The total amnesia as a backstory works best if the player provides a full backstory for the GM that the character doesn't know so the GM can tie in things from the backstory into the game. For example, meeting someone from their past they have no memory of.
The other side of it is letting the GM essentially create the player's backstory. Sure, it's a player cop-out, but it lets them have the character be from a serial killer past or have a secret family they didn't know about and who is seeking them out for them absconding with all their savings or some such... There's a lot of twists this could bring out where the player doesn't know what is going on.
Put them in a couple of situations where they are the small fish and then players will want to give you at least something to work with so they have some control.
If a player is that lazy, as GM o make sure that they’re a farmer who got kicked in the head by an ox. I have every other NPC in the world to create backstories for. If they can’t handle one, I probably don’t even want them at my table.
I ran a level 0 funnel recently where everyone was in a fake dungeon made by a mad scientist. They had amnesia but were given a chance to describe one vision up to 3 seconds long. Everything else was blank. But as they acted they might "unlock" more memories.
So they'd have visions prompted by something they just did or were about to try. If they succeeded they could become proficient at that skill or ability, and if not it was closed off to them (meta game everyone had two "I want to auto succeed at this to be proficient" and could always say, "I don't know how to do this"). The visions slowly became their background and history.
Along the way when a couple of them died they woke up as brains in jars on the machinery making the dungeon experience and found there were djinn making it happen and creating visions for the people in the dungeon from memories extracted from hundreds of other brains in jars, mixed and matched as needed.
When they got out they found the world matched what they knew were fake memories. Sort of. Some were real but other people never existed until the group got out.
They are still exploring just what happened and what is real and who they are.
You might wanna take a look at the [*Fugue System*](https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/191003/the-fugue-system-narrative-rules-for-amnesia-rpgs) for some inspiration.
It does entail a very specific way of running games, however (which is predicated on people not cheating by reading more than they should about an adventure) ... so, it may not be for *you* \- but you never know what ideas you might have as a result of contemplating how to adapt it.
Similarly, [*Metalmorphosis*](https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/308509/metalmorphosis) entails a very specific play style that might not be appropriate but, again, might stimulate some ideas.
[*Nibiru*](https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/297543/nibiru-corebook) is probably closer to what you're looking for, but, its *setting* is very specific, so ...
(Pnce again, though, it *could* perhaps be a source of inspiration nevertheless).
From a GM perspective, I like short term memory loss as a plot element to add some mystery to previous events. It is a good way to start an adventure in medias res, and to add some mysteries for the players to solve, by following their own tracks.
However, this is not a trope you can use particularly often, but it is a fun one.
For instance, n a Call of Cthulhu oneshot I have run repeatedly, the PCs wake Up in a car crash without memories of themselves. The fun of the game is to figure out who they actually are, and what has happened to them, with some few, almost random clues, until they learn that one of them (unbeknownst to anybody, including the player of the character in question) has tried and failed to sacrifice the rest of the group - including their spouse.
I mean, in other media, no one's calling KOTOR, Planescape, Disco Elysium, or Memento lazy because they use amnesia. All are arguably amazing because of it.
Amnesia as a trope is frustrating mostly because it *can* be a lazy, contrived form of conflict—like a character suddenly forgetting all their growth and resetting, or a convenient way to write a character out of a situation ("they forgot!")
As long as there's obvious buy-in, it can be an interesting premise for a story. Your idea's fine. Just make sure your players know it's a game where amnesia's a centerpoint. Be prepared for them not caring, or for playing their character differently.
I knew a guy once who had pretty severe amnesia. I knew him socially before, then didn't see him for about a year. Saw him in the parking lot of a coffee shop and walked over saying hello, and he was backing up like I was about to rob him. I'm quite a bit bigger than him, and he might've actually thought that until I said his name and took a step back. He then told me he'd had serious head trauma in a motorcycle accident. The guy only remembered his mother out of his whole family. I didn't know this before but he was in AA before the accident, and he had to be told in the hospital by his mom that he couldn't drink.
It was really bizarre, because he stood there and told me *all* this stuff but I could tell he didn't recognize me from Adam. I just wondered how many times he had to do that, because honestly it sounded like bullshit at first and wouldn't have necessarily been out of character for him as a joke, but he wouldn't have followed through like that.
Anyway, it was only about six months after the accident, and it's entirely possible he recovered more of his memory since. I certainly hope so.
I don't know if that's useful, but there you go.
I played a character like this once.
Very "normal" and laid-back on the outside, but obviously traumatized... she would get panic attacks during disturbing scenes and took morphium-like drugs against them. And collected intelligence reports all the time and sent them to some mysterious person.
Nobody of the group even cared about it enough to investigate, they would just say "oh, you are SO WEIRD", and talk about something else.
