[Torg] psionics

[Kansas Jim]

Mark wrote:

[...]

> campaigns i havnt paid it much notice before. however it strikes me that 
> weg has gone for an increased difficulty per realm and added a whole 
> bunch of axiom requirements instead of just the social one is because 
> they didnt want psionics in nippon tech. to my mind this is wrong. i 

I believe an editor or writer at WEG admitted as much, the Spirit axiom
requirement for psionics was to keep Nippon Tech from having it.

> think it shold be just based on the social axiom and have a social axiom 
> requirement for each psionic ability. id make the social requirement for 
> psionics to be higher than nippon tech's then it wouldnt have normal 
> access to them and id give core earth some world law boosting there 
> social axiom just for psionics ( kinda fudged but it works to my mind).
>            anyone ever tried this? and how do you suggest id go about it 
> if i tried?

I took an opposite approach, instead of using a WL to give Core Earth
psionics I said that Nippon Tech's WLs hindered the development of
psionics there. I also used similar WL handwaves to keep psionics out of
Aysle and the Nile. And with individual axiom requirements attached to
the powers I was able to somewhat fine-tune which psi powers were
available in the remaining realms that did allow it. (I am referring to
the second psionics rewrite on my website.)

As mentioned previously, there have been proposals in the past for a
separate Psionics axiom but I'm unaware of anyone actually having
developed one yet. I'm firmly in the camp of keeping it as a tool of
the Social axiom, though over the last couple of years I've come to
the conclusion that there are certain concepts under the general
umbrella of "psychic powers" which I think need to be separated from
what the Torg game mechanics consider to be psionic in nature.

To put it another way, some of the abilities that the 'real world' calls
psychic powers may not actually be psionic in nature as far as Torg is
concerned, they may instead be more appropriately treated as either
Spritual or Magical tools rather than psychic ones. A prime example is
channeling (séances, speaking with the dead, spirit guides, mediums
contacting the deceased, however you want to describe it). In Torg, that
may be better handled with the use of a rewritten, generic version of
Orrorsh's Spirit Medium skill rather than categorizing it as a psychic
power as I tried to do in my second stab at rewriting the psi rules.
Telekinesis and what I classified as Body Control powers in my second
rewrite are other abilities that I've thought about putting into this
"not really psionic in nature" category but I have not really put any
work into the idea beyond these initial thoughts.

-- 
Kansas Jim, Torg guru (ksjim (at) sdc (dot) org)
Torg website: http://www.sdc.org/~ksjim/index.html