I'm creating an elf spider shaman with amnesia and my husband and I seem to have very different ideas of what qualifies for the flaw. I should be clear that this is for someone else's game where my husband is another player.

I wanted to go with the 10 point version where my shaman can't remember her past but knows her skills. When I told him that I was thinking of using the Crash as an excuse as to why she doesn't have any records to help her go by, he pointed out that "That's eight years.... I don't think you can call that amnesia if she's had that long to have a new life"

Personally, I think I can still take the quality and use that background (as cheap as it admittedly sounds). My main concern is how long would it take for her to become fluent in English as I decided her native language is Filipino.

8 years is plenty of time to become fluent if you have been immersed in the language. Depending on the age that the character was immersed in English, there may be more or less of an accent left.

Re: Amnesia -- If the Crash wiped out her permanent records and she was living SIN-less for the last 8 years, it could explain why she doesn't have any records. Alternatively, adding in Erased might also help explain why there's nothing on her. The event that caused the amnesia should be more recent than nearly a decade ago. Picking up and starting a fresh life without any support is hard but once you've had a year or five to put down roots, it is harder to tell that a person can't remember anything before a certain day. If the point is to not remember anything since before you were a teenager, now that the character is in her 20s, I don't think that's worth the points per se.

I currently have her English at rating 4 but I wonder if she can still get by with it at 3? I'm being pretty firm about the amnesia thing with my husband. I want my character to be a possible plot device for the GM. My husband had suggested she can't remember past the last year but that doesn't feel like enough time to learn enough English to survive in Seattle. Maybe I should just get her a linguisoft or something.

Plenty of time to learn a language...

Just to clarify, the book is citing the condition of retrograde amnesia, or the loss of memory of past events.
I also don't see why this is even an issue. Amnesia patients retain the ability to speak, write, etc, as well as motor skills and route reflexes.
Wiki's are flawed expert sources, but this comes close to what I know:


Examples:
Someone with total amnesia who trained in martial arts for 10 years and forgets about it will still react the same when attacked.
Amnesia patients who do not remember their name can still sign their name because it's a separate neural pathway.

Ever forget a phone number until you start dialing? That's the same idea.

Languages can be learned with conversational fluency (rating 3) in less than 6 months on average, if not immersed in the language. Many people take less than that. Immersion factors tend to speed things up even more.

Amnesia itself, as a condition, can be something that lasts forever, depending largely on why it occurred. Someone may remember things in days, weeks, years, or never.


As for the reason for the loss, that may be up to your Gamemaster. In our group, Amnesia patients have their backstory written by the GM, so he can actually make it a real determent worth 10 points.

From a GM perspective: can a past that is more than 8 years old come back to haunt a person in a way that justifies a 10 BP negative quality? I'd say yes. The negative quality for 10 BP never cites loss of current lifestyles or practices. That's the 25BP one.

If you're set on it being Crash-related, but want it more recent, you could have gone into a coma, and only woken up fairly recently when the hospital decided to pull the plug.

I don't see why the new language needs to be shoehorned into the post-amnesia time frame - she could easily be bilingual from before losing her memory. But I don't see why the amnesia couldn't have been a while ago, either. With the 10-point version, you can create a character normally, and you know what her abilities are - and so, presumably, does she.

So there is a span of time where the character discovered that she can shoot really well, that she is very allergic to soy products, that she knows a bit about hacking, and so on. During this span of time, the character has also presumably managed to get a place to crash, some fake ID, and a few useful contacts. Ten point amnesia characters should have a background, starting from waking up in an alley covered in blood (or whatever other circumstances they started out in), and going over how they got their life semi-together from there.

Eight years is still longer than usual for such a character, but it still leaves the main disadvantages in place. You don't know how this happened to you, you don't know who might know you from before, you don't know whether or not to believe someone when they claim to be your sister, former lover, or what have you. You can still have people looking for you, to finish the execution they botched, or to squeeze information that you don't remember out of you, or to move you along the next step of their diabolical plan for you.

Ah good, I was guessing 'conversational' English would be 3 & that's an interesting idea, Halinn. I've been mulling over why she hasn't been slapped with a hospital bill and as I put it to another player "She kinda went through a Faye Valentine/Cowboy Bebop situation waking up." The Crash could very well account for there being no real record of her but after a few years and no one coming to claim her, the hospital went to pull the plug and she woke up.

I wanted control over her skills but an "out" on creating her detailed past. Partly out of laziness on my part but also as a way to make me feel like I could be part of the plot. Basically all I have decided was one of her contacts gave her a new name, helped her get back on her feet and taught her English.

Someone paid for it, then suddenly stopped a few years ago. That also gives the character some motivation - find that person and thank and/or slap him (depending on your personality )

I guess it DOESN'T need to be 'shoehorned' but I had this idea that she really didn't understand the doctors when she woke up and coupled with memory loss made everything really scary for her.

it doesn't matter. Either situation, before or after, is completely plausible by modern medicine and learning standards; I assume shadowruns would be more efficient.

I couldn't get past the start because I parsed out part of it....

My view from a GMing perspective is that I'd allow the Amnesia scenario as you presented. You're still getting the downside of it, provided your GM is the sort to take advantage of a blank slate like that. Yes, the character has a new life now, but the point of the low-level version of that quality, IMHO, is to give the character a totally unknown past. I consider it, "handing the GM a shiny present with a bow."