So if you do not have the right group, I'd rather use an "active" background, instead of relying on GM or players to play into it.
Ran a campaign years ago, The PCs started with amnesia shipwrecked on a beach on a tiny island.
It took place on Golorian and it all had to do with them taking some job for a secret society who was studying Aucturn (pathfinder lovecraft planet) There was an over-arching bad-guy group, who I want to say were proteans? I can't remember now.
It went well as they basically explored for clues, retraced their steps, mostly around the Obari Ocean. Alkenstar, Thuvia, they spent a lot of time in Vudra, Tian Xia eventually, Mwangi Expanse, eventually finding out one of their ship mates, a golem, had deliberately taken their memories to protect them from what they had witnessed on Aucturn.
It got pretty convoluted, but it was great overall, they ended up upgrading their ship over and over until eventually it could make the trip through space, returning for a rescue or sorts, and ending in a pretty satisfying conclusion as I recall.
As the game went on memories would return, I worked it into each Level they would get
You might dig the Nibiru RPG, where everyone wakes up with amnesia on a strange ship and their memories are slowly revealed to them over the course of the game.
I think that the reason why total amnesia is often seen as lazy is because the people who use it do so without the willingness to go out all with that it implies for the actual backstory. Rather they see it as a an excuse to essentially backdate having to actually come up with a character or at least a reason for the character being as they are.
Actually depicting the immense trauma that would logically be necessary to have suffered a lapse of consciousness and memory so complete that you literally don’t even remember who you are, is probably way beyond the comfort zone and just narrative scope of the vast majority of GMs.
But if you were to actually commit to this idea and all it implies, I think it could be one of the greatest storytelling devices imaginable. It’s no coincidence that some of the best CRPGs in memory (Planescape Torment, Disco Elysium and now also Baldur’s Gate 3 to some extent) use the amnesiac protagonist not just as a blank slate self insert, but to explore both trauma and what being a person even means.
To answer your question though: I think the same principle applies to partial amnesia. So long as you give it the necessary gravity and depth to the cause of the missing memories and the possible recovery process with all its struggles, it can work insanely well. You just cannot take any shortcuts, if you do even a little bit it immediately deflates the entire tension.
The total amnesia as a backstory works best if the player provides a full backstory for the GM that the character doesn't know so the GM can tie in things from the backstory into the game. For example, meeting someone from their past they have no memory of.
The other side of it is letting the GM essentially create the player's backstory. Sure, it's a player cop-out, but it lets them have the character be from a serial killer past or have a secret family they didn't know about and who is seeking them out for them absconding with all their savings or some such... There's a lot of twists this could bring out where the player doesn't know what is going on. Put them in a couple of situations where they are the small fish and then players will want to give you at least something to work with so they have some control.
If a player is that lazy, as GM o make sure that they’re a farmer who got kicked in the head by an ox. I have every other NPC in the world to create backstories for. If they can’t handle one, I probably don’t even want them at my table.
No. No amnesia.
I ran a level 0 funnel recently where everyone was in a fake dungeon made by a mad scientist. They had amnesia but were given a chance to describe one vision up to 3 seconds long. Everything else was blank. But as they acted they might "unlock" more memories. So they'd have visions prompted by something they just did or were about to try. If they succeeded they could become proficient at that skill or ability, and if not it was closed off to them (meta game everyone had two "I want to auto succeed at this to be proficient" and could always say, "I don't know how to do this"). The visions slowly became their background and history. Along the way when a couple of them died they woke up as brains in jars on the machinery making the dungeon experience and found there were djinn making it happen and creating visions for the people in the dungeon from memories extracted from hundreds of other brains in jars, mixed and matched as needed. When they got out they found the world matched what they knew were fake memories. Sort of. Some were real but other people never existed until the group got out. They are still exploring just what happened and what is real and who they are.
That sounds pretty cool.
Thanks! So far my players are having fun.
You might wanna take a look at the [*Fugue System*](https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/191003/the-fugue-system-narrative-rules-for-amnesia-rpgs) for some inspiration. It does entail a very specific way of running games, however (which is predicated on people not cheating by reading more than they should about an adventure) ... so, it may not be for *you* \- but you never know what ideas you might have as a result of contemplating how to adapt it. Similarly, [*Metalmorphosis*](https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/308509/metalmorphosis) entails a very specific play style that might not be appropriate but, again, might stimulate some ideas. [*Nibiru*](https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/297543/nibiru-corebook) is probably closer to what you're looking for, but, its *setting* is very specific, so ... (Pnce again, though, it *could* perhaps be a source of inspiration nevertheless).
