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Trinity RPG - Clairs and the future


LDKNemene

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So there is a lot of discussion in the books about clairs being able to read the future.

The whole no earth AFTER 2022.

Herzog, being unstuck in time (mentally in Luna rising)

also Luna Rising has storyteller section on how to work with the player for clair future readings.

Problem, I cannot find a single clair ability that allows them to percieve the future. Am I missing something and it is there? Or is this an oversight?

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The only thing I can recall from canon is something like 'gyre sensing'. Not sure what it's meant to be but always assumed it was sensing where/when a critical time/place was. Then a clear would go there and try to influence things towards a particular outcome.

I think this the cause of their mysterious/enigmatic reputation. A clear appears in Times square and loiters around for a day or two, then there is an armed robbery, which he foils. More good press for ISRA. In fact all he knew was that something important would happen in Times square that day, and turned a few days early in a vain attempt tn work out what it would be. ::confused

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  • 2 months later...

Actually I like that there are no precog powers in Clairsentience, because it keeps it more under ST control. I've had too many other games broken because of stuff like this (Fiends in Demon: The Fallen springs to mind). Heck, even some of the higher level clear powers can be hard to deal with, so I tend to cycle my more powerful clears out for newer ones. But basically how I handle it is I'll give a PC "visions" or "dreams", sometimes when they ask for it (when it might mean something, maybe not, or just be really hard to figure out), sometimes when they don't (either to give them an important plot point (or "nudge"), or just to screw with them, to keep them on their toes ::devil ).

Clears work better as NPCs I find though. Then what they know or don't know is completely under ST control, which makes things easier. Geeze, last PC clear I had got a level 5 power (I forget which) and managed to track down the Doyan, risking blowing that whole little secret far earlier than I wanted to. I fought it, but he was right about the rules. I finally had to secretly invoke "doyan power" to break the connection and prevent him from learning too much. Sure, I know I can control what he sees or not completely, but I try not to do that too much because its not fair to that player when everyone else gets to use their powers without interference.

Anyway, my 2 yuan.

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Yep Clears can break games. I think this is a good reason for not having any rules for Precognition and just doing it by ST given visions/dreams.

As for the Doyen secret, if it were still a secret how did he know to look for them? In addition the Doyen have Clear modes themselves, including Psi Cloak, which makes it very difficult for anyone to pick them up with any Psi based senses.

The other key thing is that it takes at least 6 hrs in someones possession for an object to pick up a Psi Print. This obviously doesn't happen a great deal, which limits the usefulness of several Clear modes.

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Many of these types of situations (i.e. tracking down the Doyen) can be avoided by giving the PCs the same problems the NPCs have.

1) Too much information

I.e. it maybe "obvious" after the fact when you know the exact details and nothing else, but the NPCs don't have 6 facts in front of them where all of them are relevant. They have 10,006 facts where 9.5K are not relevant and 500 are wrong. Give the PCs the same problem.

2) Change the facts

I.e. going after the Doyen is going to rely heavily on OOC info. So change the book facts so what the players know is wrong. Instead of having the Doyen master telepathic bodyless energy types, make them body snatching worms.

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My impression was the opposite of Alex, unless the PC's played through the Chromatic attack on the Eyrie and hence into the last book of the passage through shadows campaign they could go through until at least after the invasion of Chromie Prime without ever hearing of the Doyen.

Even then it is largely speculation, and at levels in the Orders and Trinity close to the Proxies that PC's would rarely have access to.

Given the Doyens rariety as well I doubt there would be much, if any, traces within a PC's temporal or spatial range.

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I don't have any experience with worrying about Clairs and the future, but I have had people tell me with total sincerity that Mega-Int 1 should make the entire conspiracy "obvious". Ignoring that cannon says it's not obvious, the core problem is if you know exactly how and what is going on and don't have *any* distracting data, then it's obvious.

I.e. it's a player thing and not a character thing.

