Forums » RP Discussion » Character Amnesia

As someone who has frolicked across many a roleplaying community and met lots and lots of characters, I can say with confidence that one of the most common concepts that I find is the idea of characters with amnesia--either they are created that way, or they contract it at some point during their RP career, be it through magic, a rock with ill intentions, a rather precise knock to the head or the natural reaction of the brain after being exposed to a roomful of naked gnomes for more than four seconds.

To some folks, it seems like a cop-out to escape writing a detailed history, or as a way to obtain attention or otherwise progress on the stock 'x goes on a journey to find out who he is' storyline; to others, it is a legitimate way to build up a character entirely through real RP interaction without them having to have literally just been born. Personally, I have considered its use when it comes to very long-lived characters, or to characters that have been around in RP for so very long that keeping track of everything becomes difficult and prevents RP from being fun anymore.

So, tell me, RPR, what do you think about the idea of characters with amnesia? Do you do it? Why? Do you dislike it? Why?

This is sort of funny, because I'm actually in the process of making a character like this. It will be my second 'memory affected' character, but my first since I've become more developed in my roleplaying.

My first just didn't pan out for it's own reasons, but this new one I have hopes for. I haven't fully developed the character just yet, but the basic premise is that she wakes up in the back room up a nightclub with no memory of how she got there or who she is. She's a junkie, which she doesn't remember but will soon enough figure out, and I'm thinking that her story will be one of discovery, maybe. I don't have a background in mind for her, thinking that bit and pieces will come as I play with her, which was my idea when I came up with her.

I haven't ever done anything like it, and I'm a little anxious, but I really hope that it works out.

So, I guess that means that I'm all for it. I don't see it as a cop out- I see it merely as a different way to develop a character.

I have to agree with you Cass. Yes, i have done this with characters of mine. Those who have back story stuff is too long or i have forgotten partially after a long time. To be honest, I feel it adds a new range to a long lived character...depending on how it's played out naturally!

I personally feel that it is a bit of a cop-out. It seems to be used quite a bit when things between players go sour and someone decides they no longer want the two characters to have history together any more. This might not be for everyone, or even the majority, but I have seen it used like this quite often.

Amnesia is an incredibly tricky thing to begin with, so the whole... 'oops, was hit over the head' thing is a bit too much for me and not terribly realistic. I have seen people use amnesia as the result of coping with an incredibly traumatic IC event, but normally people don't.... completely forget who they are, they tend to forget what happened as a way of repressing it.

I also don't understand why someone would want to lose quite a bit of history? To each their own!

I've never been one to use amnesia, in any era of my characters. The closest I've come is... Ash reincarnates, so until his soul ascends from being attached to the new physical vessel he is cut off from the experiences he had before in his life and needs to re-mature...

Oh, and of course, my very first original RP character was Suzaku, which was a broken entity; the reincarnating phoenix god was annoying the demons, so they shattered her; her pure soul went to a mortal, her mind got sealed in a rock. So, there was an intensely stupid pure hearted girl out there, but living her own life; and the knowledge of the god ended up being a legendary artifact. When Suzaku was tainted, she became something called a sanguin, something like a possessed half demon version of her old self; when freed of her curse, she remembered nothing of her dark history, but I compare that to a lycanthrope going nuts in town during a full moon, waking up in the woods and going "buh?" So I guess, in a WAY that could be amnesia. But again, it was also the very first original character I ever came up with.

That's as close as I've ever gotten. I love long histories that say that the character fulfilled an entire lifespan, and I've never had trouble remembering their conquests. Washing them away with amnesia would be very sad to me. At best I always feel like it should explore who they were on a fundamental core before they lost memory, what aspects of their personality were deep-seated--not just becoming some new evil maniac or something with a vague "oh, nobody knows why (not even me the player!)" Ash, while not a true amnesiac, still has the same soul. Of course, lack of experience/memory in his current vessel can make traits that were once admired seem very obnoxious. Just ask Loki/Gabriel.

I've witnessed a few characters that suffered amnesia that weren't just bad copouts. These were played by other people.

> Orlandu; when an angel was shattered by god casting it out, different parts of his mind woke up in different lands, and one was Orlandu. Confused, he... just got found by nobility and lived as a servant for a while until his fate caught up to him. There was no mere leaving the past behind, or going to find it--it found him, whether he wanted to or looked for it or not.

> Rain; when a chaotic deity was divided by a paladin of the god of a world, he was split apart and bound into human bodies and a crux to eventually bond them over again. One retained a lot of memory, and used that to actually recurrently wipe the memory of the other part he constantly tried to reabsorb to regain original form. Rain, fond of his then human identity, developed a new sense of self. It was beautiful.



...Huh. Each character that has amnesia I appreciate--be it my one, or by other people--seem to be from the idea of some entity being shattered, and losing grip of its whole self, thus reincarnating into a new entity.

Interestink. Never thought about that.

