Call of Cthulhu: The Nature of Madness?

[Voadam]

Yes, this is the "biological theory" I had mentioned.

I guess my next question for you then would be, how does it have a detrimental effect? What is the nature of this detrimental effect? How does it manifest?

Is it psychological or purely physiological? If its purely physiological, then the detrimental effects would in no way depend upon realization of the "horrible truth" of what you experience or observe... this seems pretty incongruent with most of the Mythos stories and themes.
To explain: In most mythos stories, the protagonist starts to lose sanity when he begins to "realize" the awful truth, reading a book of forbidden lore, or witnessing a childe of yog-sototh or what have you; and gaining some sliver of understanding of... something... that means that all they thought they knew was wrong.

Yet according to the "radiation" theory, theoretically an illiterate could lose SAN just by looking at the words of a Mythos book he is incapable of reading. It seems to rob the setting of the psychological aspect of horror that makes Cthulhu stand out from mere "gore" style horror.

That's why I think that the "radiation" theory may well have merit but there has to be something more, or that it has to be fleshed out to explain the psychological aspects of the Mythos terror.

Nisarg

Structure equals function. The brain is a physiological organ. Do things to the biochemistry and you get behavioural, psychological effects. Certain mental disrders can be linked to chemical imbalances in the brain and treated with drugs to balance things again.

Yes, an illiterate staring at sigils of elder sign power will have sanity loss, just like a literate who studies them intensely. Imprinting the signs on your visual cortex causes reactions in your head. Part of the manifestation could be "the growing horror of realization that reality is not how we think of it" so it is a symptom of the problem, not a cause of it. So an illiterate cultist may still want to clutch that mythos book and keep it by his side always for the feeling it gives him, like carrying the bible as a talisman against evil. It is the power inside, not necessarily the writing, although reading exposes your brain more directly than mere proximity.

And this jibes with our understanding of paradigm shifts about reality. People don't go horribly insane when they study the Hesisenberg Uncertainty principle, many don't like it or irrationally struggle stubbornly against accepting it, but very few people go insane over it. But in the Mythos you find out that reality is actually that funky "out there" and they get woogy. Not people who hear second hand and have it explained to them, but people who experience it directly.

Ooh, a flying squid. Many IRL would say "neat" as many do upon seeing strange undersea creatures. However if there is something about them that affects your brain directly it explains why it would universally incite detrimental long term mental effects.

 

[Nisarg]

Moreover, how does merely catching a glimpse of one of the Old Ones drive a person insane? I mean, sure a person would be frightened, but how does the mere sight fill the person with horrible cosmic truths? Do the Old Ones telepathically pipe the knowlege directly into the character's head? How does reading the Necronomicon and other ancient tomes drive a persone insane? What if a person read the book and thought it was just a load of bull?

.

Fundamentally, these things end up being up to each campaign, in the RPG sense. Some might say that if you read the forbidden book and make your sanity check, then you basically succeed at "disbelieving" the parts of the book that contain the awful cosmic truths.
Others would say that success just means you're able to handle the shock better.

Its also fundamentally up to each campaign to decide whether its the knowledge of these cosmic truths that cause san loss, or the mere exposure to the totally alien forms of these things man was not meant to know (and whether that is from the "radiation effect" or because of a deep rooted human racial fear of these creatures passed down over millenia through our ancestors).

But part of what I'm trying to say in this thread is that I think for a CoC campaign to be really excellent, the DM has to decide which of these various options apply FOR HIS CAMPAIGN, as of the very start.

And as evidenced by my other posts, I do think some options are better/more consistent than others.

Nisarg

 

[nimisgod]

Frankly, I find that fairly insulting to a significant portion of people in the real world (atheists) who already do feel this way! It implies that without believing in a loving Daddy-figure who watches over us, we would go nuts. Yet there are millions of people on earth today who believe that there is no God, no fundamental reason for humanity's existence as a race or their individual existence as a person, and an inevitable reality that they will someday cease to be, and sometime sooner or later after that all record and memory of their very existence will also cease; and yet these people are not insane. These people make personal purpose out of their lives.

The effects of the revelation of the Cthulu Mythos to a human is not unlike the injection of a physics professor's knowledge into the brain of an ant.

The world of an ant is small. Ant, Queen ant, food and enemies.

Similarly, the world of a human is small incomparison to the truth of the universe. There are dimensions beyond the first, second and third that are just beyond human comprehension. It's not that we can't see it, we can't comprehend it. An ant can't comprehend higher concepts.

Can't understand how something could exist and yet not exist (in a true sense not just in your head) in front of you? Knowledge of the Cthulu Mythos reveals to you how this is possible.

Like what previous posters said, Lovecraft's reading just mentions that somethings appear "wrong" in the same way a deja vu tells you that something is familiar.

