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Vella_Malachite
2011-08-06, 08:31 PM
Hello, Playgrounders.

I'm creating a very dark campaign using the WFRP system, in which, basically, Things from another dimension take over the entire country using minions and anarchy and insidious insanity effects.

So, the WFRP system already provides many examples of insanity, but I'm not so sure about them. This might seem like a bad thing to say, but they're not...creepy enough. Mostly it's stuff like repressed memories, kleptomania or one of three different kinds of substance abuse. They have some interesting ones, but I thought I'd make up my own.

I've got about three so far, but they all seem to be based on the concept that something is slowly convincing/forcing you to give up control of your mind or your body. I've got one where invisible tentacles take over your thoughts, one where the little voice that wonders what would happen if you jumped off that ledge gets louder, and convinces you to try to kill yourself, and one that just makes everything stop making sense, eats memories and make you unable to comprehend what's going on properly.
They all seem to be following a theme.

So, my question: What do you consider as the scariest form of insanity you could have? I'm just looking for some different ideas from some other people; all these things are things I would find scary, but my players aren't me. Any thoughts?

eftexar
2011-08-06, 08:35 PM
Well you could have insanity directly linked to the creation of more of those dimensional monsters. Every step down a path of insanity makes you more like them as you lose who you are. And once you reach the final steps you begin to physically become one as well.

NeoSeraphi
2011-08-06, 08:40 PM
This seems appropriate (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=210035)

Anyway, to me, insanity is the severance of your mind from its normal moral guidelines. It's caused by fear. It reduces you to a blind fight or flight mode and you consider absolutely everything around you to be a threat. (I'm not just talking about the spell here, I'm talking about the medical condition)

The absolute scariest form of insanity, though? Right up there in that link. Something that possesses you, controls you, but that you're still conscious through, that you still fight against. The scariest part, the part that will really drive you insane, is that you still have the ability to make choices, and the creature inside you isn't dominating your will, it's just encouraging you to make wrong choices. But when you kill someone, you can blame the insanity all you want, but it was your call, in the end. That's what's scary about insanity.

Drachasor
2011-08-06, 08:48 PM
Eh, that's not really insanity though, that's possession of some form.

But along those lines, the scariest sorts of mental disorders for the person having them are probably the cases where the afflicted is cognizant enough to realize what is happening (at least some of the time).

Kuma Da
2011-08-06, 10:31 PM
So, i've run call of cthulhu before, and run up against this particular roadblock. Imho, rolling randomly for a textbook insanity is an inconvenience to be RP'd, not something genuinely scary. I don't like that, so I have the following work-arounds.

1) take a page out of the console games' books. When something's setting off their insanity, limit their controls but don't totally take them away. Maybe they have trouble moving properly. Maybe things around them appear to distort. Maybe they indulge in compulsions (harmless or otherwise) without even noticing that they're doing them. Always let them continue to act, but play the "yes, and" rule to its fullest.

The best example I've seen of this is part of a play log on the Delta Green site, where one of the PCs was exposed to some of what were presumably extradimensional spores, and felt like he was sliding across a hospital room into the closet. To everyone else, it looked like he was walking there of his own free will, and every time he tried to move away, he took a few steps closer. Eventually, he latched onto a door frame and was dragged to safety.

2) tailor your players' insanities. I ditched the random table in Coc the minute I saw it. If something pushes a player over the edge, I give them a very specific description of how I think it's going to make them feel, and then ask for input from them. I had a player go temporarily nuts while casting a spell. The spell siphoned off some of his MP in the casting, so I gave him a temporary fear that it was leeching away his soul, and that magic was an invisible, omnipresent parasite.

3) don't be afraid to mess with people's perceptions. Flash back, forward, sideways, whatever. Contextualize the things they're seeing with character history. Make it all hit home, but don't overdo this too much or you'll get This Is Your Game On Drugs instead.

Amechra
2011-08-06, 11:07 PM
I recently read the IRL "And I Must Scream" page on tvtropes, so I have a couple...

-Sudden Onset Autism. Seriously. Look it up. I can't imagine anything worse than losing the ability to express basic information to people. I mean, one day, your mouth just stops. Making. Words. Properly.

-Having both kinds of amnesia. Congrats, you have no old memories, and you can't form any new ones, either.

-Whenever you sleep, whenever you so much as shut your eyes, images of the utmost depravity play before your vision. This stuff is so disturbing that they might start, oh, I don't know, removing their own eyelids.

-Have them feel... empty. Like they can't be satisfied, like they are hollow, worthless sacks of meat. People who have this disorder IRL tend to start copying the personality traits of people around them.

