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From:	bye_boris@*******.com (boris soban)
Subject:	amnesia
Date:	Fri, 24 Oct 2003 16:31:28 +0000

Message no. 1 hello,

please excuse me if I come with an old subject, but I intend to masterise a
campaign with a central character amnesic and having flashbacks. He will
have a complete amnesia (cost -5 in flaw if I have a good memory).

I would like to know if anyone has any tips on how to conduct that?

And I would like some explanation on amnesia in shadowrun... Does a complete
amnesia like that means he lost all his skills or does he still has his
skills but can't remember he has them and just use them has reflexes, by
instinct?
e.g. the guy is in front of a maglock, he happens to have some tools, he
need to pass the door so something, an intuition just tells/directs him on
how to bypass a maglock...

Thanks a lot,

Boris

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From:	davidb@****.imcprint.com (Graht)
Subject:	amnesia
Date:	Fri, 24 Oct 2003 10:41:54 -0600

Message no. 2 At 10:31 AM 10/24/2003, boris soban wrote:
>hello,
>
>please excuse me if I come with an old subject, but I intend to masterise
>a campaign with a central character amnesic and having flashbacks. He will
>have a complete amnesia (cost -5 in flaw if I have a good memory).
>
>I would like to know if anyone has any tips on how to conduct that?
>
>And I would like some explanation on amnesia in shadowrun... Does a
>complete amnesia like that means he lost all his skills or does he still
>has his skills but can't remember he has them and just use them has
>reflexes, by instinct?
>e.g. the guy is in front of a maglock, he happens to have some tools, he
>need to pass the door so something, an intuition just tells/directs him on
>how to bypass a maglock...

I would let him know and have access to all of his skills. Course, I'm a
lazy GM and wouldn't want to deal with the management involved in letting
him know what his skills are over time (and having to make his character
for him).

I would also let him have general knowledge of the world (he knows where
Seattle is, what a megacorp is and who the megacorps are, the price of
burger in stuffershack, etc).

He would just have no knowledge of who he is or his life. Complete
strangers could come up to him and say, "Hey Frank, how's it going? Did
you get those baseball tickets I faxed to you last week?" or "There you are
you sumbitch! I'm gonna kill you for what you did!" before opening fire.

--
To Life,
-Graht
ShadowRN Assistant Fearless Leader II
http://www.graht.com

From:	maxnoel_fr@*****.fr (Max Noel)
Subject:	amnesia
Date:	Fri, 24 Oct 2003 19:06:31 +0200

Message no. 3 Le vendredi, 24 oct 2003, à 18:31 Europe/Paris, boris soban a écrit :

> hello,
>
> please excuse me if I come with an old subject, but I intend to
> masterise a campaign with a central character amnesic and having
> flashbacks. He will have a complete amnesia (cost -5 in flaw if I have
> a good memory).
>
> I would like to know if anyone has any tips on how to conduct that?
>
> And I would like some explanation on amnesia in shadowrun... Does a
> complete amnesia like that means he lost all his skills or does he
> still has his skills but can't remember he has them and just use them
> has reflexes, by instinct?
> e.g. the guy is in front of a maglock, he happens to have some tools,
> he need to pass the door so something, an intuition just tells/directs
> him on how to bypass a maglock...

5 points amnesia... Yup, this guy will definitely be the main
character.
With this flaw, the character has no memories at all. He still has his
skills and everything, but he doesn't even know he has them.
Here's how I would run it: You, the GM, create the character. The
player begins the game with a character record sheet that's blank
except for his mental attributes. If you're feeling generous you can
give him the physical ones too. Having the opening scene be dangerous
and/or require him to run away fast might be a good idea.
As the game progresses, fill in the charsheet. Race, gender and
biometrics will probably come first, as soon as the character takes
some time to look into a mirror. Physical attributes should come next
(not very hard to know whether you're tough/quick/strong or not).
Birthdate is probably lost forever, unless he has a SIN (but he won't
have one, will he?).
Every time the character uses a skill he's not aware of possessing,
make the roll yourself (I wouldn't use any pools if I were you, to
represent the incertitude inherent to attempting something you may or
may not know). Then, roll (secretly) the character's Intelligence,
against a TN of (8 - skill). Success means he's realized he has the
skill: give the skill's name and rating to the character.
Same goes for specializations, except that 1) the character won't know
he's specialized until he's tried to use the specialization (feel free
to roll Int (8 - spec) if you really want, but I wouldn't waste my time
with this); and 2) if he realizes he has the skill while using the
specialization, he'll assume his skill is equal to the specialization
level until proven otherwise (e.g. after using an Ares Predator with
Pistols/Predator 5/7, you'll write down "Pistols 7" on the character
sheet, and wait before he tries to shoot another kind of pistol before
revealing him his actual skill).

