Seriously this opens up so much creativity for the DM.
“This person seems familiar to you, but you’re not sure why.”
“You think you’ve been here before, but you’re not sure when.”
“Being on a ship feels like home, but you have no memories of ever being on a ship.”
“Upon seeing the ruins of the village you find yourself overcome with sorrow, you feel like you’ve lost something important but you don’t know what.”
Part of the adventure can be a quest to reunite them with their lost memories.
I walk up to the bartender and ask him about rumors.
Bartender: “You son of a bitch, I told you if you ever come back, you better be able to pay your tab!”
DM: “Alright. Everyone else, please make up and write down two things about this player’s backstory and let me know. Do not tell each other what you wrote. I’ll choose which ones I’ll use plus may throw in a couple myself” evil laugh
Yuuuup.
Fiend warlock player did not like learning how I used his minor backstory. (He actually loved it.)
He knew he needed to save a tree. He didn’t know he was the one to burn it, nor that he did so because it was a source of power to his mother, who was a night hag.
So much fun.
He saved the tree and even managed to change his Patron, but is too scared to confront his mother again.
Look, if I wanted to write 100% of your backstory for you, I’d have been a player. Ttrpgs are meant to be collaborative. I already have a shit ton to do as GM, you could at least throw me a bone. Even if you want to do an amnesia plot, that doesn’t mean you the player doesn’t know anything at all.
I actually agree, that could be pretty fun. That said this puts a lot of work / pressure on the DM so it is definitely something to be discussed rather than used to be lazy. (To be clear, I am not reading this into what you said. Just saying it out loud is all)
I’m a forever DM so I’ve got so many unused character ideas that turn into either NPCs or if a player is like “I forgot to make a backstory”
But with the amount of improv I do as a DM it’s very little effort for me.
Though I agree it should be discussed as part of session 0. As it’d be rude not to.
Session 0 for my groups is always the same really, we sit around boucing ideas off of each other for characters, things we don’t want to be touched on during the campaign, and what kind of campaign we want.
This is pretty much what’s happened with my latest character.
I’m playing a reborn/dragonborn, who had previously tried to fight Strahd but lost. And a part of that loss means that my character lost a good chunk of his memories of fighting Strahd before.
But Strahd still remembers my character. So it has lead to some interesting interactions.
You forgot how to piss, shit, bathe, heal, feed and dress yourself when you gave up your memories. In fact, you forgot how to walk.
In other words, “My backstory is whatever you want it to be”.
If you were the DM and this bothered you, the player just gave you powerful ammunition.
You could even have it so whenever the player entered a shop in his home town, the shopkeepers looked at him with disgust and refused to serve him. The DM wouldn’t even have to necessarily come up with a reason. Just, that the player is extremely well known among the locals and they universally think he’s absolutely disgusting and want nothing to do with him.
If I wanted to do that part of the story for you, I wouldn’t have asked you to do it.
Sure, but given that the player did avoid doing the work, the DM can take the opportunity to punish them for it.
I don’t really like the idea of punishing players in game like that
We’re all there to have fun and we all have different ideas of fun
100% ok. Be prepared for weird stuff happening to you whenever I need a plot hook.
Acceptable but only if vague memories and impressions occasionally surface and lead to some plotline where you eventually rediscover yourself
Though that would work much better if you shared with the DM I suppose
As long the player is open to whatever the DM decides their characters history is, or they have collaborated on an outline or even a detailed history the other players just don’t know about, that is all fine and can be really fun for everyone.
If they are doing it with no heads up and are not going to play along with whatever the DM decides happened in their past, then no. But when it comes to DnD, I normally let stuff play out and only stop play if something is clearly going poorly, or might make other players more uncomfortable than they are willing to be. I only play with friends, so things rarely end up being anything close to the worst they theoretically could have gone, socially.
