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

From: Tim Ellis <tim_at_...>
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 2009 12:02:29 -0000

>
> 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?
>

My thoughts

Have some ability represent the characters stability (Probably a relationship - or maybe all their relationships, or maybe their keywords?)

When they meet some san-blasting monster it causes a contest between it's unspeakable mosntrosity and the characters stability. The consequences of this contest can be "wounds" to the ability - a result of "Dying" resulting it the character losing that connection.

Encountering Mythos beasts or reading blasphemous tomes can also give a character an "Insanity" flaw, or increase an existing Insanity flaw. When events trigger the insanity this too causes a contest between the flaw and the characters stability. A character may end up with several such flaws representing different mental problems, just as a standard CoC character can have multiple insanitys. If the Insanity wins the contest, the character is required to act as dictated by the insanity, if the insanity loses then the character should get an automatic augment (There is a term for this in H!2.o that escapes me at the moment) in the current/next scene equivalent to the level of the loss