Players as "spirits" turning NPCs into PCs

[Holy Bovine]

I saw this section of a sentence in another thread:This struck me as a really cool campaign concept. It would be an explanation for so many D&D cliches -- "Hello stranger we've just met. Come join us on our quest."

Bullgrit

While this may not be what you are talking about the first thing I thought of is a short story by H. Beam Piper called The Last Enemy in which a culture has been able to prove that one's consciousness continues to exist after death and can choose to be reincarnated into an unborn (or recently born) infant. In the story they have the technology to speak to these 'discarnate' consciousnesses who have all the memories, once 'dead', of all their past incarnations. These memories become part of the subconscious once the consciousness is 'alive' again but can be accessed through hypnosis and drug therapy.

This could be used as a means to explain why PCs, having just met, suddenly decide to embark on dangerous adventurers together - they unconsciously recognize each other from previous incarnations.