One of the ideas I was playing with in MfoM was the distinction between player & player character…

One of the ideas I was playing with in MfoM was the distinction between player & player character with a ‘possession’ metaphor, & how that relates to the time loop. I didn’t go so far with it. Maybe in Book of the Damned I’ll have the player be a possessing-spirit.

Like, in MfoM, the player character’s soul from the future possesses her past self, providing information about ‘future’ events from other timelines, & the two converse, but that’s not a primary mechanic, nor does the player control much of that.

But, I had originally envisioned a kind of gameplay where the player could only talk to the player character & try to convince her to do things. Maybe that makes more sense in a game that doesn’t also have the time loop.

Mechanics involving hallucination of instruction vs dissociation from action could be interesting as well, but perhaps belong in different games. If the same person experiences both, they might group them together.

Dissociation from action — at least, the flavor where the origin of the action is a genuinely different will (like alien hand syndrome) — is only noticeable if the two wills don’t have common cause. We do things before deciding to do things all the time.

It’s only when a plausible explanation cannot be confabulated that it’s noticeable.

That’s potentially interesting from a gameplay POV, since if we assume the player has the player character’s bests interests at heart, it means the player has information the player character doesn’t.

It’s normal for a player to have information the player character doesn’t in a VN, but it’s not normal to draw attention to this state. MfoM tried to, & there’s more to be done in that domain.