Isn't it just cool when the player character (PC, avatar) knows as little about the game world as you do? Games like Flashback and Out of This World introduced their characters this way. I think it really helps the player connect to his character. In a sense, they really are the same person. The game character has never and will never experience anything the human player doesn't experience with him. Compare this to games like Morrowind, where your character starts off as a prisoner. Or Fallout, where you start as a vault dweller (F1) or villager (F2). Didn't anyone ever wonder if the Fallout character ever got fresh with some of those ladies in the vault? :P -Or if any of the other vault dwellers were the player's parents?? I've been pondering cool ways to accomplish this. My game takes place far into the future, where nearly all of the world has reverted back to a medieval age. Amnesia works, but it's been done quite a lot. There's always a time capsule, but then I would feel I have to give the player a good reason they were frozen. The player could start as a full grown clone created in a malfunctioned underground factory, but that's probably too wierd. Anyway, this is what I'm looking for. Ways to throw the real player into the avatar into my game world. My best bet is probably an accidental time travel. For example, the player could be driving his car along, when WHAM, a big fuel truck smashes into a building right in front of him, and following a bit of white light, his car zooms out of a black hole looking thing and into the screwed up future. No need to explain physics. The player character will have no way of figuring out what happened anyway. This type of situation is nice, because as long as you can drive a car, you can enter the role directly. Any other ideas?

Most game writers seem to take this route so that the player and the avatar have the same lack of information about the game world, otherwise it's a little bit disconcerting if the avatar spends the first few hours completely lost in their home town.

The most common way is to send the avatar off into a new land. This has the advantage that the "journey of the hero" class of stories, which is very well suited to games, has this as a common element. The avatar must journey to a foreign country, another planet, another time, another dimension, out of the vault etc.

Another common way, as you've noted, is amnesia. The main drawback of this is there's not a lot of story types that deal with amnesiacs, so your game would feel a lot like all the others done before.

A third way, which is a variant of the "sent off to a new land" method, is to make the avatar a rookie in a profession. The avatar is a trainee cop, or a squire training to be a knight, or an apprentice mage etc. This gives an excuse for them to act a little lost at the start of the game.

Hopefully one of those will be of some help. However, like I wrote, the first method is extremely common, and very versatile. That's why in RPGs it works when the hero is usually some kid who has never left their village before. It's a powerful story concept, as well as a good reason why the hero knows nothing about the world.

You could always take the mysticism approach, people still don't really have much of an understanding of 'conciousness'. What is reality afterall but a dream within a dream?

An example would be:
Your slaving in a hard days work doing the grind at the local post office, after work you do your usual routine hoping one day you can afford that UZI. You crawl into bed and dose off, having the most vivid and pleasant dream you can remember having. Except afterawhile you realize you can't wake up, no matter how much you pinch yourself, and that pinching really hurts..

Actually, that example reminds me alot of Total Recall, never could tell if it was really one of those Recall mind trips, or the real thing. Ahh, such a good movie.

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Original post by Gyrthok Actually, that example reminds me alot of Total Recall, never could tell if it was really one of those Recall mind trips, or the real thing. Ahh, such a good movie.

Ahh! Total Recall was seriously wicked. You couldn't tell? Or do you mean you couldn't tell while watching through it? Just in case, here's how it happens. First, he's really the guy that he's recalling. His memory was erased by the bad dude, his current life is fake, and his 'fantasy dream' is actually his old life. When he goes to get the recall, the procedure actually recalls his memory instead of planting a new one. So he's thinking that everything he's experiencing is planted by the procedure, but none of it is. It's all real.

Anyway, yeah. That's definitely a possibility. And thanks for reminding me of that movie. Think I'll go watch that again :)

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Original post by Kest Ahh! Total Recall was seriously wicked. You couldn't tell? Or do you mean you couldn't tell while watching through it? Just in case, here's how it happens. First, he's really the guy that he's recalling. His memory was erased by the bad dude, his current life is fake, and his 'fantasy dream' is actually his old life. When he goes to get the recall, the procedure actually recalls his memory instead of planting a new one. So he's thinking that everything he's experiencing is planted by the procedure, but none of it is. It's all real. Anyway, yeah. That's definitely a possibility. And thanks for reminding me of that movie. Think I'll go watch that again :)

If you are talking about the film "Total Recall" (it's probably also a book, but I haven't read that), from memory it's actually ambiguous about whether the whole thing is real or not. Arnie's character asked for a thrilling adventure on Mars, and that's what he got. Either he recalled his true memory, or it was a very cunning story based on him recalling his true memory. It's a good way of doing the "amnesiac" motif.

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Original post by Trapper Zoid .. it's actually ambiguous about whether the whole thing is real or not. Either he recalled his true memory, or it was a very cunning story based on him recalling his true memory.

Well, my friends and I watched the movie countless times growing up, trying to fully understand it. We came up with several reasons the experience is most likely real, and none that it is most likely not. It's been a really long time, but I think one of them was the fact that the Recall agency was portrayed as either bad guys or bad guy associates. Not something most companies would want to implant into their client's memory. Another is the way his wife and friends behave before he goes to get the memory implant. Yet another is how other characters in the story are talking back and forth about how to capture Arnie when Arnie isn't even present to hear the conversation. I know that last one is a bit weak, but if it really was from memory, he would need to be there for it to exist.

Anyway, sorry. Just ranting.

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Original post by Kest Anyway, sorry. Just ranting.

That's okay. Being allowed to rant about things like whether Total Recall is real or not is one of the reasons why I like these forums [smile].

I'd consider the "Total Recall" method a specialised version of amnesia. I'm not sure if it would work that well if your world is post-apocalyptic medieval-future.

If you're open to any sort of idea, as I think I've said: the traditional method is to closet the player up in one place for their life up to the point where the story starts. Pretty much all exploration games use this as their back story. It's a bit traditional to have the hero stay in one village until they go on their quest, but it works. You can very easily put your own spin on this, such as the player being stuck in one village because he's deathly allergic to the outside world, until he gets cured at the start of the game. Or have it that the player is stuck in a village that does not know of the existence of the outside world (some calamity separated them completely) until an outsider arrives to start off the quest.

It will depend a lot on what sort of character your hero is as to what works best.