do you want to live forever?

8/12/2019 Do You Want to Live Forever?

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Do You Want To Live Forever?Creating Immortal Characters

by Henrik Martensson

"I have been alive for four and a half centuries. And I cannot die."

From the movie "Highlander"

Of all the advantages and powers in theGURPS Sup erssupplement, one catches theimagination more than any other: Immortality!

The trouble is that in most campaigns there isn't enough time to fully develop animmortal character. There are few campaigns where more than a decade or two will

pass, before the players decide to move on to something else. This doesn't even beginto tap the epic qualities of roleplaying immortals.

This essay will deal with immortality as the focus of a whole campaign, where all of thePCs are immortal, or at least have the chance to gain immortality.

How does a character gain immortality? What problems does immortality bring? Whathappens if a PC runs the risk of losing his immortality? A campaign where the PCs canlive forever puts special demands on the GM. He has to take the long view. During thecourse of the campaign empires may rise and fall, as will tech levels. Languages,customs, people, everything will change. Only the PCs remain, at least outwardly, the

same.

The Many Roads To Immortality

There are several ways a PC can be immortal in a GURPScampaign. In somecampaigns the PCs may start with either the Immortality or the Unaging advantages. Inothers, immortality will have to be gained.

I Was Born This Way!

A character may be created with the Immortality or Unaging advantages. This works

well in most settings. In a fantasy campaign the PCs may belong to a race that isimmortal, like Elves, or to a select group with special powers. The royal family of RogerZelazny's "Chronicles of Amber" comes to mind. Blessings, or curses, by the gods arealso possibilities.

In a science fiction setting the PC may be a genetic mutation, like Lazarus Long inRobert Heinlein's Time Enough For Love.
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Magical Immortality

Powerful sorcery may make PCs effectively immortal. The Youth Spell from the Collegeof Healing Spells (GURPS Magi c,p.45) may keep a PC young and healthy forever. Butwhat if not all of the PCs are able to use the spell? Perhaps only one of them can. Or

perhaps the PCs all serve a powerful mage who pays them by using the Youth spell onthem. In such a campaign the PCs may have to struggle hard to gain immortality, andthey always run the risk of losing it again.

A variant of magical immortality, perhaps best suited to horror or semi-historicalcampaigns where magic is restricted, is immortality through Hebe (GURPS Magic, p.90), the Elixir of Youth. An alchemist does not have to be a powerful mage to make theelixir. Indeed, he doesn't have to have Magery at all. This may make things considerablyeasier for the GM who wants to run a campaign where magic is rare. Of course it isalways risky to make alchemical potions, and the ingredients may be very difficult tofind.

Vampire PCs present interesting possibilities. Unless the players want to play evilmonsters, the standard vampire fromGURPS Horro rreally isn't well suited to this. Itmay be better for the GM to create his own variant ofvampirism,perhaps using GURPSSupers. A vampire does not necessarily have to be evil. He may not have to kill either.Maybe he can make do on animal blood, or doesn't take enough to harm his victims.

Personality Transfer

This can work in magic, science fiction or psionic campaigns; it's a key element inGURPS Horseclan s. An unscrupulous mage may use Permanent Possession or

Exchange Bodies to hijack a new, younger body. A powerful psi may use Mindswitch tothe same effect. Even if the PCs are good, kind people, if they can do this, can theyresist the temptation? How do they choose their new bodies?

Science fiction campaigns may offer less sinister alternatives to this kind of bodysnatching. At Tech Level 9, braintaping allows a PC to transfer his mind to a youngerclone of himself. Effective anti-agathic drugs become available at TL10, for those whocan afford it. At TL14 a complexity 8, or better, computer may run a braintape as aprogram (seeUltra-Tech,p. 109). At TL15 the computer could be built into anexoskeleton, giving the PC a wholly artificial brain and body. In a cyberpunk campaign,these techniques may become available at lower TLs.

First I Thought I'd Caught A Cold . . .

An interesting way to gain the Immortality advantage during play is through a diseaseperhaps even an artificial one like the Proteus Virus (GURPS Psion ics,p. 81).Conceivably, a virus could be created that confers either Unaging or Immortality. Thisdoesn't have to be limited to a campaign set in the far future. What if visitors from
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burglaries, taxes, floods, famine, taxes, shipwrecks, revolutions and even more taxes.GMs, be inventive! (But don't be unfair! If someone really wants to play a multi-billionaire and pays the points to do it, find a way to make it work in the campaign.)

Piece By Piece . . .

Let's give some small consideration to all the little accidents PCs can have during thecourse of a campaign. Just how immortal should they be? The Immortal advantageincludes Regeneration, Regrowth and Immunity to Poisons. Will this make the PCs tootough?

