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Message: <blockquote data-quote="shilsen" data-source="post: 3492449" data-attributes="member: 198">As Rackhir posted above, it's from Spell Compendium. It originally came out in Complete Arcane. It sounds like a cool idea, but as usual, you'd have to make the judgement call on how it works with your particular set of players. It's definitely not a concept that would work with all groups. I've got a pretty free-willed group of players too, and the way I would do it if I used your idea would be to leave the eventual choice of which way to go up to the PCs/players. Once they gradually came to the realization that they were actually bad guys who'd been reprogrammed, the PCs would still have the memories of being good guys (the caster of Programmed Amnesia can include a trigger event to remove some or all of the programming, but I wouldn't use that option), and could try to act on them instead and actually become the heroes that they were forced to be. Think of Schwarzenegger's character in "Total Recall" as an example. If you leave that up to the players and PCs to decide, then it gives them the choice to retain their character concepts, or part of it,while also having a lot of scope for fun roleplaying and adventures as they struggle between their 'natural' and 'programmed' characters. Something which is a big no-no for me as a DM is messing up a player's character concept, but messing with it in the short-term is just fine, especially if you can make sure that the player trusts you. That's precisely what I did with Gareth, Kizmet, the demon in his sword and finding out that he never was a paladin. AviLazar knew there's no way I would permanently remove his paladinhood, so he rolled with it very well, and it led to some really fun stuff in-game, created some very nice roleplaying situations for him, and opened up a whole lot of future plot points. And he ended up as a paladin again. Everyone wins. In short, I think your concept can work out just fine. Then, in that sense, the past of every character in every campaign is irrelevant."Dark Dungeons"? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />As for no in-game magic changing the personalities of the players, that may be true, but whether in-game magic - or anything else - changes the personalities of the characters depends on the player's willingness and ability to roleplay influences on the character. If I told you that Mordain had reworked Nameless' personality and memories to make him a self-aggrandizing NE megalomaniac with the primary aim of taking down the Brelish monarchy or to make him an CG crusader with an especial dislike for goblinoids and the nation of Darguun, as a player you could still say, "Screw that - I'm going to play Nameless exactly the same way and ignore it." So you're right, in-game magic can't change the character personality, though theroretically in-game magic plus me going "No, your character can't do X now" or "Your character does Y now" would change the personality. But since the latter is a lousy idea, I'd never do it, which means it's squarely in the hands of the players. I just figure that having character personality not change or develop at all, whatever in-game events happen, is a little boring. But that's up to the player to decide.Someone sounds put upon <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />As in the PCs will deny and delude themselves that they have no influence on what happens to them? Sounds about right <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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