Party amnesia

[Moogleproof]

I started a campaign once with all the PCs having complete amnesia. It was a paragon level campaign and the PCs woke up, naked, lying on cold stone slabs arrayed in a circle around an altar covered in runes. Beside each of them, on a makeshift mannequin was their gear. As they awoke, someone in the darkness, said "good, they are waking up" followed shortly by the sound of fighting and shouts and someone burst in the room, killed the priestly looking guy who obviously knew what was going on and shouted "kill the abominations" while his minions attacked the PCs. They had no clue who they were, what they were doing, where they were from or what to do now. It was a fun start to a campaign.

That's great! I started my current campaign in a somewhat similar fashion. The PCs woke up chained to the walls of a clearly incompetent Lesser Human (race from my homebrewed Ancient Greece-influenced setting) surgeon with a rusty scalpel who wanted to cut them open to see what was the difference between normal humans and lessers so he could save his race.

As for Arlough's idea, I think it could work, just as long as your players like the idea and aren't just trying to ruin it. I have planned a session that I've yet to run, but that has something in common with your idea. It's not completely the same, but in regards to the rail roads, which I thought would be the most difficult issue, I have planned to avoid it by making sure the PCs would definitely choose to be wherever it was that was starting point of the not-flashback-but-current-time, in your case the barge. In my case, the PCs would have to ignore a burning orphanage to dodge the spell that causes memory-loss, so although I'm being a bit a donkeyhole here (har har the BBEG burns an orphanage to lure you into a trap) I am feeling confident enough it'll go relatively well. Also, if the players are going to do something out-of-character, I'm just going to flat-out tell them they aren't doing a great job staying in character.

Made a bit of a mess from my text, so if I was incoherent please ask what I mean. I also simplified a LOT of my own situation.

 

[Moogleproof]

The PCs woke up chained to the walls of a clearly incompetent Lesser Human

Yes, my homebrewed race does have walls for appendages.... I guess he owns the walls in his own prison so grammatically I'm safe here.

 

[NN]

I dont understand what this idea is supposed to achieve.

It seems to have all the problems of a conventional railroad, but is far more complicated and fragile.

 

[Arlough]

Were I a player in this game, I'd do my best to get my character killed, just to see how the DM would handle it.

Be sure you don't have any twisted players like myself in your game before you run with this idea.

Fortunately for me, the preferred style of gaming is "collaborative storytelling". Actually, it isn't fortune, but design. That is the way we game and if people don't like that kind of gaming they usually either don't get to game the way they want, or if they are disrupting the fun of the rest of the group, they are told to find a different group to play with.

I dont understand what this idea is supposed to achieve.

It seems to have all the problems of a conventional railroad, but is far more complicated and fragile.

Watch Dark City, Memento, Big O, The Hangover, Eden of the East, The Long Kiss Goodnight, Blood+, Who am I? (Jackie Chan flick, not the song)
Like a detective drama, you have to piece things together to understand what is happening, but there is an added sense of urgency when you are trying to discover what you have done so you can resolve the issues that were created during that time.

Basically, the goal we are trying to achieve is a good, compelling story. And just as I am willing to work with my players, using their back stories to build compelling encounters will villains from their pasts, they are also willing to work with me on building a gripping narrative. Just because we know what will happen down the road doesn't mean there is a set way of getting there.

Fight Club starts at the end, goes back, goes back further, moves forward again to that same end, includes some flashback humor, and finally ends. But in the middle where Jack was running from damn near everybody after fleeing the police station, I was still tense and wondering if he was going to get away. We knew he would end up alive, with a gun in his mouth, speaking only in vowels, and it was still a compelling story to explore. Why can't this be similar?

 

[The Human Target]

Put me down as thinking it a great idea, but it doesn't really work in a game.

I'd do the Hang Over style thing myself.

 

[Umbran]

No, and for a very simple reason. For this to work, you would already have to have the outcome determined, and that is not how RPGs work.

With respect, pawsplay, that may not be how YOUR games work. Please do not make such statements for the rest of us. RPGs work the way we want them to work, group by group. You don't get to say how they work for some other group.

One of the best sessions I ever played was run by Piratecat, and started in media res. We started with the group several thousand feet above the ground, without parachutes. The bad guys had the parachutes, and we had to fight them on the way down to claim them and survive. We didn't know who the bad guys were, or why we were plummeting from the sky.

When we'd all landed safely, we cut back to the airplane, and played through what got us into that situation. Best darned action sequence and session start ever.

Yes, we were railroaded. We knew we had to end up jumping out of an airplane without chutes. We didn't give a crap. It was fun.

The OP is talking about an extremely long in media res scenario. If his players are on board with him pulling some cinematic stunts like that, there's no reason why it can't work. Yes, there will be some points the party will have to hit, or the whole thing falls apart. But for some players, how they get to a place is more important than where they're going, and for such players, it could be fun.

You do have to be sure you have the right sort of players, though, or it won't be fun for anyone.