Quote from: CarlD.;1022813analogy for my opinion is that its like a society of blind where occasionally though some fluke some are born with sight. They have a large advantage over most in many ways (includong the ability to spy and conspire in ways the bulk of society can't and possibly can't concieve of).

I complelely understand why some of majority would feel disturbed by their existence and even suspicious of the Sighed and their extra sense, and jealous which rarely leads anywhere good. I probably would too if I was in there situation. But I wouldn't feel it was right if that society either exiled, impriseoned or exiled the Sighted or require their eyes be gouged out before they've done anything.



Moving away from the mind field of personal ethics regarding imaginary abilities, Mental powers can make handling mysteries a chore. Its important to keep track of relatively minor details in some cases like who was actually there for exactly what and what imoressions (real or otherwise) they might have gotten (people don't always remember things accurately. Memory is very volitale and fragile particularly over time and with emotion. Two people can have entirely different recollections of the same event. Which makes it a bit less of a pain than many forms of Retrocognition.

That's true. I never thought of the "Rashomon Effect".

Quote from: jhkim;1022680He even had a contingency plan to kill a fellow PC telepath. Late in the campaign, the GM gave her a note that she accidentally read his mind and saw his plans to kill her - so she tried to kill him. I felt like this justified his having the plan in the first place. She tried to kill him for thinking of something he might do in the future. The other PCs were on her side, though, so I retired him and he went off to become an NPC.

He (your PC) sounds like the Batman...Except maybe for the killing.

Bible Man is watching you masturbate!

As Bren replied earlier, it depends on what the abilities are, how they work, how they can be resisted, etc. In general though, reading someone's mind can be really powerful, and against their will, extremely invasive. I don't really like the power dynamics of great mental powers, because if they get powerful enough, then can dominate how things are done in the game, and tend to make the game largely about them, and can make it no fun to not be a telepath. Also the ability tends to be a matter of "yep, I just have this power - is it better than yours or not?" which I don't find to be a situation I like much. I also tend to avoid supers games in general, so I'll try to resist chiming in too much.

Quote from: Krimson;1022815Remember that Batman movie with Heath Ledger as the Joker, and how he robbed the bank at the beginning of the movie? All of his minions were fed just enough information to play out their part of the plan with no idea what anyone else was doing. A good bad villain can use this to their advantage, using expendable pawns to forward a plan without any of them even knowing what the plan is. In fact, no one even knew who the Joker was until he introduced himself. He could have kept doing what he was doing, and a telepath would be really hard pressed to figure out why all this chaos was happening. Even if a telepath reads psychic impressions, that might still not give any useful information away. I'd go even a step further and have most of the hired help not even know who they are really working for. Use expendable proxies as go betweens who let their guard down because the boss just have them a promotion, and make sure their bodies are cold by the time the mind reader gets near them.

Oh yeah, there are work arounds for it. Telepathy might be a spoiler like insanely high Detectice abilities or social skills but they can be handled. I'm not unsympathetic to gms that find it more work than they want to do. Just creating a good mystery or plot can be take a boat load of effoct.

But then its probably incumbent on those indivduals to restrict or ban powers in their games they don't want to and can't deal with, IMO.

QuoteI do like your point about people having different recollections of the same event. That totally happens all the time. Their mental state determines the details they fixate on, which get reinforced while other information gets fuzzy.

I read a really interesting article on how fragile memory can be that included accounts from people about their high school experience where, for example, bullies remebered those years and the event so differently that the truly thought there targets where among their best friends.

QuoteIn the Star Wars Clone Wars series, Mandalorians were trained to resist Jedi mind tricks, in addition to cool shields that could block lightsabers. Monks in D&D have had ways of resisting mind control and charm like abilities, and Rogues in 3.Xe could learn Slippery Mind with the right Prestige Class, Shadowdancer I think. The point is, fiction has good examples of normal people being able to learn how to resist psychic powers, or at the very least hide their surface thoughts from passive scans. Now any GM that uses that regularly is a dick unless they have good reason, like an antagonist group which deliberately trains their people because their plans have been screwed up by telepaths one too many times. Which means at least once. So in that case whomever is in charge may have a history with telepaths, if they are not one themselves.

Good point, the longer and more well known telepaths are they more structures and procedures will be in place to trip them up. From the opposite end, if they're largely unknown and/or distrusted just reading someone's mind may not be enough. You'd have something tangible to verify your findings.

