It is often said that the world is divided into two classes of people: those who like Van Morrison, and those who have met him.
Another such division that lies across the heart of humanity is those who can tolerate psionics in D&D and those who cannot. I wish to go out on a limb and say that most people who play D&D do not like psionics, and I will go even further out on said limb - indeed, to the point where it begins to bend so outrageously and strenuously that breakage becomes imminent - and say that this is even more true of grognards and those associated with the OSR. The chief complaint would be that AD&D psionics made things unnecessarily complicated, were overpowered, duplicated what magic-users or clerics could do, and ruined the tone of the game.
The last of these complaints bites most forcefully. Ultimately, it is not beyond the wit of man to develop an elegant and interesting psionics system for D&D and related games. But it is the tone which is the real issue. And this is because the existence of psionics is predicated on a metaphysics which is fundamentally incompatible with those of the typical fantasy world.
What I mean by this is simpler than it sounds. The point of psionics is that mind triumphs over matter. The stuff of the universe can be bent, twisted, and otherwise manipulated by the latent power of the brain. And the psionicist therefore simply decide whether he wants to attempt to shape reality, and does so if he has sufficient puissance. The point of magic in a fantasy setting is that it is supernatural - it is a mysterious overarching force which can be channelled so as to supervene in the physical world. Obviously it requires intellect to learn spells, but spells themselves are not outgrowths of happenings within the brain. They are things written down and memorised, yes, but their origins are extrinsic to it.
These different metaphysics tug in diametrically opposite directions. Does mind triumph over matter? Or is mind subordinate to supernature, which it taps into but never dominates? There is no right or wrong answer to these questions, but they tug themselves apart all the same. In practice, what I think this translates into is simply a sense that psionics 'feels wrong' in a high fantasy campaign setting. It discomobulates our sense of what 'fantasy' entails. This is not, though, due merely to genre expectation. It is a function of the fact that psionics and magic each require the individual to simultaneously adopt two, mutually contradictory, ideas about the nature of reality. Does it conform to (or can it be made to conform to) the mind? Or does the mind channel what is 'out there' in nature (magic) into real-world effects?
I think the awkwardness of bolting a whole separate complicated pseudo-magic system onto the game came first and the general distaste later, as well as being pushed out by the general homogenisation of what fantasy is "supposed" to be.
ReplyDeleteThink of the Black Seers of Yimsha. Think of Dark Sun's whole-hog incorporation of psionics as a natural extension of all living creatures, or Planescape's mind-over-reality, or (I'm not very familiar) Eberron's ruthless magic-is-just-science approach. Vancian magic is rather materialist to begin with, based on mathematics; I wouldn't really blink to see Cugel encounter some mind-controlling person or beast.
Heck, release a few preconceptions and reread this: ""[Frodo] felt a great malice bent upon him, and a deadly regard considering him[...] a pale deadly fire began steadily to glow within, a flame kindled in some deep pit of evil thought. Monstrous and abominable eyes they were, bestial and yet filled with purpose and with hideous delight, gloating over their prey trapped beyond all hope of escape. Frodo and Sam, horror-stricken, began slowly to back away, their own gaze held by the dreadful stare of those baleful eyes; but as they backed so the eyes advanced. Frodo’s hand wavered, and slowly the Phial drooped. Then suddenly, released from the holding spell to run a little while in vain panic for the amusement of the eyes, they both turned and fled together..." What is Shelob doing but imposing her will upon the external world? The hobbits channel external power with the Phial, but Shelob holds them in place with her own thought.
For evidence, introduced to D&D around the same time as the abominable EW/AD&D psionics system, also based on mind-over-matter, and also greatly clashing with LotR-style fantasy, was another concept but one that remains enduringly popular: the monk. People might often dislike monks for thematic reasons, but I've never heard it put the way you have, that they're metaphysically incompatible with magic.
I did think about mentioning Vance, actually - you are right about Vancian magic being pseudo-psionic in a way.
DeleteI have no qualms with psionics in its proper place. I just find the combination of psionics and magic results in a thematic discombobulation. You do make an interesting point about Frodo and Shelob, but I tend to think of that as figurative rather than real. But here I challenge you! - is there not a case to be made that all Tolkien magic is about channelling will (either one's own or somebody else's)? Isn't that why Gandalf doesn't like to use magic - because it would involve too much imposition of his own will on others, and hence corrupt him?
