Game in the Brain

I want side-effects that can make the story interesting. One such side-effect is changing the character a tiny bit in the form of Quirks in his Time Stream. The Character has a ton of Side-effects because of his spell, one of the things it does is that he now has a Scar that’s Always been there.

Magical Quirks that Affect Time and Space, and Reality in some permanent, tangible but near-harmless way is striking my curiosity.

A Character all of a sudden gets a Quirk – he spends a lot of time in his garden and smells of earth, plants, and can trigger allergies. The character all of a sudden has a lifestyle that he’s always had, but in a different time-stream he didn’t have. He forgets some of his friends he met from another hobby, he now has a bunch of “new” friends he met from his “new” hobby.

Its kinda weird and interesting. One of my players is playing Bill the Mage, and he’s prepared his spells in advance and some of them will trigger some Quirks Table in Ritual Path Magic. I like magical quirks especially if it will add to the narrative, and Im particularly interested when the narrative goes a bit meta. What if the Mage is aware that his time-stream has been altered a bit, there are things in his Lab that suddenly appear but in a way that they’ve always been there.

Being aware of changes in Time Stream is pretty neat in that as you tell a story, the character’s Information Asymmetry shows as small things in his life changed. Example, he was late for an appointment for 5 minutes. It didn’t do much to change his time stream, but because of it one of the NPCs or PCs was inconvenienced and has a negative reaction to the Mage.

The Mage remembers being on Time or was he Late… his memory is fuzzy, he remembers being late and being on time. if he Journalizes he writes down both experiences and given time remembers he was late, but when he looks back into his journal he doesn’t know why he thought he was on time that day and why X or Y was mad at him for keeping them waiting.

Its funny because as we play the game and we get details messed up, we can all attribute it to the Magical Quirks. Bits of the Time Stream is not meshing very well with the mage’s memories.

Very BIG Side Effects

Some Backlashes are very big, and what if all of a sudden, the Personality of the mage alters suddenly. He now has Loner and Nightmares! There was an event everyone knows, and the Mage is slowly remembering it as though it had happened and it really did… in this time Stream!

All of a sudden, the Mage has a grown kid (Dependent -5cp) and he remembers the tragedy that broke his family and left scars on his child that he blames himself for. Aw man! the Story Telling Possibilities! Its a bit of Sci-fi with the Time-stream and Fantasy and Magic at the same time.

What if the background Story of one of the Characters Changes. The mage changes Disadvantages lolz. It might piss off my players so I gotta set expectations, but its funny because the GM can Take Back the Change in Time stream. All of a sudden the grown up kid disappears and he’s back on his old time stream but after getting to know his kid he feels sad for some reason… a few days later he forgets.

This is just awesome sauce. I just got the idea from playing around with story inconsistencies and how certain details get misplaced in the Post game write up. Its also a perfect fit for the Setting, modern Fantasy!

Man I might get too attached to the characters if their story gets too interesting.