Mad World

All the drawings in this post were done by my friend Denise (level 2 human ranger). Her take on the Queen of Hearts is - I think - especially chilling. She's been re-working some of the drawings (some of which I have yet to see) so I'll share those in future posts.

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Hector/Heinrich the half ghoul

For whatever reason when I run a game, there are at least trace elements of horror. So naturally whilst I was preparing for a Red & Pleasant Land one shot, one of my players asked me if we could use the optional insanity rules in the 5e DMG. We played a couple of weeks back and here are my views on the tweaked 5e sanity system I implemented.

If you want to know the short of it, it's this: implementing a sanity mechanic drastically changes the tone of a game and both you and your players must be aware of what's going to be in store before you get started.

Firstly the mechanic: use WIS for all sanity checks/saving throws (though there were no sanity checks throughout the session). At the beginning of the session, I gave the group two options for the system:

Elophas the Barbarian

Normal: you get 4 sanity points. Every time you fail a sanity saving throw, strike off 1 or more points (GM discretion depending on severity of failure/phenomenon). On each strike, the GM does the following (or the player can roll d100 and the GM will consult the table):
1st strike: roll on the DMG short-term madness table
2nd strike: roll on the DMG long-term madness table
3rd strike: roll on the DMG indefinite madness table

On the fourth strike, the character goes crazy beyond possible function. This is equivalent to death.

Hardcore: number of sanity points = WIS modifier. If a character has a modifier of 0 or less, they start off with an affectation of the mind determined by rolling on the indefinite madness table. In this case, the character has 1 sanity point. If they have 5 sanity points, losing the first one doesn't impose any adverse effects.

When someone loses sanity, roll on the madness table corresponding to the character's starting sanity point total, e.g. if the PC's starting total is 2 sanity points, start with the second strike, followed by the third strike as per the normal system.

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Berrin Thornfoot (Halfling Druid)

By a 3:2 vote, hardcore mode was the go. Three out of five characters started with 1 sanity point and two of them had affectations (alcoholism and laughing at everything, respectively.)

So this is how it went:

All 4 and half hours were tense, even when the party was just walking and talking. The Place of Unreason is not a predictable land and (as our druid told me after the session) there was the ever-present fear of everything/everyone they encountered turning weird and twisted, forcing sanity saving throws right and left. The highest number of sanity points anyone had was 2. The first PC went crazy within the first 2 hours after seeing salmon- and toad-headed footmen erupting out of the earth.

The Great Grub and his animal-headed guards

What I did next is a mistake I will not make again. Seeing how down the player looked at being out so early (I forgot I had some backup pre-gens in my bag) I gave him the option of continuing to play his character, on the condition that he could convince me of a suitable character concept fitting the 'crazy beyond function' criterion. The example I gave him was that if he was a guy who laughed at everything, he'd basically have to be the Joker but more insane.

Never give someone an excuse to play an insane character when it could be a remotely feasible character concept they could otherwise come up with on their own. They will abuse it and the rest of the group's experience will suffer due to this individual (the character, that is) that serves to be far more detrimental than dead weight. Dead weight doesn't cast Entangle on the entire party because it's whacky in the brain. Save it for when you will in no way be at fault for the creation of that evil.

In the end, three out of five player characters went insane (two of them in the final room) and another was babbling uncontrollably for 10 minutes.

Sev (Elf Wizard) - pre- and post-insanity 

My conclusion:

I was running a R&PL one shot with Call of Cthulu levels of tension throughout. Implementing a sanity system humanises player characters to the point that the badass, heroic fantasy aspect is diminished. It's hard to feel like a powerful adventurer when insanity could hit you around the next corner.

Madness is especially dangerous in Voivodja where literally everything could be considered alien to a non-native. You can avert this to some extent by making the PCs relatively familiar with the run of the mill unreasonable creatures and happenings if they've already been in the land for some time.

Sanity mechanics shouldn't necessarily be avoided, but ought to be handled with care. Know that you're playing a fundamentally different game to one in which madness has no such part. Or, alternatively, you could just use the 5e optional rule as it was meant to be used, leaving out sanity points and total insanity, but where's the fun in that?

I for one will be going back to simply scaring my players from time to time, rather than their characters as well, at least in these one shots I'm doing anyway.

Elizabeth Bathyscape (pre-Queen of Hearts era)

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As an aside, if you're running a game incorporating horror themes, be sure that your players can take it. Our Alice player (R from earlier) kinda lost it a little in the larder stocked with human carcasses. I suppose it was fitting that the Alice lost her sanity there, at least.