MNESIS: In Living Memory (WIP, Worldbuilding)
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.
Behind every really cool mechanic and/or premise, there will always be the follow-up questions of “Why is this here?” and “Why is this part of the narrative?” MNESIS is no different. A magic system that requires memories in order to cast spells at all carries a lot of implications that come with it; with questions like “Why cast magic at all?”, “What purpose is there for it?”, “What would this society even look like?”, and “Is it even worth it to use magic?” MNESIS answers all of these questions and more, painting the world via diegetic snippets of text of one of its inhabitants teaching players everything they would ever need to know.
The Basics of
the Basics of Magic
I mentioned before how the magic system for MNESIS was inspired by a comment in a review of another tabletop game. The original premise remained the same, magic is connected through memory: one could use a memory of swinging a sword for an offensive spell, riding a horse to provide a quick escape spell, a promise kept to a friend for a defensive spell… Additionally, there’s the potential of a memory/spell reminding you of some ordeal or traumatic event. It’s these two sentences that became the structural bones for the entire world of the game.
Building narrative of the world went hand-in-hand with building the game’s system at times. As I added rules and mechanics, there already was a hint of narrative flair to them, so I had to build more on it. One such example is the “Emotions” used for spellcasting.
In MNESIS proper, stats are split into eight categories that serve as the “emotional anchors” for the memories required for spells, divided into four pairs: Joy & Sorrow, Fury & Terror, Vigilance & Surprise, and Enmity & Trust. When creating a spell, players have to choose one of these anchors, which determines the type of spell that can be cast. Now, the thing about magic is that, whether it has incredibly strict and logical rules in-universe or it’s completely freeform, is that it’s a little tricky to put down what it can do. Since I wanted to magic to be simple but freeform, I condensed magic into doing one of four things based on the things I’ve researched for the system: adding or creating, removing or destroying, changing something, or keeping something the same. Each of those things affect either something in the physical space or something abstract.
One idea that stuck around since around inception is the concept of equivalency, things having equal opposites. Originally, it started as a “positive/negative” energy thing, which then became “give/take,” which eventually became almost everything about the magic system having a pair of something.
Then the next question became “Where does the magic come from?”
During writing, I had (and still have, to be honest) a passing interest in psychology. I was studying a lot while in college and I figured I could get a little cerebral with it. Since the magic uses memories and emotions, one would assume that the part of the brain being used for it is the limbic system. But I didn’t want to just focus on the scientific side of things since…this is magic. Magic is inherently mysterious, even if it can be boiled down to a science.
Then question became “How is the magic a resource?” Memories are a currency in the game and magic is kept in flashcards for simplicity’s sake. But since the magic is a one-time use, the world would have to reflect that.
To include a little bit of ludonarrative flair, the flashcards that players carry around are also these Polaroid images that contain the power of the magic. When that magic is used up, the Polaroid melts and burns away, and the player has to destroy the flashcard with the spell on it. And since it’s all single-use, I made sure to include the fact that even the in-universe spellcasters are aware of it and have to dance around it, since actually practicing with them is wasting a memory, which results in the spell possibly backfiring on them.
Speaking of, once the magic had been established there was one more question to ask: “Who are the spellcasters?” Obviously, the players, but what about in the lore?
These spellcaster became “Sentimancers.” Sure, they use memories as the source of magic, but the thing that powers those memories and magic are the emotions attached to them. Emotions became sentimentality, which became “Sentimancers” and “Sentimancy.” Because it’s a TTRPG, players are going to make their own characters, so of course, anyone can (theoretically) be a Sentimancer. I made sure to include several details as to how one can become a Sentimancer, like a step-by-step process and how it feels for the person becoming one.
And with that, I had a magic system on my hands.
Why Do Anything
With Magic?
The question “Why do anything?” is a haunting one. Often in our lives, we’re faced with this question. We ask ourselves why we do the things we do? Why do we keep doing them? Why have we done them? Sometimes, you might just wonder if there’s any way that things can be different…
My magic system is also a victim of this question.
So, not to toot my own horn or anything (especially since the idea came from someone else and probably several other people had the idea before them), but having memories be the source of your spells is pretty cool. It’s a killer concept for anything, not just a game. It could make for a good book or movie or TV series or even a concept album. But sometimes, you’ll have a really cool idea for a world or a piece of media on your hands, and you have to come face to face with that question…
“Why?”
