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View Full Version : Hive Mind as the Good Guys (Idea)



Leliel
2007-11-07, 03:34 PM
It has occurred to me that, despite the many, many, many "collective of minds" we have seen in fiction, I can count the number of good or merely neutral ones we have seen on one hand (There's Gaia (Foundation), Planet (Alpha Centari) and uh...Thats about it). "Well why?" I wondered', "There's nothing inherently evil about a telepathic society. Why are they "Always Evil" in fiction?" Although that answer came to me rather quickly (*cough*Individuality*cough*), I felt that the old group mind needed a bit more respect. So...

How would you, the posters, go about making a campaign where the PCs are the (assuredly willing) members of a non-evil hive mind? How did they come to assimilate with it? What would the ultimate goal of the collective be (besides the usual "assimilate the world" or some variation thereof)? What about other members? What about other, maybe not-so-nice group minds? What would the main villain(s) be? What powers would be granted to the members of the conscious? How hard should you smack the unoriginal dweeb whose character's name is some variation of "Locutus"?

Of course, it is impossible to roleplay a "true" hive mind (Where the members are nearly mindless drones which furthers it's goals), so this will be more along the lines of a "group mind" (Where the members have individual personalities, thoughts, and free will, but are in constant communication via telepathy, share powers and a "collective memory", though the last one would probably not contain things an individual wants to keep to himself, possibly an "adviser" intelligence which directs the members (And thus, mentor to the PCs)), which would also explain why their alignments could differ. It could also allow for Chaotic members (After all, you still retain free will, you're just slightly different then you were before).

We are the Borg. Resistance is useless. You will answer this man's questions.

blacksabre
2007-11-07, 03:46 PM
The reason why the hive mentality is usually projected as evil is because the absent of free will is considered infringement upon a sentient beings birth right. Hive mentality wouldn't work in a real setting with avergae+ inteligence people...failed Communism and flower power Communal societies of the 60's proved this.. People invariably want more or something different then the next door nieghbor. Not having that thing spawns resentment towards society, and getting that thing spawns resent from society" hey why is he so speciall?"

That being said, to run a PC good campaign..

Common objective of the Hive:
Religious base.
The society is centered upon supporting the well being of their benefactor.
Strength in numbers. Individually, the race is weak. physically/mentally/magically/ but when in close proximity to others they gain strength ..say they all AoE buff each other up.

chionophile
2007-11-07, 04:00 PM
Mars, in A Miracle of Science (http://www.project-apollo.net/mos/index.html) is a good example of a benign, even friendly, hive mind. MoS is finished, so you can read the whole thing if you want, although it is a little over 400 pages.

kamikasei
2007-11-07, 04:10 PM
The reason why the hive mentality is usually projected as evil is because the absent of free will is considered infringement upon a sentient beings birth right. Hive mentality wouldn't work in a real setting with avergae+ inteligence people...failed Communism and flower power Communal societies of the 60's proved this.. People invariably want more or something different then the next door nieghbor. Not having that thing spawns resentment towards society, and getting that thing spawns resent from society" hey why is he so speciall?"

Communal societies and hive minds aren't really that close, even if the latter is often used as an allegory for the former. Difficulties arise in communal societies when an individual's natural drive to benefit himself, his descendants, and his kin goes against the desired behavior where everyone acts for the good of the commune. A hive mind need not suffer this. Nor is there any reason why a hive mind would necessarily have "communal" notions of property, etc, except that each member's possessions really do belong to everyone else because they are everyone else to an extent. Hive minds are not economic systems.

Consider something like the Franklin Collective from Accelerando, where members retain their individuality but can communicate telepathically and share memories and thoughts. Perhaps a hive wherein deceased members can time-share with living ones, so that the current members are host to an aggregate body of knowledge and personalities from all previous members, as well as each other when desired?

A member could participate at a low level, but the more he draws on the memories and resources of the hive, the more of a bill he incurs which must be made up by giving over processing time to the hive. The hive seeks out novel experiences and unique perspectives, looking for strong-minded new members who can bring something new to the pool of memory. Their goal could be something as simple as recognition as an autonomous political entity or control over their own lands; or it could be something stranger like a way to make empty "shell" bodies for its deceased members to inhabit. Think of something like the Trill or Tok'ra, but instead of taking on a single symbiont members take on the aggregate of all the "symbionts", shared between them, with the ultimate option of becoming one themselves.

