Avert Your Eyes! Saving Sanity By Not Looking

[Starglim]

Don't really have anything to say about the whole "close your eyes" thing, except that I'd encourage it, because closing your eyes and going "la-la-la" in the face of a monster indicates you've already snapped, SAN or no SAN.

You beat me to it: some Sanity Losses happen because the events that you witness blast your mind, others because in order to do what you just did, you'd have to be already insane.

 

[Frostmarrow]

I play in Tatters of The King with two veterans and one newbie. When we encounter the mythos the veterans always look away or hide just so they won't lose their precious san. Me, I find that approach completely untough and I ogle all that there is to be seen. For sure, if you investigate you investigate. You read the books and you witness the horrors. Looking away is like not reading those ancient tomes full of secrets man was not meant to know. And how fun is that?

-People who look away shouldn't be allowed to have children. And that is my god honest opinion and those who disagree may prove me wrong but I won't care. There, I said it.

 

[Byrons_Ghost]

I think I've seen it in Ripples from Carcosa, but I'd have to check. It's definitely frequent enough in Tatters of the King, for just about every Sanity check upon encountering a monster for the first time.


Despite my complaint about the rule, it's otherwise excellent. There are some boring, overland, way-too-much-travelogue-info-for-my-tastes parts, but they're very thorough if you're fond of that sort of thing. On the other hand, the climactic moments are fantastic. You'll see all this adapted to an Arcanis campaign in my story hour (several chapters in the future, I'm afraid): http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=103252

Tatters of the King is extremely thorough, very well written, and logically fuses together a variety of Hastur/King in Yellow elements into a cohesive whole. I'm planning to wrap up the Tatters of the King in three weekends, which will eventually play out in the story hour.

Sounds like I'll have to check it out then. Thanks for the info! I've always been a big fan of Hastur and the Yellow Sign. I personally like the period history and travel info, too, but it definately gets to be a bit much at some times (ie Horror on the Orient Express, Mountains of Madness).

Chaosium seems to have a pretty big history buff segment in their fan base, though, so can't really fault them for trying to serve it.

 

[Johnnie Freedom!]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned this yet, but the whole idea of "looking away to save my sanity" smacks of metagaming to me. Having a character avert his eyes to, essentially, save himself from losing points in a sanity stat is not that different from having a character say to another, "Hey dude, how many hit points do you have left?"

 

[Frostmarrow]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned this yet, but the whole idea of "looking away to save my sanity" smacks of metagaming to me. Having a character avert his eyes to, essentially, save himself from losing points in a sanity stat is not that different from having a character say to another, "Hey dude, how many hit points do you have left?"

Yeah, it's like saying "I duck" when a dragon breathes down on a bunch of hapless dungeoneers.

DM: "Of course you do."

 

[Jim Hague]

Well, I guess I can see why Jim Hague is getting so cranky about this idea, but it's worked great for me in my games, from a gaming perspective - though we're talking about Far Realms creatures in D&D and not proper CoC action. Actually describing the creature, well, my imaginative powers tend to fail me - I have a hard time making it especially interesting. Instead, all Far Realms creatures in my campaign (true Far Realms creatures, that is, not merely pseudonatural ones) are completely invisible to any sense type as an Ex ability (even spells like divination fail to take the actions of Far Realms creatures into account, unless you use a special incantation along with the spell that basically tanks your Wisdom). FR creatures' SR is also based on this "invisibility." You can voluntarily take a semi-permanent Wisdom penalty to see more of the creature - staring into the abyss, as it were - for as long as your Wisdom penalty is reduced, with higher penalties giving you a more thorough description (so a minor Wisdom loss lets you pinpoint the creature, a greater one lets you fight it with it only having concealment, and the full-on, 20-point Wisdom "embrace the madness" penalty actually gives you some bonuses). Basically, the Far Realms and the normal multiverse are mutually exclusive universes, and you can't adequately understand both at the same time. And your mind tends to go all pear-shaped if you opt for the Far Realms' version of reality.

It's led to some very interesting combats, where some players try to fight something they can barely detect, or risk exposure to the creature's Form of Madness ability (cribbed from the FC:I) with a reduced Will save. I've found it does a much better job inspiring genuine fright in my players than the Sanity system I swiped from Unearthed Arcana, combined with an unspoken agreement with them that true Far Realms encounters are always going to be just this side of totally overpowering.

So your idea has merit, at least in my experience. I'd prefer a good sanity system like Jim Hague seems to prefer, but this way works better and more easily in my actual games.

