The Force is the best space magic/sci-fi power/psychic power

Unpopular Opinion;
I actually think Midi-chlorians are a fine scientific explanation for the force, but it shouldn't be based entirely on biology. Like Midi-chlorians collect more strongly in people who have the right mindset of the force, or the Midi-chlorians are a by-product produced by the brains of living people who are spiritually aware of the force. Not just a biological counter for 'how strong' your force power-level is

Isn't it canon that midichlorians are simply microscopic life forms that are drawn to those who have strong ties to the force?

It is

That's the canon interpretation AFAIK.

What I really don't like is the idea that only certain people can use the force. I'd rather that anyone can learn it if they believe. Part of why the Jedi took children was because it was easier for them to believe. Some people are strong with the force because they are closer to enlightenment or whatever it is the Jedi seek, or the Force is choosing to act through them.

I thought most of the hate for midi-chlorians was that it didn't work in a more fantasy setting like Star Wars, where in the original series it was implied to be more about spirituality than anything biological, and having a neato sci-fi explanation just cheapens it.

It's been a long time since I saw it, so I just assumed it was a neat little biological counter for your forces powers.

While I do agree with that, Star Wars is supposed to be science fiction, so giving it a little explanation, however minor, isn't that bad. Then again I like the original spiritual interpretation. It's just the life force energy that encompasses all living things. Force powers are not some spell list you can learn from by grinding off deflecting the training droid's little lasers, the force powers are the side effect of oneness with the force.

>where in the original series it was implied to be more about spirituality than anything biological, and having a neato sci-fi explanation just cheapens it.
This is basically my main complaint about Midichlorians. The force was a sort of power that derived itself from awareness and belief. Saying that there are biological markers that signify who is capable of using it as well as more or less squashing the spiritual side of the force hasn't sat well with me.

It works for a dumb swashbuckling space adventure, but it falls apart under any sort of scrutiny because it's like a shallow puddle. Dark, and having the appearance of depth, but delve deeper and all you get is mud.

There are no bigger ideas behind then Force other than "space magic" and bad guys use space magic for Evil.

When it was originally introduced yes that is exactly what it was, because Lucas is a hack and the only reason the original trilogy was any good was because financial struggles kept him from "realizing his vision." Shortly afterwards the EU expanded on it to make the explanation less shit and quickly swept it under the rug to never be mentioned again in a mainline canon production.

I'm partial to the Light personally

>The Light is a power that exist within everything
>The Ghost don't give you light powers only help you intially to get access to it
>Can use the light to learn and summon special powers and shape different elements into weapons

I mean, you can have light sabers and psyker powers but I can make hammers out of nuclear fire, turn my natural bio electicity into lightning and eat my opponents life force and turn it into power.

But 'the light' seems a little loaded with religious symbolism and good guy magic, where as 'the force' could go either way and sounds a little bit more universal or cosmic in a way.

Besides, desu, I think the force in Star Wars could be used to do pretty much anything. The reason why the characters use the force the way they do is for personal choice reasons, not because of a spell list of powers. Emperor Palpetine could just kill people with the force if he wanted, but he used lightning to torture them instead.

Are you kidding me? The Light doesn't exactly imply good off the bat. When the first Guardians were raised the first things they did was become warlords and conquerer vast swaths of land and people that the Fallen didn't take or kill. It wasn't until the Iron Lords/Wolves showed up and having forcibly converted said warlords under the gun to their way of thinking that the light=good guys thing came into play and even then people have been researching/experimenting with the Darkness as well, you even have a group of edge lords called the Shadows of Yor who formed to try to emulate their hero Dredgen Yor the same way Kylo Ren fanboys over his grandpa.

So, The Force?

>the Light
>good
>loaded with good guy magic

you're right about the religious symbolism, but it is also mixed with science in a weird way, much like the Darkness. both the Light and Darkness are weird like that, and are mostly just general paths of paracausal manipulation. while the Light is more 'forgiving' than the darkness, those that use it can be just as visious and terrible as those that use the darkness.

Sure, but when has the force ever actually talked to you?

In the Book of Sorrow Oryx actually talks to the Darkness itself and they have a friendly coversation about instituting galatic darwinism and genocide in the name of the Sword Logic

The Force is literally just chi.

>galactic darwinism
>not universal

it's the never ending quest of the hive. they can't crusade fast enough to crease the universe with their swords because no matter how they fast they fly, they are always behind

I feel your wrongness overtaking me. Also, "midichlorians".

True, the universe is a big place and they've been at it for some 20,000+ years nevermind what Savathun and Xivu Arath have been up to since they deuced away from their brother.

