| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| sciencederp |
Posted - 06 Mar 2015 : 15:34:06
I'm running a one-shot this weekend and unfortunately I am playing with people who know way more about the lore of Forgotten Realms than I do. I was hoping you all could help with developing my story a bit.
The story will involve a sort of dream-like scenario but I want the characters to be awake and experiencing the same "dream." In truth I want them to all be under the influence of a powerful, but benevolent, psion. I want the psion to be telepathically sending a story to someone else but the adventurers intercept the signal on accident and begin to believe they are in the story that the psion was trying to communicate.
Is there some sort of school for powerful psions or something lore-wise that would make this work in the Forgotten Realms setting? The psion would need to be powerful enough that the adventurers wouldn't fully know they are hallucinating, even with a high arcana role.
Any help would be appreciated, thanks! |
| 4 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| Wooly Rupert |
Posted - 07 Mar 2015 : 00:49:13
For the record, psionics have been in the Realms since 1st Edition -- one of the earliest write-ups of Elminster gave him psionic abilities.
I cannot comment, though, on how the 3E psionic rules were. I disliked the psicrystal idea, though I obviously twisted it to my own advantage when writing up the eidelar. |
| TBeholder |
Posted - 06 Mar 2015 : 22:54:36
quote:
Originally posted by sciencederp
The story will involve a sort of dream-like scenario but I want the characters to be awake and experiencing the same "dream." In truth I want them to all be under the influence of a powerful, but benevolent, psion.
1) The last word is the core of the problem here. (see below)
2) This is also done via dream magic. There even was a novel from EC, "Dream Spheres". And some short story about nightmare-for-hire in Waterdeep, can't remember.
quote:
Is there some sort of school for powerful psions or something lore-wise that would make this work in the Forgotten Realms setting? The psion would need to be powerful enough that the adventurers wouldn't fully know they are hallucinating, even with a high arcana role.
quote:
Originally posted by Artemas Entreri
Don't quote me, but I don't think there are any formal schools for psionics in the Realms. Sadly, psionics never really took off in the Realms.
There's some sort of a psionics school in Cormyr. Granted, this being Cormyr, you know what sorts of shenanigans to expect...
The main issue here is the very premise - an attempt to use 3e psionics anywhere, let alone in fiction. It's a problem unless you want to just make stuff up, anyway.
The use of WoW-speak doesn't help the developers' case either, of course... but the main problem is that this bundle of "astral constructs" and crystals with legs
1) Doesn't make much sense on its own - at least outside of the peculiar states of mind where FLCL becomes entirely transparent too. 
2) Does not fit into any established setting, presumably because developers of those weren't... in the abovementioned peculiar states of mind.
You may have noticed that the settings that actually use psionics, were written in d20, and aren't forced to use whatever monstrosities WotC gives them have patched versions (Mindshadows) or resort to custom class abilities (Thieves World). |
| Wooly Rupert |
Posted - 06 Mar 2015 : 18:09:59
The Player's Guide to Faerūn (home of my fave FR typo, the references to the month of Ukta), has some psionic organizations listed, as I recall.
I also created, as part of my Realmsified warforged project, an academy for psionics. It's a hidden place, not at all well-known. You can read about it in the write-up for eidelar; see my Wooly's Warforged discussion. |
| Artemas Entreri |
Posted - 06 Mar 2015 : 15:49:30
Don't quote me, but I don't think there are any formal schools for psionics in the Realms. Sadly, psionics never really took off in the Realms.
That being said, your players could all have unknown psionic powers that let them pick up the telepathic sending to begin the adventure. IIRC the Complete Psionics Handbook has a few tables to randomly generate inherent psionic powers. Might be fun to "gift" each player with a completely random power (unbeknownst to them) and let the power develop as the adventure progresses. |
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