Saw this on Reddit and figured it should be here too for the record:
https://www.reddit.com/r/gametales/comments/5mbens/freemarket_the_autocannibalism_fad/
First time poster, so bear with me. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the game, Freemarket is a super futuristic, sandbox style game with a card based conflict system. The setup is that you (the players) are on a space station that has adanced to the point where there is no such thing as hunger, disease, or even death. It is futuristic to the point that if you are killed, or even hurt, the space station has a system that will just 3d print you a new body/organs/limbs and implant your old memories into it.
Part of character creation is that every character has to make up their own short term/long term memories (that the gm draws content for missions from), it’s worth it to mention that if your body is destroyed/perfect deathed, you lose some of your short term memories, included the memories of what just happened to kill you.
Enter Zig. Now Zig (a nefarious character that spans across most games I run) was a Thin Slicer, a personal able to extrapolate and sift through data to determine trends and fads that will be popular, then introduce them into the general populace for flow (cash). Zig was known for a myriad of things, but most notably for creating a certain fad that involved people eating their own organs many years ago.
In game, I get a ping (PM) from a group of guys who are excited to have finally found the illustrious Zig. We arrange a meeting and it turns out, they are trying to bring back the auto-cannibalism trend. As Zig enters the room, he is greeted by 3 people. Two men in the MRCZ (guild) and another man sitting at a dinner table.They explain to me the dilemma. The man they are trying to convince to eat his own innards is having a difficult time making the initial plunge. He starts saying that every time he tries to cut himself, he can’t stand the pain. Even after assuring the man that the stations medics will immediately print and repair him, he can’t muster enough strength to carry out his own disembowelment.
Now, there are multiple skills and abilities, but the one I decide to use is called Flood/Bleed. It allows me to leech people’s memories or feeling and emotions, alter them, and then replant them without their knowledge. So the obvious answer to me, is to replace the feeling of pain when he cuts himself, with a feeling of something nice. Maybe the feeling of hugging and cuddling puppies.
So I decide to stroll on over to the 3d matter printed puppy shop to grab some memories from an unsuspecting victim. As I greet the printer technician, she basically curses me out and refuses to let me use her memories. Upon approaching her a second time, she flips me the bird and I decide I have had enough. Now you have to make physical contact to Bleed memories, so I grabbed her middle finger and broke into her mind by force.
What happened next can only be described as a Looney Toons/Tom and Jerry-esque battle of epically slapstick proportions. Including but not limited to : giant hand fist fights, drawing large animated dogs and sending them to attack each other, frying pan attacks…etc. In the end, it was only a narrow victory for me with a compromise.
I failed to get the exact memory that I wanted of the puppies, but instead I had stolen the memory of this womans grandmother. Every warm and fuzzy moment she ever had, especially her last hug. As as I release her hand she forgets everything about her grandmother, in fact even that she ever existed in the first place.
With that taken care of, I trudge back to MRCZ headquarters, and begin the process of replacing this guy’s feelings of pain with the stolen warm and fuzzies of grandmother memories. Unfortunately, I botch the shit out of it, almost scramble the guys brains, and leave him with strange memories of an old woman he has never met before.
I give the guild members a bullshit reason to excuse myself and tell them that i will be back to fix it, then promptly exit stage left before they could interject. After doing some research, the GM informed me that the guild was going to try to recruit me, and if I said no. They were going to keep “deathing” me to erase my short term memory so I would forget turning them down, then rinse and repeat.
Shortly after finding this out, Ole Zig turns into a ghost, and goes off the grid and lives to fight another day.