[Mind magic alteration] Reading and restoring memories

[Jistuma 1995]

Mind mages have the unusual ability to connect to the mind of another person through the void. This is because the mind mage creates a connection to the void to another person's, a connection alike to his. Since the person has no conscious knowledge of the connection, they do not know their thoughts are being swept to the void. This means that only their thoughts are being sent to the void, not their whole mind. Their mind won't be like a book to read through, only their current thoughts being visible.

 

As the mage gets more and more experienced, he learns how the thoughts of people change with stimuli, illusions and ideas. This allows him a certain control, minimal as it is, but enough for the best to get what they want. An image brings thoughts, an idea brings planning, a feeling brings recollection. By sending the correct stimuli, a mind mage is able to retrieve information from someone's mind by making them remember it. This works even better with outside help, as when a person is asked a question they don't want to answer, they still think about it.

 

Making someone retrieve memories they have lost works about the same way. Perhaps the person unconsciously remembers them, and their mind is locking it away. This way, as there would be an unconscious thought, the mind mage would be able to read it. By starting at a point in their memory and starting to incentive the subconscious parts of the memory into the conscious, they would start to remember more details. With memories locked with magic, the mage would have the feeling that some memories aren't showing up because of a kind of barrier stopping it, it would feel unnatural.

 

Red line being added:

A mind mage can only see what a person is thinking, and nothing else. Finding memories and restoring them is based on making the person remember them with stimuli. (This does not mean a player can ignore a mind mage’s stimuli, a thought/image/idea will promote another thought/image/idea)

 

OOC:

The previous lore allowed high abuse of the magic with little to no rp. The mage could just force himself to a memory, many times without the character even knowing his mind was being probed, nor having any way to combat it. This change makes the interaction between the two longer and the spell actually hard to accomplish, like it's suppose to be. This gives more power to the probed but stops forced lore bidding metagaming.

[Reeg_ 75]

I think this would work rather well. It wouldn't restrict the Mage much from what they already can do, but it forces interaction between the two people to make it happen. 

[ski_king3 0]

#StopMetamancy2016 #AllMyLove

[Gone 868]

On 5/18/2016 at 2:24 PM, Jistuma said:

Red line being added:

A mind mage can only see what a person is thinking, and nothing else. Finding memories and restoring them is based on making the person remember them with stimuli. (This does not mean a player can ignore a mind mage’s stimuli, a thought/image/idea will promote another thought/image/idea)

 

OOC:

The previous lore allowed high abuse of the magic with little to no rp. The mage could just force himself to a memory, many times without the character even knowing his mind was being probed, nor having any way to combat it. This change makes the interaction between the two longer and the spell actually hard to accomplish, like it's suppose to be. This gives more power to the probed but stops forced lore bidding metagaming.

 

So... To me this sounds like just completely removing mind melding which, as quoted from a post by Pandan is "the art of extracting a memory from one and reliving it within your own mind using high amounts of energy and mana." 

A big -1 from me right there as mind melding isn't some beginner spell nor can you use it then instantly run away. It is hard to do, can still fail or provide the wrong information, and exhausts the user whether successful or not. 

 

As for the whole finding memories that were lost, can't mental mages already do that if the loss was recent? Basing this understanding off your own addition, Jist. Unless you mean for this to be memories lost in any way such as a blow to the head causing amnesia. I would say though that like the memories lost by a mage's mind wipe that there should be a time limit to when they can be brought back. Especially since people could use this to bypass the time limit of wiped memories by lying about how they were lost or simply not telling the mage how. 

 

I would also like to point out that the good mental mages out there do not provide "little to no rp" even when using mind melding. It might be a short interaction sometimes, yes, but a lot of magic is. And if you look at the original lore it even says "you are attempting to break into the person's memories or thoughts to gain some information. The key to this is either going unnoticed, or distracting the person's conscience mind long enough to get the information you want."  Now to me that right there sounds like you'd either need a partner to provide the distraction or find a busy location which would risk the mage then being interrupted. 

 

Honestly, other than what I said in my second paragraph about the memory restoring, I don't see this as being needed. If people aren't rping mind melding correctly then either inform them so or better yet how about we get our magic app team or lore team to write an updated guide for mental magic? Instead of the four pages we have of scattered information at the moment. 

