FBH Design – The Telepath
So I saddled up and started my second (first real) pass on the Psi careers, starting with Telepath. Whuff. Not easy. I’m trying to provide flexible limitations while curbing abuse, all while keeping text size to a minimum. Oddly, I ended up with six Skills instead of five, and now I find myself with the task of having to cut/cryo-freeze one of them.
2 questions for the community, if you have the time:
– Evaluate Skills: Do the skills “make sense”? Do you get what they’re supposed to do? Are they too vague? Too restrictive? Open to obvious abuse?
– Eliminate a Skill: Which skill can we do without? Which is the least interesting to you?
Precognition – When you witness a pivotal moment in time and open your sight to What Could Be, the GM will reveal brief images of a future where you and your allies did not interact with that event in any way.
Telepathy – You can create a short-lived mental communication link between yourself and a target within line of sight, or over longer distances if you have a strong bond with the subject.
Probe – Touching the head of another allows you to Access their mind as if it was a computer. Failed or partially successful Access attempts can cause significant neurological damage.
Suggestion – When you plant a fact, memory or desire in the mind of someone nearby, Roll+Interface.
– On a 10+, they accept this completely, and will act on it if they can.
– On a 7-9, they will act on it for now, but will soon come to their senses.
Empathy – With a moment of focus, you can feel the life force, health and emotional states in a given space. Large changes in life force, health or emotional states resonate louder and further.
Clairvoyance – Meditation allows you to make Assessment+Mettle about specific people, objects and locations over any distance. The glimpses granted by a failed Clairvoyance can be extremely disturbing.
At first blush, and recognizing the irony of my suggestion, I’d say cut Telepathy. It’s useful, but unless your radio or personal comm goes out, I suspect it’s not going to get as much mileage as the others.
Notes:
Precognition seems… difficult to adjudicate in a way that doesn’t make things messy. Some PbtA games have similar moves that let you retcon in “preparation” for an event, which might be interesting here.
Telepathy seems underpowered in a setting where you might have like implanted jawbone microphones or whatever. I like the idea, but I’d eliminate it. If someone was playing a Psi career and wanted to say they could speak telepathically, I would just allow it based on fictional positioning anyway.
Should Suggestion just be a modified Command?
Aaron Griffin re: Precognition: I’m hoping that a lot of messiness will be alleviated by the caveat that “this is what would happen if you guys do absolutely nothing”. Because yeah, otherwise it would cause all kinds of issues. That said, I’ll look into the idea of retcon/saw-it-coming.
re: Suggestion: I wanted it to be significantly more subtle than a flat out Command. If anything, once a mind has been Accessed with Probe, you could likely Command them afterwards.
Sooooo…Suggestion is more like In Brain Puppet Strings? (grins wickedly)
And I have to agree with Aaron that Precog is a bit…awkoddward, shall we say? I could see it working in a classic AW ‘declare upcoming event…which will now happen. Hold 3 (or 1) to declare/act on this info. On a 6-less, you’re in trouble’ sort of way.
That’s a pretty cool idea. Yeah, maybe I should go back and refresh myself on the Psychic Maelstrom moves from AW, it’s been a while.
Also, I kinda agree about Telepathy, despite the fact that it’s… necessary? Or rather, a cornerstone of the fantasy of the telepath.
I’ll see if I can’t cut down the wordiness and try to fold it into Empathy.
There was a move, possibly custom, in a PbP game I played in once that was called “Sabotage” – at the beginning of a session, you rolled for 3, 2, or 1 hold and could spend the hold to declare at any time that you had sabotaged a device or machine.
It would be interesting to write a precognition skill in a similar vein, but I don’t really see how it’d work.
Maybe extend telepathy to allow speaking to any sentient life? And with a strong bond you can do it over long distance.
Aaron Griffin Yeah, that’s the kind of thing I was thinking about: you, Oh Precog, can declare your Big Vision Thing and get a bit of a bonus when acting on the basis of your knowledge, but there’s always that whole Cassandra deal if you roll a six or less.
Aha! Check out the Oracle playbook for Urban Shadows. The Foretellings move is about what I was thinking.
copypasta…
Foretellings: At the beginning of the session, roll with Spirit. On a 10+, hold 2. On a 7-9, hold 1. During the session, you can spend your hold to declare that something terrible is about to happen. You (and your allies) take +1 ongoing to avoid the impending disaster. On a miss, you foresee
the death of someone important to you and take -1 to all rolls to prevent it.
On the matter of Telepathy, although to some degree its a matter of setting, although technological communications may be more common, telepathic communications cannot normally be detected or intercepted by technological means. In such settings, that can be a huge advantage in certain situations.
I’d roll empathy and telepathy together, and I would leave precognition alone. “What would happen if PCs do nothing” is bog-standard prep in PbtA — it’s just “hey make up a countdown clock, what’s on it?”
Alternatively, I’d roll Precognition into Clairvoyance somehow.
Alfred Rudzki I’d agree with you if UW had the whole countdown/front concept spelled out in the rules.