Basically, if someone has amnesia, I don't want it to be "well I don't know how ____ type of character can interact with regular people so they forgot their past, and it never really catches up to them on its own. I don't need to think about it this way." or "I need to make an adventure, so I'm going to discover what they should already know." I like it to be something that is only a fragment of a story, not an entire drive. Something the player should have a full fledged idea of before ever placing the lost memory or piece of self into a story. It shouldn't ever be a history filled in later. And a person's history rarely waits for them to go out and find it; often, what is repressed will still come for them.

Of course, these are just my opinions, what determines if I'll have fun playing with an apparent amnesiac.

I think it depends.
Sometimes I see it as a cop-out, other times it comes for a good story.
For example, like my character Takeru has 'amnesia' depending on what 'world' he's in, because he's stuck between two dimensions, so he doesn't remember/know what the other part of him is doing most of the time.
Which gives him a detailed backstory, and I've written out his full biography explaining such.

Characters that use it for a STORY rather than just having a character with amnesia, or just using it to avoid something, I think it's fine. It's when it's used in a way to be lazy I don't like it.

I used to roleplay Hramn, a genetically-engineered mercenary, and recently sold him to a close friend of mine who can play him near exactly as I did - normally I wouldn't sell characters that have that much investment (time/rp-wise) in them, but I did. One way she explained his absence, that I really liked and is relevant to this discussion, is that he had an accident, fell partway down a cliff, and got a good knock on his skull. He remembers who he is, some of his past and such, but not faces/names directly. It's like a partial reboot that I found useful and believeable at the same time

I actually did two things. I wrote a background for my character, then made her forget it.

I spent years roleplaying her, trying to get her closer and closer to figuring things out. She had finally established a 'new self', when she ran into the person responsible for her amnesia and had everything flood back to her. She's now stuck with being who she used to be, and being who she became. They happen to be two different types of people and the conflict is really driving her up the wall.

It's a pity she's kind of stuck because Furcadia won't work for me, and that's where all her interaction has been so far.

I agree that it really depends. Sometimes it really seems like a copout. At times, it can also be a useful tool. At times even if it -is- a bit of a copout, it still makes the character playable.

Example. Say you have a character who gets into a romance with someone, falls in love, settles down.. Said other player turns out to be a drama mongering nutball and goes ballistic, causes all sorts of strife in the rp, then kills off the char when they are asked to stop making every rp packed to the brim with trama. Now, OOC you can be glad to see them go. Icly it's hard to explain why your character, who was in love with them for two years, can just move on with their life. You don't want to just nix the rp all together, you don't want to spend a year rping them as being depressed, because that gets old fast. BOOM Partial amnesia. They cant remember what happened. That way you still get to keep your beloved character, but you don't have to deal with the BS the other person caused.


In the case of one of my old characters, Darcious. He originally began as a man who'd sold his soul to an evil god to save the woman he loved. He ended up twisted over time by the god's influence and over the years became a nightmarish horrible monster of a person who served that god. That was his background, and I played him a long time on Neverwinter Nights as a really fun to play villain. I moved him to Furc, and it was fun for a while, but it got to where it was hard to play him the way he was. I was really limited in who he could interact with, because while the character was a sadistic violent you know what, me the player did not want to kill and maim other people's characters. So, I wrote a short story of how the evil god had been sealed away. As remembering everything he'd done and why, and what had eventually happened to his wife would have totally destroyed him once he was 'himself' again.. I simply had him suffer total amnesia. He only had the vauge feeling and a few clued that something -terrible- had happened, and he was afraid to try to hard to find out what that was. So his storyline became him trying to figure out how to cope and start over. He knew his name, and he retained skills and things he learned in life, but some of those things he didnt realize he knew til it came up in story.. But as far as people and events, he remembered nothing. I was so attached to his story, I wanted to be able to play him again, and amnesia allowed for that.


If someone just makes a new character and goes Eh, amnesia... So they dont have to have a history or reason for how they act.. Yeah copout, and that annoys me.

All of the responses so far have been quite fascinating! I know a lot of people express annoyance at the concept, but these are all some very fresh ideas that I think would satisfy even the most jaded roleplayer.

I'm interested in knowing how you folks handle the amnesia itself on an OOC level. If it's an established character, do you experience trouble remembering, yourself, what the character does or doesn't/shouldn't remember? And how do you decide what they retain from old experiences that they can no longer recall? Does it ever get confusing?

Now that I've posted my 13,000+ years old character on the site, I feel qualified to answer from my own point of view. With said character, there's been so many occurrences in his life that a little forgetfulness/amnesia is required to keep both him and me from suffering from critical cranial combustion trying to remember every little detail. Of course, the really important events in his life such as his childhood, his marriage, and the destruction of his kingdom he remembers fine, even though they were from so long ago; however, other things such as romances he's had or battles he's fought are so numerous that he only remembers the unusual or notable ones.

With such a large timespan to fill and so many opportunities, whenever I come up with something I think would be interesting for him to have done, I make it so, and then he "remembers" them. Everything else is left forgotten in the ether otherwise. Therefore, while his memory has enough holes to be a sieve, he never remembers a dull moment, or if he does, he doesn't comment on it.