@StealthSigma: Your reply had me laughing. Great thing to wake up to. However, I dropped the mentor spirit in the interest of more BP so her contacts wouldn't suck. Now she's just some Filipino mage.

@Speed Wraith: That's pretty much my reason for picking amnesia. I wan't to give the GM a shiny plot device on a silver platter.

I think with everyone's advice I can figure out a plausible 'history' for my elf. In fact my original logic was "She wakes up and by the start of the game it can be assumed she's at least in her late twenties... but she could very well be in her 60s, she doesn't know. There's potential for a very very huge blank."

The GM should still be asking if you like a particular possibility they think of. It would still be your character, and thus you should have full veto authority.

Kinda defeats the point of not knowing about it.

Just because the character doesn't know, doesn't mean the player can't. The only time I think it's acceptable for neither character nor player to know is if the player is brand new to RPGs in general.

Yeah, but let's face it, player and character knowledge are very tough to keep separate in the middle of a session. Besides, as someone who is planning on taking amnesia for a 2050 game my group is working on, I wouldn't want the surprise ruined!

I suppose if you have a truly evil GM, you might need that extra control on your character to prevent abuse.

I just look at it that the way I suggested makes it cooperative whereas the GM dictating the background just makes the GM a puppeteer.

No, it does not. This is just your personal opinion, not gospel truth.
In fact, handing a GM this chance can also mean that you as a player are too lazy to do your background (not Ruby, just a general example ) , you trust your GM implicitly to work up a compelling storyline for you and your group or that you're somewhat of a masochist ... Or even a mixture of everything. YMMV.
It's a thin line for the GM to walk, though, not to make the whole campaign about the amnesiac character.
If I, as a player were to present my GM with this opportunity, I really would not want him to work this out with me, apart from maybe the barest framework. I'd love the surprise and I'd gobble up, whatever the GM (who is fully in his rights to feed me whatever he wants, without having to be called a puppeteer) presented me with.

I'm pretty good about not acting on any metagaming I may do. I'm pretty much giving the GM free range to invent her past as long as it doesn't conflict with being awakened and having all her essence. We'll see how he takes my character's amnesia when the game starts.

Sure, but if you take that quality, you're surrendering a portion of your character's life to the GM voluntarily, not turning them into some marionette that the GM can simply yank a string on to make something happen. No, that's what Deep Cover is for

I don't think there is anything wrong with wanting editorial control over the character's back story in an amnesia situation, but I wouldn't personally want it that way. As I said before, that would ruin the surprise.

Don't you mean Judas? Deep Cover is the one where you know about it.

If you wanna give full control over, that's on you. *shrug*

Partial control. It's 'full control' over one (passive) part of the character. But yes, that's the point: it's on you. It's no good saying that the GM should definitely be telling you all the fun surprises and letting you veto things, because that depends on what you want.

By Definition, Taking Amnesia IS Giving control to your GM.
If you want Veto rights, maybe you should be drawing up your own background to start with.

I actually seriously thought about the Judas quality, but decided 'Amnesia' was more open to his interpretation.

Yeah, got the two mixed up.



That's just it, I'm not giving "full control" to my GM. I'm providing my own character with a blind-spot in his past for the GM to use to craft a story/arc with. There is a world of difference there, sorry you can't see it.

You could always go for both of them.

As both a GM and a player i'd advise against 'Judas' - he quality explicitely says that whoever the character really (and whoever planted him) is is hostile to the PCs. Which makes is somewhat of a dick move to the other players. It's also the sort of things very likely to result in the party being wiped out. All in all, not something I'd like to have at a table.

Yeah that's pretty much why I decided against it. I want my mage to be a plot device & not necessarily an instrument of TPK

A TPK is just one of the many consequences that could result from a Judas. The problem with Judas is that it can sometimes be tough to think outside of stereotypes. Runner are criminals. They're paid to commit crimes. That makes the players villain protagonists. This is what can make Judas quite easy to deal with because it opens up the potential for a hero antagonist to plant the Judas rather than then keeping TPK as the only option with the Judas being planted by a big bad or some other criminal element who may just want the runners killed or at the very best captured for torture and interrogation. It is also quite logical, especially if the runners have been pink mohawking it and committing plenty of murders, demolitions, and other various acts of mayhem.

Yeah, the law-enforcement entity would be the perfect Judas. But I tend to agree that it's not a viable long-term character option. Maybe someone sitting in on a game for a few sessions kind of deal.

I played a "Judas" type character for a lot of years. A Knight Errant "plant" in the shadows. He was a cyberlogician, and was tasked with compiling dossiers on every Hong Kong Shadow Asset. He was a lot of fun. Ultimately, in the end, he was caught and prosecuted by Mitsuhama for industrial espionage, stripped of the vast majority of his 'ware and all his equipment, and sentenced to an Orbital Prison. Fortunately, through a lot of prior planning I thought would never be utilized, I was able to maneuver things so that someone else took my orbital position, and I was actually tasked to a ground prison, from which I eventually escaped and rejoined my team as a "new" runner (Post facial reconstructions and whatnot). Took me a while to re-assemble my cyber suite that was yanked by Mitsuhama, and I was eventually found out by the team. Great roleplaying involved. It was a lot of fun.