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View Full Version : DM Help So I killed a PC last night...



Spacy
2015-03-15, 03:52 PM
...And I need ideas for a new one.

In Short: Sci-fi system (Stars without number), player wants to play an amnesiac similar to the Shadowrun Amnesia negative quality. Looking for ideas of interesting or off kilter characters.

In Long:

The Stars system is a far sci-fi setting. Basically humanity discovers spaceflight and travels among the stars. Over time they develop psychic powers and found an empire. One day all the psychics go completely insane and everything collapses. 600 years later humanity is rebuilding to a whole host of exciting possibilities.

The party right now is mostly on an affably evil bent. Their goals range from conquering worlds to founding a megacorp that would make the ones in Shadowrun blush but they tend to avoid the outright murderhoboing.

I'm looking for interesting character ideas that fit with the character having now memories of their previous lives. Bonus points for describing how they wake up/lost their memories.

goto124
2015-03-15, 08:01 PM
Are you a player of the PC, or the DM of the campaign? Why did the PC get killed? How does the player feel about the PC getting killed?

Maglubiyet
2015-03-15, 08:43 PM
I'm looking for interesting character ideas that fit with the character having now memories of their previous lives. Bonus points for describing how they wake up/lost their memories.

Character is incredibly old, from a time before the fall, and is psychic. His ship was lost in deep space centuries ago and he is the only one that could be revived from the primitive form of cryosleep they used back then. The others had degenerated too far, brain dead, but still alive. His first memories are of waking up on the bridge of the salvage ship that found him, everyone's accents and appearances were very strange though he doesn't know why he thinks that.

genmoose
2015-03-15, 09:37 PM
Here are a few ideas:

The PC is a cyborg, the level of augmentation is up to you but he at least has several chips in his brain. He's on some sort of mission when his systems are corrupted by a virus or hacking attempt. In order to protect himself from the virus or protect the mission/data he was carrying he executes a rough dump of data, effectively wiping out his memory.

He could wake up in any sort of strange situations depending on what works for the group. Maybe face down in an alley, or passed out in dark corner of a club. But when he comes back online he has no idea who he is or what he was doing, but still has detailed files on almost anything else the PC needs to succeed.

Over time he could find software or other methods to perhaps restore part of his memory or the original data. Or maybe he pushed all that data to a disk that was lost/taken that he might later recover.



Another option is that he's a recent victim of an 'enhanced interrogation.' He knew something important in his previous life and was captured by some random bad guy (mob, corporation, etc). The bad guy used an experimental brain scanning device to try to get the data after normal torture methods didn't work. It's unknown if they extracted any data, but the process wiped out most of the PC's memories. Now used up, the 'body' was dumped somewhere the party would happen upon it. Perhaps the PC demonstrates a 'certain set of skills' that he still remembers just without knowing who he is.

The fun part here is that others may still be looking for the PC. Maybe his old boss who gave him the secrets, maybe the bad guys thinking that he'll lead to more information.

Spacy
2015-03-16, 12:07 AM
Are you a player of the PC, or the DM of the campaign? Why did the PC get killed? How does the player feel about the PC getting killed?

I am the DM of the campaign. He got killed by breaking a taboo (a stun effect which caused damage to ignore), in order to save the party's ship from an newly reincarnated regenerating mind controlling psychic who was threatening to kill the party. The character was already at one health and aware of the risks. It was quite a good heroic sacrifice with the party medic even taking permanent mental damage in an effort to save him. The player is OK with the PC being killed, he was a fan of the character but it was a good death.

This isn't really a good system to worry about character death, until party level 5+ every encounter is potentially lethal. A obsolete shotgun can reliably kill a 2nd level character and a modern gun is lethal until 4th.


Character is incredibly old, from a time before the fall, and is psychic. His ship was lost in deep space centuries ago and he is the only one that could be revived from the primitive form of cryosleep they used back then. The others had degenerated too far, brain dead, but still alive. His first memories are of waking up on the bridge of the salvage ship that found him, everyone's accents and appearances were very strange though he doesn't know why he thinks that.

That's an awesome background, though I don't know if the party wouldn't shoot the new character on sight. Thank you!


Here are a few ideas:

The PC is a cyborg, the level of augmentation is up to you but he at least has several chips in his brain. He's on some sort of mission when his systems are corrupted by a virus or hacking attempt. In order to protect himself from the virus or protect the mission/data he was carrying he executes a rough dump of data, effectively wiping out his memory.

He could wake up in any sort of strange situations depending on what works for the group. Maybe face down in an alley, or passed out in dark corner of a club. But when he comes back online he has no idea who he is or what he was doing, but still has detailed files on almost anything else the PC needs to succeed.

Over time he could find software or other methods to perhaps restore part of his memory or the original data. Or maybe he pushed all that data to a disk that was lost/taken that he might later recover.

