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Message: <blockquote data-quote="LonePaladin" data-source="post: 3878638" data-attributes="member: 6963">I thought of a thoroughly evil DM trick to pull on a player who doesn't want to think about his background.All too often, if you ask a group of players to come up with some sort of back-story for their new PCs, one of them will decide that his character has amnesia. It's a classic shtick from fiction and CRPGs, but it can be a real headache for a DM. Here's one way to have fun with it.Odds are, you gather everyone's character sheets at some point between character-creation and the first session. When you do this, take the forgetful PC's sheet and erase the name. Leave everything else alone, just wipe out that part. If he's got amnesia, why should he remember that?Next, ask that player to leave the room, or find some excuse to have him out of earshot. When you can manage this, do a little coaching for the other players. First, ask them to concoct a name for this PC, and explain to them that they've known this character, perhaps for some time. Certainly have some of them know this character before his memory-loss, though they won't necessarily know the event that caused it.Now, here's the fun part. Tell the other players that they get to play with the one player's mind. Whenever the forgetful PC does something that shows a personal preference — his choice of weapon, what he orders at the bar, a particular spell he casts more than once or twice — question him on it. "Why are you still swinging that sword? I thought you preferred axes." "You never touched wine before. What happened?" "I thought you always said that magic missile was too cliché." "When did you learn how to pick locks?"One thing you'll have to stress with this is consistency. Let the players know that they should try to avoid contradicting each other. It should only take about three of four sessions for the forgetful PC to commit himself to clearing up his amnesia, or find some way to reconcile the other players with his 'apparent' changes in personality.</blockquote>

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