Dual focus

[Oxidised Lizard]

What are your opinions on a schizophrenic dwarf with two foci, perhaps directly contradicting each other?  I think that would be kinda cool to play, trying as hard as possible towards one focus for a while, then your completely mad dwarf switching character for a while and trying as hard as he/she can to stop that focus, or just work at another focus...
And there could be times of overlap, when the dwarf is obviously mad to outsiders, gets confused as to what he wants to do and does some strange things.
Of course, you'd have to think really hard to come up with an IC background that created a dwarf like that.

[Nao]

background wouldn't be too hard, some kind of nasty abuse and vola- your dwarf with multiple personalities. Not schizophrenic, but I guess that's what you mean...

[Jherlen]

I haven't seen all that many dwarves with interesting foci anyway... most just seem to want to "Be the best X ever" where X is something like warrior, armormaker, etc. I'd like to see more dwarves like the few I've seen with interesting, believable, and achievable foci and personalities to match...

If done well, this could be interesting, but it seems to me like it has strong potential to just become goofy and gimmicky. I'm all for comedy, but goofiness doesn't seem to lend itself to long lived characters or interesting personas.

Besides, aren't all dwarves mostly insane anyway?

[Nao]

Edited to add:
I forgot why i made this post. Yes... WHy don't you research the causes of  schizophrenia and you can see how to add that into your background.

The causes for schizophrenia are unknown, pretty much... But that's not what we're talking about here. SChizophrenia would be just someone getting insane, one way or another, maybe hear voices and everything but remain one person. No two personalities there.

The thing you are talking abut here is MPD (got a different name now but I forgot), multiple personalities, when you have two different persons in that one dwarf. Cause for that is extreme abuse during the first four (!?) years of life... Shouldn't be hard to make up something like that for the background, exspecially in zalanthas.

[Demonaire]

Edited to add:
I forgot why i made this post. Yes... WHy don't you research the causes of  schizophrenia and you can see how to add that into your background.

The causes for schizophrenia are unknown, pretty much... But that's not what we're talking about here. SChizophrenia would be just someone getting insane, one way or another, maybe hear voices and everything but remain one person. No two personalities there.

The thing you are talking abut here is MPD (got a different name now but I forgot), multiple personalities, when you have two different persons in that one dwarf. Cause for that is extreme abuse during the first four (!?) years of life... Shouldn't be hard to make up something like that for the background, exspecially in zalanthas.

Not to change topics, but are you serious about the four years bit? They have proven multiple personality syndrome is caused by abuse in the first -four- years? Wow. Damn, I wonder if those children I saw on the news will end up with this disorder since they were starved, beaten and mass tortured.. If you're from Florida, you may have heard about it once or twice.



- Demonaire

[Nao]

not really sure abotu the four years parts.. could be three, could be five, I don't remember exactly... And I'm not from Florida, but that sounds exactly like it...

[Demonaire]

I don't know if its me or if it's the marijuana speaking but every single time I read that I get the awful urge to make a bumper sticker that reads, "Want to stop crime? Stop beating your fucking kids crotch-rot!"




- Demonaire

[Angela Christine]

I think it is now called Dissassociative Identity Disorder.  And it isn't _just_ severe abuse in the first few years, although that is an essential componant.  Not every little kid that survives horrific abuse will develop multiple personalities.  You also have the ability? tendency?  something like that, to "go someplace else" in your head, to disassociate yourself from what is happening to you.  Then you rely on that helpful coping mechanism to an unhealthy degree so that part(s) of yourself have no recolection of abuse at all and are fairly normal, and part(s) of yourself do remember experiencing the abuse and found ways to deal with with it, and those parts can be kind of nuts.


Angela Christine

[EvilRoeSlade]

I would not do this.  Rather, assume that a dwarf's singleminded nature is such that even if he had two personalities, he would still only have one focus.

[Pontius Pilate]

The causes for schizophrenia are unknown, pretty much...

