I am a pretty new GM and I have problems dealing with my mage's Mind Probe...
As my games usually have a part of investigation, it can really screw up my plans when they get their hand on someone and Mind Probe him.
I know the target realizes he is mind probed, but still. If they ever get their hands on a villain, they can make him spill the beans without even sweating...
How do you deal wih Mind Probe in your games?

A couple of different ways;

( 1 ) Mindraping people is nasty, and every mundane "knows" from the Trid that you can also make them forget whatever you want as well as convince them to eat their own children. You'd be better off telling people that you are a Bloodmage.

( 2 ) Using either magic or drugs to lower your target's Willpower holds a danger of giving false results.

( 3 ) Don't ever try it on a sleeping target if you want to gleam anything even remotely useful.

( 4 ) The baddies understand that Mindraping Mages exist so they are going to use the "need to know" standard, and your average sec guard or grunt really doesn't need to know all the much.

Some teams have good interrogation skills, other teams don't. Some teams get good intelligence from the Matrix, others don't. Some teams are good at astral recon, social legwork, drone overflight, or whatever... and other groups don't.

What avenues of investigation are open to different groups is a major indicator of how they will accomplish missions. And having Mind Probe is functionally similar to having a face with a high Intimidation check.

-Frank

Scanners....

There is a thing like 'too much hits' when mind-probing.

Why don't you "walk" the Mage through the target's memories? Flashes of completely unrelated bits of the target's past, the "capture" through the target's eyes, the fear and anger at being mindraped...

What's the deal? If the target gets captured and is then interrogated, it doesn't matter anymore if he gets physically tortured, mindraped by a mind-probe, given a truth serum or forced to watch America Superstars if the Runners believe that the target might know something.
There are still other and better opportunities to play out another scene.

I'm not a fan of the "mind probe means we win" strategy, either, and I have posted a decent amount on Mind Probe, but it's all in relation to SR3. Still, if any of it is helpful, there you go.

Never forget the aftereffects. Assuming they don't immediately kill everyone they mind probe they'll be generating a trail. If they aren't all disguised when it happens, they'll be generating a trail that the police sketch programs can add lots of details to. Even if they are all disguised, they probably just disguised their face, so the trail will have some extra info in it.

Eventually something will happen and that trail will come back to haunt them.

Also, very few people will enjoy having their deepest thoughts ripped away from them. While the vast majority of mind probe targets won't be important people, eventually someone who knows somebody who knows somebody will get probed and go looking for a little payback.

...like eidolon, I've already said my peace on this in previous threads.

For my current SRIII campaign, there is no such spell. This includes for PC mages, NPC mages Spirits, GDs, IEs, Drop Bears, Space Aliens...

True, if they're discreet about it Mind Probe is safer, but you're still developing a trail. And how often are runners consistently discreet?

If they're casting the spell at a decent force, the odds are pretty good you're going to see it. Since you need three net hits and your total hits are limited to your force, you'll almost always be using at least force 5. That puts the threshold at 1. If they cast it at force 6 or higher it will automatically be noticed by everyone around.

As a fully sentient AI private investigator, I'm both discreet and discrete.

It's true what you said about a high force mind probe though. Follow up with an Alter Memory spell, and all is well. Personally, I like Influence...they actually think it was their idea to tell you everything!

Solomon Greene, you are now my other favorite GM in regard to Mind Probe.

Thank you!

My victims tend to be gagged and bound, so that they can't even move and resist physically, nor scream all too loud. Helps to make sure the people don't commit suicide before they've got interrogated, and doesn't call any cops or other noisy do-gooder in vicinity to investigate.

Really, does it matter anymore if you use drugs, violence, sexual coercion, mind-probes or a record of the Tele-Tubbies to get the informations out of your victim? You're playing a criminal for hire, after all.

VR interrogation is always nice, too: With hot ASIST, the limit really just is your imagination...

...dangling them out the back of a cargo jet flying at 2,000M altitude over the Atlantic on a spectra fibre rope works pretty good too.

So your criminal character would rather use knives, burning coals, cigarettes, acids, choking gags and other really painful methods that are even more worse than the mind-probe spell, which doesn't even inflict pain at all? Oh well, I don't mind, in the end, whatever our characters do, it's illegal, it's criminal, and it's punishable by law.

