As the title of today’s blog states, this is going to be about an infamous book in the annals of TTRPG history, one that is often poked fun at and referenced as a joke. But I loved it. I loved it then, and looking back I owe it a lot. The Complete Psionics Handbook.
Why is it infamous and ridiculed? For those of us playing Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition back in the day, there was a standard albeit confusing-as-hell set of rules that all the books adhered to. Spell casting was done in a very certain way. The Complete Psionics Handbook not only introduced the class of Psionics to play, but a totally different method of spell casting that was “tacked on” to the existing rules.
While I love wizards, I was never good at playing a Wizard in AD&D 2E because I couldn’t manage the system well enough. The psionic system of using a pool of points instead of spell memorizations clicked with me in a way that the existing rules never did, and I ate it right up. I pored over that book endlessly, since now that I understood how this rule system for spell casting worked, it activated my imagination in ways it hadn’t been before.
And like the schools of magic allowed you to play several types of Wizards, the psychic disciplines for Psionics allowed for similar variety and ignited my imagination. I was dreaming up characters who were telekinetics, telepaths, and (of course) seers. My mind was awoken by the scope of possibilities and I don’t think I ever looked back.
Beyond the game it got me interested in psychic phenomena. I took out books from my school libraries about mental powers. I gravitated towards books and movies regarding psychics. For a time, more so than magic, the mind was my playground and I was fascinated by it.
And the art in that book. Oh man. The criminally-underrated black and white illustrations of Terry Dykstra were hugely influential on me. I don’t think there was an AD&D 2E book I enjoyed more cover-to-cover for its art than The Complete Psionics Handbook.
The psychic resurgence in the comic’s timeline can be drawn right back to the influence of this much-maligned book, which I will defend to the end of my days. I don’t care if the rules were “tacked on” or unbalanced or anything like that. AD&D 2E’s rules were confusing enough as they were (I celebrated the death of THAC0) so adding a different rule set was no more befuddling than the game already was.
Do I believe psychic powers exist in the real world? Despite my long fascination with them, I do not. Nor do I believe in the existence of gods and magic in the real world. But all three are among my favorite storytelling devices, and if there’s one power I do believe in, it’s the power of stories.