Quote from: jhkim;1022894Actually, there wasn't any inter-player personal conflict between me and Allesandra - the player of the telepath. I was angry at the GM, in that I felt like he set these things up without giving my PC Blackout his due, but I was fine with her PC trying to kill my PC.

I wasn't there so I'm not going to argue with you. Experiences with similar situations has shown me there is usually some degree of resentment involved i these situations though, even when the participants don't realize or acknowledge it. In in any case, it seems to have left an impression.

QuoteI mostly agree. I think the GM should have consulted more with me before setting up that sort of plot line. I intended Blackout to be a wrench in the works, but he mostly had murderous intent towards the admittedly totalitarian government, not against other PCs. The plan against the other PC was a contingency, not something he really wanted. By having her specifically see the plan against her, he jumped up the conflict.

It seems like there were three responsible parties: both players and the gm. I would agree the gm takes the lions share of it as he seems to have stirred the pot in a very provactive way without consultation or much consideration.

As far as the in setting fiction goes, I'd be more sympathetic to the telepath in this guess. Knowing nothing else about her aside from she has telepathy (something you appear from earlier statements to have misgiving about as a rule) or "Blackout" aside from he's a frequent killer who seems those to share those views I can understand her being horrified and infuriated that he'd made plans to kill her even it was supposedly only just in case particularly if he didn't have such contingencies for everyone else just her because of what she was. Going immediately to homicide strikes me as classic PC reaction on her part but isn't completely out of bounds from what I know of ths situation at the moment.

It could have made for interestng rp but it was handled poorly, IMO.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1022212Well, more of a "right to privacy" thing.

Well, I've seen several leftists associating telepathy as a metaphor for nonconsensual sex. Which I guess ties into feminist efforts to suggest that if man is charming and you say an enthusiastic free-willed yes, have sex, and then regret it a couple of days or weeks or years later, he "raped" you.

MOD EDIT: this is NOT an invitation for anyone else to start talking about the broader subjects of consent, sex, rape, or feminist ideas of consent/rape.  Going off topic will not be welcome on this thread. You can talk about consent or feminism or rape culture ONLY in the very strict context of whether or not telepaths are 'problematic' in RPGs or pop culture.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1023639Well, I've seen several leftists associating telepathy as a metaphor for nonconsensual sex.

That was something I was hoping not to even go near. Because I think of it as a crock.

All of my statements in this conversation have been in opposition of the use of Mind Control abilities to straight up force someone to do something against their will. Or to make use of offensive telepathy to force ones way beyond just surface thoughts.

The act of forcing someone to do something against their will I do believe has a valid comparison to rape.

Yeah, well, that was the previous standard. You had Good Telepaths and Evil Telepaths; the former not abusing their great power. But now we seem to have a new 'narrative' of all telepathy being Inherently Problematic because Rape Culture.

I've seen Telepaths reviled for a number of reasons. The catagorization of telepathy as an innately a violation analogous to rape does go pretty far back. Its been treated as invading the most sacred and private thing a person has: their mind and an element of horror or sometime. Mind rape has old term. Its not a hard comparison to understand: the horror and helplessness it could engender would be akin to a brutal physical violation.

Rape is a visceral term. It strikes a innate revulsion in most people. I don't think that particular way to vilify has any direct connection to "rape culture" aside from being a way of articulating intense repugnance and innate wrong similar to Right to Privacy and sanctity in the mind for those that feel those are powerful and intrinsic aspect of humanity. People that are repulsed by the idea are going to associate and compare it to horrible things. Rape is one of them.

Basically, if some thing squicks you its going to be associated with something else that squicks you.

Personally, I think that it is an over generalization. Any ability can be abused, any can be beneficial but it the ideas can make for interesting fiction in any numnber of ways.

Yes, telepathy (especially involuntary mind-reading, not to mention mind-control, memory erasing, and telekinetic or pyrokinetic attacks) have pretty much forever been reviled because of fear. People having invisible powers that you can't resist or even perceive is terrifying and can put you at their mercy in many ways especially if they use it intelligently.

And yes, privacy is taken seriously and/or treated as a extremely important by many people, and being able to read minds involuntarily is especially horrifying to such people (not sure how many, but it certainly horrifies me). See for example 1984's Mind Screens, which were just TV's everywhere which could record everyone.

