[The Memory Cheats] Has this been done?

[knicknevin]

Another game that was on the backburner crystallized over the weekend... ironically, given the game's concept, I couldn't remember all of the original idea I had for it so I was stumped for what to do for Attributes...anyway, I really wanted to know if it's been done before, since I cant claim to have come up with anything astoundingly original, so is there an RPG out there that already does the same thing?
  In 'The Memory Cheats', the PCs regain conciousness... and thats all anyone knows at the start of the game; the narrative proceeds by players filling in gaps from their missing memories about who they are, where they were, what they were doing and how they ended up in whatever situation they are in now. Players challenge other players with these details. e.g by saying to another player "You did such-&-such", with the winner of the challenge determining whether the challenger's statement is correct in all its details.
   OK, thats the ultra-brief precis of the rules... I've actually got it all written out on in my Big File o' Notes, but I'd like to know if there is another game out there that already occupies this niche: after a quick search here using the keywords 'memory' and 'amnesia', the closest match I found was Shades, but as thats about dead people trying to put right the tragedy that killed them, I think its different enough to justify the existence of my game. Anyone know of anything with a closer resemblance? I don't really mind if there is, I just don't want to bore people with something that's been done or suffer accusations of plagiarism.

[Troy_Costisick]

Heya,

As far as games go, I can't think of any off the top of my head.  I wrote a short story similar to that theme a while ago that was inspired by the cartoon Big O.  I don't think that's on Cartoon Network anymore, but it followed along the lines of what you're thinking very well.

Here's my preliminary advice: don't worry if someone else has done it or not.  You have every right to make the game you want and the Forge will help you do that.  If your really asking for research material, that's cool, but if you're worried about stepping on someone's toes or copying a design, don't.  Just get started and see how things come together.

As for your actual game, let me see if I have this strait:

What your game is about:
- Regaining memories.

What the characters do:
- Not real sure at the moment, could you clarify?

What the players do:
- Add resistance to what the other players want to accomplish.

Let me know if I read you right.

Peace,

-Troy

[Mister Six]

Check out the Snowball variant of the Pool:

http://www.twistedconfessions.com/files/Snowball.pdf

-CJ

[Christoph Boeckle]

I just stumbled on Dennis Detwiller's Insylum. I haven't read the game yet, all I know is that there's a mechanic for memory.

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

Can you tell us more mechanically? This sounds like a good starting point, but I want to know how it would actually work.

[Adam Dray]

Do the players know what happened?

[knicknevin]

Players create characters at the start of the game, but their 'traits' don't represent the character directly, merely their ability to recall particular details: currently the four Traits I'm using are Personal (recalling details about skills, abilities, careers & gear about PCs & NPCs), Sensory (things seen, heard, tasted, felt, scented, etc), Spacial (locations, physical measurements, relative positions & arrangements) and Chronological (timing, ordering, sequences, the occurrence of events). They also get a number of personalised Factors, which could be keywords like 'Fighting', 'Alcohol', 'Blue', 'Hidden', or character concepts like 'My Car', 'I'm a Policeman' or 'Very Handsome'. Factors enhance the characters ability to recall those features, e.g. if a character with Spacial+2 and 'Pushy+4' stated as their challenge 'I pushed to the front of the queue', they would be very likely to pass that challenge.
  It is somewhat like Snowball, but the key difference is that players are encouraged to disagree with each other: all the PCs are unreliable narrators whose memory of events is vague & clouded by their own prejudices; most ofd the game play consists of making an Impersonal challenge, where you state something about your character and then enter a contest against the GM; a Personal challenge, where you state something about another PC and enter a challenge against that player; or a Universal challenge, where you state that something happened but you don't know which PC it involved, so all players enter a contest and the winner picks up the narrative. There are also some advanced rules that allow players a limited window of opportunity to deny or modify the statements of other players.
  What characters do: try to recall the sequence of events that led them to wherever they are now...
  What players do: create the sequence of events that led them to wherever the group determines they are now.
  Since I have this written up to my satisfaction, I will type it up properly sometime this weekend, so if anyone would like to see the full rules for themselves (its a card based system that uses ranks & Trumps to resolve challenges) I'll try and e-mail you a copy, unless someone can suggest a better way of disseminating it.

[knicknevin]

I've typed up the full rules of this game as a word doc now, if anyone is interested; what follows is essentially the last page of that document, an extended example of what I think the game could play like, theoretically; if you want the full rules, its only 14 pages long, so it won't break the memory bank!

