From the introduction: You don’t quite know who or what you’re playing when the game begins, because you don’t create a character beforehand. The player of the Amnesiac doesn't create a character before the game; he creates it during the game. The other players don’t create characters at all, but "choose" or "force" characters during the game. This game is meant to be played in one session between three to five friends. This game uses a custom poker deck for many different purposes – to determine who wins when some sort of conflict occurs, but also to determine what characters people can play, where events occur, and what themes to incorporate into latter parts of the game. In this way, it is a hybrid between a role-playing game and a card game.