Roll for what permanent insanity you get!

[Omegonthesane]

The problems with Call of Cthulhu are many and varied, the only bit of it I have any interest in is the sanity mechanics. A cursory reminder look at the short/long/indefinite insanities provided in the d20srd rip-off of d20 CoC reveals some are unplayable (victim curls up and doesn't play for d4 minutes) or uncomfortable (victim becomes a <foo>phile for d4 minutes) in a way that seems to detract from the experience.

How often I want things to hit is fundamentally a maths problem and I'm mainly after first principles here - if forced at gunpoint to use something resembling the aforementioned tables, how would you populate them to be playable and, where possible without sacrificing or compromising playability, to actually look like possible stress responses?

[virgil]

For Lovecraft mythos stories, it's not that people become insane, so much as they give in to despair. Either that, or writing up a chart for PTSD. A problem to be aware of is that getting too details can make the game depressing, because mental trauma is not fun.

[Laertes]

I would throw them out and use Unknown Armies or Fates Worse Than Death instead. Unknown Armies' madness system is superb but is a little quick and dirty; Fates Worse Than Death's one is a simulationist look at how genuine long-term trauma affects people.

If I were forced at gunpoint to use a rolled-table system, I would ask whether I want it to return answers which are:
A) Appropriate to the Lovecraft/Derleth/Dunsany/etc source material;
B) Accurate and representational of genuine shock and stress reactions;
C) Conducive to a fun game.

[Username17]

Yeah, I think that rolling up symptoms from the anxiety disorder table would make a lot more sense than rolling up complete diagnoses. So you'd get 'recurrent nightmares' or 'pervading sense of dread' rather than schizophrenia.

-Username17

[Chamomile]

During the unfinished development of Sentai Fhtagn, we worked out a SAN system. There were two basic ideas, and they were both better than the CoC SAN mechanics. The first, which I believe is the one we ended up settling on, was to have multiple SAN tracks (i.e. one for despair, one for terror) with different effects if they were maxed out (i.e. catatonia for despair, panic for terror). The second was to have different types of SAN damage, and the effect that got triggered was based on whatever damage type was the one that pushed you over the threshold. The second one allows for a greater granularity of SAN effects, since three is probably the limit of SAN scores you want to track but you can have six or seven damage types before things get out of control (especially since you are under no obligation to use all of them).

I realize that this is explicitly not what you're asking for, since what you asked for was something resembling the tables specifically. So here's an actual table (well, not actually formatted like a table, because I hate BBCode) of stuff that resembles real, actual reactions to PTSD (note: in all cases when "the event" is referenced, it is a reference to the event that caused SAN to be depleted to the point where you had to roll on this table in the first place) (note 2: I am assuming that SAN scores are loosely equal to regular ability scores for this, adjust the math to taste):

1-5: Panic! The character must immediately flee. Depending on your taste, this can either be an uncontrollable movement directly away from the source of the SAN loss, some kind of negative incentive like XP loss if they do not get away, or just tell the player his character is panicking and trust that they've bought into the game enough to roleplay it honestly. This is an immediate reaction, but can be triggered again when encountering certain fairly common stimuli from the event (like the color of a certain book or being in the woods), in which case the affected character must succeed on a Will save of 30-SAN or else panic again.

6-10: Withdrawal. The character becomes extremely averse to all social situations. They take 2d6 CHA damage, to a minimum CHA score of one. Also it'd be cool if the player roleplayed a certain amount of discomfort when dealing with other people. Therapy can restore the character's CHA to its original score. Rules for that therapy are left as an exercise for the reader.

11-14: Obsession. The character becomes obsessed with learning more about the creature or object that incited the event - though only at a safe distance. The character becomes subject to a reverse-favored enemy effect, taking a -2 penalty on anything not directly relevant to his obsession until he receives some kind of effective therapy.

15-18: Violent panic. The character immediately, physically attacks the source of their SAN loss (and again, the exact method of doing so is left to your discretion - I would favor threatening XP loss if it isn't successfully destroyed, but then, the group I play with wouldn't play CoC in the first place so maybe your players can reasonably be trusted to act against their own interests when the rules call for it). They will respond with similar violence to anyone or anything that gets in their way, but will not lose control to the point of attacking allies for no reason. Just like with regular panic, they can be provoked to the same panicked violence after coming into contact with a relevant detail and failing a DC 30-SAN Will save.

19: Obsessive worship. The character becomes not only obsessed with, but reverential towards the source of SAN loss. In addition to the -2 penalty to actions not related to their obsession, they take a -4 penalty to actions opposing the object of their obsession. If their obsession is threatened, they must succeed on a DC 30-SAN Will save or else immediately seek to protect it. The -2 penalty can be removed with therapy just like with a regular obsession, but the other effects are permanent.

