A Study of Madness (Part I)

To all my 13^th Age players: stay out! (The Lich King knows when you are reading this!)

This blog has yet again been left for ruin, but for good (?) reasons. First, thanks to the great crew of the Tales from the Smoking Wyrm, I’m still writing stuff for their zine that will hopefully see the light of the day during the next numbers. Second, we have reached a good level and conclusion to our 9-year-old DCC RPG campaign, and I wanted to switch gears to the other RPGs that I’ve been dying to try. Now it is the time of 13^th Age, for two very specific reasons: I want more improvisation and player input at my table, but I also want a more tactical and impartial combat. And this exactly what 13^th Age delivers*.

*Yeah, I know that OSR systems are famous for an impartial referee and a likewise impartial but brutal combat. However, OSR (and DCC RPG) in my mind discourages combat because it is wildly unpredictable. 13^th Age is from another RPG school which actually encourages cinematic and tactical combat (but it also retains some aspects of Old School that I enjoy, like the idea that not all combats have to be fair, and the party should exercise some strategy about what battles are worth).

This is my second 13^th Age campaign. So far we have concluded one adventure and, due to 13^th Age’s crazy improvisational rules, I am dealing with 2 factions that I never thought I would use (much less at the same time): Derros and Star Masks.

Derros are your well known crazy-degenerate-dwarves from the Underworld. 13^th Age escalates the craziness, with a good dash of other themes: psychic powers, torture/sadism, and a lot of conspiracy theory-like madness. You see, derros in 13^th Age believe they have seen “The Truth” in the depths of the Underworld and they are more than happy to share it with you (it also involves a lot of torture, alienation, and mortification of the flesh). It can become very creepy, very fast, depending on how much horror you want.

Star Masks are awesome pseudo-Cthulhoid horrors from the Void, living masks that dominate people, create space zombies, organize cults, give birth to giant alien brains that twist reality in non-Euclidian ways. A nice mix of mindflayers and intellect devourers, plus cultists!

As you can guess, I ended up with 2 factions that both deal with madness as a theme. I don’t want to overdue the theme, so I will be using derros most for the madness and Star Masks more for the whole “Body Snatchers” cult-like stuff.

That said, this is a post about madness in my campaign. 13^th Age does not technically have madness rules and I want to find a good approach for it. I checked all my RPG library and here is what I found so far…

Call of Cthulhu: The Great Old One of RPGs. Madness here is basically mental hit points. If you lose all you are kaput, if you lose a considerable amount real quickly you get a temporary madness. Madness is rolled in tables or chosen based on the circumstances. Simple, intuitive, easy to use. While I like the idea of creating a Sanity/Mental Stress track or points, my 13^th Age campaign is not about horror, so I will pass this option.

GURPS: the Fright Check. One simple check that based on what you are facing can trigger a wide range of mental effects. GURPS makes it easy because it has an extensive list of mental Disadvantages to represent madness. Again, very good for a mortal-level and detailed game, but not what I am looking for.

FATE: FATE has the best approach to madness when we are talking about rules. Basically, madness would be an Aspect, a statement about you character that gives you Fate Points (mechanical bonus) if you can bring it up during the game. This means that it is entirely up to the player to portray their madness. This is very useful, but in 13^th Age would require some form of “Fate Point” economy to work (Recoveries?) and I am a bit hesitant to change the game so much at this point (unless my entire campaign really goes down the Madness Lane). Of course, I could use the Background rules instead of tinkering with Recoveries.

D&D: You get the special Ravenloft checks, which are basically special saving throws that make you roll on Madness tables. 5E learned a lot from Fate and uses Madness basically as Aspects, linking them to the Inspiration mechanic. While not D&D, but still pretty much d20, the good (3^rd Era RPG) Wheel of Time used a pool of Madness that went from 1 to 100, to represent the growing taint of the One Power. You got progressively worse until you became completely insane and start breaking the world all over again (only male spellcaster got this). A progressive mechanic would work nicely in 13^th Age and there is the suggestion of such mechanic within 13 True Ways.

Warhammer: This beauty follows Call of Cthulhu and integrates it nicely with Medieval Fantasy. So you have Sanity Points and Madness Tables. 3^rd Edition, despite the boardgame components, add a Stress Mechanic that is really cool (inspired by FATE).

Trail of Cthulhu: This probably the most dramatic (but interesting) approach to Madness. The rules themselves are quite simple, using a pool of points. The implementation, however, is totally novel (but would require approval from the table, as it can be invasive). Basically, when you get a madness, the GM and the rest of the table create it and start roleplaying (without you hearing the details). Lets say, for example, that you character starts hallucinating due to a recent madness. The entire table will in this case create a few imaginary NPCs. Note that you – the player! – will be deceived, as you don’t know that those NPCs do not exist within the game’s reality! The entire idea is tricking the player, changing her perception of the game. If that table is OK with that, it is an awesome experiment. I might use this approach in 13^th Age as it does not require me to change anything in the system itself.

Lamentations of the Flame Princess: The “Edgy” OSR game. LotFP uses a simple and completely non-mechanical approach to madness. Basically, it states that madness rules break immersion and should be avoided. What the GM should aim to do is create challenges and situations whose ordeals are the kind of thing that normal people would not do. Then, the GM should show how the setting reacts to the characters, treating them – literally – as madmen! Like Gumshoe, it requires a careful approach and a completely honest talk with the table, as it might no be everyone’s cup of tea. There are a lot of examples from LotFP adventures, such as one scenario where the party might end up killing nuns and children that are actually doppelgangers (imagine how the rest of the world would see that butchery?) or one scenario where the key to understand the plot requires one character to kill and eat the villain’s brain. The funny thing is that if every GM pays attention to what the PCs are really doing in most games, (and make society reacts to it), it is pretty easy to create an atmosphere of alienation and make the players wonder how sane their characters really are.

I remember one example from my old AD&D 2^nd table, where they party got a ring of regeneration and used it (and abuse it) to keep them alive. At one point, one character was infected by some kind of flesh-eating ooze (I can’t remember which), and the rest of the party decided to cut his arm off to save him (they also decided to cut part of his face to remove another part of the ooze). To my surprise, the infected player started to roleplay his character’s hesitation to so much suffering, arguing that they could find perhaps a priest or sage to save him. In the end, the entire party put the regeneration ring on the poor soul, restrained him, and went happily (?) to chop him off in order to remove the ooze. The party’s argument was that those actions were the “most rational way” of saving the character’s life. The entire scene was completely insane (and another player even started roleplaying Gollum-like behavior towards the ring, because he didn’t want to part with it not even to save a fellow party member). THIS is madness!

After this brief tour of craziness, my next post will show how I will implement madness within the (cool) rules framework of 13^th Age.