1974 is an important year for the gaming hobby. It is the year that Dungeons & Dragons was introduced, the original RPG from which all other RPGs would ultimately be derived and the original RPG from which so many computer games would draw for their inspiration. It is fitting that the current owner of the game, Wizards of the Coast, released the new version, Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, in the year of the game’s fortieth anniversary. To celebrate this, Reviews from R’lyeh will be running a series of reviews from the hobby’s anniversary years, thus there will be reviews from 1974, from 1984, from 1994, and from 2004—the thirtieth, twentieth, and tenth anniversaries of the titles. These will be retrospectives, in each case an opportunity to re-appraise interesting titles and true classics decades on from the year of their original release.
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This is the setting for PSI World: Role Playing Game of Psionic Powers, a roleplaying game published by Fantasy Games Unlimited in 1984. It is a roleplaying game in which either the Player Characters have psionic powers and fear being hated and persecuted because of them, but wanting to use them to benefit humanity, or they are hunting rogue or terrorist Psis. Inspiration would have come from books such as Stephen King’s 1980 novel, Firestarter, and the 1984 film of the same name, David Cronenberg’s 1981 Scanners, and the ‘Days of Future Past’ storyline from the Marvel Comics comic book The Uncanny X-Men issues #141–142, published in 1981. It is slim affair in several senses. The genre, that of near-future ‘dystopian otherness’ does not amount to very much, though that does not mean that familiar tales of resistance cannot be told using the roleplaying game. After all, the television miniseries V was released in 1983 and that drew parallels between the alien Visitors and the Nazis. The setting is very lightly defined, but it does leave more than enough room for the Referee to map it onto her own setting, perhaps even the one outside her window, or simply create one of her own. Lastly, the two books that come in the boxed set are slim themselves.
PSI World was published as boxed set. Inside can be found the thirty-two-page ‘PSI World: Role Playing Game of Psionic Powers’ rulebook, the thirty-page ‘The Psi World Adventure’, a Referee’s Screen, a character sheet, and two ten-sided dice and two six-sided dice. Bar the lid of the box, which is in powder blue with a very eighties cartoon-style cover by Bill Willingham, everything is in black and white. ‘PSI World: Role Playing Game of Psionic Powers’ rulebook opens with a three-paragraph introduction, two of which provide an overview of the setting, before leaping into character creation.
A Player Character in PSI World has seven attributes. These are Strength, Agility, Dexterity, Endurance, Intelligence, Will, and Psionic Power. These are rated between two and twenty. Various values are derived from these including Initiative Factor, Defence Bonus, Bonus to Hit, Damage Bonus, Hit Points, Shock Resistance, and Heal Rate. To create a character, a player rolls two ten-sided dice for each attribute, works out the derived factors, and then rolls for Hit Points, before rolling for educational background. The latter is a percentile roll, with a bonus for Intelligence. Non-Psis gain this and a general bonus. Options for educational background include General Education, Vocational Education, Military, Advanced Education, and Spacer. Advanced Education represents studying at college. Skills are divided between ‘Level’ skills and ‘Non-Level’ skills. ‘Level’ skills are straightforward percentile skills, whilst ‘Non-Level’ skills are those are either known or not known, and rely on the appropriate Attribute Saving Throw to use. If a Player Character has psionic powers, then he has either one Major discipline or two Minor disciplines, or they can be rolled for randomly.
Name: Rachel Rosen
Education: Military
Strength 08 (AST 32), Agility 14 (AST 56) Dexterity 16 (AST 64), Endurance 14 (AST 56), Intelligence 18 (AST 72), Will 12 (AST 48), Psionic Power 14 (AST 56)
Initiative Factor: +13
Defence Bonus: -7
Bonus to Hit: +10
Damage Bonus: +2 (Projectile) 0 (Hand-held Weapons)
Hit Points: 25 (Base), Head – 7, Chest – 14, Abdomen – 14, Left/Right Arm – 6/6, Left/Right Leg – 6/6
Shock Resistance: 60%
Heal Rate: 1½/day
Skills: Interrogation 50%, Police Techniques 50%, Police Weapons 50%, Drive Car, Gambling, Streetwise 50%, Unarmed Combat 50%, Stealth 30%, Swimming, Street Combat
Psionic Disciplines: Precog (Major), Time Shifter (Minor)
The core mechanic in PSI World is percentile, a player typically rolling against either a skill or an Attribute Saving Throw. For each complicating factor, the Referee applies a Level of Difficulty, a ten-point penalty. Regardless of the Level of Difficulty, a Player Character always has a minimum chance of success, equal to one twentieth of the skill level. A roll of 95% and above is always a failure. A failure can result in equipment or materials being damaged. To avoid this, the player will need to roll an Attribute Saving Throw, modified by the degree of failure. A roll of one hundred indicates a major failure and a major penalty to the Attribute Saving Throw. However, whilst there is scope for a major failure, there is no room in PSI World for its counterpart, a major success.
