DM Advice - character with partial amnesia (and he doesn't know it)

[OnCider]

I've just started a new campaign (Kingmaker) and have asked for detailed character back stories that I want to explore throughout the campaign. One of my players has really gone to town and has given me a very well-written 4000 word back story which is written in a journal. It talks about his father taking him away from his mother at an early age and from then on being a constant wanderer. His father eventually also gets killed (3 out of 4 of these character histories have violent parent deaths (!)).

Anyway, I had an idea to turn this around on the player a little. Perhaps the character is actually somehow killing people (including originally his own mother and perhaps later his own father) but his memories of the events are somehow changed. His father witnessed the original killing and then fled with the child when he realised that he had no memories of the event. This could be from some sort of programmed amnesia (but that is a 9th level spell) or perhaps he is possessed by some kind of entity that is messing with him (dominating him, killing people and then erasing the events from his mind) - I notice the Yithian in Pathfinder (bestiary 3) is such an entity that could perhaps do this.

Another idea was that he has some kind of split personality (Jekyll and Hyde) or something similar to the plot of Memento where he is purposefully making himself forget things.

The journal could become crucial to this. Perhaps at some point he discovered that his memories were being altered and wrote about it in the journal, however the evil side removed the page so the good side would not find out. The character might notice that pages were removed but didn't remember ever having removed them. Perhaps he comes across a fragment of a burned page in the fireplace of a previous home.

So I thought I'd post here to see whether anyone could offer any ideas (motivation of the entity?) or advice (perhaps mechanics - we're playing Pathfinder). Or maybe you think I might be being a bit harsh on my PC!

 

[MarkB]

It's an absolutely excellent idea if the player knows about it out-of-character and is okay with it.

If you drop this sort of thing on a player without a heads-up, it's likely to cause problems.

 

[OnCider]

Yes, I think you're right. It's his character after all. Perhaps I'll just tell him that he notices that his journal has a page or two missing that he doesn't remember removing then let him run with that.

 

[Sunseeker]

Yes, I think you're right. It's his character after all. Perhaps I'll just tell him that he notices that his journal has a page or two missing that he doesn't remember removing then let him run with that.

No. You need to fully disclose your thoughts. It's HIS character, not yours. Which means that the player is the only person who gets to decide his history, actions or motives. If you have an interesting idea for his character its fine to discuss it with him, but you have absolutely no room to add things to his story, major or minor, without consulting the player and gaining his consent. Doing anything without his FULL knowledge is way over DM bounds.

 

[Elf Witch]

I have to agree with the others you are over stepping your role of DM to do this to him without his permission. Talk to him first. As a player I would be royally pissed if a DM changed a major aspect of my back story like this.

Now I have added whys to a background without the player knowing. For example one of my players in his back story talked about finding his brother;s murdered body one of his goals is to find out who did it. He has a pendent that came from the killer. But hat is his only clue.

What he doesn't know was the his brother was killed by a ranger who was trying to stop his brother from blowing his cover. the ranger is a good guy his brother was working with the bad guys.

 

[Unwise]

I find ENWorld very enlightening sometimes. Especially with regards to what a DM must consult with players over. Before coming here I had never before encountered the idea of checking with players if it is OK that they get captured, gets lycanthropy, that their mentor turns out to be a bad guy or that their history is not what they think it was. The idea that these things are outside DM fiat is utterly new to me. It's an interesting perspective, if not one that I particularly agree with. Personally I only draw the line where a player will feel that their PC is 'ruined' now. Even then, I will utterly ruin PCs with the consequences of their actions, just not via railroaded plot.

Regarding the OP, could you consider a curse or lycathropy rather than mental control? That could tie in well with the players heritage. Some options include:

- The mother was a succubus, the father found out and tried to flee with the child. The mother is looking for the child and will stop and nothing to get him back. The random deaths that tended to happen in towns before they left were the mother or her henchmen tracking down the father.
- Alternatively, the PC has the succubus bloodline, or half a soul or whatever and is sometimes overtaken by this dark side.
- The father is a lycanthrope and found out that he passed this on to his son. So he took his son and fled, moving each time the lycanthrope manifest itself and something terrible happened.
- There is a family curse, the father left the mother when he found out, to protect her. Now that he is dead, it has moved on to the son. The curse could control them on odd occassions.
- The PC is possessed. His bloodline has taken on an oath to trap a powerful demon. The thing is, they do it inside themselves. The evil cult found out where the father was living so he had to leave and keep moving. The father always wanted to tell the son about this when he was ready, but died first. When he was killed, his journal was taken along with some odd family heirlooms. Maybe the curse passed down to the son fully then?
- A dark wizard in the family line. He tries to re-enter the world by overtaking his decendants.
- A dream-demon/wizard/being haunts the PC. When he sleeps he sometimes does not wake up properly and sleep walks trapped in nightmares.