Joran
2007-11-07, 04:10 PM
Spoilers from Ender's Game, Neon Genesis Evangelion, and Childhood's End:

I believe the "Buggers" from Ender's Game, could be considered "good" or at least "misunderstood". Then again, I only read the first book.

Another hive mind could be the Human Instrumentality Project from Evangelion.

In Arthur C. Clarke's book, Childhood's End, humanity is absorbed in a hive mind, but it's kind of neutral whether that is a good or bad thing.


One way I think of the Hive mind is as a club or a cult. Why do people join these things? Off the top of my head, I can think of the following:

1) Feeling a void in your life that is fulfilled by joining something larger than yourself.
2) Trying to gain more knowledge for some reason.
3) Trying to feel closer to someone, for instance, someone you love.
4) Born into it.

Perhaps the Hive mind recruits ;)

Ultimate Goal of the Hive would probably be survival and expansion. Other options are the standard human goals: "self-actualization", "exploration", "living a good life". The Hive mind could also try to get to a tip over point where it achieves some kind of mass consciousness.

Villain could be anyway set out to destroy the Hive Mind. With the Hive present, you can have some fun story-telling ones in which people get killed and the characters experience the death in a Obi-Wan kind of manner.

Powers would probably be; if one person is not surprised, the rest aren't surprised. Knowledge checks should be relatively easy to do. Circumstance bonus on some skills, like picking a lock or hacking, where knowledge would be helpful. If you feel like it, some other member of the Hive can take over another one's body, etc.

I like the idea though.

Jasdoif
2007-11-07, 04:11 PM
Honestly, I'd suggest going from the angle that the PCs aren't actual members of the hive mind itself. Otherwise the campaign setting has to have a lot of direct influence on the players' roleplaying to be significant, which may not mesh well with certain people.


Instead, consider the PCs being in service to this hive mind, preferably as members of some organization it's created. This works out particularly well for a Good hive mind, since wiping out or forcibly assimilating others isn't particularly altruistic. Going even further on that angle...suppose the collective mind ability is actually a racial feature, and so actual assimilation isn't even an option.

As for opposition...well, your aim is apparently to play a foil to the "evil hive mind" idea, so let's go along with that: An expansive, individualistic society, that is convinced that this hive mind is actually capable of enslaving the minds of others, and they simply hide the ability expertly through "outside organizations"...like the one the PCs work for. And so, they've made it their goal to eliminate out this perceived threat of the free individual thought of beings everywhere, by slaughtering everything that's in league with the hive mind.

Prometheus
2007-11-07, 04:14 PM
The whole purpose could be to expand the collective experience and or knowledge. And therefore the PCs go where no other hivemind has gone before but with the support of all the hivemind. Of course, the knowledge of the world would be game-breaking, so we'd have to assume the knowledge of the known world wouldn't completely apply to this unknown territory, or that the ability to really use that knowledge (for example, arcane knowledge) requires some inate power or physical training.

Kizara
2007-11-07, 04:17 PM
I've played in vampire campaigns were we were all telepathically linked. It went as far as projecting emoitions, re-living memories, etc.

It really still amounts to 'really precise, transparent and continous communication' with a common goal.

IMO, the best you can really do as far as a playable game is to have the PCs strongly loyal and active in an organization that is active in the world and have them all permanently telepathically linked. Play up the link, allow them to read each-other's minds, let emoitions flow through, etc. If a PC wants to stop another from reading or sensing an embarrasing or personal thought, he has to make a Will save (or Wis-based Concentration check) against a DC, unless other's in the group actively are trying to look, in which case its opposed checks (with the 'looker' using Cha-based Concentration checks).

Another good referance for the empathic aspect of this kind of bond is the Aes Sedi warder bond from RJ's The Wheel of Time.

Artanis
2007-11-07, 04:18 PM
Another "not-evil" Hive Mind is perhaps the Protoss. They are pretty clearly made up of individuals, but the background fluff makes a big deal out of the Khala connecting each of them to a psychic "gestalt", though it never really explains what said gestalt actually does.

