HQ system and insanity mechanics

[Janus]

Hi,

I was wondering if anyone has worked out some game mechanics for stress/sanity/etc. with the HeroQuest system. It would be to run in a contemporary (Call of Cthulhu) or a futuristic (SLA Industries) setting.

I am considering a Stressed flaw that could increase when characters fail some contest between some appropriate mental skill / personality trait /etc. (modified by Stressed as a negative augment.) versus the Stressfullness traget number of the situation. In case of complete defeat it could lead to acquiring some new phobia/insanity trait or to increasing existing ones, whichever is more appropriate. The stressed/phobias/insanities would act like other flaws.

The stressed flaw could be reduced by doing relaxing activites / time without stress exposure. The phobias/insanities could be treated with psychotherapy or compensated for by building up personality traits to oppose them.

Any suggestions?

Janus

[Bankuei]

Hi Janus,

I'd run insanity as an extended contest.  Simply have "Sanity" as an ability, and run it against "Horror" or whatever you choose to call the mindbending Thing that Must Not Be.  Horror can be a different resistance depending on how horrifying it is.  Whenever the player fails a Horror contest, you simply apply the modifiers as a penalty, or else ADD an insanity ability.

Chris

[Scripty]

I brought the Madness Meters from Atlas Games' Unknown Armies into the HeroQuest system for a Cthulhupunk game. IMO, the Madness Meters worked even better in HQ than they did in UA, as there was no upward limit beyond which you were just "insane."

Following is a copy-and-pasted correspondence between myself and an RPG.netter who was interested in finding out more about using the Madness Meters with HeroQuest. I give the full rules (minus the 2 Unknown Armies' charts) in the Midnight-HQ document. If you want, you can PM me an email address and I can send you either the Midnight-HQ rules or just the Madness Meters stuff.

Regarding the Madness Meters, that was a total experiment. I didn't know if it would work (at all), so I was pleasantly surprised at how well it did work.

First off, I had players define the five Madness Meters on the back of their sheet: Self, Isolation, Unnatural, Helplessness and Violence. Branching off of that (in three columns) were their "Resistance" to the Madness, their Insanity, and their Hardness. Just like in UA, players did not have to roll against a rating that was lower than their Hardness. So a character with 4w Hardness against Violence would not have to roll a Violence check with a rating of 3w or less.

As far as using the system itself, IIRC, the Insanity meters start out with level 1 being a 13, and the other levels increasing by multiples of 13. So level 1,2,3,4 result in 13, 26, 39, 52 (or 13, 6w, 19w, 12w2). Insanity works like a negative modifier to any abilities to which it can reasonably apply. So a character with a 6w in Self will be at -3 to all relationships. Just like in UA, everytime a character fails the rating goes up another level (13 points). The one change I did make was in "healing" Insanity. I decided that I would let some Insanities "heal" themselves. So a character with an Insanity of rating 13 would have that drop to 0 after a week of relaxation and rest. A character with an Insanity rating of 6w would have that drop to 13 after a full month of relaxation and rest. But any ratings above that require some major psychotherapy.

As for Madness Checks...

Just like in UA, characters make madness checks whenever they are exposed to stressors that exceed their level in Hardness. IIRC, I determined the resistance of the Madness Check by its level on the chart x8. So a stressor with a rating of 3 in UA would have a resistance of 4w. That put the highest rating (10) at 20w3.

As far as Hardness....

IIRC, I had that sketched out as multiples of 7. Such that a character with a Hardness of 5 would have a 15w, but would still be subject to stressors of level 5 or greater.

Failing a Madness Check resulted in an increase in the level of Insanity for a character as well as the negative consequences from their contest. So a character who had a Minor Defeat in their Madness Check would be at -10% to all actions in the presence of the stressor as well as having their Insanity boosted by 13 points.

Hardness could be used as an automatic augment to any Madness Checks.

Now, what the players resisted with actually worked out quite well in play. Players defined, under the "resistance" column, a relationship or personality trait that they used as their default resistance to that particular Madness. So, a particular character may use his "Honorable 1w" to resist Self checks. His "Love of Family 17" to resist Helplessness checks, etc., etc. Characters who did not have any relevant abilities (and I had a couple) defended with a default of 6. So, the stereotypical "loner without a past" turned out to be pretty helpless in this set-up, especially in terms of the Unnatural, Violence and Self meters.

Unlike, UA there was no point where the character was just lost to insanity. The escalating Insanity meters did insinuate themselves into every aspect of their social actions, however. Making their lives more and more difficult. This prompted me to frame social interactions in quite odd ways, with NPCs reacting with things like "Why'd you say that?" or "What do you mean by that tone?" to which the PCs would respond with complete amazement at what was happening. The end result was very much a decent into complete madness.

It worked out quite well. We didn't have anyone go out and out "insane" but the final results were at least as good as a typical Call of Cthulhu session, if not creepier.

If nothing else, this is an example that it can be done and works quite well, IME.

Scott

[Bankuei]

Hi guys,

Oh, yeah, and I might not have been clear on this.  The extended contest idea was intended to run across several sessions, not each and every time a hero runs across something horrifying.  Each encounter would count as a single Bid on the part of the GM or the player.  

