So, I've been DM'ing for a few years now, and in all the time I've been doing this, I've set all my campaigns in the same (homebrewed) setting, slowly expanding it and fleshing it out by playing through it with several different groups. But when I started this, it seemed a bit heavy to create a complete setting for myself. This resulted in what I call: the Rift, a setting of a piece of land (size of a small country, lots of wilderness, 4 cities) floating in a void, with a risk of people falling off into the depths below (based loosely on The Edge Chronicles and Diskworld). Through the narrative of that first campaign I was able to explore the reasons for that setting, and the fact that it originated in another (more complete, earth sized) overworld, which the rift even returned to as the final story beat in that campaign. Now one important note: to maintain an air of mystery surrounding this overworld, I had established from the offset that everyone that got transported to The Rift had no recollection of their lives before that (except for subconcious memories, dreams or things like making drawings of stars even though the Rift doesn't have stars). This will come up later
Now fast forward a year or two, and I'm playing another game with a different group. None of these people know of the original setting, so I thought this would be a nice moment to explore a little of the world before the Rift.
So I set up this scenario, where these low level characters are dealing with a blight threat, and the original NPC's from the Rift setting exist in this space and can be interacted with. I was planning to put the climactic end of the arc right at the beginning of the Rift setting, with the characters seeing the massive piece of land being raised up into the sky and then just... disappear. The original characters would be there, but more like questgivers and a flavor of sorts, and because I had played these characters before they were really fleshed out. So far so good.
However, the party went of the beaten path, they antagonised one of the SUPER powerful archmage NPC's I had put in from the Rift, and I faced a conundrum: If I play true to the character, he would take the manipulative option, cast Geas on them and get them to do their bidding. Which eventually he did. They were forced to do the archmages' bidding and were doing quests on his behalf on the promise that the spell would be removed upon completion, however, his archnemesis (also a very powerful wizard, the archmages' brother and a fugitive from the law) had his own orginasation track them and try to recruit them.
Now a lot of back and forth happened, but what ended up happening is that they switched allegiances a bunch of times, and somehow each time got further involved in this conflict. They were caught, and I had already set events in motion for the Rift to happen. They ended up taking part in a climactic battlefield with the two sides, with the end of the battle being the fight between the two mages in a magically enchanted room that amplified all magic cast into it. Magic went haywire as they tapped into realitbending powers they did not fully understand. and that is how I ended the last session, explaining to the (lvl3) players that they could see out the window that a massive chunk of land had been ripped from the ground and was now floating in the air... And they were on it!! then a cut to black and a bunch of players exited for the next session.
Now, if you've gone through all that setup, thank you for sticking with me, here's the kicker. I discussed the notion of memory loss with my players, asking them what they thought, and they were NOT into it. I understand, of course, they don't want their character development to go away. However, this puts me into a bit of a difficult situation. I had established that everyone transported to the Rift had lost their memory, and this fact was still true during the original Rift campaign, 47 years into ingame future. Now I don't want to have my PC's lose their memories if they don't want to, after all, their enjoyment is my enjoyment (partially).
The only thing I'm worried about is that I now have to come up with a valid scenario in which they keep their memories. The way I see it I have a couple options:
- Somehow seperating them from the demiplane that the Rift exists in, making it permanently unavailable to them (because the original Rift campaign tied into the return of the Rift to the overworld)
- a time jump, where they are boosted into a future where the Rift is already back to the overworld
- I break my rule of setting every campaign in the same universe, and they now exist in a parallel world where no one lost their memory at the start of the Rift.
Also, since the scale of the last session was so grand, I'm a bit fearful that a normal lvl 4 adventure would become boring.
Sorry for the long text, bad habit. TL;DR: I wrote myself into a corner with the threat of a bunch of continuity errors.
Maybe sit down and explain to them that they will gradually learn and remember their past as the campaign goes on. And then work that into future sessions. It gives a great reason for them to be working together and also provides great narrative in the story for character development and character bonds. But you must explain to them that it is important for the story to start this way and none of their character development is lost, just temporarily forgetting in a unknown world and they well slowly start developing and remembering themselves as it goes on.
This is just a idea and Good luck in whatever direction you decide to go in. But remember you make the plot hooks and game world and if this is necessary to it, just have a short sit down with the players and explain to them it’s important in all the time you spent setting this up and it is only the start of the story but not going to be the whole story. Just like in real life things change. But being in a Unknown world and temporary amnesia is part of the story and how it begins just like heroes start in many games,movies and books but in the end they well remember and become so much more then what they were before the memory loss.
