Mind Control Policy
Many PCs and NPCs in Haven have some kind of mind control abilities.
These abilities as well as things like drugs cause characters to have
various ‘imprints’ telling them that they want to or need to do certain
things.
With the exception of body-imprints characters are never aware of their
behaviour has been affected by a mind control ability and must rationalize
their behaviour.
The more serious types of imprints, those that state a character needs
to do a certain thing can almost always be resisted by paying some life
force.
In general how an imprint effects a character is the sole business of
the player controlling them. There is no policing of this and part of
the risk you take when you use those abilities is that you can’t control
how they will be followed/interpreted. That makes it particularly unideal
to try to use them in a way adversarial to the interests of the target
character’s player.
The only exception to this is where someone is serially and conspicuously
ignoring imprints, or when they have an option to resist an imprint are not
doing so but are then clearly ignoring it. In which case they might lose
their ability to imprint anyone else or eventually even be removed if it
continues.
[Rationalization and Self-Awareness]/span>/spanA person who has been imprinted is never aware that the desires or feelings he
has been given are not his own. He will always rationalize why he wants or
feels this way and, after the imprint has run its course, why he no longer
does.
A person who has been imprinted does not act in a way that is robotic or
otherwise out of character and it should be extremely difficult for another
character to know he has been imprinted even if those characters know one
another intimately. The new desires and feelings are integrated into a
person’s personality so completely that he can rationalize any attempt by
others to suggest that he’s been manipulated in some way, even against massive
evidence. He feels entirely certain that he is still himself and all his
desires and feelings are his own.
[Conflicting Imprints]/span>/spanIf a character has two or more imprints that conflict with one another, the
resulting RP should make this clear to some extent. If bringing it across in
RP isn’t feasible or the number of conflicting imprints becomes too great, it
is permissible to RP each as being weakened by the resulting confusion along
with some general emotional turmoil or something similar such as a serious
headache.
[Discovering Imprints]/span>/spanWhen and after being under the influence of hypnosis or psychic persuasion, a
person has no awareness that they are being influenced or that they’ve been in
a trance. If an imprint is accepted the imprinted person has no awareness that
they are under another’s influence with the exception of ‘body’ imprints, in
which case the character is aware that their own body is moving or behaving in
abnormal ways that are outside of their control but not necessarily how or why
or who might be responsible.
If an imprint is rejected, the character has no knowledge that any influence
was attempted, and certainly no knowledge of what the rejected imprint
pressured them to do. External observers may recognize attempts at hypnosis,
but not psychic persuasion. While it is acceptable to believe that an
acquaintance behaving strangely may be under the influence of mind control,
your character should almost never be certain of it and should probably be
wrong more often than they are right.
Tips and Notes:
* If you’re on the fence about whether you should follow an imprint or not,
follow it.
* If you think an inhibition or competing desire would stop you following an
imprint, ask yourself if that inhibition or competing desire has come out
clearly in your roleplay previously. If it hasn’t, you’re on pretty sketchy
ground.
* If you decide not to follow an imprint, it’s usually a good idea to at least
show through your roleplay that you’re thinking about following it or tempted
to follow it.
* Being “strong willed” or anything similar is a completely invalid reason for
not following an imprint.
* Having been imprinted several times before or being able to do mind control
yourself is not a valid reason to be aware of mind control or be more
resistant to it.
Angelborn
Angelborn are sensitive to the desires of others, and thus are essentially
always mind controlled.
There are a few things it’s important to keep in mind when playing
angelborn. angelborn are to some extent natural victims, the fact that they
can be more powerfully hypnotized and in general more easy to coerce often
leads to them being an ideal choice if someone’s looking for a victim or
sidekick etc. You shouldn’t play a character like this if you’re too
worried about bad things happening to them. Also though, and probably more
importantly, angelborn are particularly resistant to angst. Even if one is
captured and tortured while the torture is going on they want it a little
bit, not enough to be ok with it, but it is not as bad as for others, and
afterwards they’re surrounded by people who want them to get over it.
Either because they’re their friends and want them to feel better, or
because they find it irritating. Which through their empathy causes them to
rebound fairly quickly. This is important because it means angelborn are an
extremely poor choice of character if you’re seeking to RP the aftermath or
seek sympathy.