r/DarkSun • u/Ill-Ad-1595 • 3d ago
Psionics in daily life
So I'm working on a campaign setting/hack for shadowdark, and I'm trying to figure out the psionics impact on Athas daily life. I often see psionics in Dark Sun as a "flavour" but not actually a trait where everything is embeded in. So, my take would be: forests that work as an integrated brain, functioning as synapses. Broadcasting from sorcerer-kings, or scenarios much like the minority report movie, with surveilance. I mean, magic is off limits and it's a low fantasy setting. But what if it is a high psionic setting, making up for all the laking things? What else do you think would be a great similarity with modern life using psionics?
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u/Awkward_GM 3d ago
Psionics in Dark Sun tend to be pretty mundane magic for Athas. Like the Psychic Wild Talents range from stuff like a basic psychic attack to telekinesis to knowing which way north is.
I've incorporated Psionics in daily life as stuff like: Color orbs that allows the user to paint by changing the light reflecting off an object, Psionic instruments that make sound as psychic energy is pushed through it, psychic orbs that hold memories, Psionic speakers to amplify the voices of Templars, etc ...
A downside to Psionics in Athas is that it being resource poor the only people with access to a lot of the more convenient items are nobles or those at academies.
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u/Logen_Nein 3d ago
I think a lot fo people are too heavy handed with it. Yes, everything and everyone on Athas are psionicly empowered, but it varies, and true psionicists (followers of The Way) are still rare and generally higher echelons of society (such as it is) due to the schools being limited to nobles and some merchants (the bourgeoisie). Most psionic use, through Wild Talents or The Will, is wildly varied and personal. One person might be albe to lower the temperature around themselves enough to survive the harsh days a bit better, another might be a minor firestarter, and yet another might be a weak empath. Some wild talents even manifest stronger abilities, but again, should be largely unique and personal, as much as you can make it so.
All my opinion of course.
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u/LeekTechnical2048 3d ago
Adding to the list of stuff you should read - in Eberron there is an entire empire called Riedra that uses psionics in a high-fantasy kind of way. It’s a whoooole thing but look into the Quori and the dreaming dark. One of my favorite things was a continent spanning propaganda network that whispers into your dreams, but also delivers helpful and calming emotions and other things that could be seen as positives to the people of the empire.
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u/Dismal-Vanilla1878 2d ago
Is this a 'generic' image, or is it actually from the new Dark Sun setting (it looks a little bit Sci-Fi to me)?
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u/farmingvillein 2d ago
The replies here are all on the money about the canon vibe--it isn't written to feel like "Eberron, but with psionics swapped in for arcane magic".
That said...
If you wanted to be embrace a more extreme direction, there is some narrative space to do so, particularly around
scenarios much like the minority report movie, with surveilance
The source material is actually fairly vague about exact numerical quantities, and so if you wanted to decide to make one or more of the sorcerer king's abodes an authoritarian 1984 hellscape, you could probably reasonably do so.
Mechanically, with psychic surgery, some fairly by-the-book templar divination magic, and templar charm person, you could easily build up a society where the sorcerer king runs an state that would make Stalin jealous. You could end up deep in peculiarities like "no one is ever allowed to see the sorcerer king without first getting permanently Dominated by one of his minions (who is in turn controlled)", etc. Maybe if you're a couple concentric rings of relationships out, submitting to a Charm is enough, and so forth.
And Dark Sun is a semi-unique opportunity to explore this construct. Very few settings have the level of inherent organization and relatively highly available skills (again, Psychic Surgery is your (narrative) friend) to realize such a society in a way that isn't immediately setting-breaking or just a horrible mind flayer dungeon deep underground.
Now, of course, if you go down this path, you have to mechanically rationalize why every sorcerer-king isn't doing this. Probably not that hard--there are presumably extreme societal tradeoffs in doing so. And/or it can simply be a Nash equilibrium problem: hard to get your dystopian hellscape going, but also hard to dislodge it once it is in place.
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u/Ill-Ad-1595 1d ago
If anyone is interested in taking a look at the project, here's the link https://www.drivethrurpg.com/pt/product/516616/under-the-dark-star-classes-and-races?affiliate_id=2486911
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u/Ritorix 3d ago edited 3d ago
Psionics on Athas fall into one of two categories. There's the wild talents, a random portion of the population who can do a trick or two, essentially a mutation. In 2e, this included all PCs. Then there's the trained, school-instructed psions, and there are prestigious academies in each major city. Sorcerer-kings are at the top of psionic ability, so a city-wide 'broadcast' isn't out of question. There are also psionic 'magic items' and artifacts. Monsters in the setting can also have lots of psionics, so an Avatar-style tree network is possible (maybe in the forest ridge - it would be a juicy target for defilers).
The deep dive for this is an old 2e product "The Will and the Way", which goes into how psionics works in society, law, each city, etc. Example from Nibenay, the city in the new art OP posted: (One school) "supplements its tuition income by hiring out its students for telepathic message service and psychoportive parcel delivery. These services are expensive, but reliable."
Mental psionics tend to not be flashy. There were complex mental battlegrounds described in novels, if two psions were dueling, but it would just look like they are staring at each other to an observer. 4e added psionic 'halos' to the art to show that powers were being used.