Rotes & Procedures

“I cannot recall.” While that familiar dodge tends to be a lie, some folks really can’t recall what they’ve done while under the influence of a psychic mage. Maybe the hypnotist snapped his fingers and the person in a trance forget what he’d been told to do; the Black Suit flashed a strange gadget in the person’s eyes, and suddenly his entire memory of an event had changed or disappeared.

In story terms, powerful mages can make people forget things, remember things that never happened, or recall them differently than they would have otherwise. Such “memory-forging” techniques might rely upon hypnosis, conditioning, potent suggestions, or technological alteration. Whatever method you prefer, the mage changes someone’s memories – maybe replacing them, maybe erasing them.

Game-wise, memory-forging requires Mind 4 or higher. Simple alterations demand Mind 4, while extensive ones demand Mind 5. At the Storyteller’s option, a Mind 3 Effect might allow a mage to say something like “Forget the next hour” and then “fog” a brief event in a mental haze; this, however, is not a hard-and-fast rule.

As noted earlier, a willing or unwitting subject uses his Willpower as the difficulty, while an unwilling subject uses Willpower + 3 and can try to resist the process.

Simple memory alterations are pretty easy; making someone forget a single, unremarkable impression (“Remember – I was never here”) requires only a success or two. Extensive wipes or overlays, however, demand five successes or more, and may – as in movies like Total Recall or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind – become quite traumatic and confusing.