Memetics is the study of contagious ideas. More specifically, Memetics studies how ideas propagate from one host to another and the properties of those ideas. Viral ideas are called Memes and can be designed, though the greatest are often spontaneous.

As a knowledge skill, Memetics grants complimentary dice spot Membots (those under the influence of a powerful Meme, using or resisting Psychology, creating or understanding mental Advertising and Marketing techniques, forming Influence statements, and so on. GM discretion.

...ninety nine bottles of beer on the wall, ninety nine bottles of beer. If one of those beers should happen to fall...ninety eight bottles of beer on the wall...

Interesting divergence there. Memetics would of course include knowledge of well known memes and such.

...ninety nine bottles of beer on the wall, ninety nine bottles of beer... take one down pass it around... ninety eight bottles of beer on the wall...

ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US!!!

FIRST POST!!!11!

On a more on-topic note, memetics is an interesting pursuit, but how would this assist a 'runner? Perhaps it would be minorly useful to a Face, but typically this would be more on the lines of something megacorp marketroids would employ. For example, the master memecrafter at NERPS.

So, who's up for some Stand Alone Complex?

I agree it is an exaggeration if not an outright error. Military studies seem to indicate that ideals and abstract concepts mean nothing in actual combat. The things that keep personnel functioning are fear of failing their comrades and fear of death.

Kanada, have you been reading Neal Stephenson again?

On a more applicable note, I'm completely uncomfortable with this being used mechanically in game. This is pure roleplaying stuff, and it's one thing to take it as a knowledge skill to flesh out a character, but it's pretty bizarre to apply the concept to a set of rules.

And, yes, military personnel who don't prioritize their personal survival are generally pretty damn rare.

Interesting idea,

I don't know that mimetics would have all that much to say about the propogation of ideas as distinct from doctrines like psychology and marketing - in the same way I guess that most of what we've been able to say about genetics until recently (when we developed the tools to interface with genes directly rather than just looking at their expression) drew from botany and zoology.

I don't know that there's a uniquely "mimetic" way to start a cult - a knowledge of what makes ideas appealing, memorable or likely to propagate seems to me to involve more hands-on disciplines, where as mimetics seems more of a way of viewing phenomena, kind of like the relationship between theology and athropology...

I do like the idea of runners engaging in their own viral marketing campaigns though...

It is exactly the same actually. I have no gun skills but my character does; I likewise have no social skills but my character does. Therefore, the character should be able to shoot great, but can't use social skills worth a damn. Yeah! That makes sense!

Shouldn't one's character be able to do things far beyond the players ability? The roleplaying aspect is not dismissed, but forbidding a character from performing something because of a player's lack seems unnecessarily harsh. Roleplaying already grants target modifiers and karma points, how much more important need it be?

OT: I'm about a third of the way through quicksilver and finding it moderately heavy going, but I'd still be happy to recommend it - milleu aside Austen is not a good comparison (and even the surrounding society is radically different) - this is sci-fi literature set at the birth of science and you shouldn't let the setting put you off. A lot of the first book is scene setting, but I gather the second book released recently, makes it all worth the effort.

On Topic: Unless I'm misunderstanding the suggestion I think Mimetics is the wrong title for what you're trying to do - it's simply too distant and academic an analysis to be useful even in situations where the propogation of ideas is important - trying to use mimetics deductively (as opposed to inductively) is like being cornered by a hungry animal and saying "right, I'll use my knowledge of evolutionary pressures on behaviour to determine what it's going to do next" - genetics will have insights into that kind of question, but they won't be the sort to be useful in a hands-on situation...

I think mimetics works well as a cool name for a more down-to-earth psychology of ideas/marketing kind of skill - and if that's what you meant then I apologise for splitting hairs about nomenclature - but that's radically different to what real world "mimeticists" would actually do with their skill...

My google-fu is off tonight and I can't find any real information from a university or research journal on mimetics tonight. Linkage? I don't know enough about the topic to debate herein, however.

Meme is the term to search for, BTW.

http://www.memecentral.com/

WAAAAZZZZZUUUUUPPPPP!!!!!!

Google-Fu

Selected Links:

Journal of Memetics

Memetics Papers

Having mulled over Lacemaker's point (and then realizing that Arethusa meant the same thing, right?), I think Memetics is useful in the same way as Genetech is useful to characters. Not in the middle of combat but in understanding the field and seeing it used in practice.

Memetics: complimentary to Marketing, Advertising, Programming/Deprogramming Psychology, and Sociology skill tests. It makes a great conversation piece, too.

I'll buy that- I think it works fine as a complementary background knowledge kind of skill, both in game and IRL.

Just to draw one more needless distinction, I think it differs form Genetech simply in that it's currently (and, we appear to assume will be in 2060) a much less developed field - genetech is able to look at the mechanics of gene propogation at the molecular level, that is proximate causes. Memetics is only really at the level of general principles, that is ultimate causation - kind of where genetech was two or three decades ago. I don't know how it would advance, though I guess oyu could argue that BTLs and skillwire technology have pretty profound impacts on our understanding of how ideas actually form in the brain...