The actual cosmos of pattern'd energy, including what we know as matter, is of a contour and nature absolutely impossible of realisation by the human brain; and the more we learn of it the more we perceive this circumstance. All we can say of it, is that it contains no visible central principle so like the physical brains of terrestrial mammals that we may reasonably attribute to it the purely terrestrial and biological phenomenon call'd conscious purpose; and that we form, even allowing for the most radical conceptions of the relativist, so insignificant and temporary a part of it . . . that all notions of special relationships and names and destinies expressed in human conduct must necessarily be vestigial myths. —H. P. Lovecraft, letter to Frank Belknap Long, February 20, 1929; quoted in S. T. Joshi, H. P. Lovecraft: A Life

 

[Nisarg]

great quote, Nimisgod!

Nisarg

 

[nimisgod]

Thanks be to Google

 

[Thotas]

Yup, that's it exactly. Exposure to Mythos knowledge, beit from reading the Necronomicon or running for your life in the opposite direction as that Shoggoth over there, causes the human brain to undergo experiences it cannot experience. And if that contradiction wasn't bad enough, the brain knows it's experiencing something it shouldn't be able to experience, and that the impossible experience is the true experience. And that's no fun.

 

[Trepelano]

I know this will sound like a cop-out, but, in truth, the question brought up in this thread is not meant to be answered - that is part of the atmosphere of the game.

Lovecraft used this notion of insanity as a very shrewd tool to create a sense of horror. Rather than explain how the knowledge causes insanity, he merely shows us that it does. Its like the gruesome cannabilistic ritual that takes place off-screen. The reader's (or the player's) mind develops its own sense of dread through its own wonder and imaginination that an author (or GM) could never duplicate through explaination or detailed description.

The fact that we debate its cause is, I think, the ultimate example of its effectiveness. We are driven by morbid curiousity to understand what could cause such a consequence, and are left a bit horrified nd frightened by the mere fact that we DO NOT KNOW. We can see that the secret knowledge causes such dire effects, but are standing on the wrong side of the veil to explain it.

I firmly believe that leaving such questions unanswered you do more to create the true lovecraftian horror ambience in your game than if you attempt to detail it. It is for the player's to mull over and wonder. Consider that all the information available to the GM is only a bare scratch of the surface of the "true reality". Even as you impart necessary information to the players you should always hint that there is more information that their characters are getting that you, the GM, are not detailing. Basically, they should come to understand that the information that the GM's and the players have from the rulebooks are merely a pale shadow, a hazy reflection of the truly horrible secrets of the universe.

 

[Nisarg]

It doesn't sound like a cop-out, but I think that you need to consider this from the DM point of view.

I think that your point is that the real experience of Mythos-induced madness cannot be comprehended in any accurate way, and that's true.
But I think the nature of the cause for this madness, in very general terms, must still be understood by a DM as the premise before starting his campaign.

In other words, if you as the DM have an idea in your mind of just why it is that the Mythos makes men go mad, you will also know in that way the particular nature of the "terror premise" of your campaign.

I'm suggesting that a campaign where the DM has it in his mind that the Mythos drives men mad due to the "radiation effect" is going to be very different than one where the DM has it as his premise that the Mythos drives men mad because of the "sentience is an illusion" effect, and either of these would be very different than a campaign where the DM's premise is that the Mythos madness is caused by the "overwhelming evil" effect, or the "reality is purposeless" effect.

And that a DM knowing just which kind of effect he wants to apply will lead him to run a much better CoC campaign then if he just shrugged and said "it makes you crazy".

This is completely different from telling your players just what effect it is. You probably don't want to actually make an exposition explaining the whole thing to the players, they should never be told the "why" of Mythos madness; but the fact that YOU as the DM knows will help make your campaign much more focused.

Agree? Disagree?

Nisarg

 

[billd91]

One thing to keep in mind is that there are 2 different forms of sanity loss: regular and permanent.

Regular sanity loss is recoverable with therapy, level gain (in the d20 version), and by defeating monsters. I see this as representing the stress the character is under in trying to deal with things that man was not meant to deal with. Each whittling away of his sanity by regular loss makes him that much closer to finally 'losing it' and going around the bend, possibly to never recover (but also possibly to recover). It also makes him more susceptible to picking up indefinite insanities like phobias and obsessions, things that are generally easier to pick up when you are under a lot of stress.

Permanent sanity loss comes only from gaining Mythos knowledge. A friend once defined this as the giving up of hope. The more you know about the mythos, the more you realize that in the end your soul is just going to be eaten up by some demon sultan anyway. And so your maximum ability to deal with stress and other general weirdness is diminished.

 

[Nisarg]

Permanent sanity loss comes only from gaining Mythos knowledge. A friend once defined this as the giving up of hope. The more you know about the mythos, the more you realize that in the end your soul is just going to be eaten up by some demon sultan anyway. And so your maximum ability to deal with stress and other general weirdness is diminished.

Yes, that's a good point. And you could certainly argue that part of the "temporary" SAN loss (the type that you can recover with therapy) is due to shock, etc.
However, remember that the rules STILL make a distinction between "temporary" SAN lost by regular horrific acts and the kind due to exposure to Mythos effects: the former you can develop an immunity to over time, whereas the latter will always continue to have an effect.

Ie. if you see dead bodies, at first you lose san but over time your character becomes "immune" to losing san over that as you become desensitized.
On the other hand if you see Deep Ones, you lose san, and if you see them again later, you lose SAN again. You never develop immunity to seeing them.

Nisarg