Advice on running an amnesia storyline

[Steverooo]

Having the Wizard find a spellbook whose writings seem "strangely familiar" is easy enough, but I can't very well have the Cleric feel a "natural" urge to pray to a being she has absolutely no knowledge of. Any advice how to handle that one? And I'm sure there are several other areas and potential problems I haven't thought of. Any help, advice or thoughts would be much appreciated.

Seeing their holy symbol, prayer book, song book, hymnal, or anything else related to their religion can trigger a Memory Test. A Prayer wheel, prayer fan, censor, thurible, vestments, votive or summoning materials for their deity, etc.

Worshippers of Garuda may be reminded of it by feathers, followers of Bastet may recall it upon seeing a cat. Followers of Bacchus may recall their previous revels whenever smelling wine... Whatever is (or was) associated with their former religion and/or worship will work. For a Paladin, a sword might trigger memories for BAB, Smite, and spellcasting (Holy Smite, or whatever).

In my Sci-Fi adventure, seeing a computer or Portacomp could recall programming skill, seeing a document in German recall speaking it, seeing a book or computer screen recall Information Gathering, etc. That storeroom full of other peoples' stuff was there for a reason!

 

[Blue]

I haven't been running a whole amnesia campaign, but one of the characters in my current campaign has amnesia++. Now, her life begins for her about 3 years before the start of play, and things have been coming out in play. For example, she tried to mimic a highborn to fit in and fell into the roll suspiciously naturally. Or she was level drained by vampires and had a deja vu flashback. One of the theories going around at one point was that her soul isn't even in the correct body.

I'm not going to say more about my case (my players read here) but I've found it a lot of fun to run and my player really seems to be enjoying it.

That said, it's something special and unique for her character. If eveyone was amnesiatic that would move it from special to commonplace, so it would need a lot of effort to keep it working well over a longer term. Make sure to plan lots of secrets, people they used to know, and such. Not to use early on - not knowing basic things (what year is it? who's the local duke?) will be fine early on - but things to keep coming up for the length of the campaign.

Cheers,
=Blue

 

[Roman]

I haven't been running a whole amnesia campaign, but one of the characters in my current campaign has amnesia.

That is also an interesting way of running an amnesia game.

 

[xazil]

I have run an amnesia campaign and it lets you put all sorts of funky things into the plot.

Like the characters are clones of a band of powerful adventurers who ascended to godhood, then recently a new band of gods just bumped off the old gods activiting the clones. The feedback from the attempt by the new gods messed up some of the clones, thus the amnesia. But there are/were more than one set of clones and the characters are only the most recently activated set so they have identical counterparts already active in the world. etc. etc.

 

[devilish]

Similar...but different ;-)

I'm running something close to an amnesia game -- Players! Keep out!

I've asked them to take their favorite character of all time -- their
25th level Uber-Paladin, etc. -- and rewrite them as 1st level.
They rerolled stats if they didn't have them -- if they did (and they
were 3rd edition) they had to subtract points every 4 levels over
1st, etc. They could change classes if they wanted to ....

As the campaign began, we flashed back to their last moments as
the ubercharacter, then they "woke up" in a museum-type setting
at 1st level, with minimal equipment (similar to the "Mind-wipe")
but they did _remember_ who they were.

Now, they can advance in levels as chosen at 1st but...
they can also try to do something that their ubercharacter was able
to do -- if they succeed, they are able to purchase that power
ala the "Buy the Numbers" supplement.

So, for instance, one character was a high-level thief/paladin in a former
life (strange, but true) -- this time around, they start off as
a first level thief (story-wise, seeing how much that character had
missed out by following a life of good, they now wanted to try
out the shady side.) Now, if the character makes any inkling
to wanting to heal themselves or turn undead, I'll refer to
the "Buy the Numbers" and allow them to spend XP to get
that ability back.

Over-complicated? Yes. Potential for the biggest Munchkin-ism
ever? Probably. Fun? You bet!

Probably on the road to complete absolute game-imbalance and
will end in the worst way possible ------ will let you know!

-D

 

[Zog]

I was actually in an amensia game - it worked fairly well.

The DM had us choose our 1st level (with feats and skill points) and give him two memories, things we still knew from the past. This allowed us some control over the characters - family, tutors, enemies, something.

Each level we could either level as we wished, or try and remember things from our past - in which case the DM told us what class we gained a level in.

It was a bizarre start - because the DM said anything goes for race. We had a fire genasi, a Vanari (monkey race from OA), a Yuan-ti and a normal human.
But it was interesting.

I do like the idea of an amensia game as a rational for rapid PC advancement. Sure the party can go from level 1 to 15 over the course of a game year - because they are simply remembering old skills.