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Post Fall grief

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Sat, 2012-09-22 20:57

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Post Fall grief

One aspect of the setting that is easy to forget is just how much was lost. And one of the best ways of making it real to the players is to occasionally remind them of who they have lost. A simple trick is to roll a D2/flip a coin for each family member to see whether they survived. While the average survival probability was lower, family members likely have a partially correlated survival, and if the PC is alive then the chance that their family survived goes up a bit. But it is very likely that any PC has lost spouses, parents, siblings or children. One way of using this is to just "accidentally" mention it: "The captain reminds you of Marla...", "For a moment you thought the kid was little Benny, but then you realize it is just a neotenic. Benny was in London..." In fact, handling Fall trauma is a big an interesting topic on its own. The edited memories of infugees are largely a quick and dirty way of avoiding mental breakdowns as they recall the horror of the end of the world. But even lucky people lost much, and handling all that grief keeps many Muses, psychotherapists and pharmacologists busy. I suspect anti-PTSD treatments might be very common, and deliberate emotional memory weakening fairly standard: "Today is our anniversary. I cherish the memories of our family, remembering all the good times. I remember the bad times too, but without colour. The new house in Xien He, the laughter of Ling - I can see and hear them in perfect detail. The flight from the city, the crushing crowd as the machines started to descend, your scream, waking up inside the cordon - I recall them as objective facts, with no emotion. Even the process that led me to do the edit is just a fact: I could not function as a human, so the source of the pain was modified. When I look back at those days of uncontrollable crying I only feel relief that they ended so my life could begin again. I am sad the others are not here with me, but I have my colourful memories. They live in them." This suggests an interesting subplot for an adventure: a key person has undergone this kind of trauma dampening psychosurgery. If someone could get the original psychosurgery files they would have an excellent mental weapon against the person. There might be a trigger that unravels the dampening, allowing the grief to return - and maybe it could be amplified.

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Sun, 2012-09-30 23:19

Jay Dugger Jay Dugger's picture

I replied last week, but the

I replied last week, but the post vanished somewhere between emacsclient and the forum. (Yeah, yeah...A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum. Speak up if you get the joke else google it.) Fall trauma, like romance or sex or gore, might not belong in your game. Know your players. The Afghanistan combat infantry veteran with PTSD and separated from the spouse and scheduled to return to Central Asia next month might not want to hear about it.

Arenamontanus wrote:
Post Fall grief One aspect of the setting that is easy to forget is just how much was lost. And one of the best ways of making it real to the players is to occasionally remind them of who they have lost.

That said...most Eclipse Phase PCs have the Fall in their history. Even original space colonists have in their memories the times they first heard the word TITAN, the first Infugees they met, and the last time they communicated with or via Earth and its orbital space. Most PCs will have a list of people they knew who didn't make it. That list's length will directly vary with PC age.

Arenamontanus wrote:
A simple trick is to roll a D2/flip a coin for each family member to see whether they survived. While the average survival probability was lower, family members likely have a partially correlated survival, and if the PC is alive then the chance that their family survived goes up a bit. But it is very likely that any PC has lost spouses, parents, siblings or children. One way of using this is to just "accidentally" mention it: "The captain reminds you of Marla...", "For a moment you thought the kid was little Benny, but then you realize it is just a neotenic. Benny was in London..."

You can also use this as MacGuffins to motivate characters. Actual-play examples from Martian Autumn: The labor broker that hired your PC to do some simulspace remodelling might have a lead on the financee you left behind on Earth. Your ex-wife, separated from you in the Exodus, might hide you in the Outer System if Mars gets too hot for you.

Arenamontanus wrote:
In fact, handling Fall trauma is a big an interesting topic on its own. The edited memories of infugees are largely a quick and dirty way of avoiding mental breakdowns as they recall the horror of the end of the world. But even lucky people lost much, and handling all that grief keeps many Muses, psychotherapists and pharmacologists busy. I suspect anti-PTSD treatments might be very common, and deliberate emotional memory weakening fairly standard: "Today is our anniversary. I cherish the memories of our family, remembering all the good times. I remember the bad times too, but without colour. The new house in Xien He, the laughter of Ling - I can see and hear them in perfect detail. The flight from the city, the crushing crowd as the machines started to descend, your scream, waking up inside the cordon - I recall them as objective facts, with no emotion. Even the process that led me to do the edit is just a fact: I could not function as a human, so the source of the pain was modified. When I look back at those days of uncontrollable crying I only feel relief that they ended so my life could begin again. I am sad the others are not here with me, but I have my colourful memories. They live in them."

More actual-play examples from Martian Autumn: The Land of the Ten Suns simulspace has a face on the meta-fictional far future Mars. No question about it, very definitely a Slavic male's visage. But who could it be, and what's with the in-setting rewards offered for real-world information about the person shown on the landform? This inspired a lot of copy-cat rock carvings in the simulspace, and later a few real-world ones too. A psychosurgeon overcomes his professional ethics by deleting memories of an enemy's illegal alpha fork as part of a campaign to suborn him. The memories had involved injuries suffered in the Fall that had badly damaged the enemy's body image and prevented him from moving to morphs without matching handicaps. Your younger sister never took serious responsibility for anything. When you saw things going bad on Earth, you spent your half of the inheritance to emigrate to Mars with your fiancee. Then your younger sister arrived on your doorstep, broke, incarnate in a designer Slyph morph she couldn't afford, and begged you to get her off-Earth. Who do you leave to the horrors of the Fall, your sister or your fiancee?

