if need be, you could just create a new IQ/VH skill called "Psionics" to act as a core skill; and if you don't like the idea of one-skill Talents, just replace the individual Talents with a single Psi Talent that applies to all of them.

That said, one reason why Psi-as-Magic system goes with separate Psi Talents per power group is because psychics tend not to branch out all that readily. On occasion, you might have a telepath who is also an esper and/or a psychokinetic; but for the most part, they don't mix. Without separate Talents to enforce this division, how do you keep things separate? One possible answer is in Thaumatology, in the "Strange Paths" box: in terms of Psi-as-Ritual Magic, the GM might require an Unusual Background for any character who wants to learn multiple Paths, perhaps even scaling the cost with the number of Paths known or learnable. Or maybe each Path requires you to have a "Latent <path>" Perk before you can study it. In the same way, I would strongly recommend removing the "defaults to core skill" aspect from psionic Paths.

Thaumatology provides another possibility for making psi-as-magic more flexible: treat it as Realm Magic. This is much more straightforward - so much so that you could probably use the Realm Magic rules as written. The main questions that would need to be resolved here would be: how many levels should there be in each Realm, and how much should each level cost?

03-25-2011, 04:36 PM	#1
dataweaver Join Date: Aug 2004	Psi as Magic I really liked the first Pyramid article in David Pulver's "Eidetic Memory" column, "Psi as Magic". In addition to the reasons given in the article, there's the additional advantage that Psi-as-Magic intuitively represents a trope that Psi-as-Powers only handles counterintuitively: namely, the idea that psychic powers are an innate human potential shared by everyone in theory - though in practice, only a rare few have sufficient aptitude to do anything useful with it. That said, there was one line in the article that got me to thinking: "It wasn’t as flexible, but it was easier to use for players who were comfortable with the GURPS Magic rules, and proved to be a good fit for some types of campaigns." OK; so Psi-as-Magic isn't as flexible as Psi-as-Powers. I'm not quite sure why this is, although I suspect that it might have something to do with the narrowness of effect of the typical spell. Still, I'll take it as a given. So why not apply some options to make it more flexible? The first possibility for doing this is right there in the Basic Set: Ritual Magic. With this approach, each psionic power group becomes a Path, with the individual "spells" becoming Techniques. Two problems arise with this: first, you'd need a central VH "controlling skill" to act as a cap on the various Psi Paths. Second, having one Psi Talent per Path (in effect, a set of one-skill Talents) feels wrong. That said, both of these issues can be addressed with a minimum of trouble: if need be, you could just create a new IQ/VH skill called "Psionics" to act as a core skill; and if you don't like the idea of one-skill Talents, just replace the individual Talents with a single Psi Talent that applies to all of them. That said, one reason why Psi-as-Magic system goes with separate Psi Talents per power group is because psychics tend not to branch out all that readily. On occasion, you might have a telepath who is also an esper and/or a psychokinetic; but for the most part, they don't mix. Without separate Talents to enforce this division, how do you keep things separate? One possible answer is in Thaumatology, in the "Strange Paths" box: in terms of Psi-as-Ritual Magic, the GM might require an Unusual Background for any character who wants to learn multiple Paths, perhaps even scaling the cost with the number of Paths known or learnable. Or maybe each Path requires you to have a "Latent <path>" Perk before you can study it. In the same way, I would strongly recommend removing the "defaults to core skill" aspect from psionic Paths. Thaumatology provides another possibility for making psi-as-magic more flexible: treat it as Realm Magic. This is much more straightforward - so much so that you could probably use the Realm Magic rules as written. The main questions that would need to be resolved here would be: how many levels should there be in each Realm, and how much should each level cost?