Then again, I have the feeling their real purpose was to introduce the Darkness to Guardians. It was a Hive Wizard who cursed Rezyl Azzir and he would eventually become Dredgen Yor.

ding ding ding!

/thread

It's Chi corrupted by a manichean world view.

'Nen' from HxH is the best personally, however I acknowledge that you need to indulge in your autism slightly to entertain the system of it first, and I get why people wouldn't like it.

Having consistant rules and implementation is not autistic.

I praise the fact that the author keeps the deus ex ass pull to a minimum and unlike other shonen manga it's not merely a matter of just powering up a little bit more to win the day because even the physically weakest people have the ability to take out the super strong fucks with stategy

Wait, does Destiny actually have good lore? I only played the base game.

>Nen
I 100% agree that it's probably the best and most flexible system out there, but OP was talking about space magic/powers/whatever.

>does destiny have good lore

hooo boy

that's a long and very complicated question

The vast majority of the game's story is told through Grimorie cards which fill in the blanks about what's going on

The lore is honestly more entertaining than the main game

Just read the Book of Sorrow, contains the entire backstory for Oryx and the Hive

>Science Fiction.

I thought we called futuristic stuff with 'Magic' (aka, stuff that isn't explained via scientific gibberish in-setting) Science-Fantasy? Is that no longer a thing?

I think my favorite verse is Partition of Death where it just sounds like a slice of life inside the Hive.

Oryx straps on his new wings and sees his daughters hanging out in the living room with all of her friends

"What are you scamps up to?"

"We're dying as many times as we can handle father!"

"How adorable. But why?"

Oh man that's a difficult question
I've always thought it's like a more lighthearted Warhammer 40K, you can kind of see it with the enemies but man
The lore matters so little to the setting it's like it's not even there

For instance, Rasputin, a military AI devoted to protecting the solar system, was mentally overwhelmed by existence of The Darkness he decided the only course of action was to kill off his creators in hopes to avoid it's gaze. We're talking a super lethal AI that fought with solar beams, anti-matter lances and black holes and he was overwhelmed.

But none of this is mentioned in game, they mention Rasputin is a Warmind and is super old but he does next to nothing. What a fucking disappointment.

Also the fact that power gaps hugely matter in that you can't just train and overcome them in a year or whatever. Even after over 350 chapters and roughly 2 years into the story Gon and Killua are nowhere near capable of dealing with the spiders and Hisoka, the original bad guys in the series, yet (in fact Gon is powerless now, but EVEN IF it wasn't for that..)

It was never a thing. "We" do not use retarded terms like 'science-fantasy'. Science fiction does not automatically exclude fantastic or impossible elements. That would be 'hard sci-fi'. Science fiction can have magic in it, but it's typically given a pseudo-scientific explanation or it is chalked up to psychic powers, usually.

>Sisters: [Technobabble explanation]
>Oryx: Speak English or I'll kill you
>Sisters: ...If we remove our souls, we'll be harder to kill

GONNA DARK HORSE BIOTICS HERE

AS SHIT AS MASS EFFECT GOT, BIOTICS ARE GOOD PYSCHIC POWERS

To be fair Rasputin didn't give up so much as realized that hsi weapons weren't doing shit to the Darkness, he was going to try and fuck up the Traveler and force it to do something but the Traveler decided to do that itself. Since then he's basically reprogrammed himself to undo his protocols to help humanity to come up with a better plan but how well that goes no one can say with certain especially since he lost control of Siva and it fell into the hands of the Fallen.

In Destiny 2 one of the DLCs is speculated to focus on the Warminds so we'll see what happens.

Exactly, not to mention it takes a while of training to get to the sorts of power levels most of the older characters are at evidence by the fact that Bisky is like 60 years old and she's still way stronger than both Killua and Gon.

I can only imagine what sort of power Beyond has although he's probably not quite on the level of his dad

Don't forget a lot of the original lore got scrapped at hour 11. Like the giant space globe actually being a dick all along and Rasputin wounding it so it couldn't just abandon humanity like it had every other race

he didn't turn on the golden age humans, he just stopped fighting for them and went to sleep because he figured one of a few things would happen after he shot down the traveler to stop it form leaving earth

>humanity would be wiped out, the darkness would consume the traveler, would leave, then Rasputin could do something later about it
>humanity would only be mostly dead (which is still slightly alive), they would get infused with the Light to fight the darkness, then he would wake up and decide if it was worth working with the remaining humans to fight off the darkness

he's kinda a dick though

biotics are nice

Agreed, I loved playing Vanguards in 2-3, just charge straight in with no fucks given then start shooting fuckers with a shotgun.

