Trinity RPG - Do the psi print rules work for you?

[Alistaire]

Just wondering how other people handle this. As I understand it, a psi print is created when an object is in a person's possession, or simply nearby, for at least 6 hours, and for each of these six hours, the print lasts for 1 (adding to the total your psi score), at which time it dissipates at a rate of 1 every hour. As near as I can tell, this would work for virtually nothing beyond those six hours. An example they use is your wallet, which many people keep on their person every day. But while that may be so, it is not usually near that person for 24 hours that day, most people don't sleep with their wallets, or anything else they typically carry around with them during the day. So while they are sleeping for say 8 hours, that psi print is going to fade away. This severely limits the use of them and seems broken to me. In their example in the book, a guy carries around his minicomp regularly for a week, but in order for the rule to work as stated, he'd have to sleep and bathe with the thing, so unless that is true, their example does not follow the rules. And for that matter, what if the print is partially faded, how does it work then once it is back in your possession? Does it just start from scratch? That'd be annoying because then all you'd have to do is leave it somewhere for a minute and it's as good as gone. 

 

So I was just wondering how other people handle this rule.

[Matt]

I don't think Psi print actually never came up in any game that I ever ran, so I don't have an example from one of my games.  If I were running a game I honestly don't think I would ever play with it by the rules, but rather on a case by case basis.  I wouldn't waste the time trying to figure out how long someone had it unless it was important for the plot.

 

It states that the psi print will stay as long as it is in their possession or presence.  When you leave the object the print starts to diminish.  But if you get it again before the print has completed faded there would be something left, which would indicate to me that it would begin to build up again from where it was at the time.

 

I would think that a person's location would play a big part in this.  If a character was in space or Luna I would imagine that their wallet would be pretty close to by at all times.  If they were on earth they may be further away form it.

 

[Rorx]

I agree with Matt in that it has rarely come up in the games I've run. However , it can be important for a number of Clear and Telepath modes so it is worth mentioning.

 

As you say with the example of a wallet, it is going to be in your pocket for ~12 hours, at the end of which the Psi print would last a paltry 2 hours (+Psi of detecting Psions). If you started carrying it again after 1 hour, it would have 1 hour of print left, and accumulate another hour after you had been carrying it for another 6 hours.

 

In general the timescales are far to long to actually accumulate a decent psi print for any purposes. My general solution would be to halve the time to say 3 hours, or perhaps as low as 2 hours to accumulate 1 hours duration of Psi print. Having said that there are a few items (modern day) that would accumulate good psi prints, most people wear their watch all day and leave it on a bedside table overnight, similarly smart phones and/or tablets are with us all day and charged on night stands in many cases. In these few cases the items could conceivably accumulate a psi print over days or even weeks quite easily...

 

For Teleporters thes is also a problem as they need their clothes to have their psi print in order to Jump with them! The solution seems to be to keep a ready set of clothes in "go-bag" with them at all times and in a draw under their mattress or pillow at night.

[Nina]

the item does not need to be "on you" it merely needs to be in your presence.  once your story teller defines what constitutes presence, then you can do your calculations and  "your presence" can have more than one definition. for instance if my character is in the office My presence might mean my desk or cubicle so as long as she is at her desk her purse and laptop would be in her presence, at a restaurant it might mean on her person or at chair chair, in her apartment its an apartment she has been at along long time it could mean the entire space. when she is there.

 

try not to think in absolutes.

[Alistaire]

Yeah it hasn't really come up in our games before either, but we've started a new game and this time I'm playing a clear, Al Alif actually, and Bloodhound is really their thing, so it's kind of important. I was trying to think of possible use cases for this power, and given the psi print rules I couldn't really think of one. Like say you're tracking down some criminal. You couldn't use it for initial investigation so you'd have to rely on conventional methods first. That's fine, so then suppose you track down their hotel room or secret lair, anything that they would have on them often enough for this to work would by definition most likely still be on their person, so you won't find it there (unless they are there, in which case there's no need). So basically you'd have to get really lucky that they've left that important item behind just when you need them to.

 

I've thought that perhaps the game designers were intending the power to be like a physical scent, which takes time to build up and then later dissipates. That makes sense, but again what use cases? Perhaps chasing after an escaped convict and hope they've dropped or accidentally torn some of their clothing? Again, you'd have to get lucky. It might be useful in a kidnapping but again you'd have to be lucky that something was dropped in an altercation. Am I just missing when and how to use this? It just seems like compared to other Clairsentience powers, it'd be really hard to use. For example Dowsing has plenty of use cases, from keeping track of enemy positions to finding the cookies in a grocery store. Before this character I thought that Bloodhound worked the same way as Dowsing actually, just for specific items and people instead of general ones, that you only need to have encountered the specific individual before in order to track them down, but I guess the game designers thought that was too powerful maybe?

 

try not to think in absolutes.

 

What gave you the impression that I was?

[Nina]

just a general statement wasn't directed at anyone sorry

[Rorx]

Ideally Alistaire for this job the higher your Psi the better, as you can make more/longer use of the few things yiu will find with the targets psi print.

If you can find somewhere that the target has slept in the last 5-6 hours there is a good chance that they will hVe bern there for 6+hours and so if you are at least Psi 5 you may be able to get a short trace. Similarly if they take any long distance/duration trips finding their seat through conventional means may give you a trace to work from for a while. Another thing to watch out for is miscellaneous bits and pieces, if they left some old gum behind somewhere it will have traces of their DNA, but might also have been in their pocket for days building up a psi print....

Also make use of Dowsing by matching up multiple criteria if you know or suspect them. For example if hunting an EK do a scan for psikns and you'll get loads potentially, but if yku get a good enough roll you will be able to spot where the EK's are. If you can eliminste some groups because their location ties in with an Orgotek ofgice/factory or the jumpship docks then yiu have fewer possible places to check. If from a past vision you noticed him using or wearing something in particular then do a Dowse for that, there may be lots of them but you can note which ones match up with the locations of EK's you just found. These give yiu locations to check to try to find an object or location that still has a psi print of your target.

[Alistaire]

Nina: Ah ok, cool.

 

Rorx: Yeah, I thought of that stuff too. Again it comes down to utility. When I think of how useful that power is to others, it certainly demotivates me to spend my precious xp there instead of on other things. 

 

Anyway, thanks everyone for your input. I'll talk it over with my storyteller and see what we come up with.