20: Shock. The character goes into complete shock and suffers a -4 penalty to all ability checks, skill checks, saves, attack bonuses, and anything else important I've forgotten. This effect lasts for 24 hours minus the character's Wisdom score (or whatever ability score is used to derive the Will save or equivalent).

Another idea, leaning further away from actual stress reactions and towards more Lovecraftian "encounters with supernatural horrors make you go crazy in essentially random ways" stuff, is just to make heavy use of passing out notes to describe what you see or hear, and even sane characters will be privy to moderately different details. So if two characters both succeed on Perception checks, maybe both of them see something the other didn't, and by comparing notes, you can get a more complete picture of the situation. But as SAN creeps downwards, more inaccurate information seeps in, as your obsession or aversion towards the source of your SAN loss clouds your judgement, eventually blooming into full-on hallucination. For best results, the GM should roll the SAN loss in secret. Players are obviously aware that they are losing SAN (it's hard to miss it when you're traumatized) but not how much. Plus, they can't know exactly which details are hallucinatory and which are actually things man was not meant to know.

[Laertes]

Thinking about it a little more: I think the problem really stands with the fact that these sorts of tables are profoundly player disempowering. You know how to play your character, and you play them in a way that accurately represents their stress reactions. Getting overruled by a table which has been written in complete ignorance of your character's personality is deeply frustrating and therefore will serve to ruin immersion for you and for everyone else.

Comedy games like Dark Heresy and WFRP are exceptions to this, of course, because a litany of misfortunes befalling your character is part of the fun.

Nonetheless, you've asked me how to make it work, not whether it's a good idea or not. Therefore, here's how I would do it. In fact, here's two ideas.

It's an axiom in counselling and particularly in child counselling that psychological disorders tend to be accentuations or exaggerations of normal parts of a person's personality; this is often rendered as "it turns traits into states". I would make each player make their own little table of personality traits that they roleplay their character as having. When that character's mind begins to fracture, you can roll on that table and have that trait temporarily become vastly more important than it should be, usually detrimentally.

For example, I (Laertes) have the traits "energetic", "curious", "pedagoguic", "angry" and "shy." Each of these has underlying reasons. For example, my curiosity is at least partially a control mechanism, since I'm terrified of the unknown and seek to control that by reducing the amount of unknown. If that takes over then I could find myself sleeping with my cupboard doors open to ensure there isn't a monster inside, afraid of the dark, et cetera. If my energy takes over, I could end up with an almost ADHD lack of focus. And so on.

Naturally this requires player buy-in and willingness to actually roleplay. Someone who's simply indulging in a superman power fantasy would wreck it. But why are you gaming with such people?

Have a branching tree-like set of tables. The first one would be your initial symptom; for example, headaches or hysterical deafness or insomnia. Those would each unlock a second table when your madness had grown to a certain threshold. For example, the insomnia might lead to hallucinations or addictive behaviour or self harm. Then each of those might lead to a third table which contains the really fucked-up David Lynch stuff which people would get to roll on once they've accumulated enough madness for this stuff.

This way madness gradually deepens throughout the Investigator's career and people can say "I'm worried about you, maybe you should see a doctor" and you can brush them off and stuff.

It's random so it's disempowering, but because it unfolds in a semi-predictable way, building on what's gone before, you have a lot more of a chance to roll with it than simply going "Your Elf is a necrophiliac. Next!"

[TheFlatline]

Picking up symptoms/quirks/personality traits by chart isn't the problem per se, it's that most charts are pretty light on symptoms, and so odds are good you'll have a party full of the same traits. Now for things like nightmares, that's understandable. But having 3 people with ear fetishes is silly.

[PhoneLobster]

I've been working on something like this recently for a more rules heavy horror(ish) scooby adventures game.

I've come up with a number of things.

1) Random Tables Are Last Resorts
There is little to no reason that your character defining insanity needs to be random if you have an appropriate list of insanities that are considered good for the game then any player can just have any insanity, so they should be encouraged to pick their insanity.

The random table is a optional extra for inspiring people who take way too long to make their own choices.

2) Insanities Should Not Be "Realistic" or exhaustive
The thing where CoC has a list of basically every "real" insanity name they could find (from a dictionary, or some era's officially endoursed list from whatever international association, or where-ever they dredge it up). That sucks.

Because real insanities aren't necessarily fun, don't necessarily fit for your setting, and aren't necessarily functional in game.

You should decide what you want in or out as things that actual PCs and NPCs should and will have in actual game play. If Nymphomania is an unwanted game play result drop it from the list.

Further, there is no particular reason to represent those insanities that make your list in an accurate manner if an inaccurate or "fictionalized" alternative might be better for game play.

