Interesting idea I had today. I’ll probably be posting this around in a couple of places because it is a general concept that isn’t solely applicable to a specific game or genre. Going to be discussing a specific case but the ideas are applicable to similar amnesia style stories.
The idea started when I was creating a test character for the gorgon sorcerer heritage I had created. I don’t remember the exact process but the end product was a wood elf of the gorgon heritage who had worked as a servant in a high elf household only to be dismissed after two years and having those two years be extremely fuzzy and hard to remember. Her gorgon heritage was triggered a bit later when she was in a village watching some children play and was struck by an intense, unexplained sadness.
My idea was that she’d been subjected to repeated applications of memory altering and charming magic such that her memory is rather permanently shot. Some things she can’t forget even if she wants to and others just won’t stick.
For example, she might function well enough during an adventure but once it’s over she might forget it happened or else remember as a story she’d heard instead of something she lived. This is mostly to avoid the RP causing headaches for other players.
I figured maybe discuss things with the GM ahead of time to give my ideas on what happened relating that those would be the character’s subconscious suspicions (in this case, high elf nobles wanted an heir and one was sterile but they didn’t want to admit to it or give whatever legal compensation was due a surrogate. So memory and charm magic followed by kicking the surrogate out afterwards.) on the idea that these could be wrong.
For ongoing issues with the damaged memory the idea came to me of make an Int roll on events to see how I remembered them and record them in appropriate notebooks. Seared in mind here. Forget one element there. Forget everything somewhere else.
Then I started thinking about how to handle this as a GM because I might end up building this character and doing a GM emulator deal.
And I’ve been watching Risk Legacy on LRR’s AFK stream as well as getting to play a couple of scenarios of Gloomhaven. And the idea of having envelopes set up with different memories sealed in them that might be unlocked at certain points. In my case with the idea of a GM emulator this would require me knowing the triggers which could be a subconscious thing for the character.
Plus you could bring a bit of PbtA to it and in a partial success/hard choice sort of circumstance you’d have to decide between two or more envelopes with the others being destroyed, never to be read.
Possibly also have an envelope on hand for if some other player (in a typical campaign) tries to read or alter the character’s mind or memories. Which, if I’ve played the character well enough to that point might be the first clue the character’s more than just quirky and/or absent minded.
Which does come to another point for standard campaigns. To keep this something the other players aren’t immediately aware of the envelope thing would have to be handled very subtly. Perhaps with private messaging or text. It would be relatively easy in a digital game since there’s lots of ways to unobtrusively pass notes.
From RP perspective this is RPing mental illness. Pure and simple. You’d have to be careful to make sure it doesn’t become a caricature. The character would have a lot of coping mechanisms to avoid the situation being noticed and they’d have to be functional or you’re going to frustrate other people. As I said, done right people might just think your character’s a bit quirky until the final reveal.
It’s a very work heavy concept. And one I don’t think I’ll get to play both because it’s unfair to demand that much work from a GM and because of time constraints. Elements might be used here and there in games now that I’ve had the thoughts though.