On the other hand, PCs who just have Unaging might find themselves literally dyingpiece by piece during the course of the centuries. Considering the realism of theGURPScombat system, this is not unlikely. GMs should pre-plan for this kind of thing. Ifthe PCs' abilities do not include Regrowth, then some other way to replace lost limbs,magical or technological, should be available. Few players will want to drag a one-

legged, one-armed, half-blind cripple down the centuries. But remember that justbecause something is possible, it doesn't have to be easy!

The Immortals Campaign

A successful Immortals campaign must be truly epic in scope. It will take place over along period of game time, and there should be plenty of room for PCs to develop andchange. The point level of the characters will rise dramatically during the campaign. Acampaign may start with 100-point PCs and end with characters worth 1,000 points, oreven more. The campaign must change with the PCs, to keep the challenges suitable totheir abilities.

Therefore, the Immortals campaign must be planned very carefully by the GM. What isthe time span of the campaign? Hundreds of years? Thousands? Is the immortalitymagical or scientific in nature? Will the PCs have Immortality or Unaging advantages?Will they have to rely on drugs, bio-electronics or magic spells?

What about earning character points? Will the PCs gain points between scenarios? Ifso, at what rate? It seems reasonable that a PC that is several centuries old will haveabilities ordinary mortals can't match. Can PCs gain new advantages with time, aftercharacter creation?

Let us go through the steps of creating a background for an Immortals campaign. Not atall by coincidence, it is the background I have used for a campaign for more than eightmonths now. Or a thousand years, depending on your point of view.

The Game World

I decided to use a semi-historical setting for two reasons. First of all, I wanted easyaccess to background material. There are several GURPSsupplements that come in


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very handy and I could always get more information by going to the local library.Second, I wanted to make the long-term focus of the campaign to be the PCs'immortality itself. Why are they immortal? How can they be? By putting the PCs in aworld already familiar to the players, their strangeness became more emphasized. Iwanted the campaign to run for at least a thousand years and climax in our present,

give or take a century. Searching for a starting point, I finally decided on 455 A.D., theyear the Vandals sacked Rome. This gave me the opportunity to catapult the PCs rightinto some heavy duty adventuring.

Magic Vs. No Magic

Here I decided to use a little deception on the players. Naturally, they believed thatthere was magic in the gaming world. How else could their characters, all Romancitizens of 455 A.D., become immortal? To make the climax of the campaign a bit moreof a revelation to the players, I decided to skip the magic and have a (pseudo-)scientificexplanation for their immortality instead. This had an added benefit. Since the players

believed it was a magical game world, the PCs would act from that assumption. In short,the PCs would start wonderfully, and very realistically, superstitious. (They still haven'tcaught on, after a thousand years, though some of them have begun to get a bitsuspicious during the latter centuries.)

The PCs are descendants of aliens whose spaceship crashed on Earth thousands ofyears earlier. Alien genetic science gave the PCs their Immortality advantages. But howto preserve the mystery? And why don't these aliens rule the Earth, after so long? It wasobvious I needed something to keep this alien race in check. I did it by introducinganother race of aliens, shorter-lived, but with great psionic powers. Since these alienswere not immortal, they'd lose their scientific knowledge over the centuries. Eventually

they came to view their own psionic abilities as magical.

Two great spaceships fought a battle in our solar system. Both ships were wrecked andthe survivors stranded on Earth, where they continued to fight. If these two races foughtit out for thousands of years on our planet, wouldn't there be some kind of record of it?Probably. And there is! I centered on old Celtic mythology as the basis for thisbackground, because Celtic gods used lots of devices that could easily have beenscientific in origin. I also wanted the PCs to find some of these devices over time, suchas "magical" swords that were really high-tech monomolecular blades.

The PCs became Sidhe, or Tuatha D Dnan, as they are also called. The classicenemies of the Tuatha D Dnan, the Fomhoire, fit the bill as powerful psionic aliensvery well. I decided to make the Fomhoire an alliance of several alien races, becauseaccording to Celtic mythology, Fomhoire can vary greatly in appearance.

To make a long background story short, both sides lost the war on earth, and went intohiding from each other. The PCs were brought up by human foster parents after theirreal parents were killed in a Fomhoire raid.


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How Immortal Are They?

I decided that the PCs should have the Immortal advantage. It would be a toughcampaign, and the PCs would need the edge provided by Regeneration and Regrowthto survive. To give the players a (very) subtle hint that their powers might be scientific,

rather than magical in nature, I imposed a slight limitation to their regeneration. Forevery 8 HT points they regenerate, they lose one fatigue point. The Fatigue won't beregained until they eat something to get more energy. This also means a charactercould actually faint from regenerating massive damage.

