MNESIS: In Living Memory (WIP, Mechanics)
Solo Project | Tabletop role-playing game about sacrificing memories to cast magic | Notepad, BInAS | All worldbuilding & narrative aspects, used BInAS as a base for rules
MNESIS: In Living Memory is a tabletop role-playing game where players are spellcasters that use their memories and emotions for their magic. The origin of this idea came from a comment someone made in a review of a completely different TTRPG, and I got so inspired by how it was described that it became the basis and focus of the project. The game uses BInAS (Balanced Integrated Attributes System) by Valery North—also used for haer game Piviotal Destinies—for character stats and rolling to determine the success of an action.
The main draw of the game is its magic system, represented by flash cards (or flash paper, if possible). These cards not only contain spells to heal or harm or alter or maintain, but also memories of the players’ characters that tell their stories. While the system is easy to understand and has rules that must be followed no matter what, it provides players with the freedom to do whatever they please through the power of loopholes and lateral thinking (with examples provided to them within the rulebook).
However, spells are single-use. When a spell is cast, the associated memory disappears with it, as well as all the benefits and drawbacks that come with it. When this occurs, the players must actively destroy the spell card to signify the memory being “burned” and used up.
The game aims to strike a balance between casting your powerful spells in a pinch and keeping them for the benefits in spite of the drawbacks, to solve a problem with magic or hold onto it for a better time.
Finding the Perfect System
Figuring out the bones for MNESIS was pretty difficult at first, actually. I knew that I had a spell system that used memories, but that was about it. So, the first thing I did was amend the concept a little: memories are attached to emotions, which are what charge and determine the type of spell being cast. Awesome, I could now work with that. I figured that emotions could be a good replacement for stats. All I needed to figure out now was which stats to use, which emotions could represent it, and how rolls even work.
Early on into development, I knew that I wanted everything to be about balancing. You can’t rely too much on specific emotions, you can’t rely on magic too much, everything had a sort of “give and take” way of going about things originally. But how would I represent something like that? At first, I had the idea of using something like Charles E. Osgood’s Semantic Differential scale. Each emotion would have an opposite attached to it, so “Happy” and “Sad” would be two ends of the scale, making something based off Robert Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions. There would be something along the lines of “you can’t minmax and rely on one emotion only, that will throw you off balance and cause trouble for everyone mechanically.” I wasn’t entirely sure how, but I knew that I’d figure it out along the way when it comes to me in the middle of the night.
It was incredible, I knew I had something on my hands. I just needed to refine it.
And then it turns out that someone already beat me to the punch on that, hahaha!
Valery North is a writer and game designer who created games like Pivotal Destinies, Our Deeds Worthy of Song (Honest!), and Waning Words. Hae is also the creator of the Balanced Integrated Attributes System, shortened to BInAS, used for Pivotal Destinies.
The basic premise of BInAS is that stats are divided into pairs of opposites; things such as Strength vs. Dexterity, Wisdom vs. Intelligence, Physical vs. Magical. Each pair has a “pivot” that you place on a set of numbers and determines how good you are in certain areas. When it’s time to roll for a skill, you must roll higher or lower than your pivot depending on which stat of a pair the game is asking for. This sort of balance is, frankly speaking, literally the thing I needed most and the sort of thing that would be perfect for MNESIS.
So I downloaded the System Reference Document, I read through Pivotal Destinies to get a grasp of the system in action, and I got to work. As I did, I chatted with Valery over Bluesky from time to time to discus the specifics of the system and asking for any feedback on the game. By then, the game’s bones came into form: stats are named after emotions, and each pair of stats focused on a specific type of action (physical, mental, social, resilience).
The Magic of Magic
(among other things)
Finding the right system is one challenge. Trying to make the actual magic system is another.
As mentioned, magic in this game is rooted in memories and emotions. Specifically, it uses one of eight based on Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions: Joy, Sorrow, Fury, Terror, Vigilance, Surprise, Enmity, and Trust. The question is, what does this magic even do?
For starters, I thought about all the different schools of magic and what they all specialize in, using Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition as a base. They had abjuration (protection), conjuration (creation), divination (learning), enchantment (manipulation), evocation (using energy), illusion (trickery), and transmutation (changing). I tried to expand from there, looking among other sources online to see if anyone has any other types of magic that I might be missing, only to discover that so many people have so many different types of magic for very specific circumstances. Wanting to make spell creation not an arduous task, I decided to make everything simpler but still allow players to have as much freedom as they can find. So, I boiled everything down to the barest of barebones.
Magic can do one of four things:
Add to the world (creating, healing, enhancing)
Remove from the world (destroying, damaging, debilitating)
Change something (transforming, moving, manipulating)
Keep something the same (protecting, blocking, preventing)
I also wanted the magic to have at least a few loopholes involved, too. That’s why I decided to include different levels of examples to give players an idea of what’s possible or what is considered “fair game.”
The potential overlap between spell types wasn’t 100% intentional, but it also wasn’t completely unintentional.
Of course, even if this is mostly freeform, there still needs to be a bit of balance just so everyone doesn’t have nukes on hand, even if everyone makes the agreement to not just have nukes on hand. True to life, we all have some memories that are easier to remember or more formative than others. So, why not rank spell strength based on that? But still, it’d feel a bit impractical or limiting to have the strongest memories affect everything and deal the most damage. So I came up with a solution: depending on the strength of the memory, you have different “maximum values” for certain parameters that you can choose from.
All spells start at the minimum value for each of four parameters: Number, Duration, Range, and Health. When making a spell, you select three of them to use and/or alter. Depending on the memory type, you have different ranks for each parameter available to you. So, a “Major” spell’s Number parameter can be either “Single” or “Multiple.” It just depends on what the player wants for their spell.
The only catch is that all the parameters must be obeyed. If a spell says that it targets a whole area, you have to use it on an area. You can’t just single out one person unless that area of effect only has that one person.
And finally, memories are about things or people or feelings. It’s how we remember how skilled we are at a thing, how we remember a relationship, or just how intense something felt at the time. A memory should have purpose beyond just being fuel for your magic. They should do things besides that, and casting those spells should be a mechanical sacrifice besides just forgetting something and roleplaying it. It’s for these reasons that memories have “enhancements” and “drawbacks.”
When making a spell, you write down what happens in the memory and you choose one of three options to give you a bonus and a different one to give you a penalty. As long as the spell is still in your arsenal and hasn’t been used yet, you have access to all the good and bad that comes with it.
And of course, when you finally decide to cast the spell and “burn” the memory attached to it, you have to actively destroy it. All spells are written on flash cards (or flash paper, if possible). You have to tear it, crumple it, burn it, whatever. Unless there’s a way to remember it, the memory is gone forever. This is here to help the “ludonarrative” aspect of it, to really get players in the mindset of the world around them and make them feel like they are losing memories without actually doing so.
The intent of the game is to use flash paper, as within the game’s world, magic is stored in items that look like polaroid photographs. When used, the items burn and melt away like old film reels do. So, the players use the flash paper for half of its intended purpose: to burn it. Granted, it can be a bit dangerous playing around with fire in this way, so there are alternatives to destroying the spells or even the material they use.