It’s a question that can stumble people. It’s happened to me before, and it’s certainly no different here. If the magic requires Sentimancers to lose their precious memories, why would anyone become a Sentimancer in the first place? Why would anyone use magic in the first place?
There are two reasons for it. The first is power. Some people are power-hungry. Some people want to be stronger, whether it’s for themselves or for someone else. Think of it like a weapon.
Let’s say that you’re a caveman in prehistoric times and you’re hunting for meat. The only thing you have is a spear. It works, you can stab things and throw it, and it can get the job done. But if you throw it, you’re left defenseless. But there has to be a better way to hunt without leaving you without a weapon, right? So you invent the bow and arrow. Now hunting’s a breeze and you don’t even have to be near any danger! …But then you have to take wind and distance into account. Sometimes, things are out of range or your arrows don’t deal enough damage. So you invent the gun, increasing wind resistance, range, and damage. But it’s not enough and it doesn’t hurt enough targets, so you invent the bomb. So on, so forth.
The second reason is that it’s the only thing that works against a certain type of creature.
Withing the lore of MNESIS, there’s a type of monster known as a “Stigmata,” which is created by a process called “Overmotion.” The important thing to know about this is that Stigmata are pretty much invincible, they cause so much destruction, and there’s no way to stop them…unless you’re a Sentimancer.
Magic is the only thing capable of damaging and defeating Stigmata. So naturally, people would have to practice magic in order to defend themselves from the Stigmata, even if it comes at a heavy cost.
The Rule of Cool is an excellent motivator to make things. But the Rule of Cool is not immune to being nonsensical, distracting, or completely abandoned in favor of much better and more efficient things. Sure, not everything needs a reason to exist and things can just happen. Things can be cool or interesting for the sake of it. But I feel like with a concept like this one, you need to think of the implications of that concept. How does it affect society? How does it exist in the world it occupies? How do people deal with its consequences?
If you’re going to be cool and awesome, at the very least ask yourself what might change because of it.
Asking What Might Change
But despite having all the building blocks necessary for the world, it would still feel like it’s missing something. Missing texture to it. Missing that feeling that you could sink into the world.
So I asked myself the same question I wrote in the last section: if magic is Polaroids, what changes? What might change?
I mentioned earlier how magic in MNESIS takes the form of Polaroid pictures, which implies that Polaroid cameras exist, which implies that the Polaroid Company exists within the world. That’s the sort of danger that you might come across when using language in such a specific way that brands become part of our vocabulary, like how “Band-Aid” was for bandages. So, how do you avoid a pitfall like that but still maintain the Polaroid element?
You create a historical event.
Instant film cameras still exist in this world, it’s just that it becomes a point of confusion when compared to the “real deal” that is the “Mnesis.” When those cameras were invented, they were given a name or three: “stills” because the images in Mneses move and these don’t, “Hanivers” after the inventor of the camera but also inspired by the “Jenny Haniver” skeleton, and “Pipes” after the image of the inventor smoking a pipe but also inspired by The Treachery of Images (or La Trahison des images in the original French) painting.
But what happens if Mneses and these polaroids look nearly identical? Well, you create a black market for “fake” Mneses. But what happens if there’s a black market for these things? Then you’ve created a “negative” source of creating Mneses where the memories are forcefully extracted from a victim and injected into your own body.
And what happens if there’s a method to forcefully extract memories? You create someone or a group of someones that use this technique and label it as the “forbidden art.” And those extracted memories, can you cast spells with them? Yes, but since the memories aren’t yours, they might backfire on you even worse than if you did it normally.
Worldbuilding is like setting up dominoes in a way. When you set one down, it leads to another, which leads to another, which leads to another… More and more until you’ve got a trail of questions and answers that you can keep building off of…or let players fill in the gaps themselves.
The thing about worldbuilding in a TTRPG is that you have to give players just enough information to paint a picture of the world, but not enough to limit their imagination when they decide to make their own setting or games or campaigns using your world.
In a weird roundabout way, TTRPGs are collaborations between the creators and players in the same way they’re collaborative between game masters and players.