I think the player might prefer a curse or family heritage more than being straight out mental controlled.

In my game, a changeling character had a backstory that said his parents were killed horribly by a group of adventurers. When he tracked them down, he found that they were seemingly righteous paladins. The players knew that changelings in the area were having false memories implanted into them to make them assassinate people, but never stopped to question this PCs mental stability because "that's what he wrote in his backstory". So they slaughter the paladins and do the BBEGs work for him. The PC then starts having his memories disolve into mist and is under a compulsion to "return to the black tower for debreifing". I get the impression that most DMs on enworld would not approve of that

 

[pemerton]

If you have or can find a copy of Over the Edge (20th anniversary edition currenlty on sale, at least in Australia), it has - among a lot of interesting and solid GMing advice - a discussion of how to do this sort of thing. The suggested approach there is to get the other players on board, and then to have them engage in roleplay -for example, talking about events that happened to the party but were never actually played out at the table - that gradually reveal to the player of the amnesiac/deluded PC that his/her PC's perception of the world is somehow off-kilter.

In terms of the issue of GM vs player authority I would tread carefully - Over the Edge has slightly different expectations there compared to D&D - but you might be able to get the player's OK to doing something quirky with his PC's journal without actually tipping your hand as to what it will be.

Perhaps I'll just tell him that he notices that his journal has a page or two missing that he doesn't remember removing then let him run with that.

I like that idea - it can go nowhere much, or a long way. Test the waters first, as it were.

I once had a player whose PC came into the game when the other PCs found him lying unconscious in the forest with a scar on his neck. Identifying his backstory was meant to be a big part of the game, but as a GM I flubbed it a bit and it ended up being a bit of a letdown (I can't remember the details, just that I failed in my duty to come up with something big enough to deliver on the suspense and build-up).

 

[S'mon]

It's an absolutely excellent idea if the player knows about it out-of-character and is okay with it.

If you drop this sort of thing on a player without a heads-up, it's likely to cause problems.

Yes - you need to at least edit the published/official version of the backstory to give an indication that something is up. You don't want the player thinking that his own in-mind version of events is official, only to later be smacked in the mouth by a wet kipper.

 

[S'mon]

No. You need to fully disclose your thoughts. It's HIS character, not yours. Which means that the player is the only person who gets to decide his history, actions or motives. If you have an interesting idea for his character its fine to discuss it with him, but you have absolutely no room to add things to his story, major or minor, without consulting the player and gaining his consent. Doing anything without his FULL knowledge is way over DM bounds.

IME few players are as prickly as this, but you do need to be careful, and know your player. If you think they would react like Shidaku then don't do it.

Edit: Also, IME a 4,000 word backstory is a big WARNING sign that this guy may well be very sensitive to you messing with his 'canon'. These tend to be the 'special snowflake' players who only care about playing a pre-conceived PC (usually recycled from other games) exactly the way they want, and have no real interest in your campaign per se.
Personally I strongly discourage anything over half a page, and the guy with the 5-page backstory is usually not a guy I want in my game, PC or player.

 

[Sunseeker]

IME few players are as prickly as this, but you do need to be careful, and know your player. If you think they would react like Shidaku then don't do it.

Edit: Also, IME a 4,000 word backstory is a big WARNING sign that this guy may well be very sensitive to you messing with his 'canon'. These tend to be the 'special snowflake' players who only care about playing a pre-conceived PC (usually recycled from other games) exactly the way they want, and have no real interest in your campaign per se.
Personally I strongly discourage anything over half a page, and the guy with the 5-page backstory is usually not a guy I want in my game, PC or player.

Hey hold on a second. I can write up a 5 page backstory in about an hour if I've got a good idea and decide to run with it. I've lost a lot of characters I've put a lot of effort into over the years, often before they ever get anywhere either. For people who are good at writing and have a good idea of their character, writing 5 pages is a drop in the bucket. How okay they are with their character dying is variable. I come up with new character concepts about every 10 minutes. When one dies, it's not particularly surprising that I'll have another, similarly well developed character pressed and ready with a similarly long backstory.