Monte and Bruce: Psionics and 'Formative Gaming'

When Monte got together with his longtime friend and Psionics Handbook designer Bruce Cordell to talk about Bruce's new Malhavoc Press adventure If Thoughts Could Kill, a lot of stuff crept into the conversation that had nothing to do with psionics. Like Stephen R. Donaldson. And Elric books. And the Room of the Thousand Buttons. But hey, how often do you get to hear two talented writers go off about their "formative" gaming years? This interview gives you some insight into Monte and Bruce's creative (but weird) personalities, and reveals some highlights to come in If Thoughts Could Kill, available soon in electronic format from Malhavoc Press. ~ Sue Cook

Monte: Well, the product is partly adventure and partly new rules, so let's start with the adventure.... Without spoiling too much, what can you tell people about it?

Bruce: Well, it's an adventure for psionic player characters and introduces psionic NPCs who have a good grasp of their powers and strategies -- for using their special abilities. It showcases the underlying idea of where psionics came from, and a possible place that psionics could evolve to. So, for people who really enjoy psionics, it should be exciting to see this evolution of the rules set.

Monte: The ideas that came out in the adventure, are they things you thought of when you wrote the Psionics Handbook?

Bruce: Yeah, to some extent. When I wrote the discipline Metacreativity [[for the Psionics Handbook] -- that's a new discipline -- it occurred to me, "Why was Metacreativity never in previous versions of psionics?"

Monte: A story reason to explain where disciplines come from?

Bruce: Right. What does psionic ability represent? Is it some sort of collective unconscious, or is it the detached consciousness of some elder god? The adventure involves these questions, bringing the concept down to a level where it's possible for PCs to get involved and still keep it a 10th-level adventure.

Monte: On a more specific level... when I write rules material, like a new spell, I'll often have a very specific idea of how it could be used in an adventure. When you were writing the Psionics Handbook, did you have that same feeling?

Bruce: Well, a lot of the powers in the Psionics Handbook people will recognize as conversions from previous psionics rules. As far as the completely new powers go, sure, I imagined how they might be used in an adventure.

Monte: Did any of it come out in this adventure?

Bruce: In writing If Thoughts Could Kill, often I came to a point where I thought, "A psion should have the ability to accomplish this!" so I'd create a power or a feat to allow him to do something I hadn't thought of before.

Monte: Right, you realized, "Oh, a psionics adventure needs this new power, this new thing."

Bruce: I've convinced myself that, game balance-wise, a psion can fight a wizard or sorcerer of equal level and win fifty percent of the time. However -- and I said this to a fan recently -- because of the specialization imposed upon the psion by his primary discipline, by the end of a day of adventuring he might come across as a bit one-note. So I think we needed to do something about that from the standpoint of the satisfaction of the player, from the standpoint of: "Is it fun?" So the variant rules in If Thoughts Could Kill include rules for secondary disciplines and variant powers discovered.

Monte: So let's talk about the kureshim. In this adventure, you introduce a brand new PC race, which I think people will really like. Why did you decide to include them in this book?

Bruce: A few reasons. I heard it said that players would like to see new PC races in general, but I thought it would be cool to have a PC race that was predisposed toward the use of psionics. The kureshim to me were that race, with their third eye, which resonates with the inner power of the mind, both historically and fictionally.

Monte: Is there any connection between their lost god and the Crystal Consciousness at the heart of this adventure?

Bruce: There could be. [Remains frustratingly silent on the subject -- Ed.]

Monte: That whole possibility you mention in the adventure, of the Crystal Consciousness being a god from another multiverse, reminds me of something Jay [If Thoughts Could Kill cover artist JD Sparks] would run in one of his campaigns.

Bruce: I thought you were going to say it reminded you of something you'd see in an Elric book.

Monte: Yeah, it is kind of Elric.... Do you remember when we went to visit Jay, and we brought all our old characters into his new multiverse? I brought Malhavoc...