 

 

Literally there is four pages a mental mage needs to keep track of! Please, combine this information into one place. Make a shiny new guide that emphasizes how difficult and exhausting mind melding is so people can better rp it. This magic is a rather complex one so having information scattered, even conflicting information out there, is what is causing bad rp from it. Not the magic itself. 

[Jistuma 1995]

48 minutes ago, Tiliena said:

 

So... To me this sounds like just completely removing mind melding which, as quoted from a post by Pandan is "the art of extracting a memory from one and reliving it within your own mind using high amounts of energy and mana." 

A big -1 from me right there as mind melding isn't some beginner spell nor can you use it then instantly run away. It is hard to do, can still fail or provide the wrong information, and exhausts the user whether successful or not. 

 

So a point about that post by Pandan. Did you see the example he gave? Did you see the great rp created by that?

On 12/02/2014 at 5:28 PM, Pandan said:

Dasyra's eyes flicker to a dark purple, her body becomes limp and eyes seem to lose focus, seeming almost separated from reality. 

 

((Emotes through /msg'ing ))

*You feel a presence enter your mind.*

*The presence begins to shift itself towards your memory cortex, easily being felt by those experienced, upon arriving it would search for memories in the topic of *INSERT TOPIC HERE.* ignoring any irrelevant memories.*

He did a willing example btw, the fact is, this can be forced. Oh and the *You feel a presence* isn't required, right now without this lore aproved, you can do it without being noticed. Now, as you said it's suppose to be a very difficult type of magic, I know, I said it in my post. But it's not being rp'ed as such, because lets face it, look at Pandan's example. It's ONE message emote. ONE. You can be coughing loudly while having a lighthouse as eyes while you do it, but it's still not hard to do. You can rp dragging yourself away afterwards, but it's still not hard to do. It's super easy, you get all the information you want, and only that, and then leave. I mean ye, you can get stabbed in between, but then you would have that happen if you were just checking out their thoughts or just checking the mind of the person behind them.

Mind melding isn't removed, it's just made hard. Actually hard and not one emote and then emoting being out of air. It also adds diversity and allows different memories to show up, and different learnings of the player having his mind read. Instead of doing things like "You have to tell me, it's lore aproved." Btw, I'm not talking out of my ass on this example, I received various complains about this and talked extensively with the MAT about how the magic is rp'ed and how it can be rp'ed. This alteration is to improve roleplay and not allow mages to be able to metagame without any real problems.

48 minutes ago, Tiliena said:

 

As for the whole finding memories that were lost, can't mental mages already do that if the loss was recent? Basing this understanding off your own addition, Jist. Unless you mean for this to be memories lost in any way such as a blow to the head causing amnesia. I would say though that like the memories lost by a mage's mind wipe that there should be a time limit to when they can be brought back. Especially since people could use this to bypass the time limit of wiped memories by lying about how they were lost or simply not telling the mage how. 

 

Well ye, they can do that, and they can help restore many other types of memory loss. From the magical kind in that addition, to golden apples, to natural ones like repressed memories and amnesia. Or just trying to remember details on a particular memory. The time limit on the memory removal through mind mages is still there though (1 week if I remember correctly).

48 minutes ago, Tiliena said:

 

I would also like to point out that the good mental mages out there do not provide "little to no rp" even when using mind melding. It might be a short interaction sometimes, yes, but a lot of magic is. And if you look at the original lore it even says "you are attempting to break into the person's memories or thoughts to gain some information. The key to this is either going unnoticed, or distracting the person's conscience mind long enough to get the information you want."  Now to me that right there sounds like you'd either need a partner to provide the distraction or find a busy location which would risk the mage then being interrupted. 

 

On 12/02/2014 at 5:28 PM, Pandan said:

Dasyra's eyes flicker to a dark purple, her body becomes limp and eyes seem to lose focus, seeming almost separated from reality. 

 

((Emotes through /msg'ing ))

*You feel a presence enter your mind.*

*The presence begins to shift itself towards your memory cortex, easily being felt by those experienced, upon arriving it would search for memories in the topic of *INSERT TOPIC HERE.* ignoring any irrelevant memories.*

Little to no rp in the guide. If the person is facing away, he can't see the mage, that's really enough. There's not much difference between a normal mind connection and a mind meld for someone watching through the outside. In any situation where you can safely connect your mind with someone else, you can mind meld, with the currently accepted lore.

