Oh sure, psychic powers might SOUND great, but when you lose control of your telekinesis during final exams, blowing out all the windows and hurling your classmates into a whirling psychic vortex the news later calls “Hurricane Steve” (because your name is Steve), you might wish your psi-switch had never been flipped. Also, that you weren’t named Steve.
The idea of psychics losing control of their powers is a pretty common trope in science fiction, and one I’ve always wanted to emulate in Mindstrike. Using the power and controlling the power are two different things. You might have a truckload of raw psychic energy, but if you can’t bring it to bear safely, terrible things can happen.
We call these things “backlash.”
Okay, we’re going to dive into some geeky game mechanics here, so if you’re just in it for the cool backstory of the psychic underground, I’ll have to ask you to be patient. I’ll have more goodies for you next week.
The game system for using powers (and dealing with backlash) goes like this:
Power Score: Each power has a score, which is how many dice you roll when you use it. To see if you successfully use a power, roll its dice and add them up. Compare the total to a difficulty number to see if you succeed. The higher the total, the more powerful the effect.
Psychic Pool: Characters have a psychic pool, which is how many “shots” you can use of a psychic power per day. In order to use a power, you must spend at least one shot.
Here’s the kicker: For each shot you spend, you add a die to your roll.
For example, I’ve got Telepathy 2, so I roll two dice. But in order to use the power, I must spend at least one shot, which gives me an extra die, so I’m rolling a minimum of three dice. If I want to really pump it up (say, to make a mental link with a person miles away whom I’ve never met, based solely on a photograph my captors handed me while holding a gun to my head), I can spend two, three, or more shots — each of which gives me an extra die.
More dice are more better, right? Higher rolls, more power — what could possibly go wrong?
Here’s a hint: It starts with “b” and rhymes with “flack-cash.”
When you roll, see how many dice come up 1s. If this number is greater than the base score of your psychic power, you get backlash.
Backlash scales. So if you only go over by one (say, I roll three 1s and have a score of 2), it’s bad, but not horrible (your head hurts, everything smells like ammonia, maybe a nosebleed). But if you go over by three or more, you move into Hurricane Steve territory: You’re overwhelmed with psychic noise and fall to the floor whimpering for 10 minutes, or blast a memory of your last birthday party into the minds of everyone in a half-mile radius, or give the gift of amnesia to the target of your telepathic touch.
Every time you use your psychic abilities, you risk backlash. That’s the price you pay. And that’s one of the themes of Mindstrike — what price will you pay for power?
