What Do You Want People To Know About Traveller?

[Captain Nebula]

The majority of people equate psionics with science rather than fantasy which is about various forms of magic. D&D, for whatever reason, dragged psionics into there game as an alternative to magic rather than another form of magic. Even in any version of D&D, psionics is not very popular.

I don't understand why people try to equate psionics with magic. Two different things. Even the term 'psionics' was coined from a concept of 'engineering of the mind'. It's not mind magic.

 

[sideranautae]

I don't understand why people try to equate psionics with magic. Two different things. Even the term 'psionics' was coined from a concept of 'engineering of the mind'. It's not mind magic.

In Trav it is equated to magic because there is no scientific basis given nor possible as the powers are described. Ipso facto, magic.

I'll you an example. In the game if it said that hand powered egg beaters

if cranked correctly will cause your car to teleport. Magic not even sci-fi

Marc could not come up with a fictional science explanation for "psionics" so its magic.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

That is the worst defining of psionic and magic I ever heard of. A person I know that is psionic, who for years has been trying to figure out how they're able to do what do, would be pretty upset if I told them that what they do is just magic powers.

 

[Reynard]

Yeah, that's sid for ya. Hates the game, never plays, possibly played, the game, knows everything wrong about the game, knows more than the designers and consequently babbles these 'truths' to show he wins every time. I think it's magic.

But we're used to it.

 

[alex_greene]

It's the way of these boards.

Some guys are like that XKCD comic character who can't come to bed yet because "SOMEBODY on the INTERNET is WRONG!"

Ours is Sid.

And he isn't getting the message that he is, in fact, convincing nobody that he is right - and that his recruitment efforts to gain followers have resulted in a zero% conversion rate.

We all know how science works.

But in Traveller, science embraces the things that we know are not possible by what we know today; furthermore, by what we know today, many of the cornerstones of Traveller tech, not just psionics, cannot ever be made possible.

Yet we do take these anomalous technologies for granted. And at the same time, we also accept witchcraft *cough cough* psionics.

That breeze you're feeling is a million of us waving our collective hand.