Sailors on a Psychic Sea

 The mind...

the final frontier... 

these are the voyages of the A.S. Idterprise... 

to seek out new thoughts and new psycho-phenomena... 

to boldly go where no brain has gone before!

From Psychonauts 2

In Psychonauts 2, there is a throwaway line about the founding members of the Psychonauts planning a voyage across the Astral Sea. So... that has been haunting my brain ever since. 

The Astral Sea / Astral Plane / Collective Unconscious / The Deep is a realm only barely understood by the psychics of our world. A few things are known based on preliminary exploration:

• All minds are joined together by the Astral Sea
• The Sea itself is a great collective mindscape and contains many different collective mindscapes
• You cannot simply wake up from exploring the Sea. You have to find a Corridor back to the waking world or surface up through someone else's mind, possessing their body. 
• Harm experienced in the Sea can result in real and possibly permanent mental damage.
• Anytime a psychic creates a little world of their own, it forms in the Astral Sea. It is easy for people who spend a lot of time in worlds of their own creation to get lost and not be able to come back out.

Some things are theorized but not known:

• The Astral Sea does not just link together human minds but nonhuman ones, possibly even allowing communication with aliens or with inhuman intelligences far stranger.
• The Astral Sea may be a way of accessing other dimensions or parallel worlds. It is the realm of possibilities out of which the Universal Consciousness forms reality. 
• Archetypes, gods, spirits, and the like might exist in the Sea, collective consciousness made manifest in the Deep.
• Lesser intelligences likely exist in the Sea as well: emotions, dreams, ideas, imaginary friends, delusions, inhibitions, and mental illnesses that have been cured or discarded might actually leak out into islands in the Sea.

You are a member of an organization (it can just straight up be the Psychonauts if you want, that's how I might run) who is planning an exploratory voyage across the Astral Sea for a few reasons:

• Science!
• A few solitary voyages have gone out before you but none of them have returned, but you can still detect their psychic beacons.
• You have detected a distant psychic signal from across the sea far in the distance beyond what has been explored. The source is unknown. You suspect this might be something beyond the sea itself, something on the other side.

Character creation:

Your main source of power in the Astral Sea are your Themes and your Will. 

Every psychonaut starts off with 7 Will. You can use Will to boost your rolls as we will see later. 

You also start off with three Themes. Themes are elements of your own psyche. If someone was to go into your mindscape, these themes would be prominent there. When you use your psychic powers to affect the Astral Sea, drawing on your Themes will help you to more easily and powerfully alter Sea and mindscapes within it.

You can roll or pick your Themes off of the following tables or come up with them on your own:

1d20 Emotional/Personality Themes:

1. Anger
2. Disappointment
3. Sadness
4. Joy
5. Fear
6. Loss
7. Pleasure
8. Wonder
9. Mischievous
10. Love
11. Hyperactive
12. Sluggishness
13. Depression
14. Excitement
15. Calm
16. Introspection
17. Thrill
18. Empathy
19. Courage
20. Curiosity

1d20 Setting Themes:

1. War
2. The Past
3. The Future
4. Hospital
5. Casino
6. Carnival/Circus
7. Supermarket/Mall/Shop
8. Church
9. Airport/Plane
10. Sea
11. Jungle/Forest
12. Zoo
13. Library
14. Desert
15. Tundra
16. Garden
17. House
18. Farm
19. Mountain
20. Swamp

1d20 Visual Themes:

1. Meat
2. Insects
3. Animal (Pick a particular kind or type)
4. Plants
5. Aliens
6. Rainbows
7. TV/Computers
8. Anatomy
9. Clocks
10. Trash
11. Bed/Bedding
12. Stars/Cosmos
13. Fire
14. Storm
15. Words/Text
16. Sports
17. Bottles
18. Food
19. Money
20. Math

After you have rolled or chosen your Themes, roll or choose a piece of Special Gear:

1d12 Special Gear:

1. Psycho-Spinner: Shoot webs of conceptual connection.
2. Mental Fog Bombs: A bag of smoke bombs that impose a fog that makes reality hazy and difficult to focus.
3. Thoughtform Pokeballs: Save willing Thoughtform creatures in small balls or weaken unwilling ones to capture them.
4. Blade of Faith: A pure shard of faith that can slice through uncertainty and doubt.
5. Brain Freezer: A freeze ray that traps things in ice, preventing the natural change of time.
6. Dousing Rod: Focus on something you want to find and this points the way to it.
7. Source Hacker: Examine the real-life source of a Thoughtform.
8. Scrying Ball: Get a closer glimpse of a location your ship is near even if it is concealed. Your GM might make you roll to see how clear a glimpse you get.
9. Blink Station: Basically a teleporter. The ship needs to be "orbiting" the location to teleport too and from the location.
10. Hyper Pills: Give yourself a small dose of hyperactivity and super focus, but a crash always follows.
11. Freudian Slip: A red dress that transforms you into an image of rabid desire for an intended target.
12. Thought Bubblegum: Blow out bubbles of your own thoughts that you can send across distances or save for later.

