[Totem]

Originally Posted by ericthered

I was hoping the blazen would be a simple concept to convey -- the guy is TL 9, right? But if not thats fine. Opposing simple mind-controlling aliens trying to take over the world should be a simple enough concept... how much time would that take?

You've got to convince them that these things exist (depending on whether they're Mulder or Scully that could be anything from +5 to -5 on the roll); that holds true whatever the delusion, and TL would have very little to do with it. Actually, a superstitious TL4 peasant who is worried about going into the woods because of the Fairy Folk would actually be easier to convince than a TL9 guard who believes in science and 'rational thinking'. So... For an easily convinced individual, including a telereceive and psychology roll to find some easy crack to make use of... Could be ten seconds for the delusion and obsession. On the other hand the hard-headed rational type (who needs to be convinced that this isn't a joke, a set up, a work of fiction, etc) could take a few minutes, if it was even possible in a sensible amount of time.

Originally Posted by ericthered

Does he remain loyal to an employer after suffering a mind wipe (which includes total amnesia)? I'd think that'd go a long way towards at least reducing any penalties.

Mind wipe would knock out existing loyalties (see below though). Total amnesia would also wipe knowledge of any skills, advantages, etc. Whether anyone could actually keep their skills under such circumstances... Probably, but that's less than ideal circumstances to be relying on someone for the skills that they would be bringing to the party.

There's an interesting video I ran into on youtube showing a guy being hypnotised, and one of the suggestions was that he would forget who he was; name, address, history, everything. Then they took him back to his stuff, which he didn't recognise as being his own, to the extent of:

You play hockey.
I play hockey?

Or something like that anyway. Couldn't even work out how to put the helmet on properly I recall. You'd be putting a gun in someone's hand and hoping that they could remember how to hold it.

On the plus side it would give you something like a +10 on any roll to give orders or implant that Loyalty disadvantage if you did it very shortly afterwards.

Originally Posted by ericthered

how big of cyberware penalties are we talking about?

Cyberware penalties are anything from -1 for unfamiliar mental architecture all the way up to -10 or immunity for watchdog wetware and the like. Such things would be aimed at psychological attacks (Intimidation, Fast Talk, Acting, Hypnosis) rather than psychic ones, but still... It would be on an individual basis, but guards are likely to have something minimal at least.

Originally Posted by ericthered

My intent is to recruit them as fanatics for our cause, amplifying man power, intimidation effect, and confusing the people we're looking over. Michael can take more than a few seconds, only needs these guys temporarily, and he has a very high mind surgery skill (20)-- he should be able to soak a fair amount of penalty. How would you recommend going about this mechanically?

My recommendation would be:

• Somebody hold the target down or otherwise restrain them.
• Telereceive to get into their head.
• Psychology, combined with spoken triggers to pick up key thoughts (basically, word association to pick up any suitable cracks in their mental defences based on your choice of key words: loyalty, enemy, threat, etc. These would give you some kind of background to work with, since there's no point in wasting time convincing these people that they're up against aliens when they're already relatively ready to accept an easy shift to believing that their employer is a terrorist who they need to oppose).
• Psychology + Mind Surgery to phrase the suggestions that you want to make and implant them: obsession (stop blazen), delusion (blazen exist) and sense of duty (michael). Modify as you see necessary to fulfil your intent, but each disadvantage is a separate pair of rolls.
• Total time is anywhere from a minute up to fifteen or twenty minutes depending on the attitudes of the subject.

If you want to combine this with Mind Wipe to throw in total amnesia then it would be modified as:

• Mind Wipe as the opening move.
• An Influence roll to get them to stand still while you work.
• Psychology + Mind Surgery for each of your choice of disadvantages. Loyalty is the easy one there, but you can also throw in others... Once loyalty is in place a spoken command backing up a suggestion would buy you an instant +5 on the Mind Surgery.
• Total time will be... Two minutes tops, but it could go down to thirty seconds. Certainly the longer it takes the harder it will be once any kind of panic starts to set in.

Two things I may not have made this clear in the past: the timing of these things is largely based around the Mind Force stories that I'm working on (in fact so are quite a few aspects of telepathy in this game). Extra levels in advantages can decrease the time taken or increase the range, but there is a definite lower limit to the time that you are stuck with abiding by without getting into matters like data compression techniques and broadband telepathic transmission. Unfortunately this rule has kind of evolved as we've gone along... Whatever game I run next, such things as this will be made clear from the start.

Secondly your Psychology roll is instead of their WILL roll to oppose your efforts: anyone without Telepathic abilities of their own won't have the mental machinery to sense or oppose any intrusions, but the mind is a damned complicated place, meaning that you can't simply jump in and do what you like without thinking about it. The same principle applied when Alex picked up the two guards and threw them around; they couldn't make an opposed roll because they had nothing to oppose it with. The same, I hasten to add, applies to abilities used against you...

Originally Posted by ericthered

Of course, If the group is already in the room, its a moot point.

You can grab one of the guards from outside if you want, or there are a couple in the conference room already. But with people in the conference room half convinced that they were being invaded or spied on, and some of them being possessed by Blazen (the last time we checked) the number of guards running around is going to increase somewhat. If you can spare the time you could make an effort against one of the guards in the room, but that would leave Sourn guarding everyone else. And neither of you appears to have points in intimidation.


Wow that's a lot... Uh, let me know if you've got any further questions about this. I admit that I'm veering away from RAW here in places, but I'm trying to balance between RAW, my own system, and a sense of realism that RAW sometimes doesn't manage to convey.