I like CoC's Sanity system for what it is, in the context of CoC. I also like Mutants and Masterminds' take on Madness, Unknown Armies' Madness Meters. I try to be inclusive, y'know?

I find it interesting, how you set up the Far Realms horrors. The Old Man has this to say on the topic, with compliments:

"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." - H.P. Lovecraft

 

[billd91]

I'm of two minds with this. I can see not noticing something or not noticing much of it leading to less SAN loss. On the other hand, I'd prefer the SAN loss result to indicate just how much of the creature I really saw.
Cthulhu comes rising out of the mist and I lose only 7 SAN on the d100. I obviously didn't really see more than shadows. My friend who lost 93 SAN on the d100 got a good full-frontal look.

In d20, with Spot, Listen, and Search skills, there's at least some good ideas for trade offs. If PCs all have low Spots and don't see the Dark Young plodding along the tree line, they don't lose much, if any, SAN. They don't see it coming either and so can't get a good head start on it (which they may need). I also think it's fair for any PCs boasting about how low their Spot skills are to face a few more cultist ambushes... A Keeper has to have his fun too.

I do think that I wouldn't buffer the PC's SAN much just because the player says he looks away. A glimpse might be enough to make those sounds it's making seem much more horrific than hearing them alone.

 

[Jim Hague]

I'm of two minds with this. I can see not noticing something or not noticing much of it leading to less SAN loss. On the other hand, I'd prefer the SAN loss result to indicate just how much of the creature I really saw.
Cthulhu comes rising out of the mist and I lose only 7 SAN on the d100. I obviously didn't really see more than shadows. My friend who lost 93 SAN on the d100 got a good full-frontal look.

Thing is, SAN loss is as much comprehension as perception - you realize, through inescapable, mind-blasting Truth that everything you know and hold dear as a human being is wrong. And while looking away/not seeing might work for lower-end Mythos weirdness, Cthulhu (who's middle management at best) is as much a horrific psychic presence as a horrible monster. Sure, you escape that SAN loss...for now. But then, the dreams come...the ones where what you really got a dose of starts leaking in...

In d20, with Spot, Listen, and Search skills, there's at least some good ideas for trade offs. If PCs all have low Spots and don't see the Dark Young plodding along the tree line, they don't lose much, if any, SAN. They don't see it coming either and so can't get a good head start on it (which they may need). I also think it's fair for any PCs boasting about how low their Spot skills are to face a few more cultist ambushes... A Keeper has to have his fun too.

I do think that I wouldn't buffer the PC's SAN much just because the player says he looks away. A glimpse might be enough to make those sounds it's making seem much more horrific than hearing them alone.

Interestingly, in At Your Door, a Cthulhu Now campaign, they show that SAN loss is lowered by not directly percieving the Mythos - characters have an opportunity to observe Shub-Niggurath herself appearing via a (silent) video link to the summoning site. SAN loss is dropped down to something like 1d10/1d20. Huzzah for the inadequaces of human technology, eh?

 

[Umbran]

-People who look away shouldn't be allowed to have children. And that is my god honest opinion and those who disagree may prove me wrong but I won't care. There, I said it.

Well, people who don't look away are soon stark raving mad, and incapable of so fundamentally sane a thing as raising and supporting a family.

I mean, really. One family picnic that includes a jello-mold, and Daddy'll be getting out the shotgun, mumbling about how Aunt Martha is clearly a Mi-Go, and Cousin Terrence is out to eat his brains. High velocity lead poisoning is not good for children...

 

[Wolfwood2]

In d20, with Spot, Listen, and Search skills, there's at least some good ideas for trade offs. If PCs all have low Spots and don't see the Dark Young plodding along the tree line, they don't lose much, if any, SAN. They don't see it coming either and so can't get a good head start on it (which they may need). I also think it's fair for any PCs boasting about how low their Spot skills are to face a few more cultist ambushes... A Keeper has to have his fun too.

Without addressing the question of "looking away", I think it's poor game design to regularly reward characters for being bad at a skill. Maybe once in a campaign as a gag, but characters should not regularly benefit from failing checks.

And no, beneficial uses of the Spot skill do not make up for it, as Spot is something for which character building points must be expended and so should be pretty uniformly beneficial.

I like the suggestion earlier in the thread that the CoC horrors sort of force you to look at them. Failing at Spot checks shouldn't mean that your PC gets to avoid sanity checks that other PCs have to make.