Patrons and social connections-med long

[Gordon C. Landis]

Mike,

Sure seems to me like you're on to something - this is a very specific example of some of the general protagonize/deprotagonize converstaion that have gone on here in the past.  I think your "more interesting without the X than with it" is a good principle here.  But of course, there will be a world of disagreement about what is and isn't more interesting, defined by GNS preferences, story tastes/themes (ala Fang's "genre expectations"), and etc.

What I personally find most interesting about this specific example is that it clearly shows how what might seem "good"  for providing a structure to play in/around actually ends up undermining the ultimate goals of play - UNLESS you look in a completely different place than most folks are used to looking.

Gordon

[M. J. Young]

I don't see how mind reading and mystery can work in the one game.

Oddly, I do. But perhaps it depends on your definitions. What does the ability to read minds enable a character to actually do?

Now, in Multiverser, a mind reading ability enables a character to do whatever it is that the ability is initially defined as being able to do; and a character can, if he wishes, develop dozens of mind reading abilities that do different things, and hold them at differing levels of ability--because a mind is a tremendously complex thing to read.

If you merely tell me that you want to learn to read someone's mind, my immediate reaction is that you want the ability to know exactly what that person is consciously thinking at this moment.  That's all. Now, if I'm running a mystery, it is possible that the culprit is going to be thinking about the crime--but if the crime is over and we're not talking about it at the moment, it's not terribly likely. If I want to know who the culprit is, I have to get him to think "I'm the guy who did it"; but he's probably not going to think that. He's probably going to think "He thinks I did it" or "He doesn't think I did it"--neither of which tells me more than my suspect's reactions to my questions.

I use to watch My Favorite Martian  (yeah, I'm old). In one episode, Bill Bixby's character persuaded Ray Walston's Uncle Martin to give him the power to read minds so that he could find out what his boss thought about the raise request he had submitted. But when he had the opportunity to actually get to his boss and try to get something back, the man was thinking about his bad breakfast and his other concerns of the day. Walston's character later explained that the man was "playing mental ping-pong", refusing to think at all about the issue at hand.

In a D&D game I ran, the player characters managed to arrest a certain priest suspected of poisoning a certain official, based on no better evidence than that one of the PC's didn't like the guy (and that someone had read the module and knew this guy was chaotic evil). After a tragicomic series of gaffs, a more experienced player stepped in with his character to try to get something solid. He was going to use his ability to detect truth, and engage the character in conversation. His objective was to discover what deity the priest served, what the alignment of this deity was, and whether the man was in any way connected to the crime. I ran a timer on the skill. For a full five minutes, I, playing the priest, waxed eloquent about theology, about the differences between religions and how they divide people rather than unifying them, about how very many obscure faiths there were in the world and how difficult it was to know anything about them all, about the importance of having faith and having values--the only thing the player got from the conversation was, in the final seconds, the name of an obscure foreign deity.

Now, if your read minds skill allows you to search the memories of the target character, that's certainly a very potent skill; but if you use it in my game, prepare to spend hours sifting through thoughts and memories. I don't imagine that the things I remember are so well organized that you could discover what I was doing on Saturday--I don't know that I could determine that without checking my calendar and such. You're probably going to know a lot of worthless things about me before you get around to whether or not I'm guilty of the crime in question. And if I'm one of a dozen suspects, reading my mind is not going to help much. You'll have to invest hours of game-world time into each suspect, just trying to find something useful. (I would use a general effects roll to determine how long it takes to learn anything and how useful it proves to be; you might hit that one in a thousand shot that finds out the truth immediately, but it's much more likely that you'll not learn more than you would merely by questioning all the suspects.)

I think sometimes we imagine our super powers to be more powerful than they really would be realistically. If the mind reader wants to read minds, give him information. If there's no particular reason for the suspect to be thinking about the crime at the moment, then he's probably not thinking about it. Even if he is thinking about it, if it's a major event it's likely everyone else is thinking about it, too, and not likely there's much difference in his thoughts than anyone else's, unless by some remarkable coincidence he happens to be thinking about what he's going to do next.

--M. J. Young

[contracycle]

I think sometimes we imagine our super powers to be more powerful than they really would be realistically.

Well, being as they are SUPER powers...

It's not much of a limit, and IMO is the abuse of illusionism; because as Mike pointed out it is deprtotagonoising to have a power thats frustrated.

