Post/Author/DateTime	Post
TheLastEvilDrow 08-27-07, 07:19 PM	I'm thinking of running an Eberron campaign for my group, and I wonder if starting the campaign with the characters suffering from amnesia would be a good idea or not. They'd have forgotten the last four or five years, and it allows for all sorts of power-groups to target them. Their goal would be to find out what happened to their memories and to prevent being done in by forgotten enemies. Any ideas or suggestions?
Charles Phipps 08-27-07, 09:21 PM	Well the obvious questions is how did all of the characters lose their memories and is it going to end up Bourne-like in that they discover they're highly trained killers? If so, how do you bring that out slowly?
TheLastEvilDrow 08-27-07, 09:58 PM	My plan would be to start them off at first level, how they lost their memories (and skills) still undecided. Possibly related to the Day of Mourning or whatever it was they were doing. The idea being that they worked for some organization as high level agents (adventurers with specific agendas). Bringing it out slowly is much easier, just have them earn their levels back, slowly uncovering the secrets of their former lives. One potential way to lose their memory is through death. Perhaps they were recently resurrected for whatever reason, but they've slowly lost their memories, retroactively, from the time of death. Thus if it had been two years since they died, they'd lose two years prior to their death in memory, for a net loss of four years. Just an idea, not entirely sure yet. Sort of working it all out, hence the posting on the forum!
Rekko 08-27-07, 10:43 PM	Go for it! I really like the idea of them gaining their memories as they advance in level. However, you can go up a level quite fast in early levels, so it will be your job to pace that or choose what specificly they have learned from their past. Remember that Eberron is a low-level world so maybe your PCs were say 5th level prior to loosing their memories (and levels) What power groups/organisations will you make them worked for? Whose going to hunt them? Rekko
Rechan 08-27-07, 11:17 PM	Just a side note. "Amnesia" does not cause people to lose skills. Someone who has long term amnesia like you describe can still drive a car without having to re-learn, because the part of the brain that holds memory (and is thus damaged) is not the same part of the brain that retains skills. Granted, this is fantasy, so human brains don't have to function in the same scientific fashion - for all we know, the human bodies could operate on the Chinese idea of the five elements. So how I would do this? They had their memories wiped with spells. Someone using "Modify Memory". In addition, they were hit with enough negative levels to bump them back down to 1. So someone basically kidnapped them, tore their memories out and had some Wight beat down on them, then dumped them somewhere. Then, things trigger them remembering something. A familiar site, a person, a voice, a name, an item. It could be that the milk maid walking down the street reminds one of the PCs of the farmer's daughter he shacked up with when they were using a barn as a safehouse. The smell of a dead cat takes another PC back to the crypt where their target was hiding. Things like that. My thinking would be that the PCs were agents of Group X, and they stumbled across something Big. This Big Thing could incriminate Group X, or it could incriminate Group Y. Either X or Y kidnaps the PCs and totally rips it out. Why the PCs had their memories wiped, rather than simply killed, well that's up to you.
Splendide 08-28-07, 01:27 AM	They all washed up on the shore of Lake Galifar, on the Day of Mourning, with no recollection. They don't know where they're from, who they are, and they really have no idea where to go. They could probably get away with posing as Cyran refugees.
ArcTan 08-28-07, 02:41 AM	Go for it! I really like the idea of them gaining their memories as they advance in level. However, you can go up a level quite fast in early levels, so it will be your job to pace that or choose what specificly they have learned from their past. Remember that Eberron is a low-level world so maybe your PCs were say 5th level prior to loosing their memories (and levels) What power groups/organisations will you make them worked for? Whose going to hunt them? Rekko The amnesia thing actually makes the whole concept of levelling up (getting better and better at what you do by leaps and bounds as you do it) make *more* sense than it usually does.
ArcTan 08-28-07, 02:42 AM	Just a side note. "Amnesia" does not cause people to lose skills. Someone who has long term amnesia like you describe can still drive a car without having to re-learn, because the part of the brain that holds memory (and is thus damaged) is not the same part of the brain that retains skills. It depends. The thing about brain damage is that, well, it's not exact. All kinds of crazy things can happen to the brain after trauma depending on what parts were damaged and how severely. The basic conceit of the Bourne Identity -- he actually still has all his skills, he just doesn't remember that he has them, and has to be put in a situation where he needs them before he can use them again -- is obviously stylized for Hollywood but nonetheless makes a certain degree of sense.