Let me play my Uno reverse card and ask if channelling will, either own's own or somebody else's, isn't the major component of ALL conceptions of magic, with formulaic magic that activates impersonal forces like that in the Dying Earth the rare exception? (And in a couple of the later stories even that gets largely replaced with bossing sandestin around). Either you impose your desire directly, usually assisted by some kind of ritual or mental discipline, or you invoke some spirit and get them to do it for you. Can't magic as historically believed in and practiced be glibly described as the belief that the material universe operates according to the same principles as human psychology; hence the power of names, the power of association, the begging, bribing and bullying of natural forces as if they had minds? So it's all one, and comes back to the mechanics again. In a harmonious system the distinction could be between "psionics" by any other name, by which you act on the world yourself directly, and invocation, by which you exploit the power of others. In a D&D-type framework the latter can then be distinguished further by whether you supplicate an entity to get it to do what you want, as priests do, or use bondage and the manipulation of metaphysical laws to force an action, as magicians do.
DeleteHmm. I think you are eliding two things that are very different, namely: 'imposing your desire directly' and 'invoking some spirit and getting them to do it for you'. This is the distinction I was trying to get at in the post. There is a big metaphysical gulf between those two phenomena. When you impose your desire directly your will bends matter. When you invoke 'some spirit', you plead or persuade but have no capacity to bend matter yourself. The relationship between mind and matter is opposite.
DeleteI got that. I think you missed my meaning. The distinction is the same as that between picking up a heavy load yourself and asking someone else to do it for you. For example, you inflicting a disease on someone using the evil eye, and an evil spirit doing the same - in each case you, or the evil spirit, are exerting your will or psyche on the material world in what might be considered an identical fashion. The evil spirit might be bodiless, while yours is wrapped in flesh, but you're doing the exact same thing. When you use ritual magic to cajole or force it to act on your behalf, you're just tagging in someone more apt for the job.
DeleteSpirits and demons, to judge by the grimoires, tend to have a lot of ability to impose their will in certain specific ways while also being easily bribed and vulnerable to being bound by rituals and rules, so they're apt be exploited to do things you can't manage yourself, but there's no clear difference in kind drawn between their spiritual power and that of humans. It's all psionics, in other words. Anyone, per Agrippa, can kill a camel with their mind, a demon is just presumably better at it.
I agree. In most fantasy worlds, psionics don't blend well. In a setting, like Dark Sun, they fit in.
ReplyDeleteI agree. The Dark Sun conception totally makes sense.
DeletePart of the tonal issue may come from people overly associating psychic powers with current-day pseudoscientific ESP. This is a mistake; there's plenty of support in both eastern and western occult tradition for psychic powers that may be more to their liking, e.g.
ReplyDelete"The Passions of the Soul which follow the phantasie, when they are most vehement, cannot only change their own body, but also can transcend so, as to work upon another body, so that some wonderfull impressions are thence produced in Elements, and extrinsecall things, and also can so take away, or bring some disease of the mind or body. For the Passions of the Soul are the chiefest cause of the temperament of its proper body. So the Soul being strongly elevated, and inflamed with a strong imagination, sends forth health or sickness, not only in its proper body, but also in other bodies. [...]
Now by these examples it appears how the affection of the phantasie, when it vehemently intends it self, doth not only affect its own proper body, but also anothers. So also the desire of Witches to hurt, doth bewitch men most perniciously with stedfast lookes. [...] And certain women in Scythia, amongst the Illyrians, and Triballi, killed whomsoever they looked angry upon. Therefore let no man wonder that the body, and soul of one may in like manner be affected with the mind of another, seeing the mind is far more powerfull, strong, fervent, and more prevalent in its motion then vapours exhaling out of bodies; neither are there wanting Mediums, by which it should work, neither is anothers body less subjected to anothers mind, then to anothers body. Upon this account they say, that a man by him affection, and habit only, may act upon another." - Henry Cornelius Agrippa
I totally agree with this point - there are definitely cooler ways of doing it than the pseudo-SF version.
DeleteThe issue's definitely not helped by the existence of creatures that can just innately do magic as inherent abilities, including 3e+ style sorcerers if your game has those.
ReplyDeleteI agree.
DeleteThe sizzle about psionics is not that they fit the setting but that they DON'T — i.e. people in the fiction probably don't have a good grasp on what these powers are either and attribute them to some better characterized aspect of the world. A wizard ego-whipped or whatever might believe it is some sort of novel MAGICAL ATTACK (mechanics aside — do we all wish D&D had some sort of spell duel mechanic like DCC — or maybe otherwise that DCC's was a bit better?) The whole any sufficiently advanced tech is indistinguishable from magic bit.
