Tabula Rasa

[Andrew Martin]

I got inspired on RPG.net.

Originally posted by The Unoriginal
"You wake up in a dark alley.  You do not remember how you got there.  Come to think of it, you do not really remember anything.  Oh sure, you remember how to read and write, what a car is, things like that.  But where you live, any family you might have, pretty much everything specific to you, is a mystery.  And you know that you *should* remember these things.  To say that the sensation is disturbing would be an understatement.

Of course you have every right to be disturbed; you had never died before.  How were you supposed to know what it felt like?"

The other day, I spontaneously got this idea for a setting.  The basic premise is that the characters have died and come back to life with special powers, and no memory of their previous life.  These powers are defined by the way they die, ex:  someone who burned to death might be immune to fire and have powers over fire, someone shot to death might gain the ability to dodge bullets and instantly become an expert user of guns, someone crushed to death might become extremely tough overall and become supernaturally strong.  

There are no experience points; instead the characters receive memory points whenever a situation is similar enough to one that they experienced in life that it triggers a flashback and regaining a bit of your memory.  (As a side note, these flashbacks would likely incapacitate the character for a bit, making things interesting if a flashback is triggered in combat.)   As you remember more, you gain greater mastery over your powers, the implication being that when you remember everything up to your death, and what it was that brought you back, something big happens (possibilities include  things like becoming a god, or reaching final death).

I have no idea what kind of rules or mechanics a setting like this should use; I just really liked this setting idea, and decided to put it up here for you guys to look at, and hopefully comment on.

EDITED:  In an attempt to make it sounds just that little bit cooler

This is based on some thoughts I had today about multi-way branching character description.

Call the game Tabula Rasa ("Blank Slate" or something like that, IIRC). The character sheet is simply a blank sheet of paper. As the characters wake up, the players writes down what their character looks like to others. As play proceeds, and as the characters remember more, write down those details on the character sheet. Basically use design in play as part of the play.

In a conflict situation, if the player describes their character as having a flashback related to the situation, and so causes their character to fail in a significant way ("these flashbacks would likely incapacitate the character for a bit"), the player is rewarded by being able to use that flashback as a reason to add to the character's description ("As you remember more, you gain greater mastery over your powers"). For example developing a special "power", having special contacts, and so on, as the player wishes.

Otherwise, the character only just succeeds in winning the conflict, provided the player describes at least reasonably appropriate action the character is taking. If taking inappropriate action, the character doesn't succeed.

To achieve a higher quality of success, the player needs to use the written character description in the narration of the character's actions.

If the character's written description becomes incoherent or unbelievable, the other players are allowed to invoke this as reason for your character to significantly fail at actions, "your character switches personalities/goes mad/something else".

What do you think?

[Mike Holmes]

I made a game almost identical to this (Cell Gamma) except that the characters wake in a prison. Never had a chance to actually run it, however. The real question is can you keep a number of players, or even one, interested in the mystery long enough to play it out. I'm not sure, but maybe I should try it.

Inpired by the new show "John Doe" by any chance?

Mike

[Andrew Martin]

Inpired by the new show "John Doe" by any chance?

No. I live in New Zealand and the new shows in the US rarely get to us in the same year.

[kevin671]

Kinda makes me think of the movie Memento......

A cool flick, and it could be a cool game.....but......you would need to have a killer system and setting for it to work.  So, here are my questions:

1.  Do characters remember "skills" that they had in thier revious life? (or do they remember some of them?)  You mentioned that they would still be able to walk and talk and they would recognize a car, but would they be able to drive?

2.  How do you set limits on character "advancement"?  I mean, you might want to limit what characters can learn or aquire through game play.

[Tim C Koppang]

I'm actually working on a rough draft of a game that uses the basic premise you describe.  It's only a system however, and doesn't reinforce the idea that the character wakes up remembering nothing, but the mechanics would support such a venture perfectly.  I'm not suggesting using the mechanics, but if you want to take a look at what I have typed up:

http://www.students.uiuc.edu/~koppang/persona/PERSONA.PDF

You are  going to want to look at section number 2.  As I said, it's an early rough draft, due for at least a couple more revisions.