TheLastEvilDrow 08-28-07, 04:27 AM	Yeah, I gotta admit that my younger brothers playing KOTOR also inspired this campaign concept, because if I am not mistaken, the protagonist in that game is actually the mind-wiped, clean slate'd antagonist who set some crazy stuff or something (never played the game myself). And as its been mentioned, the effect could easily wipe memories as drain levels. Day of Mourning in particular seemed most likely as a candidate for cause or the assumed cause (until it later reveals something else was to blame or something). The concept of having certain things trigger flashback is perfect, and the milkmaid-barn safehouse one in particular is humorous. :D Washed up on the shores of Lake Galifar is also really good. If I remember correctly, in the chapter about running an Eberron campaign, they mention something called Eldritch Machines, which have no defined abilities, but rather are just sort of like the doomsday devices of adventure stories. That or the Day of Mourning (which itself is pretty undefined) would be likely choices for what caused the amnesia. Another thing I thought of: Changelings. Their presence adds a layer to such a campaign as the PCs may ask around for places people have seen them and may end up tracking down changelings hired to double as them for good or ill.
maollelujah 08-28-07, 12:48 PM	I had thought of something similar, and I was going to have them wake up in hospital beds in Skyway to find that most of Sharn has been destroyed by a destructive cloud that kills and mutates. They were going to need to find out who did it, which would lead themselves ultimately to themselves.
Hopeless 08-28-07, 03:57 PM	I'm thinking of running an Eberron campaign for my group, and I wonder if starting the campaign with the characters suffering from amnesia would be a good idea or not. They'd have forgotten the last four or five years, and it allows for all sorts of power-groups to target them. Their goal would be to find out what happened to their memories and to prevent being done in by forgotten enemies. Any ideas or suggestions? What if they had been captured and had been replaced but they were kept in suspension and linked to the originals so they could retain any knowledge they didn't have ala Autons (Doctor Who monster) or the Foothold aliens in stargate? The mourning freed them and unknown to them they managed to escape to freedom before the after effects of what happened to them caused them to forget. They wake up with amnesia because their last memories date back maybe a decade or so and they have no idea what happened meanwhile because their source has dried up their doubles have had to disappear causing a lot of confusion in their lives as their former friends and perhaps families now think they're traitors or worse... fiends! Of course as they develop they get better at certain skills as the memory download works both ways and they're recollecting things their doubles did although they might react differently and use those skills differently as eventually they will start to stumble onto what really happened and perhaps House Cannith had a hand in their "duplication" and perhaps one of the other organisations did as well and they want this loose thread eliminated before either they or anyone who knows them before or after figures out what happened and more importantly who was behind it...
OctaviusIII 08-28-07, 04:12 PM	I have to admit, I'm not too much a fan of using the Mourning unless it's more than just a way to have them forget everything. There needs to be some kind of irony to it: they may have caused it, and they survived because a colleague teleported them away, only to have them all be amnesiacs at the other side. (The wizard might have died on the other side of the teleport, so they woke up with a dead body in the middle of a grassy field). That's the first clue the PCs get as to what happened, and give them back their levels and memories slowly.
TheLastEvilDrow 08-29-07, 01:23 AM	More awesome ideas. This board rocks. I'm thinking of having them wake up, a day or so after the Day of Mourning, floating in Lake Galifar, on the coast opposite of what had been Cyre. A prosperous fisherman, in an act of compassion, takes them to a local Healer's Guild enclave, where due to the magical nature of their illness, and the lack of real wealth from the fisherman, the PCs are tended for several months, in a fatiguing coma like state, in and out really, due to the whole nature of their memory and level loss. So when they wake up, the Treaty of Thronehold and the whole war is over, but they can't really remember what they were doing in the war anyway, and now they (in theory) feel indebted to the fisherman who was so kind to pay for their continual care. Causing the Mourning is definitely an idea I had (although I want to throw in feverish flashbacks of the Mourning, but I can't find any details on what it looked like at all, so do I just improvise a huge devastating event?) was to have them be part of the reason why the Mourning happened. Perhaps having gone to Xen'drik to recover some item, which turned out to be an eldritch machine slash artifact that went all crazy and destroyed Cyre (for some reason, Akira pops in my head). Having just seen the Bourne Ultimatum, I am also considering the idea that (and in Paycheck), the PCs volunteered to be wiped clean, which they soon discover as they try to figure out what they had done.