So in a game of Con-X, none of these methods would be of any use - because the characters will just strap the target to a chair, inject sodium pentathol for good measure, and keep driving at the topic until that is the ONLY thing the target can think about.  Players can and will work around the problem.

[Mike Holmes]

Gareth's right, MJ, these are just examples of the problem, not the solution.

Sure, if we define the power as weak before hand, then, yes, I shouldn't have any expectations of more results. But the idea that there is a "realistic" way of looking at a super power is, well, ludicrous. In Hero System, it says that if you roll high enough that you can root out any though from a charcter's memory. Am I going to change that because you feel that it's not a "realistic" portrayal of a non-existent ability? Sorry, but I think its perfectly valid.

What you are doing is simply trying to cut the bandits off at the pass. By limiting the power before hand you are trying to avoid the problem. But as Gareth points out, it's not going to work. When the player notes the deficiencies, he's going to try and find a way around them. And in any case you are assuming that the weakened version is not powerful enough to ruin a plot. But for certain plots it very will might be.

If I limit a power so much that it never really has an affect on a plot, then why would anyone want to buy it? The point is that players want to have an impact, and what you are doing is eliminating their ability to do so. Better before than after, I suppose, but still not my preferred way to handle such a situation.

As far as thins being Ilusionism, yes, I think Gareth's right in a technical sense. But it's pretty poor illusionism, IMO. Any time I make the game boring by forcing a player to listen to silly drivel, just to make a point to him that his power is going to be nigh usless in a particular situation, I have made a mistake in applying my Illusionist powers. As Gareth said, I'd be tempted to call this abuse as well. Proper application of Illusionism should, IMO, leave the player with the feeling that they have affected the plot. That's the whole point, IMO.

I'd be more comfortable, telling the player, that I needed to have the power fail in this case for dramatic reasons and working out with him a good reason why. At least he gets to participate then.

Again, this is all my preference. I understand that there are people who state that this sort of thing is their preferred mode of play. But the people who have the problem enumerated in this thread are not going to be satisfied by having their character's be ineffective as a means to ensure that the GM can promulgate a decent plot.

Mike

[damion]

Well, the 'Fish out of water' is an standard theme in literature, or 'how do you cope with a situations without your powers, toys, whatever'. This adds tension and is interesting. The problem is with powers that can routinely curcumvent plots. The end result is they end up getting 'incorperated' into the plot. A poor GM will just nullify them, a good GM will just use them to give the info you'd get anyway. (The thug you capture can only divulge some info under mind probe, ect). The problem is because these powers are usually payed for based on the fact that they can curcumvent plots, despite the fact that they can't in practice.  Thus they should be payed for on this basis and the GM should let players know this ahead of time.

[Mike Holmes]

All makes sense.

A poor GM will just nullify them, a good GM will just use them to give the info you'd get anyway.

The good Illusionist GM. The good Narrativist GM doesn't have hidden information that can only come out fter certain actions at all (thus directing the plot). He lets the plot go where it will, including the "untimely" uncovering of any secrets. In such a game nothing is Untimely, as the plot is being created as you go.

Mike

[Balbinus]

A poor GM will just nullify them, a good GM will just use them to give the info you'd get anyway. quote]

Which has much the same effect.

Game one, my telepath suddenly can't read the thug's mind for some reason.  I am deprotagonised and the time and currency I invested in that ability are wasted.

Game two, my telepath reads the thug's mind for info he would otherwise have given me anyway, by some other means.  I am still deprotagonised and my time and currency are still wasted, I have gained nothing I wouldn't have had without the ability.

The answer is to allow your plot to be derailed, let go and see where you end up.  Otherwise, it is entirely valid to say "ok, I'm going to be running some mystery style plots which won't work so well with telepaths in the game.  Is everyone cool with no PC telepaths?"  Nothing wrong with that, it's upfront and honest.

But letting someone buy an ability and rendering it irrelevant is just making player choice meaningless.

[contracycle]

Hmm.  I kinda agree with both those thoughts.  One might argue that on sim terms, currency is not plot relevant but world relevant; after all it only describes a mechnical process.  In which case, if you got to use your mind reading powers on plot-irrelevant matters but not on plot relevant matters, the illusion might be plausible because you were really paying to influence the objective world, which you can.  OTOH, repetition makes this increasingly implausible, and fundamentally if you didn't get to use your power over an objective world to solve your problems, it wasn't very effective and wasn't worth the expense.