[Ian Young]

Kinda makes me think of the movie Memento......

A cool flick, and it could be a cool game.....but......you would need to have a killer system and setting for it to work.

Actually, I've toyed with the idea myself, and I'm of the opinion that you could create a sort of over-lay mechanic that would work with just about any system you want.  The important issue here is providing a means for gradually exposing personal identity, not simulating the rest of the game world.

The way that I was approaching the idea was that, at any given point in any existing roleplaying campaign, a player's character development would just stop.  From that point forward, his character sheet would remain unaltered.  The character maintains an unaffected recollection of who he is, or rather who he was at the time his amnesia manifested.  What does change is the addition of a supplementary character sheet -- a short-term memory sheet, really.  This additional character sheet allows the player to determine the ability to recall and track recent events.  There would be a number of "memory points" that could be allocated to various events and nuances of the immediate situation, and once those memory points were all used up, they could be re-allocated to new experiences and events at the expense of those previous.

Would it work?  I'm not so sure that it could outside of a one-on-one mini-campaign.  It might prove annoying to any other player who doesn't suffer from anterograde amnesia, and all players might find it difficult to keep OOC knowledge separate from IC knowledge.  Still, these are some effects that might mesh well with the Tabula Rasa proposal.

!i!

[Andrew Martin]

1.  Do characters remember "skills" that they had in their revious life? (or do they remember some of them?)  You mentioned that they would still be able to walk and talk and they would recognize a car, but would they be able to drive?

I would think that the characters would need to have a flashback right at the start of the game to get the ability to walk and talk, let alone drive a car. It's literally a blank slate! :)

2.  How do you set limits on character "advancement"?  I mean, you might want to limit what characters can learn or aquire through game play.

If the character's written description becomes incoherent or unbelievable, the other players are allowed to invoke this as reason for your character to significantly fail at actions, "your character switches personalities/goes mad/something else".

A character that's too advanced for the setting becomes unbelievable to the other players. Therefore they can apply this as a reason for your character to fail it's actions, due to the "obvious" delusions your PC is suffering from.

[wyrdlyng]

I did a similar thing for a supers/anime PBEM game. Each player submitted two forms of death which were added to one large compiled list. The characters woke up to find themselves naked, in some kind of laboratory, with no memory and with C5 tattooed to their foreheads.

Quick exploration of the lab found everyone else there dead and a file labeled C5 which listed all the compiled forms of death.

They manifested powers at flashback intervals. The first flashback gave them a hint towards which was their form of death. They took it from there as to what powers they manifested and determining how they died. Of course there was the obligatory "evil agency" pursuing them which led them to also discover what had happened to them.

Time and commitments never allowed the game to get too far but I'd like to try and start it up again someday. The concept of a blank slate works great, with the right players.

[Ron Edwards]

Andrew,

I'm assuming this is not a game you're developing seriously for publication, but just kickin' around as a hypothetical design. Correct me if I'm wrong - if I am, then I'll boot the thread back to Indie Design.

Best,
Ron

[Andrew Martin]

Andrew,

I'm assuming this is not a game you're developing seriously for publication, but just kickin' around as a hypothetical design. Correct me if I'm wrong - if I am, then I'll boot the thread back to Indie Design.

Best,
Ron

Hi, Ron.
I've published it on the web at: http://valley.150m.com/Games/Tabula%20Rasa.html

There's a little issue with copyright for the setting description, which was written by "The Unoriginal" which should be sorted out soon.

And on reviewing it again, I feel that it's missing something. Perhaps, a way or excuse for a group of players and their characters to stick together. What are people's opinions on this?

[Ron Edwards]

Okie dokie, back to Indie Design. Sorry about the back-and-forth, Andrew.

Discuss, folks!

Best,
Ron

[kevin671]

Getting PC's to stick together?  That one is easy.  Have them wake up in the same area, and some kind of conflict happens while they try to escape.  They realize that the only way they'll survive the first little while is by sticking together, and after a while, sticking together comes naturally.  This sort of thing can actually be written into the game itself.