Trinity RPG - Amnesiac Characters

[Slagheap]

So, I really like the idea of having a player in game with the highest level amnesia (meaning the player only knows what their stats are), but I've been struggling with a good system for letting them learn what their die pools and abilities are.

The system I've hit upon is derived from the wild psi rules. When ever the player takes an action he rolls only the controlling stat, while I roll the unknown ability dice. Each time the player rolls I keep track of how many successes he rolls and I also roll what I'm calling the Memory die (which functions like the Wild Psi die in post 418 games). The successes it adds or subtracts are only applied to the total successes the player is pooling to remember the given ability. Then I set the target at 10 or 15 successes pooled.

I think that system should work for remembering things (sorry if that doesn't flow very well), but I'm not sure what to do about XP gained during play. Clearly the player can't increase stats or buy things if he doesn't know what he has, but it seems odd to just have them just pool XP.

Have any of you dealt with this in the past, and how did you handle it?

-Slag

[SkyLion]

Seems to me that once they performed an ability they had dots in it would become clear that they had that skill and it could then be revealed and notated on the player's sheet.

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Example:

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"Where did you learn how to fight like that?"

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"I don't know!"

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ST: "You seem to be highly skilled in the arts of self defense..mark down martial arts at 3..."

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yes? no?

[metaphysician]

I'd be inclined to tell them stuff they are skilled in shortly *before* they actually use it ( when they are readying to fight or flee, looking over a broken VARG, etc ). Otherwise, there will be a *very* strong incentive to spend much time working out what one is good at outside of dramatic time, rather than actually following the more typical amnesia plot.

[BlueNinja]

I would recommend keeping the player's Abilities and Psi modes secret - for a while. However, keep the amount of XP he gets secret, and let him train to raise the stuff he wants to - but unless he has more than the XP needed to raise the given Ability, nothing happens. Sort of like a wish list, where he tells you what he wants to improve, and does the training/studying, but if he doesn't have the points neccessary, nothing happens. In this fashion, you don't even need to tell him that the ability has improved. It does involve a great deal more work for you the GM, though.

Alternately, after he's put some effort into trying to "learn" something that he already knows, you can let him mark it down on his character sheet.

[SkyLion]

yeah it seems to me that discovering a skill you had would be obvious. "Hmm..it seems i can rebuild an engine block pretty good!"

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Actually alot of that you wouldn't need to try..you would see an engine and just know what needed to be done.

[metaphysician]

Thats exactly what I mean. Its just, you shouldn't have to find out you *can't* repair an engine, by trying, starting, and then totally blowing it up.

Or, more pointedly, find out you *aren't* good at dodging by trying to get out of the line of fire of a heavy weapon, and only *after* you roll finding out you were rolling four dice. . .