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I can see both points. With the Doyen there is a total lack of information, and so nothing to investigate or extrapolate from.

The Aberrant Project Utopia/Proteus conspiracy is more open to investigation/extrapolation if someone asks one simple question - where are all the Nova children? Logically some who become Novas are already partnerships and perhaps parents. If they are trying for children post Nova and nothing happens in a year or two, then it could be one of two things. 1) the change to nova makes you sterile os 2) some outside agency is responsible. 4f it is an agency then PU is the 6nly one wide7pread enough to do it.

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I had a player who wanted to play a Clair ... since his character was very combat-orientated, he asked for temporal clairsentience with effects like heightening his initiative, addind dice for dodgerolls, negating the effect of being attacked from behind and such stuff.

We planed to invent such a list, but when we stopped playing, we cancelled it ...

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I had a player who wanted to play a Clair ... since his character was very combat-orientated, he asked for temporal clairsentience with effects like heightening his initiative, addind dice for dodgerolls, negating the effect of being attacked from behind and such stuff.

We planed to invent such a list, but when we stopped playing, we cancelled it ...

There are a couple of published powers that do similar things between Telesthesia and the alternate modes, so I don't think it would be too difficult to scan through and find them and make up any that are missing

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The Aberrant Project Utopia/Proteus conspiracy is more open to investigation/extrapolation if someone asks one simple question - where are all the Nova children? Logically some who become Novas are already partnerships and perhaps parents. If they are trying for children post Nova and nothing happens in a year or two, then it could be one of two things.

1) the change to nova makes you sterile or

2) some outside agency is responsible. 4f it is an agency then PU is the 6nly one wide7pread enough to do it.

Without Time Travel it's very hard to see how PU gets all of the novas world wide from day one. And again, this is without dis-information. In RL every day every character should be able to read news dribbling out on how PU is working on this and the universal medical consensus is that it's a nova problem and not induced. There should be Enquirer articles about Pax's love children so any reports of children should be taken at that level.
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I agree Alex, it is logically one of two things I listed - PU or the change to being a Nova, and the probability is going to be massvely in favour of it being the change to being a Nova unless/until someone can come up with some verifiable proof.

All the odds and the information both genuine(unknowing) and dis, is going to support it being the change to Novahood. If it was easy to get people to believe the truth then the 'Aberrant' faction would have a much easier time of it.

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This is an instance where I'd change what "the truth" is. As given the Micky just wouldn't work well enough. There need to be other problems.

If I were ST just for starters I'd say anyone who has even a dot of taint is sterile (from not being human) unless he has Health. That'd go a long way to confuse matters and give PU some breathing room.

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This is an instance where I'd change what "the truth" is. As given the Micky just wouldn't work well enough. There need to be other problems.

If I were ST just for starters I'd say anyone who has even a dot of taint is sterile (from not being human) unless he has Health. That'd go a long way to confuse matters and give PU some breathing room.

Sterile with everything, or only sterile with baselines?

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This is an instance where I'd change what "the truth" is. As given the Micky just wouldn't work well enough. There need to be other problems.

If I were ST just for starters I'd say anyone who has even a dot of taint is sterile (from not being human) unless he has Health. That'd go a long way to confuse matters and give PU some breathing room.

Thats a double edged sword for PU Alex...If that is true and Novas cant interbreed with humans then they are basically admitting the Zurich Accord was wrong and the Teragen is right. ::devil

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This is an instance where I'd change what "the truth" is. As given the Micky just wouldn't work well enough. There need to be other problems.

If I were ST just for starters I'd say anyone who has even a dot of taint is sterile (from not being human) unless he has Health. That'd go a long way to confuse matters and give PU some breathing room.

Why doesn't the Mickey work well enough? It turns the Nova's own immune system against the bodies reproductive cells making them permenantly sterile, and with no immediate cure in sight.