-"The Stepford Syndrome". They feel they can't let anyone know something is wrong with them. Yes sirree bob, there is nothing wrong with them at all (Ignore the axewounds and limp and 100 mile stare and rocking and muttering and the VOICES, damn it the Voices...

-(If anyone can guess the SCP object this next one is based off, you deserve a cookie) Every time they walk into the shadows, everything seems to go black. There is no gradiant between "light" and "dark" for you; and once your in the darkness, you begin to here some nice, steady breathing, coming from right behind you. If you spin around quickly and activate a source of light, you might catch a glimpse of a nicely dressed man, surrounded by blood, with not a spatter on him, with a taunting whisper filling your ear of "Joining us again so soon, <PC Name>?", before they vanish completely as your restored to nice, safe, light.

-(If anyone can source this one, I'll give them a cookie) Every time they fall asleep, their dreams turn to nightmares. And then they wake up, and find themselves in a worse nightmare, and then they wake up into a worse nightmare, and so on and so forth until someone wakes them. Of course, how do they know that this isn't still a nightmare...

Vella_Malachite
2011-08-07, 04:33 AM
I recently read the IRL "And I Must Scream" page on tvtropes, so I have a couple...


You, my friend, are a terrible, wonderful person. I will have to borrow some of these. *wanders over to SCP site for more ideas*

Also, thanks to Kuma Da for the DM advice - better than winging it on the first time.

Thanks, all! Lots of food for thought.

ocel
2011-08-07, 05:08 AM
A little while back me & Quellian-dyrae were: Re: UA: Searching for even more ways to lose my Sanity, expanding on the sanity variant (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=203100); through I think it was more based on a combination of converting nWoD, & warhammer fantasy to a 3.5 d20 game-system; anyway it might be what your looking for, we could continue where we left off, if he or anyone else is interested in the project again..

Arcran
2011-08-07, 05:27 PM
The Joker is by far the scariest form of insanity.

"Want to know how I got these scars?"

Yitzi
2011-08-07, 05:53 PM
The scariest form of insanity is the one that makes you welcome what's happening to you.

Scratch that. The scariest form of insanity is the one where the insane person welcomes what's happening to them, and the player understands the appeal.

Jelvoden
2011-08-07, 07:09 PM
It starts with a brush against the unknown, the unquantifiable. The victim gazes into the eyes of an unearthly creature that it can never fully understand. Having met such an abomination, the victim's world view begins to collapse. He/she withdraws into solitude, to think. "How can such a thing exist in the world unchallenged?" "Why would such a thing let me live?" "If it had wanted to kill me, what could I possibly do to stop it?" The victim loses focus on its sense of self, and everything it has learned in life holds no answer. The victim's own self-doubt (long suppressed by his/her sense of self-worth) now escapes and pulls at the mind. "If my creed cannot account for this, has it been wrong before and I simply didn't realize?" Doubt becomes stronger and stronger, gaining the ability to dictate what the victim can and cannot do. When the victim ends his or her solitude, friends and acquaintances no longer see the individual they once knew. This new person balks at activities once enjoyed, and engages in irrational behavior, often in the company of individuals best avoided. The victim's appearance shifts too, making it difficult for his/her friends to approach or even gaze upon. Alienated, these (now former?) friends may move on or take offense at the sudden change. The victim realizes the changes have occurred, but revels in them. This is, after all, a better existence.

This particular insanity exists in D&D 3rd edition. It's caused by a ninth-level spell which has the [Good] descriptor.

Sanctify the Wicked.

The_Watcher
2011-08-07, 07:23 PM
I've found one that works really well for me, though I did it with a CoC game was simply stop describing anything to the character. This worked for me because I always was extremely descriptive to the characters about anything and everything and when I suddenly stopped describing the contextual feel of the backlash of the gun or the feeling of the broken ribs they really started to get worried. The fact that the world was becoming 'grey' and they lost feeling, conception, everything was just becoming the same can be really disconcerting if you do it right.

Kuma Da
2011-08-07, 09:01 PM
It starts with a brush against the unknown, the unquantifiable. The victim gazes into the eyes of an unearthly creature that it can never fully understand. Having met such an abomination, the victim's world view begins to collapse. He/she withdraws into solitude, to think. "How can such a thing exist in the world unchallenged?" "Why would such a thing let me live?" "If it had wanted to kill me, what could I possibly do to stop it?" The victim loses focus on its sense of self, and everything it has learned in life holds no answer. The victim's own self-doubt (long suppressed by his/her sense of self-worth) now escapes and pulls at the mind. "If my creed cannot account for this, has it been wrong before and I simply didn't realize?" Doubt becomes stronger and stronger, gaining the ability to dictate what the victim can and cannot do. When the victim ends his or her solitude, friends and acquaintances no longer see the individual they once knew. This new person balks at activities once enjoyed, and engages in irrational behavior, often in the company of individuals best avoided. The victim's appearance shifts too, making it difficult for his/her friends to approach or even gaze upon. Alienated, these (now former?) friends may move on or take offense at the sudden change. The victim realizes the changes have occurred, but revels in them. This is, after all, a better existence.

