Creating new character classes and origins (races) is hard, partly because so much has already been done before.

In some ways, searching for pure originality is always a fools errand, because someone, somewhere has done what you've done before and probably done it quite well.

Different for different's sake is normally a bad idea that produces incomprehensible and stupid results.

Sometimes, however, life presents a moment of inspiration in the most unlikely of quarters.

The Dhelvin character origin (sulky teenager one in the picture on the right) that you will be able to play when the Book of the Phantasm is Kickstarted (and of course if you pony up and back it), was the product of a staff training day at a (for legal reasons) unnamed employer.

I was being trained to do the sort of meaningless and alienating work that modern Britain specialises in, something involving telephones and despair.

The training involved videos about various things, ranging from not burning to death in the building to not accepting bribes from visiting state dignatories. The result was a type of three day psychical torture, and the only mental escape was to scribble, draw, stare out of the window, go for endless loo breaks, and sometimes cry.

I wondered, on my way home, what if a being could use targetted boredom as a super power, and considered that the constituent parts of boredom were a sense of time slipping by, a fear that golden opportunities to do other things in this fleeting experience called life were being lost, and a deep frustration that morphed into a mind crushing anxiety eventually.

I wondered to myself what kind of terrible being might possess such a power (other than a call centre supervisor, who was probably to some degree a victim of it too).

Then I wondered if it might be an ability inate to a creature, which could be turned on and off like a tedium machine gun, and that with a little bit of magic, the boringness might be amplified to defeat even the stoutest of opponents.

And this is how the Dhelvin was created, humanoids who live in the dark of the Dhelve in the Phantasm, trade across the vast underdark expanses at subterannean river ports and who make the economy on the Phantasm work.

When cornered, they can pull the most powerfully meaningless, rambling story from their unconscious mind to psychically batter any opponent within earshot into the pit of mental anguish and despair.

PS:

The Book of the Phantasm is coming to Kickstarter in late September, so watch out for alerts from this email soon.