[DF] Lich PCs in DF - Oswald the Violet

[Tymathee]

I think it is imperative that I provide context to as of why Oswald is designed the way he is. My anxiety is spiking and I feel my face is going numb, signs of a potentially incoming panic attack. I feel my hands shaking and tears flowing from my eyes as I write this.

Oswald, on paper, is an exploration of understanding the concept of evil. As a part of the therapeutic process I expect out of my roleplaying experiences, I want this to be something that will be one of the pillars of my intensive therapy for my crippling PTSD, or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Naturally, people will want to know why I have PTSD. It is unavoidable. It effects every aspect of my life, professionally and recreationally. My symptoms can even be triggered at the table when all I'm trying to do is roll some dice and have a good time. I have no choice but to inform my fellow players and the GM because otherwise I'll be blindsiding them potentially when they have to witness me breaking down.

I was repeatedly molested and raped as a child. I witnessed domestic pets being brutally beaten and murdered before my eyes. I was purposefully neglected and often times starved. I was tossed and locked in a room that was fumigated by toxic chemicals, my screams going unheard as I collapsed and fell to the floor unconscious. I was reprimanded for trying to take appropriate legal action against the people who would do harm to me and was told to commit suicide.

That's just a part of my childhood and not even the full story. Adulthood has been even worse.

Unable to hold down a job consistently even though I tried so hard to, I remained homeless for a greater part of the past decade ever since my late teens when I decided being in a homeless shelter with my malignantly narcissistic mother was becoming far too abusive to cope with. My lifelong PTSD made it difficult to take the right actions to rise above my horrify circumstances. I struggled with substance abuse and even alcoholism to drown out my agonizing traumatic memories. I experienced horrific violence that left me bleeding on the sidewalk, I was threatened with violence and forcefully raped, I was nearly murdered by a machete-wielding psychopath....

Part of the neglect I experienced was being left undiagnosed and untreated for my significant ADHD, so I effectively have no meaningful public education. I'm now faced with the fact that I might have to drop out of community college because I'm so ill-equipped to succeed. That means losing my financial aid, my only income right now, and becoming homeless because my own mother has little interest in supporting me and is so profoundly callous that she completely lacks any compassion for my crippling PTSD which is a significant barrier to employment.

Part of PTSD is "survivor's guilt". A large part of me wants to put all the blame on me for the traumatic events that occurred. It is so difficult for me to combat these feelings, but I have to keep reminding my self that the worst of it was committed by bonafide sociopaths and malignant narcissists.

I'm in the process of receiving intensive therapy for my PTSD. Realistically, or perhaps cynically, no amount of heavy medication or counseling is going to make things better, only mildly soften it. I want my roleplaying experiences to be a important pillar of possibly recovering from my illness.

That's a large part of why I made Oswald. I want to explore why evil does what evil does, and how they might consider the lasting consequences of their past actions even if that wasn't something people in my life considered doing.

You could say "Nice story buddy, better sell it to Hollywood and make a fat stack of cash!". This is my story though, and you don't have to believe it. I'm the one who has to live with it.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Tymathee

Oswald, on paper, is an exploration of understanding the concept of evil. As a part of the therapeutic process I expect out of my roleplaying experiences, I want this to be something that will be one of the pillars of my intensive therapy for my crippling PTSD, or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

...

I'm in the process of receiving intensive therapy for my PTSD. Realistically, or perhaps cynically, no amount of heavy medication or counseling is going to make things better, only mildly soften it. I want my roleplaying experiences to be a important pillar of possibly recovering from my illness.

That's a large part of why I made Oswald. I want to explore why evil does what evil does, and how they might consider the lasting consequences of their past actions even if that wasn't something people in my life considered doing.

Ah. In my (quite limited) experience, personal development and/or therapy via RPGs is a real thing, but it is slow work. Don't get discouraged if it takes a while.

[Tymathee]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Ah. In my (quite limited) experience, personal development and/or therapy via RPGs is a real thing, but it is slow work. Don't get discouraged if it takes a while.

