Limits of Mindbond and / or Insert Memory

[barna10]

Is there a compiled list of canon sources of what you can and cannot learn / teach via Mind Bond and / or Insert Memory?

I know of Mysteries of Magic and what it says about Insert Memory helping with learning spells, but what else is out there?

Thanks

[Library Ogre]

None that I know of. I based the logic in Mysteries of Magic on a simple idea: The memory from Insert memory is persistent, but falsifiable. So, if you remember going to Astroworld in 2014, but everyone knows it closed down years before that, your memory is falsifiable... you still remember it, but you don't believe it. However, it also occurred to me that if you don't CARE that a memory is false, then there's a lot that can be done with Insert Memory. While I would not allow it to teach a full skill (not without a LOT of uses of Insert Memory), I would let it provide frameworks for other things... like easily teaching a spell, which you can use your existing knowledge of spellcasting to actually cast. Similarly, if someone already knew how to drive an automobile, Insert Memory could give them instant familiarity with a different kind of automobile, but wouldn't be enough to let them fly a jet. It could teach a cook a recipe, but it's not going to make a master chef out of someone who doesn't know how to turn on the oven.

Mind Bond, IMO, is a different story. Mind Bond lets you learn, temporarily, everything the other person knows... like you imaged their mental hard drive, and can reference that until the duration expires. This lets you run any "programs" they have in their head... including skill use.

Insert memory will more or less permanently put in a chunk of knowledge. Mind Bond will temporarily give you access to everything a person knows. To rely on computing metaphors, Insert Memory is essentially a single file... one picture, one document, maybe even one spreadsheet or a short video... but it doesn't install the programs needed to run the file.

Where Insert Memory gets interesting, IMO, is in combination with Mind Wipe. Wipe a chunk of memory, insert a fake one... and when the real memory resurfaces, there's two competing memories of a space of time.

[Glistam]

But isn't Insert Memory just an advanced Hypnotic Suggestion? There's no actual transfer of information, just the suggestion that information was always there and the victim's mind filles in that blank.

[barna10]

But isn't Insert Memory just an advanced Hypnotic Suggestion? There's no actual transfer of information, just the suggestion that information was always there and the victim's mind filles in that blank.

This seems open to interpretation. The description describes a memory being "implanted" and then describes the psionic "telling" their victim something. To each his own on this one. I prefer Mark's interpretation, but I also err on the side of more power / more freedom for the player.

[drewkitty ~..~]

Might I ask where the Power? Spell? Insert Memory is?
I've looked in RUE and RMB psionics section and found none.
The RBoM only has the Instill Knowledge spell.
------

To run with Mark's computer analogy........while mind bond might gain you the data and programs (knowledge and skills) of the other, to make magic you need a hardware modification.

[barna10]

HU2 and PF

[drewkitty ~..~]

The problem that I see with using the super-psionic power Insert Memory to help mages learn spells would be that the mages engaging in this would need a Master Psi that had both Mind Bond and Insert Memory for the learning mage to get any memories from the teaching mage.

[barna10]

And yet it's canon, directly from the pages of Mysteries of Magic

[Library Ogre]

The problem that I see with using the super-psionic power Insert Memory to help mages learn spells would be that the mages engaging in this would need a Master Psi that had both Mind Bond and Insert Memory for the learning mage to get any memories from the teaching mage.

Which is rare, but not unheard of. Sure, you don't run into many PCs with that combination (outside of Rifts), but dragons? Demons? Gods? Rune Weapons? Lots of ways for that combination to exist, even with respectable magical powers.

[drewkitty ~..~]

The problem that I see with using the super-psionic power Insert Memory to help mages learn spells would be that the mages engaging in this would need a Master Psi that had both Mind Bond and Insert Memory for the learning mage to get any memories from the teaching mage.

Which is rare, but not unheard of. Sure, you don't run into many PCs with that combination (outside of Rifts), but dragons? Demons? Gods? Rune Weapons? Lots of ways for that combination to exist, even with respectable magical powers.

I'm just pointing out how it would need to be done if only mere mortals were involved. *shrugs*

I am not saying that it can't be done...just adding in the part the rest of you are leaving out, that typically mages don't have access to super-psionics so can't do it themselves.

