Wiki Highlight: Psionic Gear

 "Did we ever decide what Psi-Tech was available in Psi-Wars?"
"It varies from tradition to tradition, from world to world."
"Yeah, sure, all technology does that.  But, like, what can my psychic character buy for Undercity Noir?"
"I... uh..."

That's a good question.  What Psi-Tech is available? To be sure, there are highly specific items, such as memory crystals or resonance staves, that relate to a single group or culture.  But broadly speaking, what can people get?

So I sat down to think about this, and I came up with the following psychic tech as fundamental to Psi-Wars:

Psychic Testing Gear: Obviously, you need Zener cards and weird EM sensors that go beep and white noise machines that one can attempt to hear voices in, etc.

Psi-Damper Collars: We need a way to capture rogue psis, so we need Psi-Damper collars.  This one combines the neuronic restraint with the electronic collar for a full suite.  There's also a helmet for that cool, cyberpunk psi-look of a rogue psi in a helmet that covers their eyes to prevent them from using their evil eye on you.

Mind Shields: Obviously, people will want to protect themselves from psychic attack.  Rather than a lame helmet, let's go with a mask. I've also added the mini mind shield, because the idea of someone shielding themselves with a token or a jewel is cool.  I've not included Mind Shield Circuitry: it exists in Psi-Wars, but you get it as part of a pre-built helmet, generally.

Sensory Deprivation Chambers: More of an Akashic thing, but anyone can use them, and it's a signature of Psi-Wars that reminds you that the "magic" of Psi-Wars is closer to cold-war psychic powers than it so the space magic of Star Wars.

Psi-Amplifiers

This is what it's really about, isn't it? So let's give it its own section.  The headband is the go-to default, but I tend to see the headband as more of a crest however; while it didn't make it into the final art of the Maradonian lady, a crest or halo behind her head was in the art notes.

However, I noticed in the Psi-Tech notes that the rules for the amplifiers is that they halve the cost of extra-effort, which is no doubt why our resident psychic was so insistent on knowing if they're available.  Alas, I don't think I can allow this particular rule, because the rules for Psi-Tech never assumed you were going to be using Godlike Extra Effort, and I think that might break the rules. I can, however, add ER to them, integrating psychotronic batteries into the design.

Of course, if we're going to talk about different traditions, why not several different amplifiers? I've created the default "maradonian crown" added a wild, psychic super-collar/harness that's battery powered, a gauntlet drawn from Pyramid #3/69, and a Ranathim crown.  They have slightly different rules for where the ER comes from, but in all cases, it's about 10 points, or enough for 5 techniques or increasing your godlike extra effort up to 5 times.  I'm not sure how well that'll play out, but we'll see.  The prices are a bit high, but they're based on psychotronic batteries costing $10,000, a headband clocking in at $6000 (or a helmet clocking in at $25,000), and then adjustments either for an inferior product, variant ER regeneration rules, and styling, and then capped about about $25,000 because that's one signature gear point.

All of this together should cover our bases and give players a few things to play with.  You can check them out here.

Abstract Wealth Retrospective

I've had a busy week (expect me to not respond much for the next while: my son is sleeping poorly which exhausts my wife, and the second little one requires a lot of attention too, so if I'm not working, I'm sleeping and if I'm doing neither, I'm probably looking after kids, so I snatch wht time to write that I can).  Thus, I was unable to announce my posts, but my discord picked them up anyway, and had quite a few thoughts.  I wanted to share them here and respond to them, so they can all be collected in one spot.

If I don't get to your comment, it's probably because there was too much discussion going on (the topic really blew up!) so I couldn't get to everything.  I'm picking out stuff that catch my interest sequentially.

Abstract Wealth in Psi-Wars - Wisdom of the Pyramids

So, recently I touched on Gear in GURPS, wherein I discussed my thoughts on how genre and gear interact.  This matters because Psi-Wars is a different sort of genre than what GURPS, by default, handles well with its gear.  This isn't a problem.  One of the reasons we build campaign frameworks is to adjust the rules of the game to better support our genre.  This is why GURPS is generic and universal because it offers support for a variety of play-styles, but we need to highlight what those differences are.

Psi-Wars emphasizes social status and wealth. Like many Space Opera settings, it revels in the travails of the poor and emphasizes the grandeur of the wealthy.  It has a positively feudal wealth disparity!  Thus wealth should matter.  However, it tends to matter narratively.  Both sorts of characters have interesting story hooks that arise from their position.  The wealthy often don't have to deal with things that poor characters do need to deal with (such as where their next meal is coming from, or how to afford a gift for that girl whose eye you want to catch), but these problems can usually be overcome with clever gameplay or good skills.  Skill, broadly, should matter more than wealth: yes, the wealthy can access better gear than the poor, but not so much better that they can "pay to win:" a knight can be defeated by a farmer with a staff, so to speak.  The differences in station tend to also manifest superficially and symbolically: the poor can expect to look "more street" than the rich while the rich can expect to look "classy," and both can expect rough treatment in the world of the other, but both can contribute to a group.