Fair Aaron Griffin — but UW literally has a GM move called “Foreshadow.” I really think a Precog move works just fine. Player uses it, GM tells the player — in fictional terms — what their hardest move would be if left to their own devices. Maybe even phrase it just like that, more or less. I don’t think that would break anything.
Precognition feels more like a GM move to me. I’m not quite sure under what circumstances a player would want to trigger it.
Telepathy, I think is fine. The long-distance stuff is great, and short-distance although you can just radio-chat with allies I think it can have some neat synergies with other career skills. e.g. telepathy + probe means you can read their minds without physical contact
Probe sounds great, maybe clarify that you’re using the Access move (Interface) since it’s easy to miss that capital letter.
Suggestion sounds great too… but what’s the difference between this and Probe? In both cases you’re hacking their brain to some end, either to read or write information. If this skill didn’t exist, and someone wanted to plant a suggestion, I’d tell them to use their Probe skill and roll interface to see if they could manage it. Does that make this one redundant? Or is the difference intended to be read vs write? Does it make sense that you can plant a suggestion without physical contact, but not read a mind?
Empathy is less exciting but I think still fills a useful niche, maybe? It feels like a special case of “Clairvoyance”.
Clairvoyance is my favorite. I think the Precognition elements may fit in here too, at least the ones players would want to trigger. Precognition and Empathy could probably both fit under the Clairvoyance umbrella.
I keep thinking that it would be possible to merge two ability together instead of removing one.
Telepathy, suggestions and probe are linked. they all affect the mind.
Probe and suggestion can’t be merge because OP, but, could telepathy piggyback on one or both? maybe.
Flavorwise. clairvoyance and precognition are very similar, in most SF, time does not really matter when a telepath meditate. It would probably be OP.
powerwise, telepathy and empathy seem the weakest. they could be merge with the flavor of opening your mind to another one (telepathy) or opening your mind to the surrounding world(empathy).
Alfred Rudzki I don’t think it’s “broken”. Only that UW’s general GM advice is to give things agendas (primary and secondary for intelligent threats) and “advance” them as a move. My issue here is that an agenda is not a final step of some plan like you get with the countdown style games. If it was, awesome (“reveal the next Grim Portent that will come to pass”).
I think a GM familiar with PbtA style would totally get this move and rock it as is, I just don’t think it follows well from the specific advice in the book.
Awesome, thanks so much for all the feedback, you guys rock. I’ll roll these around with your suggestions, see what comes out. The Precognition thing is still bothering me a bit, so I’m going to try a few new avenues, see what sticks. With that in mind, what do you guys think of this:
Precognition: When you glimpse the future with a clear mind, gain a minor mental debility (headaches, visions, fatigue, etc) and choose any character’s experience trigger. The GM will make it happen, and soon.
Hm, I’m not really feeling that one, Sean Gomes if only because I figure XP triggers — while up to the players — are flags to the GM for what the games should be about, anyway.
That sounds extremely fun. There are a lot of GM moves that force the players to think on their feet and improvise, I like the idea of one that turns that around! (Granted, the GM is doing a lot of that anyway, but still…)
That one seems a bit power-gamey to me. I like the idea of referring back to in game mechanics. Maybe just something like “the GM will reveal a threat’s agenda” or something?
Alfred Rudzki while true that the XP Triggers are an informal “vote” as to the content of the game, the skill is intended to create a coincidental or unexpected event that forces the specific trigger to the forefront, but perhaps not in a way the character expected (since the XP triggers are very open to interpretation).
That said, I’m not married to the idea, I just found it neat to use XP triggers as a built-in guideline to the phrasing of a premonition.
off with Precognition’s head!!
(after all Precog is a common trope in itself)
Another (probably terrible) idea:
Precog, Fate: When you glimpse the future, roll 2d6 and record the result (Success, Partial Success, Failure) as a minor debility named “Impending Fate”. Whenever you are called to make a Move, either you or the GM can forgo the roll and use the result of the Impending Fate instead.
Or yeah, maybe I should just get rid of precognition and tweak up Telepathy
I really like the idea of precognition, it’s just the execution that could be tricky. I don’t think your original version’s actually that bad. The GM doesn’t have to know beforehand what would happen, but the precog move is their cue to make something up.
On the other hand predicting future is something that could be covered by simply adding “events” to the list of subjects in Clairvoyance.
I think there might be more stock in a retro-active move. Sort of a “Actually, that was just a vision, instead I’m going to do this.” For example:
Precognition: When, after missing a roll, you declare those events to have been merely a vision of the future, revert time back to the moment before you made the roll and change your actions. Any information discovered in your vision remains true and can be used to your advantage. You may only do this once per session.
Ended up putting all 5 major designs for Precongition into a Google Doc, I’d really like to get all of your opinions on which one you like best, etc (Commenting on the doc is enabled)
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ctXFEUfWbbPP9aE_8HEKyVcZnREpoKkj3NuMdFA3G2E/edit?usp=sharing