.... How about an influx of dopamine in the synaptic cleft. In fact, that's how they treat schizophrenia, by regulating the levels of dopamine. Another facet that proves that theory is COCAINE! Yes, indeed, since cocaine increases the amount of time dopamine spends in the synaptic cleft, it eventually leads to the development of schizophrenia. On a different note, parkinson's disease is thought to be caused by a decreased amount of dopamine in the synaptic cleft.... isn't that ... amusing?

Semper Pax,

Dirr

[FiveDisgruntledMonkeysWit]

If you're seriously considering running something like this, you might want to send an e-mail to the mud. Sounds like a special app to me.

[Cale_Knight]

Not much about DID has been proven at all, and there's a lot of debate about whether it even exists.

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/031003.html

[Pontius Pilate]

I need only to examine the name of that web address to discern the reliability of that information.

Semper Pax,

Dirr

[Nao]

Not much about DID has been proven at all, and there's a lot of debate about whether it even exists.

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/031003.html

There IS lots of people who question that. There's probably been a lot of misdiagnosis in the past that was one of the things that lead up to this whole questioning thing, but I'm sure it exists, even if it's probably more rare if you sort out all the misdiagnoses.

[Cale_Knight]

I'm inclined to believe that if it exists at all, it's at the level of one or two cases a year. Not the thousands and thousands that popped up out of nowhere a few decades ago.

That said, a dwarf with two conflicting foci sounds interesting. I think playing it via a split personality seems pretty cliche, though. Why not just have two extremely powerful urges. Maybe one focus is to kill the biggest silt horror ever seen, but his other focus is to live among halflings. How is he going to deal with both, , when silt horrors and halflings live across the world from one another?

[moab]

Rarely are dwarves played properly and rarely are focusi choosen properly.

Rarely is mental illness played properly.

These things in hand, it seems to me to be a bad choice.

If you're playinga dwarf with two focui, you are missing the _whole point_ of playing a dwarf.

App your dwarf with a reachable focus, once he reaches it, change his foci to the next thing, and the the next.

Bad Focus: To fly to the moon (unreachable)
Cheesy Focus: To be the best warrior in the world. (unreachable)
Good Focusi: To make Sergeant in the Byn
                   To save up 10,000 coins
                   To kill five elves this year.

[Oxidised Lizard]

I disagree that all unreachable foci are necessarily bad.  It is possible to play a mad dwarf with a focus of, say, crossing the far northern void, or crossing the Sea of Silt very effectively.  Just because dwarves and mental illness are rarely played well, it doesn't mean they can't be played well.

More on the original subject of this thread, I agree that a dual focus dwarf would be very difficult to play convincingly and a lot of time would need to be put into its creation.  However, I don't think the idea should be dismissed just because it's difficult to play and probably won't be played properly.  

I'm not missing the whole point of playing a dwarf - it's merely a variation on a dwarf's central characteristic which might just be possible.  Then again a dwarf with a split focus might be pretty much an impossibility in Zalanthas - that's what I want to discuss primarily, not the playability of such a dwarf.

[Oxidised Lizard]

Rarely are dwarves played properly and rarely are focusi choosen properly.

App your dwarf with a reachable focus, once he reaches it, change his foci to the next thing, and the the next.

Bad Focus: To fly to the moon (unreachable)

From the documentation on choosing a focus:

A dwarf who has gone insane could have all sorts of bizarre foci - get to one of the moons? eat only ginka fruit? Teach a vestric to talk?

[Maybe42or54]

Well, "flying" and "getting to" can be very different things.
Personally, my thoughts are that if you havn't mastered a dwarf with only one Foci in terms of RP, I don't think you should be attempting to make a dwarf with two who is insane. That is just me though, if you do and I don't like what you are doing IC, don't expect me to RP with you while you smirk IRL and think how fun it is to play this loon of a dwarf.

[Oxidised Lizard]

This is purely theoretical...I'm not playing a dwarf with two foci and don't plan to any time soon.

Also, as I said previously I'm not saying I or anyone should try to play it (although I think it could be interesting if played well) - it's just an idea which I wondered if people thought  would be possible (i.e. could a dwarf with two foci exist in Zalanthas)?

[Tamarin]

I want to make a dwarf who's focus is to uppercut a punkass, and send him flying into a cake or a bowl of punch.