Direct-brain whisper projection, Psychic Relay, and the Arresting Skinner

I ran my first game last night and I think I may have messed this up, but it was fun so thats a wash if I did... but in the future I want to be a bit more accurate on this.

Playing the Hachet City scenario the Brainer and Skinner (Sin and Spice) decided that they were lovers and that they knew how to work together. The sitch was one that 5 snipers were covering the city's main gate. Spice got some wierdo suit as her Psychic Mealstrom tribute (she wanted to survive) and wore a Psychic Relay on her head, then walked out the gate into view of the snipers. Now, I said that to walk out that gate was going to take a some major balls and if they were going to pull it off he couldn't flinch or shit would go south real quick.

Spice held his shit together and then Sin used the Psychic Relay to tell the snipers to surrender. I treated the group of snipers as a gang one size bigger than Sin by himself so he could affect them all. Sin rolled 13 so I said it was all good.

Now, the Direct-brain whispers should be a close range interaction, but does that hold tru with the Psychic Relay? Also, since Spice was an Arresting Skinner would they be looking at the relay or just the skinner? 5 is technically too small for gang, but I could not think of another way to affect the group all at once and I was not such she should get to roll against all of them individually (I realize this is moot if the long range thing is a deal breaker, but if it had been close should this power work on a group? or is this something an advanced move would be used for or perhaps a new move that uses DBWP as a entry cost?)

So set me straight so I can get this right next time.

Well I think ultimately it's your call as MC whether you want to allow it to work on groups, but personally I wouldn't unless there were some particularly appropriate circumstances. (It would definitely make an interesting 'advancement' version of the move though, like you say.) There are already moves for dealing with crowds and there is a reason the Hocus and Skinner get them and the Brainer does not. That said, I don't see anything in the move's description that suggests it needs to be close range -- it just says "if they can see you," and specifies that you don't have to interact. For me the only sticking point would be whether or not the Brainer has to know somebody is looking at her in order to use the move -- since they presumably do not know the location of all of these snipers.

If the idea is that the Skinner holds it together long enough that the Brainer is, fictionally-speaking, Going Aggro on the individuals one by one, then I would suggest having them roll for each of them -- after all, it only takes one miss or a few 7-9s before that situation starts getting a lot more interesting. If the Snipers are aware of each other and one of them starts screaming and holding his head while blood spurts out of his nose, the others might decide that shooting sooner than later is a good idea. Then again, a perfect series of 10+ and you have one truly epic brain-fucker on your hands.

Also in terms of 'treating them as a gang' -- gang size is mostly only used for dealing Harm or taking Harm. In the case of that particular move the harm is ap, so the extra armour wouldn't really make a difference to the results. Did you penalize the roll or something instead?

Well I think ultimately it's your call as MC whether you want to allow it to work on groups, but personally I wouldn't unless there were some particularly appropriate circumstances.

Yeah, its a "established precedent" thing. I'd probably say it's for onesies, but I've been in a game where the brainer had this and the hardholder had him mount the relay on a tower in the middle of town he could do anyone or everyone looking at the relay at once. But people knew that's what the tower was for. And it was awesome, because sure, he could use it, but how long would the people stand him reworking their brains. Further, how long before the hardholder lorded over a town of brain-addled zombies? That shit can't be good for people.

It's one of those in the moment judgement calls where there's no wrong answer, but you gotta know that it's gotta be consistent. It's the same every time.