Suggestions? Telepathic PCs just captured VIPER agent

[The Horror]

First game of the campaign. The PCs fight some VIPER guys, and leave them all for the authorities to find after they deal with them. One of the PCs however is a telepath, and suggested they take one of them for interrogation.

Next session they will have full access to this guy, and they are going to want to know who he works for, what they were doing there, where the nest is and so on.

How do I handle this without giving away too much info? I can just give the guy high levels of Mental Defence, but I know that this will likely happen time and time again - it might be stretching it a bit if all captured guys have 20 points in Mental Defence. I don't have a problem with them finding out a fair amount of info, but certain things would be out of the question (like the nest location). It's just too early on in the campaign for that.

Maybe he doens't know where the nest is? Maybe he swallows a cyanide tablet? Maybe his mind was wiped? Any suggestions? How do I do this without stretching credibility? Like I say, I'm specially worried because I see this happening time and time again.



The Horror

[Chuckg]

Do the superheroes have to obey the law, or are they vigilante rogues?

If door #1, remember that in the CU, telepathic interrogation of a suspect is illegal without either:

a) a search warrant

or b) the subject's concsent

or c) an immeidate life-threatening emergency (like "the nuke goes off in two minutes! for the love of god, Mind Man, get me that disarm code!")



a) will require them to get past VIPER's lawyers... he *did* get to call his lawyer, right? If not, ohhhh, the lawsuits they're gonna get...

b) yeah right!

c) isn't it always the DM's choice whether or not one of those is going on?

[Hermit]

Break the local VIPER set up into cells. The captured agent knows the small area his group works out of, and has no idea where the Nest is. This gives the PCs a chance to find the member of the cell who DOES know more... if they're lucky or cunning enough, or at least search for clues.

Now, for the first time, this should be rewarded with success if the telpathy check is high enough (after all, the Mentalist paid points for that power), but when the first cell falls, have VIPER higherups get wise, and start making countermeasures. Have them begin spread disinformation to their agents so when the next time one of them is captured, it eventually leads the PCs into a trap, or at the least keeps them running in circles.

[Lord Liaden]

Excellent suggestions so far. However, if none of those work for you...

Remember that low-level flunkies of major organizations typically know little of import, beyond perhaps the location of their local base. If VIPER is aware that the PCs have access to a telepath, and reason to believe that that telepath will scan their agent, they will probably have contingencies ready. These could include:

Bugging out of their base so that when the heroes arrive they find nothing but an empty facility - perhaps with booby-traps left behind;

Anticipating that the heroes will learn of their location from the agent, and setting up an ambush for the heroes;

Planting deliberate disinformation in their agents to lead the heroes away from VIPER's true objective, and perhaps into a trap as above. Note that this gambit should probably be used only once, unless you want to foster resentmen in your players and paranoia in your PCs.

[The Horror]

Thanks Hermit. I think I'll most definately do exactly as you suggested.

I'm not using CU ChuckG. As in I'm using a fair bit of it here and there, but the history of supers is all changed. The PCs are playing the first generation of superheroes, in modern day Megalopolis (Millenium City). No UNTIL, no DOSPA, no PRIMUS, none of the CU supervillains. I plan to introduce UNTIL and DOSPA over the next few sessions, but they don't know anything about that. Hitting them with the lawsuits and numerous charges should be good though. Depravation of liberty and assault with a deadly weapon come to mind.

So far they've been behaving like criminals. They've broken into the offices of the Department of Homeland Security to install a remote bypass into their mainframe, they've broken through police lines to get to scenes of the crime, they've been beating up random drug pushers trying to get to the guys above them by sheer brute force, and they have caused tens of thousands of dollars of property damage in the first session alone. The telepath reads everybody's thoughts without remorse, ranging from clerks behind office desks to police officers on patrol.

I figure that if I introduce DOSPA next session, that they can get an offer from them - either sign up as a registered superhero team bound by the law, or be hunted down and put away like criminals.

I think they'll choose to go their own way though.



The Horror

[Badger]

Breaking up like Chuckg did.

Basically, I would let the mentalist know before hand that invading one's mind is going to be considered highly immoral in this setting without the consent of the one whose mind is being invaded. So if they are law abiders this will be difficult. Because essentially if I am GM the search warrant would not be granted for the search of one's mind and even if it is an emergency situation he'll have to expect brutality lawsuits on him afterwards from the lawyers (hey you know a defense lawyer would argue it that way) and it would be doubtful the suspect will give him consent. Course if they be vigilantes "The ends justify the means

[Southern Cross]

of course,as a last resort,you could have the agent develop mental powers as a result of the telepathic interrogation...

[death tribble]

The agent might know some locations and some personnel including any resident paranormals.
They might not know the computer passwords, that the vehicles are bugged with locator devices, as are the guns etc

[Supreme Serpent]

1) Nest Leader confides in squad leader X that Hero Y (one of the team) is secretly working for Viper, and has excellent post-hypnotic defenses in place to thwart telepathic discovery. Squad leader X is instructed that if they encounter the heroes, he should maneuver his team so that Hero Y can provide them a distraction/"accidental" getaway.

2) Nest Leader sends squad leader X and team out on high-profile mission, sure to bring heroes in. (Evacuate and booby-trap heck out of Nest after they leave.) Likely that squad leader X has also told his team of the "mole", to improve their following his lead, and to impress them at how much he knows/the NL trusts him. Heroes show up, trash agents, interrogate.

3) How will the team react? Dissent, distrust? Or will they be more cautious in what they believe from telepathy? What if next time the "secret agent" is the mayor? The chief of police? Their local congressman? Will they follow up all leads and become seriously hunted, or will they just become incredibly paranoid?