Basically they go in not remembering they were a nobody and develop into a savior and hero of this world. But this could not have happened if they entered this strange land because their memory’s and previous world experiences would have limited them to more then likely focusing on trying to get back to what they know instead of saving a world in the same time as they slowly remember themselves. It gives great reason for them to explore this world because they can’t remember where home is and have to survive on what’s presented to them in this strange land.
The original Rift campaign was set 47 years in the future... is there any chance that the inhabitants of the Rift only *think* they'd been there for 47 years, but in reality it was longer (as long as needed for narrative purposes), and the event that caused them to lose their memory occurred 47 years before the Rift campaign? As in, they only remember being there for 47 years, because that's all they can remember.
Alternatively, if you don't want to alter the actual timeline (keep in mind these players don't know of the Rift timeline, so altering it has no negative consequences on your campaign), you could have everyone on the Rift retain their memory for now, but something that happens further in the current campaign (caused by the players even, perhaps?) causes all inhabitants of the Rift to lose their memories. That would let you continue to play off the player's current knowledge with no memory loss, give you something to work towards, and leave room for some early interesting adventure hooks while everyone on the Rift is trying to figure out how to handle the situation (before memories are wiped).
Maybe the memory loss wasn't instant, but happened gradually between the events of the current game and the original game. Their memories, when cut off from their plane of origin, could take years to fade, or more depending on the person's intelligence or strength of will.
Then the players can opt in or out of losing their memories over time, and if a player says "not yet" then you can hand wave it without requiring a roll or save on the player's part.
Maybe due to their location within the highly magnified magic room they were excluded from the memory loss, kind of like a barrier to the magics that affected everyone else. Seems plausible to me.
The events of the first campaign occur 47 years after the parcel of land was ripped away by this magical battle. The party in that future campaign suffered memory loss and you made a campaign of it.
The party in the present is partly responsible for the parcel of land being ripped away. Why not make them responsible for the memory loss as well? Now that the battle between the mages has come to this result, you can put them in a magical stasis. The party, barely escaping the temporal bubble that has trapped the mages, goes off to adventure in this new territory. As their journey moves on, they find answers, clues, etc. which lead them to try to pop the bubble, since the mages should be able to bring them home, right?!? Once you get to the point of wrapping up the campaign, they make their way to the tower, pop the temporal bubble, and that act causes the mind wipe. Since the archmages were trapped in time, their release "resets" everything to when the event originally happened for those two. The players could be shunted off the "island" due to the effects, thus removing them from the timeline of when the first campaign happened.
So, I've been DM'ing for a few years now, and in all the time I've been doing this, I've set all my campaigns in the same (homebrewed) setting, slowly expanding it and fleshing it out by playing through it with several different groups. But when I started this, it seemed a bit heavy to create a complete setting for myself. This resulted in what I call: the Rift, a setting of a piece of land (size of a small country, lots of wilderness, 4 cities) floating in a void, with a risk of people falling off into the depths below (based loosely on The Edge Chronicles and Diskworld). Through the narrative of that first campaign I was able to explore the reasons for that setting, and the fact that it originated in another (more complete, earth sized) overworld, which the rift even returned to as the final story beat in that campaign. Now one important note: to maintain an air of mystery surrounding this overworld, I had established from the offset that everyone that got transported to The Rift had no recollection of their lives before that (except for subconcious memories, dreams or things like making drawings of stars even though the Rift doesn't have stars). This will come up later
Now fast forward a year or two, and I'm playing another game with a different group. None of these people know of the original setting, so I thought this would be a nice moment to explore a little of the world before the Rift.
So I set up this scenario, where these low level characters are dealing with a blight threat, and the original NPC's from the Rift setting exist in this space and can be interacted with. I was planning to put the climactic end of the arc right at the beginning of the Rift setting, with the characters seeing the massive piece of land being raised up into the sky and then just... disappear. The original characters would be there, but more like questgivers and a flavor of sorts, and because I had played these characters before they were really fleshed out. So far so good.
However, the party went of the beaten path, they antagonised one of the SUPER powerful archmage NPC's I had put in from the Rift, and I faced a conundrum: If I play true to the character, he would take the manipulative option, cast Geas on them and get them to do their bidding. Which eventually he did. They were forced to do the archmages' bidding and were doing quests on his behalf on the promise that the spell would be removed upon completion, however, his archnemesis (also a very powerful wizard, the archmages' brother and a fugitive from the law) had his own orginasation track them and try to recruit them.
Now a lot of back and forth happened, but what ended up happening is that they switched allegiances a bunch of times, and somehow each time got further involved in this conflict. They were caught, and I had already set events in motion for the Rift to happen. They ended up taking part in a climactic battlefield with the two sides, with the end of the battle being the fight between the two mages in a magically enchanted room that amplified all magic cast into it. Magic went haywire as they tapped into realitbending powers they did not fully understand. and that is how I ended the last session, explaining to the (lvl3) players that they could see out the window that a massive chunk of land had been ripped from the ground and was now floating in the air... And they were on it!! then a cut to black and a bunch of players exited for the next session.