Arenamontanus wrote:
This suggests an interesting subplot for an adventure: a key person has undergone this kind of trauma dampening psychosurgery. If someone could get the original psychosurgery files they would have an excellent mental weapon against the person. There might be a trigger that unravels the dampening, allowing the grief to return - and maybe it could be amplified.

Surviving family ties might grow stronger. Characters might implicitly trust other family members because they survived too. Easy enough to abuse... I wonder if this happens in real-life? Human history, esp. the post WW2 era ought to have plenty of examples.

—

Sometimes the delete key serves best.

Sat, 2012-09-29 19:00

OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture

also reclaimers

There's a whole faction devoted to and heavily influenced by the trauma of the fall. Reclaimers. The movement has to be pretty heavily influenced by people who have experienced great personal loss. It's more than just nostalgia. Members of this faction are probably extremely passionate. Which would make for interesting interaction between pcs and the faction. This is highlighted in the published character of Tate Markess, a leader of the movement who's husband sacrificed himself during the fall. (Sunward p.72,75; Core p. Even in non-personal ways the fall is staggering in a way player's probably can't comprehend. 9 BILLION people are dead. 9 out of every 10 people you knew are gone. This happened in a time where death had been essentially conquered. People aren't supposed to really die in EP. Then there's the grief of losing so much data and science. Any character with a doctorate level skill of 60 in academics, profession or technical fields has probably lost both colleagues data or had a major career interruption at the time of the fall.

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Mea Culpa: My mode of speech can make others feel uninvited to argue or participate. This is the EXACT opposite of what I intend when I post.

Sun, 2012-09-30 08:42

Jane the Bane Jane the Bane's picture

Let's also keep in mind that

Let's also keep in mind that many victims of the Fall are not merely Really Dead (which is traumatic enough in itself for those left behind), but Worse Than Dead: forcefully uploaded by the TITANs, warped by the Exalt virus, taken over by some nanoplague... Knowing that your loved ones are truly dead may actually be preferable to NOT knowing their ultimate fate.

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[img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/lost_userbar.jpg[/img]

Sun, 2012-09-30 21:16

Octomorph

Fall grief

I've played around a bit with coming up with an equivalent of the Lifepath from Cyberpunk 2020 as a way of fleshing out some of the character background. It could be used in random format or just as an idea spur during character creation. The factions and backgrounds in EP are a good start, but there's so much potential depth to the setting that providing options for my player has been helpful.

Sun, 2012-09-30 22:05

Jay Dugger Jay Dugger's picture

Lifepath work-alikes

I think there exists a Lifepath-like system in the Eclipse Phase FATE variant that floats about. You can also use the out-of-print Central Casting's Heroes of Tomorrow. I've used that and its siblings since their publication for NPCs. I usually find it succeeds through excess.

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Sometimes the delete key serves best.

Wed, 2012-10-10 19:01

Erenthia

Arenamontanus wrote:and maybe

Arenamontanus wrote:
and maybe it could be amplified.

—

The end really is coming. What comes after that is anyone's guess.

Wed, 2012-10-10 19:18

Friend Computer Friend Computer's picture

Yowch.

Arenamontanus wrote:
This suggests an interesting subplot for an adventure: a key person has undergone this kind of trauma dampening psychosurgery. If someone could get the original psychosurgery files they would have an excellent mental weapon against the person. There might be a trigger that unravels the dampening, allowing the grief to return - and maybe it could be amplified.

You know, with the rules for researching data and the absurd number of mental Complex Actions that a player can get, you could pull this up in the middle of combat and start bombing the local AR with whatever you found that would upset the gunwoman who has you in her sites.

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[img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/titan_userbar.jpg[/img] [img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/pro_userbar.jpg[/img] The Computer wants you to be happy. Happiness is mandatory. Failure to be happy is treason. Treason is punishable by death.

Tue, 2012-10-23 12:27

Axel the Chimeric Axel the Chimeric's picture

Not Our War

Another fun point to bring into this is the Lost and AGIs. While they only account for a tiny percentage of the 500 million to a billion transhuman souls left in the solar system (and the smattering beyond), they're still important too. Same goes for some uplifts. The Lost grew up in a simspace after the Fall. For all intents and purposes, their only family, if they have any, are their "siblings". AGIs never really had anything to do with it. Frankly, most of them probably don't even know what it's like to lose someone; they come from a world of immortality. Hence, for them, it might be fun to play up how alien the idea is. People lighting candles and putting up pictures or having other ceremonies for the dead, leaving them contemplative of the idea of people just not existing anymore. Might even be cause for mental stress.

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[img]http://img813.imageshack.us/img813/982/exhumanbar.jpg[/img] [img]http://img804.imageshack.us/img804/4473/scumbar.jpg[/img] [img]http://img818.imageshack.us/img818/1396/gatecrasherbar.jpg[/img] [code][@-rep +1, f-rep +2][/code]

Wed, 2012-10-31 06:52

#10

Thampsan

Excellent point Arenamontanus

Excellent point Arenamontanus, I love the idea of tugging at player's heart-strings. Also worth a mention perhaps - future shock, those people who were reinstantiated later in the AF and so have missed decades of advance, both culturally and technologically, and cannot stand the new cultural paradigms. They might have enjoyed the element of the transhuman dream they had heard about prior to disconnecting from reality by way of death (optional or not) but now find the entire thing too overwhelming.