Sanity, Infirmiry and other flaws that slip as the game goes on

From: Todd Gardiner <todd.gardiner_at_...>
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 2009 15:16:04 -0700

I'm having a little trouble figuring out how to use the narrative rules to "simulate" on-going degradation of the player characters. If I wanted to run a game in the Call of Cthulhu setting how would I achieve a slipping of each character's sanity? Presenting a challenge against them for environments or creatures that "attack" their sanity makes sense, but how to I represent a continued slip in the ability to resist such challenges and how to I measure the thresholds when new traits (phobias, obsessions) should be added. And how would I measure, in a dramatic sense, when a character should become unplayable because the sum of sanity-breaking elements has become too great?

This could also be important for broken legs, social standing with the Pope, or resistance to an addiction. Anything that slides downward with use or time or continued stress.

Rough ideas
Have an ongoing extended challenge, with only one resolution per sanity event, that runs parallel to the entire story.

At moments of "ickiness", use a Pass/Fail determined challenge with minor failure causing a lasting setback and major failure adding a new flaw.

Just add a Sanity trait and attack it now and then, with the score dropping with failure (The simulationist answer to this question)

If you have any other ideas or sources I could turn to, I would be interested. The idea of playing the old CoC modules as narrativist games instead of simulationist makes so much more sense to me than determining how many feet away from a monster you are standing and how much damage a shotgun does to a deep one.

Thanks,

--Todd