I wouldn't go so far as to make all Nova's with Taint sterile, at most I'd limit it to those with physical aberrations, who are thus plainly altered by their powers. Having said that I'd still be reluctant to do so, for the good reason that Skylion gave - admitting that they are no longer human.

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Any way this was mean to be a TRINITY thread about Clairsentients and their abilities to look into the future.

The most obvious one from the Core rules is Sense Danger, especially at 4 dots in the Mode when you start getting visions of dangerous things that might occur later that scenario/day/chapter/session (can't remember which).

For me I simply wouldn't want PC Clears to be spending all there time contemplating their navels, trying to work out the likelhood of future events, and unlike Alex I don't see it as a major part of their theme at all, but then again I don't remember there being a listing of Herzogs objectives/goals as has been done for a few of the other Proxies (Cassel, Bolade, Pai del Norca, Bue).

As for the Doyen, there isn't many of them about, or even discussed in the supplements, and their existence isn't generally know about, so very few people would be bothering to look for them or their influence. It should be very difficult to detect them in operation as well since a lot of it would be done through brain wiped and/or programmed individuals, none of whom would be in close enough contact with the Doyen for long enough to leave a Psi print. Even those they possess, they would normally only do so for a limited time, and/or leave in a situation where they are about to be destroyed or away from poissble investigation. While a Doyen is in the possible range of a human psion I would assume that they tend to use the Clairsentient Mode of Psi Cloak in order to make it difficult for anyone to detect/sense them.

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Sterile with everything, or only sterile with baselines?
Baselines... although with aberrations we start getting into the "everyone is his own species" territory.
Thats a double edged sword for PU Alex...If that is true and Novas cant interbreed with humans then they are basically admitting the Zurich Accord was wrong and the Teragen is right. ::devil
So what? "Human" is a political definition, not a scientific one.

You label as "human" things you want to give rights to (Aliens, other races), and with hold it from things you don't (historically members of other tribes).

By *any* definition of human there are people walking around in RL who don't fit it from a science perspective.

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Why doesn't the Mickey work well enough? It turns the Nova's own immune system against the bodies reproductive cells making them permenantly sterile, and with no immediate cure in sight.
Hand wave it being available because Max is a time traveler. It doesn't work well enough because not everyone is going to take it. For non-novas it's a deadly poison so it's going to be restricted and you're going to need to make an effort.

So *only* the novas who go to the PU clinic come back sterile. *Or*, if it's in every single pill of Mox/Andies, it's available for study. And even if it's in every single pill, we *still* aren't going to get all novas to take it because some of them come to their power in the 3rd world were they don't have access to medicine... and there's totally no reason for them to use these things after their headaches are gone.

Im not so sure about that. I dont think that a mutated member of a species is considered a seperate species. Then again there is still debate among the scientific community about the definitions of speciation.
There are somewhat functional people around who have different numbers of DNA than the rest of us. There are people who are sterile.

Dogs, Wolves, and something else can all inter breed.

And if Trinity's aliens land peaceable somewhere around in RL we (hopefully) won't say that they can be killed on sight because they're not human.

Given that this is an actual Trinity issue, my impression is that they treat those slugs as "human" as far as the law is concerned.

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Check Breed Apart for origins of the Mickey, but I don't think Max initially knows about it and certainly wouldn't approve of it.

I believe PU has teams even in 3rd world countries to "help" new Novas. Most stocks in PU centres may be treated, but only a small random sample outside.

Once the headache goes I thought Mox and Andy could be used to help in training?

By slugs I assume you mean the Qin? I think they are legally treated as human, but with so much diplomatic immunity it probably doesn't matter.

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The point of what Alex is saying I think is that the Mickey has to be in more than just the drugs. Since canon makes a big deal that *no* novas have had any children, with the exception of Anna DeVries being pregnant and Boutny's brood.

We should be seeing a horde of Nova children...especially in the really remote places in India where novas are worshiped as gods, and the rate of population increase is huge...ie people have large families. In canon so far it isnt until after Bahrain and I think further along before we hear *any* mention of 2nd gen Novas....

