I'm playing an escapee

[Sergio1992]

He just escaped from an asylum center, but, mhh, I'm finding it hard to roleplay him.

I guess someone will make a reference to joker, but I don't find it such a comparation useful in my case.

Suggestion?

[Lapak]

People with mental health issues are people.

Which is to say, your problem may be that you've settled on that as the defining trait rather than one aspect. Your character should have hopes, dreams, goals, opinions, etc. like any other character you have built; then they have one additional trait that may or may not come up that frequently depending on what it is and how it affects them. But start from building this as if they were any other character.

[DeTess]

Might I suggest watching the film 'one flew over the cuckoo's nest?' It should help you understand your characters motivations, including those for escaping, better.

[Particle_Man]

Why was the character put in that asylum in the first place? Why did the character stay in the asylum as long as they did? Why did the character leave the asylum when they did? Did the character have a motive for escaping, something to do on the outside, or was it simply "gotta get out of here!"? Does the character plan to return to the asylum later? If so, why? If not, why not? How does the character plan to stay out of the asylum?

[tomandtish]

Why was the character put in that asylum in the first place? Why did the character stay in the asylum as long as they did? Why did the character leave the asylum when they did? Did the character have a motive for escaping, something to do on the outside, or was it simply "gotta get out of here!"? Does the character plan to return to the asylum later? If so, why? If not, why not? How does the character plan to stay out of the asylum?

Very much this. For example, the fact that your character was in an asylum doesn't mean they deserved to be there. Maybe an enemy set them up and got them committed.

Is your character competent, mentally ill (if so, to what degree), or insane (not capable of understanding what they or doing, or capable of understanding that it is illegal). Remember, when it comes to being committed, insanity is a legal term, not a diagnosis. You can be declared not guilty by reason of insanity and not have a mental illness diagnosis, or have a severe mental illness but not be insane.

Interestingly, when criminal attorneys and criminal psychologists have analyzed the joker, most versions are not insane by modern legal definitions. He KNOWS what he is doing, and that it is illegal. He just doesn't care.

Likewise, in the real world insanity (legal definition) is extremely hard to achieve. It's attempted in only 1% of cases, and successful only 25% of the time. So you'd need 400 cases to have one successful insanity defense, right?

Not exactly. because in 75% of the successful defenses, it was agreed to by the prosecutor and/or the judge before trial ever began. So you actually need 1600 cases to get one that is successful by jury.

Also, what type of game is this? D&D? Modern?

So to get advice on role playing your character, yeah, you need to answer PM's questions. Why were they in there in the first place? What is their actual mental state? Etc.

[Kaptin Keen]

The mentally ill are interesting. My girlfriend is a nurse, and worked at a closed facility - some of the very most disturbed, and/or dangerous people in the nation. And for one thing, those who are high functioning, bathe and clothe themselves are by no means necessarily more sane than those who have mice living in their beards and are dressed in rags with suspicious body odours.

The most general way I've heard true insanity described is that a persons view of the world doesn't overlap with reality. They may hear voices or see things that aren't there, or they may believe in things that quite simply aren't true, such as that there are cameras in their bathrooms.

My girlfriend had a patient who was as sane as anyone - except for the occasions when she wasn't, when she claimed she was talking with Lenny Kravits on skype, that the intelligence community was monitoring her calls, that she was really heir to the russian throne ... and so on, a nigh-endless list of paranoid schizophrenic, mad ideas. She was released one time, promptly went off medication, and wound up in the supermarket, where she asked at the counter for help removing the safety packaging on a butchers knife, because the voices were telling her to kill herself.

I mean .. thank god for safety packaging, right?

So being insane doesn't mean you need to go around looking for the next insane thing to do. It's much more likely to be that you pick up every pen you ever see, and pile them at home in neat piles or weird patterns, in their thousands and thousands. And then, maybe, if some trigger occurs, you do something dangerous. Most insanity is entirely harmless.

[Schismatic]

Depends on the reasons for their institutionalization... But an escapee would likely be someone fairly clever or powerful, woud strongly feel a reason why they might want to escape. Depending on the level of security. So here's a couple of ideas of some possible archetypes that mght predicate the necessary effort, desire or skill to get outside and survive.

- Delusions of grandeur. You needed to get out of there, the world is counting on you...

- Paranoid schizotypal personality. They were experimenting on me, drugging me, trying to make me forget who I really am! Goes hand in hand with above, often times.

- Parasocial relationship(s). Stalking, intense fixation on someone who may not know you even exist. We were meant to be together!

- Paraphilia. Sexual attraction to and creation of fire (pyrophiliac) such as a chronic arsonist, etc. How can people dismiss the beautiful, passionate caress of flame? Look how it dances!

- Nightterrors, fugue states, severe anxiety occasioning routine dissociation. War veterans who suffered extensive injury or psychological stress, etc. Where am I? How did I get here, again?

[PastorofMuppets]

First of all what is the setting of the game? Potential reasons for being in an asylum have varied drastically through time. Paranoia is possible at any time but if you go far enough back being too strongly opinionated could be reason for a woman’s stay there. Maybe you wanted to be an entymologist instead of joining the family shipping business and were sent there to remedy your desire to play with bugs instead of focusing on money. You could be a perfectly sane but inconvenient family member or business partner in the way of someone’s inheritance if you want a political aspect.

If the game setting is modern I think the other comments so far are on the right track. I wanted to point out the other options for why a person might be imprisoned in an asylum if the setting were more medieval.

An escape in these cases could be a result of someone sympathetic to your plight. Someone or some group could be opposed to the attempts to try and delegitimizate your claims to the family fortune/company/throne etc. Or maybe you are just bonkers and only think that’s what is going on.