[Basic] Skill of the week: Brainwashing (and Brain Hacking)

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Real is real, and fictional is fictional. Extremeness is unrelated entirely.

Not entirely. Fictional allows infinitely more extreme things than real does.

[Phil Masters]

I think that the point here would be that if we were discussing GURPS rules for military training, we wouldn't usually say that Brainwashing skill was involved. If we were going to talk about rules for cult deprogramming, we might. However, the two may be similar enough in practice that this is a category error.

I guess that the general image of "brainwashing" is that it's a very quick and very dirty version of the same sort of thing that is covered by Teaching skill, built on detailed knowledge of psychological science rather than any sort of small-e empathy. But that suggests that the borderline between Brainwashing and Teaching skill may be fuzzy. Well, so it goes; the borderlines between Karate and Brawling, or Diplomacy and Streetwise, can get fuzzy at times too.

And yes, "brainwashing" is generally seen as a dirty word, if only because the classic techniques seem to have been very brutal and unpleasant (though they might be considered crude and embarrassing bodge-jobs by less crass future psych-experts, who won't have to hurt you or stick you in front of spinning spiral patterns to turn your mind inside out). Also, it usually involves treating the human mind as a thing to be manipulated, broken or rebuilt to taste, which sounds a bit psychopathic. Cult deprogramming may actually be as nice as brainwashing can get and still qualify for the term; the line there would be "someone else has already treated this mind as a thing to be rebuilt; we're just trying to restore it".

Because it's a dirty word, people may not want to see it on their good-guy character sheets. But in settings where cult deprogramming is an important thing for the heroes, or where teams of psych-war probe teams are sent out to make enemy bases surrender bloodlessly (the alternative being frontal assaults and hundreds of deaths on both sides), well, you're going to have to call the skill something, and PCs shouldn't be any more embarrassed to have this one on their character sheets than to have Guns or Intimidation.

(Or we could rename other skills for similar honesty. "Stick Sharp Things In Soft Things Which Scream And Bleed", perhaps?)

[Not another shrubbery]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

I think that the point here would be that if we were discussing GURPS rules for military training, we wouldn't usually say that Brainwashing skill was involved. If we were going to talk about rules for cult deprogramming, we might. However, the two may be similar enough in practice that this is a category error.

I guess that the general image of "brainwashing" is that it's a very quick and very dirty version of the same sort of thing that is covered by Teaching skill, built on detailed knowledge of psychological science rather than any sort of small-e empathy. But that suggests that the borderline between Brainwashing and Teaching skill may be fuzzy. Well, so it goes; the borderlines between Karate and Brawling, or Diplomacy and Streetwise, can get fuzzy at times too.

And yes, "brainwashing" is generally seen as a dirty word, if only because the classic techniques seem to have been very brutal and unpleasant (though they might be considered crude and embarrassing bodge-jobs by less crass future psych-experts, who won't have to hurt you or stick you in front of spinning spiral patterns to turn your mind inside out). Also, it usually involves treating the human mind as a thing to be manipulated, broken or rebuilt to taste, which sounds a bit psychopathic. Cult deprogramming may actually be as nice as brainwashing can get and still qualify for the term; the line there would be "someone else has already treated this mind as a thing to be rebuilt; we're just trying to restore it".

Because it's a dirty word, people may not want to see it on their good-guy character sheets. But in settings where cult deprogramming is an important thing for the heroes, or where teams of psych-war probe teams are sent out to make enemy bases surrender bloodlessly (the alternative being frontal assaults and hundreds of deaths on both sides), well, you're going to have to call the skill something, and PCs shouldn't be any more embarrassed to have this one on their character sheets than to have Guns or Intimidation.

That may be my problem with it. If Brainwashing is also its own counter-skill, then having it for the purpose of deprogramming is less distasteful. It still seems to me that Psychology would be the go-to skill for cases like that.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Not another shrubbery

That may be my problem with it. If Brainwashing is also its own counter-skill, then having it for the purpose of deprogramming is less distasteful. It still seems to me that Psychology would be the go-to skill for cases like that.

Psychology is clearly the underlying scientific skill, but that leaves room for a "doing things" practical skill, that doesn't require lots of knowledge of the science, like the relationship between Engineer and Mechanic.

Counsellors, NLP practioners, and so on might well be using "Psychology mechanic" skill. This might be a familiarity of Brainwashing, or might be a separate skill: the GRUPS skills model is somewhat arbitrary.

[Phil Masters]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Psychology is clearly the underlying scientific skill, but that leaves room for a "doing things" practical skill, that doesn't require lots of knowledge of the science, like the relationship between Engineer and Mechanic.

I'd say more like Physics and Engineering. But that may be me thinking of "Psychology" as an academic skill rather than what GURPS usually means by the word.

And those hypothetical deprogrammers might have to know enough about Brainwashing that they could use the skill as such quite effectively, even if they're too ethical to do so and the rule mechanics in use have them rolling against Psychology.

But there's also scope for, say, the benevolent Galactic Federation's whatever-works psych ops teams being PCs who go into border worlds and brainwash the local leaderships into not fighting thermonuclear wars. Because, you know, idiots with nukes, predicted megadeaths, screw the ethical semantics. Could be an interesting campaign.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

I'd say more like Physics and Engineering. But that may be me thinking of "Psychology" as an academic skill rather than what GURPS usually means by the word.

And those hypothetical deprogrammers might have to know enough about Brainwashing that they could use the skill as such quite effectively, even if they're too ethical to do so and the rule mechanics in use have them rolling against Psychology.

But there's also scope for, say, the benevolent Galactic Federation's whatever-works psych ops teams being PCs who go into border worlds and brainwash the local leaderships into not fighting thermonuclear wars. Because, you know, idiots with nukes, predicted megadeaths, screw the ethical semantics. Could be an interesting campaign.

First, it's reasonable to assume that Brainwashing is a specialisation so distinct from general Psychology as to be its own skill, with probably a -6 default (the recommended value in the book, IIRC). Second, cult deprogramming is a subset of Brainwashing if done through this skill so . . . Buy A Technique!

Noncombat Techniques don't get enough love. Look at the number of kick techniques alone, or better yet the number of Techniques for the whole skill of Karate. Now see if you can find as many for Psychology or Brainwashing. Spread teh Tekno-luv!

[WaterAndWindSpirit]

I've been thinking about something...

I'm kinda hesitant to do things like that in a game because I'm a bit squeamish on the subject, and I'll have to talk to my players about it before ever doing that as a GM, but what would be your thought about an evil organization where most rank and file members have been brainwashed?

Say, the organization sets up specific victim support groups to find vulnerable people among them, and turns their pain into hatred for a specific group of people whom they say are part of a vast conspiracy against them and are responsible for a trauma, and then giving them some basic training (and the Fanatical and Intolerance disadvantages) before sending them out to die for the cause? Kinda like the Brotherhood of Nod cultivating hatred for GDI in citizens living in the yellow/red zones (zones highly contaminated by tiberium, a toxic living material poisoning and killing people, with the side effect of disrupting infrastructures like power plants and the like due to death of skilled personnel) before recruiting them in militia squad and using them as canon fodder or even suicide bombers (from C&C 3 Tiberium Wars)?

It would be a touchy subject requiring discussion with the players before implementation, but how would such a scenario work in-game?