This particular insanity exists in D&D 3rd edition. It's caused by a ninth-level spell which has the [Good] descriptor.

Sanctify the Wicked.

Holy crap. That's terrifying. I love it. I've always felt LG made for as plausible villains as any of the other alignments.

Also, I just dreamed maybe the perfect idea for insanity.

Have a character go into sequential dreaming. He wakes from nightmare to nightmare until you finally say "you wake up for good this time," and then tell him that you have some information for him, and would he wait out in the hallway for you etc etc.

Now, talk to the other players. Get them on board with this. Tell them to act normal, then pre-arrange a trigger. Like, when you tap a dice on the table. On that trigger, they're going to start acting really suspiciously to the player with the nightmares. Arrange a second trigger, as well. Say, tapping the die a second time. On this trigger, they're going to subdue his character, tie him down, and begin to eat him, acting as if nothing's going on.

Go into the hallway, talk some blah-de-blah about maybe the player saw some significance in his nightmares and here's what it is, then bring him back in and resume play as normal. It doesn't matter what the party was doing before the nightmare player went to sleep. Keep going with it, and play out the triggers.

Finally, when the player's completely unnerved, say "and now you wake up again" and drop him back in his bed.

Presto. Paranoia, predation, and a player who hates you forever.

Insanity accomplished.

(please be sure to actually stop if the player's getting really freaked out. Just kill the last dream early. Creating lasting mental trauma is not the goal of gaming. Don't do this to someone--a player, not a PC--who's emotionally fragile, either. Know people's limits.)

Kuma Da
2011-08-07, 09:02 PM
edit: herp-a-derp. Forum-hiccup-induced double-post.

Amechra
2011-08-08, 04:23 PM
Here's a fun one:

-The first couple times that they roll a d20 with some degree of pass/fail, tell them they succeeded, no matter what (inform the rest of the players of this, and get them to play along) the actual result would be.

Describe the scene to them as if they succeeded.

Have them gradually figure out that, yes, they HAD failed their save vs. Hold Person, and several innocents are now dead that they THOUGHT they had saved.

It is "funnier" to afflict the entire party with this EXCEPT one person. Easier to pull off (pass the unaffected person notes under some other pretext, like him having his OWN insanity; the notes inform him off the actual state of affairs), and a lot more terrifying, in it's own way.

-I also have a little trickery I played on some of my players; illusory healing. Essentially, let them know your keeping track of their HP.

Then, have a nice DMPC healer join the party. The healer doesn't actually exist, by the way; he is merely a figment of their imaginations. As such, the healer should be off on an "errand" every time they enter town (perhaps have him be "traveling with him for his own protection?"

This healer is wonderful; he can cure most afflictions, can restore someone nearly to full HP with ease, and so on and so forth. Of course, these afflictions and HPs aren't really restored, but...

And so, the players go off and get into some fights, relying on this healer to save them; won't they be surprised when, after taking a slight hit (doing piddly damage) when they are at full health, you tell them, "alright, you're bleeding out."

A variant would be a "phantom buffer", who would "buff" everyone. Consequently, even the weakest monster would seem far more frightening...

-One that always struck me as creepy is ripped directly from Johnathan Strange & Mr. Norrell; When you look at people, you see that the back of their heads are hollow. Inside, is a lit candle; they have to catch themselves when they start to think about how easy it would be to blow those candles out...

-Another is just having them stop noticing people's body parts when those body parts are moving. Few things are creepier than having people's faces cease to exist while they talk, or bodies vanishing while they are walking...

-Another of the "real world crazies" is getting everyone to pretend that, for maybe one encounter, d20s are d12s, and d8s are d6s, and vice versa.

-Whenever a given player kills a creature, it looks strangely like one of their loved ones...

All I have for now, sadly.

Vella_Malachite
2011-08-09, 02:42 AM
-Another is just having them stop noticing people's body parts when those body parts are moving. Few things are creepier than having people's faces cease to exist while they talk, or bodies vanishing while they are walking...


May I please use this shiny idea?

Amechra
2011-08-09, 03:31 AM
I'd be glad if you used it.