 

1 hour ago, Tiliena said:

Honestly, other than what I said in my second paragraph about the memory restoring, I don't see this as being needed. If people aren't rping mind melding correctly then either inform them so or better yet how about we get our magic app team or lore team to write an updated guide for mental magic? Instead of the four pages we have of scattered information at the moment. 

 

 

Literally there is four pages a mental mage needs to keep track of! Please, combine this information into one place. Make a shiny new guide that emphasizes how difficult and exhausting mind melding is so people can better rp it. This magic is a rather complex one so having information scattered, even conflicting information out there, is what is causing bad rp from it. Not the magic itself. 

 

For the "people aren't rping mind melding correctly", they are, that's the problem. The correct way to rp mind melding is one emote through personal message and the emotes of the tells of the mind mage. That's the currently acceptable way of finding out if a character is a necromancer, frost witch, homunculus, murderer, assassin, misstress, mage, or the details of a murder, theft, master, chief, battle plans, secret hideout, etc. It's bad rp, but it's allowed, which is why I'm making this alteration post.

 

Well the scattered information is bad (for example the original lore is sooooooooo outdated) Benbo has been talking about it in LM chat, so we should get to the lore part at least. MAT should try and figure out the rest.

[Gone 868]

Your counter to Pandan’s post completely ignored how he included “reliving it within your own mind” meaning that sure, the mage did an emote there to show themselves delving in but now the one he messaged that to has to then describe the memory to the mage, not only what happened but how they felt and what they thought as it happened. The mage meanwhile feeling not only the original reaction of the memory’s owner is at the same time having their own reaction to what they are reliving. Meaning a shocking memory could have the mage sitting in the corner suddenly gasping or screaming. A sad memory could have them start to cry. RP builds from the interaction unless you have lazy people involved who do emotes like *this thing appeared and I felt scared* 

You act as if that one example of how to start the rp was all that’d be done. 

 

2 hours ago, Jistuma said:

Did you see the great rp created by that?

 

No I didn’t, because that rp has only just begun and could go anywhere from there. 

 

And of course the magic can be forced. You can force any part of mental magic onto someone just like sensory illusionists can force an illusion on someone, necromancers can force someone to be drained of lifeforce, a fire evocationist standing close enough can even force someone to get hit with fire. But mental magic doesn't directly kill someone and there are wards out there to block it. Cognitism blocks it. Barriers as well, if your character is worried about mental magic then find someone to teach you how to form a mental barrier. Or learn cognitism. Or get a ward. It honestly isn’t hard to stop a mental mage. Even just keeping  an eye out for anyone staring at you works since a mental mage has to have eye contact. Reliving a memory takes the same amount of time it took to go through it the first time so not like you have to instantly find the guy in order to stop it. He's gonna be there a while. 

 

2 hours ago, Jistuma said:

You can be coughing loudly while having a lighthouse as eyes while you do it, but it's still not hard to do.

 

Mental magic takes extreme focus to perform since you have to not only connect to their mind but make sure you’re not sending over any thoughts or feelings to the target that you don’t want to send. Have to control what you’re receiving from them so you’re not overwhelmed. If a mental mage is coughing loudly while using the magic they’re not doing it right as the coughing would break focus whether it is natural coughing or forced. Especially forced coughing actually because the mage is now focusing on making those coughing sounds. 

 

2 hours ago, Jistuma said:

It's super easy, you get all the information you want, and only that, and then leave.

 

Actually laughed at this part. So many times as a mental mage I would send the emote of what I was looking for and get information related to but not exactly what I wanted. In those situations you can’t oocly correct the person or tell them to say something else. You’re supposed to rp that as a fail. You weren’t specific enough to find what you wanted. It even says on the guide that mind melding “will not always be successful”! And from my experience it is unsuccessful more often than not! I usually used telepathy instead by whispering a thought or image to someone and watching what they thought of in return as that takes less energy to do and is already a thing. My character when she taught mental magic even encouraged this method over melding unless the information was extremely important. 

 

The point is mind melding already is hard and if we had a proper guide to reflect this for mental mages both old and new to look on they’d see so. If they then continue to rp it badly then why do they have an MA for it? Contact their teacher, have them at least oocly taught again or something along those lines.

It honestly sounds more to me like you’re trying to replace mind melding with a ‘harder’ version of telepathy the more I think about it. 

