First off, since I’m not making any real progress on Ki, I’ll drop the news about it. When I actually do something, that’ll get an article of it’s own.



Today I’ll be addressing two subjects. Why? Because both are clamoring for attention, and I’ve been procrastinating on the psionics essay long enough.



Psionics: Psionics, as such, really got its start in the 1940s with the work of J.B. Rhine. Rhine, a psychologist, became interested in psychic abilities and set out to see if they might have a basis in reality. One of the people who worked with him in the early days was a writer, editor, and one time engineer by the name of John Wood Campbell Jr. It was Campbell who invented the term “psionics”, recalling the then brand new science of electronics. Originally psionics was meant to apply to devices that would amplify psychic abilities. Only later would it come to apply to psychic abilities themselves.



John was a tireless promoter of psionics, using his magazine, Astounding (Later Analog) to push his ideas. Stories with psionic characters appeared with regularity, and he often wrote about psionic devices and abilities in his editorial. The 1960s were the “golden age” of psionics in Analog magazine, with it being a rare issue that had nothing psionics related in it. Thanks to Campbell’s pushing psionics such classic works as Anne McCaffrey’s “Weyr Search” and Frank Herbert’s “Dune” had psionics in one form or another in them.



Unfortunately, real life wasn’t as kind to John. By the 1970s it was becoming obvious even to someone as stubborn as he could be that psionics and psychic abilities had practically no validity, once you took the evidence into account. So he quietly decided to drop the subject, and take up a new enthusiasm. Unfortunately, he died in his sleep, victim of a brain aneurysm.



Still, his editorials, personal letters, and the stories he published in Analog had a big impact on a number of science fiction fans. For many fen psionics became an essential part of the literature.



A number of whom took up the then new (1974-1975) Dungeons and Dragons game. These included a pair of players (identities unrevealed) who talked Gary Gygax into including a psionics system they’d written in the Eldritch Wizardry supplement.



As Gary himself would later admit, the damn thing was practically unplayable. Later the DnD psionics system would be almost completely rewritten. Again and again.



Other RPGs were designed and published. And since DnD had psionics in it, most of them had to have it as well. Later on some RPGs would use the term, “psychic ability” instead. Gygax himself would switch to the term, “psychogenic” in his Dangerous Journeys RPG system, and retain it for “Lejendary Adventures”.



So there you have a short and very incomplete history of the origins of psionics.



Mental Health: We now switch subjects for a short look at mental health in RPGs.



In real life our understanding of mental health is spotty at best, and downright primitive at worst. Not that long ago such conditions as Autism and Schizophrenia were blamed on parenting. Even today such things as addiction and obsession are mistaken for each other.



In the past things were a lot different. In European society the mentally ill were treated in a very shabby manner. While among many American Indian tribes the mentally ill were treated with deference and respect, since they were thought to be in touch with the spirits.



This all to set you up with this question; how are the mentally ill treated in your game?



If a fantasy game, what are the causes of mental illness? Is it a curse? Or caused by one or more malignant spells? How are mental disorders treated? Are there any effective magicks for mental conditions. If set in a more scientific setting, how is mental health viewed? What treatments are available for the mentally ill and how effective are they?



All these questions provided in the hopes of getting you, good reader, to consider the role of mental health in the societies of your game. Thus giving your campaign more depth and making it more involving for your players.



Then again, someone who hears voices might have schizophrenia, or he might be telepathic. And what if being schizophrenic is necessary to be telepathic?



Coming up: A look at working magick and its possible effect on society, and a short look at why the world of Buffy the Vampire Slayer makes no dang sense. (I bet a few of you were wondering when I’d get around to it.:)) Till then.



Alan