In which Jim and I discuss taking feedback and not pretending to be the ultimate self-referential measuring stick. The movie Paycheck, and how using (and abusing!) memory, amnesia, and identity in your campaign can keep things fresh and interesting. Oh, and we give mad props to Philip K. Dick.

Show Notes with Links to Mentioned Media

I mean, you've got to set your priorities, man! Blowing off the podcast for blood relatives? What kind of weak excuse is that?

Just asking, how goes it?

good! Ep 24 will be released tonight ... no matter how late it takes me ... and ep's 25 & 26 have already been recorded!

Thanks for being patient, everyone!




Ep.24 is up! It's about 75 minutes long and delves into Philip K. Dick territory - i.e. memory, amnesia, and identity. Think: Paycheck, Total Recall, Memento and you've got the idea. Enjoy!

PS: if any of you have watched Joss Whedon's "Dollhouse" ... would you please clarify whether or not there was a spy / assassin plot line and how that worked. I didn't watch it but heard from others (including my mother!) and Jim only watched one episode. So ... if you can help, I'd be grateful!

Also (inspired) by Philip K. Dick: Blade Runner, Minority Report. Talk about some awesome stuff.
Regarding memory loss, now I have the perfect excuse to tell about our last gaming session (Yay, Gaming Story).

Some months ago, when one of our players wasn't there, we planned an adventure together, so all the other players knew (roundabout) what was going to happen (Unfortunately, when we played it, another player was missing, so I was the only initiated player, but whatever).
We had a mission to retrieve some kind of McGuffin from some island. We stocked up and went onto the ship that would take us there, next thing we know, we wake up at the beach of an island. We soon find out, it is the island we were supposed to go to, but some stuff was strange.
What our victim didn't know, but my player was in on, was that we had landed there a couple days ago already, found the McGuffin and in the process freed a demon, which now possessed the other character.
The longer it would stay in the body the stronger it would get, but it would only know what he knew. The shaman from the island therefore helped to wipe his memory and tasked me to lead him to a cavern in the mountains, where a trap would be prepared. The body had to be almost-killed to extract the demon and this was the place to do it.
So I had to carefully nudge him towards the right direction without raising too much suspicion, because then the demon might kill me.
There was other strange stuff happening of course, for example: When our victim (a priest) tried to perform a service to his goddess, he got horribly sick and had to vomit (because demons don't like that stuff). [The player even asked what was in the vomit and found islandy stuff rather than ship-rations - that's what you get for gaming with a police guy ] Or when we went on to prepare our meal, the moment we spilled the blood of the pig we caught, we faded to black again (because the demon smelled blood and went on a rampage and we had to control him again with the help of the natives).
The highlight of that adventure was when I had lured him into the trapped cave and run out. The door was magically sealed and the room began to fill with water. I stood there outside and watched my friend die. Great imagery.
Of course we could extract the demon and revive him.
It was an awesome game!

I ran a game in which ALL the players suffered from amnesia, and woke up in the basement of a ruined building in some sort of laboratory. (Steve, I think you played in one episode of another version of this scenario.)

When they made their way out of the basement, they found themselves in the ruins of a modern city, like something out of Escape From New York.

In this instance, I wrote up all the character sheets but did not give them to the players. When they tried something, they would roll and I would tell them if they succeeded. The idea was to gradually allow them to discover their abilities at the same time as they discovered their world. It sounded like a really cool idea at the time, but for lots of reasons that have been discussed on this and other podcasts, it didn't go over well with the players and only lasted about three sessions.

I still think there's a way to make this work--maybe by allowing the PCs to pick out some skills as they use them, or letting them pick their own personality traits, or something, but no matter how you do it, this is a difficult game to run. As we've said, all the players can control is their PC, and if you erase the character sheet the players lose a certain amount of investment in the game.

I have not played it, but from some actual plays I have heard, Monsters and Other Childish Things seems to have some remembering aspects to it.



There were a couple episodes where one or more dolls were used in spy-type operations. One of the major characters was an FBI agent trying to find the dollhouse which had some government black money financing and congressional customers. The Primary character (Echo) wasn't staying wiped, but would remember skills from previous uploads.

Overall the series is worth a weekend of netflix.

In the podcast you mentioned giving players tokens to model the Paycheck effect of having an envelope full of clues. While that does indeed sound like a fun mechanic, I'm reminded of when I used to run 007 games. I would frequently have a set of gizmos from the Q branch that I would have to incorporate into the game. It's essentially the same problem, "How will these gadgets help the players in the future?" I think that adds a lot of fun/challenge for the GMs that like to think on the fly. It gives the GM a chance to do their own puzzle solving.

In the playing games with your memory genre, I'd like to do a shout out to Jared Sorensen's Lacuna Part 1. [Which I happen to be doing a play by post game of.] The pitch goes something like this...

"Lacuna part 1 is a RPG that is combination of Men in Black and Inception. Players are anonymous Mystery Agents working for the Company. Their job is to hunt down psychopaths in the collective subconscious and send them to the Lucuna, a black rift where even memory can not escape. Patients sent to the rift come out permanently cured of their violent tendancies. Remember, Blue City is a dream world, but it is not your dream and that dream has its own defenses... "

As you can imagine, just about everything that you talked about in this episode can be factored into a place like Blue City. So, a big thanks for giving me some ideas for future missions.
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TAZ