D&D 5E Out of the Abyss - Madness! Insanity! What Works/Doesn't? What Was Hilarious/Tragic?

not-so-newguy said:

Lust is one I'd cross off the list, but that's just personal preference.

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Try this:
The PCs enter a new town. "John heads straight for the red-light district" and the camera swivels to follow somebody else. John returns in about an hour (in-game). We KNOW what he's been doing, no need to elaborate.

But I agree, the table will get very uncomfortable very fast if somebody's amorous exploits (or efforts) are front-and-center all the time.

I'm doing as CapnZapp as far as restricting madness to demon lord appearances and truly horrifying scenes. I don't like the faerzress induced madness idea. I figure adventurers would have to see some truly horrifying things given how often they do battle and fight strange monsters to be afflicted with madness. Adventurers are naturally resistant to being unnerved by the strange or they wouldn't begin a life of adventuring.

I based the madness that afflicts the characters on the Demon lord madness table. I don't even bother with the DMG madness table. I prefer whatever demonic madness/corruption invades their mind to be driven by the demon lord that afflicts it. I'll have to come up with some basic game affects from the madness to go along with the descriptive. I only recently had my players make a madness save when they saw their first demon lord.

I see the madness more like corruption. Demon lords are such powerful forces of evil that their presence corrupts the weak minded driving them to carry out the evil impulses the demon lords naturally send out like a humans send out smells from their biological function. The function of the Lords of the Abyss is to corrupt and destroy. That is what they encourage in their presence.

I think the madnesses should not be played as a staus quo, but trying to resist them. Otherwise you don't have a group for long because who would hang around with people who are not better than the enwmies they are fighting...

If you have something that makes you cruel, start slowly. With thoughts spoken out loud. Than words. Then in situations where it does not matter too much. Maiming instead of killing could be called mercy...
Allow your group to notice that something is not allright. Maybe have your players all roll in secret that they don't even know that all of them are effected by madness.

I prefer the 'madness' traits that are really exaggerated 'bad personalities'. It's more fun and gives players a 'handle' to work with.
'I think everybody else is trying to steal all my stuff from me!' > 'I curl up into a ball when somebody threatens me with a sword'.

You're having the players act out mental illnesses?

You realize you're essentially just getting together with your friends and mocking the ill right?

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Facepalm.

Why not just get it out of the way and accuse all Roleplayers of mocking victims of violence (inter alia)?

ETA:

The insanity thing is one of several major parts of the AP that I think either work very well or not at all, depending entirely on how interested your players are in it. If you have even one player who's just not into the Underdark for an 8 month AP, or doesn't like having mechanical rules tell them how they have to RP their character, it can fall apart very fast. The AP is divisive like that.

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I've just started reading OotA, but it seems like it would be zero* work to just drop the insanity checks. Doesn't strike me as a particularly relevant source of division.

*: more like negative work. Work credit.

CapnZapp said:

Obviously there's the Wisdom save, but you can't expect a Fighter or Wizard to focus on what would otherwise be their dump stat.

To really work for me, ideally Madness/Sanity was its own statistic, like a seventh ability presented to players already at character creation. This way it would be up to the player if he wanted to start with Sanity 15 or 8. And all classes would be impacted equally - a Fighter might sacrifice a bit of Strength for a high Sanity while a Cleric would go with lower Wisdom.

Most importantly, it would leave the choice in the hands of the player (even if he or she doesn't truly know the significance of the stat). I don't like the original rule's way of saying "oh, so you generated a low-Wis character? Bad choice!"

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I would allow the player to choose INT, WIS or CHA for resisting madness and horror. You could justify INT by saying the character is resisting the horror be remaining clinical, focusing their attention on the facts of what is going on instead of its horrific implications. You could justify WIS by saying the character is using their mental fortitude to stay strong and focused on their goals. You could justify CHA by saying the character is using their force of personality to stay centered.

There was a moment when the psycho NPC with the god complex murdered a guy on our way to the fish-people town (I am absolutely terrible with remembering names). We found the victim's mutilated remains plastered all over a cave wall like post-modern art. Madness check. Then since Stool is a shroom and shrooms eat dead things, he decided to roll around in the gore and have a snack. Madness check. We ended up with one guy run screaming into the dark, another paralyzed with terror, one guy having hallucinations, and the last swinging his great axe at anything that got close.

Fun times.

P.S. One thing I don't like about Madness though is the chance for a character to become completely comatose for HOURS at a time. Really slows things down.

GMforPowergamers said:

yea, you do know that political correctness can also be called BEING POLITE... two of my friends are brothers, there mother in real life is paranoid schizophrenic... you know what they HATE seeing, people making jokes about paranoids... you know what they wont do though, tell random people (not even all our friends) about the deeply held problem.

One of them walked out of a Vampire game because of how someone was playing paranoid, and the story teller to this day doesn't know why they kid left game mad...

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Gonna be totally honest with you, that's their problem and nobody else needs to or should even feel the need to change their behavior so that these random two people can feel better.
Of course don't make fun of them in their face, like what that story teller did (but it's not even his fault because how was he supposed to know about them if they didn't tell him?) but when youre alone with some friends, and everyone's cool with impersonating disabilities, then it's fine.

Also, one other thing, what they are doing is IMPERSONATING. very different from MOCKING. nobody is going "haha downies are stupid haha get a real job idiot", what they are doing is IMPERSONATING real life mental illnesses that would REALISTICALLY affect their characters.

Political correctness is not at all being polite, it's got the title political for a reason. Because politicians speak to the whole population when they give speeches and such, therefore they need to accommodate any illnesses that the WHOLE POPULATION might have. There is no need whatsoever for political correctness when speaking with people who you know don't need that kind of sensitive treatment.

About your friends, I suggest you tell them, if you actually care about their feelings, to open up about their situation, because it's not going to go away by treating it like tiananmen square, tehy need to tell people "so yea my mom is paranoid" and whatnot so that people KNOW not to joke about it around them. It's their life and they can either live it being constantly offended and put down, or they can look at it realistically and know that people are going to continue to imitate paranoid people around them and unless they speak up nothing is going to change.

For me my dm made madness hurt. Firstly madness made it so your ac is reduced to zero, and but your attacks were crits. Also you couldn't control your character if you were affected by it. Made it really terrifying to fight against. For example my dm once in a one shot made me fight against a bug that had madness. And I won just barely, because while I was fighting it, it's buddies showed up . Also the only reason I won was because I was playing a heavy dps Character.