Cerebral Trauma [placeholder title]

[Grey]

Themes: suffering, endurance, perceptions of truth and reality, humanity, transhumanism


Tone: Dark, horror


Location: Sprawling, run-down facility - maybe fifteen minutes into the future.


Aesthetics: late 90s cyberpunk, with more gruesome elements, psychedelia.


Characters: borderline amnesiac test subjects, possibly with psychic powers


Hooks: hallucinations, AI, psychic powers, morality play, mystery


Perfection is iterative. Iterations are flawed.

 

[Grey]

Necessary research: Cotard's Delusion, Korsakoff Syndrome, MK-Ultra.


Action without thought.

 

[Bone2pick]

Is this your creative process? Interesting. Have you cooked up any plot details or history for the setting?

 

[Grey]

Some of it. For certain things.


This applies to both questions.


Plot will primarily involve unearthing the history of the facility, the identities of the characters, and dealing with the after-effects of the experiments. A lot beyond that is reliant on how the characters react and progress.

 

[Bone2pick]

And how much room will the characters have? Is the idea for the group to stay pretty close to the facility or do you expect some significant travel? Obviously the more room allowed, the more world building required.

 

[Grey]

I don't intend them to escape the facility before the climax of the plot. It's going to be self-contained, but quite large. Of course, given that hallucinations will be potentially quite common...

 

[Bone2pick]

So a cyberpunk dungeon crawl inside a horrifying human experiment facility?

 

[Grey]

Oh, dungeon crawl? Not even close. More exploration, investigation, and conversation than dungeon crawl, even if any combat happens. I hate dungeon crawls. Just a closed location which will be a facility used to conduct horrifying experiments.

 

[Bone2pick]

One location, going from room to room, uncovering secrets while at the same time being discrete. I'm imagining a very dungeon crawl vibe.


Edit: Is this for a larp?

 

[Grey]

I expect there to be a degree of backtracking, possibly even rebuilding, and a period settled into at least a part of the facility.

 

[Bone2pick]

I'm confused with your use of "rebuilding" and "settled into". I also edited in a question above.

 

[Grey]

It is not for a LARP. I haven't tried my hand at writing and running a LARP yet.


I mean it may be necessary for players to restore or repair some elements of the facility, or the machines therein, and that they will be trapped inside for weeks, at least, requiring them to find somewhere safe to stay.


I can see the comparison to a dungeon crawl, but to me dungeon crawl = kill monsters, get loot, plot is an afterthought to justify the killing of monsters and getting of loot.

 

[Bone2pick]

Dungeon crawls are too often poorly developed plot wise, but they don't need to be. Anyway, why are the players trapped inside the facility?

 

[Grey]

Security lockdown, of course. That and navigation becomes difficult with Korsakoff's Syndrome.

 

[Bone2pick]

So plenty of enemy personnel but possibly no combat?

 

[Grey]

Minimal, but not none. And it may take the form of PTSD-inducing curbstomp battles.

 

[Bone2pick]

And how developed are the characters expected to be considering they have memory loss?

 

[Grey]

It won't be complete memory loss. I've run a game with amnesiac characters before, and the players took the ball and ran with it almost perfectly. I'd expect the players to have a firm grasp of their character's personality, but after that I'd expect them to remember snatches of personal history, the world beyond the facility, occupation or education... Recovering memories as we go will be a component of it, too.

 

[Grey]

May meld these two projects.