So, over time, the hero would become more frazzled or more hardened with each encounter.  I'd probably also raise their Sanity rating if they ever get a success, or lower it on top of the other penalties suffered for failing a Horror check.

Chris

[newsalor]

I ran a one-shot HQ horror game set in Pelanda a couple of weeks ago. I used an extended contest to model the grip that the characters had to the world. The players were free to act out their lost or gained APs during any "strangeness". If a character actually lost, he'd get a wound that the player could then act out. The penalties would then be applied to appropriate contests. This system relied on the players ability to roleplay their encounters with the strange and the bizaaarrr.

The beayty was that even a few lost APs became a good imperative to roleplay characters. One player in particular really played to role of a distressed noblewoman. I was simply over-joyed after a other player came up with the idea to improvise the use of an obscure magical item called Tear of Manimat to lend APs to the distressed character. An item that I had envisioned to be something like an impressive brooch became a actual tear of Manimat to which the Emperor had shed his fear and anquish. Pressing the item against the noblewoman forced her to open up and cry all his anquish away. A great scene!

The game however, was a one-shot. IMO it worked out quite fine, but based on it, I really can't give solid advice.

I can fanthom a mechanic, where losing a sanity-contest, the character would actually acquire a flaw of some sort after the wound itself has healed. I think that I would propably let the player choose the flaw.

A valid questions you should ask yourself could be: "What do you want to accomplish?" HQ lets you do many things, but before making up a way to handle maddness, I think that you should ponder a few issues.

Do you want the players to immerse themselves in their characters and feel the fear and the breakdown of the characters world? (Eläytyjism / Immersionism) If you do, then I would suggest that you don't make up an extensive system for insanity, because a bulky system can be a hinderance for character immersion.

Do you want to create and tell a spooky story with your players? (Dramatism) If you do, then I would suggest that you stress this to the players. I guess I would only use simple contests and stress that everyone involved should try to build up a horror / spooky story. For the story / game to be entertaining, it would not neccesarity be important to know the details of a particular characters mental problems.

Do you want to focus on the plot / authentic surroundings / genre conventions / whatever and simulate the horror and dread? (Simulationism) I suggest that you either expand the HQ rules with extensive madness house rules or have a firm grip on the real effects of stress etc. If the HQ rules are used carefully and with believability in mind, they can achieve good simulationistic results. IMO the characters should have extensive abilities that could augment or hinder in contests based on the groups assessment of the psychological stress involved.

The simulationism / immersionism split is very important. While in forge terminology they may both use a lot of actor stance, immersion is not about "what would my character do", but actually sincerely attempting to be the character within the confines of the game.

I don't know what you should do if you want a narrativistic or a gamist game.

[Janus]

A valid questions you should ask yourself could be: "What do you want to accomplish?"

I aim to create some tension so that the characters don't go around merry and happy like some anime characters. How far it will go with the tension and the insanit roleplay will be up to what the players find fun. I want to run a game where the players have fun, so I'm currently getting input from them on this and a couple of other issues. I'm an entertainer, not an art director :)

Scripty provided me with some nice rules to make the game grittier and manage madness extensively. I might use them if that's what the players are looking for.

Thanks for your input, it gives me food for thought, which is always a good thing.

Regards,

Janus

[Mike Holmes]

Note that the regular system works perfectly well for all of this if you're creative enough with your "injuries".

It seems to me that people forget some really important rules about how HQ works all the time, in this case, the injury rule. Whenever you fail at a contest, you get some injury. Every time. I find that people seem to ignore this, and say that if it's not an actual physical injury, that they just say that the failure of the task is enough. This is ignoring one of the great strengths of the system.

So, when you'd normally do a "fear" check, or "sanity" check, or a "madness meter" check, simply do a contest around it.

Let's say that my character comes across a ghoul munching on an arm that has a bracer on it that he recognizes as a friend's. I'd start with the ghoul's Awful Stench, augment with his Menacing Glare, and use the character's relationship with the friend as a flaw to penalize the character's attempt to resist with his "Single Minded" ability. The result of the roll is that the Hero suffers a Minor Defeat. The GM rules that the character runs away scared off by the ghoul, and the "injury" is that he's now afraid of the ghoul and like things to the tune of -10% on any ability roll when presented with the presence or likely presence of such creatures.

These things should be jotted down, and they remain until they're "healed," perhaps by time with family, or psychotherapy or whatever. If a character ever got to a Complete Defeat, more and more likely the more they're exposed to such fearful stuff, then I'd rule that they'd gone permenantly insane, requiring a long trip at the mental ward (or time with the Shaman or whathaveyou) before they could get a healing roll.

HQ in one system manages to do most of what all other systems do, and it does it better, IMO. That is, not only does a character get mechanically "damaged" by sanity blasting things, but you record the nature of each, and there's no "cap" to what the character can take, really, just more penalties to the roll. Which maintains the suspense better.

I'm seeing no need for an ancillary system here.

Mike

[Janus]

Note that the regular system works perfectly well for all of this if you're creative enough with your "injuries".

It seems to me that people forget some really important rules about how HQ works all the time, in this case, the injury rule.

Thanks a lot Mike, I will do just what you suggested. I'm new to the HeroQuest system. I will take me a bit to get used to all its potential.

Cheers,

Janus