There's also a scene somewhere where Oryx let a Wizard into his court because she punked Crota like a bitch by simply running around in circles .

Then again Crota is daddy's little fuck up even if the Vex getting in wasn't entirely his fault.

>great flexibility of powers
>no force fireball spell

that was added back into the lore. there are cards that say that if rasputin thought that the traveler was going to leave, he was gonna shoot it down
ishtar-collective.net/cards/ghost-fragment-rasputin-5#rasputin

>Rasputin gets captured
>Next game starts out with the last city, the one the traveller has been parked over, being conquered

Gee I wonder what happened

I've always liked the idea that having biotic powers wasn't simple or easy. They require constant medical check ups to ensure their augmentations that allow them to use it to begin with work okay and then they have special requirements like needing extra rations because using it physically exhausts them.

I just wish it wasn't tied to Element Zero

Oh my bad then, to be fair i was recalling this from years ago when I was piecing together the lore on my own
I always interpreted
>"I AM ALONE I survived alone. I cast off the shield and I shrugged my shoulders so that the billions fell off me down into the ash. They made me to be stronger than them and to learn and I learned well [...] I am made to win and now I see the way."
as Rasputin just saying "fuck it" and killing humanity to ensure it's own survival
Man this lore was good but the game was pretty fucked

>the fact that Bisky is like 60 years old and she's still way stronger than both Killua and Gon.
Wing tells them at one point that practicing ten slows aging, and considering Netero's age, the experience Biscuit gets from age probably outweighs the decay from aging by a significant margin. Netero mentions he's not as strong as he used to be at some ridiculous age like 120 or something IIRC, so I'm sure the weakness from age comes, but I doubt Biscuit has reached that point yet.

I used to love Star Wars and the pop-philosophy that was behind the Force.

But my appreciation has been waning. First, he midichlorians were terrible.

Disney bought the property and George Lucas' last act was to wipe out 30+ years of deuterocanonical fiction so Disney could have a clean slate to make shittier stories.

Since then I've felt that Star Wars has lost its soul. I've got stories/comics from the same periods in the same in-galaxy time and when I look at them side by side the old canon is often the better, more fulfilling canon.

DigitalTimes recently had a decent article that kindve sums up how I feel about Star Wars now.

idigitaltimes.com/can-star-wars-last-jedi-salvage-force-spiritual-wreckage-586721

Lately I've been into Warhammer more and more - while Chaos is really fleshed out I feel like Order/Light really sucks and has little fluff and even less going for it.

That actually is the canon though, if you read the codices. Later series biotic implants have less complications and need less maintenance but all biotics get double rations

I think, in-universe, a jedi could create a force-fireball if they wanted to.

Of course. 60 year old Netero could have fucked Meruem sideways no problem however even with that going for him Netero had a proper backup plan that invovled having a nuclear bomb in his chest on the off chance he couldn't handle him. He did the needful and it ultimately worked.

Then again it's implied if the Hunters couldn't stop them then throwing even bigger Poor Man's Roses at the Ants would have happened (the one in his chest was a tiny one after all)

Well there was always a biological aspect, seeing as the power to use the force was passed down from Anakin Skywalker to his two children.

But Leia hasn't expressed any Force powers herself in the new movie although obviously Kylo Ren apparently got them instead.

We should have seen at least one, even if it was in the expanded universe, if it were possible.
If even the EU wont touch it, then it's not there.

Leia never trained, but always had signs of being tuned in to the force. She was able to tell Luke was in trouble and guide the Falcon to him in Empire Strikes Back and could feel Han dying in Force Awakens.

I see, you are correct as I now recall these events.

>60 year old Netero could have fucked Meruem sideways no problem
I actually doubt that. Meruem's physical durability was insanely powerful. I got the impression that he would beat any human fighter easily and the only reasons Netero did as well for as long is because Meruem wasn't outright trying to kill him, and Netero can launch attacks in the span of milliseconds.

Even after withstanding all those attacks Meruem took very little damage, how much more powerful would a more youthful Netero have been? And would it still be enough to beat a literal ubermanch?

Fair enough, Meruem was essentially a walking plot device and the only way he could be killed was by another one hence why everyon eelse died violent deaths he died in the arms of a blind ches master.

Don't get me wrong, Meruem actually could have died and I think it's a loose consensus that the reason Togashi wrote Knov out of the confrontation was because "Scream" + "God's Accomplice" or "4th dimension Mansion" + "Backpack full of Poor Man's Roses" would have solved the entire scenario with no need for a fight.

