Membership Telepathy

[Grey 9]

... or: how I learned to stop powerplaying and love the bomb.

 

Do you have telepathic characters in your RPG? I'm curious as to how that works, how it doesn't work, and how it could.

 

(Context: I write in and run Star Trek RPGs, which we call 'simming'. A group of five to, say, 20 writers write a character on a starship, starbase or colony. We produce third-person longer-form 'logs' (posts of 500-1000 words), sometimes collaborating for a joint log or ensemble log. These RPGs, or sims, run on play-by-email or similar systems, and sometimes forums.)

 

How are empathy and telepathy handled in your RP environment? In Star Trek we have a range of species to write with. From empaths who feel or experience the emotions of another (empathic, like Betazoids, or Deanna Troi on The Next Generation), and telepaths, who can read thoughts, send messages and other crazy stuff according to what the writers needed (Original Series wierdos, Kes on Voyager) – we have quite the selection to pick from.

 

I can see telepathy in particular being a PIA in RPGs. A writer might try and steal the thunder by telling you what your character is thinking before you can respond, or suddenly undo an action, or control your character. But, in the right hands, there are also some great advantages in gameplay, both for plots and for character development. Taking the telepath out of action, having them find a piece of the puzzle, or having an interaction with an ongoing villain/NPC/object (thanks, ST: The Motion Picture). There are many options*.

 

My character (Grey, funnily enough) is a former spy who is unexpectedly developing telepathic skills. He's in a relationship with another character, a PC written by an old friend, and we are having lots of fun exploring the push and pull of that, with various evil plans for the future (namely, making Grey suffer). I know many of the other RPers of old so they know where I'm coming from – but as I'm restarting my own game I'm wondering about where the lines are and how I'd define them in my weirdalienjellymachine head to a future writer.

 

How does your RPG handle telepathy? Does only the GM/CO get to write telepaths? If you are or were writing a telepath, do you have free rein in what you can do or are there limits? Do you write with a telepath who's great/awkward? I want to hear from you. All input welcomed. 

 

(*so long as none of them involves William Shatner. I really never need to see that man again, even if I am a massive Star Trek fan.)

[Garmr 106]

Telepathy and other mind-oriented talents (i.e: memory manipulation, compulsion, etc) boils down to a good dialog between you and the other writer you're working with. Generally you want to get permission first before you go claiming your character can read a certain thought from another person's character.

 

Another way to approach it is to consider that human thought isn't as black and white as its portrayed in the movies. Not all thought is going to be an auditory narration in the person's voice of some sort of inner monologue. Thoughts are pictures, smells, and emotions as well, typically going all at once. Think the way Diana Troy's telepathy worked where she could pick up very strong emotions but not coherent thoughts.  This might be a way for you to add some natural limitations to the telepathic abilities of your character so you're not railroading over others.

 

Just my initial thoughts.

[Jaxx 317]

Do you have telepathic characters in your RPG? I don't have any in play but it's a power option on my site. 

 

How does your RPG handle telepathy? Powers like that are only used with player permissions. If someone keeps godmodding or metagaming, and thinks they can get away with it because they chucked in a certain power in their app, then I'm going to have a sit down talk about why that's not cool. If they don't listen, they get the character taken away from them and have to learn to play nicely with whatever other character they have or  make. But if you and your writing partner talk about it out beforehand, you can do whatever the hell you want, I don't care. 

 

Does only the GM/CO get to write telepaths? Nah, powers and ranks and all that aren't restricted to staff or anything. But like above, if someone is mishandling that power, individual players will be restricted from writing telepaths. 

 

If you are or were writing a telepath, do you have free rein in what you can do or are there limits? I've never written a telepath. Closest thing was an empath who could project what he felt to his teammates. There was a distance limit of 150 feet, he wouldn't pick up on someone that had magically cloaked themselves mentally/emotionally or had empathic powers, and he couldn't change emotions. It worked out well for me. 

 

I'm a lot stricter with writing in threads with other peoples' telepathic characters. If someone powerplays or metagames in a thread, I won't reply until they edit it out. And if they keep on doing it, I'll just get the thread archived. If people talk with me first, I'm pretty chill with what I allow, but I put my foot down hard when people don't talk with me ahead of time. There's times I set all that aside because IC actions = IC consequences, but that's how it goes for me with most threads. 

 

Do you write with a telepath who's great/awkward? Neither, really. I've never been attracted to either end of the awesome-to-awful spectrum, but sometimes I'll lean towards, "I'm not 100% sure what I'm doing but I think I'm doing it pretty well." And that's why everything is on fire. For the most part, though, I like characters that have very good control but don't have a high power ceiling. 

[clipsed 231]

13 hours ago, Garmr said:

Telepathy and other mind-oriented talents (i.e: memory manipulation, compulsion, etc) boils down to a good dialog between you and the other writer you're working with. Generally you want to get permission first before you go claiming your character can read a certain thought from another person's character. 