Another option is that he's a recent victim of an 'enhanced interrogation.' He knew something important in his previous life and was captured by some random bad guy (mob, corporation, etc). The bad guy used an experimental brain scanning device to try to get the data after normal torture methods didn't work. It's unknown if they extracted any data, but the process wiped out most of the PC's memories. Now used up, the 'body' was dumped somewhere the party would happen upon it. Perhaps the PC demonstrates a 'certain set of skills' that he still remembers just without knowing who he is.

The fun part here is that others may still be looking for the PC. Maybe his old boss who gave him the secrets, maybe the bad guys thinking that he'll lead to more information.

I really like both of these ideas. Thank you so much! One question, how do you think the cyborg would work with the player not aware of his abilities or status.

goto124
2015-03-16, 12:39 AM
how do you think the cyborg would work with the player not aware of his abilities or status.

Don't keep your player in the dark about his own character.

Gritmonger
2015-03-16, 12:49 AM
Don't keep your player in the dark about his own character.

Depends on the game really - I played in a Fate game - I think it was Dresden Files - where I outlined a few points of what I expected, and had a huge gray blob of powers I handed over to the GM and said "Go for it." It can be interesting to discover what your powers are in-game, without having OOC knowledge.

Spacy
2015-03-16, 01:27 AM
Don't keep your player in the dark about his own character.

That is exactly what he wants though. It was his explicit request of a character.

As a bit of background:
In Shadowrun, there is a negative quality called "Amnesia" in which if you take the maximum level, the player is not aware of what the character can do. They attempt to do stuff, and the GM tells them how many dice to roll. The player gets to figure out what their character is good at though experimentation. It fits will with the theme of having no memories and lets the GM build an interesting character to discover.

goto124
2015-03-16, 01:33 AM
Depends on the game really - I played in a Fate game - I think it was Dresden Files - where I outlined a few points of what I expected, and had a huge gray blob of powers I handed over to the GM and said "Go for it." It can be interesting to discover what your powers are in-game, without having OOC knowledge.


That is exactly what he wants though. It was his explicit request of a character.

Unusual. Okay then, go ahead.

Surpriser
2015-03-16, 07:38 AM
Another idea: Similar to current days suicide pills for secret agents, the old psychic empire developed an emergency "brain wipe" to deal with rogue agents or information leaks. While most of this technology was destroyed during the fall, a few devices still exist somewhere. The PC could have been on a mission to retrieve such an item or stumble upon it by chance. Somehow, the ancient relic activates itself (or is activated by him), leaving him without memories.

As for the actual mechanics of all these ideas: Pick a few abilities that are likely to come up even without the player knowing about them (such as Athletics or various combat skills). That way, you reduce the endless metagame of "Now I try hacking a computer. Does it seem like I know what I am doing? No? Okay, now I try telepathy. No success? Next try: Chemical engineering!". Of course, you can include additional abilities that are "hidden" and will likely be found only after the PC starts piecing together their previous life.

Segev
2015-03-16, 09:11 AM
In the height of the ancient empire, there were experiments with many kinds of technology. One vessel-type was supposed to revolutionize travel in ways at least as marvelous as the discovery of FTL. These ships were known as "star-walkers."

They required human sacrifice to make, though the sacrifice was less tragic than it might sound: great souls with great psychic talent, backed by the force of teams of psychics, would imbue the vessels with their artistic magnum opus, literally pouring their souls into the vessels. The results were powerful, psychic vessels with most of the personality of the sacrifice as the living soul of the vessel itself. As long as their works remained intact, their spirits could manifest within and they served as much as members of the crew as the vessel itself.

The difficulty of finding strong enough souls made this a difficult mass production project. Worse, damage to the artistic work damaged their personalities, and they could only learn and grow and remember new things by expanding on their works.


The Heaven Queen was one of the last of these vessels built before the Fall. A young poet was the soul invested into it, and his (or her) poetry scribed nearly every surface, interior and exterior. It was designed to be built up over time, to give the poet's soul more space to grow.

Sometime before or during the Fall, the Heaven Queen was lost, and its poet-soul became separated from it, cast adrift in space.

Little more than a ghost, this person is a bit spacey (no pun intended), and has difficulty remembering things. If re-united with the Heaven Queen, the ghost would regain memories of the life that was given up to forge it. The ghost has a near-compulsive urge to scribe potetry on surfaces in places it resides for any length of time; as long as it remains near them, it develops memories of the time it spends surrounding those poems. Lengthy separation from them deprives the ghost of these memories.

The party could find the ghost drifting through space, or the ghost could "intersect" with their ship unbeknownst to them, or they could come across the ghost on a planet somewhere. The ghost's poems appearing on the vessel would be reason for the ghost PC to start developing memories only from the time of meeting the ship and its crew.

