How to stat out false memories?

[DataPacRat]

Okay, here's a puzzler: How many ways can GURPS model a character having false memories about something important... but not knowing which of their memories don't correspond to reality?

For one extreme, there's the character who believes "I lived in the late twentieth century, died, was cryopreserved, and eventually my brain was diced and translated into a computer program, and now a copy of that program is a zillion years in the future and here I am" while the reality might be "some posthuman version of a slacker university student ran a quick, low-res ancestor simulation to produce a baseline-level human mind to let loose to troll the locals".

This sort of thing shows up reasonably often in fiction (well, at least the sort of fiction I enjoy :) ), but is kind of hard to manage well in a tabletop RPG, where almost everything about the character is laid out for the player. (With some exceptions, like their accumulated total of corruption points from GURPS Horror.)

But if it's doable at all, it's almost certainly doable via GURPS, so... any ideas how? Simply use Secret Disadvantage to buy a Delusion? Or is there a better way?

[David Johnston2]

It could just be a plot twist. Simply having a false belief is not Delusion. It must be something that causes you to behave irrationality and/or other people to think less of you as a result.

[AlexanderHowl]

False memories are a specific form of Delusion found in Horror, p. 24. When you discover the truth, your personality changes and you replace Delusion (False Memories) with the equivalent value of mental disadvantages. If a GM is feeling really devilish in a horror campaign, they should give PCs 20 extra CP and ask them to give three unrelated sentences that represent their character's three most powerful memories (effectively giving them a Secret Disadvantage form of Delusion (False Memory; Crucial Memory) for one of the three memories).

[Anaraxes]

The shocking nature of the truth is a horror genre convention. It works well enough in those sorts of games, but wouldn't be a general rule. In the real world, people believe false things all the time, but don't have their personalities destroyed when they learn the truth. Not quite the same as learning the truth about the existence of incomprehensible Elder Things.

David Johnston's point is the key insight. I'd still call the false memories "Delusion" (just avoid inventing yet another word). But the point value of a Delusion depends on its practical negative side effects -- the irrational behavior and reaction penalty from people seeing you behave irrationally. If that's not happening, then the Disad isn't going to rise past Quirk level.

A character not knowing that they're actually a simulation doesn't affect their behavior. (It hasn't affected yours to give you reaction penalties, has it?) It'd be more the other way around, where understanding that you're part of a simulation is the thing that changes your behavior -- so, Matrix-style changes that seem perfectly rational to the rest of the "woke", if irrational to others. Or we start to slide over toward AlexanderHowl's point, if that revelation is supposed to be that shocking and mentally disturbing.

So, ask yourself:
1) What bad things happen to the character because they don't know the truth? and
2) What bad things happen to the character when they do learn the truth?

("Bad" here has the usual meaning for Disads that's something like "obstacles to the characters choosing appropriate means to accomplish their game objectives".)

[DataPacRat]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

False memories are a specific form of Delusion found in Horror, p. 24. When you discover the truth, your personality changes and you replace Delusion (False Memories) with the equivalent value of mental disadvantages.

Ah, I'd hoped for pretty much exactly that. ... Looks like I'm going to have to go through Horror cover-to-cover to see what else I may have forgotten is in there. :)

Preliminary build: PC gets 10 20-point Secret Disadvantage (p B120), which the GM notes down as eventually being revealed as Delusions (False Memory; Crucial Memory: "I'm a real boy!") worth -15, which when pinned down gets turned into 15 points of coping mechanisms and other personal issues.


Hm... now I'm also thinking about Horror's "Untrue Beliefs" version of Delusions, for a character who believes in circa-2000-AD science in a setting where the physics don't match - eg, they think of the larger universe as containing dark matter, that stars' redshifts mean they're zooming away, that a given lump of mass-energy can neither be created nor destroyed... while the actual universe has an ever-so-slightly tweaked-from-Einstein law of gravity that explains those observations differently, and allows for a reactionless drive. I don't see this particular false belief as having much of an effect in combat, so I'm guessing it's either Minor or quirk-level, depending on whether or not they have access to a spaceship. ... Though maybe I should write this one off as a plot device, if the character is reasonably open-minded about their pre-existing scientific knowledge.

[DataPacRat]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Or we start to slide over toward AlexanderHowl's point, if that revelation is supposed to be that shocking and mentally disturbing.

So, ask yourself:
1) What bad things happen to the character because they don't know the truth? and
2) What bad things happen to the character when they do learn the truth?

("Bad" here has the usual meaning for Disads that's something like "obstacles to the characters choosing appropriate means to accomplish their game objectives".)

I can see more than a few possible CP-worthy psychological results of discovering the "I actually grew up in a sim" issue:

- Absent-Mindedness, as the character starts focusing a significant part of their mind on trying to puzzle out how to trust any of their conclusions if they recursively can't be sure of how reliable their memories and/or brain are at any point of their memories;
- Chronic Depression, if they strongly valued their simulated friends and family;
- regular-style Delusions, if they outright /reject/ the revelation and insist their memories are accurate, possibly attempting to prove them to the point of incurring reaction penalties;
- an offbeat Dependent: "the computer containing the original simulation, including the software of every individual I ever knew". (... not that I know how to price this one out);
- Low Self-Image: "How can I trust that my simulated training and education will work in reality?";
- Megalomania: "My simulator must have created me to do something massively important!";
- Obsession: "I have to get back to my real life, even if it is in a computer. Yes, I know that doesn't make sense.";
- On the Edge: "Oh, don't worry, this universe is probably all a simulation, too.";
- Paranoia: "/Is/ this universe also a simulation? Are /you/ real, or just another NPC?";
- Selfless: "Ah, go ahead, take it; you're more real than I am anyway.";
- Weirdness Magnet: "Somebody went to the trouble of creating me and dropping me off here and now... there was probably a reason for that, implying there's probably at least one, if not several, edge-cases that they hope my presence will tip the balance for, one way or another."


... I wonder how many of these could be found in a single party? :)

[AlexanderHowl]

Secret Disadvantages are worth five points more than normal disadvantages, so a Secret Delusion (Crucial Memory) is worth -20 CP, not -10 CP, because the plater does not know what the disadvantage is.

[DataPacRat]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Secret Disadvantages are worth five points more than normal disadvantages, so a Secret Delusion (Crucial Memory) is worth -20 CP, not -10 CP, because the plater does not know what the disadvantage is.

My mistake. I'll get the hang of this 'subtraction' thing one of these days, I'm sure... <ahem>