[UA] Re: Clockworks and Memories

[Antonio Rodriguez]

Essentially the varying mechanics proposed for this situation (apologies if
I'm oversimplifying):

1) Memories sacrificed cannot be permanently kept by written record.
This mechanic looks good. I'd still ask the player to keep a written log of
what he has sacrificed, and the character's attempts to recover it must be
checks made against meta-memory, in essence remembering what it is that you
remember about the situation.

Does anyone else work with the concept of meta-knowledge? As a TA at my
university, I've gotten across the idea of meta-knowledge onto my students.
I ask them something inane like "On what day of the week was George
Washington born on?", something that's practically impossible that people
will keep at hand. Of course, no one answers. Then I express to them how
quickly they knew that they didn't know, in essence, knowledge about the
lack of knowledge they had. Computers have to go through endless databases
and files, to finally determine that they don't have that knowledge either
(of course, they can always calculate it, but that's beside the point).

Maybe the memory hasn't dissappeared from the mechanomancer's mind, just the
meta-memory connected to it. By reading his memoirs, he refreshes the link,
but it's a tenuous thread at best.

2) Memories cannot be recovered at all, they seem foreign (sanity checks).
This I find somewhat hard to contend with. Even if memories have been erased
from the mechanomancer's mind, the world that surrounds him has operated
with those consequences, and they haven't lost the memory. Unless the memory
is both very powerful and very personal, I don't see this being operable.

3) Loss of identity with regards to writings (sanity checks).
The throes of insanity take over. The journals become more vivid than the
person himself. Very UA, and probably the best solution. I can see the
mechanomancer just looking over the ripped pages of his journals after a
frenzy, and unable to remember what got him into this situation.

4) Effects of the memory loss dissappear (constructs fall apart).
I'd like this idea, if it weren't for the idea that it almost seems like the
perfect way to commit a crime. Murder scene, victim, weapon, and a whole
bunch of junk that seems out of place, and without a power source, just
because he left a note to himself to read page 129 at 9:15pm.

In the end, I wasn't so afraid that a player would abuse this, but more
along the lines of what would happen if someone tried to do this in the
UA-verse. I think that there may be a story in this.

Thank you for the extended posts on this topic. I think it's been the only
post I've made on this list that's produced this many responses. (and no
flames!!)

Antonio Rodriguez

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ua-admin at lists.uchicago.edu [mailto:ua-admin at lists.uchicago.edu]On
> Behalf Of James O'Rance
> Sent: Wednesday, June 27, 2001 6:54 PM
> To: ua at lists.uchicago.edu
> Subject: Re: [UA] Re: Clockworks and Memories
>
>
>
> 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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