Since Immortality includes immunity to poison, and alcohol is a poison, the PCs cannever get drunk. Nor will they develop a nicotine habit, when tobacco becomesavailable in the campaign. (One PC spent almost a century in futile attempts to getstoned.) However, I decided that various skin and eye irritants, like lacquer powder ortear gas, would work on them, though with somewhat reduced effect.

I also decided to let the PCs gain new advantages during the course of the campaign.The rationale for this is that the PCs should have the time to change and develop newabilities during the course of the centuries. Not every advantage could be gained,though. For instance, Toughness and Charisma could be bought after charactercreation, because they could conceivably be gained with time, but better physicalappearance couldn't be. It is worth noting that since the characters have Regrowth, theycan never have any form of cosmetic surgery. Nor can they ever have any form ofimplants, as these would be rejected by their bodies.

Character Improvement

The cost to play an Immortal in our campaign was 150 points for the ImmortalityAdvantage, minus 30 points for Secret (Immortal) and minus 20 points for Enemy(Fomhoire) (Powerful psis, with some ultra-tech science, appearing on 6 or less), for atotal of 100 points. The players were given the usual 100 points to spend, and 45 pointsextra for disadvantages and quirks. This made the PCs 200-point characters. Of course,the players themselves didn't know the exact point value of their characters at the startof their campaign. They only knew that the PCs were, or could become, immortal, andthat they had 145 points to spend.

I allowed the PCs 1/2 character point per year after the age of 50, to represent theexperience gained in decades (or centuries) between scenarios. This would bring the

PCs close to a whopping 1,000 character points in the 20th century. The way I plannedthe campaign, they'd need it!

With these high point totals, I thought it wise to limit the skill levels the PCs could reach,especially since we were using the cinematic fighting rules. Therefore, the maximumskill level is the basic attribute +10. This has proved to work quite well.


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I allowed no points for practicing skills between scenarios. Even so, the characters gainmany more character points between episodes than they can ever do while adventuring.Sticklers for rules may call this a Bad Thing, as it upsets much of the idea behind thecharacter point system but it worked. The effect was that we had PCs that could reallychange, and grow, with time. As the campaign developed, so did the characters. Now,

after a thousand years game time, the PCs have personalities and attitudes that reflecttheir powers, age and experience. Most important, we have all had loads of fun, and willhave even more, roleplaying the centuries to come.

Setting Things In Motion

All that remained was to get things moving. I put the PCs in Rome, then gave them anincentive to leave (the Vandals) and dropped a hint that they might find their trueheritage in Ireland. Psionics and ultra-tech gadgets are relatively scarce, and always inthe guise of magic.

The players have only recently begun to speculate about the nature of the "magic" inthe campaign. All the better when the revelation comes, they'll enjoy it more.

Inspiration for Immortality

The Immortals campaign has been the best, most fully developed campaign we haveplayed for years. It required a lot of both patience and planning, but has been well worthit. A lot of inspiration came from the excellent movie "Highlander," with CristopheLambert, Sean Connery and Clancy Brown all doing very believable portrayals ofimmortals. (Try to view the British version of the movie; the American one has a verybad rep. And forget about the sequel; it's awful.)

Have fun! May your PCs live forever.

Bibliography

Adams, Robert: The Horseclansbooks, about a few immortals in a post-holocaustworld. There is a GURPSworldbook covering this series.

Farmer, Philip Jos:A Feast UnknownTarzan and Doc Savage are immortal due to awonder drug, but it has unfortunate side effects. An underground classic.

Modesitt, L.E.: The Fires of Paratime

A whole society oftime-travelingimmortals.

Moorcock, Michael: All of the gigantic Eternal Champion Cycle, around 50 books. Readthose about Elric, Corum and Hawkmoon first.

Rice, Anne: Interview With the Vampire, The Vampire Lestat, The Queen of theDamnedThe most chilling vampire stories ever written. These immortals will scareyou!
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Saberhagen, Fred: The Holmes-Dracula File, An Old Friend of the Family, Thorn,DominionDracula as a nice guy.

Shea, Michael: In Yana, the Touch of UndyingOne man's quest for immortality.

Zelazny, Roger:

The Amber series: Nine Princes in Amber, The Guns of Avalon, Sign of the Unicorn,The Hand of Oberon, The Courts of ChaosA must-read. The immortal Amberiteprince, Corwin, struggles to gain power in Amber and to defeat Chaos.

Jack of ShadowsImmortality through a form of rebirth. A very good book.

Today We Choose FacesA family of clones achieves immortality through personalitytransference.

This Immortal

Genetic immortality with mythical overtones. A must for any aspiringimmortal.

Lord of LightScientific immortality through personality transference.

Creatures of Light and DarknessTL16 science fantasy. Several different kinds ofimmortal protagonists.

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