Belteshazzar
2007-11-07, 04:20 PM
I plan on having at least a neutral and in some places obviously good insectile hive mind in my world. I plan to merge Aborials? (those bee people), Thri-Keen, Unber Hulks, and perhaps some minor aspects of other races into this race. Some of them are indeed highly martial comunists or racist facists whose veiw of other races or even other hives varies from either larvae food to slaves(many ants engage in slavery of carptured larvae from other species).

However, most hives are simply enormous families of hardworking extraplanar emigrants. Sure they may number in the thousands per a hive and they have creapy eyes. But look at their crime rates. Murder is almost unknown among them because they would be killing a brother or sister. Sex (the deep basis of many crimes) is almost a non-issue with most hive members as they would need to become nobles in order to feel sexual desire. Greed is a lesser factor too as most arguments over possesions would be akin to siblings arguing over who has the most legos. All the queen needs to do is tell them to behave and they would straighten out either from respect for mother, dirrect mental conditioning, of pheremonal control. Family plotting would be rediculous except amongst equal queens as any hive members would be unable to lie to their psionicly more capable mother. This could lead to an efficient culture founded on matriarchal leadership whose members value truth, expidient justice, hard work, and family unity. It could be an excellant counterpoint to the Drow matriarchy whose members favor guile, manipulation, and sibling rivalry to culling the weakest to refine the strongest as opposed to the hive's philosophy of bearing the weak on the shoulders of the strong.

martyboy74
2007-11-07, 04:20 PM
Spoilers from Ender's Game, Neon Genesis Evangelion, and Childhood's End:

I believe the "Buggers" from Ender's Game, could be considered "good" or at least "misunderstood". Then again, I only read the first book.

Another hive mind could be the Human Instrumentality Project from Evangelion.

In Arthur C. Clarke's book, Childhood's End, humanity is absorbed in a hive mind, but it's kind of neutral whether that is a good or bad thing.


I'm pretty sure that the HIP was considered a bad thing...

dyslexicfaser
2007-11-07, 04:24 PM
You could go the way of the esper collective in the Deathstalker series of books. It's not exactly what I think of a hive mind; more of a gestalt or collective, really. The collective power of all the espers in the universe can be given physical form or, alternatively, all their power can be channelled through an avatar for the betterment of espers as a whole. It definitely takes the long view.

Perhaps the PCs could be just such an avatar: empowered by the collective, in order to achieve an objective. The downside being that using the power of thousands of beings could do terrible things to a person's psyche.

Belteshazzar
2007-11-07, 04:25 PM
Evangellon is not the way to go for a good hive mind, as the entire story is about establishing a sense of self as opposed to a sense of unity.

daggaz
2007-11-07, 04:28 PM
I'm pretty sure that the HIP was considered a bad thing...

In the first book. Ender's game, it was definitely considered a bad thing. A very bad thing. And it was going to wipe out humanity.

But you need to keep reading the books (dont wanna spoil the story) so I will just say there is a lot more to it.

Rasilak
2007-11-07, 04:32 PM
You forgot Solaris, which is at least very neutral.
Like said before, the problem with playing members of a real hive-mind is, that it negates the players personality, and inevitably kills all roleplaying. So you'd have to use some "soft" form of hive-mind. I'd begin with something cleric-like (maybe cleric//psion) and add the ability telepathically communicate with some kind of nexus (like a deity, but only existant through the linking with other hive-members), which enables indirect communication with other hive-members (direct telepathic link could be dangerous for RPG reasons). Maybe add some abilities given by this linking, like being able to sense the presence of others.

Leliel
2007-11-07, 04:36 PM
Wow, I got this many responses already?

My self-esteem just leveled up.

kamikasei
2007-11-07, 04:38 PM
In the first book. Ender's game, it was definitely considered a bad thing. A very bad thing. And it was going to wipe out humanity.

But you need to keep reading the books (dont wanna spoil the story) so I will just say there is a lot more to it.

He's not talking about Ender's Game or its sequels.

Diego
2007-11-07, 04:41 PM
The insect peoples from Feist's "Daughter of the Empire" series were fairly value neutral, IIRC.

Townopolis
2007-11-07, 05:05 PM
I had an idea similar to this in a sci-fi world I was making. Basically, half of humanity went ultra-militant and became known as the *dramatic pause* collective. They weren't a true hive mind, but everyone was telepathically linked in some way to everyone else. Platoons pretty much thought, felt, and lived as one. Whole armies were linked, and a marshal could sense and think through multiple armies at once. The high council, which was pretty much an actual hive mind in itself, was in touch with everyone.