Oh, as cynical as I may be I'm willing to have some optimism that things will get better. A pragmatic pessimist would argue that life does not in fact necessarily get better. We can't predict the future, but we can guess its projectory.

There's likely other aspects of Oswald's design I would like to ponder upon, and while doing so I might consider variations on how he is designed as of now. Discussion up to this point has not necessarily been fruitless, as I've genuinely been able to glean some useful insight. Most of it was just ironing out the under-the-hood bits without any actual need of shuffling points to adjust any traits, which is a good sign. The important thing is remaining confident in my design choices, BUT also keeping in mind that I'll need to communicate the intricate nuances to this character to the GM so that these kinds of unnecessary responses don't occur. I've purposefully built Oswald with some very ubiquitous fantasy tropes, like "Evil Wizard who wields Evil magic" and "Evil as a tangible force of nature". He should be appropriate in most kitchen-sink DF games, with perhaps some expectation that the GM work with the players to have reasonable worldbuilding decisions made that incorporate PC design.

[Tymathee]

Amidst my pondering on the design of the character, I was thinking about the "50% Town roleplaying / 50% Dungeon roleplaying".

Kromm and the authors of the DF product line are surely aware of the fact that a realistic significant demographic of zoomer to millenial generation players of DnD might migrate to GURPS to play DF. Perhaps I'm being presumptuous in my assumptions on their tastes (I fall within this demographic at least), but actual contemporary trends in taste of what qualifies for dungeon fantasy is at least a little more social than what the DF material assumes by default. A group of young players who come to GURPS, pick up the DF line, and read into the obvious murder hoboery intent behind the rules will toss those out the window in favor of something more sensible.

I don't think my 50% Dungeons assumption is unreasonable either. 50% Dungeons is 50% of the campaign. That's HUGE. 50% Towns, with the previous logic in mind, is reasonable too. Adventurers should not be wasting their time on petty dungeons with little chance on meaningful returns in the form of good loot. Adventurers should be taking considerable time investigating what dungeons are truly worth their time delving to maximize their profits. This obviously means spending a significant amount of time in Town... and roleplayers being roleplayers, inevitably they'll want to pursue at least some endeavors in Town that's not just "Dungeons... my precious Dungeons... my precioussss!".

Of course, some forumite could just come along and say "Yeah, Tymathee, your new fangled expectations associated with more contemporary sensibilities of dungeon fantasy are not permissible in strictly-by-the book DF. If you want that out of your dungeon fantasy, go back to playing 5E DnD."

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Tymathee

Perhaps I'm being presumptuous in my assumptions on their tastes (I fall within this demographic at least), but actual contemporary trends in taste of what qualifies for dungeon fantasy is at least a little more social than what the DF material assumes by default.

This is being rectified, somewhat, in the 2021 PDF Challenge.

[Tymathee]

Originally Posted by johndallman

This is being rectified, somewhat, in the 2021 PDF Challenge.

That's nice.

I don't think I'm wrong with my expectations. I'd like to say that, while overall I do quite like the DF product line as it is a genre I enjoy, the GURPS treatment of the dungeon fantasy genre, given the default assumptions it makes, appears to cater to a particular kind of taste of campaign/reflects a specific time period of fantasy TTRPG design philosophy(?) that is largely not being played in today's fantasy gaming. There's a market for such a product but it's realistically catering to a very, very small demographic of gamers. Not quite generically universal in my opinion.

It just comes off as catering to a niche market (GURPS products, but I suppose that's a given as we're all here for it) within a niche market (Dungeon fantasy as in lower case dungeon fantasy the genre) within yet another niche market (Screw most of the lip-flapping, let's bash monster brains in and take all their valuables!). That's a whole lot of matryoshka doll! Celjabba said it himself that the typical DF game is more likely than not to be 90% Dungeon and 10% Town (we can assume the optional basic travel rules or the "Travel Montage", but YMMV).