Discovering the compulsion and the consequences of resisting it (i.e. not developing new memories, and possibly losing old ones if the poetry is removed) can be part of the discovery for all of the players, since the ghost would have little reason to know the limitations of memory under which it labors if it lacks the poems to remind it.

The ability to come across the ghost's writings elsewhere could give exposition as the GM needed, too. "I remember... this is... and then..." as the ghost is re-exposed to the poems. And recognizing the ghost's poetic style could let the party know to go fetch that particular PC.

There could also be psychic gifts for helping control/sense/protect the party's ship, if the ghost PC starts imbuing it with the poetry and thus investing it with the ghost's own psychic presence, making it a body for the ghostly soul.

kaoskonfety
2015-03-16, 12:40 PM
My players don't take these flaws any more - I have WAY too much fun with them...

I suggest: Horribly mundane.. or is it?

- Layer 1, digging into his background is fairly easy, a non-descript fellow from a mining colony, wife, 2 grown-ish kids, small pension fund, dental insurance. Oh that was easy, check it out later...

- Layer 2, wife is uneasy, kids are a bit distant/back away, *GOONS* bust down the door at MAX awkward and kill all the "not PCs". Dying the wife smiles... now I can tell you, "tangent 8 degrees, to dream is to live" ... weird... you kinda want to go switch on the computer terminal hidden in the hand print activated wall compartment in the back of the room and type in "Agency initiate theta kilo beta niner" and say the phrase "to live is to dream"... schematics... ALOT of schematics... genetic sequencing, retro virus encoding, a coffin like device, all coded for the characters use... several large sums of money and some un-obtainium later...

- layer 3, Freakish device at hand, genetic encoding ready, should only take a few days, after emerging they feel... nothing, but a droning noise they never knew they were hearing is gone and a haze? lifted from their eyes (give a light cross section of notable but not game changing buff - a couple hit points, a skill boost, ignore the first point of penalties) being near psi increases the effect, but not dramatically....

- layer 4 "we found you" the shadow consortium the character stole the technology from comes looking - the character is in fact PART of the technology, a man they made whole cloth with he intent of creating a world without psi - he currently acts a a mild psionic damper "normalizing" the world nearby (they tried with brain dead clones but needed... something. Testing on enclosed sentient was not yielding results so they made him and gave him the belief of freedom, the test is working beautify...

- layer 5 during the spirited escape from impossible odds they come across the containment area for the other experiments - thousands of identical men in identical cells looking out at them self... but free... shatters the characters "resistance" to psi as their cumulative hope on his "frequency" overloads everything and they die in droves while he watches - enter some rage Psi powers but focused - clean - while trying to stamp out psi for good they have forged a weapon they will forever fear...

.... I could continue but at some point it drifts into "there is no bottom to the rabbit hole" as the shadow consortium is in fact the front for the new psion alliance, who are in turn a tool of the government, who is being manipulated by his "wife" who didn't die and is in fact a galaxy spanning AI "we have such dreams for the worlds you will build for us again"...

TheTeaMustFlow
2015-03-16, 05:30 PM
A psionic manchurian agent (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ManchurianAgent) for a faction that no longer exists. Their agenda, however, is still somehow relevant.

Angelmaker
2015-03-17, 06:30 PM
...And I need ideas for a new one.

In Short: Sci-fi system (Stars without number), player wants to play an amnesiac similar to the Shadowrun Amnesia negative quality. Looking for ideas of interesting or off kilter characters.

In Long:

The Stars system is a far sci-fi setting. Basically humanity discovers spaceflight and travels among the stars. Over time they develop psychic powers and found an empire. One day all the psychics go completely insane and everything collapses. 600 years later humanity is rebuilding to a whole host of exciting possibilities.

The party right now is mostly on an affably evil bent. Their goals range from conquering worlds to founding a megacorp that would make the ones in Shadowrun blush but they tend to avoid the outright murderhoboing.

I'm looking for interesting character ideas that fit with the character having now memories of their previous lives. Bonus points for describing how they wake up/lost their memories.

Let the player create a pc without any fluff at all.

He suffered head injury, loosing his memories, but he was a former member of the crew.

Let all the other players at times when they feel like it throw him bit and pieces of information about him.

Something like ."hey Mark!"
Amnesiac." My name is mark?"
Party member :" sure is, dumbass. Have you written your old granny? You know she expects a letter from you daily."
Mark:"uhm, i dont recall any of that. Would you please tell me what my grandmother is called and hwat her adress is."
Another party member:" dont know, dont care. Have better things to do. Just dont forget to water your collection of a hundred different mini bonsais from various planets around the system."
Mark" i collect bonsais".
Group nods in agreement."you also like to do the laundry dor all of us"
Mark:" WHAT.????"
Group :" na, just kidding. But your granny is real and your bonsais look appalingly thirsty."