What are the SARP rules on psychic abilities?

[Fay]

I know that psychic powers are commonly used to meta-game or cheat, but I wonder if a plot could be created in a way that would be meta-gaming. Specifically, I am guessing that Empaths would be the least form of meta-gaming in this matter.

Anywho... my main question is: What would be the rules and guidelines for a plot using some form of psychic abilities? A bonus question for those who created or know the SA species well: Which species have natural (or even sometimes unnatural) telepathic/empathic/psychic powers?

 

[Fred]

...not this again.

Fay, this discussion happens pretty much on a bi-yearly basis. The end note to this is the following: as little psionics as possible, as it is considered cheap to players.

Miharu involves psionics, but Miharu is conceptually a plotship made to tie up loose ends - and one is to give a fitting conclusion to famous character in the setting whom boasted powerful psionic capabilities. It's thier deathknell, basically.

 

[Tyler]

then we have a double standard. telepathy is a form of psychic ability. If you want to do away with it, do away with that too. If you keep it, you havea precedent for more of them along the same minor basis.

 

[Exhack]

Telepathy as it is now doesn't allow you to turn your enemy into a gibbering mess. Brute psionics, as in brain crushing/overloading and that ever classic act of mind raeps have basically been done away with. Right now it's just the NH-27 and Yui who have mainstream, but fairly strong psi, and they've been really toned down from the way things used to be.

Correct me if I'm wrong, though.

 

[Tyler]

Yeah true but telepathy has the potential to be insidious, Like suggestive mind control.

 

[Exhack]

https://wiki.stararmy.com/doku.php?id=ex ... perception

But frankly, there's been enough psi flung around in SARP history that most characters would realize someone is trying to muck about in their brain. The insidious factor would basically be killed as soon as the character realized the voice in their head wasn't theirs, and told it to GTFO.

The characters that could have pulled off something of that caliber are all going to be very dead, very soon, anyway.

 

[Fay]

Sorry, Fred. Didn't know that it was such a big issue. I wasn't referring to have the 'destructive' forms, which is exactly what I was saying not to put into this group. For the record, empathy is a 'lesser form' of telepathy: instead of feeling emotions and thoughts, an empath only feels the emotions.

 

[Exhack]

Actually, there are few Yamataian characters capable of feeling the emotions of others. They tend to just use psi as a free method of text messaging.

 

[Fay]

Hm... I suppose that I understand that. Well, so far, only negative reactions to this idea, so I'll probably scrap it like all of the others.

 

[Exhack]

On another note... there are two races with Empathic abilities already submitted. One with passive low key sensing, and the other that has to consciously connect their senses and emotions with those of the other person.

 

[Nyton]

Psuper psionics is for the most part dead or being done away with. The current telepathy that we are seeing now to me does not feel akin to the telepathy that we have all been most famliarized with as a form of psionics. Rather to me this telepathy appears to me as a type of hyper subwave transmission medium. The femtomachinery that makes up the organic body and computerized brain of the NH series can talk on a shared frequency which is what makes up this sort of 'mechanized telepathy.' Hence the need for encryption and channel sifting so that not everyone who uses this frequency hears or knows what is being said. The fact that Nepleslians can still 'hear' this telepathy when it is broadcast towards them must mean that the wavelength is one shared by most biological organisms. Most likely since the NH brain was patterned off a human brain originally.

What Nepleslian brains lack is the ability to direct this telepathy unaided and this has been achieved via cybernetic modification While it happened in the past I think that it was mostly a case of bending the rules. Thus I don't believe it should be widely accepted for this to happen again.

Anyways, the point I'm trying to make is that my opinion on the existence of telepathy in the SARP is that for the most part it is a machinery induced signal being used as a form of communication. Whether I'm right or wrong doesn't really bother me because I rarely touch on psionics anyway nor do I play a telepathy user.