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Monday, October 5, 2020

Gerry & the Osirians

Gerry the Necromancer is an interesting complication in my DF game. Mostly it's just a mechanical puzzle. How do you deal with monsters that threaten 250-point characters with your 35-point skeletons, and how do you make them useful and relevant?

How do you get them places they'd have trouble going? What do you do when the path through is through a No Mana Zone and that reduces the skeleton to pieces in short order?

Sometimes, though, it's a more roleplaying-tinged complication.

One of my players noted that Gerry would have an affinity for the Osirians and/or vice-versa (not his words.)

Meanwhile, Gerry and his skeletons are treated neutrally by the people of Stericksburg and the Church, and by the civilized simians beyond the Ape Gate.

Beyond the Icy Gate is a society seemingly ruled by the Iron Wind, which is some kind of evil force, but they hate and fear the undead. Gerry can't be walking around with his skeletons there.

None of this is really planned out. I made some very early decisions on what was were - Mur Fustisyr beyond the Icy Gate, the simians, the Osirians. That Gerry happened to come along with some undead just factors into it.

I don't really do "gotcha" situations. Your disadvantages may not hinder you much or they may totally preclude some adventures. If you make a big, heavy, hard to move guy, maybe the Air Gate isn't for you. If you depend on heavy armor for everything you can't spend a lot of time in the Lost City unless your cleric pal comes with and throws the all-too-broadly-useful Resist Fire spell on you. And so on. It's just a good fit or the lack thereof.

We'll see how Gerry actually gets along with the Osirians. If the plan is either "kill them and loot them" or "not kill them, just befriend them, then ask them for a quest that involves them paying over everything they own of value so we aren't forced to kill them later" - it might not matter how well they get along. It's all just a complication of the character who comes to the table, not of the game being channeled in a way that would complicate his life for him.

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