It leaves the distinct impression that most people who purchase this product line are going to want to ignore a lot of the default assumptions the rules make on behalf of the GM in order to better facilitate the kind of game that most people would actually be interested in playing. One has to think then, who are these rules being written for? According to one person's (Kromm's? The other author's?) particular taste in dungeon fantasy gaming, or to a broader market? It does not appear to be the latter and may possibly be the former.

I'm not trying to be unnecessarily cruel, this is just my critique of the product line as I understand it and also from how I understand how the GURPS community perceives it. It comes off as utilizing game design philosophy that was even dated for its time back in the early 2000's, and it hasn't aged well since then. You can certainly say it would appeal to the OSR (Old School Renaissance) community since this stuff is getting up in its years... but it certainly is not living up to or seemingly interested in catering to the much, much larger demographic of people interested in contemporary game design, game design philosophy, or more contemporary gaming sensibilities at all.

[Tymathee]

It just occurred to me that for Slow Recharge, even at the -20% level, a case could be made for the value to be altered for the sake of genre expectations. While Dungeons suggests that Wandering Monster checks occur hourly within the dungeon, but traditional "dungeon turns" within DnD take place within 10 minute increments. Traditionally a Wandering Monster check would occur every 1-3 "dungeon turns", or anywhere between every 10-30 minutes. Oswald's special Energy Reserve, thanks to the Slow Recharge -20%, will recharge at 1 point/hour without purposeful rest and with the Recover Energy spell he'll recharge at 1 point/12 minutes. Wizards naturally are casting a dozen if not certainly more spells within a particular dungeon, so with the previous logic in mind this modifier could be worth more than just -20%. Of course it is up to the GM to consider what's fair for how severe and how frequent Wandering Monster checks are made but it seemed like a good idea to keep this in mind. If anything my ideas keeps in better flavor with "old school" sensibilities (even though I think it is better to not be wholly married to that sort of gaming philosophy, contemporary tastes have their place).

As a tangential sidenote, if it appears that I'm posting at all odd hours of the night (It is... about 5 AM as of now where I live, so I guess it's morning now...) it is probably due to my insomnia. I'm frequently plagued by horrific nightmares as a part of the many symptoms of my PTSD. Babbling about game mechanics is somewhat soothing to me.

[Tymathee]

Here's more of my loose train of extended Designer's Notes (I'm likely to refer future GMs to this thread!).

At IQ 16 and Magery 6, it makes it convenient to just spend a single point on almost every spell.

Being a Lich, Oswald has a great deal of free time in his state of undeath. Studying and learning spells via teacher seems like it'd be a rarity if it is even plausible in the first place for him, so it only makes sense that Oswald would be studying and learning magic independently through spell tomes.

If my math is correct using the independent study rules for learning spells, Oswald will need to study for 240 hours to be able to invest a single character point into a new spell.

For some quick crunch to fluff, since Oswald has already learned 42 spells, he's spent at least 10,080 hours learning spells already. That's pretty neat!

As for learning material, I'm sure there's spell tome rules specifically for DF buried somewhere in one of the various supplements but here's a quick and dirty suggestion:

Spell tomes, each a heavy textbook weighing in at about 12 lbs. (!!!) for learning a single spell (more spells means more weight(!)), and cost a minimum of $500 (cost may differ per spell, but the most powerful are likely to be of even greater value!). Wizards take pride in their writing, and they're well written to please the most introverted Wizards with a preference for independent learning. They're more often than not beautifully decorated, their covers gilded with gold leaf, with strong material and good binding. Some Wizards who leave their spell tomes lying around in Dungeons for whatever reason might leave a nasty curse inside! Roll and succeed on a Hidden Lore (Magical Writings) check to avoid the nasty effects of the curse. Doing so takes the time as per the rules in Dungeons, but as noted the process is quickened by Speed-Reading.

