Mandatory Disadvantages

       In my previous DF campaign, I had strongly encouraged the taking of Sense of Duty (Adventuring Companions) as a disadvantage, but I fell short of making it mandatory. It is worth noting that the one player who didn't take it was also the player who caused the most problems. When their other character flaws caused them to come into conflict with the group, the presence of that disadvantage would have constituted an additional guardrail on the PC's behaviour. The absence of that disadvantage therefore was unfortunately noticed. And for players who have no such conflicts, then the SoD (Adventuring Companions) should effectively amount to free points.

    For the DF Novices game, I am considering not only Sense of Duty (Adventuring Companions) for the reasons as above, but also Wealth (Struggling) for more thematic reasons. A starting novice adventurer, be they a trained-professional-who-is-still-relatively-inexperienced, or a true wet-behind-the-ears-rookie*, would arguably begin their story less well equipped than the default $1000/cp which is assumed for 250-point adventurers.

    I had thought of arbitrarily setting that $1K budget lower, however it seems fairer to invoke the disadvantage and give the player points in exchange. -50 points is a large disadvantage total when your PC is only a 62-point hero. Disadvantages that are social/metagame-traits rather than an aspect of the character's personality, also have the benefit of being one less character flaw that has to be actively roleplayed. That goes double for any novice who is adding on racial disadvantages from a non-human template on top of the above.

    Of course, Mandating any amount of Disadvantages does break with the use of -25-point disadvantage modules. However, the book already does this with the professions for the Holy Warrior, Martial Artist, and Cleric. So I feel that this is already unavoidable to some extent. The thematically-bundled disadvantage modules are a nice idea though, even if they can't be adhered to rigorously (and p.30 of Delvers to Grow mentions as much that they are more of a guideline than a rule). 

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* Delvers to Grow has an option for 62-pointers to skip the upgrade module, in exchange for 1 less disadvantage package, which is what I am trying to distinguish between above. I just wish I had snazzier descriptions for these two options.