Mr_Nakami 08-29-07, 02:27 AM	Not sure what to add to the W5(What where, when, why, how) but consider if it happened once it can happen again. It's one thing for a group of adventueres to lose thier memories but imagine the consequences of such an occurence happening to a high ranking general on the eve of war, or a poweful wizard to whom the Pcs need to remove a curse. Need I even mention multiple personalites in admist all this?:P
Domenic 08-29-07, 07:53 AM	This thread is funny, 'cuz it coincides with an idea I had a while ago (namely, an amnesia campaign with some of the features mentioned). Here are all the notes I've collected for myself while thinking about such a campaign. They're messy, but might help some people. Any players of my campaign who stumble upon this, of course, should not read. THE PLAYERS CAUSED THE MOURNING!!! Amnesia. Horror campaign. The players start out at level 2 or so. With amnesia. They were alternately (depending on their background): Part of a strike team sent into Cyre to stop something (multiple strike teams could have converged) Part of the Cyran group working on whatever it was Investigating on a mission for some other group (Vol, dragons, etc.) That kind of thing Maybe do a few things. They get dark hints, perhaps certain people hate them for reasons they can't articulate. Pretty soon they find that the borders of the dead-gray mists are expanding, for no known reason. They have to venture into the Mournland (which is what Cyre is now called, news to them) to attempt to find the cause. Finally, the come face-to-face with the realization that they caused the Mourning, leaving their memories wiped. Climax of the campaign, near the middle-end.More Amnesia Maybe they could start being prisoners together, of a mysterious shadowy group (not the Emerald Claw) that is underground enough that the players will have no idea who it is for a long time into the campaign. They've been having their memories wiped over a period of years by magic, kept in a coma while the process goes on—but something/someone interrupts this process. Someone rescues them, tries to get them out, but is killed in the process, thus leaving them with a huge mystery: why were they being memory-wiped? Who was doing it? What was their past? What has happened in the world in the last few years? Why are they important? Why not just kill them? [as a DM, I need to answer the last one] Alternately, the memory-wiping mechanism could be induced by something besides their captors—their captors are keeping them because of what they've done, but perhaps what they've done has itself wiped their memories of it—the captors aren't doing the wiping. Something happens to interrupt the continual wiping (quori could probably do this…). There could be changelings out in the world taking their place, in their absence. With any luck, this could force the characters into "who's a Skrull?"-esque paranoia, possibly about each other. The changelings could themselves hint at it. This would work especially well if one of the players was himself a changeling, 'cuz then he's easy to accuse since he's probably been using his abilities indiscriminately. "There needs to be some kind of irony to it: they may have caused it, and they survived because a colleague teleported them away, only to have them all be amnesiacs at the other side. (The wizard might have died on the other side of the teleport, so they woke up with a dead body in the middle of a grassy field). That's the first clue the PCs get as to what happened, and give them back their levels and memories slowly." "I'm thinking of having them wake up, a day or so after the Day of Mourning, floating in Lake Galifar, on the coast opposite of what had been Cyre. A prosperous fisherman, in an act of compassion, takes them to a local Healer's Guild enclave, where due to the magical nature of their illness, and the lack of real wealth from the fisherman, the PCs are tended for several months, in a fatiguing coma like state, in and out really, due to the whole nature of their memory and level loss. So when they wake up, the Treaty of Thronehold and the whole war is over, but they can't really remember what they were doing in the war anyway, and now they (in theory) feel indebted to the fisherman who was so kind to pay for their continual care." Pasted from <http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=913689> Mindflayers of Thoon Mind flayers of Thoon… crashed in the Mournland? Caused the Mourning (but then how did the players?). They're really useful. It'd be great if one of the PCs could be performance-eated (LoM 81) Use dreams (thus quori!) "Another possibility is that the Dreaming Dark will choose not to turn its full force against the adventurers because it has other plans for them… schemes that are so far-reaching that they may take years to come to pass. The Dreaming Dark might even go so far as to set up schemes with the intention of letting the party foil them, because it wants to build up the reputation of the party, so they'll eventually get invited to the Tain Gala, where they'll meet the princess who… you get the idea. The Dreaming Dark is working on an immense jigsaw puzzle, and it's willing to take years or decades to finish it. If the PCs throw out one piece, there's a hundred others still on the table. And the PCs may BE one of those pieces! One of the key principles of Eberron is that the PCs are destined to be some of the great heroes of the age. The Dreaming Dark may know that – and you don't destroy such useful tools because one of them cut your thumb." Pasted from <http://www.bossythecow.com/askthedreamingdark7-23.htm>
Ryoden_Anariavas 08-29-07, 09:02 AM	Here's an Idea: Four years ago the the PC were working for whatever group was behind the mourning. As it turns out they caused the disaster and were horrified by that fact so they all decided to go to Flamekeep and have the Keeper of the flame (Who remember is LG and a LV 17 cleric) cast miracle on them to remove the memories and therefore the guilt they feel. ( they may have all been Cryan loyalists) Four years later they are all living happily when the memories start slipping back for whatever reason. The twist I would throw in is that the last member of the team didn't want his memories wiped so the miracle didn't work and now he is pushing the PC into the direction that he has researched will cause them to remember what they need to know so that he can use them to cause the mourning to happen again.