Bringing in the word rape isn't even necessary.

(And trying to jump from ethics of telepathy backwards to rape culture, feminists, leftists, and that amazing line above about false rape accusations, is just off-the-scale ridiculous.)

Quote from: RPGPundit;1023954Yeah, well, that was the previous standard. You had Good Telepaths and Evil Telepaths; the former not abusing their great power. But now we seem to have a new 'narrative' of all telepathy being Inherently Problematic because Rape Culture.

I still go by that previous standard. My teenage years were the 80's.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1023954Yeah, well, that was the previous standard. You had Good Telepaths and Evil Telepaths; the former not abusing their great power. But now we seem to have a new 'narrative' of all telepathy being Inherently Problematic because Rape Culture.

Where?

Quote from: Baron Opal;1024058Where?

I think Star Trek, TNG dealt with this a few times, from Deanna Troi's mother's tendency to use to read people without permission to one episode which was flat out described as mind-rape regarding an alien with mental abilities.

It's funny - I love Telepathy. I know a lot of GM's that hate it. But for me the ethics come into place not by doing it - but by the motives of doing (reading someone's mind) and what you do that is actionable based on it.

I think a lot of GM's hate it because it often forces them to extemporaneously make moment by moment decisions that they rarely consider consciously within their game. It's what I call the "What's in the crate?" question. When a PC asks you what's the contents of some random thing and you have to come up with it on the spot. I'm really good at that and I often use those random moments to introduce random elements of potential interest.

I do the same thing with telepathy. If a player uses it a lot - I might decide to put something interesting in there for them to discover. The fun part is people rarely fully understand their own thoughts. Or they don't know the entirety of what they think they do - Players that operate off of these half-truths will often get themselves into trouble. This is why being a telepath in-game requires discipline. Disciplined players once they get stung a few times by making bad assumptions start being better telepath-PC's and usually ratchet down their play to more subtle levels.

It's a great way to disseminate game information too. Plus I like to keep telepathy in context with the game by the fact that there are likely to be other telepaths in play too. And perhaps that interaction has other unspoken issues until it's too late.

Anyone that has telepathy will be unethical in the sense of privacy. Its going to happen. But whether they do actionable things based on what they read... that's far more unethical.

Quote from: tenbones;1024246It's funny - I love Telepathy. I know a lot of GM's that hate it. But for me the ethics come into place not by doing it - but by the motives of doing (reading someone's mind) and what you do that is actionable based on it.

I think a lot of GM's hate it because it often forces them to extemporaneously make moment by moment decisions that they rarely consider consciously within their game. It's what I call the "What's in the crate?" question. When a PC asks you what's the contents of some random thing and you have to come up with it on the spot. I'm really good at that and I often use those random moments to introduce random elements of potential interest.

I do the same thing with telepathy. If a player uses it a lot - I might decide to put something interesting in there for them to discover. The fun part is people rarely fully understand their own thoughts. Or they don't know the entirety of what they think they do - Players that operate off of these half-truths will often get themselves into trouble. This is why being a telepath in-game requires discipline. Disciplined players once they get stung a few times by making bad assumptions start being better telepath-PC's and usually ratchet down their play to more subtle levels.

It's a great way to disseminate game information too. Plus I like to keep telepathy in context with the game by the fact that there are likely to be other telepaths in play too. And perhaps that interaction has other unspoken issues until it's too late.

Anyone that has telepathy will be unethical in the sense of privacy. Its going to happen. But whether they do actionable things based on what they read... that's far more unethical.

You have shown me just by these statements. That if you were in a superhero game of mine. I wouldn't let you near telepathy at all.

Superhero games are morality plays. And nothing is moral about randomly traipsing around in more than the surface level of someone's mind. Once you go to the level of of someone's intimate thoughts and memories, you are committing an act of intimate violence against them. In other words: Mind Rape.

I am not a politically correct person. Far from it. But on this topic my view is straight up black and white, right and wrong. This is stuff heroes do not do. It's only in the realm of villains.

And yes, I view antiheroes as villains.

I've been looking for a book I once had, a novella from the 1950s or 60s. The title is, I believe, Mutant by Henry Kuttner.

In short, people start being born telepathic, manifesting in puberty. I think you might find it interesting.