Now, if you've gone through all that setup, thank you for sticking with me, here's the kicker. I discussed the notion of memory loss with my players, asking them what they thought, and they were NOT into it. I understand, of course, they don't want their character development to go away. However, this puts me into a bit of a difficult situation. I had established that everyone transported to the Rift had lost their memory, and this fact was still true during the original Rift campaign, 47 years into ingame future. Now I don't want to have my PC's lose their memories if they don't want to, after all, their enjoyment is my enjoyment (partially).
The only thing I'm worried about is that I now have to come up with a valid scenario in which they keep their memories. The way I see it I have a couple options:
- Somehow seperating them from the demiplane that the Rift exists in, making it permanently unavailable to them (because the original Rift campaign tied into the return of the Rift to the overworld)
- a time jump, where they are boosted into a future where the Rift is already back to the overworld
- I break my rule of setting every campaign in the same universe, and they now exist in a parallel world where no one lost their memory at the start of the Rift.
Also, since the scale of the last session was so grand, I'm a bit fearful that a normal lvl 4 adventure would become boring.
Sorry for the long text, bad habit. TL;DR: I wrote myself into a corner with the threat of a bunch of continuity errors.
Hope you guys have some pointers for me
Maybe sit down and explain to them that they will gradually learn and remember their past as the campaign goes on. And then work that into future sessions. It gives a great reason for them to be working together and also provides great narrative in the story for character development and character bonds. But you must explain to them that it is important for the story to start this way and none of their character development is lost, just temporarily forgetting in a unknown world and they well slowly start developing and remembering themselves as it goes on.
This is just a idea and Good luck in whatever direction you decide to go in. But remember you make the plot hooks and game world and if this is necessary to it, just have a short sit down with the players and explain to them it’s important in all the time you spent setting this up and it is only the start of the story but not going to be the whole story. Just like in real life things change. But being in a Unknown world and temporary amnesia is part of the story and how it begins just like heroes start in many games,movies and books but in the end they well remember and become so much more then what they were before the memory loss.
Basically they go in not remembering they were a nobody and develop into a savior and hero of this world. But this could not have happened if they entered this strange land because their memory’s and previous world experiences would have limited them to more then likely focusing on trying to get back to what they know instead of saving a world in the same time as they slowly remember themselves. It gives great reason for them to explore this world because they can’t remember where home is and have to survive on what’s presented to them in this strange land.
The original Rift campaign was set 47 years in the future... is there any chance that the inhabitants of the Rift only *think* they'd been there for 47 years, but in reality it was longer (as long as needed for narrative purposes), and the event that caused them to lose their memory occurred 47 years before the Rift campaign? As in, they only remember being there for 47 years, because that's all they can remember.
Alternatively, if you don't want to alter the actual timeline (keep in mind these players don't know of the Rift timeline, so altering it has no negative consequences on your campaign), you could have everyone on the Rift retain their memory for now, but something that happens further in the current campaign (caused by the players even, perhaps?) causes all inhabitants of the Rift to lose their memories. That would let you continue to play off the player's current knowledge with no memory loss, give you something to work towards, and leave room for some early interesting adventure hooks while everyone on the Rift is trying to figure out how to handle the situation (before memories are wiped).
Maybe the memory loss wasn't instant, but happened gradually between the events of the current game and the original game. Their memories, when cut off from their plane of origin, could take years to fade, or more depending on the person's intelligence or strength of will.
Then the players can opt in or out of losing their memories over time, and if a player says "not yet" then you can hand wave it without requiring a roll or save on the player's part.
Maybe due to their location within the highly magnified magic room they were excluded from the memory loss, kind of like a barrier to the magics that affected everyone else. Seems plausible to me.
The events of the first campaign occur 47 years after the parcel of land was ripped away by this magical battle. The party in that future campaign suffered memory loss and you made a campaign of it.
The party in the present is partly responsible for the parcel of land being ripped away. Why not make them responsible for the memory loss as well? Now that the battle between the mages has come to this result, you can put them in a magical stasis. The party, barely escaping the temporal bubble that has trapped the mages, goes off to adventure in this new territory. As their journey moves on, they find answers, clues, etc. which lead them to try to pop the bubble, since the mages should be able to bring them home, right?!? Once you get to the point of wrapping up the campaign, they make their way to the tower, pop the temporal bubble, and that act causes the mind wipe. Since the archmages were trapped in time, their release "resets" everything to when the event originally happened for those two. The players could be shunted off the "island" due to the effects, thus removing them from the timeline of when the first campaign happened.