Reading thoughts in different languages
- Thread starter McPerth
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CosmicGamer
SOC-14 1K
While I love mind exercises and puzzles, any such in an RPG is for role playing how the character handles such, and rolling if they are successful. For me, the success or failure should be based on the character not the players abilities.
Agreed.
rich4421972
SOC-12
Would this limit mind-reading to those of the same culture areas? How many Terrans speak high Vilani?
How many Terrans, Vargyr, Ihatei, Zhodane understand enough Hiver or Vilani for their minds to be read? This seems to completely eliminate the possibility of using psionics on primitive minds or those of other cultures.
Fritz_Brown
Super Moderator
So, the silent ones will be in black & white?
Rigel Stardin
SOC-13
You have to look at the level in which a psion might scan a person's mine.
Examples:
Daily psion interaction with people around them. Walking down a street he or she might only see glimpses of what the person is think. What errands they might on, what clothing interest them or what food they wish to buy. You might only get imagines instead of words. Another example would be sitting in a crowd room and 'sensing' an intense emotion coming from someone in the room like sadness.
Attempting to establish their intent. Emotions would be the key indicator here. Words really are meaningless since people skilled in deception could make someone believe there is nothing wrong. This is a learning process and enables the psions to learn the language of another race.
Establishing contact. Visual thoughts would allow individual to learn a language. Training the vocal cords come next and learning to think in the grammar of the language would follow next.
Depth of the contact made by the psion would also determine how much he understands of the other person's or alien's language. A causal scan might only provide visual information which the psion then must translate into his or her language. A mind link with this being could allow transfer of everything necessary to speak the language in a matter of minutes or days.
Just some thoughts here, I've used.
Examples:
Daily psion interaction with people around them. Walking down a street he or she might only see glimpses of what the person is think. What errands they might on, what clothing interest them or what food they wish to buy. You might only get imagines instead of words. Another example would be sitting in a crowd room and 'sensing' an intense emotion coming from someone in the room like sadness.
Attempting to establish their intent. Emotions would be the key indicator here. Words really are meaningless since people skilled in deception could make someone believe there is nothing wrong. This is a learning process and enables the psions to learn the language of another race.
Establishing contact. Visual thoughts would allow individual to learn a language. Training the vocal cords come next and learning to think in the grammar of the language would follow next.
Depth of the contact made by the psion would also determine how much he understands of the other person's or alien's language. A causal scan might only provide visual information which the psion then must translate into his or her language. A mind link with this being could allow transfer of everything necessary to speak the language in a matter of minutes or days.
Just some thoughts here, I've used.
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rich4421972
SOC-12
I think this is the best response yet.
It seems like it would really work in a game and would be fun.
Rigel Stardin
SOC-13
The one thing that is never brought up in these conversations is the effect the psion on has on the person or alien being probed. ST Enterprise did this with their depiction of the Vulcan revolution arc. But you could imagine the strangest one might feel when an alien enter a human's mind. (forgive my spelling here) The psylogical impact of such a deep probe could alter the alien mental status of sophont being scanned.
Some terms I use in MTU:
Scan or empathy: The psion only receives the sophont surface thoughts and emotions. With training he or she can determine the person's intent.
Probe: Basically rifling the database of the mind to get information.
Mind Link: A psionic link between two people which can be perminate or temporary.
Some terms I use in MTU:
Scan or empathy: The psion only receives the sophont surface thoughts and emotions. With training he or she can determine the person's intent.
Probe: Basically rifling the database of the mind to get information.
Mind Link: A psionic link between two people which can be perminate or temporary.
IMTU, empathy and read surface thoughts may be used without the person being read (or even influenced) noticing it. Probe is more intrusive and distubing and the person probed is well aware of it.
rich4421972
SOC-12
In game terms, would there be an ability level penalty? A reduction in interaction skills or fast-talk? Would social standing/interpersonal skills or psionic power (as in TNE) defend a player from permanent mental damage?
I'm suggesting a permanent reduction in education, intelligence or social standing (future personal development could restore the ability scores).
In a lot of sci-fi a permanent link is called a psi-bond or mind bond.
As I understand it, probe is just looking for information, not altering it, so, no, thre will be no damage, but the person will be surely aware he/she is probed, and the experience is not pleasant, though the most the person tries to resist, the more unpleasant it is.
Rigel Stardin
SOC-13
Damage may occur with any form of psionic connection. This depends on whether or not the contact is accidental or intrusive.
Example of accidental psionic connection:
There is crashed alien ship in the swamp outside of town. The being is a high level psion who is asking for help from the locals. No one is aware of the ship but everyone in town is having strange dreams. The local nutcase is extremely agitated by the beings mental energies.
