Addiction to Mental Support Abilities?

[meticulousDemiurge]

Everyone in my session just got together to discus things, plan, etc. Afterwards our Bane of Mind pulled me aside and told me she was worried that our leader (Ward of Time) is spending all of her pluck on time player psybuffs, to the point where she might be dependent on them. Additionally our Guard of Life might also be abusing [Do You Remember Me?] to keep himself from having to deal with any of his other emotions.

I suppose my question is whether this is something anyone else has observed, and if so is it necessary to do anything about it? Cass (Mind player) wanted my opinion on whether we should stage some sort of intervention, she hasn't confronted either them yet because both of them are very independent and absolutely cannot stand to appear weak in front of anyone, especially their friends (Mind player's words, not mine).

We're a little ways into our first session if that helps.

[tenaciousTheseus]

Time psybuffs are different than other psybuffs. That is, they are mandatory and necessary. The mental strain of constantly finding your own corpse and reliving your own death over and over is a powerful one indeed. Give him Time (Pun totally intended). If he's still spamming them later on in the session, yes, have your Mind player intervene.

As for the Life player, have your Mind player intervene. Mind players are great with the psychiatrist shtick. Leave it to her (and your Heart player if you have one). Tell her to keep in Mind (Pun also intended) that she's doing this for the good of the group. That'll bump up her ARC and give her a better chance of helping.

Or, alternatively, wait for your Mind player to rise on the echeladder some. If they're spamming psybuffs, there's a good chance they won't have a breakdown unless someone forcibly pulls the psybuffs off. Keep an eye on them until the Mind player is high enough that she won't screw up. And if you have a Heart player, DEFINITELY wait until s/he's high on the echeladder. Shiny Manip's delicate enough.

[lucidChthonia]

What aspects do you have?

How mentally stable have your players been historically? That is a level of dysfunction that you usually only see with 5+ sessions spent with near total disregard for mental health. Or a session in which at least one of the players starts with a history of inpatient hospitalization for psychiatric issues.

I need you to start with this knowledge: psybuffs do not fix anything. At best they do some poorly understood but extremely abstract buffering of how much psychological turmoil someone is in at any one time.

It is likely, given your description, that there are structural problems going on. If you have a Heart player, put them on here immediately. Also, I would like to talk to your Bane of Mind, Champion to Champion.

((The session mentioned happened several timestamps ago, and she watched it happen and crash-and-burn on the chat long before this roleplay was a thing. Also, Bane of Mind does not actually need to show up but Lucid would like to talk anyway!))

[meticulousDemiurge]

We have a Bane of Mind, a Smith of Stars, a Sage of Space, a Ward of Time, a Guard of Life, and a Thief of Dream (me), no heart player unfortunately. Cassandra (Bane of Mind) keeps telling me the forums don't exist when she tries the link from the Glitch FAQ (she's the one who found it in our group) on her computer so I'm just going to let her use my account.

Hi there! I've never talked to any of you but thank you for offering to help. To answer your questions Jessica seemed to be doing fine before we entered the game, although she wouldn't have told us if anything was wrong. It's normal for time players to feel awful I know but I'm worried she's not going to be able to maintain this forever, and even if she could it's still unhealthy. She's the kind of person who won't bend at all up until her breaking point when she'll probably just shatter and I really want to avoid that.

As for Stanley I'm a lot more worried about him now that you bring up the question of psychiatric hospitalization. See none of us had actually talked to him for a few years up until about a month before we played the game, we were really excited to talk to him but he was really evasive about what he had been up to in that time. I hope nothing bad happened to him but I can't get a good read on what's going on in his head. I'm still really inexperienced with my aspect and my whisperings haven't told me anything about him, just that he needs help. He keeps fondling a keychain when he uses [Do You Remember Me?], I don't know who it belongs to but none of us recognize it and he got really defensive when I brought it up at the meeting. Speaking of which if Jessica or Stanley ever contact any of you please don't tell them I told you any of this, I don't know much about being a mind player or psychiatrist but I think I'm supposed to keep most of this stuff confidential when I can help it.

What would you like to talk to me about?

[bluesunnyday]

Look, don't mess with the Time player too much. Those psybuffs are important so that they don't curl up into little balls and cry for the rest of their lives from seeing an entire barrage of corpses.

Imagine the Time psybuffs as their medication. Useful when used in the recommended doses, but bad when overused, and capable of causing addictions.

As for [Do You Remember Me?], no dice, sorry. Not really a fan of that one, even when I WAS a Guard of Life. If you want, I could potentially do a bit of a feelings jam with them, over PMs of course. I have experience as a former Mind player, and while my psychoanalyzation is a bit rusty, I could probably help out.

[meticulousDemiurge]

We sort of figured it out on our own, unfortunately. Long story short our Guard of Life was just trying to deal with his corruption problems. Our Ward of Time was "cured" of dependency on psybuffs when The Beat abandoned her after she deliberately BTd our Bane of Mind in a misguided attempt to help the aforementioned Guard with his recurring corruption issues.

Currently all three of them are sort of shaken and tending towards huddling together, not really in any shape to go questing or defend themselves (not that I can blame them really, huddling together and doing nothing sounds pretty nice right now). Sarah (sage of space) and Victor (smith of stars) keep telling me they're going to be fine eventually and I trust their scrying.