Flashbacks?

SYSTEM: ANY

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Jolly Kwanzaa, Super Solstice, Happy New Year.

I read Edgar Cantero's Meddling Kids over the holidays and am wondering how you'd turn it into a CoC scenario. Specifically, how could you use flashbacks to further the story instead of straightjacketing everyone by what has already happened?

One way is just to have the flashbacks strictly defined, of course: the GM calls for them and the details get filled in buy the end of the scene isn't really in doubt. But I'm looking for something a bit more free-form.

In Encounter Theory (and elsewhere) there's an idea that certain scenes provide a bit of information for the final boss fight, and that's what I'm thinking of. Maybe if you defined what that information needed to be closely enough (and had players who were willing to go along with it) you could say, "this flashback will define whether Bad Guy was at the scene back in the day." Though I haven't read DramaSystem, it might be a bit like a supplication: you want X result, and you get it or not.

In that case, the PCs could call for a flashback any time they want, to remember a crucial piece of information, even if they're running from Old Man Withers-cum-shoggoth.

That seems do-able, though it would add to the complexity. For time reasons, you'd probably want to limit the number of flashbacks to one per PC, and maybe one team one.

Heh...you could also do Rashomon if your players were up to it: all the flashbacks are the same events, but froma particular point of view.

Anyway...thoughts? Would it bend the scenario too much?