 

2 hours ago, Jistuma said:

Btw, I'm not talking out of my ass on this example, I received various complains about this and talked extensively with the MAT about how the magic is rp'ed and how it can be rp'ed. This alteration is to improve roleplay and not allow mages to be able to metagame without any real problems.

 

Then why are you not looking into the people being complained about? As I said, if someone is rping a magic badly then why do they have an MA for it? Get them retaught somehow. Changing the magic is just going to confuse the users of it and if some are being complained about clearly they already don’t understand it and need help. 

 

2 hours ago, Jistuma said:

Well ye, they can do that, and they can help restore many other types of memory loss. From the magical kind in that addition, to golden apples, to natural ones like repressed memories and amnesia. Or just trying to remember details on a particular memory. The time limit on the memory removal through mind mages is still there though (1 week if I remember correctly).

 

This idea I’m fine with and like. Can’t count the number of times someone wanted help with amnesia or some sorta memory loss but I still think there should be some sort of time limit on it at least for certain situations. 

 

2 hours ago, Jistuma said:

For the "people aren't rping mind melding correctly", they are, that's the problem. The correct way to rp mind melding is one emote through personal message and the emotes of the tells of the mind mage.

 

No, no no, no to infinity no. If any of my mental magic students had uttered those words they’d have failed right there. No more lessons. They’re done. I’ve even made example rp before during lessons and wrote my own guide ages ago for students because of how the current ones are horrible. What I went with was rather simple yet provided entertainment.

First the mage finds their target, getting into position where they can watch but hopefully not be bothered and connects to the void, making sure to emote their tell. That part is obvious and doesn't include the other player just yet so now send the target player a message then asking if they have any wards you should know about or know cognitism. If the way is open you then emote publicly your second tell and send a message to the target that a presence has entered their mind.

This is where things differ depending on what spell is being used. For mind melding, since it is described as delving through the mind, because this is how I was taught the magic, and because the guide mentions those who have mental conditions having different minds than normal people, I ask the target what their mind would appear as. This lets the person take a moment to think what would best represent their mind. I’ve seen examples ranging from houses, to glaciers, to forest groves but could also include things like libraries or even a single filing cabinet if someone is rather simple minded. Might seem minor but it lets the target think about their character instead of regurgitating information. Once they'd answered then I message the target what I am looking for but make it match what they told me. For example: “The presence searches through the books in the library for one that might reveal what Billy did late last night.”

Now that isn’t very specific thus Billy, being the target, could respond that he had a sandwich before bed and describe in detail what kind it was and how it tasted. I wasn’t specific so hey, that’s my fault and he’s perfectly able to use that fail to his advantage. Now my mage is tired out and didn’t get any further. But say instead I send the message of “the presence searches through the library for any signs if Billy harmed anyone last night” and suddenly Billy can’t hide that he killed his neighbor and now has to describe what happened for me. Mental magic is a game of wording and trying to outsmart the other party. There shouldn't be laziness in the emotes unless it is friends who've done the song and dance before thus are saving time.

 

2 hours ago, Jistuma said:

That's the currently acceptable way of finding out if a character is a necromancer, frost witch, homunculus, murderer, assassin, misstress, mage, or the details of a murder, theft, master, chief, battle plans, secret hideout, etc. It's bad rp, but it's allowed, which is why I'm making this alteration post.

 

Again I'm gonna go aw heck no. Never should this be acceptable and if it honestly is that isn't the magic's fault. If Betty the frost witch gets a mental mage searching in her head to see if she is a frost witch she should be oocly asking them what reason they have for suspecting her. If they don't wanna explain get a GM involved. Same for any suspected metagaming. Due to the amount of energy it takes no mental mage would be just randomly mind melding someone for information! They have to already suspect that Bob the Builder is actually planning on blowing up Laureh'lin from previous rp and then check his mind to confirm or deny the suspicions.

 

2 hours ago, Jistuma said:

Well the scattered information is bad (for example the original lore is sooooooooo outdated) Benbo has been talking about it in LM chat, so we should get to the lore part at least. MAT should try and figure out the rest.

 

Thank you, the only good news out of this so far. Making a new guide that has everything in one place, detailed information, and shows how to properly rp the magic really isn't that hard. I've written a simple guide myself in one night before. 