Basically Meruem is the best fighter, but if your ability circumvents physical defenses or allows you to put him into a nen space which is inescapable unless you meet the requirements he'll die no problem.

That's the interesting thing about Nen, Strength doesn't matter if your opponent counterpicks your skill set.

What we see doesn't necessarily mean that's all that could happen. The Force should not be constrained to a spell list, it's a formless power that is harnessed by its users. It can shape physical reality (telekinesis) and create energy from seemingly nothing (electrocution) so saying that it can't make a fireball 'just cuz nobody said it could!' doesn't make a lick of fucking sense.

I didn't think about that but it makes me glad that Togashi didn't asspull Knov away.

I mean, in the act of doing his mission he had to use Zetsu in order to hide his presence but it just so happened that one of the Royal Guards (Pitou I think) let their malicious nen go unchecked and he suffered horribly for it

Yeah, more and more I come to dislike the idea of pre-packaged effects. Probably goes with the fact I like MtA

What about the magic system for Dwarf Fortress Toady is working on where teh randomly generated pantheon/creation myths determine what kinds of magic exist/are possible in one particular world

I prefer to see it the other way. Medichlorians don't cause a Force connection, a Force connection causes a rise in medichlorians. A physical reaction to Force sensetivity that can be measured would be a good way to establish someone's potential.

Nen is awesome and I would love to play a game that uses it as it's powers system

PSI from Psyren is pretty cool and flexible too, you have three basic types and your powers are unique combinations of those three basic principles
Burst is the ability to manipulate the world around one's own self.
Trance is the ability to manipulate the minds of others.
Rise is basically enhancement either of the users body, senses, or their ability to heal from injury

You get a couple of ultra rare types in addition to those but they are limited to the main characters and the BBEG

I was trying to think of how you would use Nen in a system and the way WoD has Social/Physical/Mental kinda makes sense.

Basically, each of the 4 main techniques are stats: Ten, Ren, Zetsu, Hatsu

You can level each one individually because while you might be really good at one you might be shit at another one. For example, Killua said he couldn't use En but then we see his dad and grandfather before the fight with lucifer and Zeno says his En can expand to about the size of a football field. Then you have guys like Nobunaga who use En as an essential part of his fighting style.

That's the thing I love about Nen is that you don't need an expression to be powerful, but then again having a certain technique could be considered a Hatsu I guess.

I liked the fact that in the early EU the force was literally just magic, especially all the Sith related shit

>doesn't apply to machines or allow for broken 'machines that use the force'
What if the machine is alive?

I have an even better idea:

>"His midi-chlorian count is over 9000"
>"That's higher than Master Yoda's!"
>cut

That's all the information the viewer needs. Let the fans make up theories of what "midi-chlorian count" means; you can always adopt the best fan theory later if you want, though I'd recommend keeping it just hinted at, to keep that aura of mystery.

The movie is ready not when there's nothing left to add, but when there's nothing left to remove. The only thing wrong with the prequels is that the editor didn't have the power to cut off the bullshit. There are good movies under all the fluff wanting to get out.

Nen or more specifically Hatsu has the same problem STANDS run into in that they are both the type systems that sort of require the ability to just declare something as true

Like a lot of Nen abilities rely on imposing conditions and bypassing resistances, you also need too plan out shit or have the ability to retroactively plan "you activated my trap card" style

FATE would probably be the system I would be the most comfortable using it in but that has its own set of problems

>>Not overly scientific (original trilogy)
The point here is that the cynicism of the old order led to their doom. The fact that your body is matter doesn't remove your soul. Or your mind.

Yeah, now that I really stop and think about it one's Hatsu doesn't have to be anything flashy. Using Nobunaga again his Iaido/Kenjutsu would be his Hatsu. He even mentions a condition he has where his En only extends as far as the length of his blade for a cut for example.

But getting back to what your saying having vows and oaths would work well for a system like Fate and would be essential to help keep powers in check (especially when a lot of them are ways of repurposesing ability you can do already like Chain Jail only it has the condition it only works on members of the Phantom Troupe and Emerper time has to be active)

The powers in Warframe have some seriously dope lore. In fact, the lore is one of the things that keeps bringing me back to that psycho grindfest of a game.

Well, that and the raw mobility of the stupid-awesome space ninjas.

Well, quite a lot in my games. Visions from long dead masters, ghosts of ancient Sith, messages of the future provided in glimpses of images and such.

It's really a catch all.