Combat is played out in a series of ten-second rounds and covers unarmed, melee, and ranged combat. The attacker’s skill is modified by his Bonus to Hit and the defender’s Defence Bonus. There are processes given each for Throws, Throws/Pins, Throws/Chokes, and Strikes, and then again for melee and ranged attacks. Where attacks affect specific hit locations, damage is applied to both them and general Hit Points. Damage that exceeds the Hit Point total for a location indicates a wound which will have different effect depending upon the location. This is followed by various weapons lists, most of which consists of typical weapons from the eighties like the .357 magnum revolver or the .44 auto magnum. They are joined by needlers, tangle guns, essentially Science Fiction weapons.
Between the combat rules and the skill lists are listed the psionic powers and their use. Psionic powers are divided between major and minor disciplines. All require the expenditure of Psionic Power Points to use, each Player Character possessing a number equal to double to his Psionic Power attribute. The major disciplines consist of Precog, Telepath, Teleport, Telekinetic, Self-Aware, Healer, and Empath. The minor disciplines include Time Shifter, Pyrokinetic, Ghost, Weakness Understanding, Psi Amplifier, and more. Some of the minor disciplines, such as Genius which adds extra points to the Intelligence attribute and adds more skill points, are permanent effects, but at a cost of permanent reduction in the Psionic Power attribute. Major disciplines have numerous sub-abilities. For example, Precog has Clairvoyance, Clairaudience, Sense Danger, Locate Danger, Detect Psi, all the way up to Augury, Vision, Combat precog, and Luck. Each of these costs its own amount of power points to use. For example, Sense Danger costs five points to use, but Psychometry on an object costs twenty points. The list of powers is compressive, though it should be noted that the Healer includes reverse effects. So, Harm and Heal, Reverse Major Wound and Cause Major Wound, Curse Disease and Cause Disease, and so on. However, the one aspect missing here which is integral to the genre, that of psionic duels of will and power.
The ‘PSI World: Role Playing Game of Psionic Powers’ rulebook comes to a close with a chapter called ‘The World’. Except, it really is not about the world. Rather that it takes a cursory look at some of the changes that might affect the neighbourhood where the Referee is setting her campaign, the suggestion being that the this should be her neighbourhood, only changed to account for the advances in technology and the presence of the psionically capable. The rest is devoted to a price list. The result is distinctly anaemic and indicative of the problem that pervades the roleplaying game as a whole.
The second book ‘The Psi World Adventure’ contains two scenarios. It also expands upon the setting. Three generations previously, the world was divided between two superpowers and a host of neutral nations. The two superpowers were the People’s Confederacy and the United Commonwealth, the former based on Communist China, the latter on the then modern U.S.A. The neutral nations formed trade blocs. The appearance of Psis disrupted society and led to the collapse of the People’s Confederacy into a patchwork of warring states, often led by Psis who set themselves as petty dictators and warlords. Similarly, a wave of psi-related crime swept across the United Commonwealth, but unlike the People’s Confederacy, it was able to survive this due to strong central government and effective police force. The United Commonwealth established the Psionic Protection Agency, a federal organisation dedicated to protecting the general population. Psionic crimes are subject to a warning and several years of probation on the first offence, and then psionic lobotomy on a second. Most who suffer this migrate to space. Violently opposed to the Psis is the League for Human Genetic Purity.
Both scenarios are set in the fictional commonwealth of New Arlin, in Bishop County, located on the heavily forested edge of a western mountain range. It is known for its furniture products and a range of breakfast cereals. In ‘Scenario I’, the former ghost town of Enclave has been opened up again and re-established its bauxite mine, and offered a sanctuary for Psis. The town council asks the Player Characters to travel to the nearby town of Bently where they have detected someone whose psionic abilities are beginning to express. The Player Characters are to monitor the situation, avoid any entanglement with the Psionic Protection Agency and the League for Human Genetic Purity, and in particular, avoid a radical psionic revolutionary known as ‘Bonzo’ and said to be in the area. In ‘Scenario II’, the Player Characters are recently graduated agents of the Psionic Protection Agency who are assigned to help local law enforcement investigate organised crime activity in the area.
