Call of Cthulhu: The Nature of Madness?

[Nisarg]

Hopefully that didn't come out too jumbled up. I can elaborate more on how I perceive it all if you want. Either way, I hope this all helps if only a little.



The Horror

I agree with all of your definition of insanity, and your expression of how different levels of sanity would act, but that doesn't address my fundamental question, which is: WHY does the exposure to the true nature of reality lead them to this insanity? What do you see as the cause that leads to these effects.
You said that in CoC people become more insane as they discover more about the true nature of the universe. I am asking what is it about the true nature of the universe that makes them more insane as they discover more about it?

Nisarg

 

[Yair]

I was going to post something really smart, but don't have anything smart to say

I liked The Horror's explanation very much. I'm not sure it actually jives with the rules, but it's a a good and interesting one.

Yair, who wonders how long it takes this thread to close.

 

[The Horror]

You said that in CoC people become more insane as they discover more about the true nature of the universe. I am asking what is it about the true nature of the universe that makes them more insane as they discover more about it?

Well, let's take magic as an example. You learn one day that by erecting a shrine to some ugly looking tentacular God, that you will be blessed with good fortune. And this ugly God thing doesn't just give good fortune as in things will generally be better. It actually gives you a couple of model girlfriends overnight, and by the end of the week you are rolling in cash and organising a party with free blow for everyone.

You fully believe in your God and you believe he gave you everything. Other people look at you and think of it as just another freaky religion. Great. No harm done.

Next week however you start getting visions from your God. You erect a larger alter, and pray at the specified time of the month like the God told you to do. When you do this you commune with your God, and get to speak with him directly.

Now if you tell people you've done this, most people will consider you to be insane regardless of what religion you are. But nobody is going to lock you up for it now are they?

But what if your God told you during your communion that he/she would be really really pleased if you provided an animal sacrifice at the next mass? Now you are closer to the edge. Anybody that hears you are sacrificing animals in the woods at midnight on the second day after every full moon will most likely consider it their duty to see you locked up.

And then the spiral continues. The God asks for larger animals. Then for people. You become accostumed to the good fortune the God has given you. You don't want to lose them. You do as the God wishes.

At this point you have lost contact with the rest of humanity. The world has become more about you and your God rather than you and your neighbours. You don't think you are insane, but to everyone else you most definately are. Ergo you are insane. Even though you did discover so much more about the true nature of the universe. Because you discovered so much more about hte nature of the universe...


The Horror

 

[TerraDave]

As a game mechanic [and an aside], sanity is great, slowly eroding away as your knowledge of and experience with the Cuthuhlu Mythos increases. It feeds on itself, the lower your sanity, the more likely you are to loose sanity. It ensures that if for some strange reason your charecter isn't killed, he or she will loose it. (For all its grimness, it is actually pretty entertaining in play)

I think the explanation for sanity loss can work on various levels, there doesn't have to be an exclusive explanation. Going back to Lovecraft, one key element was just the pure horror of the knowledge or experience. It was just wrong. Like the weirdest/crudest true life stories multiplied by 10 or 100 or 1000. I think it would be closest to post traumatic stress disorder, but made more horrible and lovecraftian.

Beyond this, sanity loss may also reflect a strange kind of higher awareness (that makes you act crazy once in a while, at least as percieved by the "unenlightened"), as implied by the aptly named The Horror. The link in original CoC between the sanity score and the Cuthulu Mythos score points to this.

I would just assume most charecters would be athiest or agnostic (did Lovecraft have any religious charecters?). In any case, it is the encounter with the supernatural, a wierd and horrible supernatural, that gets them, not the loss of some pre-existing religous beliefs (lots of things do that, and it doesn't nec. make people crazy). And it is important that there is no upside here, no good gods or angels or white magic, just pure horror and dread. Or worse, the feverish euphoria of hoping the old ones will return...

 

[The Horror]

I think the explanation for sanity loss can work on various levels, there doesn't have to be an exclusive explanation. Going back to Lovecraft, one key element was just the pure horror of the knowledge or experience. It was just wrong. Like the weirdest/crudest true life stories multiplied by 10 or 100 or 1000. I think it would be closest to post traumatic stress disorder, but made more horrible and lovecraftian.

