[Torg] Psionics & Social

[Chad Dickhaut]

My take on psionics is that it's a tool with multiple axiom requirements depending on the application (in game terms, power group) desired.  This is in large part due to my inclination to want to place all tools within
the framework of the existing axioms rather than inventing a new axiom
each time a new, desired tool doesn't readily match up with tools in the
existing material.  Note that I'm trying to address psionics as a 
distinct and unified tool that shares some overlap in effect with other tools.  

--- On Wed, 2/24/10, Kansas Jim <ksjim at sdc.org> wrote:
> ESP and telepathy I envisioned as falling under the Social
> axiom, building off the concepts of the Noosphere and the
> Akashic Record, two popular concepts in the New
> Age/paranormal field. 

This has always been my take as well, in part because of the 
definition of the Social axiom from the original rulebook; to wit:
"The Social axioms (sic) govern what sort of interactions are possible
between beings . . . and what ideas make sense to them."  Social 20 is
probably as early as I'd place the Telepathy and Empathy groups since the
earliest accounts of possible psychic phenomena come from the Victorian 
era, though it's not always easy to discern such events from Spiritism
(which I'll address shortly).  I'm personally inclined to just keep
Telepathy and Empathy at Social 21 and chalk earlier occurrences up to
P-rateds and/or highly localized axiom shifts.  As for the Tech benchmark I'm up in the air; for a long time I've favored removing a Tech 
requirement from these two power groups, but now I'm leaning toward having 
one after all.  I don't know if I agree with vanilla Torg that the rating 
should be 15; I'm more inclined to place it at a minimum of Tech 16, at 
least until I get the time to research when the idea of 
thoughts/consciousness/etc. are forms of energy came into vogue.  It'll do 
as for now, I suppose.

The Kinesis group would probably require a minimum of Tech 26 or so IMHO; 
there's enough understanding of matter and energy at that level to allow 
for personal energy weapons and teleportation.  Social 23's understanding
of the individual's interconnectedness with and responsibility to society
at large might lead to a similar understanding of the individual's
interconnectedness with the material world and the relationships between
himself and matter/energy.  That places TK and the like higher than Core
Earth, but in my reckoning that's appropriate; most "real world psychic 
powers" and fiction set in settings most like CE tend to be more along the
lines of ESP and sensory phenomena and not as much physical phenomena 
bent spoons and ectoplasm notwithstanding).

Body Control (e.g. feats performed by yogis) would probably have a Social 
requirement similar to Telepathy and Empathy and would possibly have a 
Tech requirement even lower (basic anatomy of living beings is what, Tech 
11?).  I'm inclined to place the Tech requirement a little higher, though, 
due to the greater and more detailed biological knowledge possible at 
higher levels.  I haven't set a firm benchmark for this group as of yet, 
if you haven't guessed. :o)

> For Spiritualism, things like channeling and speaking with
> the dead, some of that can fall under the Noosphere/Akashic
> Record idea (you're not really speaking with the spirit of
> the deceased, you're reading information about that person
> out of the Record in the format of a conversation with the
> deceased) but in other cases it could be actual
> communication with the dead - that I figured should fall
> under the Spirit axiom and I had planned on creating a
> modified, generic version of Orrorsh's Spirit Medium skill
> for handling it.

I'm inclined to handle Spiritualism in a similar way; seances and the
like seem more Spiritual than psionic to me.

That's my take on psionics.  YMMV, of course, but it works well enough
for my purposes.

Chad