5 thoughts on “The Telepath, now with the slightly more evocative name of The Psychic!”

  1. I really love how the moves build tension, and some of your choices are inspired (I find that Scanner is fantastic!);

    My only doubt looking at this is that this is a pretty safe, controlled playbook, in both thematic and mechanical ways:

    Thematically, most of the moves are aimed at creating conditions in which the character is now in a more solid and controlling position with regards to another character – you’ve got something on them;

    Mechanically, most of the moves have direct effects, with no rolls (that carry an associated risk) or pretty “safe” costs*.

    I think it makes a lot of sense for this Skin to be very much about control in this way, but on the other hand I wonder if introducing a few more elements of instability/vulnerability, a few ways to rattle the psychic’s cold power, could improve it. There’s an excellent seed of that in the Strings section, with the “I know what you did” vibe – maybe something about the Psychic having secrets to protect/other characters being able to experience them could be cool!

    Oh, also, specifically: how would Heard Enough interact with Shut Someone Down? In most cases, if a character told another to shut up, I’d reach for that basic move. Do you see this as superseding the “normal” shut down? as working in parallel? (it could even become a move that adds the “silencing” as an extra option to Shut Down that the Psychic can exercise against characters with Neurotic).

    However, I really like the scope and tone of the playbook, and I think it’s full of good ideas, so congrats 😀

  2. Alberto Muti A belated thank you for this — you’re exactly right that the Psychic needs a little more skin (ahem) in the game, and the Heard Enough-as-Shut Down-option thought is a perfect fix.

    Unfortunately, thanks to a lack of funds, I can’t change the InDesign doc right now, but I’ll hopefully have a 3.0 version on here sometime soon.

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