Beyond this, sanity loss may also reflect a strange kind of higher awareness (that makes you act crazy once in a while, at least as percieved by the "unenlightened"). The link in original CoC between the sanity score and the Cuthulu Mythos score points to this.

I would just assume most charecters would be athiest or agnostic (did Lovecraft have any religious charecters?). In any case, it is the encounter with the supernatural, a wierd and horrible supernatural, that gets them, not the loss of some pre-existing religous beliefs (lots of things do that, and it doesn't nec. make people crazy). And it is important that there is no upside here, no good gods or angels or white magic, just pure horror and dread. Or worse, the feverish euphoria of hoping the old ones will return...

Most definately. Take this simple example: you are walking down the street one day when you see the roads asphalt come alive, complete with mouths and limbs, grab a dog off the sidewalk and consume it.

WTF? I would personally flip out. Right there and then, on the spot. I would run for my life and probably curl up in a ball somewhere shivering for a few hours. After that I probably would never want to step on a piece of road again, going out of my way to avoid doing so even to the point of stupidity. It would naughty word with my life until counselling managed to tell me I imagined the entire thing and would allow me to function normally again, though I'd probably always be wary of roads from then on (my sanity would be lowered, but the insanity would eventually be gone).

Then again, I am assuming that I would have made my Idea roll and actually understood what I saw. If I failed my idea roll I would know something was wrong, but probably assume the dog fell into some soft asphalt on the road, or just ran behind a fence whilst the light played tricks on me. It would still shake me up a little though (lowering sanity a bit) and making it less likely that I could just shrug off the next freaky thing I saw...


The Horror

 

[grimslade]

Insanity from Beyond

Religion doen't even enter into it. Exposure to the Mythos is a direct challenge to the commonly accepted world view. 2+2=4 or gravity. Exposure to a mythos creature or cities with eldritch geometries challenge the basis of a sane rational world. Prolonged exposure to the Elder gods skews a persons sense of reality from the percieved reality of the rest of us to the REAL reality of the Mythos.

Grim

 

[Mark Causey]

I always thought that the horrific nature started with:

1) the fact that the gods and related creatures of the universe, despite our anthromorphization of them, are nothing like us, and are completely alien and unable to be understood, and

2) at best, these things are uncaring of humanity and cannot be pled with against the others which want humanity destroyed, much like we want to kill an infection or cancer.

The fact that we are considered to be worse than anything else in the universe, despite our proud history.

 

[Kanegrundar]

An atheist wouldn't be less prone to insanity versus a religious person. No matter what a person's religious/philosophical viewpoints are, all sane people view the world the same. Trees are trees, cars are cars, and so on. However, an atheist that just the world as nothing more than a crapshoot that played out to this point by the laws of science or whatever, when they see the swirling masses of chaos, they suffer the same effects as a man of God would.

As for whether the Mythos Gods are evil: I seem to recall several HP Lovecraft stories detailing at least some of them as maelvolent, which would imply evil to me. However, they may not look at it as evil to destroy or harm humans (looking at it as we would swatting a fly), but from the standpoint of mankind and the PC's, yes, the Elder Gods would be evil.

That said, I do like Voadam's theory. It's not how I originally perceived the Mythos, but it is one that I like and jibe's with the feel I always tried to protray in my games.

Kane

 

[Wrahn]

Atheist or not, most people believe in their own worth. The acceptance that we are insignificant, our existence literally has no worth, no meaning, that we are less than ants, not only in the grand scheme of things, but in all scheme of things, grand or not.

To accept that the Mythos is real is to accept that you personally are of no worth. Belief in a Primum Mobile is irrelevant in the face of total negation of self worth. Whether it would drive one “insane” (whatever that is defined as), I can not say.

But ultimately it is the mood that the game tries to set, that ultimately it is all hopeless, which is the reason for the sanity loss mechanic.

 

[Scribble]

Yeah I've always seen it more as a suddenly you realize that you're nothing more then a hallucination...

It's not so much that there aren't any gods or that you don't matter to them, it's more that you just aren't.