I've had a fascination with the concept of hive minds since I was first introduced to them, and I think it's a shame that they don't get explored more often.
90% of the time, Hive minds in fiction are depicted as evil creatures whose only goal is to "assimilate mankind, resistance is futile"
I want to see more ways the trope can exist, and I want to see it used in more interesting stories.
stories like "A Song for Lya" where the "creature" in the hivemind is simply a fungus that eats people's bodies with the side effect of absorbing their minds into a psychic network where all minds are melded together
or "Ender's Game" where a war is started on accident because a hive mind society doesn't share our value of individual life
or even fucking Rick and Morty, where a hive mind is simply one mind inhabiting billions, and the mind is capable of having a relationship with an individual
the concept of a hive mind is so inherently terrifying and interesting that you figure it would be one of the most common fantasy tropes, alongside zombies or giants, but they're surprisingly lacking
I like the idea of bringing Illithids to their natural conclusion
they use their psionics to turn other species into thralls, so wouldn't it follow that there be a central mind enthralling all of the illithids?
In a sense this makes them a hive mind, a single mind controlling many minds, each in turn controlling even more minds, until all of creation is under its control
it might be a little too close to the borg's "you will be assimilated" cliche, but still a new take on it.
Luis Walker
I always find them rather boring because they replace interacting with multiple different entities with only a single entity.
Cameron Morgan
I sort of wanted to make a society of a parasitic hivemind that farms its host like you would cattle overtime the host and parasite would become genetically linked to the point where the parasite is only able to latch onto this particular population
Kayden Hernandez
Not full blown hivemind, but the concept of the Tines from A Fire Upon the Deep is quite cool, imo. I'd probably only change the fact that they're giraffe dogs.
Anthony Butler
easy to fix >make a city where the major religion centers around a hive mind >have the population worship the hive mind >young people talking about how they want to grow up to be part of "the union" >people in the streets performing rituals so as to "open their minds to the unity" >have a small sect of apostates secretly trying to "free" the city from the hive mind
there, I made an adventure for you, took me 1 minute.
Isaiah Phillips
I could see this either being played for horror or made in to some strange political drama, depending on what you mean by "farming"
Joshua Brown
Honestly, there are so many different ways hiveminds can screw with people. Imagine capitalist hiveminds. Abuse their nature to amass shitloads of money and influence over society.
Evan Brooks
That's canon for Illithids though. They're all basically thralls of the Elder Brain.
Jason Lee
but in canon, each illithid community was enthralled by an elder brain, one elder brain for each community
my idea was that each elder brain was in turn enthralled by some sort of superbrain that existed someplace darker and more ancient than any illithid city.
Thomas Carter
Eh, that is people not part of the hivemind acting, doesn't change the actual hivemind.
David Powell
I'm confused
>complains that a hivemind only allows you interact with 1 NPC instead of multiple
>given a story explanation why PCs would interact with non hivemind NPCs
>eh, that doesn't change the actual hivemind
Jose Campbell
The complaint was that the hivemind acts as one entity. Let's say the hivemind is a nation or ethnicity, it doesn't differ which vessel of the hivemind is encountered. It is about the volume of people being filled with one personality. 10 normal people are 10 persons. 5 normal people and a 5 hivemind people are 6 persons, because those 5 act as one. Adding more additional not hivemind people doesn't change that encounters with hive vessel a and b will involve talking to essentially the same person.
Jordan Wood
I'm honestly confused as to what the problem is, would you care to elaborate?
Asher Howard
Read Peter Hamilton's Commonwealth Saga. The first book is "Pandora's Star". Goes about it in an interesting way.
Josiah Diaz
The Revelation Space series has a non-evil hivemind faction. Or what you might call a "lite" hivemind that connects minds together without entirely overwriting individual identity, like a computer network.
>Conjoiners use technology to create a localised group mind. Individual identities are retained, but the group generally functions as a single unit working harmoniously toward its goals. All Conjoiners possess, at the minimum, a net of nanomachines that mimic their host's brain structure and thus augment the host's neural capabilities. Artificial enhancements such as vision overlays are not uncommon, and Conjoiners can communicate neurally through fields generated by their implants, which may or may not be amplified by background systems depending on the situation. Most Conjoiners use only neural communication with other Conjoiners and do not physically speak.
They have some shady elements but no moreso than other factions in the setting.
Dominic Robinson
Let's say the story involves flying your spaceship into Hive space. There you can expect to interact with Hive beings multiple times, at the asteroid belt mining station, at the gas giant eternal storm eye, at the hive homeworld and so on. But encounters would be pretty similar in terms of the NPC personality you interact with. If it where klingons or whatever there would be different klingon personalities in play at each encounter. Adding another unrelated party doesn't change the problem because Hive encounters still feel samey. If there is the occasional foreign space trade floating around in between won't make the next random Hiver more fresh.