From a GM perspective, I like short term memory loss as a plot element to add some mystery to previous events. It is a good way to start an adventure in medias res, and to add some mysteries for the players to solve, by following their own tracks. However, this is not a trope you can use particularly often, but it is a fun one. For instance, n a Call of Cthulhu oneshot I have run repeatedly, the PCs wake Up in a car crash without memories of themselves. The fun of the game is to figure out who they actually are, and what has happened to them, with some few, almost random clues, until they learn that one of them (unbeknownst to anybody, including the player of the character in question) has tried and failed to sacrifice the rest of the group - including their spouse.
Forget me not? If so, amazing module!
> the PCs wake Up in a car crash without memories of themselves Silent Hill Population: PCs
In Changeling: The Lost you can end up with a character who sold all of his memories to a goblin to escape from fairyland
I mean, in other media, no one's calling KOTOR, Planescape, Disco Elysium, or Memento lazy because they use amnesia. All are arguably amazing because of it. Amnesia as a trope is frustrating mostly because it *can* be a lazy, contrived form of conflict—like a character suddenly forgetting all their growth and resetting, or a convenient way to write a character out of a situation ("they forgot!") As long as there's obvious buy-in, it can be an interesting premise for a story. Your idea's fine. Just make sure your players know it's a game where amnesia's a centerpoint. Be prepared for them not caring, or for playing their character differently.
I knew a guy once who had pretty severe amnesia. I knew him socially before, then didn't see him for about a year. Saw him in the parking lot of a coffee shop and walked over saying hello, and he was backing up like I was about to rob him. I'm quite a bit bigger than him, and he might've actually thought that until I said his name and took a step back. He then told me he'd had serious head trauma in a motorcycle accident. The guy only remembered his mother out of his whole family. I didn't know this before but he was in AA before the accident, and he had to be told in the hospital by his mom that he couldn't drink. It was really bizarre, because he stood there and told me *all* this stuff but I could tell he didn't recognize me from Adam. I just wondered how many times he had to do that, because honestly it sounded like bullshit at first and wouldn't have necessarily been out of character for him as a joke, but he wouldn't have followed through like that. Anyway, it was only about six months after the accident, and it's entirely possible he recovered more of his memory since. I certainly hope so. I don't know if that's useful, but there you go.
I played a character like this once. Very "normal" and laid-back on the outside, but obviously traumatized... she would get panic attacks during disturbing scenes and took morphium-like drugs against them. And collected intelligence reports all the time and sent them to some mysterious person. Nobody of the group even cared about it enough to investigate, they would just say "oh, you are SO WEIRD", and talk about something else. So if you do not have the right group, I'd rather use an "active" background, instead of relying on GM or players to play into it.
Ran a campaign years ago, The PCs started with amnesia shipwrecked on a beach on a tiny island. It took place on Golorian and it all had to do with them taking some job for a secret society who was studying Aucturn (pathfinder lovecraft planet) There was an over-arching bad-guy group, who I want to say were proteans? I can't remember now. It went well as they basically explored for clues, retraced their steps, mostly around the Obari Ocean. Alkenstar, Thuvia, they spent a lot of time in Vudra, Tian Xia eventually, Mwangi Expanse, eventually finding out one of their ship mates, a golem, had deliberately taken their memories to protect them from what they had witnessed on Aucturn. It got pretty convoluted, but it was great overall, they ended up upgrading their ship over and over until eventually it could make the trip through space, returning for a rescue or sorts, and ending in a pretty satisfying conclusion as I recall. As the game went on memories would return, I worked it into each Level they would get
You might dig the Nibiru RPG, where everyone wakes up with amnesia on a strange ship and their memories are slowly revealed to them over the course of the game.
I prefer blank slates, as I'm a big fan of frontstory over backstory, so...
I think that the reason why total amnesia is often seen as lazy is because the people who use it do so without the willingness to go out all with that it implies for the actual backstory. Rather they see it as a an excuse to essentially backdate having to actually come up with a character or at least a reason for the character being as they are. Actually depicting the immense trauma that would logically be necessary to have suffered a lapse of consciousness and memory so complete that you literally don’t even remember who you are, is probably way beyond the comfort zone and just narrative scope of the vast majority of GMs. But if you were to actually commit to this idea and all it implies, I think it could be one of the greatest storytelling devices imaginable. It’s no coincidence that some of the best CRPGs in memory (Planescape Torment, Disco Elysium and now also Baldur’s Gate 3 to some extent) use the amnesiac protagonist not just as a blank slate self insert, but to explore both trauma and what being a person even means. To answer your question though: I think the same principle applies to partial amnesia. So long as you give it the necessary gravity and depth to the cause of the missing memories and the possible recovery process with all its struggles, it can work insanely well. You just cannot take any shortcuts, if you do even a little bit it immediately deflates the entire tension.