As for cyber/bioware, magic and weird stuff ("as you look into the
mirror, your eyes widen in surprise and you begin to question your --
theoretically female -- sexual identity. You're growing a beard."),
well.. Have fun. *egmg*

-- Wild_Cat
maxnoel_fr@*****.fr -- ICQ #85274019
"Look at you hacker... A pathetic creature of meat and bone, panting
and sweating as you run through my corridors... How can you challenge a
perfect, immortal machine?"

From:	maxnoel_fr@*****.fr (Max Noel)
Subject:	amnesia
Date:	Fri, 24 Oct 2003 19:08:59 +0200

Message no. 4 Graht wrote:

> I would let him know and have access to all of his skills. Course,
> I'm a lazy GM and wouldn't want to deal with the management involved
> in letting him know what his skills are over time (and having to make
> his character for him).
>
> I would also let him have general knowledge of the world (he knows
> where Seattle is, what a megacorp is and who the megacorps are, the
> price of burger in stuffershack, etc).
>
> He would just have no knowledge of who he is or his life. Complete
> strangers could come up to him and say, "Hey Frank, how's it going?
> Did you get those baseball tickets I faxed to you last week?" or
> "There you are you sumbitch! I'm gonna kill you for what you did!"
> before opening fire.

That's what you get with the -3 points version of the amnesia flaw.
For -5 points, you get my previous post.

-- Wild_Cat
maxnoel_fr@*****.fr -- ICQ #85274019
"Look at you hacker... A pathetic creature of meat and bone, panting
and sweating as you run through my corridors... How can you challenge a
perfect, immortal machine?"

From:	gurth@******.nl (Gurth)
Subject:	amnesia
Date:	Fri, 24 Oct 2003 19:14:47 +0200

Message no. 5 According to boris soban, on Friday 24 October 2003 18:31 the word on the
street was...

> please excuse me if I come with an old subject, but I intend to
> masterise a campaign with a central character amnesic and having
> flashbacks. He will have a complete amnesia (cost -5 in flaw if I have a
> good memory).
>
> I would like to know if anyone has any tips on how to conduct that?

The description for amnesia at its maximum level says that the player
shouldn't really know anything about the character, so the best way to do
it would be to make a character sheet and keep it behind your GM screen. I
would give the player a list of equipment the character is known to have
(for example, the stuff he has on his person, any obvious cyberware, etc.)
but not much more. Then, whenever the character attempts something, roll
the dice for it behind your screen and tell the player the outcome.

I would allow the player to keep notes, in order to try and figure out what
the character is and can do, but I don't think I'd make any definite
comments on it even if the player (think he) has figured out some stuff.

> And I would like some explanation on amnesia in shadowrun... Does a
> complete amnesia like that means he lost all his skills or does he still
> has his skills but can't remember he has them and just use them has
> reflexes, by instinct?

Realistically, amnesia is usually your basic gap-in-memory: you can't
remember where you were or what you did between 18 March and 25 April,
2062, but have no trouble with anything else. The more cinematic way is to
have the character forget everything up to a certain point, including his
or her identity, but not basic stuff like walking and talking. As for
skills, at maximum level IIRC amnesia in SR works like you suggest: the
character has the skills, but will not know about it. So yes, he'd be in
front of a maglock with the necessary tools, but has to pick them up and
see if he can use them to find out that, he indeed does seem to have the
skill to do so. (Or, of course, it could just be that he had to default
and rolled really well :)

--
Gurth@******.nl - Stone Age: http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
Don't you know you know what's right?
-> Probably NAGEE Editor * ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso <-
-> The Plastic Warriors Page: http://plastic.dumpshock.com <-

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