Expanding on my previous statement since I feel I didn't explain myself properly
Yeah, running an HxH game or really any anime based game really needs the players to be able to say "If I fulfill X condition Y happens" no roll, no save just If X then Y
You also need the ability to interrupt an opponents action and react to what others are doing, as well as the ability to declare "You been attacking my clone for the last round" or "When you weren't looking I set up a trip mine" which works in games like FATE where you have Fate Points that you can spend to bullshit the GM at the cost of accepting more bullshit coming your way later

>WoD
It's funny you bring up this series because I'd considered using a system similar to oMage's Spheres of magic to accomplish a more crunchy look at nen. Basically like in oMage (I have no experience with nMage) the only thing that matters is having the proper number of dots in a particular line of magic, and what effects you can produce from such.

So for say Conjuration; 1 dot is "conjure mundane object"
2 dots is "imbue minor effect"
3 dots is "Conjure imagined object"
4 dots is "imbue major effect"

Or something like that.

Only problem is that Specialization is basically a wildcard stat so there aren't any rules I could think of that didn't come down to "Make up whatever" in increasingly complicated ways.

My goal was to create a system where you would either make sure you had the proper XP to purchase your Nen training, and create situations where limitations/restrictions could be imposed to spackle over what XP the player didn't have.

So someone who made a character like Kurapika wouldn't have the points to outright buy something like "Force Status Effect (Zetsu)" Which we'll call a major effect until he took "Only use chain jail on Phantom Troupe at penalty of death" which lowered the cost of creating that ability enough to purchase.

We never see it because the Dark Side prefers electrocuting or strangling people and the Light Side prefers killing people with lightsabers, not Force powers. Fireball simply has no appeal to the market, regardless of availability.

The fact that it was so loosely defined was one of the major reasons I like it. Nothing makes my interest die as fast as magic system with hard defined rules, or hippy bullshit about "opening ones mind". The former is a tool used by hack writers and only appreciated by autists, and the latter is pure new age bullshit.

The Force killed the Star Wars franchise. It's only tolerable at the lowest level or when used by BBEGs to make them powerful and intimidating.

The way it's used now completely overtakes everything that made the setting good. It poisons the mechanics of any setting its present in to the point that you go all in or out, or end up with a unplayable mess because everyone is a Jedi/Sith/Special Snowflake. While it may be a cliched statement, the runaway expansion of the Force has overtaken Star Wars like a cancer overtakes a body.

Enjoy your contrarianism while the rest of us go on enjoying the product

He's not wrong you know.

Putting your hands over your ears doesn't negate a thing I said, user. If you enjoy alienating half your players through obsolescence to appease your space wizards, then fair game to you.

I like the warp simply because of the combination of power and risk. Sure you can blow up an army, but you'll probably explode into demons in the process.

while I, too, am more of a fan of Light, its pretty much confirmed in Destiny 2 that The Traveller is the source of your light and without it you lose all your powers. also, The fallen are the way they are because they grew dependent upon Light and after the departure of The Traveller they had to resort to ether which is a pale substitute. the Archon's are what all fallen are supposed to look like, the dregs are the way they are due to ether starvation.

Uh, user... if the lightning thing isn't good enough a parallel, would you like to consider the whole "force nuke" thing that the old sith had? It's not really used in the movie series, but a few cultists can actually get together and hate the universe so hard that they remove a planet through sheer forcehate.

The deathstar is only such an advancement because it doesn't kill the user in the process.

Well, that sort of has to do with the force as a sort of "faith" then as a "science." The old films only suggest at the potential for a higher meaning and power to things, with one or two odd events that seem to make it so. One old faithful jedi who could well just be pulling a few slight of hand tricks is deniable, but luke's willingness to put aside the technology of his aiming computers and put faith in that higher power is a sort of crossed threshold between mythology and reality.

What I mean is, the box is already opened for the star wars series. Everyone going to see the new films takes the existence of this force for granted. They had to do something with it.

youtube.com/watch?v=oIRJfls37D8

That's some fanfic levels of retarded.

Chi has several similar properties.
But Chi is rarely a part of the World Soul. Or Divine. And often requires a Chi Organ, where The Force is without that baggage.
The Force also get all the best Telekinesis abilities

I believe there was a jedi known as the fire eater or some such who could control fire.
As well as there being some Darkside group that could control various elements as well.

I would say that the OT force preferable to the warp because it doesn't interfere with the story or the setting too much besides just being invisible and maybe slighty influential.

Whil the warp is just about "LULZDEAMONSDEAMONSEVERYWHEREANDEVERYTHINGISKILL"

What's the point of having space magic if it doesn't interfere with the story or setting?

>mindset
>Not based on biology