Worse is in the eye of the beholder.

Exactly.

My criminal mage for hire thinks that mind-probes aren't that harmful for the victim, totally neclegting the fact that he has complete access to her intimate knowledge, while other people have to rely on physical means, like in the film 'Hostel', but consider this to be less horrible than magically peeking into the brain of your target, while other will try to insert many strong doses of truth-compelling drugs into the blood stream of the guy who doesn't want to talk.

In the end, it doesn't matter. The ones' not suppossed to get the information get it anyway, and there's nothing you can do.

What is this crap about "mind rape" anyways? You freaks might like to invent a spell like that, but I'll just use mind probe or influence to get information. Given a choice, I'd take a Mind Probe over psychological or physical torture any day of the week.

Magical voyeurismus into your thoughts and memory patterns becomes exagerrated into mind rape, to so demonize magicians.

I do encourage this demonization, as it enriches the SR setting. After all, most people still aren't that educated about magic, even if they get to see it day-for-day in the Trid.

...ahh but where's the sport in it just sitting there sucking out memories? Kind of fun for the PCs, watching the fellow windmill about in the plane's slipstream. All he got from it was a little windburn & soiled trousers, otherwise he was fine.

...& I was the GM.

>>> Although I enjoy burning a witchsniffer at the stake as much as any wizard, even I find mindrape to be one of the more distasteful tools of our trade. <<< -Bot

>>> *Snorts* Big talk coming from a fragging blood mage! <<< -Dr D

Well, remember that mindraping works both ways, it's entirely posssible to take the best roleplayer in your group on a solo session where he/she gets mindraped and turned into a magical Judas.

Also just because the team isn't moved by mindrape, doesn't mean that the rest of the world isn't, so even if they use the spell to great effect they would be better off bragging about child molestation then talking about the mindrape spell.

Naw, they should still fear that the mindraping mage could do the samething to them just as easily.

As was pointed out previously, this is nothing that a good face adept couldn't talk out of them. No matter how many penalties you stack up against the adept.

I prefer the threat of mind probe.

"Ye don't start talkin' soon, and we're gonna let Thermowhatchalopolus here dig through your brain case till we finds what we'z lookin' fer."

Mind you, Thermowhatchalopolus was normally me (a street sam) dressed up in some really snazzy "hermetic" robes, a pointy hat, and a curled piece of rebar for a staff.

The occasional, "He's lying. I won't damage him like that last guy. I'll be extra special not to destroy his ability to control his bladder. And that other dude only sees hell hounds, once... maybe twice a day now." type comments would normally turn the poor sod into a veritable library of information.

No magic trail, no body to hide, and no renting an airplane to fly over the Atlantic

...well...you were close with "rigger"...

...who was friends with a decker...

Do remember, theres nothing in mind probe which says that you aren't able to act while being probed. So, I'm sure the sammy has nothing to be afraid of from the mage, why? Mage starts a mind probe, roll initiative, sammy shoots mage, mind probe stops.

Honestly, the problem isn't the mind probe spell here. If your Players only leave people alive because sometimes it's easier, and wouldn't blink at a elaborate discription of the psychological impact of a mind-rape, then it doesn't matter what you do. They want to capture the badguy, roll some dice, and get him to spill his guts.

And why not?

In another game, called dogs in the vineyard, the GM advice section has some great, well, advice.

"The [characters] you've made have secrets. quite likely terrible secrets - blood and sex and murder and damnation. But you, the GM, have no secrets A'tall. You have cool things - bloody, sexy, murderous, damn cool things - that you can't wait to share"

"uh-oh, they're going to figure out whats going on in the own. I better stonewall. poker face on. and then I'm like, wait a minute, I want them to figure it out. In fact, I want to SHOW them. Otherwise they'll waner around waiting for me to drop a clue, while I've got my stupid poker face on, and we won' have any fun the whole evening."

Don't worry about making the information in the NPC's head harder to get. Worry about making what they find cool enough to warrant the effort. Then the story will be driven not by how hard it was to get somewhere, but by how much the Players wanted to go.