Character with Dissociative Identity Disorder

[FauxFoa]

I was thinking of making an alternate character that would be the opposite of my current one. (My current being a strong battle friendly Caparii.)
I'm shooting for a character that has a very gifted intelligence, but also has a crippling mental state that makes life much harder.

A character with dissociative personality disorder may be interesting to play, so I thought up some rules and personalities to play with.

How to determine which personality is dominate...
Roll a d20; 1 to 9 is personality one, 12-20 is personality two, 10-11 his personalities fight for dominance; roll again [RP he falls into a seizure].

Roll when...
The character gets spoken to after being alone for 3-6 hours.
The character takes mind altering substances (Alcohol included.)
The character is under great stress.
When none of the above is applicable, I roll once per day.

Personality One;
Good personality traits: Very compassionate to all races. Loves to learn new things.
Bad personality traits: Untidy, tends to leave clutter around the house. Unfocused.
Common mood: Relaxed.
Sense of humor: Takes nothing serious, enjoys riddles and witty jokes.
Character’s greatest joy in life: Learning the natural sciences.
Character’s greatest fear: Being trapped.
Priorities: Has no real priorities.
Life philosophy: “Go with the flow.”
Greatest strength: His mind.
Greatest vulnerability or weakness: Cannot fight, simply can’t hold a sword correctly. Suffers from extreme headaches.

Personality Two;
Good personality traits: Extremely intelligent, picks up on new things very fast, enjoys learning above all else. His home/work space is very clean and in order at all times.
Bad personality traits: Dislikes most others, hates crowded areas. Typically avoids unnecessary contact with anybody he doesn't feel he can learn from.
Common mood: Focused.
Sense of humor: Takes everything seriously, does not have room for humor.
Character’s greatest joy in life: Brewing potions and learning.
Character’s greatest fear: Being trapped.
Priorities: Gain as much knowledge as he possibly can.
Life philosophy: Knowledge is power.
Greatest strength: His mind.
Greatest vulnerability or weakness: Cannot fight, simply can’t hold a sword correctly. Suffers from extreme headaches.

Both personalities are similar in regards to the love of learning, but both are vastly different in how they interact with others. I'm not sure if this character would be easy to RP with, or if the changing of personalities is different enough that others would pick up on it in RP. Thoughts?

 

[Baron]

Ehh, multiple personalities are one of those cliches we've managed to escape from like the orphan assassin and red eyes. Nowadays people make their characters stand out by the quality of their RP, not the special snowflakeness of some condition/aspect nobody else has.

 

[FauxFoa]

Ooph..

You got me at orphan assassin.

 

[Baron]

Either personality is just fine as a character, but I wouldn't try to play 2 people in 1 body since it's been done to such an extreme that it's no longer taken seriously, or at worst looked down upon.

 

[Baron]

Seriously, at one point we had shapeshifting dragon men, wizards whose claim to power was because they said so, orphan assassins up the wazoo, and worse. Since then we've heavily tightened the lore and begun restricting the crazier stuff. The only remnants of that time now is the legacy characters, people who got to keep their potentially lore-breaking character because they were good RPers, worked with the lore team to find a compromise that made everyone happy, and remained active throughout the entire time period to the present. There's a few people with red eyes and two nonhuman simulacra.

 

[Sos]

buuuttttt this doesn't stop him from fleshing out the character... i recommend looking more indepth with DID. particularly as they tend to have one or two aspects as opposed to 'different personalities'.

 

[FauxFoa]

Thats what I figured when you said "orphan assassin".
I think I'll just create a genuine intelligent character and RP him to somewhere he can learn a lot, no shapeshifting dragon men or wizards.

 

[FauxFoa]

I'll put more thought into this, maybe have some personality quirks that change depending on what the character consumes or stressors that effect them.

 

[Sos]

I'll put more thought into this, maybe have some personality quirks that change depending on what the character consumes or stressors that effect them.

bingo... walk before you can run and all that.

 

[Mryosi]

I always wondered why people are always either the hero who can't fail, or the extreme anti-hero, a villein who has no emotions or a complex psychological disease like the one above. (And of course, those who do the extra mile: Starting as a hero, loosing their memory and waking up as anti-hero)

Putting that aside, it will be simply impossible to diagnose you. "Mental illness" has no place in a medieval place, people should just consider your charterer crazy, if you are lucky.
I'm afraid that when you start switching someone will stand up, give you a full modern diagnosis and treatment and within a week you will announce yourself cured. In other words, very poor, boring and meta rp.

I personally, stay away from this characters. Even if the one who is playing them is doing it really, really good (which is very rare), the environment would ruin it.

On a side note..
If you say "Orphan Assassin" three times in a thread, a new one is born...

 

[Sankera]

Orphan assassin, Orphan assassin, Orphan assassin

 

[Tybalt]

Orphan assassin, Orphan assassin, Orphan assassin

*stab, stab, stab*
No! No! No!!!!!

 

[Sankera]

*stab, stab, stab*
No! No! No!!!!!

But I always wanted to make one for giggles

 

[Tybalt]

But I always wanted to make one for giggles

*groans* just... Keep it somewhere far away from me.

 

[Sankera]

*groans* just... Keep it somewhere far away from me.

I will make a Lavoyard bastard orphan assassin with autism who grew up with heathen thiefs

Jk, dont kill me

 

[Tybalt]

I will make a Lavoyard bastard orphan assassin with autism who grew up with heathen thiefs

Jk, dont kill me

I approve...

 

[Scardrac]

Eh. I think multiple personalities could escape the cliche category if done right.. I would take him seriously.

 

[DraconDarknight]

Ehh, multiple personalities are one of those cliches we've managed to escape from like the orphan assassin and red eyes. Nowadays people make their characters stand out by the quality of their RP, not the special snowflakeness of some condition/aspect nobody else has.

Jirishim invites for it though

 

[Michcat]

This guy seems super chill, and I definitely think a multipersonality/DID could be played rather well by the right person-

But MrYosi made a good point up above, the enviroment might take away from all the good aspects :C

 

[FauxFoa]

I'm not entirely clear on what environmental factors would effect this character so greatly that it would take all the good out of playing him.

Also with that being said, I don't think the character at this point would be playable. Since this character could not survive on his own (as he is), he would need to have been brought up as a child into a family that would accept the illness, which is rare and would make for some lame RP. It would seem more common to me that he would have been left to die as a child (again corny), or had some crazy torture to pull the demon out of him which would have resulted in death. Mental illnesses in medieval times were generally considered divine/demonic/magical things that happened to a person, so the survivability of this character would be slim to none.

Even if he survived his childhood in his backstory and was grown, I don't think his personality would be that what I stated above, I think it would be more of a greedy distrustful survivalist personality.

I think that a mental illness can have a place in the game. This particular one would have to be created very carefully and would need to be played by someone who is better at RPing than I am. XD