 

Another way to approach it is to consider that human thought isn't as black and white as its portrayed in the movies. Not all thought is going to be an auditory narration in the person's voice of some sort of inner monologue. Thoughts are pictures, smells, and emotions as well, typically going all at once. Think the way Diana Troy's telepathy worked where she could pick up very strong emotions but not coherent thoughts.  This might be a way for you to add some natural limitations to the telepathic abilities of your character so you're not railroading over others. 

 

Just my initial thoughts.

 

All of this, but especially the first part. The same goes for any sort of powers, really: communication is the thing that separates god-modding from enjoyable roleplay.

[Rhindeer 217]

On Remnants of the Earth, we have telepaths and empaths and all sorts of psionic specializations! It makes up an entire class of characters in one of the nations, Aedolis. In that nation, it's a military government, and the elite are the "Pilots". They have a psychic bond with their biomech dragons. Sci-fi dragon-riders, whoo!

 

Anyway!

 

There are many specializations within the group. And shit's complicated, yo. But they are basically the best of the best, and most are attuned to psychic static so they'd be able to tell if someone was poking at their mind, and/or be able to set up their own barriers. But also among them is a code of honor, basically--consent is a big deal, and you don't read minds without consent, because it's regarded as a deep violation. (That can be prosecuted.) In fact, there's a lot of red tape and bureaucracy around the issue, and they have an entire department dedicated just to those sorts of issues. xD A Pilot could be required to submit to a probing, where they must lower their shields and let someone of said department search their mind, but there has to be a justifiable reason and, again, lots of paperwork and policies around the whole thing. Point being, it's not just something people do willy nilly and it's not treated lightly.

 

Civvies are fair game. Because civvies are, well, secondclass citizens to Pilots. But most Pilots are REALLY not interested in eavesdropping, because most thoughts are mundane and pointless and also...they kind of value quiet when they can get it. Having all that loud buzzing gets annoying, and they have better things to do. They'd mind-read only if they need to.

 

That said, the way we players treat telepathy is that...most Pilots actually like having just verbal conversations and being as human as they can be. They have a lot of stress and responsibility, and they value privacy of their own personal thoughts and those of others. Plus, slogging through a person's thoughts is work, and can be tricky to decipher because damn do peoples' thoughts move fast and boy are they random and nonsensical! And mind-reading between Pilots is more a thing done between those that are very close. It's a very intimate thing.

 

So, we treat it as a very layered and complicated thing! 8D And they have an entire culture around it! Whoo!

 

Players play empathy in a variety of ways! All depends on the character. Some characters can influence emotions, some can just feel them. There are a lot of applications!

 

And the Pilots (and Pilot Candidates) are all over the place in the awesome to awkward spectrum! There's so much variety and stuff that can be done! My games are all consent-based and easy going, so there have never really been any issues.

[Bro 89]

I created a telepathic species of faeries for my board, and had to make them reasonable enough to not overpower the other supernatural things on the site, so here's my personal 2 cents. 

 

Obviously, as other said, the most important thing is out of character dialog with the other writer. I never let my character "hear" something the other player didn't say they could, as a personal rule. Unless they write how anxious their character is, or how they're thinking about how awful their boss is or how their boyfriend is being a jerk today, my character doesn't know about it. Period. I never make assumptions about other peoples' characters, no matter how consistent they seem to be in writing. Personally, I would hate it if someone told me what my character was thinking. I'd probably roll with it, but I'd be very salty. 

 

Also, for this particular species, they can only communicate telepathically with other members of the same species, and only hear what the other is 'broadcasting' outwards.  A metaphor I've used to explain it in character is like the difference between reading out loud and reading something silently. If you're reading out loud, obviously everyone can hear it even if you aren't talking to them. That's what their telepathy is like. They can choose to read out loud, or read silently. They can also explicitly send messages to specific people instead of out into the open, but only if the other is listening to receive them.  

 

The limitations make them Not Very Effective™ telepaths, for general use, but that was also part of the species' point so take that with a grain of salt. 

[CovertSphinx 710]

I usually left whatever thoughts I didn't want the telepath to "hear" out of my post entirely. 

That being said, we also ran telepaths as if their natural enemy was "willpower". So basically, there was an unofficial "will save" that took place every time the telepath read anything - generally speaking, people that KNEW the person could read minds would obviously take the effort to jumble their thoughts a little or push back mentally where applicable to limit the results of probing. 

[Pegasus 6]

We have some Immortal Marks (Blessings from the Gods) which allow specific telepathy / empathy between two pcs. Those are handy, useful and not OP - and also, voluntary. We're cautious of telepathy - and empathy, although we have an empathy magic - but yeah -it's a balancing act and the truth is that communication has to be key.

 

We pretty much let players work it out among / between themselves unless and until they need a mod. Then, we help as asked.