Psi-Wars allows characters to access cool stuff regardless of wealth level, and the coolest stuff tends to a character signature.  Almost everyone who wants one has a spaceship, and the space knight always has his force sword and, if appropriate, his armor.  Soldiers have whatever weaponry they've been issued, and even the most poverty-stricken, indebted smuggler has a totally sweet gun.  Characters often pursue ancient relics, and those who make regular use of them tend to be drawn into their symbolism.  Characters do not "trade up" with such gear: the character with his grandfather's Valiant starfighter doesn't "upgrade" to a Valiant 2.0 at the first opportunity, nor does the space knight go through a selection of force swords at every space port to see if he can find one better than the one currently equipped.

Psi-Wars doesn't really care about gear beyond this; player characters generally have what they need unless the narrative requires otherwise. Gear in Psi-Wars is largely about what your character looks like and their niche in the story.  A poverty-stricken space knight has a force sword and never upgrades it, and has a particular look (say, a rough jacket and boots and a low-slung belt over a simple battleweave garment) and needs to deal with hassles from richer space knights who look down on him for his lack of "proper breeding."  If it comes to checking to see if characters have rations or if they have proper lockpicks, then the GM shouldn't demand to know what the player characters have on their sheets.  Saying something like "I'm sure I have something like that in my utility belt" should be enough, unless the scenario calls for deprivation ("You're stuck in a dying space station with no food and only the air you have in your vacc suit").  At the same time, this shouldn't allow players to have infinite gear: after all, being poor should have some sort of consequence!

Does GURPS have the tools to handle this? Yes it does!  But most of it is in various Pyramid Articles.

Elite Armor III: Shinjurai Armor

I've been busy with the posting of my Atlas, but I haven't forgotten my tech series.  More warriors in the Psi-Wars galaxy get to enjoy the benefits of advanced armor than just the space knights and their imitators.  The advanced Shinjurai people also have their own secret armor systems, from the sleek cybersuits of the Syntech corporation to the heavy battlesuits of Wyrmwerks.  This armor tends to be less widespread, either because of intentional secrecy on the part of Syntech, or because of the loss of the Wyrmwerk foundries during the revolt of the Cybernetic Union.  Even so, both tend to find their way into the hands of the galaxy's mercenaries, assassins and bounty hunters.

Psi Wars: Weapons and Armor

Cinematic space opera thrives on the spectacle of dramatic combat.  Lasers flash, armor gleams and grenades punctuate the conflict with fiery explosions! But we need to be careful with Ultra-Tech weapons if we want to build up the right sort of combat scenario.  In low-tech or high-tech conflict, we emulate existing weaponry and we use them in scenarios where they face logical.  If we open the ultra-tech book, however, we are faced with a smorgasbord of options that don't all work perfectly well together.  Bullets will zip through reflective armor, and lasers will cut through ballistic armor.  Disintegrators ignore armor completely, and battesuits can shrug off most small-arms fire.  When we choose our weapons and armor, we must carefully consider how they interact with one another, so that we get both a consistent, believable universe, and the sort of gameplay that we want.

And we want swashbuckling heroics, where heroes use beam and blade to defeat their opponents in face-to-face combat.  We have, thus, two golden standards around which we can build our combat paradigm: the force blade, and the blaster pistol.  The former represents the lightsaber, without which we do not evoke the imagery of Star Wars, and the latter has similar armor penetration capabilities and fits into the right TL.  For armor, our golden standard is the combat hardsuit, as it resembles the white plastoid armor of the storm trooper.  Finally, we know that we need to create combat that captures both the feeling of World War 1-2 era combat, and also allows us to have our leaping space-samurai having dramatic duels with one another.

Psi Wars: the Gear List

GURPS Action 1 includes a catalog of items available to its heroes, starting on page 26.  Psi Wars should include a similar list, allowing player to select non-combat items appropriate for their characters.  By having such a catalog, we can trim the inappropriate options from Ultra-Tech, and customize anything that we include to be specific to our particular setting.  So, all we need to do is go through the items, one for one, in the Action list, and replace them with appropriate Ultra-Tech items.

Most items can be replaced directly with ultra-tech equivalents, but sometimes, we need to adjust them. Ultra-Tech is intended less as a catalog of items, and more as a gadget-design system.  Thus, where I have had to alter, fiddle or redesign gadgets, I have included a full description (and perhaps a page reference to the original gadget I derived the new gadget from).

The list in Action includes weapons, clothing and armor, but we'll revisit that at a later time, as it is worthy of its own post.

Unlike the Action list, the following list includes legality class, a page reference and (if necessary) further discussion because, unlike in Action, we cannot take for granted that our players will automatically know these details.