3) Insanities can be selected BEFORE your character goes insane
Regardless of whether your players pick their insanities (they probably should) or whether you roll on a table. This does not have to happen at the last minute when their character goes insane.

There is no reason at all that you shouldn't select/roll your insanity at character generation. It can just represent foreknowledge of your character's eventual "weakness" before it has started to actually become problematic. This also helps with number 4...

4) Insanities can be more than just weaknesses
You want insanities to define characters. You want players to actively choose them and work with them, possibly in advance of their characters actually going insane.

So why not offer skills and abilities the characters can gain FROM being insane. They can still pay for those abilities with advancement resources, but they need the right insanity condition to gain access. Rage Guy can get Rage bonuses when in a Rage freak out, Coward Guy can get fleeing and defense bonuses. All of them opt in, and purchased with standard advancement resources.

5) Strongly Formalized Freak Outs and Degeneration
This is one I need to work on more at the moment. But it seems increasingly clear as I work with a setup that follows the other points 1 through 4, that a lot of the fictionalized/gamey insanities I have written fall into a few sort of formal sub categories by the way they actually function.

a) "Freak Out" insanities, trauma damages your sanity and triggers a freak out. Freak out behaviors defined by insanity. (ie Fear freak out insanity)
b) "Degenerative" insanities, trauma damages your sanity and causes gradual long term changes to behaviors, defined by insanity. (ie Increasingly behave like a Cat insanity)
c) "Triggered" insanities, trauma damages your sanity. Which reduces your defense against relatively mundane triggers for your insanity related behaviour encountered in on going play. (ie increasingly cleptomaniac insanity).

Now you could formalize a set up where each insanity had all those aspects, and where each was neatly described. Or you could have a set up where each insanity ascribed to one of those models. You might even have a set up with additional models, or where you rolled triggers into just the first two options. Whatever.

The point is that something like this needs clear definition of when and how it applies and what sanity checks and failures do and when the hell to check for them. Many variants of Cthulhu sanity systems... tend to fall down heavily on clear descriptions of the formal effects of sanity conditions.

6) Should you even HAVE an insanity list?
And never forget, you should always be asking, do I actually want this?

Insanity lists/mechanics do NOT have a particularly good reason to be in many RPGs. They exist solely for their own sake. If you are putting Nymphomania and Kleptomania or whatever into your game, you are doing it because you want those things in your game.

You COULD just not have insanity mechanics, you COULD have just a beefed up "morale" type system. Many games probably SHOULD just opt for a simple "Bravery" type resistance and when you freak out you just become "feared" in a D&D style status effect and bug out.

If you are putting together a list of varied Insanity conditions it is because the design goals include having a party of a Raging Bell Boy, a Paranoid Mountain Climber and an Exhibitionist Prime Minister working together despite their insanities getting notable game time, and ideally somehow using their insanities productively together IN game time. Because it COULD have just been Bell Boy, Mountain Climber and Mr Prime Minister just freaking the hell out and running when they failed their bravery check vs the Tentacled Yeti God out the back of the ski lodge mountain resort hotel.

[JigokuBosatsu]

Eldritch Horror's approach is good with the cards for madness(and the other conditions). You take one when the trauma happens and it has a certain effect, and then when activated later has worse effects. That wouldn't be too hard to use in a TTRPG context. I think that would have an incentive to actually have players deal with the condition vs. be a fishmalk.

[Username17]

I missed this earlier, but some idiot actually suggested using the insanity rules from Unknown Armies. Do not do this. UA has pretty much every problem that CoC does, plus the additional problem of requiring you to put seventy five little boxes on your character sheet. It's a shitty CoC hack that solves no problems.

-Username17

[Laertes]

Frank, have you played UA or are you speaking strictly ex recta? Because I recommended its madness system and I will continue to, based on actual experience of how it actually handles in play. You know, anecdotal evidence. That thing honest people base their beliefs on when there is no hard data available.

[Username17]

Frank, have you played UA or are you speaking strictly ex recta? Because I recommended its madness system and I will continue to, based on actual experience of how it actually handles in play. You know, data. That thing honest people base their beliefs on.

Name a problem with CoC's insanity system that all that extra book keeping solves. Name fucking one.

-Username17

[Omegonthesane]

I missed this earlier, but some idiot actually suggested using the insanity rules from Unknown Armies. Do not do this. UA has pretty much every problem that CoC does, plus the additional problem of requiring you to put seventy five little boxes on your character sheet. It's a shitty CoC hack that solves no problems.

-Username17

While this is as much damning with faint praise as defending the proposal, UA does resolve short-term insanity more quickly and with more player choice and with fewer lasting playability issues than CoC. "You fail your Sanity check on seeing a shoggoth; flee, freeze, or frenzy" as opposed to "roll to see if you aren't catatonic or necrophiliac for the next 60 hours".