ReplyDeleteOf particular interest is the Paladins are singularly susceptible to having psionic ability. (by my math over 2% of them — obligatory high charisma, what). So you have a comic book type of situation, where the voices start in on the unsuspecting telepath, the, "And the place was on a sudden filled with the forms of lions, bears, leopards, bulls, serpents, asps, scorpions, and wolves, and each of them was moving according to his nature. The lion was roaring, wishing to attack, the bull seeming to toss with its horns, the serpent writhing but unable to approach, and the wolf as it rushed on was restrained; altogether the noises of the apparitions, with their angry ragings, were dreadful." (Saint Athanasius of Alexandria, "The Life of Antony") but it's not infernal forces at all, but rather the engrams of fellow (super) humans, or else "only" the odd thought-eater floating by.
AD&D psionics were only interesting briefly until I played Traveller and read the Saga of Pliocene Exile books by Julian May. After that, I designed a new Traveller homebrew that was a stepped down version of May's psionics and it was only ever in my sci-fi games. I never played it in fantasy again.
ReplyDeleteI recently re-read The Many Coloured Land and enjoyed it a lot.
DeleteWas just having this discussion with my DM, who has been playing 1e a long time. Part of trying to leave psionics out is you lose a lot of the threats and monsters. Many spells are considered "psionic-like" and thus have the chance of attracting passing psionic creatures, some with nigh-"save or die" effects on the non-psionic. Plus swaths of the monster manuals are sidelined in whole or part, including some terrifying monsters. I grew up, like most people, not using it, but as I get older and more willing to have to roll 3d6 in order I can see adding the fairly low chance of a PC (or NPC) having it to a table.
ReplyDelete"If you've cast cure light wounds/detect magic/feather fall in the last turn, there's an approximately 10% chance that an arch devil, demon prince, titan, lich, or other level IX monster will wipe your party in the next encounter" is not the most attractive optional rule in the DMG I must say.
DeleteExcluding demon princes and archdevils, there are by my count 23 psionic monsters in the MM. Ten are demons or greater devils, three are paragons of Lawful Good, and four might have psionics with a low chance, leaving six you're likely to meet in a fight who are meaningfully lessened by the removal of psionics. It isn't worth the hassle. I've no opposition to psionics per se, just the poorly bolted on implementation.
It is true that there are more cool monsters in 2nd edition that were psionic. Don't get me wrong: a campaign setting in which the only type of 'magic' is psionics would be fine by me.
DeleteIn the specific case of the D&D line, AD&D psionics were unappealing because they broke the class logic, being a bolt-on skillset you had to luck into, as well as the game logics of both combat and magic. It's as if you had a 2% chance of being a gunslinger who played by Boot Hill rules.
ReplyDeleteAs others have said, when D&D began to explain inherited book-free powers by using, not bypassing, the game's systems -- and likewise using in-setting logic (it's magic inherited from fairies, dragons, The Gifted) rather than science-fiction and mock-Freudian terminology -- then we gained the very well settled-in sorcerer class.
I could be wrong but I heard that Psionics were created as a second magic system based on Doctor Strange but since Gary liked Vancian magic he bolted it on so people would have another option.
ReplyDeleteLot of of twisted and different spells in the 3.5 srd waiting for someone to do some tweeking.
Honestly, I cannot recall using Psionics in any campaign, other than maybe some technomancer bullshit in some sci-fi settings, like the character can talk to machines and know what their thinking in a cross between the Red Dwarf all the appliances are alive sort of thing and that one girl from the X-men who I can't remember.
ReplyDeleteI've mostly seen psionics just done in Indian mysticism settings, including Yoon-Suin, where it is something done by yogis and roughly applied to the chakras or something done like Nod Magazine's SoulKnife where essentially the psychic is a warrior dude who can conjure a lightsaber from his psychic powers. Or it is something done like mind-flayers where it is a monster attack to eat your player character's mind.
Another is horror games where psionics are just mediums and channelers, sense ghosts and demons and do seances.
Never really applied psionics and I can see the tone problem, although I have never run into the problem because I would just say "oh, this is just another shape of magic."
This feels like a problem of the 'options' craze, where rpgs just throw option after option for player characters. Sometimes, this is a good thing, like with OSR circles making silly classes, yet I've seen cases, mostly from World of Darkness, where players are overwhelmed by options, in my experience players just want to make a version of X fictional character and don't want to select each and every bell and whistle, and the referee has the problem of two many half-baked ideas in the game world.