Mental condition and insanity

[Entropious]

Recently I started wandering when, if ever, would a RPG finally pick up, in a meaningful way, the notion of the protagonist's sanity and the general deterioration of ones minds when faced with death, murder, horror and the supernatural. I know it may, at first glance, look a bit too "Lovecraftian" but such a mechanic is actually not too hard to implement at all.

 

I would just point out to the near-forgotten game Eternal Darkness and its simple, yet brilliant idea - the sanity meter. The more a single individual encounters something completely out of range of their perceptions, especially if he or she is harmed by it in any way, the meter slowly goes up, eventually introducing some spontaneous and sporadic effects - whisperings, omens, hallucinations and the likes.

 

What does the forum think? Should the mind of the protagonist, and its state brought on by sights, sounds and experiences beyond role playing, be somehow reflected?

[Concerned Reader]

I've always like this sort of idea within games, but I know that some people absolutely hate it when control of the character is explicitly taken away from them.

[Cantousent]

I can think of a character who is bi-polar and has periods of expansive spirit contrasted with periods of lethargy. ...Or a depressive who has to fight back from behind the teeth of despair daily in order to keep going. ...Or a Schizophrenia, where the PC knows some things are real and some aren't and he must decide how to respond to his environment. Has potential at least.

[PsychoYoshi]

Interesting idea; ED was a great game.

 

I don't know if there should be something like a sanity meter in PE, per sec, but the concept of sanity as some type of story or plot mechanic could be very compelling, indeed. Seeing as how souls are tied to everything, it could be a reasonable extension that perception or something like that could be affected by the development of the person's soul. One example might be, say, if a person was some kind of spirit medium. Altruistic spirits are more likely to flock to an altruistic person. Something of that nature. On the insanity end, certain kinds of evil or just weird characters could potentially gain access to different powers based on their mental state.

Edited September 20, 2012 by PsychoYoshi

[General_Disarray]

It could be done... but it feels more like a horror game mechanic than a large RPG mechanic.

 

I think it could work if it was implemented as a sort of first act, like how in Fallout you have to find a water chip in X time. So you have to 'fix' yourself before proceeding. how you chose to do so (or not) could reshuffle the game.

[Entropious]

...Or someone who has actual, dialogue-based "conversations" in his head once his state turns really sour. Imagine a whole quest based around the question of "Whether I'm completely insane or is something actually in my head, or worse, in me?"

[exodiark]

Recently I started wandering when, if ever, would a RPG finally pick up, in a meaningful way, the notion of the protagonist's sanity and the general deterioration of ones minds when faced with death, murder, horror and the supernatural. I know it may, at first glance, look a bit too "Lovecraftian" but such a mechanic is actually not too hard to implement at all.

 

I would just point out to the near-forgotten game Eternal Darkness and its simple, yet brilliant idea - the sanity meter. The more a single individual encounters something completely out of range of their perceptions, especially if he or she is harmed by it in any way, the meter slowly goes up, eventually introducing some spontaneous and sporadic effects - whisperings, omens, hallucinations and the likes.

 

What does the forum think? Should the mind of the protagonist, and its state brought on by sights, sounds and experiences beyond role playing, be somehow reflected?

 

A great idea, maybe they'll start seeing unicorns, Stalin, and rainbows along the road. It certainly is interesting.

[Concerned Reader]

The stuff they introduced about Souls does bring up some interesting concepts as well. If you happend to be one of the lucky/unlucky ones to be host to two souls, how would that affect your mental state?

 

I've always been facinated with the concepts of reality vs perception. Having a PC who experiences halucinations which the party cannot see could be very interesting. Especially if it turns out those halucinations are real.

[Entropious]

Yes, all those concepts are quite appealing, however, a simple, yet effective mechanic would have to be introduced, something along the line of certain beasts, spells, effects and plot-driven events earning the protagonist and X number of Insanity Points (of course, this numer would be hidden from the gamer). Once a certain threshold is met, the effects would start, very subtle and sporadic at first, but with time growing more severe.

[Playgu]

Yeah I think mental conditions and insanity could be part of the game. But there should be ways to protect the character from these kind of things.

 

What if character attributes (Willpower? Wisdom? Charisma?) helped define your mental strength, and by having more of these attributes your character would be less suspicable to mental conditions.. Could be a cool way to add some variation to the races as well, some may be naturally strong-willed, while others would easily become insane.

[Entropious]

Actually, there is an even simpler way. For each point beyond the "average" of said attribute, for example, Will Power, points would be deducted when gaining Insanity Points (if the effect would garner very few points, you would be left totally unscathed).

 

I would be very much against any immunities beyond that, so as to not make the mechanic too complicated. I would, however, be a supporter of divine intervention (very rare, very hard to get, devoute and sincere priests only) being able to reduce possessed Insanity Points or even cure of an already existing insanity.