[Kaelik]

Frank, have you played UA or are you speaking strictly ex recta? Because I recommended its madness system and I will continue to, based on actual experience of how it actually handles in play. You know, data. That thing honest people base their beliefs on.

The plural of anecdote is not data. You are looking for the word anecdotes. And it is not the thing that honest people base their beliefs on. It is the thing that stupid people base their beliefs on.

[Laertes]

One thing that CoC's mental hit points thing doesn't do, you say? Here are five. Pick one.

It doesn't differentiate between damage from mundane and mythos sources. It doesn't represent human coping mechanisms. It doesn't have any "no longer bothered by trivial horrors" mechanism. It doesn't show the extent to which even the winners are scarred. It has no yardstick for what small amounts of damage mean.

It's not that much bookkeeping either. The tickboxes are just a way of representing ten numbers: half of which go up to five, half of which go up to ten. The most I have ever seen anyone gain in a single session is fifteen boxes total across those ten numbers, and it's usually far less. Fifteen boxes in a three hour game is one every twelve minutes. If one mark on your character sheet every twelve minutes is too much bookkeeping for you, maybe roleplaying isn't the right hobby.

EDIT: Kaelik, your point is fair. Original post edited.

[sarcasmoverdose]

One thing that CoC's mental hit points thing doesn't do, you say? Here are five. Pick one.

It doesn't differentiate between damage from mundane and mythos sources. It doesn't represent human coping mechanisms. It doesn't have any "no longer bothered by trivial horrors" mechanism. It doesn't show the extent to which even the winners are scarred. It has no yardstick for what small amounts of damage mean.

It's not that much bookkeeping either. The tickboxes are just a way of representing ten numbers: half of which go up to five, half of which go up to ten. The most I have ever seen anyone gain in a single session is fifteen boxes total across those ten numbers, and it's usually far less. Fifteen boxes in a three hour game is one every twelve minutes. If one mark on your character sheet every twelve minutes is too much bookkeeping for you, maybe roleplaying isn't the right hobby.

EDIT: Kaelik, your point is fair. Original post edited.

But what does all that solve? How does it improve play?

[Kaelik]

EDIT: Kaelik, your point is fair. Original post edited.

Anecdotes are not what honest people use when advanced data is not present. Analogies and logic are perfectly acceptable methods of dealing with a lack of data, and generally produce better results than anecdotes.

[schpeelah]

One thing that CoC's mental hit points thing doesn't do, you say? Here are five.

The challenge was to name a problem solved, not just "a thing". Not differentiating between between Mythos and others and not having a "not bothered anymore" mechanic are not things people will talk about when you ask them about the main problems with CoC insanity.

Also, lol ten more numbers to track is not much extra bookkeeping.

[Omegonthesane]

One thing that CoC's mental hit points thing doesn't do, you say? Here are five.

The challenge was to name a problem solved, not just "a thing". Not differentiating between between Mythos and others and not having a "not bothered anymore" mechanic are not things people will talk about when you ask them about the main problems with CoC insanity.

Also, lol ten more numbers to track is not much extra bookkeeping.

In all fairness, not having a mechanic for being Used To Cthulhu is actually a thing I feel is wrong with CoC, it just didn't directly relate to the specific issue that I felt I needed help with. The 32nd Mi-Go you encounter really doesn't have an excuse to be exactly as scary as the first one you encounter - at a minimum you no longer have the shock of "this impossible thing exists!" because you've seen that exact impossible thing before.

[Username17]

Very often people will be confused and think that the result of an 'actual game' is the best evidence. It is not. It is the worst evidence. In an actual game, you will use mind caulk to fill any holes in the rules. A rule is good if it requires less mind caulk and a rule is bad if requires more. One person's anecdote that they had enough mind caulk on hand to have fun at some point doesn't mean dick. It doesn't tell us if a rule is good or bad, for fuck's sake some people have reported having enough mind caulk n hand to play and enjoy FATAL.

So I ask you again: what problems of CoC does the UA system actually solve? Don't just regurgitate ways in which the systems are not the same, list a problem that is solved.

-Username17

[Desdan_Mervolam]

It's not that much bookkeeping either. The tickboxes are just a way of representing ten numbers: half of which go up to five, half of which go up to ten. The most I have ever seen anyone gain in a single session is fifteen boxes total across those ten numbers, and it's usually far less. Fifteen boxes in a three hour game is one every twelve minutes. If one mark on your character sheet every twelve minutes is too much bookkeeping for you, maybe roleplaying isn't the right hobby.

I've seen the "It's not that bad" argument justify really bad rules, like THAC0. THAC0 is by no means impossible to use, but that doesn't mean you should have to actually use it.