Proposal for Memes

[Burzmali]

A few thoughts I had about the memes mechanic in GH2

As it stands, memes play a rather weak roll in the game, serving only to provide the player with a little nibble of information after the fact.  What I propose is a revamp that increases the roll of memes in the game and adds a slight risk to banging the chat button until you are blue in the face when interacting with an NPC.

In summary I propose that:

1. Memes be handled on the character gear level as well as the scene or story gear
2. Memes be given the ability to spread from character to character gear during interaction (or passively during scene changes)
3. Memes be expanded to allow a payload other than text
4. A skill be created to deal with memes
5. Quests be created to deal with memes

1: Memes belong to characters
Right now, memes belong to a story or a scene.  I suggest that character gears be allowed to carry a pointer to the memes associated with them.  This would allow only specific characters to have a bubblegum pop music meme and not less likely ones. This would make NPCs more uniques without requiring massive changes to the chat routine.  To achieve this, memes would take context tags to denote the traits and profession the most frequently adhere to.

2: Memes pass between characters
Right now, memes are universal.  I suggest that the player's party be allowed to spread memes from scene to scene by interacting with NPCs in the scene.  Likewise the player's party should acquire memes from interacting with NPCs.  Whenever the PC enters a scene, every NPC in the scene would have their memes checked for expiration and new ones added if the scene has a meme they lack, and the current function to check for expired memes would run when a character interacts with an NPC.

3: Memes expanded
Right now, memes have a max number of views and a time limit.  I suggest adding the following:
Context tags - to encourage specific character types to pick up memes
Virility - a measure of how 'catchy' the meme is
Decay rate - a measure of how the fast the population develops a tolerance to the meme
Payload - currently only text, expand to trait and skill bonuses and penality, interactions with other memes, and status effects (rare)

More speculative suggestions,

4: Memetics skill
A skill that would allow the PC to determine which memes a character is affected by and a chance to add new ones or counter existing ones in an NPC.  To do this, the PC would need to have a list of known memes store somewhere on their person, possibility in a computer as a form of software or something.

5: Memetics plots
A new meme is spreading through the youth of a spinner driving them to commit suicide.  Can the PC find and eliminate the meme fast enough or create a more virulent counter meme before it is too late?

Thoughts?

[Erathoniel]

Well, you could also use a similar system for plagues, I guess. Which would be awesome.

I'd think memes would be awesome. Potentially annoying, but awesome.

[Joseph Hewitt]

Quoting: Burzmali

1: Memes belong to characters

This is already somewhat possible. Meme messages can be limited by conditional scripts, so it's already possible to limit memes based on personality characteristics, factions, and everything else for which scripting commands exist. To link memes to jobs, a new command would have to be added.

Quoting: Burzmali

2: Memes pass between characters

Memes exist primarily to pass information to the PC, so allwoing the PC to spread them doesn't make sense to me. What purpose would this serve?

[Burzmali]

Quoting: Joseph Hewitt

Quoting: Burzmali
2: Memes pass between characters

Memes exist primarily to pass information to the PC, so allwoing the PC to spread them doesn't make sense to me. What purpose would this serve?

Well, I am suggesting that the role memes play in the game be expanded.  A couple of examples I can think of, off the top of my head, would be "L5 sucks" and "Aegis rules" memes.  When an NPC has the meme, they occasionally through out the appropriate phrase (i.e. "L5 pilots are a bunch of sissies!", etc).  When the PC has the meme they get a negative or positive reaction from members of the target faction.  If the PC chats with  an NPC they have a high reaction with (or uses a Memetics skill on the NPC) there is a chance that the meme transfers to the NPC as indicated by a chat like "Yeah, I feel the same way about X, but there's not much we can do about it."

Normally, that's that, but if the spinner's faction is contrary to the meme, a plot would occasionally pop up where the PC has to bail his new friend out of a jam, (i.e. "You've learned that the Rocket Stars Green squadron is hunting for X").

Also, if you actually concentrate on memetics you might receive missions that explicitly involve spreading a meme to as many people as possible (i.e. "Senator X has paid to help in his re-election campaign").

The general idea was to make a few new types of missions possible while slightly reducing the player's default behavior when chatting with NPCs and to add a little more variety to the dialog without adding more white noise.

[Therumancer]

Well, it's probably as wonky as my "Ghosts Of Mars" suggestion, but I suppose I can see it being a science fiction concept. Not sure of the point either.

 In Science Fiction killer memes are a big deal. The idea of something going through a person's brain like a catchy tune that can either force them to do something, or take up so much of their brain activity that they can't do anything besides sit there and sing "Don't Worry, Be Happy" or whatever until they die from dehydration.

 The concept of a set of words that when heard fire the exact pathways in a brain that a meditation monk or whatever would use to commit suicide is also a similar concept.

 As is the idea of a Meme that somehow achieves sentinence (natch) and becomes an entity of it's own.

 I know Wildstorm Comics played with the idea. I haven't done comics for a while, but back in the day I remember "Global Frequency" ran into a Meme based neural virus that turned people into Zombies and they were talking about the only way how to stop the spread would be to nuke the area more or less. They also did a satirical version in Gen-13 about a pseudo-benevolent Meme that took over the entire planet except for Caitlin Fairchild and was sticking around just long enough to solve a complex equsion and needed her help or something.

 It's more the stuff of straight Sci-Fi, or horror though. I can't see how it could be implemented in Gearhead, except perhaps mentioned.

 As far as spreading rumors as memes or whatever and having them catch on, I *DID* play a JRPG series (Persona 2: Eternal Punishment) which heavily used that concept as breakdowns in reality were causing belief (rumors) to become reality and you could cause effects by spreading them, but that wouldn't work with Gearhead at all.