Bruce: ... and I took Jahpheth Dark. So it's cool that Jay's doing the cover of this adventure.

Monte: Remember how back then we used to write up our adventures as actual modules? I remember the first adventure you ever wrote almost twenty years ago -- you put it in a manila folder with a module number and a cover and everything.

Bruce: Yeah, and I gave it a title, "In Search of the Old Ones" inspired by a Larry Niven novel [A World out of Time]. I even put "By Gary Gygax" on the cover, 'cause that was on all the "real" modules.

Monte: Yeah, one of the adventures I wrote out to look as close as I could get to a 1st Edition module turned out to be the first adventure you and I ever played in together.

Bruce: That was where the wild boar came out of the bag of tricks and started pushing buttons, and throwing lightning bolts because he pushed some magic button.

Monte: Yeah, I creatively called it "the Room of the Thousand Buttons," where every time you pushed a button some weird magical thing would happen.

Bruce: Yes, folks, and you can expect just that sort of zaniness in my new adventure.... [Laughs]

Monte: Unfortunately, we haven't come very far. [Wrenches the conversation back to the topic at hand.] So, what if you don't use psionics in your game? How usable is this book?

Bruce: People can play through If Thoughts Could Kill without having a single psionic character in the party, but you will need the Psionics Handbook.

Monte: If you don't use psionics at this point in your campaign, this adventure would be a good time to bring it in.

Bruce: In fact, I suggest that very possibility in the introduction. One of the PCs who's not psionic has a chance of becoming one of the keys of the adventure by being chosen by the Crystal Consciousness to help make a decision about the future of the disciplines. Assuming he was thinking about multiclasssing into a psionic character, this would be a great chance for him.

Monte: One of the new rules in If Thoughts Could Kill is a monster template for a psionic lich. Why did you decide he'd make a good character?

Bruce: There was this old horror movie I saw years ago. This guy died, and he believed he could come back from beyond the grave. It turned out that in life he had stored up a godawful amount of mental "bio-energy." When he did die, his body managed to tap into that bio-energy, and he was able to come back and started animating things telekinetically -- it was quite terrible in my memory. So in my subconscious is this feeling that undead things with psionic powers are really scary.

Monte: Any new power in the book that you're particularly happy with?

Bruce: My favorite utilitarian power is stabilize construct. It hangs off the hook of astral construct powers for psions, but at the same time it doesn't break any of the rules for creating golems, constructs in the arcane sense. My favorite cool power is probability mantle, cause it's just darn cool.

Monte: Do you expect to see a lot of psionics products, a lot of psionics adventures, now that the rules are going into the SRD [d20 System Reference Document -- Ed.]?

Bruce: I know there are at least three or four announced, and there's a huge interest, so I bet there will be a large number of products.

Monte: I get the feeling that, of the people who play 3rd Edition and like psionics, a ton of them are online. I know Wizards has sold a gajillion Psionics Handbooks, [Sales figure unconfirmed -- Ed.] but there's a larger amount of discussion online about psionics than what you might expect.

Bruce: If that's true, a potential reason for that is that psionics is more technically oriented than traditional fantasy, than magic. It has an almost science-fictiony feel, and I suppose people who dig that kind of thing are also those who dig the cyber experience.

Monte: I think that's true.

Bruce: But many people who like psionics say they don't like science fiction, so who knows.

Monte: I know you get a lot of email from people who love psionics. Do you know of any campaigns out there that are all psionics and no magic?

Bruce: I have heard of one campaign like that, but most of the people I hear from seem to add psionics onto their existing settings.

Monte: It seems to me that you could base a whole other campaign around psionics alone.

Bruce: In fact, when I was writing the Psionics Handbook, I built it in such a way that you didn't have to have other character classes -- even healing can be accomplished using psionics.

Monte: I suppose you can't even talk about what you're writing now....