Rauric 08-29-07, 09:35 AM	I am doing something like this. They wake up in a facility below the Mournlands, find out the memory of their last adventure was implanted by an Eldritch device. The group is all mindlinked and now find themselves gestalted also. The Eldritch Device did the Gestalting by placing souls of other adventurers into them. They were "rescued" by the Lord of Blades goons who broke into the place and murdered all of the guards. They beat the warforged and are now off to Sharn. They also saw two other rooms with machines like the one they were hooked up to, but the hibernation chambers in those rooms look to be empty for some time! The players seem to like it so far. Most of us are ages 24 to 35 so it's not a total a powergaming cheesefest. I did the gestalt thing to add some mystery and fun. The gestalt soul/side can never be multiclassed, it's strictly static.
Rekko 08-29-07, 10:16 AM	Mindflayers have discovered that brain juice tastes better than a brain itself. People suffering from mindflayers brain juice sucking suffer from amnesia. Why would your PC would be doing with a mindflayer is up to you. Your PCs were involved in the Shadow Schism that splitted Phiarlan and Thuranni by killing a whole branch of the family. Afterwise, Thuranni erased the memories of the helping PCs or the witnesses. Quori mind seeded the PC, but the mind seed didn't developped normally. Thus, the PCs memories are fading, causing major amnesia (and level loss). Subconsciously, the PCs are fighting the mind seed to gain back their memories and control over their bodies. (by leveling up, they are closer to vanquish the mind seed) However, the Dreaming Dark are not happy in their failure to mind seeding the PCs and hunt them down. Dolurrh Nalfeshnees possessed the PCs to kill many people because the realm of the dead was low in souls for watever reason (seems awfully strange since we are in the last years of the Last War and the Mourning is either about to happen or have already occured). Now, the Nalfeshnee is gone and the PCs don't remember what they have done in the past days/weeks/months/years. The truth, they have become high class murderers who killed about anyone with certain criterias to die. They are hunted criminals, and many are after them for revenge/safety/hire/etc. A fey was bored and wiped out their memories. Beware of the feys! They encountered a Daelkyr, they suffered madness for a long while, but somehow they managed to recover their senses (maybe thanks to a manifest zone to a lawful plane) but not their memories. The PCs were building a magic item which its creation went wrong. The item absorbed their memories and became an intellient magic item who is quite fond of the PCs memories and won't let them go easily. The PCs caused the Mourning is to much cliché and is too much easy to find out, IMO. Rekko
OctaviusIII 08-29-07, 02:24 PM	The PCs caused the Mourning is to much cliché and is too much easy to find out, IMO. On the boards, perhaps, but if there are enough clues laid down that say that they're going after the guy that did it, or something similar, then it should be enough of a "WTF???" moment. Then, channel the "WTF" into finding whoever/whatever sent them on the mission. Rauric: I like your thinking, especially the gestalt bit. Reminds me of Kalashtar a bit.
Rauric 08-29-07, 08:44 PM	One of hte people that helped create the gestalt process was an elan. His payment for inventing the device was becoming gestalt. So now it is like he has 3 souls inside him. He wants to get back at the Dreaming Dark for putting the "evil spirit" in him. That's just one of the antagonists in my plot. We shall see how it all pans out. There is more to the plot that is not related with the Bourne Identity but I will not bore you all with the details.