Modelling ability to 'act/be fictional character
 

I am interested in modelling the power below for a potential off beat, breaking fourth wall game.


In some movies/tv shows the characters sometimes act like other characters from fiction. Often this means they can and do things which their 'real character' never could.


For example, they read a book about Huckle Berry Finn, then take on not just personality, but also the advatnages, disadvantages and skills of the character. They speak his accent, have a delusion they are a teenager and know all things a teenager in the 1800s would have known.

Community has done this more than a few times (it even goes further with characters able to take on the abilities and traits of general) particularly in Modern Warfare and For a Few Paintballs more.


Now I could just say... that's acting and a quirk or mix of delusions as a disadvantage, but thats not much fun and it doesn't model well character suddenly being 'good' where they weren't one session before. Also it seems to me you can push this ability enough to even get 'soft' superpowers into an otherwise 'normal campaign' so its interesting for me.


My thoughts:


The best/easiest way is modular abilities cosmic with limitations of only being used for alternate form (the form is really just identical to the orginal character) stacked up with all the new abilities, a compulsory split personaility while in the other form and a requirment that it be either a character from fiction or appropriate archetype for what is going on in the session.


other ideas?

Re: Modelling ability to 'act/be fictional character
 

Acting
Racial Memory (Cosmic, Fictional People, +50%)
Elastic Skin
Modular Abilities (Skills Only, -20%; Must Be Character Appropriate, -5%)
Delusion (I Am A Fictional Character) [-10]

Use acting to portray the character convincingly, Racial Memory to have the right memories, Elastic Skin to look the part, and Modular Abilities to gain the skills of the character. Remove the "Skills Only" limitation on Modular Abilities and add "Physical" if they can do something like turn into a super and actually fly.

I don't think letting the Delusion periodically reset is a problem.

Re: Modelling ability to 'act/be fictional character
 

Biotech's Wetware sub-personalities along with a Delusion "I turn into fictional characters!/I am fictional characters" seems to be it, at least if they go back to particular forms at some times rather than others.

Use Trigger, Uncontrollable, and Unconcious Only to have them "change" into the right personality when they're exposed to the right stimulus.

Re: Modelling ability to 'act/be fictional character
 

No reason for it to be skills only. Even if you have enough to handle advantages, such a character probably could fake combat reflexes and other such nonphysical advantages. Just nothing Exotic.

Re: Modelling ability to 'act/be fictional character
 

That's a clever build. I don't know that the Cosmic on Racial Memory is necessary, if all you need is to remember details of the character as depicted in whatever source.

Re: Modelling ability to 'act/be fictional character
 

Racial Memory of something that didn't happen, as such, seems fairly Cosmic. You can also claim it fills in the gaps in the fictional portrayal.

There are always plenty of those. The one time I've had an outright fictional character show up in a GURPS game, he realised for himself pretty fast that he was fictional because of the gaps. The PCs had got it immediately from the name, but hadn't pointed it out, being somewhat diplomatic.

Re: Modelling ability to 'act/be fictional character
 

Can't say if that was the intention or not, but if the idea was to actually become the character, then Acting and Delusion wouldn't fit. It seemed like the idea in that particular build was just to remember things about the character that the other traits would fill out.

Re: Modelling ability to 'act/be fictional character
 

Yes, but it will also need Modular Abilites Cosmic with a limitation of only one advantage right? As per seeking sense(IIRC?) in Psionic Powers