 

TL:DR 
We have GM's to help handle suspected metagaming if the mental mage can't prove why they're looking into someone's mind about something specific. We have MAT that are supposed to help regulate and make sure people are rping magic properly. I will feel until I die that if we just get a guide that's actually worth anything sent to each mental mage then things can be fixed without some confusing change that just sounds like you're trying to make telepathy hard while removing mind melding.

 

But all for ways to heal amnesia and that sorta thing. We really should have that in some form.

[Jistuma 1995]

2 hours ago, Tiliena said:

No, no no, no to infinity no. If any of my mental magic students had uttered those words they’d have failed right there. No more lessons. They’re done. I’ve even made example rp before during lessons and wrote my own guide ages ago for students because of how the current ones are horrible. What I went with was rather simple yet provided entertainment.

First the mage finds their target, getting into position where they can watch but hopefully not be bothered and connects to the void, making sure to emote their tell. That part is obvious and doesn't include the other player just yet so now send the target player a message then asking if they have any wards you should know about or know cognitism. If the way is open you then emote publicly your second tell and send a message to the target that a presence has entered their mind.

This is where things differ depending on what spell is being used. For mind melding, since it is described as delving through the mind, because this is how I was taught the magic, and because the guide mentions those who have mental conditions having different minds than normal people, I ask the target what their mind would appear as. This lets the person take a moment to think what would best represent their mind. I’ve seen examples ranging from houses, to glaciers, to forest groves but could also include things like libraries or even a single filing cabinet if someone is rather simple minded. Might seem minor but it lets the target think about their character instead of regurgitating information. Once they'd answered then I message the target what I am looking for but make it match what they told me. For example: “The presence searches through the books in the library for one that might reveal what Billy did late last night.”

Now that isn’t very specific thus Billy, being the target, could respond that he had a sandwich before bed and describe in detail what kind it was and how it tasted. I wasn’t specific so hey, that’s my fault and he’s perfectly able to use that fail to his advantage. Now my mage is tired out and didn’t get any further. But say instead I send the message of “the presence searches through the library for any signs if Billy harmed anyone last night” and suddenly Billy can’t hide that he killed his neighbor and now has to describe what happened for me. Mental magic is a game of wording and trying to outsmart the other party. There shouldn't be laziness in the emotes unless it is friends who've done the song and dance before thus are saving time.

 

TL:DR 
We have GM's to help handle suspected metagaming if the mental mage can't prove why they're looking into someone's mind about something specific. We have MAT that are supposed to help regulate and make sure people are rping magic properly. I will feel until I die that if we just get a guide that's actually worth anything sent to each mental mage then things can be fixed without some confusing change that just sounds like you're trying to make telepathy hard while removing mind melding.

 

But all for ways to heal amnesia and that sorta thing. We really should have that in some form.

I'm going to respond only to this part because it's late, but you can add me on skype and we can talk more if you like. Skype is Jistuma.

 

So, I don't think you noticed the problem, but did at the same time. You started with "No, no no, no to infinity no." and I feel just like you. Problem is, the rules don't.The necessary roleplay to read a memory is one emote through tells asking about it, and the tell emotes (glowing eyes, sparkling hair, lots of shaking) and one/two tells asking if there are mind barriers/stuff that is weird in the mind. That's the major problem, if a mind mage does that, he's not powergaming, he's not metagaming, he is following all the rules. You can't remove someone's magic for doing rp correctly but without doing more than the minimum.

 

While your example is FAAAARRR better than the situations I was told about, I still find it kind of meh. What I think about it, is that it's very well and good until you open the book. And from then on, you just have the other player tell you everything about the event. That doesn't seem like a two way rp anymore, but someone narrating an event that happened to their character. And in mind magic there has always been the problem of everyone learning differently. Non the less, the representation of the mind could still exist with this lore, just not reaching the library then going "Magic portal creation blueprints" and have a book fall from the shelf with that information. Or in a more normal type of memory "Murder of John Doe, The Grand Harvest of 1543".

 

I don't know if you understood my proposal completely, but you speak of it in your post. " I usually used telepathy instead by whispering a thought or image to someone and watching what they thought of in return as that takes less energy to do and is already a thing." it takes less energy to do it, but if you want to do it well, or get an actual memory that didn't happen recently, you have to use more thoughts and more images and then see their reaction, and send more and more, and you'd get tired pretty quickly.

 

Well, I need sleep...

[Wretched 2038]

This lore has been accepted.

 

Moved to implemented lore.