Psychic Magic for USS Crowfield

James will tell you that I’m not a fan of mixing magic and tech, and he’s right. There’s no limit to my hatred of sticking magic into a modern or futuristic world. Yes, that means I’m not a Harry Potter fan. I flat out refuse to read, watch, or play The Dresden Files.

You know what works well in a modern or futuristic setting, though? Psychic or psionic powers! They particularly show up a lot in Star Trek. Off the top of my head:

• The Talosians in “The Cage” (the first pilot episode).
• Gary Mitchell in “Where No Man has Gone Before” (the second pilot episode).
• The eponymous character in “Charlie X”
• Oh yeah, Spock and all Vulcans have low-level telepathy.
• The aliens in “Plato’s Stepchildren”
• Deana Troi (like all Betazoids) is a telepath.

So what if we had an ancient world where certain people had psionic powers? Wouldn’t they just be the wizards of that world? Wouldn’t their powers be considered magical?

I think this would work well for the U.S.S. Crowfield world. Maybe there’s something in the local fruit that gives certain people powers (like in “Plato’s Stepchildren”)? The locals might call them wizards, shamans, or whatever, but they’re really psionics.

That means I have to replace the spells with spells based on psychics powers, but I think it will work.

Maybe I don’t even tell the player’s that’s why I’m doing… just have the “spellbook” and see if they can figure it out.

What do you think?

Maybe next week I’ll have a working list of spells.