Memetics is useful knowledge, yes (though I feel it's worth pointing out that it's still very young, and, on a lot of levels, extremely loose theory). For a runner, not so much, or, at least, not much more than most academic background skills (discounting the hard sciences, like physics and chemistry).

But that's not really my concern. My issue is with claiming that having the number on your character sheet should automatically make up for any lapse in knowledge you may have. Good roleplaying, like good acting, requires a personal knowledge of the character and the character's fields of knowledge. Certainly, no one expects an actor playing, say, a mathematician, to be deeply versed in math, but he can't expect to give a compelling performance if math is completely and abjectly foreign to him, either. In RPG terms, a player who knoes absolutely nothing about guns but takes Pistols 6 has made a terrible mistake, because his portrayal of that character will always ring false. He must at least understand what pistols are, what they do, and generally how they do it to portray that aspect of the character well. Simply having numbers on a sheet does not make up for roleplaying, and simply because you have Etiquette 6 doesn't mean you should be able to bumble your way through everyone around you without ever being forced to take responsibility for your idiotic actions (for clarity's sake, Kanada, this is not specifically a reference to you) simply because your Etiquette skill clearly reflects more social grace than you are humanly capable of mustering. That is wholly insane, just as it is insane to expect your GM to bail you out of a bad situation simply because your character has an Intelligence of 6 and should be able to come up with a suitable solution while you cannot. That's my point.

Of course, if you're playing a simple game with roleplaying largely excised, little of this applies, and you're practically playing a pen and paper video game, but if you're doing that, what use could you possibly have for Memetics or Psychology or American History or whatever as a knowledge skill anyway?

GURPS Transhuman Space has rules for Memetics that can be adapted. In particular, the newly released Toxic Memes sourcebook has some "meme creation" rules and a boatload of strange beliefs and ideas you can plug into Shadowrun with a bit of fiddling.

Arethusa, I play a game. I am not walking the boards at Stratford. I am not some sort of second coming of the Method Actor Avatar. Actually classical actors don't really need any knowledge of the subject matter, but since RPG players are co-writers I suppose a tiny bit of knowledge doesn't hurt. However if there is -someone- at the table that understands the subject they can help guide it (best if it is the GM), or if everyone at the table has relatively the same incorrect conception of the subject that seems to work out just fine too....to have, you know, fun.

I'll try to put Cray's example into my game and we'll see how that works for you.

MemePlayer: "Ok, so the J wants us to smear the Azzies. What if we hit their fast food places and make them look unsafe?"

GM: "Roll your Marketing to see what impact that would have."

MemePlayer: "All right, can I use Psychology or Memetics as complementary?"

GM: "I'm going to say no on the Psychology because you're not targeting an individual person, but Memetics might work."

MemePlayer: "Ok, Marketing... 2 4 4 8 and Memetics 8 8 3.

GM: I'll set the base target number at 6, with a +1 because he's not using the Matrix. That means he got 2 successes, so he knows that his plan has holes (1 success) and that he needs to widen the damage (2 successes) "You think it would have a small impact, but you would have to hit many places at once. Things like food poisoning and SURGE victims had more impact in the past."

MemePlayer: "Food poisoning? That sounds doable, I'll call up Mary Ann, my truck driver contact, and see if she knows an Azzie distributer."

GM: "Roll Etiquette, Trucking or... I'll let you use Street."

MemePlayer: "What about Corp? She does work for one."

GM: "Yeah, but you know she doesn't exactly speak their language." If the player hadn't interacted with the contact much, I'd allow him to try Corp at a plus 2 target number, and then have him use Charisma (6) to notice the negative effect.

MemePlayer: "Screw it, I'll use Etiquette to get a face to face meet with her and then use Seduction on her. I'm short on cash anyway."

GM: "She answers the call and seems happy to see you."

MaryAnn: "What's up wit you, dog? Long time."

Meme: "Hey babe, just wanted to see your beautiful face. What's say you and me get together and boogie?"

GM: "Roll Etiquette." The base TN is 4 but I've set a time of one week divided by the number of success, and his sweet talking gives a -1 TN.

MemePlayer: "Ok! 3 4 4 7 2 1"

MaryAnn: "Sure honey, I'll clear my schedule... we can meet Friday, if that's not to late." 2 days after the call.

I have to agree with Cray and Kanada. Arethusa, do you demand that Magicians actually know all about magic in real life and use it? Do you require your riggers to know from real-life experience, or at least reading about it, what it's like to be one with a two-truck? And do your deckers have to be actual real-life hackers with an understanding of how to break into computer systems?

Because unless that's true you're applying your logic to only one part of the game and penalizing Faces where you don't give the same penalties to Riggers, Magicians, and Deckers.

Two things:

1. Isn't Marketing a knowledge skill? If so, do you allow knowledge skills to act as comps with other knowledge skills?

2. During the early stages of the Nazi invasion of Russia, defending Soviets were not particularly enthusiastic with political officers spouting rhetoric and exhorting troops to defend the Soviet Union.

So much so that at some point during the campaign, the Soviets started advocating defense of "Mother Russia" which had a much stronger impact.

In short -- not many soldiers will gladly and cheerfully place their own lives below those of a higher, grander ideal. Those few that do, however, can be pretty impressive things.

-Siege

Oops, it is actually the Hearts In Atlantis DVD.