Mason Green
reminds me of the Geth in Mass Effect.
the "neural network" style of hive mind is always super cool to me.
Jacob Morgan
Your answer was basically not using x as much and using y instead makes x better. To talk about it in more abstract terms.
John Gomez
the solution here is to just treat the hive mind as one person, and not many people.
Yeah, encountering the hive mind for the 5th time in a row would get samey, but do you send your PCs to talk to the same shopkeep 5 times in a row?
If your hive mind is one character, then use them as one character. They can be great for single adventure stories, or even as big bads or helpful NPCs, but don't force your players into encounters with the same person over and over again, what's wrong with you?
Alternatively, you could just use a different kind of hive mind, make it so that the vessels retain their individuality, but can choose to link their minds to a neural network of minds in order to do certain things. That opens up a whole bunch of new ideas for adventures and NPCs.
Grayson Howard
>Hive minds in fiction are depicted as evil creatures whose only goal is to "assimilate mankind, resistance is futile"
Just that , for example, the Borg don't do this because they want to be evil. The Borg genuinely believe they do the other species a favour by assimilating them. Likely they really can't understand why someone wouldn't want to be part of a hivemind.
Leo Evans
>the borg did nothing wrong
Ryan Adams
I'd think the very point of a hivemind would be to act as monolithic and multipresent. Cutting them down in presence seems counter the core concept. I feel like at a scale, where its involvement gets meaningful it gets proportionally monotone, which is why I perceive it as a bit flawed.
Elijah Young
look at the example I gave earlier.
you can have a hive mind be omnipresent and embedded in every facet of a society without it being overtly present in every session.
also, the multipresence of a hive mind is one aspect that you can choose to draw upon, but it definitely isn't the only one.
you can have an antagonistic hive mind be monolithic and multi present, and that set up alone can run the entirety of your campaign.
or else you could have a hive mind that's taken over a village, and use it as a moral quandary for your party.
Else you could use it as an extension of psionic abilities in your society, that groups of people simply choose to live as a hive among a larger society.
there are so many ways to use the concept
Alexander Price
The issue I have with a lot of hive minds in fiction is that they aren't actual hive minds. Theyre either simple mind linkages with lots of people, or theyre a ton of bodies controlled by one creature. In a true hive mind there is no Queen or any individual thought. In a hive mind the "thoughtspace" would be utterly insular, with no empathy or emotional connection with any other being not in the hive, since all thoughts not part of the hive may as well not exist. So having a hive like in Rick and Morty makes no sense, since Unity isnt a hivemind, but a single human-like mind in a bunch of bodies. The Borg also arent a hive because the drones are all slaved to the Queen(by show canon at least), and arent all conteibuting. In a true hive, all mimds are literally one and the same, so no creature is central. Sorry if this was rambling, but "hiveminds" like Unity and the Borg always bothered me.
Ryder Flores
If you want that, you NEED to read these books:
Aaron Howard
I understand that so many different tropes being lumped under one name can be frustrating, but with so little reference material, I'll take all that I can get.
My favorite example of a hive mind that I've read so far is in "A Song for Lya", and that fits your example of a "true hive mind" I think.
Matthew Flores
My main problem with hive minds is that there aren't enough stories about men having sex with attractive hive mind twins/triplets/quadruplets.
Luke James
write it yourself user, just let the autism flow through you
Owen Myers
there's an interesting scene in SWTOR where if your character romances Vector Hyllus (who's part of a hivemind of the nueral network variety) he offers to sever his link to it when you have sex, for the sake of privacy, you then have to the option to tell him to re-enable it before the fade-to-black.
Camden Ross
would love to see more porn and CYOA type porn and stories about hive minds
Dylan Gutierrez
after playing starcraft 2 and warhammer 40k games I just want to vomit when I hear "hivemind".
Henry Stewart
There was a great Voyager episode called "Unity" with a Borg offshoot that wanted to be a collective again, but wasn't aggressive. Really interesting, especially by Voyager's hit or miss standards.
Also, the allure of Instrumentality in Evangelion is probably relevant to this discussion.
Samuel Ramirez
Whats the hivemimd portayed like in there?
Julian Reed
I always liked the cranium rats from Planescape. IIRC Many-as-One is a godlike hive mind made up of neurally networked rats who doesn't want to assimilated everyone, but just acts like a more intelligent vermin.
Just imagine the horror if a species of pest was linked together as a single hivemind that doesn't change it's nature as a pest.