The setting was pretty high-tech, to the point of being mystical. The other half of humanity had "battle mages" and stuff.

Leliel
2007-11-07, 05:06 PM
The insect peoples from Feist's "Daughter of the Empire" series were fairly value neutral, IIRC.

Huh? What serires? I've never heard of it.

NerfTW
2007-11-07, 06:38 PM
Huh? What serires? I've never heard of it.

The Empire Trilogy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_Trilogy)

Just look up Feist and Daughter of the Empire.

MrNexx
2007-11-07, 08:30 PM
The Arisians in the Lensman series were a communal intelligence.

Benejeseret
2007-11-08, 12:40 PM
Perhaps go a spiritual route rather than mental.

Example: All souls from your world come from a fragmented god or gods. All beings might be an extension of a single soul and thus linked through emotion, gestalt feeling or some such. But they are all individual minds with individual goals.

So where does it go. Well, if the souls are the fragments of a god, then collecting them back together would produce great (godly in fact) power. The BBEG might be forcibly collecting other beings souls and fusing them together within himself.

The 'Good' faction might do a similar thing in different ways. Perhaps the good 'hive' is a group that links their soul-fragments together so that together in a group they can collectively access low level deity powers to combat the BBEG. This could explain the source of magic, epic level powers, or similar such things. Maybe powerful beings such as dragons where lizards once that like the BBEG became embodiments of numerous soul-fragments.

Thane of Fife
2007-11-08, 01:13 PM
Well, I'd suggest making the PCs equivalent to Zerg Cerebrates - give them some intelligence, but still forced obedience to the Hive/Overmind. Then, let them control some fairly weak hive critters, but be fairly weak themselves.

Ex.
The PC is a member of the Gruuz race. He gets 1 Gruuz/level which will slavishly obey him. Each Gruuz is fairly weak, and he is fairly weak, but he benefits from being able to multitask very effectively.
The trouble would in determining how class abilities work for him.

Indon
2007-11-08, 01:25 PM
Well, Formians from D&D, while I do believe they're statted as almost always lawful evil, don't neccessarily have to be. Say one Formian hive saw the benefit of working with nearby, 'good' races, and decided to prey upon and conquer/consume only 'evil' racial lands instead, thus obtaining allies such as humans and elves and being opposed to the likes of goblins and orcs.

The party could consist of Formians (probably of the Taskmaster caste) enacting their hive's D&D-concept-of-good-friendly will.

It'd be an interesting concept for a kick-in-the-door campaign, anyway.

Aquillion
2007-11-08, 01:33 PM
Skirting around discussion of actual real-world politics, it should be remembered that histories of collective-style organization in human society can only be used to judge what works for humans. Humans lack telepathic or supernatural empathic links; you can't use anything from human history to judge theoretical societies that depend on them.

Of course, they're often used for social commentary... but it's stupid social commentary. Once you've gotten that far from actually being human, it's not really possible to make useful comparisons to our limited human history... this is one of the things I liked about Planet in Alpha Centurai, that it was basically shown as totally alien to us rather than good or evil, to the point where it can take generations just to establish meaningful communication with it.

Of course, this leads to another point, which is much more straightforward: Playing a hivemind is, for the most part, no fun. No matter what you're RPing, your players are actually humans, and they have individual will. They're going to get annoyed at constantly being part of the hive mind. (Why even have players, come to think of it? Just tell them what the hive mind does and how the adventure ends.)

Of course... players do tend to have permanent Telepathic Bonds. It might be interesting to explore the impact of having a constant mental link to a group of people 24/7 for extended periods of time. I mean, just their organization gives them an overwhelming advantage in combat.

Hey, imagine what a military could do with some sort of mass telepathic bond permanencied over its troops...

bugsysservant
2007-11-08, 01:36 PM
Hive minds are neither good nor evil, but they are incredibly lawful. This limits campaign potential by prohibiting chaotic creatures and players. Such creatures would undeniably be viewed by such a hive mind as a threat, and one step on the road to chaos and anarchy. While a good aligned hive mind might attempt to coexist, an evil one would undoubtedly strive to eradicate it.