[freakboy6117]

Let them have the first one for free not that this low level flunky has any real info.
The next time the agents start being psychically conditioned to remove information trained in psychic defense or if you want to be real nasty implant a PSI BOMB either a literal explosive device activated by telepathic interference or a psionic virus that enters the mind of the telepath and does something nasty a slow transfor m which builds as he invades more agents eventually turning him to the dark side? Or it could just a command his heart to stop or leaves him catatonic

[Hugh Neilson]

Let them have the first one for free not that this low level flunky has any real info.
The next time the agents start being psychically conditioned to remove information trained in psychic defense or if you want to be real nasty implant a PSI BOMB either a literal explosive device activated by telepathic interference or a psionic virus that enters the mind of the telepath and does something nasty a slow transfor m which builds as he invades more agents eventually turning him to the dark side? Or it could just a command his heart to stop or leaves him catatonic

I can see VIPER doing hypnotherapy (5 or 10 MD only vs telepathy on their agents), and I can see the issue of not wanting telepathy to make things to easy for the characters. At the same time, however, if the first consideration the first time a PC uses his telepathy which he paid points for is "how can I reduce or elimninate the benefits of this power", maybe the better answer would be to tell the player you didn't consider the ramifications of telepathy on your campaign when you approved the character, and you would like him to revise the character to remove, reduce or limit his telepathy, and spend the points somewhere else instead.

Telepathy should not always be 100% effective, but contriving means to avoid it working on mook level agents seems like only one step away from taking the power away entirely - if you're going to make it ineffective most of the time, why not just tell the player "slap a -2 "no conscious control" on it, because it's only going to work on those rare instances that I want it to!"

If you plan on running a campaign filled with mysteries, allowing telepathy is a bad move. If I, as a player, had paid for (say) 12d6 of Telepathy, I think I'm within my rights to think that power is going to be as valuable and effective as 12d6 of energy blast. Using it to interrogate prisoners seems perfectly reasonable to me. That's not to say the mooks would or should have all the informaton the characters need to topple VIPER world-wide, but (as someone has already pointed out), he should know enough to move the characters up to the next level on the chain.

[BlackSword]

At first I was thinking of some sort of hypno-therapy, but reading the other posts I have changed my mind. The following comments are not new, but my own summary of how I might consider this situation (fortunataly no telepaths in our group, the only player that would abuse a telepath is fortuntaly more occupied trying to munchkin a blaster). If there are other telepaths in the world, then likely Viper would make some move to protect itself from telepaths getting hold of its minions.

(a) has two options
a1) Hypno-therapy is expensive and time consuming so its unlikely a mook will get the treatment. Since telepaths are known in the world he will most likely be protected by being ignorant. He will know a few things, but not enough to reveal then entire plot. He knows that he has to rob a bank, but not where the money will go or what it will be used for.
a2) All Viper agents do go through the Academy. During the training they would get minimal hypno-therapy.

b) The telepath should also get some information if they make their roll. As pointed out, the telepath did pay for the power, they should get some use for it. However, telepathy shouldn't be used as a "Force GM to reveal entire plot with players doing no work, 13-". I might use the hypnotherapy as follows (haven't looked into mental powers closely so adjust as needed); for every +4 the mentalist gets above the target number, reveal one extra piece of pertinent information before the hypnotherapy kicks in. Hypnotherapy will jumble the agents mind so the mentalists can't make heads or tails of the data he receives. The unfortunate side effect is that the agent becomes a vegetable for several weeks before he recovers with no memory of his time in Viper.

c) Senior members of Viper will have extra training and may have limited metal defenses.

Clues shouldn't give away the entire plot, but should give helpful (or sometimes deceitful) information as much as a successful streetwise roll or other path of investigation.

[CourtFool]

Telepathy can be a real plot killer. Something to consider in future campaigns.

I also have to agree that constantly limiting its effectiveness is not fair to the player. I would be inclined to let them have one. Maybe not the entire VIPER base, but enough to really disrupt current operations. Of course VIPER should learn from this weakness and be better prepared next time. I think disseminating false information down the ranks is the most effective and VIPER-like tactic. Cheap, quick and easy. So what if it puts lower members in jeapordy?

Considering the actions of your characters, VIPER might try to recruit them. Would this make the PCs think twice about their actions? Would they use it as an opportunity to really hit VIPER hard? Would they join? Any of these possibilities can lead to some interesting campaign twists.

As mentioned many times before, if the PCs act like villians make sure the world around them treats them like villians. No one trusts them. The authorities constantly harrass them. Superheroes come after them.

[Chuckg]

And the smarter supervillain masterminds laugh out loud, because framing people who already have bad reps with the cops is as easy as tracking Grond through a china shop.

[Ghost who Walks]

Anti-Mind Control Conditioning: Simulate Death, Only to resist mental Powers(-2)

After putting the poor flunky into a coma, the authorities pull the evil telepath away from their victim.

Its also in how you handle telepathy. If the subject (The VIPER guy) is actively resisting, the player may only get images of stuff. If asked about their headquarters, he gets a building. If asked about their weapons, they might see images of weapons that guy has used. Asked how many people are in VIPER, he flashes an image of how many he thinks are in it...millions and millions. He may also show images of people he thinks/suspects are in VIPER, but actually aren't.

An especially strong psionic may be able to relive specific events of the subjects life, almost like retrocognition (I use that IMC a lot)

That way the PC's get the info, but at least we get to have fun doing it.

Just remember, the human mind is not an open book.

IMC, there is a lot of anti-psionic prejudice (they replace mutants and lepers). A lot of it is encouraged by VIPER, just for this reason.