So where are all the children going???

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I think what the writers were going for was, incredible efficient sterilization conspiracy. I doubt they really worked out how hilariously difficult this would actually *be*, though. Forget time travel foreknowledge, it would practically require precise, reliable precognitive forecasting of nova eruption.

Exalted had something *vaguely* similar. . . except the Wyld Hunt both had far fewer Solars to deal with, and resources available to it that blow far past anything in the Thetis' wildest fantasies.

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We're moving a bit off topic, but I'll pursue this for a bit.

8-10 K novas. Total number of known births, Zero (as of either 2007 or 2008).

Novas are rock stars, they have money, fame, groupies, Mega-Socials, most are in their 20's and they're regarded as a superior new race...

Without the Micky being related to time travel there's no Micky for the first year or two. So... given the above situation, out of hundreds if not thousands of brand new rock stars, No One had sex? Not every male is going to take advantage of his situation to sleep with a different girl every night, but if they wanted to they could. Personally, drop a 100 Million on me and there's a very good chance that my wife would decide to have another child.

Even if Max accidentally supplied Project Pro with the Micky, not all novas are going to have access to the drugs. Most or all India Syndrom novas, Core, and that Directive Nova who didn't know he'd erupted are all obvious examples. Eventually Project Pro might have caught up with them but they were all running around fertile before that.

Roughly 2.5 new novas every day. Project Pro can't get to them all. Even if we discount the India and outback types (which we can do, if an outback "god" has 50 wifes then the assumption shouldn't automatically be that any kids are his), Project Pro "still" can't get to them all. Some novas never come out the closet (although if they have kids in the closet and the world doesn't find out one can wonder), but others would be in the closet for a while and then be forced out.

Once might be a coincidence (or the wife cheating), but with 10k novas it should happen a dozen times.

By slugs I assume you mean the Qin? I think they are legally treated as human, but with so much diplomatic immunity it probably doesn't matter.
The key words are "they are legally treated as human". They can have contracts, they can summon the police, they can buy property and all that stuff. Diplomatic immunity is a nice bonus but that's all it is. As an intelligent alien race the law treats them as "human". For that matter the law does the same with Psions.

Being "Human" is a political thing.

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Hmm, this actually reminds me of a Champions game I used to be in, some years ago. Through some combination of canon material and campaign specific interpretation, well, the default legal position in the US was that undead, AIs, aliens, and 'trans dimensional beings' did not receive civil rights by default. I believe the legal logic for the lot was, basically, that in all cases there was a non-trivial question of whether the beings in question would even qualify as people, and in some cases it would be impossible for a legal body to even formulate the proper questions to figure out. Especially for that last one.

In practice, clearly sentient ( and not omnicidally hostile ) members of the latter three groups would be granted privileges equivalent to basic civil rights. This is still a sizable step down from full equivalent treatment as people, but then again, there were few enough of the lot to mean that every case was a special case, anyway. In particular, one of the party members was actually granted diplomatic status, due to being a representive ( princess ) of an alien power. In her case, thus, all privileges emanated from her diplomatic status, rather than intrinsic to her being a person.

Long digression's point: determining who counts as a person and who doesn't is the material for centuries of legal debate, in a sci-fi setting. This shouldn't change the fact that people will still want *someone* to negotiate formally with, and this will probably trump all legalism.

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Long digression's point: determining who counts as a person and who doesn't is the material for centuries of legal debate, in a sci-fi setting. This shouldn't change the fact that people will still want *someone* to negotiate formally with, and this will probably trump all legalism.

This is probably closer to the case with the Qin then them being legally defined as human. After all there are no instances in the published materail of them calling the police, being tried etc. Added to which anybody they wish to trade biotech data with would be falling over themselves to get it ASAP and who cares about the individuals status that they are dealing with.

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