[UA] Re: Clockworks and Memories

[James O'Rance]

First I'd like to point out that most player attempts to metagame for some 
advantage can be handily solved by a few Madness checks.

I don't agree that you can "regain" lost memories by reading about them in a 
journal. For a start, the average mechanomancer is probably not a very 
evocative writer. Writing is damn hard work, and most good writers are 
probably obsessed with writing in UA terms. By definiation, a mechanomancer 
can't be.

If a mechanomancer tried to write out his personal experiences into a 
journal with the intent of using them as pseudo-memories after making a 
clockwork, I'd probably have him make a Soul check. If he succeeds, okay, 
he's got a readable account - the better the success, the better his 
writing. If he fails this Soul check, then the writing is trash, and he 
knows it.

Then he goes off to make his Clockwork o' Shooting People in the Face, or 
whatever, and loses his memories.

Sometime later, he finds the journal. If he reads it, it's going to seem 
strangely compelling - maybe even spookily so (assuming it isn't trash). 
This would be a somewhat unsettling experience, and I'd have the PC make a 
modified Madness check.

The PC has to roll beneath his Mind stat to avoid gaining  failed notch as 
usual, and gains a Hardened if he rolls below.
* If he rolls above his previous Soul result for the journal, then the 
journal is simply quite jarring to his sense of identity and the Madness 
check is against Self (regardless of whether its failed or hardened).
* If he rolls below his previous Soul result for the journal, then the 
journal is unsettlingly convincing and the Madness check is against the 
Unnatural.

The player can choose whether or not to treat the journal as true, but if he 
does I'd ocasionally require some more Madness checks on the same meter that 
was indicated above. I haven't decided at what level I'd consider the PC 
hardened against this experience.


This alone should convince the Mechanomancer that memories are not to be 
toyed with lightly. However, if the PC was recalcitrant, I'd consider the 
following:

The memories that the *player* thinks are true are actually false ones. As 
the game progresses, you can start to insert encounters and clues that 
relate to memories that the Mechanomancer has "regained" - except that they 
seem strangely inconsistent. In fact, the Mechanomancer has been "regaining" 
false memories (perhaps written by the Sleepers, TNI, or his evil past 
self), and the GM represents this by retconning the past in sublte ways. 
There might be a few Madness checks here, too (although not as many).

If the player challenged me on this (OOC) I'd freely admit that the past was 
being altered to reflect the fact that the Mechanomancer PC was regaining 
false memories, and so the real events of the past were unknown to him. 
After all, if a player can metagame, so can the GM. It's all in the name of 
good fun.

I wouldn't change past events that involved other PCs, naturally, unless I 
talked with the player first and they were in on it (*that* could be fun!).

This is all a game-play issue, IMO. Lots of the ideas about leaking memories 
from clockworks were inspirational, but I'd save them for use in other 
situations. If a player tries to twist the meaning of a paradox to get out 
of jail free, you should usually twist it back to smack him up the side of 
the face (in a friendly, this-is-all-entertainment way, of course).

Something like this happened in Cthulhu once.


See how on-topic I can be?


Cheers,

James O’Rance
“Divine being creates petting zoo. It gets out of hand.”
- The Bible (summarised by John W. Mangrum)

http://www.dragonlance.com/taladas
http://www.geocities.com/dragon-dreamer/






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