In this case, people associate the being’s psionic powers with weird dreams. They will not act on the images and dismiss them as something they have eaten. The local nutcase may or may not act on these messages but he is extremely disturbed by the image. This may result in the being acting out or causing harm to others. This was not the intent of the alien but because of the mental state of the local man, it clearly cause affects on those with mental illnesses or weaken mental disciplines.
Example of intrusive connection:
1. Secret organization uses psion to retrieve information from a spy.
2. Person willing accepts the help of a psion to retrieve information lost due to a brain injury.
In case 1, our spy is activity fighting the intrusion by the psion who uses techniques to overcome the person defenses. This will result in some form of mental damage while in case 2, the person is freely allowing the psion to enter his mind and seek information.
Probing another sophont’s mind could result in damage to the person’s mental state. It depends on how it’s conducted and by whom. In MTU, Probing is considered intrusive, even on a passive scale where the person feels the presence of the other being in their mind. This could affect the person mental state from the sophont seeing it as an invasion of privacy, reacting violently, to a sense of paranoia from there on out.
Example of accidental psionic connection:
There is crashed alien ship in the swamp outside of town. The being is a high level psion who is asking for help from the locals. No one is aware of the ship but everyone in town is having strange dreams. The local nutcase is extremely agitated by the beings mental energies.
In this case, people associate the being’s psionic powers with weird dreams. They will not act on the images and dismiss them as something they have eaten. The local nutcase may or may not act on these messages but he is extremely disturbed by the image. This may result in the being acting out or causing harm to others. This was not the intent of the alien but because of the mental state of the local man, it clearly cause affects on those with mental illnesses or weaken mental disciplines.
Example of intrusive connection:
1. Secret organization uses psion to retrieve information from a spy.
2. Person willing accepts the help of a psion to retrieve information lost due to a brain injury.
In case 1, our spy is activity fighting the intrusion by the psion who uses techniques to overcome the person defenses. This will result in some form of mental damage while in case 2, the person is freely allowing the psion to enter his mind and seek information.
Probing another sophont’s mind could result in damage to the person’s mental state. It depends on how it’s conducted and by whom. In MTU, Probing is considered intrusive, even on a passive scale where the person feels the presence of the other being in their mind. This could affect the person mental state from the sophont seeing it as an invasion of privacy, reacting violently, to a sense of paranoia from there on out.
Agreed, as with the rest of your post.
In any case, I was answering to a question about how to reflect the damage probing may do in game stats, and that was what I meant when I said probe is not damaging.
Of course, agresive (resisted) probing is damaging, as would be a rape, but in neither case this kind of damage is reflected in game stats (it can in how the player plays the character, if truly playing in character).
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Rigel Stardin
SOC-13
I merely wished to point out that even under the slightest psionic contact you might have unintended consequences with those who's mental state are not prepared for psionic contact.
Lycanorukke
SOC-13
What about the reverse - what happens to a psi who 'plugs in' to someone who is on a bad drug trip or is insane?
Attempting to probe a drugged mind would be difficult (trying to find information past the purple elephants and dancing flowers), but reading Hannibal Lecter would probably end up with unpleasant results.
Rigel Stardin
SOC-13
Depends on whether or not they are trained to handle such people. An untrained psion could screw things up and injuryed him or her self when entering such minds as you discribe. Where as, psion train in interrogation will probably be able to handle such people. Over time, they suffer something like shell shocker or multi-peronality disorder which requires medical treatment.
And I agree about 'active' psionic uses (sending thoughts, mind probes, empathy when used to influence, etc...), but I don't think so when only using 'passive scan' powers, as are empathy when only wanting to know the mood of the scanned person, read surface thoughts or life detection. In the latter case, the scanned person will be (as I understand psionics ) blissfuly unaware his mind (or mood) is being scanned and will suffer no damage for it (unless the read thoughts enrage the psion so much as to damage him, of course :devil
Lycanorukke
SOC-13
With empathy/life detect I would agree, the psi is just sitting back and 'listening to the noise', however when trying to pick out a specific thought train amoung the noise they have to focus a bit on the target. This gives a slight chance the subject may sense something - nothing specific, but more of a raised hackels/walk across grave/sudden shiver feeling. Vague and common enough to be dismissed as ordinary, but enough to make people jumpy in the right situation (ie: most PC's situations). Full on probes are as subtle as a bulldozer accompanied by a marching band.In the latter case, the scanned person will be (as I understand psionics ) blissfuly unaware his mind (or mood) is being scanned and will suffer no damage for it (unless the read thoughts enrage the psion so much as to damage him, of course :devil
But if there is potential for an odd feeling on non-specific scans, prehaps you could have military units deploy with animals (like the Anoelas things on Pysadi but not actually psionic). Animals may be more sensetive to general scans, so when the units dog starts getting twitchy over nothing, pay attention.