Bruce: Some of what I'm working on now is coming out in 2002, but one of the projects isn't slated to come out till 2003.

Monte: People know that the Epic Level Handbook is coming out. There's some psionics stuff in there?

Bruce: YES! Whenever I have a large say in a new cap system book, I throw in compatible rules for psionics. In the case of the Epic Level Handbook, every major chapter heading also has rules and rules conversions for psionic characters, so psionics players can expect to play epic-level characters just like any other class.

Monte: How's your novel coming?

Bruce: It's going great, as far as I can tell. I write five thousand words per week. I don't think I can talk about specifics, though.

Monte: Was writing this adventure for a small d20 imprint different than writing something for Wizards?

Bruce: Yeah, I felt that I could just say any crazy-ass thing that came into my head, as long as it was cool. I didn't feel I had to rein myself in too much for fear of the company telling me, "That's just not going to work."

Sue [horning in on conversation]: Monte always talks about how, since you share the same gaming roots, you also share common game design sensibilities. Is that part of the reason why it felt different to work with him?

Bruce: Well, for a long time the only D&D games either of us played, we were in the same games -- our first, formative games.

Monte: I'm in the middle of rereading The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, and I look back in rereading that it's just so much us, and the kinds of things we write about today. It's so clear from those books...

Bruce: Right, like breaking of the Staff of Law, drinking the Earthblood to gain ultimate power...

Monte: Clutching stones of power so they just ooze out magical energy...

Bruce: So that's why we're actually giving a royalty to Stephen R. Donaldson for sales of this adventure....

Monte: Really, on everything we write.

Sue: So, who was the first psionic character you ever played in one of those "formative games"?

Bruce: I played a psionic character, Lord Erik Desitaiso, in Monte's Homeworld campaign back in 1st Edition D&D. I remember that one of his first uses of his mind blast power was to bring down a psychic shield protecting a fortress. He had the psionic power of etherealness that...

Monte: ...ended up throwing the whole game out whack...

Bruce: So my character wound up meeting this terrible demonic creature, Kolgar the Mind-Ripper, which Monte had drawn this illo of. It had the power to rip specific psionic powers right out of your head. To my great and eternal sadness. So since then I've always thought about the game balance of psionic characters.

Sue: So, where do you two diverge as designers and as players?

Monte: I never thought about that before, strangely enough.

Bruce: We're actually the same person... we just have different pictures that we show. [Gets serious.] I think Monte has a greater capacity to enjoy more hard-core gaming, and I'm more satisfied with a single game per week, and satisfied with not running a campaign. Though part of me wishes I were running more often, beyond playtests at work.

Monte: To some extent, I think Bruce likes to give an almost scientific explanation for the things that happen in a game, a little more than I do.

Bruce: We're both interested in verisimilitude, but we differ in how we approach that. I try to hang explanations on some half-baked theory I heard about.

Monte: So, you've written the Psionics Handbook and now If Thoughts Could Kill, and I understand you're writing an introduction for Fiery Dragon's upcoming psionics adventure. What are your feelings about being sort of "the Psionics Guy"?

Bruce: I've never really thought of myself as the Psionics Guy. But I guess, if I think about it, yes, all the psionics questions [at Wizards] come to me, or I take a pass at any answers that go out. It's okay, though, because before I was the Psionics Guy, I was typecast as the Oooky Cthulhu Tentacles Guy. I think it's because the first adventure I did when I came to TSR was Gates of Firestorm Peak. [Lots of tentacles -- Ed.] So whenever a tentacle showed up in any of my other products, everyone said, "Oh, there Bruce goes again!"

Monte: How many tentacles in this one?

Bruce: Oh, there are a few...! It's the tentacles that you don't see that you have to be afraid of.

Monte: Anything you'd like to add as we wrap this up, Bruce?

Bruce: I was just really happy to be given the opportunity to write more psionics material and happy to work with you guys!