Anyway, on the topic of hive minds: one of my favorites is the computer from The Last Question (http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html). While probably not what you're looking for, and slightly religious, I love this story, it is one of Asimov's best. Anyway, I would definitely consider this to be a "good" or at least necessary hive mind.

Azerian Kelimon
2007-11-08, 01:38 PM
Formians are LN. And that is the real problem, Formian's represent a hivemind perfectly, and sadly, it's nigh impossible to be good when people lack free will.


If I were you, I'd take a collective mind, which indeed HAS the potential for massive goodness, though they tend to neutrality. A good example of a neutral collective (With a G bend, or perhaps the other way around) would be the Dals from the Malloreon. Now, Good collectives are pretty unusual, though more likely than hiveminds, and I'd say that a good collective is probably going to be small. It's hard to keep lots of people nice and good when they're likely to have many different motivations. Just imagine a spouse metally catching his or her significant other being infidel, which could be a rather common case. There would be a lot of murders around.

Indon
2007-11-08, 01:41 PM
Formians are LN. And that is the real problem, Formian's represent a hivemind perfectly, and sadly, it's nigh impossible to be good when people lack free will.


I do believe certain Formian castes are depicted as semi-independent (such as the Taskmaster); from there, a "good" hivemind would imply that all the members behave in accordance (though probably still tending neutral).

shadowdemon_lord
2007-11-08, 01:43 PM
Evangellon is not the way to go for a good hive mind, as the entire story is about establishing a sense of self as opposed to a sense of unity.

spoilers for Neon Genesis: Evangelion


But it's only through honest communications with his representations of other people through the hive mind that the main character finally does acheive a sense of perfect self. The ending of that series shows the physical world to be an imperfect state of being and the only true way to achieve nirvanna (for lack of a better word) is through a collective consiousness.

Azerian Kelimon
2007-11-08, 01:48 PM
Which goes in contrast with the whole of being human, and why would someone elect to stay like that. Evangelion is not a really good thing to judge hiveminds by, or even how people behaves. If I had to take something for hiveminds, I'd be better off reverse engineering The Wall.

MCerberus
2007-11-08, 01:51 PM
Well the closest I could see a hivemind is LLLG (super lawful). Everyone would be going on with the greater good junk while ignoring the needs of the individual.

Xuincherguixe
2007-11-08, 05:44 PM
The problem with hive minds is that they amount to a loss of self. And thus an individual doesn't have the opportunity for good or evil. One needs to exist first. And you can't really play a character if you don't exist.

It seems like some form of telepathy needs to be involved for any hive mind. We can count emiting radio waves that carry information as telepathy too (maybe the characters are robots). In order for individuals to exist, either information simply can't be taken against their will, or it is discouraged.

A chaotic Hive Mind is an interesting idea, but probably not suitable for play. I can see Demons like this. A form of intelligence that exists as violence against it's own self. The idea of a form of life that can read each others minds that values freedom is nice too because of the fact that it's counter intuitive.



Now, getting to the actual point. How I would do a Good Hive Mind. I'd probably go Science Fiction/Fantasy rather than Medieval Fantasy. Since I already mentioned it, let's go with the Players are advanced robots (gives a fair number of options too). They have the ability to broadcast information, and other robots (or organic speices) might try and hack them. I'm more a fan of Dark Settings, but this was about good hive minds. Forcefully extracting information would be a crime. Punishable by being placed in the pain simulator.

The "Hive Mind" aspect here is that the robots could form networks with each other. This is done to solve problems, or just as a form of socializing. These robots could also control devices they have manufactured, which themselves lack free will.

The player characters would pursue some kind of goal for their robot civilization. Such as exploring, form a peace treaty with earth, pursue robot criminals, or perform maintenance.

Character advancement would occur by the Robot Leaders granting permission for upgrades, or performing unauthorized ones.


... You know, this isn't a bad idea. I might have to come back to this one day.

Leliel
2007-11-08, 06:04 PM
You know, I just thought of a good example of a group mind with chaotic members: the Asuran Replicators from Stargate Atlantis. They're in constant communication with each other, their powers are pretty much based on each other, but other than that, they're pretty much individuals. Hell, Oberoth himself would probably qualify as CE.