Play Dialogue

   In this example, we join an advanced game involving Bob, Helen & Simon as the Characters, with Kate as the Interlocutor; text in brackets relates the narrative to the results within the framework of the rules.
Kate: "Did you steal the golden idol?" (Target of this Request is Bob; this is a Solo Personal challenge, which Bob loses; he puts one of his unplayed cards face-down on his character sheet and writes down I Have the Golden Idol as a fact)
Bob: "Yes, I stole it; I was hired to steal it for a private collector" (Bob makes a Solo Personal challenge, hoping that he can use his face-down card as a Booster, but the cards he draws are both low and don't help him to win; he puts another card face-down on his character sheet)
Bob "Actually, I wasn't hired; you were blackmailing me into working for you" (Bob targets Helen with a Dual Personal challenge; Bob plays a card, Helen beats it at first, but this time Bob is able to play a Booster to raise his rank enough to beat Helen; Bob puts his card face-up on his character sheet, but Helen only drew 1 card, so she has no unplayed ones to put face-down)
Helen: "Yes, I blackmailed Bob to steal the Idol (Helen writes down I'm Blackmailing Bob as a fact); who did I see him cheating on his wife with?" (Helen has opened a Universal Sensory challenge, so she plays a card, then Simon who is next in player order, then Bob; Kate, as the Interlocutor, does not play one; Helen wins, so she puts her card face-up on her character sheet, whilst Simon & Bob each put a card they drew but didn't play face-down)
Helen "Oh wait: it was me he was having an affair with!" (Helen writes this down as a fact) "You were using me to set Bob up" (Helen targets Simon with a Dual Chronological challenge, then she quickly spends the face-up card she has to gain a new Factor, Criminal+2)
Bob: "But I knew you were setting me up" (Bob spends his face-down 7 of Diamonds, which is a Trump during this challenge, on a Reaction; Simon is the only other player with a face-down card, but he declines to use it right now)
Helen: (Helen makes a restatement of her modified challenge) "You were using me to set Bob up, but Bob knew that's what you were doing" (The challenge is played and Helen wins; Helen puts her played card face-up, Simon gets to put one unplayed card face-down)
Simon "Yes, I knew Bob could pull off this job so I needed a way to make him do it" (Simon writes down Mastermind as a fact) "You fell in love with him though and tried to stop him from doing it" (Simon makes a Dual Sensory challenge against Helen, but Helen wins again; Simon puts an unplayed card face-down, Helen puts the card she played face-up)
Helen: "I wasn't trying to stop him, I was trying to persuade him that we could keep the Idol & run away together" (This is a long statement, but it is justified because Helen has as a fact that she is having an affair with Bob; she now adds the fact that she loves Bob too!) "I called the police when Bob rejected me" (Again, the extra clause is justified, by at least 2 of Helen's facts now! Helen has set up a Solo Chronological challenge, but she loses it, even after spending both her face-up cards to raise her Chronological Trait by +1; she at least gets to put an unplayed card face-down though)
Helen:  "Actually, I just threatened to call the police if Bob wouldn't run away with me" (There isn't a fact here which is likely to affect the game later, so Helen doesn't bother writing anything down) "Then the police caught us all anyway!"

[Sydney Freedberg]

That's a very neat example of play.

Two questions:

(1) Do you realize that you don't need to have the characters be amnesiacs? That you can use this same mechanic to create a game where the players don't know things that their own characters already know until the players make them up? Instead of starting with a character with no memory, you're simply starting with a character that you, the player, don't know anything about, and you find out in play.

I'm thinking of heist/caper movies and espionage novels here, where there's a radical revelation every scene until the whole idea the audience had coming in about who was the good guy and who was the bad guy, who was the player and who was playing whom, gets totally reversed -- there's a brilliant Argentine movie called Nine Queens that does this. Often the whole story is told in flashback by a narrator who's not trustworty -- Usual Suspects being the perfect example.

Now, you can't replicate the feel of these sudden surprises in traditional RPG mechanics because of the assumption that "I know what my character knows, and what my character knows is what I know"; but if you break that link, your idea would be perfect for this style of story.

(2) When you say

currently the four Traits I'm using are Personal (recalling details about skills, abilities, careers & gear about PCs & NPCs), Sensory (things seen, heard, tasted, felt, scented, etc), Spacial (locations, physical measurements, relative positions & arrangements) and Chronological (timing, ordering, sequences, the occurrence of events).

do you really need these four traits at all? They only matter if the actual process of remembering things matters more than what you remember -- and of course, as I said above, maybe the game isn't about remembering at all, but revelations.

[knicknevin]

(1) Do you realize that you don't need to have the characters be amnesiacs? That you can use this same mechanic to create a game where the players don't know things that their own characters already know until the players make them up? Instead of starting with a character with no memory, you're simply starting with a character that you, the player, don't know anything about, and you find out in play.

I'm thinking of heist/caper movies and espionage novels here, where there's a radical revelation every scene until the whole idea the audience had coming in about who was the good guy and who was the bad guy, who was the player and who was playing whom, gets totally reversed -- there's a brilliant Argentine movie called Nine Queens that does this. Often the whole story is told in flashback by a narrator who's not trustworty -- Usual Suspects being the perfect example.

Now, you can't replicate the feel of these sudden surprises in traditional RPG mechanics because of the assumption that "I know what my character knows, and what my character knows is what I know"; but if you break that link, your idea would be perfect for this style of story.

Yeah, that was one of those things that emerged in the creative process: bewteen the inception of the idea and the completion of my write-up, I realised that the rules allowed for something much broader than my original concept... any kind of story where there is a strong element of mystery about the background of the characters involved, much like my favouite TV show of the year, Lost... maybe I was sub-conciously influenced...
The Traits, I suppose , aren't necessary; the game evolved beyond them, but they were actaully the foundation of the first inspiration I had... I like them because they allow for a greater differentiation of challenges; it may not have been clear from my play sample, but the Traits a) allow you to draw extra cards and choose which one you want to play and b) the type of challenge sets a different Trump card, though I acknowledge that the latter could be separated from any kind of Trait mechanic. In esence though, you could start play with a blank character sheet and simply add whatever facts are created about your character as the narrative develops.
Thanks for the feedback Sydney, it is appreciated :-)

[knicknevin]

Well, the game is ready and you've seen the comments: even if you don't like the amnesia aspect, there is still a rules set here that could do with a good going over in practice, so can I get any playtest volunteers please? I've got a semi-captive audience at the RPG club I go to, but I could do with comments and feedback from further afield, i.e. from people who don't have to play in one of my games after saying this one was a load of donkey droppings! ;-) Any takers out there?

[JakeVanDam]

I can't guarentee that I'll have a chance to actually play, but I will try to arrange a ggame and, at the very least, look the game over. My e-mail is in my profile.