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Pinjata
2018-12-01, 01:41 PM
Hey guys,

So, I have this idea for my group to start the campaign with. They are all utter noobs, not familiar with 5e or Faerun. They want to play as elves.

The pre-story idea (which will not be revealed to them) is that(as elven kids) they wandered away from elven tribe. They were ambushed by spiders and drawn deep into an old tomb to be devoured later. A group of elven adventurers trekked after them and saved them.

Campaign starts as PCs are awakening from the slumber, caused by spider venom. Some are still being cut down by older elven archers who just "finished Lost Kids Quest".

Point is that i have poison as an excuse to their "loss of memory". So, things can be explained to them because "the have forgotten them".

What do you guys think of this?

Nifft
2018-12-01, 02:08 PM
My advice is to write down any sort of non-player setup as pre-game prep material, and start play with the PCs having the spotlight.

So if I were to run a game like this, I'd be sure to:

- Tell the players in advance that they're all amnesiac elves;

- Post the set-up as part of the pitch email (including whatever the players should know, which is significantly more than the amnesiac PCs would know);

- Tell them enough about their original village that they could make informed decisions about their characters, including stuff like "gosh I wonder why two of us have similar hats ..." (they were both Elf Scouts) "... with different buttons on them ..." (different Elf Scout badges); these details are clues to the PCs identities which the players can tell you about after certain conditions are met in-game.


One thing which I would NOT do is tell everyone to make normal characters, then spend half the game session making them listen to me narrate powerful NPC actions. The game-table is a stage, and the actors in the spotlight should always be the players.

weckar
2018-12-01, 02:49 PM
Pitch email?

ahyangyi
2018-12-01, 03:06 PM
Yeah, I completely agree with Nifft.

Just give the starting story hook to the players. You might even want to design a few character backgrounds (4e/5e) / traits (pathfinder) just for this story hook. The players themselves do the hard work of connecting their characters to the hook, and they get involved.

Anymage
2018-12-01, 04:24 PM
In addition to the fact that players should be told the setup so they can build with the setting in mind, there's also the fact that complete amnesiacs have no real ties to anything and that makes your job as DM harder.

If you want mostly the same outcome (the PCs have reason to know very little about the outside world), it might be easier to make them extremely sheltered. Maybe their village considers the outside world a corrupting influence, maybe they're just very young by elven standards and their elders figured there was plenty of time for them to learn later. Now include some reason why they're dealing with the outside world (maybe a rumspringa (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumspringa#Popularized_view), but more likely something bad happening to their village that forces them to move on), and you have a more coherent start to an adventuring party. They have ties to each other, a few plot hooks built into their world, and there's a built in motivation and start to the action.

Quertus
2018-12-01, 06:49 PM
Yeah, I completely agree with Nifft.

Pretty much this.

I mean, you could hand them pre-built amnesiac characters, and have no NPC, and let them Explore those characters, let them notice that 2 of them have the same hat, etc.

However, the general "amnesiac" or, worse, "pre-built" characters are huge turnoff to certain types of players - I happen to know, because I am one. A pre-built character, or a character without a history, is just a playing piece, and the game is just a war game.

So, know your players. Is this going to have the results you want, or unintended side effects?

Which brings us to, what do you want? What, exactly, are you so worried about, that you would do what many consider one of the worst mistakes in an RPG, and give an NPC the lion's share of the spotlight?

Darth Ultron
2018-12-01, 08:12 PM
Should work just fine. I do the ''Clueless Characters" all the time.

Kadzar
2018-12-02, 01:14 AM
You really don't need a convoluted setup to explain things to the players. If there's something their characters would naturally know, it's fine for you as the DM to say, "As inhabitants of this world, you would naturally know..."

I mean, don't overdo it. You don't need to tell them everything that their characters would know in one go; probably just the bits that are relevant to the current situation (which you would probably have fed to them through the NPCs anyway). Let them know that, if at any time they have questions about things their characters would know, you'll answer them, and only have them do a skill check for such things in situations where you yourself are unsure about their knowledge.

Really, the idea of an amnesiac protagonist is a literary trope meant to make up for the limitations of non-interactive media, and even then it something of an unnecessary crutch. It's entirely possible to do otherwise in TTRPGs, and to reserve amnesia for when it actually serves the plot.

denthor
2018-12-02, 04:57 PM
Flip it they are the adventures looking for the kids. Good 1st level adventure. They are armed the kids were not 3 giant spiders one at a time. Give them 10 potions of neutralize poison. Some for them and one for each child. Send a 7th level cleric along. Then start at 1st.

Knaight
2018-12-02, 05:57 PM
If you want a bunch of amnesiacs, you can pitch that idea directly, and a poison works fine as a reason for it. That said, this sounds like a pretty weak reason to go with that decision - you can just explain things as they come up, and there's a whole host of effective methods to do fish out of water characters that don't raise the same sort of expectations.

To start with, amnesia is generally a giant neon sign that the background of the characters that they've forgotten is extremely important, and that the character will try to recover or at least reconstruct the lost memories to the best of their ability (though this attempt may well end in deciding that it's better not to).