[Mike Holmes]

Gaareth is right, these are player priorities. If you prioritize Sim play, then you will often be satisfied with the Illusionist response. Moreso if the illusions are really well introduced (as they will not violate the plausibility clause; not the plot impact side).

Mike

[Valamir]

I have this nagging itch that I feel the need to scratch...that being that IMO the term "Deprotagonize" gets slung around a little too freely.  Its almost as if every instance of the player not getting his own way is "deprotagonizing".   I advise caution in this, because I like the word but can easily see it heading the way of "RailRoading" as a term which everyone uses but ultimately has little value because its been misused so often.

Taking away a character's Schtick (whether it be mind reading or all of the whiz bang gadgets from the Bat Utility Belt) is not in and of itself deprotagonizing.  If the result is nothing more than "whiff by fiat" than yes, I can see where that is.  However, there are many legitimate uses for this tactic.

[Walt Freitag]

My telepath reads the thug's mind for info he would otherwise have given me anyway, by some other means. I am still deprotagonised and my time and currency are still wasted, I have gained nothing I wouldn't have had without the ability.

I disagree. I don't accept that logic because if continued, it makes all abilities useless and deprotagonizing all the time.

The truth is, in most cases, if I don't have that pick locks ability, I'll eventually get out of the prison cell somehow. If I don't have the Vulcan Nerve Pinch, I'll eventually get past the sentry somehow. If I don't have another three points of dueling skill, I'll eventually kill the Cardinal somehow.

Except in play where Director stance predominates or where incredibly flexible intuitive continuity plotting is taking place, using a particular skill rarely determines whether or not a particular thing is accomplished. (And when it does, it leads to another problem recently discussed -- e.g. when I fail to jump a chasm so all objectives contingent on doing so have to be scrapped.) Usually the use of a skill affects:

- When the thing is accomplished
- Whether it's accomplished through the agency of my character or another
- What concessions had to be made (risk taken, time and resources spent, etc.) to get it done

Using telepathy to discover information that the players would otherwise have eventually obtained anyway is no different than most uses of most skills. If my character fails to climb a cliff, will the cliff, or the need to get to the top of it, go away? In some game styles, it will. But in the vast majority of cases, it won't. In those cases isn't using my character's ability to climb the cliff only getting me somewhere that I would have gotten to anyway? Does that make the ability irrelevant and its use deprotagonizing?

- Walt

[Mike Holmes]

What Walt said. It is often the simple display of the character as effective in his Niche that protagonizes the character. Sometimes a simple matter of who comes up with the idea and makes an appropriate roll first. But in any case, it's the players decision in these cases (whether Illusion or not) that give the player the sense of protagonism.

In a Dirty Harry movie, we know he can't really lose. But there is still tension when he "rolls the dice" and shoots it out with yet another thug. And the character is protagonized.

Mike

[Balbinus]

My point was that the GM would have given me the info anyway.  My telepathy is actually a gm tool, not a player one.  It works when the gm wishes it to so that the gm can introduce elements to the world.

That is why it is ultimately meaningless.

[Bob McNamee]

What other way would Telepathy work in a Sim oriented game?

Thats a classic "GM gives info" skill/power...
the player doesn't get to determine what info gets told (maybe the depth of reading etc).
As far as GM giving info he would have learned anyway... only the GM knows that... but most of my Players in my Supers games would have found ways of getting that info out of the thug - interrogation, dangling him at 10,000 feet...
The protagonizing element of that power would be the speed of info gain.
Or even the "We got the info My way"

Its really not anymore deprotagonizing than meeting up with your Arch-Enemy Flambe' who is immune to most of your Souffle' powers (as you are to his...)

Bob McNamee

[Balbinus]

Fair question Bob, I'm not expressing myself well.

The difference as I see it is between the player having a genuine choice as to when to use the ability and the gm having that choice.  If the gm allows the ability to work only so as to provide info the gm would have provided anyway, the player has no power to determine events.

If the player can use their ability, even to the detriment of the GMs plans, the GM has shared power over the gameworld with the player.

I have been in all too many games where powers such as telepathy only seemed to work successfully when the gm would have told us some other way anyway, that's not a real allowance of the ability.  Real allowance is where I can derail the plot, so as to craft a plot in which I have more stake.