Gear:

You may also, during the game, take out up to 6 pieces of gear that make sense for your character to have. This is something you can do in the middle of play in negotiation with the GM.

After you have rolled or chosen your Themes and rolled or chosen your gear, answer the following questions:

• Why do you have these Themes? What has happened in your life that has given you these Themes? What does it say about your mental state?
• What are you hoping to find in the Astral Sea? What do you want to explore? What are you afraid of finding in the Astral Sea?
• What darkness is hiding deep down inside yourself? What are you afraid you might become?
• You know one of the missing psychonauts. Who were they? What were their area of expertise? What were they working on before losing contact? How is their body being preserved for their mind to return to? What was your relationship with them?

Once you have sorted that out, answer these questions as a group:

• You are all traveling together in a ship. You designed a model of this ship together in real space as a focus. What does the ship look like? 
• How does it sail the Astral Sea? What is it's method of propulsion? 
• Who typically pilots the ship? How is it piloted?
• One of you had created a whole imaginary world as a child that you had all but forgotten about. What was it like? What was one particular character that you were especially attached to?
• One of you had an anger issue, depression, anxiety, or other such mental health issue that you received treatment for and now think of as under control or cured. What kind of mental health issue was it?
• One of you has experienced a trauma but you repressed it so much that you no longer really remember it. What was the nature of this trauma?

Main Mechanic: 

Roll 2d6 plus a modifier given by the GM between -2 and +3. 

• Double 6s: Maximum Success, you seize control of the mindscape and alter it in a major way.
• 10+: Full success, you alter the mindscape with the desired affect.
• 7-9: Partial success, you achieve the desired affect at some cost or drawback.
• 6 or less: Failure, you are not able to achieve what you set out to do and something bad happens.
• Double 1s: Critical Failure, you fail and something especially bad happens.

Will can be used to Boost your roll, turning a Failure to a Partial Success or a Partial Success to a Full Success. You cannot Boost Double 1s.

 

The GM adjudicates the modifier based on how the desired alteration of the mindscape fits the PC's Themes and the Themes of the mindscape. 

• +3 for the desired alteration fitting with both multiple of the PC's Themes and multiple Themes of the mindscape.
• +2 if it just fits with multiple of the PC's Themes or multiple Themes of the mindscape.
• +1 if it just fits with one of the PC's Themes or a Theme of the mindcape.
• +0 if it is not especially fitting of any relevant Themes.
• -1 if it goes a little against the PC's Themes or the Themes or logic of the mindscape.
• -2 if it greatly goes against the PC's Themes or the Themes or logic of the minscape.

The GM may also take this as a rough guideline and assign a modifier as feels right and makes sense in the moment, as will more likely be the case.

The PCs do not just have Themes but the mindscapes and the Sea itself have Themes. These Themes will have to be things the PC's discern by examining the details of the mindscape. They do not have to directly name them, but if they catch onto some of the Themes, they should be rewarded.

For instance, if the PCs are just sailing on the Sea, the Themes of the mindscape are:

• Infinite Possibility
• Sea
• Creatures in the Deep

The first Theme of the Astral Sea can apply to just about anything and that is purposeful because the Sea is easily manipulated by psychics.

If the PC's are in the mindscape of a mad dentist who hates children because of his own super strict upbringing, the Themes could be:

• Childhood Prison
• Dentistry
• Mother is Angry

The Themes of a mindscape can be more particular and they can have more or less than three.

If the PC's are in a collected mindscape inhabited by discarded mental constructs like cured emotional issues, imaginary friends, and lost inhibitions:

• Port of Plenty
• Many Discarded Things
• Lack of Belonging
• Trash

What if I am not really trying to manipulate the mindscape but just doing more mundane actions? 