Towns might have a specialty bookstore for Wizards to peruse for new spells to learn, they could be bought from the local Wizard's Guild, or of course possibly found as prized loot within Dungeons.

I'd imagine Oswald's adventuring companions could be convinced to take some of his share of the cash into Town with them to find and acquire spell tomes for him (if he isn't already being sneak buddies with the party's Thief), or if they're not feeling like doing favors (I imagine they might not want to always want to cut into their own valuable down-time to do this. That's less time for their own carousing or more importantly their training!) I guess he could always rough it and count on the occasional loot find for it in Dungeons.

These are all just suggestions for the GM to consider. They could always rule that spontaneous miraculous learning is possible and you can just learn spells that way, but this seems more balanced and fun.

EDIT: Changed tome weight to match up with the listed weight for a tome as noted in Adventurers.

[Tymathee]

Another segment of the loose train of extended thoughts of Designer's Notes.

Unhealing has a interesting workaround for Oswald. He can heal via spells, or by being drenched in healing potion.

I thought it would only be appropriate to give him some necromantic spells... so he has Steal Vitality to sap the life out of foes!

You'd think this would truly depreciate the value of his Unhealing, but I don't think it does. He has to touch his subject in order to cast the spell. This means either a willing subject or a incapacitated one.

He had to have Steal Energy as a prerequisite to learn this spell... and considering the modifier on his Magery, he can't actually use it. It's just there to be a pseudo-Unusual Background essentially.

Hmmm... it is just after 4 AM here as of the writing of this. My insomnia keeps me awake. Mostly because of the horrific nightmares associated with my Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, like I mentioned before. I think I'll continue this pattern of periodic postings as I find it soothing, and the notes double as useful reading for my future GMs.

[Tymathee]

Just some more loose thoughts for future GMs I might be playing with. This character, in particular, just needs to be played as he's designed. It's nearly non-negotiable. I know that spits in the eye of conventional TTRPG wisdom, but that's just it. This is a character built by someone with PTSD to help them work through their illness. That person being me. You could say my mental illness is intertwined with the inherent design of the character. By putting myself in the shoes of Evil, I'd hope to glean some deeper meaningful insight into why the people in my life did what they did to me.

This might yield the sense that this is a un-touchable special snowflake character, how-dare-you-do-harm-to-my-OC kind of a thing. Hmm, not quite. I expect every aspect of him that could logically be mutable, to be mutable post char gen. Liches love their lichdom, why not hose the lich by taking that away? Protected Power (Magic)? Makes sense for a lich to invest well in preserving their powers, but maybe at least some magical anti-Wizard traps are just too good.

With the "baggage" that comes with this character, I'd expect the GM to not be too trigger happy with the lethal encounters and death traps. Danger wise, I want things to happen to him that make him consider that his status-quo of Evil isn't what he thinks it is. Invoking that feeling of... ah, this video really captures that feeling. It's less about killing off characters as you please and more about pushing issues onto the characters that make them pursue interesting routes of meaningful character development. That's what I'd like as playing as Oswald. Character death can be fine, but what interests me more is prolonged opportunity for thoughtful roleplaying.

I think the lack of real melee skills is still fine. Thematically it makes sense, liches would rather not put themselves in harms way as often as possible (they worked real hard for that immortality) and have their minions do the good thwackin'. He does speak "Goblinish", which might be specifically speaking to Goblins, or possibly just Goblin-Kin in general. The GM ought to be a sweetheart and let Oswald have a small entourage of simpering goblin hirelings to order about using his commandeering skills, Leadership/Strategy/Tactics. They should have modest combat effectiveness, but not be so effective as to throw off combat balance, and probably should be utilizing the "Worthy" status, as in they'll drop dead as soon as they hit 0 HP. The idea is that they're pretty disposable. Goblins in a lot of fiction (or at least lowercase dungeon fantasy) live loose, fast lives that end with a "Splat!". So they should be cheap to hire, as goblins know they live short lives and appreciate whatever coin they can get their grubby little hands on.