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Potential Community Project: Expanded Psi

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Thu, 2011-04-28 00:59
#1
LostProxy LostProxy's picture
Potential Community Project: Expanded Psi
As it came up in another thread I was hoping there may be some in the EP community who would want to contribute to an expansion of the current Psi rules. This want was inspired by my disappointment with the lack of options. Many powers are near useless in the vast majority of situations while others are so much more useful there isn't a rational reason not to get them which leads to many builds looking very similar. This was my initial idea of how to treat it. Layout: I thought it would be something like an underground transmission sent out across the system to help any asyncs who could get their hands on it. Like Asyncs Anonymous in the IC section. Instead of being written like a textbook it would be written in character (the fluff sections I mean of course) and maybe with bits of commentary in between subsections. Chapter 1: This would focus on living as an async and the potential advantages/disadvantages it could bring to your everyday life and how to deal with them. Subjects such as how to hide your condition, ways it could impact your friends/family, how some asyncs have come to understand their powers (blessing, curse, voice of god driving them, summoning of the life fire whenever they strike someone down). Chapter 2: I think it would take a whole section to show all the people and groups who would be pro/anti async, async hunting strategies and how to avoid them (maybe ego hunters who hunt asyns are called witch hunters as a joke?), and whatever else we can think of. Chapter 3: This would be most of the crunch. I know there hasn't been a system worked out for making our own sleights but with us looking over the work of each other I don't think it would be hard to balance it out with what's in the book. I was thinking new sleights to add some (desperately needed) variety, maybe a quality or two, any optional rules you may have thought of and anything else we can think of. If you have any ideas for async related gear it would go here as well. The thread on softer science psi rules if it was expanded would go here as well. What do you think? Any ideas? Would anyone want to get in on this?
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Thu, 2011-04-28 10:20
rhat rhat's picture
Re: Potential Community Project: Expanded Psi
There are a couple Physics/Gravity-based PSI-like powers posted on the forums under the Mass Effect threads. Is this the kind of stuff you're looking for? EDIT: It does occur to me that PSI powers (as written) are relatively bland. Sure they give you a bad case of the crazies when you first catch them, but as a living breathing async, it's not generally all that more dangerous than any of the other myriad of things that will make you insane in EP. What PSI needs is a better flavor trade-off. Make them actually dangerous to use, but too useful not to, and people will come to appreciate them more. Example: The hypothetical power, "Space Ghost", lets you ride someone like you were in a puppet socket in their head, and while there you are unobservable unless you try to directly control the host. You can try to control the host, btw, but it's difficulty is inversely proportional to how close they are to your actual body. DRAWBACK: You risk dissociating yourself from your true identity, and will have a chance to wind up believing yourself to be the host you are riding (as if you went through a partial merge with a fork of them). See, interesting, powerful, and the drawbacks are based on making the powers interesting to use. In the example, you would have to drag your physical body around with your host in order to have any chance of controlling them, and you'd have to bounce back to your body occasionally to avoid long-term complication. Much more flavor than, "I get a +5 bonus to task X". What do people think?
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Thu, 2011-04-28 12:31
LostProxy LostProxy's picture
Re: Potential Community Project: Expanded Psi
Well the softer psi I was talking about was this http://www.eclipsephase.com/new-softer-psi Soft but still pretty close to what's there. That sounds interesting but Psi has enough disadvantages as it it (go stir crazy when not in a biomorph, powers cannot be used on non biologicals, easier to infect with exsurgent virus, etc) so I try not to add "your powers may back fire" on top of all that.
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Thu, 2011-04-28 17:33
tasuret tasuret's picture
Re: Potential Community Project: Expanded Psi
I am grinning so hard. This sounds AWESOME. I already started writing the crunch (like I said I would), and I'll try to post the latex source up soon. Maybe pimp a github or something.. I'll update the original topic with that. Thanks for reading, and especially for spreading the idea. Actually, holy hell here it is: You can download it, edit it, and even push it back. If you don't want to set it up on your computer, you can always edit the wiki or open an issue, and someone will add your stuff for you. https://github.com/Tasuret/Softer-Psi-for-Eclipse-Phase
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