Well, on one hand, everything you do on the Astral Sea is technically manipulating a mindscape, but if that is weird for you or you players, the GM should adjudicate the roll based on the character concept as derived from the Themes. Have Themes like War or Sports and have decided that your character was an athlete or a solider, then you are probably pretty strong. Have Themes like Math, Words, or Library? Then you are probably pretty learned. The GM should adjudicate the roll accordingly.

Traveling the Sea and Regaining Will:

The Ship has 7 Psi-fuel. Each time you travel a hex on the sea, you spend 1 Psi-fuel. Each Psi-fuel is made up of Will equal to the number of PCs. You can spend Psi-fuel to gain will equal to the number of PCs or the PCs gave give up that amount of Will to give the Ship 1 Psi-fuel.

To regain Will or Psi-fuel there are a few ways:

• Find a source of Will in the Astral Sea. There are places in the Sea where Will is traded like currency. There are also crystalline ice-burgs of pure Will left over from supremely stubborn people or martyrs that can be harvested for a wealth of Will. There may be other ways to discover. 
• Surface from the Astral Sea. Surfacing from the Sea is not so easy. There are some Corridors where the crossing can be made back to your physical body and you can return to your place like a check point. Or you if you could find a mindscape connected to a living person, you could temporarily possess their body. In any case, a short time of rest in the real world will refill your Will up to 7. If you can return to your own body in headquarters, your colleagues will supply you with Psi-fuel up to 7. 

Harm and Psychic Injuries on the Astral Sea:

A PC can take three Harm before they receive a Psychic Injury. On the fourth Harm, the PC's mind is broken, their body is sent into a comatose state, and their astral self is scattered across the Astral Sea. It might be possible to recollect them or to find their mind again in the Astral Sea but there will be a lot of work to do to reconstruct their shattered mind.

Psychic Injuries are mental disruptions like the corruption of source code. Outside sources leak in and alter the PC's Astral form and give them a Theme.

For instance, if the PC is punched in the gut by a fiery Anger Issue on Port Manteau, giving the PC a third Harm, then the PC might gain the Theme: Fiery Anger and their Astral Form might start manifesting as being made of fire.

This Psychic Injury and the corruption of the PC's Astral Form will remain until the PC is able to surface from the Astral Sea and get treatment as base. The other PC's could also try to enter into the Injured PC's mindscape and attempt to resolve the problem themselves.

However, the Theme given by the Injury can remain or be transformed as negotiated by the PC and GM. They could keep Fiery Anger and then make use of that moving forward or, if it is more fitting, they could turn it into Righteous Indignation or Cold Fury or anything else that makes sense. 

All Harm resets after Surfacing or taking a night's rest.

What might you find on the Astral Sea? (1d20) Special thanks to Archon's March On and Sailing the Stygian Seas for their help with this!

1. Barren gilded idols to false gods and yet there may yet be a few pieces of glittering faith left over that you could recover and sell.
2. Thoughtforms of various types like emotions, inhibitions, dreams, nightmares, and the like.
3. Paranoiac webs of the conspiracy spiders.
4. Vast super-consciousnesses that are more like hive minds intrinsic to consciousness itself, like krakens in the deep.
5. A busy port town populated by forgotten imaginary friends, personified emotions, and people that have become well and truly lost.
6. The island of those who thought it was butter, though it was not.
7. A planetoid of giants and their giant houses and giant furniture, the reflection of how the world looked when you were a toddler.
8. A collective mindscape of the people who think they have Morgellon's syndrome.
9. Things spawned from/native to dreams.
10. Groovy hippie ghosts astrally projecting through time and space thanks to really good/bad acid.
11. Psychic's who have created their own worlds out the Astral Sea and become lost in them/ forgotten it was fake/ just don't want to go back/ their bodies have died so they literally can't go back and are absolutely desperate for company.
12. The boudoir of loves lost by morning, intimacies known only in dreams.
13. Enlightened mystics who are untouchable to others, contemplating concepts that they would not be able to understand with the messy biological limitations of a corporeal brain.
14. The earths idea of itself. Infinite, wild, untamed.
15. Bicameral mind throwback - divine voice pulled in chariot by atavistic beast-men.
16. A great Astral Whale that is secretly a predatory mindscape that eats everything in sight.
17. The mindscapes of people in deep comas. 
18. The Isle of Avalon where King Arthur waits to return when his people need him most.
19. A cult who all committed suicide together and are now trapped together in a mindscape.
20. A great serpent of chaos who has been on the Sea before the world began.