[Axelmania]

You can learn True Names via Mind Bond.

Which makes that Bio-Wizard device in Atlantis very useful since it's 1-way (the victim only learns what the mindless symbiote knows, symbiote relays what it learns to you without sacrificing your knowledge)

[barna10]

You can learn True Names via Mind Bond.

Which makes that Bio-Wizard device in Atlantis very useful since it's 1-way (the victim only learns what the mindless symbiote knows, symbiote relays what it learns to you without sacrificing your knowledge)

Nice!

[drewkitty ~..~]

You can learn True Names via Mind Bond.

Which makes that Bio-Wizard device in Atlantis very useful since it's 1-way (the victim only learns what the mindless symbiote knows, symbiote relays what it learns to you without sacrificing your knowledge)

The reader would only learn the True Names that the subject knows.
If the subject does not know their own True Name then the reader is SoL.

[Axelmania]

Good point, maybe some parents never reveal the true name to their kids to keep them safe until they are considered responsible enough to learn it in a coming-of-maturity ceremony? Or maybe they never reveal it at all, it's like this guarded secret that only 1 or 2 should ever know? Unless of course there's pressing need like for Diabolist Wards or a Sealed Circle.

[Library Ogre]

I somewhat prefered Earthdawn on this... a name that becomes too prominent in your identity is your True Name, making it difficult to conceal them.

[eliakon]

I would also like to point out that the rules don't actually say that a Mind Bond can get a true name. It says that telepathy can not though.
In the Hades book it goes on to say that True Names can not be forced out of a demon by any means....
I would say that this is a pretty good implication that Mind Bond is not going to be transferring True Names around. ESPECIALLY since that would imply that every use of mind bond leaves both sides with the true name of the other....

[eliakon]

I somewhat prefered Earthdawn on this... a name that becomes too prominent in your identity is your True Name, making it difficult to conceal them.

Why?
Its just a really prominent use name.
No matter how publicly and prominently someone is known as Mark Twain that is not, and never will be their "True Name"...
....or at least not all of it. All it has done is mean that now you need to know both parts of their true name. (There is nothing anywhere saying that true names have to be short!)

[barna10]

Also, individuals usually don't know their "True Name". In real-world myth (sort of an oxymoron...), a true name was something written by the universe and then the name you went by was your "given name" (name given you by your parents or society). Great quests involved individuals and others seeking true names because they held much power.

Given this, I would say you can't get True Names via Mind Bond because the individual probably doesn't even know it.

[Library Ogre]

I somewhat prefered Earthdawn on this... a name that becomes too prominent in your identity is your True Name, making it difficult to conceal them.

Why?
Its just a really prominent use name.
No matter how publicly and prominently someone is known as Mark Twain that is not, and never will be their "True Name"...
....or at least not all of it. All it has done is mean that now you need to know both parts of their true name. (There is nothing anywhere saying that true names have to be short!)

Because, in Earthdawn, your use name got tied up into your Legend, and your Legend was how you grew more skilled at your magical abilities. Changing your true name was relatively trivial... but it would completely remove your accumulated magic, since that was how you interacted with the world.

[barna10]

I somewhat prefered Earthdawn on this... a name that becomes too prominent in your identity is your True Name, making it difficult to conceal them.

Why?
Its just a really prominent use name.
No matter how publicly and prominently someone is known as Mark Twain that is not, and never will be their "True Name"...
....or at least not all of it. All it has done is mean that now you need to know both parts of their true name. (There is nothing anywhere saying that true names have to be short!)

Because, in Earthdawn, your use name got tied up into your Legend, and your Legend was how you grew more skilled at your magical abilities. Changing your true name was relatively trivial... but it would completely remove your accumulated magic, since that was how you interacted with the world.

Interesting idea

[Axelmania]

the rules don't actually say that a Mind Bond can get a true name.

Page 145 of Palladium Fantasy under the Summoner OCC specifies it as the exception to the inability of psionic probes to retrieve True Names.

Both sides learning each other's names is fixed by controlling the reaction to the information, if you don't have something handi like a Psi-Interrogator or other medium. The one in control can get the prisoner Mind-Wiped so they forget it sooner than normal, or write the name down while restricting the prisoner's access to writing tools (you both forget the name after a time)