Both scenarios are fairly open with the Player Characters free to go about their investigation. There is more advice about running ‘Scenario II’ than ‘Scenario I’, and both are supported by decent maps and lots of detailed NPCs. Neither scenario is all that interesting and neither develops PSI World in terms of a setting. This highlights the issue with the roleplaying game. PSI World does not have a setting except that of ‘tomorrow’, but with gifted individuals being persecuted and facing bigotry and violence. As the designers state in the ‘PSI World: Role Playing Game of Psionic Powers’ rulebook, “Background chrome has been kept to a minimum to the rules sections to allow more referee freedom in setting creation. For a closeup of part of the authors’ playtest world, see Book 2, The Psi World Adventures’ for scenarios and design ideas.” To be fair, the authors have kept ‘background chrome’ to a minimum in the rules sections, but to be equally fair, they have also kept it to a minimum in ‘The Psi World Adventure’ and both of its scenarios. It is frustrating because it leaves the Referee with a lot of work to do in developing her setting and it does not address any of the ideas or themes intrinsic to PSI World and its game play—resistance and rebellion, oppression and suppression by the government and hate groups, bigotry and misunderstanding, and so on. This is the core problem with PSI World. The Referee with left with all of the work to do, but given none of the advice with which to help her do it.
PSI World was supported by three supplements. Published in 1985, The Hammer Shall Strike contained new psionic powers and two scenarios, whilst Underground Railroad, also published in 1985 and Cause for War, published in 1986, contained five linked scenarios. These would do more to develop a setting to PSI World and explore some of its themes.
Physically, PSI World is decently presented. The writing and layout are clean and clear rather than adventurous. The artwork is good, much of it by Bill Willingham and Matt Wagner, and the cartography is decent.
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PSI World was reviewed in ‘Games Reviews’ in Imagine No. 21 (December 1984). Reviewer Chris Baylis wrote, “I would suggest that this is a system for the slightly more mature player, not for the young and blood-thirsty beat-’em-up brigade. Much thought and planning is required by both GM and player, and character interaction and party cooperation is a must for survival and enjoyment.”
Scott A. Dillinger reviewed PSI World in ‘Game Reviews’ in Different Worlds Issue 44 (November/December 1986). He was in general, positive about the game, but said that one “…[A]rea with which I have a bit of problem is the reverse healing. For every curative function listed there exists an opposite damage producing function. As a mental health professional I question the probability that anyone who is sensitive enough to the life force to be able to sense and restore it would under any circumstance harm another human being with such a power. I might concede that if such actions are used to save more lives, then the healer might harm someone but they would be loathe to do so. This is a matter for the individual gamemaster to decide but it does tend to put some limits on an incredibly powerful character-a character with the ability to literally give and take life at will.” Ultimately though he was positive about the open nature of the roleplaying game in that it did not tie the Game Master to a setting, but left room for her to create one of her own and awarded it three stars and said, “It’s a lot of fun for a little money.”
Stewart Wick reviewed PSI World in White Wolf #7 (April 1987), awarding it a rating of seven out of ten, and said, “Thru and thru, Psi-World is an interesting and pleasing game. It is fairly simple, but does not achieve this by sacrificing either playability or campaign development.”
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There is no denying that PSI World is workmanlike and serviceable. It provides solid mechanics for both its then modern, near-future setting and its psionics. In fact, mechanics which are far less complex and much easier to comprehend than those presented in other roleplaying games from Fantasy Games Unlimited. However, that is all it does. The setting included is so underwritten and underdeveloped as to be no better or no more useful than the Referee could come up with herself. Without a fully realised setting, PSI World cannot even begin to address or explore any of the themes and storylines that it wants to lend itself towards. Ultimately, GURPS Psionics would do it better. The result is a roleplaying game that does not go out of its way to make itself distinctive, bar the simplicity of its mechanics in comparison to other roleplaying games from Fantasy Games Unlimited. PSI World: Role Playing Game of Psionic Powers is mechanically solid, but in every other way, is just too generic and simply underdeveloped for what it wants to do.
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