Pauly
2018-12-02, 11:12 PM
I am not sure from the OP whether you’re intending to:
1) use pre-generated characters with the players discovering their abilities
2) use pre-generated characters and using the amnesia to describe the world
3) use player generated characters and use the amnesia to describe the world.

Option 1 is something like “the Bourne Identity” and something I would only run with very experienced players.

Option 2 is fine for a one shot adventure to explain the mechanics of D&D, but players are inherently less interested in someone else’s character than their own character.

Option 3 can be very frustrating for both the player and the GM since the players don’t know the game mechanics.
One thing I have done with newby players is to use the “Barbarians of Lemuria” character generation system. You can download the .pdf for free. It’s a very simple way for new players to be able to explain to the GM how they want their PC to perform. It also gives newby players some hints/help for generating a backstory. Then as the GM you convert the player’s BoL character into the system you are using.

Knaight
2018-12-02, 11:39 PM
I am not sure from the OP whether you’re intending to:
1) use pre-generated characters with the players discovering their abilities
2) use pre-generated characters and using the amnesia to describe the world
3) use player generated characters and use the amnesia to describe the world.

Option 1 is something like “the Bourne Identity” and something I would only run with very experienced players.

Option 1 runs just fine with newbies - I actually ran it a few months ago, and the only person who would qualify as very experienced at that table would be me (maybe one other person, but in a narrowly focused way focused on something else), with a couple of players qualifying as experienced and a couple being pretty new. It worked just fine.

That said, my commentary above about discovering the memory being central? That was absolutely there, with the added knowledge being that the one thing they did remember was their memories being deliberately wiped.

Chauncymancer
2018-12-03, 12:07 AM
Concept. Having your players play the NPCs as session 1 pre-gens. Then having them make their own characters, who are the people they saved in session 1. You continue to use the NPCs.

ahyangyi
2018-12-03, 03:27 AM
Obviously this depends on the players, so do communicate with your players.
But my experience with players who have no desire with building their own characters is that during our session 1, someone basically asked "why don't we play Diablo III instead" and I have no answer for that. They have no attachment to their characters and I can't ensure my story isn't crappy...

The old days of players having no attachment to their characters, accept whatever is handed out from the DM, and go with the chances might be long gone. We need an answer to the "why not Diablo instead" question. And a simple answer would be "because in this game, we create our story."

Knaight
2018-12-03, 04:02 AM
But my experience with players who have no desire with building their own characters is that during our session 1, someone basically asked "why don't we play Diablo III instead" and I have no answer for that. They have no attachment to their characters and I can't ensure my story isn't crappy...

The old days of players having no attachment to their characters, accept whatever is handed out from the DM, and go with the chances might be long gone. We need an answer to the "why not Diablo instead" question. And a simple answer would be "because in this game, we create our story."

That's a good reason. There's plenty of others though, starting with any number of specific pitches. Diablo can't do Arthurian-wuxia hybrids (which ended up as dramatic blood opera), so that's why you'd pick Crouching Lion, Hidden Pendragon over it. Diablo can't do blends of high action magical combat with slice of life drama, and that's why you'd pick Magic Knight Delta Theta Phi over it. Diablo can't do gonzo pulp about intrepid adventurers trying to save the world from a volcano powered borealis generation machine used as a doomsday device by a Nazi hypnotist, and that's why you'd pick Isle Aurora.

The primary takeaway message here is probably that naming your one shots is fun, but the useful takeaway message here is that specific characters beyond your generic adventurers in specific campaigns with a pitch somewhat more concrete than fantasy adventuring can be really solid, while providing an experience that Diablo fundamentally can't. Of course, just being a deeply social, deeply creative, deeply performative game (a general description that fits basically every RPG) already does that.

Pinjata
2018-12-03, 10:02 AM
Thanks for all the input.

My players will start like this, stat-wise:
1st session: Commoner stats
2nd session: Elite array + Race stats
3rd sessin: Elite array + Race stats + Class stats

I'll also just TELL them some things they know as inhabitants of this world. But spider poison and stuff will explain their lack of knowledge.

The only thing i find interesting in the comments is an idea that this approach takes agenda away from the players. As far as I go, my PCs can run off into the woods the moment, after they are saved. Stage is set up immediatelly, but I think this intro already represents some great initial points: world is full of dagers, elven caravan is a place of safety, there are groups of people (adventurers) who save people in troubles.

I like the idea.

Thrudd
2018-12-03, 12:17 PM
I still don't understand the point of starting them out as children with no memory. Can't you just tell them (the players) that they are adventurers in a world full of dangers, and describe the environment in which they first find themselves (an elven caravan in the woods)? Then they start exploring the environment and interacting with NPCs, and learning about potential adventures. There's no point in wasting game time telling them a story in which they have no ability to do anything or make any choices. Why do they need to start as commoners with no abilities, instead of normal 1st level characters? People's time available for playing games is limited. Just get to the actual game as quickly as possible, don't make them play through the "you're a kid that can't do anything yet" intro scene. That is the most annoying part of every adventure video game that has one.