Hey guys. I’m thinking of doing a game with a similar starting point as the show Dark Matter. The PCS wake up with no memory of who they are and where they are. They would wake up one by one and immediately have a challenge to face.
Do you see any potential problems in a Pbta game when the pcs have memory loss?
What was the first part of the question?
😉
I think it would be interesting. You might want some equivalent of Spout Lore from DW to allow for memory recovery and things like that. UW doesn’t have PC bonds so you’ll be fine there.
Debt and Favors may be a problem, but you could have that pop up as a faction is introduced. Maybe have them roll and on a 12+ the new faction owes them a favor (ask what short memory they have), 10+ they remember nothing, 7-9 they remember dealings with them but nothing serious. 6- and they have debt with the faction…
I think make discern realities part of Assess might work. That would make sense in this situation I think. Sean Gomes what do you think
Sounds very, very cool!
Henry de Veuve I hope so. I’m very new to Pbta games so I have to fight my instincts to tell my story and focus on letting the characters tell their story.
Chalice In Chains I know your pain: having to unlearn some thirty plus years of GMing the ‘traditional’ way means making lots of mistakes as I learn to let go of this whole ‘plot’ thing. 🙂
But oh, when it clicks…
Henry de Veuve oh yeah!
I definitely think there’s no problem with running a game like that: the “recommended” flow of making it up as you go along works about the same way anyway.
My take on it would be to make ‘episode zero’ character gen by having the players discover their skills and origins though play.
Todd Zircher – I would but I’m planning on running this as a one shot so I don’t have a session zero in that case. I would in this case let the players use their skills and abilities as normal but they have to give me the fiction around it. Do they remember something from their past? Do they just follow their instincts but don’t know why they did what they did? Did they actually never have their memories wiped and all and are just pretending. That kind of thing
The best game for slowly answering questions about your past is Psi*run. One of the central mechanics is that every roll has a risk of causing a memory to be recalled.
Adding something like that – maybe a Face Adversity after a threat is dealt with – would work well.
Isn’t there a MC soft-move that says:-
Ok, you do that; but… you have to tell me something about your mother.