FASA Games, Inc.

Hiya everyone,

I came across what I believe is a typo in the revised edition's Psi powers extended duration. The extended duration reads: "The power lasts as many rounds as the psychic's Psi rating" (emphasis added by me). Though, obviously, there is no such thing as a round in the revised edition as far as I know. Somewhat later the text reads: "... to extend a prolonged power, spend 1 Wyrd per additional span.", which leads me to believe that extended duration should be measured in minutes, while prolonged in spans.
I haven't actually run a game yet, so I don't know how will it play out. My guess is that timing prolonged duration in spans is quite a big leap form extended's minutes, not to mention something measured in spans might take a long while all on its own. For instance one span might be 5 minutes long, the span after that may take a day, and between them there's a week not played by the characters; so all in all by spending 1 Wyrd, a power can be extended from a 2 minutes duration to 2 spans, being over a week in this example.

Do you have any suggestions as to how to make this "feel right"? I guess there's a sense in allowing players to reach as far as influencing whole spans of time, but I just can't get over the huge leap from minutes.

Thanks!

Edit: P.S. Just wanted to say I think you guys did a great job with FS revised ed. Indeed I haven't played yet, but just from reading the rules it's clear you guys covered the major problems of the 2nd ed. Good job!

Hi donjim,
We’re glad you like the FSR edition – that warms a designer’s heart to hear
Feel free to post a review somewhere - we need all the publisity we can get to keep the work going

First, you’re quite right that there is no such thing as a “round” in FS; this should read “turn” instead. Thus, Temporary duration lasts PSI/2 (round down, minimum 1) turns, while Extended duration lasts PSI turns. A Prolonged duration lasts PSI minutes. (p.184)

Now, to increase the duration of PSI powers, the character spends 1 point of Wyrd and increase the duration to the next duration class/time unit. For instance, you can, by spendind 1 extra Wyrd, increase the duration of a Temporary power so that it gains an Extended duration. In your own example, if you spend 1W to boost the duration of an Extended duration power, it would become a Prolonged duration power (lasting PSI minutes). (p.184)

As the text explains (p.184), a Prolonged duration power can rarely be extended to Perpetual duration (i.e. permanent effect); instead, spending W to extend a Prolonged power increases its duration to 1 whole span per additional W spent (instead of PSI minutes).

Here’s a summary:
Instant (immediate effect) -> +1W makes it Temporary
Temporary (lasts PSI/2, round down, minimum 1 turns) -> +1W makes it Extended
Extended (lasts PSI turns) -> +1W makes it Prolonged
Prolonged (lasts PSI minutes) -> +1W makes it last a whole span
Perpetual (permanent) -> cannot be extended to last longer than permanent

Did that help at all? In other words, you identify the typo but your further assessment was slightly off

Now, you do touch on another interesting discussion however, and that is just how long should a Span last. FSR defines it simply as a single scene, but that, as you point out, can be a quite varied length of time. Elsewhere, I therefore clarified examples like this by saying that it “lasts one Span, or 20 minutes (whichever is shorter)”. For some reason, that clarification doesn’t seem to have made it into the FSR thought…

I hope this was at least somewhat illuminating :p

Best wishes,
Vidar

Thanks a lot! Your reply was very helpful . I do wonder though, in light of the Span dilemma, whether or not to allow players to extend Prolonged actions for a number of Spans. I guess it depends on the situation really.

This reminds me of another question regarding duration of Psi powers. This time about Instant powers and their usage in combat. Since they're immediate, I understand it as though they're literally immediately activated and then a player could continue to "another" action during his turn, since he didn't use up any "real" time of his turn. This leads though to an optional exploit of activating "infinite" number of immediate powers. Obviously, it's not really infinite because you have a finite number of Wyrd points; furthermore, the powers that actually do matter in combat have temporary duration - or at least I should hope so, I haven't gone over all of them just yet . So the question is, what's the verdict for Instant powers during combat? (I vaguely remember FS2 having the restriction of only one skill action among the 3 allotted in a turn, but I don't remember seeing this in FSR).

Anyway, I would very happily write a review, had I a blog or some such place with an audience You can count on me, though, to spread the word old-school way, for sure

From a GM's perspective I wouldn't mind allowing the player to spend Wyrd to extend the duration of some of the powers but they would need a good story reason for it. Some of the powers lend themselves to this naturally, such as Slowing, but allowing Heart's Command or Puppetry to continue for several spans would probably require some strong story behind it. Of course using some abilities for prolonged periods could increase the chances to build up Urge as well.