| Hi Dan, David, Everyone. >>> Dan Wrote:
I have to agree with Dan in this. You have found a fictional counter example, but real humans teach other humans. I have taught, Math, Game Design, Programming, Science and a couple other odd things and it was both profitable and very rewarding. I think that human beings tend to enjoy both teaching and learning. I think that for every fictional universe (ficton) where there are no psionic schools there are ten where you CAN learn from someone who has mastered the skills. The exceptions are likely to be fictons where psionics is so RARE that the person who learns them is virtually unique, which trumps the human desire to pass along knowledge. Let us say that you have a TFT game with psionic rules. Let us further assume that these rules are interesting (not just a rehash of magic) and very fun. Lots of PC's are going to want to use them. Now if you want to make the PC's the only ones who have these and no NPC's have them that is fine. I once ran a GURPS fantasy game where magic was so rare that the PC's had a virtual monopoly (big advantage) but there were no magic guilds, no schools and gaining spells was super random (an especially bad disadvantage in GURPS with their huge, long lines of prerequisite spells). Such a campaign can work. (My PC mages eventually gave up and started learning sword play, so it is obviously frustrating.) But I question if the ideal design of psionics would depend on this sort of assumption. The way your rules are written, powerful psionic users are cripples with low ST, DX and IQ. Every point of IQ bought lowers your power. This also seems to not match the stories with psionics. Was Alfred Bester in Babylon 5, stupid, clumsy and feeble? It also seems very alien to me that there is no advantage to IQ in the psionic rules. Again this goes against the standard biases about psionics in most fictons. ____________________________________________________ Now, what am I arguing here? I think that you have found a way to make AD&D 1st edition psionics work in TFT with almost no changes to the TFT rules and no changes to the D&D rules. In that, you have completely succeeded. I am arguing, that if you want to put psionics in to TFT, there are several things about this system that I do not like. This is of interest to me, because I have wanted psionics for a long time. (My system is based on the Blue Oyster Cult song, "Veteran of the Psychic Wars".) I am also not impressed with D&D's psionic rules. (The link below goes to a web page where someone tries to figure out how they work as written, and it demonstrates many examples of why those rules suck.) Building a good psionic system is not easy. I've tried a couple times, got it "sorta working" and given up. I'm a perfectionist when it comes to TFT, and perfect psionics rules have eluded me. However, since your write up, I've looked over D&D psionics for the first time in 3 decades or so. And my reaction has been "I can do better than THAT !!!" I am tempted to write up 5 pages of rules that simulate D&D style psionics in TFT. They would not be a direct conversion (why copy something that has so many problems), but would aim for D&D psionics if Gygax had playtested the rules. My goal would not be perfection, but "better than D&D". I am confident that I could beat that rather low bar quite quickly. I am pretty busy, but it is possible that I might put something on the list in the next two weeks or so. However, if you wanted to take another pass at it, which fixed my major two complaints, I would be very interested. Warm regards, Rick. |