"Memento" adventure: so crazy it probably won't work

[sabelo2000]

If you've seen Memento you know the gimmick: the movie runs backward in time. I'd love to do this to my characters, via a little help from the River Styx: They begin the adventure during the fight with the BBEG, after crawling out of the river, and they have to play backward through the adventure to figure out why they were there, and what they got from it.

Obviously, the DMing and RPing challenges are immense, even IF the entire party was onboard with the idea. I've considered that a workable substitution might be to have the PCs essentially track themselves through the adventure, revisiting all the scenes they forgot about, piecing together clues from the aftermath.

Any other suggestions on how this might, somehow, actually work?

[ShriekingDrake]

Ya got me? I'm not sure where the "roll" in the "role-playing" could happen if you already know how it's going to turn out. It might still be fun as an in character role-playing experience--you know, to see how the characters get to the beginning of the scene they just experienced from the place where you've put them when the previous (but in the timeline subsequent) scene ended. In a sense, it would be giving them a VERY CLEAR and unavoidable course of action. They'd have to figure out how to get from x. (where they start the scene) to y. (where the last scene they experienced started).

[Ditto]

Just like a normal campaign, you will have to be very adaptable and willing to change around any Proper Nouns in your campaign on the fly. PCs will always throw a monkey wrench into your story plans. No reason it couldn't work, you just have to drop a few clues as to where they came from previously so they know what they have to accomplish by the end of their next session. A DMPC/recurring NPC would be helpful in dropping a 'Yeah, this is just like that time last week when we...' comment.

Friends of mine put together a radio series based on this concept - told from the finale back to the start, written by different writers throughout. They were only told 'The characters must pick up a MacGuffin from Jim and end the episode in Newtown', and left complete freedom for the in between. Might be good inspiration! This site (http://wax-work.com/radio/epic.htm) has the scripts and mp3s for Epic Echoes.

[Kaje]

You'll run into issues when a player tries to one-shot an npc they've encountered in the future.

[nedz]

You'll run into issues when a player tries to one-shot an npc they've encountered in the future.

You just have to make it clear to them that they must avoid paradoxies at all costs.

Ed: maybe the paradox causes the character who caused it to blink out of existence - so the one shot back-fires. This could lead to all sorts of hilarious incidents.

[Ditto]

Laying down ground rules makes a safe playing field, and a lot of the fun in this is you make them collaborative storytellers with you. Aside from those key plot points they have to accomplish each episode before another timejump, they can go wild. :smallsmile:

[PersonMan]

You'll run into issues when a player tries to one-shot an npc they've encountered in the future.

Isn't the point that they've already done the adventure, just that they forgot everything and need to find out what happened by following the trail of destruction they left before they lost their memories?

[Daftendirekt]

Isn't the point that they've already done the adventure, just that they forgot everything and need to find out what happened by following the trail of destruction they left before they lost their memories?

You clearly haven't seen Memento. The first scene of the movie is the end of the story. The next scene is then what happened just before that. Etc, and the end of the movie is the start of the story. We finds out why he did what he just did in the next (but actually previous) scene.

[herrhauptmann]

Isn't the point that they've already done the adventure, just that they forgot everything and need to find out what happened by following the trail of destruction they left before they lost their memories?

Sounds more like The Hangover to me...

[Barstro]

Since, as far as I know, we humans only view time in one direction, you really cannot play a game backwards. This is mainly due to the thought-experiment mentioned earlier; what if you kill a person who you already (read: will) interact(ed) with. Hell, the difficulty in writing that sentence shows how difficult actually playing would be.

On a side note, I seem to recall that Memento wasn't about living backwards, but about no remembering how he got to the present and not remembering what he wanted to do in the future.

If you want to do something Memento-ish (as I described Memento to be), then I think you simply have to keep changing the goal and named of NPCs ever "day" so that the players need to find clues each time to see what the correct goal is for that day. Personally, I would find that annoying as a player, but you might be a better GM than I am used to.

If you want to do a more "time-paradox" quest, you could let the PCs know that there is a time paradox, and they need to fix it. Then, every action that they do creates a new and different paradox that they have to fix to get it right. That way, there is a reason for NPCs to disappear and reappear. "w00t, we killed BBEG's lieutenant! Crap, how did my +5 sword disappear? Guess we need to find some other way to defeat the lieutenant so I keep my sword. Or maybe defeat him at a different time"

[pasko77]

Memento's main theme is also the fact that you watch the scene, and in no point you find "stupid" behaviours from the protagonist. Given the premises, his behavior seems reasonable.
THEN you see that what happened earlier makes his behaviour totally stupid and gullible. Therefore the point is that what makes a functioning person is the sum of their previous experiences.
I honestly find it hard to transpose it in a game.

[Bruendor_Cavescout]

I've occasionally tried doing this in individual stories - I'm terribly fascinated by non-linear storytelling, so I'm always looking for a way to tell a game story out of order and still make it exciting.

One thing I did in a spy game was take a page from Alias - you often saw the final scene of the episode in the first scene, but you had little to no context for what was happening. I decided to do that in a game, and it worked fairly well - I kept cutting between the final scene and the events that led up to it, and had to play fast and loose with what was going on. If someone got badly hurt in the "past," I had to explain why they weren't hurt in the "present."

Another thing I saw someone do is start out in a fight that's eventually revealed to be a vision from the future. The rest of the adventure is based around preventing that future from happening. It's not quite Momento, but it's definitely non-linear.

[nedz]

Memento is using a story telling technique where they use a chain of, essentially, flashbacks. You should probably start with a simpler example of perhaps a single flash-back to an encounter - just so everyone can get the hang of it.

[Godskook]

Memento is not feasible in this context, but Hangover is. I'd go with that sort of thing instead, where tons of plot-hooks were left wandering around that the PCs totally meant to finish dealing with, right *BEFORE* they suddenly have their memories wiped. A slightly cracked thought bottle would be an ideal plot device too.

[nedz]

Maybe, I dunno ?
//
Too Rail-roadey - might need a little tweaking.
//

I kind of like this idea.

DM:
You are walking along the road when you meet someone who greats you in a friendly manner and says "How did you get on with X?". You have no idea who either X or this person is.
After a brief pause a look of insight crosses their face and they cast a spell targeting the whole group.
Slowly as the Dispel peals the cobwebs from your mind; you remember that yesterday as you were walking along the road ...

[Ditto]

I'm telling you, it is definitely possible. Assuming PCs don't deliberately want to spite you and can rely on you weaving the arc plot, such a game can be wonderful. Check out Epic Echoes. Highly recommended!