 

Oh yes, and one thing I forgot to add. Once a very high level of Insanity Points were gathered by the protagonis, he or she would gain an insanity, a permanent, debilitating madness, randomly selected from a "secret" list. For example, agoraphobia, where the character would "enjoy" severe negative penalties when acting in an open space.

 

So, I've just read the new update, and it seems that the Soul System, or however else you'd like to call it, would fit in pretty well with the general mental (or, if you prefer, spiritual) well-being of the protagonist.

Edited September 20, 2012 by Entropious

[Scryer]

It would be interesting to see a character lose his **** in an encounter depending on the type of the opponent. But no metter or any other type of numbers visibile to the player. Orcs? No problem, not even the little brats fear them they're so common 'round these here parts. Demon from the 9th circle of hell? Roll sanity mate. Fail roll and nasty things depending on how badly the roll was botched. The Crawling Chaos you say? Sorry no roll for you boy, you sanity has just gone into retirement.

 

And effects could vary from immediate loss of control, temporary or permanent drain of menal stats or even nastier stuff like perhaps the death of a character. Just imagine coming face to face with Azathoth the Daemon Sultan, and a char decides to shoot himself (in the face no less) to escape the horror. Fun times.

[Giantevilhead]

If they do introduce insanity then it should not be obvious. It should manifest as changes in the character's perception. For example, if your character is becoming paranoid, then there may be extra descriptions in dialogue or encounters and certain patterns may emerge. Like if you have an encounter with a group of bandits, there might be an extra line of description about how the bandit leader seems to be carrying a dagger that looks a lot like the one you saw a city guard carry. When you meet a new character, there might be an extra line saying that the person looks familiar to you. You may notice your companions talking to strangers or meeting amongst themselves more often. There could be all these little clues and hints that seem to be leading to some quest or suggests that your companion is plotting against you.

[septembervirgin]

The PnP game Call of Cthulhu by Chaosium and the PnP game World of Darkness (the new one) by White Wolf provide the best examples of RPG rules for madness anywhere. That a sanity meter exists in a game at all is because Chaosium trail blazed the idea to begin with (in the early eighties). World of Darkness connects cruelty and criminality with loss of sanity -- quite a horror trope, actually.

 

I don't think there's reason to include sanity rules just yet. Wait til a later expansion?

[Entropious]

The question is just how much such insanities could go beyond the effects I've already proposed and into what amounts to extra plot...or how far, if at all, the developers would want to take this topic.

 

By the way: I'm George Bush the Younger, Ex-President

[Concerned Reader]

I do like insanity as a mechanica concept for a game universe, but for it to really be utilized it'd need to be a very important part of the game world. Like in Amnesia: The Dark Decent. The entire game is built around the mechanic. If it's just thrown into PE as a cool mechanic on the side, it might have a sort of situational coolness for a bit, but then I think it'd start to develop into a sort of distraction or annoyance. If it fits within the greater themes of the game though, then that would be cool.

 

Having too many mechanics can be as much of a problem as not having enough. (And of course everyone has their own personal idea of what constitutes too many mechanics. Personally I didn't like the hardcore mode of F:NV, but I know a lot of people did.)

[Entropious]

Personally, as George Bush, I see no problem with making insanity one of the main ideas of the game. I believe no other RPG truly revolved around the topic and, since the main motiff of this game is the "soul", one can easily imagine the various corruptions of thereof to be implemented within the game as part of the dangers presented to the protagonist. Or opportunities, in such cases when certain insanities brought about new powers (like schizophrenia actually allowing one to summon items and beings, either temporarily or permanently, into existence).

[Concerned Reader]

I actually designed and ran a freeform rpg very briefly around that idea. There was a drug that you could take to manifest things from your imagination into reality. But if you took too much then you'd start seeing imagined things all the time, and couldn't distinguish between which were real and which weren't.

[drgonzo]

Nice idea, but probably hard to implement in a nice way. Persecutory delusion could give your char +1 to spot enemies or something similar. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not after you.

[drgonzo]

I actually designed and ran a freeform rpg very briefly around that idea. There was a drug that you could take to manifest things from your imagination into reality. But if you took too much then you'd start seeing imagined things all the time, and couldn't distinguish between which were real and which weren't.

 

story of my life.

[TimB99]

That would be awesome...

 

How great would it be to have the game try to play subtle tricks on you?

 

To have conversations with companions or other NPCs that may or may not end badly (i.e. you potentially killing them), only to find out later that said conversation didn't really happen, and you just killed (or thought about killing) a good friend...

 

Or say in a conversation you want to pick option 1, only to find that the game just won't let you... Your character just can't say it.. The option/link is unresponsive, and after a second or two the description of the option changes to 'no, I just can't do/say that...' or 'no, I won't let you', in the signature text-color of the soul that possessed you some time ago that you almost forgot about. (and then **** hits the fan, of course)

 

Yep.. Sounds cool.. I like mental condition and insanity..

 

-Tim

Edited September 22, 2012 by TimB99